Miss Tod, my mother’s oldest friend and quidnunc, had gone quietly to the poorhouse, too proud to ask for help.

I said, ‘Why didn’t you come to me?’

She said, ‘I’m well enough here, Nellie. I keep busy. They put me to knitting stockings, while my eyes last.’

‘But you have to sleep in a room full of cots while I’m rattling around my house with bedchambers to spare.’

She hated to be beholden, she said. It really wasn’t so very bad to live in a dormitory, she said, and besides she had always expected to end in the workhouse, not having any family to turn to.

I said, ‘You have me to turn to, just as I turned to you all those years ago when I needed a friend.’

‘Did you?’ she said. ‘I don’t remember. I don’t recall things as well as I used to.’

God love her. There was nothing wrong with her memory.

At the Pink Lemon Annie’s news received a mixed hearing. Sally was secretly pleased. She knew Annie was better suited to teaching than she was to spinning sugar, but Henry was put out and whatever discommoded him discommoded her.

He said, ‘You’d no place interfering, Nellie. What am I to do now? You can see I’m stretched with Jack gone.’

I said, ‘Then do what Jack did. Take on a lad. You turned out well enough.’

‘I was no lad. I knew my craft. Take on a boy, you never know what you’re getting. Look what happened with the first one Jack took on.’

‘There was nothing wrong with Ambrose Kersie. He just wasn’t suited to it, and neither is Annie. She’s got a brain in her head.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘And that’s what I’m afraid of. I worked long enough with Jack to see the damage books can do to married life.’

Annie cried. She said she’d do as her father wished and give up her place at Rose Street and once Henry had seen her shed a few tears he was satisfied. He said no one should ever work for him against their will because their resentfulness would show in the quality of their work and if she didn’t mind appearing too bookish ever to get a husband he wouldn’t stand in her way. He could be a very cussed man, Henry Topham.

So that was settled, and then Annie came with me, with a handcart from the shop, to bring Miss Tod and her few bits from the poorhouse to Seymour Street.

She said, ‘Grandma Nellie, what did Miss Tod do, when you needed a friend?’

She was old enough to be told.

I said, ‘When I was a girl, when I was walking out with your Grandpa Jack, another man forced his attentions on me and I caught for a baby. Miss Tod helped me. She told me a house to go to and loaned me the money to get the baby fetched away, and when I got sick afterwards, very sick, Miss Tod cared for me and kept my secret.’

Annie was quiet for a while. It must have conjured up a shocking scene, a man forcing himself on stain-faced old Grandma Nellie.

She said, ‘Was it a girl baby or a boy baby?’

I said, ‘I don’t know. You can’t tell when it’s so small. But listen to me, Annie Topham. Don’t you be such a chicken heart as I was. If a man ever comes at you when you haven’t encouraged him, you kick and scream and make him think better of it. I don’t want you going to any Mrs Dacey, getting your insides all ruined.’

She wanted to know, who was the man?

I said, ‘He was a stable groom at a big house I used to go to, and now he’s dead and I’m old and none of it matters.’

‘And anyway,’ she said, ‘you married Grandpa Jack and lived happily ever after.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

That’s what they call a white lie.

I hadn’t expected to hear from Sofy ever again. In those first weeks I’d thought she might send a note but nothing came. The heat had gone out of our quarrel but as time passes the embers of a friendship may grow too cold to be rekindled. The attempt, when it came, was from Princess Minny.

Gloucester House, May 2nd 1826

Dear Nellie Buzzard,

I do not know, nor wish to know, the nature of the quarrel between you and Sofy. Only that she feels your absence greatly and is perhaps too obstinate to say so. The Duchess of Kent and I are her sole company and nothing we do succeeds in lifting her mood. You were ever a dear and loyal friend to her. I wonder can you find it in your kind heart to call on her?

Minny Gloucester

For a week I did nothing. I had missed Sofy but I wasn’t sure I had the patience for Royalties again. They dilly and dally and change their clothes too often and before you know it the day is wasted. There was also this conundrum to unknot: Sofy’s secret and Ernie Cumberland’s lie had caused me years of pain, but Sofy didn’t know that. She had no idea, yet her innocence didn’t lessen my need for recompense. And then, what could that recompense be? She couldn’t turn back the clock.

Eventually I wrote to Kensington Palace, and received a reply by return:

Dearest, dearest Nellie,

Forgive a silly old woman. I long to see you.

Yr Sofy

33

I believe I found Sofy more changed than she found me. Instead of getting stronger eye glasses she had taken to peering closer at her sewing and her books and so had grown quite stooped. She had also developed a type of deafness, not uncommon, in which the clarity of hearing comes and goes according to the agreeableness of what is being said. There were but two topics of conversation: dear Conroy, now promoted to major, who was everything considerate, and naughty Tommy Garth who was not.

Tommy had made love to another man’s wife and a great scandal was about to erupt. He had met Lady Astley in Leicestershire, riding out with the Quorn Hunt, then followed her back to London. Sir Jacob Astley, careless of his property, had gone to the North Country to see a promising chaser put through its paces and while he was away Tommy Garth was continuing his flirtation—and in broad daylight. Sofy was afraid that the talk would grow too loud for Sir Jacob to ignore, that he would call Tommy out, a duel would be fought and Tommy would be killed. She drafted a letter to Old Garth, begging him to remove Tommy from London and the temptation of Lady Astley, but then she hesitated to send it.

She said, ‘Garth is so ancient now. I don’t suppose he can do anything. And as you once reminded me rather sharply, he’s done so much over the years. I shouldn’t ask any more of him.’

I said, ‘What about Ernie Cumberland?’

‘Oh I couldn’t trouble Ernie,’ she said. ‘Besides, he’s in Hanover. What could he do?’

The subject was dropped for the rest of the afternoon while we debated the relative merits of Campden Hill and Vicarage Gate as places where Major Conroy might live. Sofy said Shooter’s Hill was a vast distance for him to travel when he was needed so frequently and so urgently at Kensington Palace. Something had to be done to make his life more comfortable. What I failed to understand, perhaps because my attention had wandered, playing with an idea of far greater interest to me, was that Conroy’s new residence was to be paid for by Sofy.

My little idea kept me awake that night. I could call on Garth and discuss with him Sofy’s worries about Tommy. I might be able to carry back to her some words of comfort. It would be my perfect cover for seeing him and perhaps putting the record straight. For a week the idea grew and possessed me. I said nothing to Sofy but I did try it out on Miss Tod. An old gentleman, I said. And a misunderstanding I should like to put right.

‘Why, for heaven’s sakes,’ she said, ‘of course you must call on him. I can’t think of any reason against it.’

Twice I set off for Grosvenor Place and then turned aside when my nerve failed me. The third time I rang the bell. The maid who came to the door gaped at my face.

She was gone for an age. The house was silent and there was no sign of the parrot in the front hall. As I waited it became clearer and clearer to me that it was one of the most foolish projects I had ever embarked on. Then the maid returned, wearing a faint smile.

She said, ‘General’s in the morning room, madam. He don’t get many callers.’

I saw little change in Tom Garth. He was as neat and poised as ever, and very pleased to see me.