Read Long Live the King Online
Authors: Fay Weldon
They had another Manhattan and worked out ways of smuggling Frank up to her bedroom. The best way, they decided, was for her to say goodnight and go publicly to her bedroom and for Frank to take another room in the hotel and join her later. No one would be fooled but the proprieties would be observed. Frank did not quibble about the unnecessary cost. She was glad of that. One would not want to be stuck out in the Australian desert, or anywhere, with a mean man. She would have to face her parents’ wrath, but she would worry about that tomorrow.
The next morning Minnie was taking breakfast in her room; her condition was now most obvious no matter how full her skirts, and while the intellectuals of the I.D.K. delighted in their advanced thinking, guests at the Savoy were of a more conventional mould. She was surprised when there was a knock at the door and was taken aback when Rosina came in, accompanied by a youngish man she did not know. Rosina introduced him as Frank Overshaw of Western Australia, her betrothed; they were to be married by special licence and sail for Freemantle within the week. Their tickets were booked. No, her parents did not know: she would be going round to Belgrave Square with Frank that morning to tell them.
Minnie remembered what living with Stanton had been like, in that other world, long ago and far away, when the unexpected and rather alarming was a day-to-day occurrence. She recovered from her annoyance that Rosina had misled her so and wished her and Frank every good fortune. She declined to go with the happy pair to Belgrave Square. She would make her own way back to Dilberne Court to be with Arthur. She was feeling perfectly well, thank you very much. She thought Frank Overshaw a little strange and not someone she would have married but every girl to her own taste.
She rang for room service and ordered breakfast for her guests. There would be some talk but really in the circumstances what did it matter? Frank Overshaw asked for Bircher-Muesli, a concoction of raw oats, nuts and raisins moistened by cream and lemon juice. Minnie tasted it and found it quite delicious.
After the gig in Milsom Street bookings for Princess Ida had been steady: there had been enquiries from as far away as London. Carlotta continued to do the platform work, George to plan and manage lighting and props, and Ivy took the money, kept the books, and helped out George. They developed a few extras: psychokenesis, in which Princess Ida lifted a chair in the air by the power of thought and moved it towards her before sitting in it; another one in which a panama hat materialized out of darkness to land on someone’s head. That always got a laugh. Levitation would need another person. They did small private sessions and larger public ones, which proved to be less profitable after you paid for the hire of the hall and overheads. George’s only problem was deciding which way forward to take the show. Raising the spirits of the dead was their mainstay, but this didn’t bring in a class audience, just the poor and the gullible who had very little to spend. They expected ectoplasm, too, which was messy stuff and hard to control, and which both Carlotta and Ivy hated. The show, he reckoned, had to be positioned somewhere between a music-hall act, an uplifting demonstration of the power of the human mind when released from doubt, and spooky voices from the grave.
They’d moved to London when they had built up a good enough network of connections. Mrs Henry had good contacts in fashionable circles there. George observed that Princess Ida’s looks and cultivated voice opened many doors that would otherwise be closed. They’d rented rooms in a boarding house on the fifth floor of a big house in Earls Court: the advantages being that it was cheap and their comings and goings would not be noticed, or the strange equipment they carried about: the disadvantage was the stairs. Ivy did most of the housework and cooking and complained that Carlotta didn’t like getting her hands dirty.
‘Well, she is a lady,’ George had rather rashly replied and Ivy had gone off into a huff which had lasted days. It was remarkable how a sour face affected takings. George could see something had to be done. Jealousy was rearing its ugly head. He was fond of Ivy, and had resigned himself to Carlotta being out of his league; yet wondered quite why. He would look at her on a platform, the way she moved, spoke, inclined her head, with a kind of reverence that ill became him, a young entrepreneur of the new century.
