Valhalla, p.19
Valhalla, page 19
May does not reply. She turns her head away to stare blankly out of the window. In Bayswater Road, attracted by the escort of glittering Hussars, people on the pavements stop and wave. Behind the rows of faces, secluded in the doorway of a public house, a couple in shabby clothes is canoodling. The young man glances up, raises his cap like the rest of the crowd, then laughs and lifts two rude fingers to the carriage. The girl laughs too. They go back to the kissing and the cuddling. Lost in the small world of the doorway. Needing nothing more. How wonderful, thinks May Teck.
This evening, in support of some other worthy cause, they go to the theatre. She has loved the theatre since she was a little girl, dazzled by that magic when the curtain rises and a beautiful picture comes to life. And then, in Florence, she became aware of a potency far beyond the smoke and mirrors, the powder and the paint. Since that time, with Madame Bricka to guide her, she has witnessed the power of Bernhardt, Duse and Ellen Terry. What women they are. How, in the glare of the footlights, they illuminate our condition; our hopes and dreams, our struggles and shortcomings. On her twentieth birthday, Henry Irving no less presented her with the works of Shakespeare bound in white vellum. She will treasure it all her days.
Tonight though, it is lighter fare. But while the audience roars at the wit of Mr Wilde, Georgie sits in the box without so much as a flicker of amusement.
‘It’s quite acceptable to smile in the theatre,’ she whispers.
‘But this is poking fun at our breed, is it not? Am I not being asked to laugh at myself? I may not be a genius, but even I can work that out.’
‘Isn’t it supposed to be good to laugh at oneself?’ she says.
‘Maybe for the common man, but not for us. If we start doing that, where will we end up?’
Afterwards, the impresario enquiries if they have enjoyed the performance.
‘Your audience seemed to like it, Mr Alexander,’ Georgie replies, ‘but I can’t feel that anyone in our family should have been invited to attend such a play.’
The man looks at him as if he comes from some other planet. May sees the derision in his eyes.
That staircase down which Bertie fell has a lot to answer for. The Grim Reaper lurking in its shadows was cheated that time but now Georgie looks for the spectre in every corner. Until recently, he checked on the health of his Papa almost daily; in person when possible, by telegraph when not, till Bertie, still in great pain, snapped that if he needed a nanny, he would employ one. Even Alix noticed.
‘What on earth is the matter with my darling Georgie-boy?’ she demanded, feeding sweetmeats to her lapdogs. ‘He’s so much less fun. Is he liverish? I hope you’re looking after him properly May.’
Tonight, when they reach the old palace, he goes before her up the steps.
‘What strange shoes you’re wearing,’ May says. ‘They seem to have heels.’
‘It’s an experiment,’ he says.
‘But why?’ she replies, making the mistake of a smile.
The face flushes, the lower lip juts out.
‘When you’re wearing one of your bloody great hats, I appear shorter than you. In my position, that cannot be acceptable. Nor indeed for any man.’
‘Oh Georgie, does it matter?’
‘I will not be laughed at,’ he shouts. ‘Don’t you understand? I must never be laughed at. Never. Not any more.’
*
The brood mare is heavy with the foal.
She hates it. It is disgusting. The sickness is passed now, thank God, though the memory haunts her. She even had to stop smoking for a week or two. But the rest of it, if less horrific, still wears her down. Her back aches all day long. In bed, to lie on her side, cushions must bear the weight of her belly. She is never out of the bathroom; a second cup of tea sends her scurrying. And while her bladder is as nervous as a kitten, her bowels adopt the opposite strategy. She would give her finest pearls for one easy, voluminous shit. Her pretty ankles, that pride and joy, are swollen and tender. Her whole body is in revolt; its customary discipline quite lost, chaos and disorder rampant.
In this matter at least her mother has warned her. Aunt Queen too.
