CHAPTER VII #2
‘He can hardly finish a sentence!’
‘I am hardly in a position to complain about that,’ she reminded him.
Arthur shook his head. ‘You have things to say.’ He recollected the wooden expression that had come over Hetty’s face the night before. ‘You just withdraw entirely. Why is that?’
Hetty could not quite put it into words.
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She preoccupied herself instead by navigating around an irate goose, but when this business was concluded and Arthur was still looking at her, expectant, she sighed.
‘I am so much less shy than I was – I promise! – but with strangers, or, well, gentlemen, I still sometimes feel the same oddity I was in my first Season, so terrified of making a misstep that it is a task even to utter commonplaces.’ She sighed again.
‘I should so love to be one of those ladies who is always ready with an amusing comment or an elegant retort, but …’
Arthur shook his head. ‘You are such a person, Hetty – with us, anyhow.’
‘It is different with persons one knows,’ Hetty said dismissively.
Arthur hummed thoughtfully. ‘I am surprised Mama has not taken you more to task.’
Hetty pulled a face. ‘She had me learn lines. “A person need only know three phrases to conduct themselves elegantly in any situation,”’ she said in a passable imitation of Lady Allerton’s careless declarations. ‘“Such a fine day!”’ she quoted. ‘“Do you think so?” and “How marvellous!”’
Arthur grinned appreciatively. ‘I received that lesson myself. You did not, I take it, find it helpful?’
‘My recollection is not at its best when I am agitated.’ Wishing to be fair, she admitted: ‘Perhaps I did not try very hard. Practising such a thing on persons whose opinion can flatten one’s reputation is not such an appealing proposition.’
Arthur paused to consider for a moment: for Hetty to feel calmer around all persons, they ought really to practise her encountering strangers at such a frequency that her nerves would eventually decrease.
It was, in some ways, not dissimilar to preparing a military exercise, and that same briskness was in his voice when he next spoke: ‘I shall introduce you to a succession of new persons, with whom you may only use Mama’s three phrases. ’
‘Only those phrases?’ Hetty laughed. ‘In practice, Arthur, I do not think—’
‘Let us see.’ Arthur swept a magnificent bow. ‘I am Captain Asquith: a pleasure to make your acquaintance.’
‘Arthur …’
‘Captain Asquith,’ he corrected. ‘How do you do?’
He looked at her, so full of hopeful expectance that she found herself, reluctantly, returning the greeting; then he looked pointedly up to the sun.
‘Such a fine day,’ she said obediently.
‘All the finer for seeing you!’
Though she knew this gallantry was just part of the game, a faint blush still came to her cheeks and she had to mutter her next line to her feet: ‘Do you think so?’
‘But, Miss Clithero, of course, how could you doubt me?’
‘How marvellous,’ Hetty concluded.
Arthur clapped his hands. ‘Bravo! It works!’
‘Only just. I am not at all certain it would with anyone else.’
‘Let us see,’ Arthur said again, eyes landing upon a gentleman in a distance. ‘Mr Chapman!’
He raised a hand, hailing him. Mr Chapman, an unfamiliar gentleman garbed in military uniform, paused, peering over at them. Then, recognising Arthur, he began to stride in their direction.
‘Arthur,’ Hetty said in a low, urgent voice. ‘Arthur, what are you—’
‘No time like the present!’
‘I can’t!’
‘I shall be right there beside you.’ This was not reassuring in the least: witnesses, in Hetty’s experience, rarely reduced one’s humiliation.
‘Mr Chapman does not move in the first circles of elegance. Nor is he to remain in London for long. However you conduct yourself in this conversation matters not one jot.’
Hetty tried to remember how to breathe.
‘Just remember your lines!’ Arthur urged as Mr Chapman neared.
Hetty felt the oncoming blankness begin to intrude in her periphery and tried to recite them under her breath. How do you do? Do you think so? Such a fine day. Or was it What a fine day, she could not recollect …
In your head!’ Arthur added hastily, as Chapman came into earshot. ‘Good to see you, it’s been too long! May I present you to Miss Clithero – you have not, I think, met before.’
