The Curious Tale of the Lady Caraboo (19 page)

‘And your lovely sister, the beautiful Cassandra – is she still carrying a torch for me?'

‘Ed, I have warned you about Cassandra. Just because she throws herself at you . . . You would do well to remember that she is my sister.'

‘And I am your friend.'

‘And I bested you in three fights at school.'

‘She is safe with me! Unless I marry her, of course, but that is a century away at least.'

‘Don't let her – or Mama – hear you dangle marriage like that, Ed. She will surely faint with delight.'

Edmund laughed. ‘The ladies of Leghorn and Tuscany and Venice are waiting. I don't know if your sister can compete.'

‘I
will
knock you down, Edmund.'

‘I cower before you, Frederick.'

Fred rolled his eyes. But at least he was smiling.

‘And there will be dancing?' Edmund asked.

‘Mama has booked musicians from Bath.'

‘Thank God! And I have heard' – Edmund lowered his voice as they went inside – ‘that your princess is a regular smasher.'

‘I assure you she is not
my
princess at all. She's down by the lake, I think – at least, I saw her heading off there with Cass.'

‘Then let us kill two birds with one stone. My refreshment can wait,' Edmund said, marching Fred out onto the terrace and down across the park.

The girls were walking towards them, arm in arm. Fred saw that his sister was talking animatedly about something. The other girl was beside her, her shoulders slumped, her attitude listless; even from a distance she looked sad. Fred would have liked to shake her. What right did she have to be sad? She had promised to play the Princess, and he wanted the running, dancing, fighting one, not a sulky girl. How would Mama feel if the stupid girl let everyone down?

‘Edmund, Fred!' Cassandra waved, and as they drew closer Fred saw that Caraboo was quite pale.

‘What's happened?'

‘Caraboo has been sick, just now, by the lake! Oh, Edmund' – Cassandra blushed – ‘you have arrived.'

‘Indeed I have.'

‘Fred' – she turned to her brother – ‘I am taking Caraboo up to the house, to Bridgenorth. I think she is not well. It's such a shame for you, Edmund, to see her like this. I'm afraid she is not herself at all! Come, I am sure you need some refreshments after your long journey.'

Fred stared at Caraboo. The girl was a liar; she could be faking this as surely as she had faked everything else.

‘Hello – Princess.' Edmund spoke to her slowly and loudly as if she were a small deaf idiot.

‘Edmund, don't be silly – she's no fool,' Cassandra said. She turned to the Princess. ‘This is Edmund Gresham.'

‘Esquire,' Edmund added, bowing slightly.

The Princess returned a salute – although it was lacklustre, Fred thought, and definitely half-hearted. He bit his tongue.

‘I say, Princess,' Edmund said, reaching out to touch her face as if she were a small child, or a dog.

She stepped back.

‘She doesn't like being touched. By men,' Cassandra explained.

Edmund looked at Fred and snorted. ‘What a poor show! What does she like, then!'

‘Don't be so mean, Edmund.' But Cassandra was smiling as she spoke. ‘I will take her to her room. I will see you gentlemen at dinner.' And she led the Princess away.

Edmund put his hands in his pockets and turned to Fred. ‘I say, did you know that! The touching, I mean?' He cursed. ‘And she is a corker. A bit peaky now – vomiting's never a plus in a girl – but a definite looker. I'd have a crack at her! Fred, I was banking on you having broken the girl in by now! I mean, sir, you are, are you not, Mr Frederick Worrall, a man capable of charming any girl in Westminster into bed . . .'

Fred glared at his friend. It was as if he was looking in a mirror – only somehow time had shifted in the weeks he had been down from school and he knew that wasn't his reflection any more. He turned away. Edmund was talking about something else now, and he was grateful for it. All those girls, all those Lettys and Hettys . . . He had bought those girls' compliance with money, and even then some wept. The society girls who flirted with him didn't know him at all, wanted only a pretty face and some silly soft-soap flattery.

He thought of Caraboo, by the fire on the island. She was the only girl who knew him at all, he thought. And she didn't even exist.

‘There!' Cassandra and Phoebe stood back to admire their work. ‘I am so glad you recovered, Princess. Mama, as usual, has plans for this evening and tomorrow, and I thought you would need something a little more elegant.'

