It was the Conroy Effect. Vicky Kent’s steward was in and out of their apartments constantly. Sofy could depend on seeing him several times a day, or rather not seeing him, for she always snatched her spectacles off her nose the instant she heard his voice. She never hid the pleasure his company gave her.

She said, ‘I know you think I’m silly, but what harm does it do? I think I’m allowed a little fancy in my old age. Remember, I never had a husband.’

I said, ‘You may yet. Princess Elizabeth was older than you when she married.’

‘True,’ she said, ‘but look what she settled for. You don’t suppose Humbug ever causes her any raptures?’

I said, ‘If it’s raptures you want you’ll do just as well without a husband. Husbands are for a different kind of comfort.’ She was silent for a while. Then she said, ‘But Nellie, perhaps that’s why you never caught properly for a baby, if Jack gave you no pleasure, for you know I’m convinced it was my rapture that brought on Tommy.’

I remember smiling at her imperfect understanding of things, great woman of the world that I was.

I said, ‘Sofy, it wasn’t your rapture that caused Tommy. It was Garth’s.’

She spilled her tea. ‘Garth’s?’ she said. ‘Garth’s? What is he to do with anything?’

I wasn’t smiling then. My first thought was to retract, but I couldn’t. The ground for retreat was cut away the instant I’d said Garth’s name.

I said, ‘Garth is Tommy’s father. You told me so.’

‘I certainly did not!’ she said. ‘Garth! That ugly old man!

How could you imagine such a thing?’

Then we stared at each other, both dumbstruck. She was affronted. That was simple enough. But it was nothing to my embarrassment and confusion and the first pang of something else. My old feelings for Tom Garth, shut away for so long. Sofy broke the silence.

She said, ‘I cannot believe it, Nellie. Where did you get such an idea? Garth was always very helpful, admittedly. It was his suggestion to take Tommy into his own household when those Sharlands grew indiscreet. I’m sure I shall always be obliged to him for that. And he quite adores Tommy. But that I lay with him? You cannot have believed it. I know he always made a great pet of you but even you must admit the idea is repulsive.’

Then I couldn’t think of Garth at all. I began to see what was coming, what had always been under my nose. Nevertheless I had to ask.

‘Then who is Tommy’s father?’

She laughed and blushed, like a young girl again.

‘Why Ernie, of course,’ she said. ‘That’s why Tommy has turned out so handsome. You must surely see that?’

Ernie Cumberland, who had lurked about Gloucester Lodge that dreadful August, pretending brotherly concern. Who had stayed out of sight until that tiny baby had been hurried out of the house and then had laid the blame at Tom Garth’s door.

I said, ‘He forced himself upon you.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Well, perhaps at first. But I found I enjoyed it. It wasn’t at all what I’d expected. The Queen, you know, when Royal married Fritz, warned her it was a most disagreeable duty, but that wasn’t my experience. Now your face says all. You disapprove.’

I said, ‘Disapprove hardly meets the case. Do you realize what you’re saying? Ernie is your brother.’

She picked at a loose thread on the arm of her chair. She said, ‘I know it isn’t usual.’

Usual!

I said, ‘It’s contrary to nature, Sofy. It’s contrary to God’s word.’

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘And when did you grow so pious? A man may not marry his sister, that’s what my prayer book says. Well there was no marrying. I love my brother and he gave me something wonderful.’

‘What kind of gift is it that you’re not allowed to keep? You never held your child in your arms. Not once. Do you remember what you said to me after Tommy was born? You said “I’m ruined”. And so you were.’

‘You never liked Ernie,’ she said.

She reminded me of Amelia when she said that, petulant and silly. There was grey in her hair but she was pouting like a little girl.

I said, ‘And now I have particular reason, though I’m too shaken yet to quite believe it.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘don’t imagine you’re the only one who’s affronted. That you could think Old Garth was my lover! It’s too awful. I’m sure I shall have nightmares about it.’

I said, ‘He would have been a worthier one than Cumberland. Hasn’t Garth done everything a good husband would do? He’s protected your character. He’s raised your son and given him a name.’

She said, ‘I don’t deny it. Don’t lecture me. Garth knows I’m grateful and he did well enough out of it. He was promoted full general, you know, which he had no reason to expect. Ernie arranged that, of course. Ernie saw to everything.’

I stood up.

She said, ‘Anyway, what is it to you? If anyone has suffered it’s me. I’m the one left an old maid. Though Ernie always visits me when he comes to England. He never misses. I’m one of the very first calls he makes. And I have my consolation. I have Tommy.’

She saw I intended to leave. Usually she would find a dozen little reasons to make me stay another hour but that day she was too fired by the romance inside her head, too determined to defend it from any criticism.

