‘No. What’s the point? We’ll never see any of them again.’
‘But we can dream.’
Sofy said, ‘Oh but Nellie doesn’t need a sailor to dream about. She already has an admirer.’
Amelia shot up in her bed.
She said, ‘Nellie? An admirer? Great heavens!’
And there was an anxious pause until I said, ‘Astonishing, isn’t it? But I’ve had the great good fortune to meet a man who loves nothing so much as a girl with her head in a bag. I’m really very hopeful.’
It was the only way with Amelia. I couldn’t bear her being made to kiss me to make amends for her rudeness.
I said, ‘But if you insist I choose someone from the Southampton, I’ll have one of those strapping side boys that brought us safe on board. In fact, I’ll take them all. They say you can’t have too much of a good thing.’
Which set them all squealing, even Amelia, though I’m sure she didn’t understand the half of it.
On the afternoons when we weren’t out on the water or driving about hoping to hear the tramp of ghostly legionnaires, we’d sketch or read or ride around the gardens in a little cart pulled by a jenny ass. Then, at five o’clock, we faced the greatest challenge of the day: turning ourselves into visions of loveliness ready for the evening’s entertainment.
The Queen didn’t care for going out and would happily have sat at the card table every night of the week, but the King loved to go to the theatre, and a king trumps a queen. It didn’t matter that he’d already seen the play. He would laugh as loudly the sixth time he saw it as he had the first and I believe he would have found a joke even in Macbeth, but we were never fortunate enough to see it acted.
By September I was word perfect in Mistress Warnock’s Triumph and Barnaby Brittle, but the theatre wasn’t our only diversion. Twice a week there was a ball at Stacie’s Assembly Rooms and this gave the Royal Highnesses what they really craved: a setting where they could see and be seen, where they could inspect young men at close quarters and even brush fingertips in the innocent name of dance.
One Tuesday evening the King put aside his own prejudices about dancing and looked in at the rooms for an hour. He was attended by two equerries, Major Garth and Major Manningham. Coote Manningham was reckoned gay enough to be recruited to the dance floor and he was showed no mercy, Gathering Peascods with Elizabeth, Beating the Kettle Drum with Sofy and Climbing St Margaret’s Hill with Minny, and all with a cheerful smile. Garth stood with his back to the wall longing, I was sure, for His Majesty to signal that he’d seen enough and it was time to retire. As equerries and humble companions are mindful to speak only when spoken to I feared we might stand there all night in polite silence, so I opened the bidding.
I said, ‘Major Garth, I should like to know about your parrot.’
‘She’s a yellow bill,’ he said. ‘Found her in Jamaica. No, that’s not quite true. It was she who found me. I was close to death till she decided to nag me back to health.’
He had had a fever, he told me, contracted in the jungles of Nicaragua, and had not been expected to live. I had never heard of Nicaragua. He explained it very well. If North America was his hand and South America was his coat sleeve, Nicaragua was the pearl button on his shirt cuff.
‘Bad business altogether,’ he said. ‘Plan was to break through to the Pacific, do you see? Doomed from the start. We went out on the Hinchinbroke. Young whippersnapper of a captain, only just made post, took it into his head he’d lead the transports upriver. Never should have happened. No experience, you see? He paid for it though, by God, and so did I. They took us both back to the Jamaica garrison in cots, more dead than alive.’
‘And is that when the parrot comes into the story?’
‘It is. Flew into the infirmary one morning, fixed me with her eye, and we’ve been together ever since. Did you hear her talk?’
‘I did. Her voice wasn’t what I expected. She sounded more like a grand old lady than a bird, and I didn’t understand everything she said.’
‘Just as well,’ he said. ‘She has some Spanish curses, acquired I may say before she lived with me. I aim to make her fit for polite society but a parrot won’t be hurried, you know? I teach her new words but weeks can pass before she condescends to say them. She seems to wait until I’ve given up hope.’
I said, ‘I’ve heard Miss Gouly make the same complaint about Princess Amelia.’
He smiled. ‘Nellie,’ he said. He had remembered my name. ‘There is something I should like to say to you.’
He studied his boots for what seemed an age.
‘Your face,’ he said, when he finally dragged it out. ‘I mean to say, your mark. I observe you’ve painted it over.’
‘I don’t like to, but it’s Her Majesty’s wish.’
‘Ah,’ he said.
‘And my mother agrees, although she never thought of it until the Queen did.’
He said, ‘Then I find myself in some difficulty. Obedience to your Queen is laudable and to your parent is natural. Nevertheless …’
‘You disapprove.’
He said, ‘I’ve seen its consequences. Countess Torrington. Have you ever seen the Countess? You’d remember if you had. She’s as yellow as a Chinaman. Lady Thynne and Mrs Bly Lennox too. Teeth gone, hair gone. And all devoted users of ceruse. How old are you, Nellie?’
I said, ‘I’m seventeen. Her Majesty said my face would frighten the horses if I didn’t cover it, but you have the same mark and you’re a cavalry man, so I suppose you disprove her theory.’
Another smile. Then we saw Princess Augusta approaching us.
He said, ‘I believe I’m about to be drafted to the dance floor.’
But Augusta said, ‘No more dancing for me. I made the mistake of wearing new slippers so I’m hors de combat, but I don’t believe I’ve seen Nellie dance at all this evening, nor you, Major. It won’t do, you know.’
I longed to dance of course, but not as a charity case. I said, ‘I don’t think Major Garth is a dancer.’
‘What rot,’ she said. ‘All soldiers are dancers. How else do you think they pass their winters?’
And so I had my moment. Tom Garth partnered me for Mr Isaac’s Maggot. He was light and neat on his feet and as we led up he said, ‘God save you, Nellie, from the interfering of well-intentioned fools.’
I wasn’t sure if he meant the Illustrious Personage for insisting I paint my face or Augusta for making him dance with me, but I clung to my preferred interpretation, that he cared for my health. When it was time for the carriages I was only too happy to make more room for the Royalties’ hooped skirts and go back to Gloucester Lodge by chair. I wanted to be alone, without anyone to enquire why I smiled so inanely. Major Garth was a man who had seen the world. He had battle honours, he was the King’s most esteemed equerry and he was no fool. And yet he smiled at my quips and cared for my well-being. The thought caused me a pang of sheer pleasure, though later it turned to an ache, the hopeless longing that I could ever find a man like that to love me.
The summer of 1792 was the best I ever spent in Dorset.