Caraboo could not help smiling. She had never worn anything that felt so delicious in all her life. It was cream satin that shimmered almost golden as she turned this way and that, looking at herself in the mirror, wishing she truly was a princess who could do as she pleased.

‘Oh! You are a picture!' Cassandra said. ‘Phoebe, your needle does you credit.'

Phoebe bobbed a curtsey. ‘Thank you, miss. I made it from the mistress's old chemise.'

Caraboo saluted her, then kissed her on the cheek. If she could have spoken English she would have thanked them both. The dress came down just below her knees – modest for Caraboo – and was cut square about the neck, like her hunting dress. The sleeves and hem were crenellated, and swished when she moved. Caraboo felt the Princess return a little, and danced around the room; Cassandra joined her.

‘Come along, Phoebe!' she said, and the three of them made a wonderful picture. Until Cassandra, out of breath, stopped and leaned against the window.

‘There, look! The captain is returned on some kind of wagon!'

Caraboo followed her gaze, and her heart sank. The man was lying spark out on a cart being pulled by a tired old farm horse. The cart stopped and the man slid off and made his way unsteadily into the house.

She looked at herself in the mirror and thought of fairgrounds and punters as drunk as him, prodding her, shouting at her. She was a fraud – not a princess any more, but Mary Willcox dressing up. Her stomach churned.

Cassandra was laughing. ‘You know, I never saw a man get so drunk so often and live.'

‘You ent seen my father, miss,' Phoebe laughed too.

‘Oh, you do look beautiful, Princess.' Cassandra sighed. ‘I shall look like a sparrow beside a swan next to you. My only hope is that you do not steal away my Edmund's heart.'

The pretend Princess Caraboo's first thought was that Edmund Gresham didn't have a heart at all. Perhaps a pump to circulate the blood, but nothing tender. He reminded her of the seagulls that preyed on rubbish in town, small beady eyes regarding everything and seeing the value in nothing.

After the party had gone down for dinner, the fake Princess Caraboo sat on the roof, watching the sun set in the west, letting her legs swing free over the parapet of Knole Park. If she were truly Caraboo, she thought, she would not let the captain's threat of fairgrounds – or Fred's of imprisonment – worry her at all. She would merely stand up here in her beautiful silk dress, spread her arms, and fly all the way back to Javasu.

Her heart thumped at the thought of going downstairs, of performing. She had never felt like this before. Could she do it? Could she be Princess Caraboo again?

She stood up and stepped up onto the parapet. The Princess used to love heights. A breeze came in off the lake and she closed her eyes.

Hell, she thought, was all around her; hell was here. Hell was baby Solomon gone, hell was in a Wiltshire cherry orchard, hell was broken hearts and loving those who never ever loved you back, hell was dancing for crumbs and sleeping in barns. She shut her eyes. She had tried life, she thought, as Mary Willcox, as Princess Caraboo, as farm girl, nursemaid, lover, mother, beggar, actress. She had not been good at any of them. She stepped out, one foot over the void. Perhaps she should show them all that she was not afraid of anything.

Knole Park House
June 1819

Fred did not recognize half the staff in the dining room. Mama had mentioned borrowing the Edgecombes' cook – she must have half their household here, he thought. The guests, apart from the professor and the village parson, the Greshams and the Edgecombes, seemed to be academics who wore old-fashioned jackets, or thick glasses, or both, deep in discussion with some of Mama's friends from her anthropolgical circle. Most argued about Caraboo, but only a few, he noted, doubted her veracity.

The professor from Oxford, a collegaue of Heyford's, was convinced. ‘I have seen her writing – she is real! And I have spent three months in Calcutta . . .'

‘Mrs Worrall would not be taken in. She is intelligent – for a woman. And an American.'

Fred studied the man and thought more and more that university would be a waste of his time.

The food was, he had to admit, good, – meat jellies and pies, and even a representation of the island of Javasu worked entirely in coloured sugar paste. But he was not hungry.

He was sitting opposite Edmund and Cassandra. He felt like an old grey-haired cynic watching them flirt and talk so much rubbish. Then Professor Heyford enquired about Edmund's forthcoming tour, and Edmund trotted out his itinerary. Cassandra told them how, thanks to Mrs Shelley's
Frankenstein
, she wished to see the Alps.

