‘Dear Nellie Buzzard,’ he said. ‘It’s been far too long.’

Milady, perched on the back of a chair, was not so welcoming. She began weaving from side to side and clicking her bill in an alarming fashion.

Garth said, ‘Perhaps a walk? I have a small garden. I’m afraid Milady regards this room as hers. She’s forgotten her manners. We get so few visitors.’

I said, ‘I imagined you were in Dorset. Princess Sofy and I, we had a falling out. It’s only since we made up I discovered you were in town.’

He said, ‘My movements no longer merit mention in the Court Circular. I live very quiet.’

We talked generally. He condoled with me on the loss of Jack and wondered could it really be twenty years since we’d met on the day of Admiral Nelson’s funeral procession. I said, ‘You were carrying Tommy in your arms, because of the crush of people. He was still a little boy. That’s how long ago it was. There are two reasons I came today and both of them concern Tommy.’

‘Ah,’ he said.

He said he was sorry to see Her Royal Highness put to such torment but he was at a loss to know what he could do. Tommy had grown arrogant and wouldn’t listen to advice. He lived recklessly, as though the laws and rules of civilized society didn’t apply to him, as though he were untouchable.

I said, ‘Is it because he knows his parentage?’ Garth said he feared it was.

I said, ‘But does he know it fully? Sofy makes provision for him, I realize, and that never was the closest of secrets. But has he been told who his father is?’

He busied himself, plucking dead leaves from a currant bush.

I said, ‘The day Tommy was born, after we had carried him to the Sharlands and you had left Weymouth, I was led to understand, to misunderstand, that you were his father. I knew no different until three years ago and then I learned the truth, quite by chance. It was the cause of my quarrel with Sofy. All those years I blamed you for her ruin.’

There was a little arbor with a seat.

He said, ‘You weren’t the only one. Even those who knew the truth found it was better to forget it. It was a clever stratagem, to give people a bone to gnaw on. Old Garth and a lovely young princess? La belle et la bête? How could such a thing be? Don’t worry, Nellie. I guessed the reason you became so prim with me.’

We sat and talked and talked. Of poor Queen Caroline, and of Willy Austin, who’d come back to claim his inheritance but was kept out of it on the grounds that he wasn’t right in the head. Of the King, who’d gone to Waterloo field to pay homage to Lord Anglesey’s leg and come away quite convinced that he’d been present on that glorious day and had led a great cavalry charge himself. The only name Garth wouldn’t be drawn on was Ernie Cumberland’s.

‘Bad business,’ was all he’d say. And he pressed his lips together and shook his head.

I ventured another look at Milady before I left. ‘As she’s taken against me,’ I said, ‘perhaps you should think of another guardian for her?’

‘Oh, but Nellie,’ he said. ‘All she needs is time to get accustomed to you and now I’m absolved of being a scoundrel, I hope you may call again.’

I had achieved nothing for Sofy. Tommy was apparently an incorrigible rake and we could only pray that he tired of Lady Astley before her husband came home and counted the spoons. But on my own account I was deliriously happy. I believe it was the most joyful I had felt since the summer of 1792 when we had attended the Weymouth Assembly Rooms and Princess Augusta had obliged Garth to dance with me. The first thing I did when I returned home was take out his bracelet and put it on my wrist, and the second thing I did was rest for an hour with a towel across my brow.

Miss Tod said, ‘It’ll take more than a wetted cloth to put out the twinkle in your eyes.’

Not much got past Miss Tod.

I said, ‘It’s a very strange thing. When I was seventeen he was far too old for me, but now I’m fifty he’s not. How can that be?’

‘I’ll tell you how,’ she said. ‘A bachelor enjoys a most restful life. But think of all that’s befallen you. You’ve done a good deal more living. You’ve used up more road than he has and caught up to him.’

I said, ‘You make me sound like an old cart wheel.’

‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘You’re better off now, Nellie, than those that were great beauties. You never had that and you’re the better for it. And if it should come about that things go further with this bachelor gentleman, if he should make you an offer, don’t let me hold you back. I’m sure they’d have me again at Poland Street.’

From that day on I saw Garth every week. If the sun shone we walked in Green Park, if it rained we sat in his drawing room. Once he went with me to Kensington to call on Sofy but it was a difficult hour, full of awkwardness and things unsaid, and Sofy’s apartments were so stifling hot I thought I should faint. John Conroy lurked and so did the shadow of Ernie Cumberland. Then Gus Sussex came in, old cloth slippers on his feet and a copy of The Mechanism of the Deadbeat Escapement in his hand. He’d taken neighbouring apartments and quite often called by with some exciting horological discovery he wished to share. It was a relief when Vicky Kent brought in her daughters and we were free to leave.

Garth said, ‘It was a mistake. I shan’t go again. I think I discharged my duties some time ago.’

I said, ‘She insists Cumberland is blameless in the affair. She adores him, you know.’

