Yvonne Goes to York Read online

  ‘Where did you get that gown?’ asked Hannah, admiring Yvonne’s dress of sprigged muslin. It was not the material but the cut and stitching that made it exceptional.

  ‘I made it myself. It is one of my few accomplishments.’ Yvonne gave a rueful laugh. ‘You see, we were all so determined to be equal after the Revolution. No parasites, even among the ladies. And so I was apprenticed while still quite small to a dressmaker.’

  ‘So that was before the Revolution,’ said Hannah sharply, ‘or the Bourgeois Uprising, as we call it here. So your family knew it was coming and were prepared. Never say your papa worked for the Revolution.’

  ‘How could we imagine what would happen?’ cried Yvonne passionately. ‘We were going to make the new France, where all would eat and none would starve. How could we imagine the bloodshed, the tumbrils, the heads in baskets?’

  She sat down suddenly and began to cry. Hannah put an arm around her shoulders. ‘Now, then,’ she said bracingly, ‘all that is behind you now. What have you to fear? This is England!’

  Yvonne managed a watery smile. ‘And that answers all problems?’

  ‘Of course. What did that Mr Smith say to you to so upset you?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Yvonne quickly. ‘Nothing at all. Shall we go downstairs to the dining-room, Miss Pym?’

  ‘A moment,’ said Hannah, looking at the girl’s delicate face and at the blueish shadows under her eyes. ‘I thought at first that Mr Smith, despite his age, might have been making advances to you. But there was an air of menace when we got back on the coach before we reached the flood. I do not like him. I do not like him at all. Was he baiting you because you are French?’

  Yvonne remained silent, her face turned a little way away. Poor thing, thought Hannah. Poor frail creature. So delicate. Not at all like our sturdy English misses. I shall find out later what the trouble is.

  Aloud, she said, ‘Do not allow yourself to be bullied, Miss Grenier. In my experience, bullies scent fear. I shall let you into a great secret, if you promise not to betray me.’

  Yvonne wiped her eyes and looked up at Hannah curiously.

  Hannah took a deep breath. The Grenier family, after all, had supported the Revolution because they wished equality for all.

  ‘I have only lately become a lady of private means,’ said Hannah. ‘All my life, I had been a servant. My late employer left me a legacy. But as a servant, one learns much of the ways of the world. Before I rose to become housekeeper to the Clarences of Thornton Hall in Kensington, I was an ordinary housemaid. The housekeeper then was a Mrs Warby, a massive woman much addicted to spite and gin. She used to torment me, to find fault. One day, when she was tipsy, she knocked over a vase and broke it, went to Mrs Clarence and said I had done it. Mrs Clarence sent for me and I can still remember the gloating look on that Mrs Warby’s face. I was in floods of tears, standing before Mrs Clarence with my head bowed. And then I felt her arm about my shoulders and her soft voice begging me not to cry, her voice telling me that Mrs Warby, not I, had lost her employ. Then Mrs Clarence made me sit down, and told me she had it in mind to elevate me to the rank of housekeeper. “But you must stiffen your spine, Hannah,” she told me. “If you are always afraid of those above you, you will encourage bullying. Bullies sense fear. So smile, and throw your shoulders back and look them straight in the eye.” Very simple advice, Miss Grenier, but very useful. Shall we go to dinner?’

  Yvonne smiled suddenly, her large eyes sparkling. ‘Amazing Miss Hannah Pym,’ she said. ‘You give me courage. En avant!’

  The gentlemen rose to meet them as they entered the dining-room. Monsieur Petit was wearing much the same style of clothes as he had worn on the coach, but Mr Giles was magnificent in evening dress, black coat with silver buttons, black knee-breeches, gauze stockings, and ruffled shirt. As the ladies sat down, the maitre d’hotel bowed low before Mr Giles and said, ‘Dinner will be served in a trice, my lord.’

  ‘My lord?’ Hannah looked amused. ‘Your fine clothes have elevated you to the peerage, Mr Giles.’

  ‘Not Mr Giles,’ said Monsieur Petit crossly. ‘His secret is out. He is recognized here. He is the Marquis of Ware who, for some dark reason, needs to travel incognito.’

  ‘No other reason but debt,’ said the marquis languidly. ‘The duns were after me.’

