The first meet of December for the Southbourne Hunt was as ever well attended, with some hundred local riders assembled on the lawn at Hadderton, to fortify themselves with the stirrup-cup of port and sherry wine that Tillotson and his minions were dispensing.
‘Mornin’! Good mornin’ to you there!’ Breath steamed as greetings were exchanged, hats raised, whips flourished in the frosty air. ‘Milady, good to see ye! Good morning to ye, John…
‘Consult your toes, Ma’am, there’s my method, and if they’re cooler than your nose, why then we’ll have a scent!
‘Hey there, young Fuller, how’s your father’s gout?’
Ruddy squires and weathered ladies. Stout tenant farmers, sporting clerics and rod-backed military men held in excited horses the better to unleash their own excited tongues. ‘Stand still, will you! Stand!… ‘Two thousand guineas is what I’ll give ye for that piece of flesh,’ I put it to him there an’ then… Stand, Sultan stand sir, damn ye!’
Loud-voiced and scarlet-coated, they surged and eddied round the mounted figure of Lord Southbourne as their host and master; with young Viscount Denton, quite as keen as any for the sport, threading through their ranks to find a place to move off as close as possible to his father’s well-bred and high-fed grey.
In the three weeks since the fiasco of his mother’s tea-board in the White Saloon, and poor Sary’s aborted début into Hadderton society, David and his parents had exhausted all their views on the subject of his infatuation – as had his cousins, Octavia and Charles, and Sary Ann herself. There was nothing more to say that was not already said; and nothing more for David to do this side of Christmas than to go about his daily business while he wrestled with the unresolved decisions of his future.
‘You fine ladies like to think that girls who go a-whoring ain’t worth the bounce of a cracker. But yer ’usbands an’ yer brothers could tell ye differently I daresay, if ye cared to ’ear a cully’s version of the story. That right then, Charlie?’
Sary, cornered in the White Saloon, had instinctively enlisted masculine support against her female adversaries. ‘I’ll give ye this for nothin’ though,’ she’d gone on to tell the ladies on that most unforgettable occasion. ‘I love young Davy ’ere. Yes, love, Miss Stanville, that’s the word, for even whores know ’ow to love it seems. And ’e loves me an’ all; a young Lord who’s dwelt with women of refinement all ’is life, set firm on weddin’ with a trull! So what d’ye make of that? An’ where would such an upset place young ladies with maiden’eads to offer, an’ proficiencies in French an’ drawin’ an’ the pianoforte? Think about it, Miss. Then come an’ tell me when you ’ave the answer.’
At which, with all the majesty of Cleopatra, she’d risen to her feet to sweep past Lord Southbourne, ignoring Charlie’s military salute, and await the others in the carriage which had brought her to the door, and which shortly would return her undefeated to the stews of Brighton.
But now the Huntsman and his hounds were trotting into view. ‘Hold up! Hold up then, Pincher! Towser! Roly! Up together!’ The pack held sixteen and a half couple of as level and as useful hounds as any in the country – as Lord Southbourne had but recently observed to anyone in earshot. Black-and-tans and lemons, with blood in them from all the best foxhound breeding-lines; they moved with sterns erect and heads alert, rationing their urine between the trees and fencing-posts along their way up from the kennels behind the Hadderton coach-house and stables.
It was at the coach-house gate that Octavia intercepted him, when David returned the landaulet from taking Sary and the actress back to Brighton.
‘Now then, Tavie, before you start,’ he’d said defensively, ‘I’ve just now come from Sary, and can tell you now that she has finally agreed to marry me when I attain majority. Is that plain enough for you? We will be married, and nothing now that you or anyone can say will to stop us!’
Her face was quite as pale as his, her mouth as firm, her dark eyes mirrors of his own. ‘I see too well how she must leap at such a prospect. But you, David! How can you consider it?’ she had demanded. ‘You cannot cast aside all that this place has meant to us and could still mean. It just won’t do; and I will not believe that you’re prepared to make the name of Stanville a laughing stock in every salon and assembly room in England.’
Disappointingly, cousin Charlie’s attitude within the house that evening had been to all intents and purposes as hidebound as his sister’s.