Carlotta moved about the house with a childlike confidence, laughing and chattering, which made him feel fatherly. But he was not her father. He could not do without Ivy: he did not want to do without Ivy. She was of the flesh rather than of the spirit, he doubted that Carlotta would ever consent to what Ivy consented to, and nor probably would he want her to. The rational thing would be to live in a
ménage à trois
: if men proposed this, women sometimes consented. Half a man, they thought, was better than no man at all. Ivy could probably learn to settle into it; Carlotta was so off into her own head she might not even notice. One way or another he imagined she knew all about the birds and bees by now. How could she not? He and Ivy made enough noise.
In fact he was confused; he thought perhaps he was in love. The tune of
Come into the garden, Maud
kept coming into his head. Granted, he had worked the accordion to play the first few phrases but it kept surfacing in his head:
Come into the garden, Maud,
For the black bat, night, has flown.
Come into the garden, Maud,
I am here at the gate alone . . .
The lover, waiting, while the scents of the night drifted around. Beautiful. He wanted to call her Adela. She had never been a Carlotta, this girl he had rescued from the flames, her arms so trustingly, childishly, round him. May the 21
st
was going to be her birthday. She seemed to have forgotten. She had put her past behind her so admirably. She looked ahead into the future, straight as a die, clear-eyed. Perhaps he should encourage her to go into the healing business but then she wouldn’t want him any more. He wanted her to need him. She looked blank when he mentioned the Mrs Henry business, and just said it must have been some kind of fit. And of the other night’s bird incident, all she said was she had stroked the creature, it had recovered and then flew out.
What was odd about that?
‘What was odd,’ said Ivy sourly, ‘was that a bird dashed itself to pieces in the first place, possessed by a demon, like as not. Things are getting too spooky.’
Carlotta had been all set to do a child’s voice when the young woman who’d died of typhoid fever had come through and taken over. George said he’d intervened to seize the moment; having done so much research he didn’t want to waste it. But he knew in his heart it wasn’t true. The voice had been echoing all around. It was kind of a phenomenon that did happen. They’d talked about it at college as ‘a non-conscious intelligence’: an energy that happened when a lot of people were concentrating on the same thing.
A week or so after this conversation, when Ivy’s mother in Yatbury fell ill, Ivy had to go and sort things out. This meant she had to leave George alone with Carlotta and she was none too pleased, but there was little she could do about it, except to warn George to leave Carlotta alone. Once done, of course, she regretted it: tell a man what to do and he will do the opposite. One show had to be cancelled and another simplified so that George and Carlotta could manage.
So it was that George was able to take Carlotta to the Prospect of Whitby to celebrate the birthday she had forgotten all about. They travelled by pleasure boat to Wapping. It was a truly beautiful evening. George surprised Adela – he would call her that name from now on, he said – by quoting Tennyson, though she suspected much of it came from
Come into the garden, Maud
.
He held her hand, and she wished he wouldn’t. She had hero-worshipped George for a time, but it was hard to adore someone who lived so close to you: they were just people, with noses to blow and tempers to lose. He was like a brother and brothers and sisters didn’t hold hands that way, she knew enough now to know that. It was still a bit vague, but a girl she’d met in a queue had explained what men did to women to have babies. It seemed they did it even when they didn’t want babies. It was rather revolting but judging from George and Ivy it was enjoyable, once you had realized it wasn’t someone’s death throes. ‘No better than you ought to be’ meant you did it when you weren’t married. George was moving his knuckle up and down in her palm, and talking about the evening star, Venus. She wanted to laugh, it was so unlike him.
She would rather he didn’t call her Adela; that was another world she had once lived in, full of flames and fire and palaces and complete unreality. But he seemed bent upon it. She wished Ivy had been able to come; it spoiled things not to have her around. She never knew what to say to men, they struck her dumb.
The Prospect of Whitby was an enormous public house with lots of rooms and little stairways leading to nowhere in particular, and she wondered why he had taken her to this place of all places. When George had called her Adela again she’d had a vivid memory of the dining hall at the Bishop’s Palace, with the harpist and the gold candlesticks – Babylonian, her father had called it. Now George led her into a bar that was full of men and women in a state of more or less undress and intoxication sharing cigarettes; it seemed a very odd place to have come to. Here he plied her with glasses of gin and tonic. She had rather too many, which she supposed was his plan. She did not like the smell of the cigarettes: he smoked but she certainly did not.