‘I do not think so.’ Mr Chapman gave Hetty a bow. Arthur nudged Hetty softly with his elbow, and she groped desperately about in her mind for one of her lines and—
‘Do you think so?’ She was so panicked that the words burst out of her far more loudly than she had intended. The effect was rather aggressive.
‘I do not think so,’ Chapman clarified in a slightly louder voice – perhaps the young lady was a little deaf?
‘Are you here for the ascension?’ Arthur stepped smoothly into the breach. ‘Not the first time you’ll have seen one of these before, I imagine?’ He turned to Hetty in explanation. ‘Chapman has a particular interest in aeronautics.’
Chapman looked rather bashful. ‘Yes, indeed, that was my goal – though I’m not sure the conditions are suitable; the weather looks to be on the turn …’
Arthur nudged Hetty again.
‘Such a fine day!’
Chapman, having just made the opposite point, did not seem to know how to answer this.
‘How long are you to stay in London?’ Arthur interceded hastily, and Chapman pulled his gaze back to him with some relief.
‘I leave today. In truth, not for the happiest reasons,’ he said heavily. ‘My grandmother has been declining for a while. I go to her sickbed.’
Arthur reached out to clasp him wordlessly upon the arm. Unbidden, Hetty’s mouth opened. She tried to stop herself, she did, but it was as if, once queued up, the phrases simply had to come out. From a great distance, she heard herself say: ‘How – how marvellous!’
‘Well, we shan’t keep you!’ Arthur said loudly. ‘Safe travels!’
He ushered Hetty away. They walked in silence for a moment, Hetty willing herself into an early grave, and Arthur trying to repress laughter.
‘How – how do you feel that went?’ Arthur wondered after a few minutes, keeping his voice even by sheer force of will.
Hetty shook her head. She could not yet speak.
‘What made you say them in such an order?’ His voice was trembling now.
Hetty pressed her hands against burning cheeks. ‘I did not mean to. I was just … trying to remember the questions and – Don’t laugh! That was a disaster.’
‘It was,’ Arthur agreed, mastering himself with some difficulty. ‘And?’
‘And?’
‘You said the wrong thing. Perhaps the most wrong thing a person can say, now that I consider it.’ He gave a little shrug. ‘Nothing happened. You did not perish.’
Hetty pressed a hand to her racing heart. ‘I almost did.’
‘It will be easier next time,’ Arthur assured her.
‘You don’t mean we have to try again?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ Arthur said promptly. ‘Come along, there is Mr Blanchard.’
To Hetty’s horror, Arthur began propelling her towards another gentlemen. Hetty felt her chest tighten. ‘No, no,’ she protested. ‘I cannot.’
She would, in that moment, have rather dived into the Serpentine. As if in answer to this desire, the heavens chose at that moment to open.
‘Oh blast!’ Arthur looked up to the dark sky, frowning. ‘Only in England. Come, we had best hurry back.’
The day having been so clear when they left, they had not thought to bring umbrellas.
Hetty, at least, was partially shielded by her bonnet, but by the time they had neared the enclosure once more, Arthur was looking rather damp – though the effect, in truth, was rather pleasing to the eye, for he looked fresh and alive.
She could only hope the rain was affording her the same improvement.
‘Are you cold? You look like a drowned rat.’
Perhaps not. Still, the cold press of her skin, the weight of her clothes: it was all strangely reassuring. She was a person; she had a body. She would not float away.
‘It is just a bit of rain!’ Trixie was saying crossly when they reached the carriage. Her face, underneath her sopping bonnet, was as thunderous as the sky. ‘I do not see why they must cancel the whole thing – it might stop at any moment!’
‘Have you lost your senses?’ Hetty asked – but Trixie was suddenly not paying attention. Her gaze had been caught by a gentleman in military uniform passing by on horseback. Trixie raised an arm in greeting, but the fellow was not looking their way.
‘Did he see me?’ Trixie asked Hetty anxiously. ‘How do I look?’
All at once, a great many things became very plain to Hetty. ‘Oh.’
‘I must say, I did not realise such spectacles drew such a varied crowd,’ Arthur said blandly, following Hetty’s gaze. ‘Captain Edgewood – what a singular coincidence!’