‘Denton, my dear young idiot; why be so extreme? All things in moderation, don’t ye know,’ advised a man who’d always managed to avoid involving his own heart in the affairs with which that organ’s generally associated. ‘One day you’re an innocent; a very monk where muslin is concerned – next thing we know, you’re so confounded taken with the sex that you’re all up for weddin’ with a Cyprian! A frolic’s one thing, Cousin, and I was the first to see the fun in passing off a harlot as a lady. But to think seriously of marriage with a common trull like Sary? With the Earldom in the balance, Denton, the thing’s beyond a joke – noblesse oblige, dear fellow. Noblesse oblige!’
At the sounding of the horn to summon them across the park towards the home farm coverts, the meet responded to a man – with David as thrilled as any; his heart absurdly active.
It was a clear December day that promised famous sport. A pinkish winter sun searched out the bronze and russet tints of fallen leaves and naked quickthorn twigs. A peacock, bereft since autumn of his gorgeous train and hundred Argus eyes, battered upward from their pathway like a great bejewelled pigeon, to peer down at the passing cavalcade from the safety of an overhanging branch. Lord Southbourne, trotting at their head, levelled a jaunty shot at it along the barrel of his hunting whip; in best harness himself as ever when riding out as Master of the Hunt.
Downwind of the initial covert, ranged in a vivid line of scarlet all along the headland of Farmer Swaine’s best thirty-acre field, they sat their mounts and waited while the Huntsman put in the hounds to draw. Next moment their combined activity released a flock of whirring ring-doves and a harsh-voiced crow from the far side of the coppice. Then all at once the pack gave tongue, and David saw a lithe brown form streak out across the rising land beyond, already half a field to the good – Charlie, ‘gone away’
A whipper-in hallooed the fox’s exit. ‘Hike, hike!!’ the Huntsman sounded; and Lord Southbourne’s grey leapt forward with David close behind, across the ploughed expanse of Swaine’s best field, sparking through the cobbles that the flint-pickers had missed.
‘Hey, boy! Ain’t this a better sport than chasin’ mutton through the lanes of Brighton?’ his father shouted happily, applying spurs to make up his horse’s mind for it on the subject of the gate that loomed ahead – and contracting his own hunter’s stride to collect him for the take-off, David acknowledged his affection for the courageous, and in essence very simple, soul who’d sired him.
Perhaps surprisingly, of all his critics in the family, and despite his own dynastic interest in the matter, Lord Southbourne had shown himself to be the least severe in opposition to his son’s wrong-headed choice of marriage partner.
‘Well, boy, you know a looker when ye see one, I’ll grant ye that.’ He’d told David in the private fastness of his library, whence Lady Southbourne’s wails had driven them to earth. ‘A gal worth lookin’ at, damned if she ain’t – and with mettle too, by Jove, the way she faced Miss Tavie down!’
He winked lewdly as he turned to rummage in a cupboard for the decanter and the glasses that he kept there in amongst a litter of old spurs and knots of whipcord. ‘Ye’re a spunky fellow, Davy, an’ I’m not the man to blame a son of mine for playin’ at top-sawer with a pretty whore,’ avowed Lord Southbourne, flicking a far from pristine handkerchief across the glasses and pouring each of them a bumper-full of port. ‘But look here, marriage with her, boy? I ask you, is it reasonable?’
‘I think so.’ David took the proffered glass and made the best of things he could. ‘Papa, I know how it must seem to you. You think me a young fool who’s simply lost his head over the first girl he’s made love to; an ‘infatuation’, as Mamma is pleased to call it, and one from which you think I will recover.’
His father finished off his port and poured himself another glass. ‘My dear fellow, damn it all…’ He left the sentence in the air.
‘But that’s where you’re wrong, you see! I never will recover from what I feel for Sary; not in a month or year, or in a lifetime of separation from her – and I don’t see why I should! It’s why we have to marry.’
‘But if you did tire of her after, shall we say a year? If ye found yourself tied for your lifetime to a woman who’s unworthy of your title? What then boy, have ye thought?’ The faintly astonished expression in Lord Southbourne’s face revealed that he himself was thinking hard.
‘I tell you it will never happen.’
