Mr Bishop and the Actress Read online

  Harry looks at me with mild surprise but he appears dazed, as though he might expect to see any number of people or things upon the sofa and not be much moved. I rise and stand aside, and watch as Harry takes his mother’s hands and speaks quietly to her.

  She wails and shakes her hands free, saying no, it cannot, must not be, while Mrs Shilling embraces her and the two women rock to and fro.

  ‘You should go and speak to him, Ma,’ Harry says. ‘He might hear you. Your voice will comfort him.’

  She nods and she and Mrs Shilling leave the room for the bedchamber where Harry’s father lies dying.

  Harry exchanges a few words with the surgeon and tugs on a bellrope. One of the female servants of the hotel, pale and as red-eyed as her mistress, is summoned to bring the surgeon’s hat and gloves, and Harry and I are left alone.

  ‘I am so very sorry, Harry.’

  He nods. He looks older, sombre, and his shoulders droop as though intolerable burdens have been placed upon him, and indeed, so they have. ‘I must write to my other sisters and brother. God knows when the letters will reach them. We last had word from Joseph some six months ago when his ship was in port. My sister, the one who is a housekeeper, is in Yorkshire, and Eliza in Bristol expects her third child any day. There is not time for . . .’ He blinks at me and takes off his spectacles, rubbing them absently on his cuff. ‘Thank you for keeping my mother and sister company, Mrs Wallace.’

  I have not been addressed as Mrs Wallace in such a while that I start at the use of my name.

  ‘I beg your pardon. Mrs Marsden, then. I have another favour to beg of you, ma’am, that you will stay with my mother and sister this night.’

  ‘Of course.’

  He continues, ‘I must write also to Lord Shad, to . . . pray God no one in the neighbourhood knew of Amelia’s departure. Her reputation may yet be saved. But . . .’ he looks at me, confused. ‘I regret this delays our departure for Brighton.’

  ‘Harry, sit. You should drink some tea.’

  He does so and sits stirring his tea like a man in a dream, but when he drinks it he becomes more like himself. I wish I could touch him and give him some human comfort, but I know too that his formality, his wish for order, is the only protection he can offer his family.

  ‘The physician says he doubts my father will last the night,’ he says and then falls silent again.

  I go upstairs to the bedchamber where Harry’s father lies, attended by his wife and daughter, only the slight rise and fall of his chest indicating that he lives still.

  Richard, solemn and somehow less gawky, as though he has grown up in the past couple of hours, is summoned to bid his grandfather farewell, and both he and his father Thomas weep.

  Harry returns from his letter writing and sits beside his sister in silence, his arm around her shoulders.

  Mrs Bishop holds her husband’s hand and talks of how things go at the hotel this night and how the cook, in her grief, burned some chickens and drank a quart of porter; of compliments the hotel has received from guests; and how those who have stayed there before wish Mr Bishop well. Mrs Bishop tells him she has no doubt Mr Bishop will rally and that she will nurse him back to health and take him away for a holiday, for in all this time he has never had one. Sea air, she thinks, would do him good. She holds his hand to her face, talking of the bright sparkle of sunlight on sea, the slap and tug of waves, the cries of seagulls as they ride the winds overhead.

  Gradually her voice becomes quieter and I think she talks of their courtship, of their years together, and of their children and grandchildren.

  Clocks strike, coaches arrive and depart, and the night watchmen call the hours and announce that it is a fine night.

  So it may be, but not for the Bishop family. Shortly before dawn Mr Bishop dies.

  I leave the family so they may grieve alone and find the hotel staff at the bottom of the stairs, waiting, many of them in tears. They don’t need me to tell them what has happened, but they look to their new master, for Harry has followed me downstairs.

  ‘My father and your master Mr Bishop is dead.’ His voice is quiet and kind. ‘I thank you all for your concern. The Norwich coach arrives in fifteen minutes, so make sure all is ready. Bring Mrs Bishop some tea in the parlour, if you please.’ He turns to me. ‘May I ask you to stay with my mother? She should sleep. I’ll have a room made up for her. Mary must return home to her children.’

  I cannot refuse. When Mrs Bishop comes back downstairs, a woman having arrived to lay the corpse out, she is in a state of nervous agitation, scarcely able to keep still, and then collapsing into tears. She talks incoherently of her dead husband and what is to become of her now.

  She grips my arm during one of these panicked ramblings. ‘You must help Harry. He will need a wife now. We always meant for him to run the hotel, but not yet. Not so soon. Promise me, Sophie.’

  I urge her to calm herself.

  ‘Has he made you an offer?’ she asks with something of her former bright-eyed energy.

  ‘He did, ma’am.’

  ‘Oh, thank God.’ But then she sees my expression. ‘You refused him, my dear Sophie? How could this be? But never mind, he will propose again, and this time you must accept.’

  ‘Ma’am, I regret I—’

  ‘Promise me!’

  ‘If he asks, I shall consider it,’ I say carefully. She is not to know how unlikely it is he would ask me again.

  I cannot tell her that her son has lost all regard, all respect for me, for I think I would weep myself if I were to tell her.