‘Nine times I’ve been through it, May dear,’ the old woman says. ‘Nine. Each time as tedious as the last. But thank God for the blessed invention of chloroform. They didn’t want me to have it, you know. Much tut-tutting from the bishops and their ilk. Not natural. Not God’s will. Stuff and nonsense. Let just one of them experience childbirth and they’d soon change their tune. You must demand it if you need it, May dear. Remember now.’
Aunt Queen decrees that the birth of Georgie’s heir must be in the city, but it is May’s misfortune that the summer is so hot. In their rooms in the old palace of St James’s, the air scarcely circulates. Perhaps it is too laden with the dust of history to make that possible. Open windows merely bring in a fetid breeze from the armpits of the sweating city. But if her body cries out against what is happening to it, so too does her spirit. For the ravenous eyes return again, even worse than before.
When the news is broken to the world, the world takes leave of its senses. The newspapers sweep everything else off their pages; the doings of Mr Gladstone and Lord Salisbury are quite forgotten, the explosion which kills hundreds in the harbour at Santander is as nothing compared to what is happening inside her belly. Dull, decorous May Teck is suddenly far more interesting than the naughtiest, half-clad chorus girl at the Gaiety Theatre. The ladies’ magazines regurgitate the articles published at the time of the wedding. Once again, her history is told; how clever she is, how she has read even more books than those contained in the London Library. Crowds gather outside the old palace trying to glimpse her whenever she goes out, so she begins to make excuses not to do so. She is immured inside her own four walls.
But even there she finds little sanctuary. Every female visitor who comes to tea requires the most intimate details of her condition. She cannot decide who are the worst; the scarred veterans of motherhood who, like Aunt Queen and her mother-in-law, are eager to warn and perhaps to terrify, or the still virginal girls, terrified already, but nevertheless feverish with wonder at the prospect of it. One afternoon in the Red Drawing Room, over the Madeira cake for which she has developed a sudden, unaccountable passion, she can take no more.
‘Heavens, can we please talk of something else?’ she says to Georgie’s sisters. ‘Even just for a quarter-hour. Anything at all.’
‘But why?’ asks Toria. ‘Whatever could be more important?’
‘I do hope Georgie is being gentle with you at the moment, my dear,’ adds one of his aunts, with lowered eyes. ‘If you take my meaning.’
May’s cheeks flush to the colour of the Aubusson rug. She cannot believe they are willing to invade her with such forensic indelicacy. She straightens her aching back and does not answer. She offers no more cups of tea and the hint is soon taken.
It is after this tea party that she passes out on the floor of her bathroom and cries out to be taken for her confinement to Richmond Park. If nothing else, it will be a little cooler there. When White Lodge comes into view, drowsing in the shade of the oaks, she thinks she might weep. At the sight of her mother and Madame Bricka waiting in the portico, she does.
She is treated like the Prodigal.
‘Stop fussing, Francis,’ Mary Adelaide snaps at her husband ten times a day, as the Duke manoeuvres a stool under his precious girl’s legs or tries to put a shawl around her, even though an egg could be fried on the windowsill.
‘Thank you, dear Papa,’ she always says and kisses him on the cheek.
May kisses him more often now as she likes to see the peace it brings him. With every month that passes, the temper is worse, the mood as unpredictable as a broken barometer. The trajectory of his only daughter, though it has restored his dignity, is no longer quite enough to counteract the fragility of his mind. Like a medicine tried too late, its efficacy lasts but a short while and then is lost.
These days he is master of the house in name only. It only takes half a day for May to realise that this title has passed to Madame Bricka. While Bricka rules the household and takes on May’s role as secretary, the Duchess, merry as a grig, continues to rule the ladies of the Needlework Guild and of all her other worthy causes. Mary Adelaide and Madame Bricka are now the old married couple; chalk and cheese, opposites who attract and somehow carve out a life together.
When May had fled to White Lodge, Georgie declared he must therefore come too. It would not look right, he said, if they were seen to be apart at such a time. Since her old bedroom is too small for a couple, there are given a larger room in one of the wings. She is glad of that. At least their bickering is less likely to be overheard there.
‘And how is the little prince today?’ asks Mary Adelaide every morning at breakfast.