‘Ha!’ the Earl exclaimed with all the triumph of a clumsy intellect who knows he’s outmanoeuvred a refined one. ‘Well now, if you’re so sure of that, Sir, then I think I have the very answer to the problem that you’ve set us. My dear boy, take a year away then, and spend it in doin’ what you’ve always wanted – I say in touring, Sir, and on the continent!’
‘In touring?’ The idea took David by surprise.
‘Gad’s teeth, why not? What’s to lose, if you’re so sure you’ll feel the same about your little ladybird when you get back? Go and enjoy yourself! Go see the damn antiquities in Rome and Florence, an’ even if ye must in that dug-up Pompey’i. Tour all the palaces and galleries an’ broken statues they can find you. Half of Society these days are off explorin’ Europe. ’Tis all the crack again since Wellington has made it safe for ’em. So why not you, boy? Think about it. When you’re of age in March you’ll have the funds to play whatever ducks and drakes ye like in France and Italy.’
At which point in the conversation, having seen the interest kindle in his son’s dark eyes, his Lordship hastened to build on his advantage. ‘Ye notice I don’t speak as your mother has of disinheritance, or any thunderin’ nonsense of that kind, an’ run me through the liver if I would,’ he avowed as he returned the decanter to its shelf. ‘No, Sir, I ask only that you give yourself some time and breathin’-space, to make a trial of your affection if that’s how you want to see it.
‘I’m an honest man, I hope.’ He closed the cupboard door. ‘So if at the finish of a year away, you’re still set upon the wench, well then we’ll see what can be done. I can’t say fairer, boy, and nor can you expect it.’
Having thus burdened himself with enough abstract meditation to last the year he’d mentioned, Lord Southbourne patted David on the shoulder, advised him again to think it over, and took himself off for some cleansing exercise about the Hadderton estate – leaving his son, who’d never had much trouble with the abstract, to tantalising images of Alpine peaks and sun-bleached Tuscan plains and all the priceless treasures of the Louvre, the Pitti and Borghese.
They came up with the Huntsman and his hounds in the wooded shaw that ran beside the Lewes turnpike at Lower Tilton; and while Lord Southbourne exercised his Master’s privilege of abusing all and any of the field who dared to press too close, David took advantage of the check to turn his winded horse into the breeze and make his own choice of the hound he thought would be the first to open on the line. Not that he or any other rider could fix on a direction for their quarry. For the scent of a fix and the sense of a female were two things, everyone agreed, that men could never hope to understand. David, as the case in point, had shown his total ignorance of women in imagining that attitudes like Sary’s and his cousin Tavie’s could possibly be reconciled, even for a single afternoon. To make things worse, in forcing a false character on Sary he’d publicly denied his own appreciation of all she stood for. He saw that clearly now, and knew that he must make amends.
Another ‘halloo’ rang out. Charlie broke from cover, and the hounds laid on in hot pursuit.
‘Heaven confound ye, boy! Hold back! Hold back, I say, an’ give the damn hounds space to work,’ Lord Southbourne thundered to conceal his secret satisfaction at being over-ridden by his son. And as he passed him, David made his day complete by uttering the words his father had been waiting all week to hear.
‘All right, Papa, I’ll go!’ he shouted with a kind of desperate triumph. ‘I’ve decided that I’ll take that year away in Europe after all!’
And no need to spoil his father’s victory or enjoyment of the hunt, David thought, by telling him that he would not be going on his own.
‘Listen to me Sary, an’ tell me if I’ve got the right of it, my love? Ye’re aimin’ to strike out for France an’ gawd-knows-where besides, in company with ’is Lordship Davy-Denton. To wed ’im in a twelvemonth an’ become a bloomin’ Viscountess? That all there is to it? Or would ye like p’raps to go an’ try for Princess of Wales, now that Prinny’s talkin’ so freely of divorcin’ Caroline?’
The pair of them were sitting in the upstairs salon of the house in Brighton, sharing an early morning pot of chocolate while they cozed and Hodge locked up below – Madge Perrin in cut velvet reinforced with stays and high, concealing ruffles; Sary in nothing but the flimsy robe de chambre that she worked in.
‘Is that all ye want then, dearie?’ Madge repeated drily.