She said, ‘I know what it is, Nellie. You’re jealous, because I have a son and you don’t.’

It was the Duchess of Kent who saved me from myself. She came in to the room, with John Conroy padding at her heels, and began talking at once. Vicky Kent believed the world was a series of theatres, with scenes set and actors frozen on their spot, waiting for her to make her entrance and bring the play to life. She failed to notice Sofy’s cross, flushed face so a Humble Companion with tears in her eyes was certainly invisible.

I didn’t take my usual path home. It would have taken me through Cumberland Gate and that was a name I preferred not to be reminded of. I walked along the Serpentine to Stanhope Gate and then up Park Street and as I sifted through the day’s revelations one thought began to overweigh all others. For twenty-three years I’d believed Tom Garth to be a seducer and a scoundrel. I’d been curt with him. I’d put away his garnet bracelet and never worn it since. And now I knew he was innocent. Doubly so, for he’d endured the gossip and raised Sofy’s son in dignified silence.

32

Nearly three years passed before I saw Sofy again. For me they were three years of change, most of it slow and inevitable, but some of it exciting. I began a new story and, spared Jack’s disparagement and Sofy’s demands on my time, I wrote freer and faster than I ever had before. Mr Crosby paid me £50 for the copyright of The False Construction. He said it was a much more saleable work than The Outcast, containing as it did the suspense of a conspiracy, the tragedy of unrequited love, a light peppering of wit and, above all, a happy ending. It was published in June 1825 and reprinted after only seven months. My Uncle Christoff died in his sleep on Christmas Eve. As near as we could say he was seventy-five. He had outlived Papi by a quarter of a century and no two brothers could have been less alike. Papi had thrived in company and being a mere steward to society didn’t trouble him. At Carlton House he’d been at the gilded, sparkling heart of dull old Hanover and to Papi it was a world of opportunities. My uncle preferred the quiet, domestic life. He had that same Weltje nose for turning a profit but he’d conducted business from his country retreat and, unlike Papi who’d been a shameless murderer of the language, he did it in almost perfect English. Without my uncle to push about in his invalid chair Morphew found he had no purpose in life. By Twelfth Night he followed him to the grave. I felt his loss more even than Papi’s, perhaps more even than my Jack’s. Morphew had been a presence for every one of my fifty years—trusty coachman, begrudging footman, kitchen-table revolutionary, Mrs Twyvil’s spurned lover, a kindly, sentimental man and a sniffing, scratching snub to my mother’s genteel ambitions. He had caught a head cold and though he kept to the fire-side and took nothing but brandy and milk the inflammation invaded his lungs.

He said, ‘I ain’t too fierce today, Miss Nellie, but do you bring me the tin of dubbin and my brushes I’ll shine up the boots.’

The next time I looked in on him the boots were polished and Morphew was gone. He looked like a man sleeping peacefully. It was only when he had passed away I realized how little I knew about him. That he was Norfolk Fenman, that he must be closer to eighty than seventy and that I had once heard Twyvil call him Dick. Sal and I opened his locking box and we put together the pieces of his life. According to his last will and testament his name was Nehemiah Richard Murview born, best as I can calkerlate it, 1737.

This made him the grand age of eighty-eight. He left a gold spade guinea to Sally, his bone skates to Annie, and a much-thumbed copy of Mr Defoe’s Captain Singleton ‘to Miss Nellie, as I’ve known from a babe and has gave roof and family to this poor batchyller’.

Suddenly I was alone and Seymour Street was too big for me, full of rooms I never entered from one week’s end to the next. Sal and Henry said I must go to them and live above the Pink Lemon, and I did begin to think of it, what I could take with me, what I should have to sell. It would have been easier for them to come to me but Henry wouldn’t. He liked living over the shop. Jack had been the same, twitching all night about the next day’s work, jumping up before first light to run to his beloved drying cabinets. Then just as I’d braced myself to give up my house and be reduced to the rank of elderly widow, I found I was needed again.

Annie was nearly fourteen. It was time for her to leave the parish school in South Street and learn the confectionery trade from her father but she had no heart for it. She said, ‘I know I must do it, Grandma Nellie, but the smell of the sugar makes me sick to my stomach.’

Annie’s a good girl, dutiful and hard-working, but she was always too sharp and enquiring to be wasted on making bonbons. I went with her to every school from Park Street to Soho and she got taken on at the National School in Rose Street, to help with the elementary class, two shillings a week and six hot dinners.

‘Father won’t be pleased,’ she said. But I knew how to deal with Henry Topham.

We walked round to Trotter’s Bazaar to say good day to Miss Tod but she wasn’t there. She hadn’t been seen for months. We went to her house in Meard Street but a stranger came to the door.

‘Gone,’ she said. ‘Ask for her at Poland Street.’