  But my answer seems to satisfy her for she calms a little and drinks some tea, finally allowing me to help her to a bedchamber and assist her in going to bed.

  ‘This was the room Harry slept in as a boy,’ she says. ‘He and our other son, Joseph. You see here, they measured themselves and marked it on the doorjamb.’

  Sure enough, a series of notches, one headed by an H and the other with a J, measure the growth of the Bishop sons.

  ‘Harry was so angry that Joseph was always taller.’ She manages a smile. ‘My dear, you will like him so much when you meet him, and my other daughters Sara and Eliza. To think they never bid their papa goodbye!’

  She argues very little when I suggest she take some laudanum and she falls asleep.

  I go to my bedchamber and lie on my bed, thinking I shall sleep only a little while, but when I awaken it is late afternoon. Outside I hear a coach horn and the clop of hooves and the rumble of vehicles on the cobbled yard of the inn. When I go to the window I see Harry, wearing a long apron, greeting passengers as his father did, a black armband on one sleeve. He smiles and makes conversation and I marvel that he is able to do so with such ease; a few, noting the symbol of mourning, stop and converse more deeply with him or shake his hand.

  A familiar trio enter the courtyard on foot – my father, Sylvia, and Amelia. I smooth my skirts and splash a little water on my face and go downstairs to meet them.

  15

  Sophie

  ‘A dreadful business, Mr Bishop. Dreadful indeed.’ My father dabs at his eyes with a large handkerchief he wields like a theatrical prop, which is exactly what it is. ‘Your late father was well known and deeply respected in the neighbourhood. It is a loss, sir. An inconsolable loss for us all. My commiserations, sir.’ He wrings Harry’s hand.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Pa, you didn’t even know him,’ I mutter to my sire and pull him aside.

  The last of the arrivals have entered the hotel, and Harry invites us into the family’s parlour, where Mrs Shilling and Mrs Bishop preside over the teapot. A few other ladies, who are introduced as friends of the family, gaze in astonishment at Sylvia’s beard and then talk loudly of the weather.

  Mrs Bishop, swathed in black like a mourning queen, graciously accepts the condolences of the newcomers, although somewhat taken aback at my father’s florid eloquence. She barely seems to notice Sylvia’s beard and smiles faintly at Amelia’s youthful prettiness.

>   After a while, Harry enters, his apron discarded. He announces his mother must rest, and with great tact and firmness directs the visitors out, but asks me and Amelia to stay.

  Now everyone has gone he looks weary, like an actor coming off the stage, and so it has been for him, I suppose, as he maintains the friendly pleasant façade of the hotel keeper.

  He sinks into a chair and accepts a cup of tea. I wish I could offer him more, some kindness or words of comfort, for now he looks weary and sad.

  Amelia produces a needle and thread from her pocket and stitches at a loose ribbon on her bonnet.

  ‘Your bonnet turned out well,’ I say as she bites off the thread.

  ‘Oh, had you not seen it finished before?’

  I shake my head. She had worked at that bonnet last week. Was she thinking even then of running away to London?

  ‘Mrs Henney admired it, too. I bought the ribbons from her.’

  ‘When did Mrs Henney see it?’ Harry sits bolt upright.

  ‘Why, just before I boarded the coach to London.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why do you look at me like that, Mr Bishop?’ She looks at me for reassurance. ‘Mrs Marsden, I met her while I was waiting for the coach. She drove up in her donkey cart and offered me a lift while I waited at the crossroads, but I told her I did not need one.’

  ‘So she knew you were going to London? Alone?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes, but I did not tell her why, for it was none of her business.’

  ‘What did she and you talk about?’ Harry asks.

  ‘Oh, very little. She teased me that I had a lover waiting in London and of course I told her she was mistaken. She very kindly offered to wait with me until the coach arrived.’ She gazes at us both. ‘Did I do something wrong?’

  ‘Amelia, my dear, Mrs Henney is the biggest gossip in Norfolk.’ I break the truth to her as gently as I can. ‘Your only hope, to retain your reputation, was that no one but us should know of your escapade. Now everyone – the village and all the surrounding families with whom Lord Shad wished you to be known as an equal – will know that you are ruined.’

  ‘Ruined!’ She stares at me in horror. ‘What shall I do?’

  Harry puts his teacup down and stands. ‘We must take you to Brighton as soon as we can so you may throw yourself on Lord Shad’s mercy. I doubt whether he knows any of this and it is best he hears it first from you. We bury my father tomorrow.’ He says it with no emotion, no inflexion in his voice at all, but his hands are clenched tight. ‘Meanwhile, you and I must talk, Miss Amelia. I’ll escort you back to your lodgings. Mrs Marsden, I should be obliged if you will stay here until my return in case my mother requires your company.’

  ‘Cannot Mrs Marsden accompany us?’

  ‘No, Miss Amelia, she cannot.’

  He bows, and I can only admire the eloquence of Mr Bishop’s bows, for this one expresses a lofty officiousness that makes me grit my teeth. As he escorts Amelia from the parlour, she sends me an agonized, tearful glance.