Sary smiled. ‘I know it sounds fantastical, an’ to tell ye truly I can’t ’ardly believe ’tis ’appenin’ myself.’ She raised her sleepy painted eyes. ‘Reckon it’d be fool’s work to turn ’im down though, wouldn’t you?’
For a long silent moment Mrs Perrin held her gaze. ‘Ye’re right, you’d be a fool to let a chance like that pass by yer door,’ she said at length. ‘So go with ’im an’ see the sights of Europe – an’ wed ‘is Lordship if he’ll ’ave ye, sweet’eart. For ten to one he’ll never guess until too late that ye can’t stock ’is nurseries for ’im, or be the mother of ’is son and heir.’
‘But that’s not true, it never is. I’m not barren! Why, I’ve twice ’ad cause to call for ’pothecary’s pills to bring my courses back, ye know I ’ave! I’m not yet two-an’-twenty. I’m strong, I’m ’earty, ain’t I? You said yourself you’ve never ’ad a working girl who’s stouter. Why, I dare say I could give the man a score of kiddies if I chose to!’ (Never having thought of it, except as a hazard at all costs to be avoided, the chance of bearing children became to Sary suddenly of absolute importance.)
Madge Perrin sipped her chocolate reflectively, her thick black mastic lashes lowered. ‘’Ow long is it, sweet’eart, since you’ve been with us now?’ she asked.
‘Four years last summer. I came to Brighton in the first week after Waterloo, if ye recall?’
‘Four full years then, plus a six-month.’ Sary’s employer set her decorative golden head a little on one side, then demonstrated its utility for mental calculation. ‘That’s fifty-two times four; two ’undred an’ eight weeks, plus twenty-six for the ’arf-year – that’s two ’undred an’ thirty-four then – minus one week a month for courses, which is fifty-four. One ’undred and eighty workin’ weeks then altogether, if ye agree?’
She paused for corroboration. But Sary, already way behind, could only nod.
‘Good gels, and ye know you’re one, my love, must manage sixty culls a week on average,’ continued Madge complacently. ‘Add fifteen for double-’elpin’s. That’s seventy-five – an’ I’m countin’ ’is ’ot-cockled Lordship as several, ye may be sure. Seventy-five times one ’undred an’ eighty. That’s, let’s see – thirteen thousand, five ’undred shots in the tail, give or take a few; and enough to last a very willin’ married lady a good ’undred years of faithful service, I should say.’
‘So what of that?’ said Sary stoutly, refusing to be daunted by mere arithmetic. ‘It sounds a deal, I’ll grant ye. But ’ard work never did hurt nobody, so’s I’ve ’eard. An’ if it ain’t hurt me, I don’t see ’ow it signifies.’
‘Well if we’re onto maxims, dearie, another that ye might ’ave ’eard, tells ’ow the often-trod pathway grows no grass – and another ’as it that the tree too early robbed may never bear no fruit. Ye said yerself you’ve ’ad to call for ’pothecary’s pills, an’ more than once, an’ like as not, while takin’ in a poxy Tom or two. Or am I wrong?’
‘Well, maybe not.’
Sary’s heart felt suddenly as cold and heavy as a stone. (No children – no heirs for Hadderton? If that was true, how would he bear it? How could she ask him to?) ‘But I still say it’d take a good sight more’n that to make an ’earty woman barren,’ she maintained, with a confidence that sounded hollow even to her own ears.
‘P’raps so. I’m only ’ere to tell you that whores who’ve served a three or four years’ term of ’ackneyship don’t generally need to fret no more about mislayin’ courses.’ For all the harshness of her tone the older woman’s voice was not unkind. ‘I can’t say for sure. Maybe it ain’t impossible for gels like you to make feet still for kiddies’ slippers,’ Madge admitted. ‘I’m sure I ’ope ye can; an’ if ye’re askin’ my advice, I’d say try like ’ell for ’em, before ’is Lordship’s inspiration an’ ’is year runs out.’
Madge laid a thin, veined hand on Sary’s arm. ‘But if it don’t work out, my lovely, an’ ’e won’t take you for ’is Lady after all – just you come back to Madge where you belong. We’ll still be ’ere, gawd knows. For whatever else we doubt, ye may be sure that payin’ culls’ll never be in short supply this side of Judgement Day.’