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.
‘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.