Professor Heyford and Edmund laughed.

Cassandra pouted. ‘It is not fair! Why may young men travel the world and not young ladies?'

‘My dear girl,' Professor Heyford said, ‘travel is dangerous, and most uncomfortable – so I've been told.'

‘Our princess managed it all the way across the world,' Cassandra said.

‘But you are
English
,' Heyford said.

‘I am as strong as Caraboo, I'm sure!'

‘Oh! You can swim and hunt and climb?' Fred asked her.

‘No, but I could if I wanted to,' Cassandra said. ‘My skills are—'

Edmund cut in, ‘Your skills are being the most perfect adornment to society.'

Cassandra blushed and giggled, and Fred thanked heaven he'd been born a man. What could Cassandra do? If there was anything she wanted for, she had only to ask, to inveigle; she could not possibly step out into the world on her own.

He sighed. Wasn't he following a course set for him by so many others? He smeared his strawberry cream around the plate. Everything was false – not just the Princess, but the whole evening: all these people, smiling but wanting so much from each other. His mother wanting a titled lady like Edmund's mother at her table; his sister wanting Edmund, and Edmund wanting anything but boredom. Professor Heyford was a fool of a different stripe. Was he really taken in by the girl? Or was he only going along with it all so as to have his contributions listened to?

They were all fools and liars just as much as the Princess upstairs. He pushed his plate away.

In the library the chairs had been set out for a lecture. The terrace doors were open behind the curtains as the night was still – even now that it was at last growing dark – too warm. The easel from the schoolroom had been set up and Professor Heyford had pinned up a phrenology chart showing the human head divided into sections, like the counties of some strange skull-shaped country. He busied himself arranging a pointer he had borrowed from Miss Marchbanks, and reading over copious notes under his breath.

Mrs Worrall sidled up to Fred. ‘Would you fetch Caraboo down? I think she might be on the roof – Finiefs tells me she isn't in her room. Oh, and I forgot to ask Finiefs if the captain is fit for the lecture – I am certain Lady Gresham would so enjoy his tales of the Penanggalan.'

Fred finished his drink, and as he put the glass down on the table the whole party fell silent and turned towards the terrace windows.

Finiefs opened the doors; outside the sun was low in the sky which had turned a fantastic, dazzling crimson. Fred wanted to turn away – it almost hurt to look.

The buzz of conversation quietened, and there against the blood-red sun he saw the dark silhouette of the Princess Caraboo making her way across the lawn towards the house. One or two of the ladies gasped. Fred, despite himself, couldn't help staring.

She came in barefoot, wearing a dress that shimmered as she moved. She had taken off her turban and wore a kind of wreath made of ivy around her head. She looked straight ahead, but even though she walked as Caraboo had done, she couldn't feel that regal leopard curling itself around her legs; surely someone would see her shaking . . .

‘Princess!' Mrs Worrall gazed at her and smiled. ‘You look beautiful!' She wiped a tear from her eye, and led her into the room. ‘Princess, this is Lady Gresham and her son, Edmund. They have come especially to see you.'

Lady Gresham looked intrigued. ‘Mrs Worrall, she is most delightful!'

Mrs Worrall glowed with delight, Caraboo saluted, and Professor Heyford led her over to a chair.

Edmund sat down next to Fred and said quietly, ‘I say, her legs!'

‘Mrs Worrall,' Lady Gresham asked, ‘is satin the costume of choice in the South Seas?'

Professor Heyford coughed and rapped his pointer against the easel. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,' he began, ‘the Princess Caraboo.'

He began a lengthy discourse on phrenology. Fred saw the Princess twitch. Cassandra was fiddling with a curl of hair.

Edmund leaned close. ‘If I'd known your mama had intended a series of lectures, I would have stayed at home.'

Fred looked over at his mother, fanning herself and looking a little agitated.

Professor Heyford's voice droned on. ‘And so, you see, in addition to identifying her previously unrecognizable tongue as from Java, I have been able to deduce, from my investigations and the new science of phrenology, that she is without doubt of noble birth.'