The first time he hears the question, Georgie for a moment thinks she means himself. He considers Mary Adelaide the most irritating woman in the world. The unfailing patience he shows to his own silly mother is extended to the Duchess, but only because courtesy demands it. In the months since the marriage, the Teck carriage has drawn up at the old palace with the regularity of the milk float and the coal merchant’s van. When he hears that voice charging into the lobby, Georgie flees to his stamps and locks the door. Only after she departs will he explode.
‘She seems to forget you are now married!’
‘I know, I’m sorry, Georgie. We were always together, you see. I think she is missing me rather.’
‘Then she should have kept you at home as a spinster, like my Mama does with poor Toria. But she seemed happy enough to watch your father give you away to me. To me, do you hear?’
Now, at White Lodge, he keeps himself as far away from Mary Adelaide as he can. When May sees the nerve twitch under his left eye, she knows he will be gone in minutes. Out into the park to contemplate the deer and wish he were allowed to shoot them. To the stables to make the acquaintance of the grooms. To the furthest corner of the garden with the Norfolk paper which is forwarded to him every week without fail. He is far better informed about the doings of King’s Lynn than many who live there. Most often, however, he takes the carriage back into town pleading urgent business, returning only in time for dinner.
The excuse fools nobody; Georgie has never had urgent business in his life so far. May has often thought how much happier he would be if he had an occupation beyond the slaughter of the birds in the sky. How much more fulfilled, how much more equable his temper. Then it strikes her that of course he does have a job after all. It is not complicated, demands no intelligence and takes no more than five minutes a day. It is therefore well within his capabilities. What is more, half the world is waiting to slap him on the back if he does it efficiently. This occupation is the impregnation of his wife and the world regards it as a permanent position. Dear God spare me, thinks May Teck.
‘And how is the little prince today?’ asks the Duchess at breakfast as usual.
It is only nine in the morning and too warm already. May Teck trudges off to the bathroom and strains to have a decent shit. Giving up the effort, she cannot summon the energy to pull her knickers up. She sits on the bowl and stares at the wall. How will she ever get through this? Even just this first time, never mind in the years to come? The sash window is raised a few inches to let in some air. In recent mornings, a blue tit has taken to landing on the sill, singing at her while she does her toilette. His beauty and his joyfulness entrance her. Each day he cheers and strengthens her. But today he does not appear and, in the absence of him, May Teck, squatting on the bowl with her knickers at her pretty ankles, begins to cry.
XXV
Summer, 1894
‘This room feels quite different somehow,’ she says.
‘That’s because you’re no longer in it, Princesse,’ replies Madame Bricka. ‘Now it is just my room, no longer ours. Now it is just an unremarkable place.’
In the old white sitting room, there are unfamiliar chairs and pictures. Side tables are piled high with paperwork. A large elmwood desk is littered with the paraphernalia of the Duchess’s frenetic existence: letters, telegrams, invitations to a country house party, to open a school or an exhibition of tapestries.
‘It never stops’ wails Madame Bricka.
‘Poor you,’ says May, ‘it’s all terribly tedious, isn’t it?’
‘Terribly. Still I admit it is good to see how much pleasure your Mama gives to people. It is only those under her own roof whom she drives to distraction.’
May goes to the bookcase and runs her finger across the volumes.
‘Some new ones,’ she says.
‘On my free afternoon, I still go to see what fresh treasures may have come into Messrs Hatchards. I saw Wilde and Conan Doyle there last week. Such a thrill. How I longed to speak to them but I couldn’t find the courage.’
‘You Bricka? The woman who faces down the stags in the park?’
‘Stags are easy. Genius is a different thing entirely,’ she says. ‘Then I took tea again in Fortnums with Mr Thaddy’s wife.’
‘You seem to like her.’
‘Eva is the most admirable woman. A stimulating companion. You still haven’t joined us there.’
‘I’d so like to, but if it were discovered…’
‘Oh just be brave, Princesse.’
‘Whatever bravery I might once have had is deserting me.’