  I sit in the parlour as the light fades, wondering if I should move into the lodgings with Amelia and my father as I find the proximity to Harry disturbing and painful, but I do not want to leave Mrs Bishop. As I bend to light a candle at the fireplace, Mary Shilling enters the room again.

  ‘Where is Harry?’

  ‘He is escorting Amelia back to her lodgings.’

  ‘Oh. Mrs Marsden, Sophie, may I ask the favour of you staying with us tomorrow? My father will be buried and we women shall be here. We should so like your company; you are a great comfort to us and Harry is . . . well, I need not tell you of Harry’s opinion.’

  Oddly she too seems to think Harry holds me in great esteem. Doubtless she and her mother have been planning further attempts to make me the mistress of Bishop’s Hotel.

  Harry, when he returns, looks even more strained and worried than he did before. He dons his apron. I watch him square his shoulders and assume a welcoming smile for the next group of travellers and wish I could ease his burden, but I cannot. I have assisted his family because I like them and I feel for them in their sorrow; I have become close to his mother in particular, even if she continues in the belief that I am to marry her son. I am willing for her to make that assumption if it gives her some comfort, although I know my refusal (or more likely his disinclination to make me a second offer) will sadden her. But I must leave Bishop’s Hotel soon, to become the drudge in my father’s company if I can do so without fulfilling any obligation to Sloven; and if that is unavoidable, I shall go elsewhere.

  The next day is that of the funeral and for the first time in living memory, Bishop’s Hotel closes its doors for the morning. Mrs Bishop, Mary Shilling, and other female friends and relatives listen in the parlour to the tread of the undertakers’ feet on the staircase as they take the coffin downstairs. Harry and Thomas Shilling are two of the pall-bearers, as is my father, who weeps into another black-edged handkerchief the size of a tablecloth. The stable yard is deserted except for the carriage with two black and plumed horses.

  Mrs Bishop wails and presses her palm against the window as though trying to touch her husband one last time.

  The coffin is loaded into the carriage, and the male staff of the hotel flock into the stable yard, sombre, some weeping, all of them wearing black armbands. They gather behind Harry and the procession sets off, Mrs Bishop watching as it leaves the yard, her forehead pressed against the glass. None of us dare to disturb her.

  ‘What shall we do?’ Amelia whispers to me, for she and Sylvia have come to join the mourning women.

  ‘Nothing,’ I whisper back. ‘She will let us know when she is ready.’

  Finally she moves. ‘Fetch some claret,’ she says, and the maidservants scurry to do her bidding.

  ‘But, Cousin—’ remonstrates a female relative. ‘It is not proper.’

  ‘My Peter liked a glass of claret, God bless him, and if you don’t like it, Cousin Letitia, you may leave.’

  ‘Well!’ Cousin Letitia and the pale, skinny child who is either her daughter or servant, I cannot tell which, leave, noses in the air.

  I regret to say we all get drunk as not one, but many bottles of claret are produced from the cellar, but the atmosphere improves considerably. A hectic jollity reigns. Stories concerning childbirth, husbands’ antics in the bedchamber and elsewhere, and other female matters are exchanged, and Mrs Bishop weeps a little still, but she laughs occasionally too. Amelia blushes quite pink at what she hears but she pays close attention.

  A cough comes from the doorway. Sylvia, who has been juggling empty bottles, scoops them up into her arms, and several of the ladies, who have raised their petticoats to take advantage of the fire, for it is a rainy, chilly day, make themselves decent.

  Harry stands there, sniffing a half-full glass of wine. ‘For God’s sake, Ma, that’s the good claret.’

  ‘Of course it is. Your father would have wished it.’

  ‘Of course he would have. Will all the ladies stay to dinner?’

  The ladies indicate they should like to indeed, and assure Harry that even the two among us who have fallen asleep will wish to dine.

  Harry smiles and sneezes. ‘Mrs Marsden, I should like a word with you, if you please.’

  ‘Certainly,’ I say with a bravado inspired by the wine. Surely he is not going to make me an offer now?

  He offers his arm and takes me into the office opposite the kitchen, where he hangs his hat on a peg on the door.

  ‘Mrs Marsden,’ he says with great formality, and I wait for him to drop to one knee.

  Instead he sneezes again.

  ‘Oh, Harry, I am sorry. Did you catch my cold?’

  ‘I fear so. It is nothing.’

  ‘I hope you are right. I am almost better now.’

  ‘I am glad to hear it.’

  But he looks unwell, tired and strained, pale except for a redness around the eyes, his voice hoarse. He continues, ‘As you have realized, I must manage Bisho
p’s Hotel now. It is something my parents expected me to do, and while I did not anticipate taking on the responsibility for some years, circumstances have . . .’ He pauses and reaches out his hand to touch the pipe that lies on the desk; his father’s pipe, a finely turned piece of ivory and wood. He stands absolutely still.

  I lay my hand on his arm.

  ‘So.’ He shakes my hand off, not in an unkind way, but rather in an absent-minded way, as though I was a fly that had alighted on his sleeve. ‘I know my duty. You may have noticed that my mother expects me to marry, for this sort of establishment is best run by husband and wife . . .’

  He spoils the effect of his eminently practical speech by producing a handkerchief and blowing his nose very loudly.