Miser of Mayfair (8 page)

But they had all been pent up and excited, dreaming of the food they would have and the vails they would get. Rainbird had even been down to the mews at the end of the street to seek out likely grooms and a coachman in case the new tenant should not bring his own.

Rainbird was remembering, too, the excitement that had preceded the Sinclairs’ arrival. April first, the day when Palmer had told them Mr Sinclair would appear, Rainbird was out waiting on the step, preening himself a little under the watchful eyes of the servants in the neighbouring houses.

But the day faded into dusk, and there was still no sign of the Sinclairs. Excitement began to fade among the staff. Rainbird ate his evening meal and then went back out again for a last look.

A dusty hack pulled by a broken-down horse rounded the corner from Piccadilly and came to a stop in front of the house. Rainbird went forward to tell the driver to go away. God forbid that Mr Sinclair should arrive and see such a disgrace of a vehicle outside his residence.

‘Move on,’ he called to the jehu on the box.

‘Won’t,’ said the driver laconically. ‘This is the h’address what this ’ere cove in the back wants.’

A chill feeling of dread began to grow in the pit of the butler’s stomach. The carriage door opened, and a fat portly gentleman in old-fashioned clothes inched down backwards into the street. He held out his hand and helped down a female figure closely wrapped in a long hooded cloak.

The gentleman turned about and saw Rainbird. ‘You,’ he called. ‘Fetch the imperials.’

‘Mr Sinclair?’ asked Rainbird faintly.

‘The same.’

‘Joseph!’ called Rainbird. Joseph came swanning out, one hand on his hip.

‘Fetch Mr Sinclair’s baggage. Quickly,’ added Rainbird as Joseph’s mouth fell open.

Mr Sinclair paid the hack, and there was an unpleasant scene as the driver howled over the paucity of the tip.

Rainbird shook his head and came back to the present. He wearily rose to his feet. May as well look out the port. He was sorry he would not have a chance of looking at Miss Sinclair. She was a dreamy, vague girl, but so dazzlingly fair that it eased the pain at his heart. Rainbird felt the humiliation of having a poverty-stricken master keenly because he felt responsible for the other servants. Already servants from the houses on either side were making jeering, slighting remarks.

Rainbird took the half decanter of port and climbed the stairs. Good servants
never
knock. He opened the door of the parlour and then stood stock still, staring at the scene before him.

Seemingly oblivious to his presence, Mr Sinclair was counting gold coins into a brass-bound strong box. Gold glittered through the old man’s fingers. ‘One hundred and one thousand,’ Mr Sinclair was muttering. ‘One hundred and one thousand and one . . .’

Then Mr Sinclair looked up and saw the butler. He shovelled the gold back into the box – ‘so much of it,’ as Rainbird was to say afterwards, ‘that it spilled down the sides.’

‘I am a poor man,’ gabbled Mr Sinclair. ‘You saw nothing . . . nothing.’

‘No, sir,’ said Rainbird impassively, although his heart was beating hard. He set the silver tray with decanter and glass on a table and withdrew.

He erupted into the kitchen, babbling of the gold he had seen. ‘Mountains of it,’ he gasped. ‘The man’s a
miser!
’

Slowly they all turned and looked at little Lizzie, who sat crouched in front of the fire. ‘This is what comes of listening to you and your papist beliefs,’ sniffed Mrs Middleton. ‘You will scrub the kitchen floor until it shines and that will do you more good than candles and painted images.’

Upstairs, Mr Sinclair sadly pulled his waistcoat out of the strong box where he had stuffed it before putting his guineas on top to make it look like a miser’s hoard. He only hoped Rainbird would gossip to the neighbouring servants.

It would be quite dreadful if he did not!

But it was Joseph who started the gossip, Joseph who was so bitter and put down by that Luke next door who strutted up and down in his new pink livery with the gold lace.

Luke noticed with satisfaction Joseph’s envious glare and said, ‘Looking’s all you’re going to get, my fine buck.
Your
master couldn’t even afford one of my shoulder knots.’

‘My master,’ said Joseph passionately, ‘could buy and sell yours.’

‘Garn!’

‘’S the truth. He has a box with thousands and thousands of golden guineas. ‘E’s a miser, that’s what ’e is.’

To Joseph’s gratification, Luke’s eyes grew rounder and rounder. ‘Mr Blenkinsop,’ called Luke to his own butler who was just emerging from Number 65. ‘Come here, Mr Blenkinsop, please sir. You never did in all your born.’