He said it was her birthday, she was seventeen and it was time for them to know each other better. He knew a place where they could go. He slipped his arm under her jacket and squeezed her breast. He said he loved her.
‘That’s a strange way of showing it,’ she said. ‘It hurts.’
He said she had cast a spell over him. He wanted only to serve her. Adela! Adela! He beseeched her. She could see this was so much nonsense. She remembered Frank Overshaw wanting to take her off by ocean liner to teach the aboriginals of Western Australia mining. This one only aspired to a river boat and Wapping. She thought she was worth more. She could tell the difference between a fairy prince and Rumpelstiltskin. She slapped his hand very hard and told him to stop. He did so at once and took her to a place where they served rather good steak and kidney pie and beer, and there was no nonsense from him any more. She was relieved. He was her brother again.
Arthur Balfour was surprised when Mrs Baum called to visit him at Carlton Gardens on the morning of the 2
nd
of June. As it happened he was at home. It was a momentous day. First thing that morning he had authorized Broderick at the War Office to release the news of the official ending of the South African war. The King had been informed. The Bishop of Stepney would announce it at his evening service at Westminster Abbey. Prayers would be said and bells rung. The nation could proceed to the Coronation in good cheer. A great trial was over. Not only that, the nation’s wealth would be greatly increased by the emptied coffers of the now annexed Boer territories. There would be a lot less carping about the cost of the Coronation.
Balfour had intended to take the rest of the morning off by playing a round of golf at Henry Tubbs’s golf course in Hendon, but the weather was so bad it hardly seemed worthwhile. It was a disappointment; the course was only nine holes and the members were eccentric, insisting on wearing a uniform – scarlet with brass buttons – but old Tubbs was an amiable enthusiast and always good for a golf conversation. There were precious few places near central London where a man could play, and he needed his mind clearing. His uncle, Robert Salisbury, would most likely be stepping down next month: as his successor he must make final decisions as to his new Cabinet, not be taken by surprise. Ritchie, tough but loyal, should probably replace Hicks Beech as Chancellor. Financial matters grew more complex, loomed larger in the nation’s understanding of itself than it should, but there it was. On the home front a letter from Mary Elcho which would need thinking about before replying. And of course, May’s voice still echoing in his ears; that had disturbed him greatly. It was one thing to search, another to find.
And then of all things there was Naomi Baum tapping at his front door. Well, he would let her in, he would see her. It would stop him brooding, as he’d hoped a round of golf would do. He knew Naomi and liked her, a spirited young woman who sang beautifully and was wife to Mr Baum, who had saved so many of his landed colleagues from financial disaster, and who was a leading light of the Handel Society. It was good to talk to someone from the ordinary world. He made her sit down and talk. There had been some trouble with their invitations to the Coronation, it seemed. Theirs had come, at his instigation, to the Dilbernes via Consuelo. He remembered having delegated the task to her. These invitations were like gold dust. How had it ended up at prime ministerial level, with this damp woman – the rain had not stopped all day; jubilant crowds would be having a hard time of it – on his doorstep?
‘I could say I lost them,’ she said. ‘I could say they blew away in the wind, I could say the dog ate them, but I think I will tell you the truth. There was a domestic tiff. I threw a diamond bracelet in the fire and in retaliation my husband threw the invitations.’
‘What, the highly responsible Mr Baum?’
‘I drove him to it,’ she said. ‘In penance I have come to see you.’
That made him laugh.
‘And now you want them back again?’
‘Of course.’ He called his secretary and asked him to sort it out, and when Mrs Baum rose to go he asked her to stay. He asked if she was going to hear Clara Butt singing Elgar’s
Land of Hope and Glory
, and when she said she had her ticket booked, asked her to bring back news of it; he would not be able to find the time to go. They chatted about this, and that, and why Handel was so dear to the English heart. In the course of the conversation she said she and her husband were to buy land in Palestine.