He said Jack Buzzard was a skilled craftsman, that he planned to open his own establishment and it might be a profitable investment, a good way of providing for my future.
I said, ‘So it’s a question of business. He’s coming to inspect the merchandise.’
Papi banged his hand on the table.
‘Jesu Maria!’ he said. ‘Jack Buzzard is gut man. Vill you heff him or no?’
I didn’t like to cross my father. He was a kind man and I knew he wanted the best for me. In the ordinary way of things it’s reckoned to be no bad thing for a girl to show some flirtatious resistance when she first receives an offer, but my marked face deprived me of that privilege.
I said, ‘How can I say? I haven’t been in his company. I’ve never thought of him. I’ve never thought of anyone as a husband. Who would ever want me with this face?’
I saw a tear come to his eye.
‘Mausi,’ he whispered, and I knew I was forgiven. ‘Miss’ and ‘Little Mouse’ signified the ebb tide and the high water of my place in Papi’s affections. So then it was my turn to say something conciliatory, to give him hope even though my true intention was to find myself a man like Tom Garth.
I said, ‘Well, let me meet him, Papi. First let me know him a little.’
Which Papi took to be near enough my consent. He slapped the table again, but this time in joy.
‘Nellie, Mauschen!’ he cried. ‘You sink he comes tomorrow viz horse und cart, takes you avay? Nein, nein. First he vill make hiss bissness. Oh yes. He vill be most best convectioner in all London.’
Mother had been listening outside the door. She had begun the day with a headache but what she’d overheard had cured her.
‘Oh, Nellie,’ she kept saying, over and over, ‘vot a gut Papi you heff, to find you husband. Vass Glück, vass Segen. Only sink! Married!!’
But I couldn’t think. I couldn’t even recall Jack Buzzard’s face. And I was very anxious that Mother should say nothing to Miss Tod, our Herald Extraordinary. I knew she would parley my reluctant agreement to consider an offer of marriage into a firm betrothal, then everyone would know about it, from Charing Cross to Piccadilly and there’d be no way out.
I hardly know how I got through the day. I’d woken that morning without a worry in the world. Then suddenly I was under an obligation. I was being offered something I had no business refusing. And to make matters worse I wasn’t allowed even a minute of solitude, for Mother was in such a girlish mood, pink-cheeked and simpering, trying my hair this way and that. I kept her talking on any subject I could think of. I feared that if I once fell silent she would start to give me some womanly advice I would rather not hear.
At five o’clock sharp Jack Buzzard arrived and I understood why I’d been unable to picture him. He wasn’t handsome and he wasn’t ugly. He was just himself, with light brown hair and a square, serious face. Before dinner was served we were left alone in the best drawing room for fully ten minutes and it was clear he thought we were coming to a definite understanding. Papi had misrepresented me.
I told him I was too young to marry.
‘You won’t be,’ he said. ‘Give it a year or two, you’ll be just right. And that suits me. I’ve business to attend to first. I’m going to be my own master, me.’
I suggested he could do better.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re from a solid family, sensible with money, well thought of. But you’re not too tied to them and that’s a good thing. I couldn’t be doing with a wife who’s always running home to her mother.’
‘I meant my face.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I did think of that. But looks are soon gone and then what are you left with? No, you’ll do very well.’
I didn’t give him any encouragement, not even the faintest smile. But Jack had everything worked out.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘I know it’s usual to give a thimble but I hear you’re not much of a needlewoman. I hear you can keep accounts and write a clear hand and that’s a more useful thing. Sewing girls are ten a penny. So I picked this out instead.’
He brought a small package out of his coat pocket. It was a traveller’s inkwell, with holes for two quills and a tiny castor for pounce powder hidden in its base. There was that side to Jack. He could surprise you. It was a very lovely gift.
I said, ‘I write stories too and keep a journal. A writer likes to write something every day, you know?’
As well to get that on the table, I thought, but he showed no interest.
He just said, ‘I thought it’d come in handy. I know you’re up and down to Windsor a good deal. But you can tell those Royal Highnesses to enjoy your company while they may. Once we’re wed I won’t have you coming and going.’
I see Twyvil outdid herself:
October 15th 1792
Mushroom soup, roast pheasant and sherry wine syllabub. All like ashes in my mouth. Jack Buzzard is hard working and very ambitious. He doesn’t drink, his fingernails are immaculate and he is a stranger to self-doubt. I cannot love him because I think I love TG. I am trapped.
10
I didn’t tell Sofy about Jack, at least not immediately. It was my way of pretending nothing need come of it. He’d find a pleasanter face to look at across the table or a father-in-law with deeper pockets. The Royalties, anyway, were distracted by the turn of events in France: the King was to be tried for his crimes. But was there still a King of France? Some clever devils argued that the monarchy had been extinguished so how could charges be brought against it? Louis, they said, could only be indicted of crimes committed since he lost his crown and there were none, kept as he was under lock and key, unless playing shuttlecock and battledore had become an offence. Others argued that a trial was quite unnecessary. A man, they argued, need only be tried to establish his guilt or his innocence, but Louis had been king and all kings were tyrants whether they intended it or not, therefore Louis was guilty. Quod erat demonstrandum.
Amelia said, ‘It’s too absurd. How can a king be locked up in a prison? Why doesn’t he tell the jailer to release him immediately?’
Minny said, ‘Read your history, you silly baby.’
Sofy was gentler with her. She said, ‘I expect he’s kept there for his own well-being, until he can be given safe conduct. I expect he’ll go to Vienna, to his queen’s people.’
Sofy knew her royal houses and her geography. I always thought how strange it was that she could place all her cousins, in Mecklenburg and Saxony and Hesse, when her own world was so very small. There was the Queen’s House at Buckingham Gate, there was Windsor, and the old red house at Kew. Then she might go to Lady Harcourt’s in Oxfordshire once in a month of Sundays and to Weymouth in the summer, if the King decreed it. That was her orbit and she had no say in any of it. The Queen’s spaniels had more freedom. They could at least run into a shrubbery and sniff around unchecked.
Beyond the walls of Lower Lodge everyone guessed that King Louis was doomed. People would have been disappointed if it had gone otherwise. His sorry situation cheered them up. They might be struggling through the mud and misery of winter but at least they weren’t locked away, waiting for the footfall of a priest come to confess them for the last time.
Papi, who had found it sensible to subscribe to St George’s, Hanover Square, when he became an Englishman, suddenly insisted on our attending services. He said we must pray that sanity would prevail and the French King be spared. But like our own first King Charles, King Louis was beyond saving. He wasn’t a cruel man or a particularly avaricious one, but the times were against him. The French people were like a fire that had been banked and now began to burn bright. If he gave way too much to their demands, he was weak. If he resisted them too firmly, he was a tyrant. He was caught on a turning wheel that could not be stopped.
It was evening when we heard. Papi came home at an unusually early hour. The Prince of Wales had been giving a supper at Carlton House, but when the news was received his guests’ appetites had failed them and the party had broken up. Papi said the theatres had closed and people were milling about in the streets in spite of the cold, telling and retelling the awful details of King Louis’s fate.