He shook his head. ‘I’m thankful she has your friendship, Nellie. Heaven knows, she has little else.’

In July Lady Georgiana Astley abandoned her children and eloped with Tommy Garth. They went first into the country, then to France, and finally back to London, to Jermyn Street, where they took up residence in Batt’s Hotel. Sir Jacob had gone to law immediately and sued Tommy for criminal conversation with his wife. She was Sir Jacob’s marital property. Tommy had trespassed upon it and was liable to pay compensation. And when Sir Jacob instructed King’s Counsel, Tommy had to go one better and instruct a Serjeant-at-Law. Garth feared it would be his ruin, but it was Sofy I worried for. Tommy conducted himself with such swagger. He cannot have cared much for Lady Astley’s feelings, nor for her poor children. The more I observed him the plainer it was he was Ernie’s boy. He was every inch his father. And the caricature-makers loved him. They fed off him for weeks, gradually slipping in more and more sly references to his royal connection.

Sofy was pulled this way and that. Tommy pestered her for money and John Conroy did his best to protect her from Tommy’s supplications but he did it out of self-interest. He had found a house in Campden Hill and Sofy had promised to pay for it.

I said, ‘They both take advantage of you.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I do it gladly. What do I need money for?

Better that it’s put to use by those who need it.’

There was soon another burden on her too. Fred York was dying. His dropsy was no longer eased by tapping and he knew he couldn’t survive much longer. He asked Sofy if she would execute certain delicate aspects of his will, to pay legacies and to fend off possible false claims.

The New Year came in and the Duke of York went out. He’d come to town to die and Sofy was at his side at Rutland House when the end came.

‘Poor dear,’ she said, ‘he so hoped the King would visit him, to be assured no ill-feeling remained between them, for you know there was always a little rivalry there. When the old King was alive Fred was always his favourite.’

His Majesty had failed to visit his brother, pleading a head cold, but York was nearly the death of him anyway. The funeral was at Windsor on the coldest night of the year and they all caught such chills—Sussex, Clarence, Gloucester, and the King himself—we thought we’d be burying the lot of them. Sofy huddled by her Kensington hearth, with John Conroy at her side, and picked at the tangle of her brother’s legatees. He acknowledged a Mr Frederick Vandiest and a Mrs Louisa Crockatt as his natural children; also Captain John Gibbes of Fulham Lodge, and a son, John Molloy, by Countess Tyrconnel. A third John, by housemaid Emma Stilwell, had fallen at Waterloo and died without issue. There were bequests too for two particular friends: Mrs Clarke, now residing in Boulogne, and Mrs Sinclair Sutherland of Portman Street.

Sofy said, ‘Disbanding Fred’s troops has quite exhausted me. I pray Billy Clarence won’t ask me to do the same for him. I dread to think how many there would be, leaving aside all those Fitzclarences. He probably had a family in every port. Well let him ask Augusta to do it.’

34

The case of Astley versus Garth was heard in the Court of Common Pleas in February 1827. Sir Jacob’s counsel painted him as the most devoted of husbands in the happiest of marriages. Tommy’s counsel posed the question, why would a wife leave such domestic felicity? Then swiftly answered it themselves by bringing into court a number of doxies willing to testify that they had entertained Sir Jacob.

My own dear Garth was very distressed by the proceedings.

He said, ‘I raised Tommy to be a gentleman, but it’s all too clear what he intends.’

What he meant was that the evidence Tommy’s lawyer had brought, that Jacob Astley was known to every drab in Leicestershire, might prevent his being allowed to divorce her and cast her off. And if Sir Jacob’s petition for divorce was dismissed it would be very convenient for Tommy for then he wouldn’t be obliged to marry Lady Astley.

Garth said, ‘He stole a jewel and paraded it about, and now he’s dulled its lustre I fear he’ll throw it back to its rightful owner. He’ll be the ruin of that poor woman.’

I said, ‘Then like father, like son.’

He pressed his lips together. It was his habit whenever I mentioned or even hinted at Ernie Cumberland’s name.

The judge seemed not to care one way or the other about Lady Georgiana’s fate. He instructed the jury that whilst Lady Astley had failed in her wifely duty to correct her husband’s weaknesses, and that a wife’s adultery was always more fatal to a marriage than the husband’s, Astley had nevertheless thrown away his entitlement to compensation through his own debauchery. Sir Jacob was awarded compensation of one shilling and sentenced to remain married to Georgiana till death did them part.

Georgiana applied to her husband for funds, for Tommy lived far beyond the means of a captain’s half pay and his allowance from Sofy was soon swallowed up. Sir Jacob granted her a very modest sum, but it was nothing like sufficient for them to live on and satisfy Tommy’s creditors. It was inevitable he would turn to Sofy again, and that he would let drop the faint suggestion of using the secret of his parentage to strike an advantageous bargain.

I said, ‘Tell him you won’t be intimidated. Tell him you’ll cut him off without a penny if he ever threatens you again.’