Mr Blenkinsop made his stately approach and inclined his head gravely to hear the tale of misers and guineas.

‘Terrible, terrible,’ he said ponderously. ‘Be so good, Joseph, as to step indoors and ask Mr Rainbird if he would care to join me at The Running Footman for a tankard.’

And so Rainbird joined Mr Blenkinsop, and, warmed by the fascinated interest of an appreciative audience in The Running Footman, which was the upper servants’ pub, he told the tale of the miser of Mayfair. So the gossip, like a stone dropped in a pond, spread out in ripples through the ranks of the servants from Grosvenor Square to St James’s Square, and the servants talked to their masters and mistresses, who talked to each other.

The next day was a day to remember. Mr Sinclair announced his intention of taking his ‘daughter’ for a walk in Hyde Park at the fashionable hour.

At first the cynical servants, who had been told to expect Mr Sinclair and his
ward
, were inclined to think that Fiona might be his
chère-amie
. But her vague air of innocence combined with Mr Sinclair’s gruff treatment of her soon put that scandalous idea to rest.

Mr Sinclair waited in the front parlour for Fiona, who had told him that she had completed her first ensemble and planned to wear it. He hoped she would not look like a country dowd. He wished now he had pressed her to take the advice of a fashionable couturier. But he had been so disappointed at their previous lack of success that he had jumped at the idea of saving money. Also, dim-witted though she was, Fiona at least appeared to be skilled in all the arts of housewifery. Mr Sinclair had grown up in Edinburgh in the town’s heyday when it was called the Athens of the North and ladies were judged on their knowledge of metaphysics rather than their gowns. He believed that dressmaking and cooking came naturally to even the most feeble-minded.

Nonetheless, he looked at her in awe when she entered. She was wearing a pink crêpe dress, high-waisted and puff-sleeved and cut low enough at the neck to show she had an excellent bosom. A Circassian straw hat with the brim pinned up at one side to show her glossy black curls and slouched down at the other gave her a dashing and sophisticated appearance. She wore long gloves of a deeper rose pink, and a bunch of pink roses ornamented the crown of her hat.

‘You
dasher
,’ breathed Mr Sinclair.

‘Let us hope I do not scare the birds from the trees,’ said Fiona primly.

They entered the park, arm in arm, at the fashionable hour.

Fiona was a sensation.

Drivers reined in their carriages while their occupants stood up to get a better look. Fiona floated gracefully at Mr Sinclair’s side. It was the first fine day. Fleecy clouds puffed across the blue sky above, and everything was green and fresh after the recent rain. There was something about Fiona’s beauty and innocence that made even the most hardened rake think of enchanted princesses in ivory towers.

In vain did the ladies try to point out Fiona’s faults. One said she was too bold, but that was such an obvious untruth that she blushed as she said it.

To Mr Sinclair’s surprise, Fiona appeared to be more awake than usual. Her grey eyes scanned the carriages with interest. It was almost as if she was looking for someone.

Mr Sinclair waited until he was sure they were the centre of attention, and then he dramatically clutched his heart and made odd gargling noises.

‘Papa!’ cried Fiona loudly, her Scottish voice with its lilting accent carrying clearly to the surrounding spectators. ‘What’s amiss?’

Mr Sinclair made several choking noises, wrenched desperately at his cravat, and to all intents and purposes collapsed in a dead faint. Gentlemen rushed to give their assistance. Fiona, now kneeling in the grass beside the fallen Mr Sinclair, looked more like a romantic heroine than ever.

‘Speak to me, Papa,’ she urged, and even Mr Brummell, that arbiter of fashion and renowned cynic, was to say later that her silvery voice pierced him like an arrow.

Mr Sinclair opened his eyes and said faintly, ‘My heart. Alas, Fiona, you know I have not long to live. Miser that I am, I have been a bad father to you. But when I die, all my gold will be yours.’

The listening company looked as if they had been galvinized by one of the new electric machines. Eager hands tenderly lifted Mr Sinclair into the famous Lord Alvanley’s carriage while Mr Brummell, Alvanley’s closest friend, mopped the old man’s brow with his handkerchief.

A procession followed the carriage back to Clarges Street. Apparently recovered, Mr Sinclair fulsomely thanked his rescuers and urged them indoors for cakes and wine. The distracted Rainbird did his best. The wine was thin and sour and watered. The cakes were stale, bought at half price from a local bakery. Society gamely ate and drank, saving up each evidence of miserliness to relate at the dinner tables, routs, and parties later that evening.

