I said, ‘I’ve become acquainted with a godson of yours, Majesty. He was named for you too, I imagine. Ernest Jones. The late Major Jones’s son.’
I saw the name hit its mark but I rattled on, just like the railway journey I described in tedious detail and how it had taken me to Brighton where I’d learned of the Major’s demise. That registered too.
I said, ‘I once met Major Jones. I liked him very much. He was so full of wonderful soldiering stories. Such a sad end, but not unexpected considering the tortures he’d endured, wouldn’t you say, sir?’
Sofy said, ‘What tortures? And who was Major Jones? Did I know him?’
I reminded her of the day young Ernest Jones had called on her but she couldn’t call it to mind.
I said, ‘He’d come to ask you to intercede with His Majesty for a pension for his father, but Conroy headed him off, of course. You know how Sir John likes to protect you from supplicants. So I took him out of your way. We walked across Hyde Park together and he told me a little of the Major’s story. People do that, you know. When they learn that a person is a writer of fiction they often come out with a splendid tale that deserves to be published, indeed they keep meaning to write it up themselves but somehow they never find the time. Well of course, I couldn’t resist. I went to see the Major, to hear the dreadful details from his own lips.’
Sofy took the bait. What ‘dreadful details’, she wanted to know.
‘Damned lunatic,’ Ernie muttered. ‘Had to send him packing. You don’t want to hear Jones’s ravings, Sofy. Fine soldier but he went to the bad. Battle fatigue.’
I said, ‘But you’ll be glad to know he made a kind of recovery. He wasn’t raving at all when I saw him. Quite the opposite. He was very composed, but oppressed. And when I heard his story I understood why. A murderer had confessed to him, Sofy, confessed all to relieve his own conscience and then sworn him to eternal secrecy. Well, who could endure that? I lost a little sleep myself, wondering if I should report what I’d heard to a constable, but then, I thought, that was the Major’s prerogative, and as long as he lived I should leave it to him.’
Sofy said, ‘But Nellie, if the Major’s dead I think you should tell a constable. After all, the murderer is still free to strike again. If you know his name you must report it, then we can sleep more safely in our beds. Do you know his name?’
I said, ‘I do. But he’s an old man by now, and settled overseas. I’m sure we’re quite safe from him. And I take a deal of comfort from the thought that soon enough he’ll stand before his Maker. Better for him to be required to answer to God Almighty than to a mortal officer of the law who might bungle the affair.’
Sofy shivered. I kept my eyes on Ernie and he never once looked at me, but his cheek twitched and the jutting eyebrow above it, like a great rippling silver caterpillar.
He jumped up and said, ‘Can’t stay, dear one. I promised Dolly I’d call on him. But I’m going to send you Hildegarde Groote for a companion. You’ll like her. You can practise your German. It’ll be better for you than listening to gossip about murders.’
Sofy said, ‘You’re very good to think of it, but you know I have my readers, and I can’t be without Nellie. She comes here in all weathers and she keeps me very cheerful.’
When I stood up to leave her I found my legs had been turned to water by my pretty little speech to the King of Hanover, and that instead of my customary route across the palace gardens and over the Long Water into Hyde Park I turned onto Kensington Gore and hailed a hackney. I’m not a woman given to nervous imaginings but Ernie’s cold-eyed parting had made me think of deserted paths and shrubberies and cut-throat razors.
43
Gus Sussex died in April of ’43 so Cissie Buggin, or Her Grace, Cissie Inverness as I must remember to call her, didn’t have him for long, but she has borne her widowing with a smile.
‘We were very happy,’ she said. ‘And nothing is for ever.
I’m content.’
By rights he should have gone to the vault at Windsor but he knew they’d never allow Cissie to lie beside him so he had left precise directions with Dolly Cambridge that he was to be buried at Kensal Green, with space for Cissie, when her time comes.
Sofy said, ‘Nellie, I need your help. I want to rewrite my will.’
I said, ‘Tell me what you want and I’ll set it down, though I wonder you ask me. I thought Conroy was your man for such things.’
‘He is,’ she said, ‘but I don’t know when he’ll come back from the country and I’m liable to die at any time.’
Well, which of us is not?
Sofy lived in the dark but her mind was still sharp. She knew by heart all the small bequests she’d made and none of those were to be altered. There was nothing for Tommy, nothing for little Georgiana. She simply wished to stipulate that she should be buried at Kensal Green.
She said, ‘I was buried years enough at Windsor. You know, I always dreaded the idea of being taken back there, to be lowered into that charnel house, but until Gus died I didn’t realize I was allowed to choose a different resting place.’
That was Sofy. Sixty-six years old and in many ways still like a nervous child. Was this permitted, was that permitted? She’d seen so little of the world it seemed not to occur to her that she’d committed one very great transgression and no thunderbolt had struck her down. So why worry about receiving Gus Sussex’s natural daughter or ringing for tea a little earlier than usual?
There was no drawn out suffering for Sofy, I’m glad to say. She escaped the family curse of dropsy or Augusta’s costive agony and slowly faded away. Whenever Minny was in town she would take her for a ride in her carriage or bring one of the Queen’s little ones to sit on her knee. She longed to be useful, and for a while Cissie Inverness had her filling bags with lavender flowers but more lavender landed on the floor than in the sachets. It was not a great success. Ladies still came to read to her, though she had less and less staying power for a story and often fell asleep. Mainly she liked conversation, and sometimes we would make quite a coterie. Cissy Inverness, Minny Gloucester, Gussy Cambridge. Three duchesses and one humble companion. When we were so many Sofy said very little but she listened intently, leaning forward, not to miss anything.
When it was just we two she loved to talk, chiefly about men. Did I remember a page called Cake? Or a gardener called Blinkhorne? And what about Henry Halford? She asked me one day about Jack Buzzard. Had he been the love of my life?
I said, ‘I think you know he wasn’t. But he was a good steady husband. I’ve nothing to complain about.’
She said, ‘I believe I know who you’d have preferred.’ I said, ‘I doubt it.’
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I do. It was that stable hand from Piddletown. What was his name? Ezekiel? Ephraim? It was something very biblical.’
I said, ‘It was Enoch, and you couldn’t be more wrong.’
We agreed to toss a sixpence. If it fell to the head I must tell, if it fell to the reverse I could keep my secret.
‘I’m trusting you now, Nellie,’ she said. She had no choice. She was quite in the dark by then. But when old King George landed face down, I found I was disappointed. I wanted to tell her how I’d loved Old Garth.
She refused to believe it, of course.
‘No, no, no,’ she said. ‘Don’t tease me now. You promised to tell the truth.’
And even though I offered to swear it on the Testament I know she never took me seriously.
‘But he was old,’ she said. ‘And so ugly. I remember when you thought he had been my lover. I had bad dreams for weeks. No, you must come up with someone more plausible. He’d better stand six feet in his stockings and have a firm, manly chin.’
I had no intimation that the end was so near. She had become the kind of desiccated old lady that can last for ever, like a dried fig. On Thursday I sat with her for an hour but she was very tired.