  Monsieur Petit snickered. ‘That diamond pin you are wearing in your cravat, my lord, would fend them off for a time.’

  The marquis’s face suddenly became hard and stern and his silver eyes bored into those of Monsieur Petit as he put both hands on the table and leaned forward. ‘Do not be impertinent, sir, or I will drive your teeth down your throat.’

  ‘An’ I’ll help you,’ commented Benjamin gleefully from behind Hannah’s chair.

  Monsieur Petit cast the marquis a venomous look and then turned to Yvonne. ‘You must find the manners of the English very boorish, Miss Grenier.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ said Yvonne, looking directly at him. ‘I find the gentlemen of England courteous and charming and safe.’

  She has thrown down the gauntlet, thought Hannah, amazed. He is startled and furious, but she is not afraid.

  ‘What were your first impressions of London?’ asked the marquis.

  ‘I came up the Thames past Greenwich on a ship,’ said Yvonne, smiling at him. She was no longer afraid of him. He was nothing more than an aristocrat in debt. ‘So much shipping! it looked to me as if a forest of masts was growing out of the river. And the river itself! So brown and muddy, with mist drifting over the surface. There were jetties which thrust out fifty paces into the river on either side. There was gleaming mud left by the ebb-tide. Oh, a jumbled impression of warehouses and docks, ship-building and -repairing yards, mean dwelling-houses, the iron carcass of a church being made for assembly in India, or so someone told me, and all the many canals with their ships leading into the river, giving the impression of streets of ships. The mist changed into yellow acrid fog as we approached London. I thought myself in Homer’s inferno, in the land of the Cimmerians.

  ‘I arrived in London on Sunday.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the marquis. ‘Our famous English Sunday.’

  ‘It all had the aspect of a large, well-kept graveyard,’ said Yvonne with a shiver. ‘Tiens! How frightened and lost I felt. Shops closed, streets almost empty. It was raining – small, fine, close, pitiless rain. Everything was dirty and impregnated with soot. In the livid smoke, objects were no more than phantoms, and London looked like a bad drawing in charcoal over which someone had rubbed a sleeve.’

  ‘But the family with whom you are staying no doubt made up for the gloom outside with the warmth of their welcome,’ put in Monsieur Petit.

  ‘Indeed they did.’

  ‘Their name being …?’

  ‘What is it you English say?’ asked Yvonne with a sarcastic inflection on the you. ‘Mindyour own business.’

  Hannah noticed that the marquis was toying with his food. He seemed fascinated by Miss Grenier. Hannah’s matchmaking pulses quickened. ‘You must find, Miss Grenier,’ said Hannah, now anxious to keep Yvonne talking, ‘that there are great differences between the English misses and the French.’

  ‘A very great deal, yes.’

  ‘Tell us,’ urged the marquis.

  ‘The English misses are healthier, being addicted to riding and to walking. I teach some ladies French, and so have had the chance to observe their ways closely. I was surprised to find, for example, that it is rare to come across a fashion journal in any of the great houses. And the magazines they do read! No fiction, no chatty column of theatrical gossip, no fashion notes, none of the things you would find in a French journal. Instead, in one magazine for ladies, there was an article on education in the workhouses, one on slavery in America and its influence on Great Britain, and one on the improvement of nurses in agricultural districts. So the English misses are more intelligent. But they do not know how to use this intelligence. No one teaches them the art of conversation
. Nor do they know how to coquette.’ Yvonne raised her fan and flicked it to and fro and then flirted over it with her eyes at Monsieur Petit, who stared at her angrily.

  ‘Go on,’ said the marquis. ‘So young and so wise. You intrigue me.’

  ‘Everyone pays lip-service to love in this country,’ went on Yvonne, ‘and so husband-hunting is very vulgar. A rich and noble man is much run after. Too effusively welcomed, flattered, and provoked, he becomes cautious and is constantly on his guard. It is not so in France. Girls are kept under too much restraint to take the initiative; in my country, the game never turns hunter.’

  ‘But English women are faithful,’ said Hannah. ‘Marriage is a respected and noble institution. Someone once told me he had heard one Frenchman say casually to another, “I hear your wife has taken a lover.” Things are managed better here.’