It is the first time she has ever said any such thing to anyone. The first time she has articulated that everything in the garden is not lovely, not a fairy tale come true, a happy ever after.
Madame Bricka puts down her pen and swivels round in her desk-chair.
‘Do you want to tell me?’ she asks.
‘Yes Bricka dear, I do. But I can’t. I mustn’t.’
May sits down on a little chaise she has not seen before and pretends to look at a volume she has taken off the shelf. Madame Bricka’s eyes bore into her.
‘I’m just being silly, that’s all,’ says May. ‘My mind is all over the place. Maybe that’s normal at a time like this.’
Madame Bricka comes and takes May’s hand and gently rubs it. It is enough.
‘Oh Bricka, I’m so frightened,’ she says.
‘Of course Princesse, but your own Mama has done it four times and lived to tell the tale. And it will be over in a few hours; at worst, within a day.’
‘You don’t understand,’ May replies. ‘Yes, I’m scared of that, but it’s not what I mean.’
‘What then?’
‘I’m frightened because I don’t want this child.’
The words shoot out of her like a piece of meat which has been stuck in her gullet, choking her. She gasps and gulps for air.
‘But you always knew that was your purpose in their eyes,’ says Madame Bricka. ‘We spoke of that, you and I, remember?’
‘No, you still don’t understand,’ says May, gripping her arm. ‘I don’t want this child. His child. I don’t want his child.’
‘Oh Princesse.’
At once, May regrets the confession. My goodness, she should not have said that. The days when she could have told anything to Madame Bricka are gone. At all times now, she must remember who she has become or, at least, is on the road to becoming. She may not quite be May Teck any more, but nor has she yet transitioned to being the person she is required to be. She floats in limbo, neither one nor the other, paddling furiously to keep her head above water.
The child gives her a vicious kick of reprisal. She cannot wait for this creature to be out of her. She rises from the chaise and smooths down her dress.
‘Forgive me, Bricka dear,’ she says. ‘Ignore me too. I will go and take a little nap. I think that would be best.’
Madame Bricka looks sadly after her, well aware of what has just taken place, of the intimacy that has, for the first time, just been withdrawn.
‘If that is what you wish,’ she replies. ‘But remember, I am always here.’
As May hurries to leave the white sitting room, this space once so precious to her, she knocks against a side table covered in photographs of Madame Bricka’s previous charges, her precious girls she calls them. May catches one picture, larger than the rest, just before it crashes to the floor. It is her own.
‘You were the best of them,’ says Madame Bricka softly. ‘Always the best.’
May goes upstairs to her old bedroom high above the park. It is her habit to come here whenever she can. Here, for while at least, the hands on the clock can be pushed back. A few of her old dolls still live in the dusty corners of the wardrobe. From the open window she can still see the herds of fallow deer grazing on Queen’s Ride; the flock of wildfowl skittering skywards towards Pen Ponds. Her simple, virginal bed is as if she had risen from it yesterday. In the locked drawer of the little dressing table, she has taken to keeping some private things since she took refuge at White Lodge. One of these she takes out now and sits on her bed to read it again; perhaps for the hundredth time. It is the letter Georgie wrote to her after she finally told him she was carrying his child.
‘Splendid,’ was all he’d said when she’d broken the news at breakfast in Norfolk. ‘Splendid. Well done, May. The family will be pleased.’
‘It took two of us, Georgie.’
‘Ha! Yes indeed. Ha!’ he replied.
He blushed to the roots of his beard, avoided her eye and burrowed back into his breakfast. What a conundrum he is. One minute, the coarseness of the quarterdeck; the next, the embarrassed delicacy of a maiden aunt.
‘Damn fine egg this. Just right. How about another one to celebrate, what d’you say?’
And that was it until, after he went off shooting one day, the letter was delivered to her.
When I asked you to marry me, I was very fond of you but not very much in love with you. But I have tried to understand you and to know you, with the happy result that I know now that I do love you darling girl with all my heart and am simply devoted to you. I adore you sweet May, I can’t say more than that.