‘We barely noticed,’ said Lord Petersham later. ‘We were all too busy feasting our eyes on Miss Fiona’s beauty.’

Downstairs that evening Rainbird carefully put all the tips he had collected from the aristocratic guests into a pot. He had faithfully promised his fellow servants that all vails would be equally shared. Mrs Middleton and Joseph had protested, claiming that Rainbird should get the main part, then Mrs Middleton herself, then the cook, then Joseph, and so on down the line. But Rainbird said they had suffered together and they may as well benefit together.

‘I don’t know if they’ll be any more pickings,’ he said gloomily, ‘so let’s make this last. No wasting your share on candles, Lizzie.’

‘Oh, Mr Rainbird,’ said Lizzie, ‘I do wish you would let me pray again.’

‘Enough of that, my girl,’ said Rainbird. ‘Pray by your bed if you must, but there’s enough work here without you running off to waste your money on candles.’

‘Seems to me you’re touched in your upperworks, Lizzie,’ tittered Joseph, and then quailed as Rainbird rounded on him fiercely. ‘Now, you leave our Lizzie alone, you jackanapes,’ he growled. He smiled at Lizzie, that charming smile of his that lit up his comedian’s face and usually made Lizzie want to laugh. But Lizzie adored Joseph, and his remark had cut her to the quick.

‘Before that Jessamy goes a-buying scent for to anoint his useless body,’ said the cook, MacGregor, ‘I waud suggest we could hae a wee bit o’ meat for supper tomorrow. Roast beef,’ he said, his eyes gleaming. ‘Roast beef and gravy and lots of potatoes and we’ll give them upstairs that old bit o’ venison I got cheap from the butcher ’cause he dropped it in the sawdust and I saw him do it.’

‘Roast beef it is then,’ said Rainbird dreamily. He loosened his cravat and put his feet up on the table. It was a sign that they were all equal in hardship again and the others took their places at the table, each sitting in the nearest chair without carefully noticing rank and precedence as they had done since Mr Sinclair’s arrival.

‘Give us a bit of a tune, Joseph,’ said Rainbird. ‘This is the best day we’ve had for a while.’

Joseph took out his mandolin and with a wicked side-long look at Mrs Middleton began to play the opening chords of a rather bawdy ballad, but his aim of shocking the housekeeper was defeated by MacGregor, who began to make up words, all of them ridiculous, to go along with the tune. Jenny and Alice began to giggle helplessly, and little Lizzie put her hands over her mouth to stifle a laugh in case she offended Joseph.

‘Tol rol diddle dol,’ carolled MacGregor happily. Then his voice trailed away, and there was a sudden shocked silence. For the door had quietly opened, and Miss Fiona Sinclair stood surveying the scene.

Miss Harriet Giles-Denton and Miss Bessie Plumtree had been enjoying their evening at Mr Pardon’s town house until the name of Fiona Sinclair cropped up. Their respective parents, who had brought them to London for yet another Season, had graciously allowed both of them to attend a musicale at Mr Pardon’s under the stern chaperonage of a maiden aunt of Miss Plumtree, who had been engaged for the Season by the Plumtrees and Giles-Dentons to keep a watchful eye on their daughters.

The acceptability, or lack of it, of Mr Pardon had been much discussed by both families on their arrival in London, but Mr Giles-Denton had clinched the matter by saying that Pardon was well-regarded by the
ton.
This was in fact true, because Mr Pardon’s more nefarious deeds had been discreetly performed in or near his mansion on the Scottish borders. Because he entertained lavishly, he was accounted no end of a good fellow.

There was a fair sprinkling of titles in his mansion that evening. There was of course Mrs Leech, but neither Bessie nor Harriet allowed themselves to think about her because to do so might conjure up unladylike feelings.

The musicale was over and the company were strolling about or sitting chatting or striking attitudes when Harriet heard Fiona’s name. It quite spoiled the attitude she had been rehearsing all day, which involved propping her chin on her plump hands and scowling out into space.

Bessie, too, had been striking an attitude when that wretched name had spoiled it all. She was wearing a Turkish turban of bright blue, fringed with gold. Her gown was white-silver lame on gauze, the gauze sleeves revealing her sharp pointed elbows. Bessie’s attitude was to point one finger to the centre of her brow and look dewy-eyed, the dew in her eyes being a liberal application of belladonna.

A certain Lady Disher voiced the dreaded name. ‘Who is this beautiful Fiona Sinclair everyone is raving about?’ she asked languidly. ‘Evidently she caused quite a sensation in the park this afternoon.’