  ‘I do not think so,’ said Yvonne with a quaint old-fashioned air. ‘Your English mees has much more freedom before marriage than her French equivalent. But after marriage – and here I speak of the bourgeoisie, not of the lords and ladies – the husband is the head of the household and his wife must be quiet and submissive. They have families of eighteen children.’ She raised her hands. ‘And without shame!’

  ‘Miss Grenier!’ Hannah looked shocked.

  ‘You frown then on legalized lust,’ teased the marquis. ‘Eighteen times is hardly an orgy.’

  Yvonne blushed. ‘Forgive me. I am too outspoken and it is not fair of you, milord, to underline that fact with coarse remarks.’

  ‘I humbly beg your pardon,’ said the marquis, his eyes dancing. ‘You are about to tell us they organize things better in France.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Yvonne seriously. ‘For there the husband will discuss his business at all times with his wife. Here, she is kept in such ignorance so that, should he die, she has no means of taking up the reins of business herself.’

  ‘Perhaps Englishwomen should marry French husbands,’ jeered Monsieur Petit.

  She gave him a cool look. ‘It does not always answer, for Englishwomen in business do not know how to charm. There is a French innkeeper at Calais with an English wife. He is all charm and has great interest in his customers, going from table to table to see they have everything they need. But the English wife! Ma foi! As the guests get up to leave, she calls out in execrable French, “Havez vo’ payez?” No ease of manner. No elegance.’

  ‘We are nonetheless,’ said Hannah stiffly, ‘a very moral people.’

  ‘On the surface,’ sighed Yvonne. ‘Very moral. Even your novels read like religious tracts. The fallen woman is always ugly and comes to a hard end, which is not always the case. All is clean and decent on the surface, but the Englishman in his cups can turn beast. Look only at the thousands of prostitutes who throng the streets of London, the houses in the Strand, the young girls of fourteen with babies at the breast. Pah!’

  ‘My dear Miss Grenier,’ drawled the marquis, leaning back in his chair, ‘we do not drag hundreds of our countrymen to the guillotine to have their heads chopped off.’

  ‘No, my lord, you just hang them seven a side on the gallows-tree outside Newgate.’

  ‘After a fair trial, Miss Grenier.’

  ‘Yes.’ Her face grew sad. ‘Yes, I forget the horrors at home. I have drunk too much wine and that has led me into the rudeness and folly of criticizing my hosts.’

  ‘We English are so arrogant,’ said Monsieur Petit, ‘that no criticism can dent our smug armour.’

  ‘Spoken like a true Frenchman,’ said the marquis softly, and Monsieur Petit shot him a startled look.

  A newcomer strode into the dining-room and looked around the assembled company through his quizzing-glass. His face brightened as he obviously recognized Monsieur Petit. ‘Well, Jimmy,’ demanded the newcomer, ‘how goes the world?’

  Hannah was startled. Whoever would think that the cadaverous and sinister Mr Smith would answer to the homely name of Jimmy? The newcomer was a young man, foppishly dressed, rouged and painted and padded, with a large black patch in the shape of a coach and horses on one cheek-bone. He had small, watery brown eyes and thin brown hair, backcombed and teased until it stood up on his head, giving him an air of perpetual surprise.

  ‘My friend Mr Ashton,’ said Monsieur Petit. ‘He will be travelling north with us. Mr Ashton, allow me to introduce our little company. Miss Pym, Miss Grenier, and the most noble Marquis of Ware.’

  ‘Servant,’ said Mr Ashton laconically. ‘Word with you in private, Jimmy.’

  Monsieur Petit rose and the pair went out together.

  ‘Into the yard,’ urged Monsieur Petit. ‘We will not be overheard in all the bustle. How did you arrive?’

  ‘Mail-coach. Just got in.’

  They strolled into the yard of the Angel.

  ‘So, monsoor,’ said Mr Ashton, ‘how goes the game? I see the Grenier female is travelling under her own name. What’s a marquis doing on the stage?’

  ‘He says he is running from the duns.’

  ‘A marquis? Never. Lords can live on tick until the day they die. But he can’t be after you. Not anything to do with the War Office or anything like that. In fact, he’s the kind who would look better with his head in a basket, eh?’

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ snapped Monsieur Petit. ‘What possessed you to call me Jimmy? Do I look like a Jimmy?’

  Mr Ashton shrugged. ‘Seemed a good English name to me. What d’ye want me to call you? Pierre? Where you learn the lingo anyway?’

  ‘My mother was English.’

  ‘Was? Chop her head off, hey?’

  ‘Listen, you cur,’ said Monsieur Petit savagely, ‘you are being paid well for your help. One more word of insolence from you and I will abandon the project, and before I leave this perfidious country I will shop you to the authorities.’

  ‘Two can play at that game,’ said Mr Ashton, quite unruffled.

  ‘Where did our embassy find such as you?’ demanded Monsieur Petit angrily.

  ‘I do anything for money,’ said Mr Ashton, stifling a yawn. ‘Not murder, but anything else. Do not exercise yourself, Monsoor Frog. You are on the right coach. Have a word with the girl?’

  ‘Yes, I showed her a letter from her father tome which he wrote before the Revolution. She does not know that and is convinced her father now wishes to help us.’

  ‘And when she finds we mean to follow her to him and take him back to France at gunpoint?’

  Monsieur Petit smiled slowly. ‘She will do nothing. She goes with him as well.’

  ‘Such a pretty neck, too,’ said Mr Ashton. ‘Ah, well, I’ve been paid the first half and very generous your people were, too. What’s the drill?’

  ‘Just make sure she does not give us the slip and leave the stage-coach at any point before we get to York,’ said Monsieur Petit.

  ‘Right,’ Mr Ashton nodded. ‘And what about Lord Thingummy?’

  ‘A lazy penurious aristocrat? I would we could take him as well. How many of his tenants, think you, had he beggared before he ran into debt?’

  ‘As long as he’s no threat, then he can beggar the lot, for all I care,’ replied Mr Ashton. ‘That’s the trouble with your lot. Always hot and bothered about something.’

  3

  It is not easy to persuade an Englishman to talk about his illicit amours; for many of them this is a closed book the mere mention of which is shocking.

  Hippolyte Taine

  Mr Ashton was to travel with them, much to Hannah’s dismay, for she had taken the young fop in dislike. He began by letting the other passengers know that he thought he was a cut above stage-coach travel. There was enough straw on the floor, he said acidly, to hide a whole covey of partridges, and he kept picking bits of straw fastidiously from his clothes.

  Monsieur Petit added his complaints. He could not understand why inns did not offer napkins to the guests, so that they had to wipe their fingers and mouths on the table-cloths, and he considered the custom of offering slippers to new arriv
als a filthy one. He had refused to wear them. You never knew who had worn them last.

  Yvonne looked out at the passing scene and tried to forget the presence of Monsieur Petit and his friend. A good night’s sleep, not to mention the bracing company of Hannah Pym, had done wonders for her spirits. The more she thought about that letter, the more she became convinced that it was a fake, or rather a fake in that Monsieur Petit had pretended to have recently received it. Perhaps it was one her father had written to him before the Revolution, for her father had been friendly with him then, that she knew. Monsieur Petit wanted her to keep her distance from Miss Pym. Well, she would not. There was something comforting about Hannah’s strength and the amusing devil-may-care cockiness of her servant, Benjamin. Yvonne wondered whether to confide in Hannah. For when she got to York, she had no intention of leading Monsieur Petit to her father, not until she had seen her father first, and she felt that Hannah might offer help in enabling her to slip away.

  She turned her eyes from the landscape outside and met the silvery-grey eyes of the Marquis of Ware. There was an oddly speculative look in his eyes. Her senses sharpened by danger, Yvonne began to worry about him for the first time. He did not look down at heel. He had given up the pretence of being Mr Giles and was now dressed like a marquis. She saw enemies everywhere and prayed for the day when they would arrive in York. Her father was brave and resourceful. He would know what to do. But Mr Petit did frighten her. She shivered and Hannah pressed her hand. Yvonne gave her a shy smile.

  Mr Petit caught that smile and had noticed that press of the hand. Something would have to be done about Yvonne Grenier before they reached York. Then there was the upsetting presence of the Marquis of Ware. His clothes had undergone a change. He seemed to be making no effort to appear impoverished. He would discuss the situation with Mr Ashton when they stopped for the night.