5. Three Encounters and a Hatpin
THREE ENCOUNTERS AND A HATPIN
OPERA BOXES AND MISQUOTED SPEECHES
The trouble with public entertainments, Genevieve Ashby had long ago decided, was that the public rarely understood its duty to entertain.
The opera house glittered as if light could be persuaded to behave respectably by being multiplied in mirrors.
Chandeliers burned over velvet boxes, polished shoulders, feathered headdresses, white gloves, lorgnettes, and the tightly managed boredom of people who had paid a great deal of money to be seen listening.
Music still trembled in the air from the first act, but the interval had already converted art into conversation.
Everywhere, London leaned sideways to discover who had arrived late, who had applauded too soon, and who had chosen a sapphire necklace with implications too large for its throat.
Genevieve sat in a borrowed box between a widow with opinions about sopranos and a gentleman who believed a programme note became more accurate if read aloud. She held her fan at the precise angle required to suggest attention whilst permitting her eyes to move.
There were rules for opera boxes. One looked first at the stage, then at friends, then at enemies, then at friends pretending not to be enemies. One did not search a crowded house for a reform journalist whose handwriting had become, in the past week, annoyingly recognisable.
Genevieve did not search.
She observed.
Observation found Daniel Hartley in the side gallery reserved for those whose invitations had been earned by professional necessity rather than inheritance.
He stood half behind a pillar, programme folded in one hand, dark coat correct enough and expression less so.
The music had not altered him. Mayfair lamps had not improved him.
He still looked like a man listening for the lie beneath the orchestration.
At that exact moment, he looked up.
Their gazes met across velvet, gilt, feathers, and a dozen social distances arranged to make such a meeting inconvenient.
Daniel inclined his head.
Genevieve returned the smallest possible nod, which was to say the largest possible folly.
The widow beside her sighed. “The tenor lacks sincerity.”
“Perhaps he has placed it in trust until the final act,” Genevieve said.
The widow blinked, considered whether this was praise, and chose to agree with it.
A philanthropic address followed the interval.
It was not in the programme, which Genevieve considered an act of cowardice by the printers.
A gentleman of consequence took the stage and began to speak of the moral improvement of public amusements.
He possessed a noble brow, an excellent waistcoat, and the fatal confidence of a man who had never been interrupted by sense.
“Culture,” he declared, “must refine the people without inflaming them, elevate the mind without disturbing its appropriate station, and teach the lower orders to aspire without expecting anything so vulgar as alteration.”
The opera house received this with a murmur of approval, because the lower orders were not seated in the expensive boxes and therefore could not object.
Genevieve opened her fan.
Across the house, Daniel’s programme lifted by a fraction. She could not read his face at that distance, but she knew, with unwelcome certainty, that he had just written the sentence down.
By the time the address concluded, culture had been burdened with discipline, charity, patriotism, restraint, modesty, and one metaphor involving lamps that had suffered grievously in service.
The applause swelled with the peculiar enthusiasm of people relieved that language had stopped being harmed.
The first useful movement after such a speech was always towards conversation. Genevieve left the box on the widow’s arm, surrendered her to a cousin near the stair, and found herself, entirely by accident and with no assistance from intention, beside a display of plaster busts in the corridor.
Daniel Hartley was already there, reading a notice about subscription funds as if it had personally offended him.
“Miss Ashby,” he said.
“Mr. Hartley. Are you investigating Apollo?”
“Only his committee.”
“That is wise. Gods are rarely accountable, but committees leave minutes.”
Daniel’s mouth moved. Not quite a smile; it had ambitions in that direction. “Did you hear the address?”
“I was seated within range of injury.”
“Then I may rely upon your professional diagnosis.” He unfolded his programme. “When a speaker says the public should aspire without expecting alteration, is that contradiction, cruelty, or merely bad acoustics?”
“Bad conscience,” Genevieve said. “The acoustics were excellent.”
“I had hoped you would say that.”
“You hoped I would accuse a charitable speech of bad conscience?”
“I hoped the sentence had not improved as it travelled.”
“The only thing improved by distance was the speaker.”
Daniel looked down at the line he had written. His pencil had pressed too hard, scoring the paper. “I have a professional affection for a sentence that condemns itself.”
“And yet you appear displeased.”
“I dislike seeing hypocrisy applauded in tempo.”
“Ah. You object to rhythm.”
“I object to obedience disguised as refinement.”
Genevieve glanced towards the corridor, where a cluster of ladies drifted near enough to catch any interesting fragment. “That is a large objection for a small interval.”
“You disagree?”
“Not here.”
“Because the corridor has ears?”
“Because the corridor has hats. Ears are much less treacherous. Hats carry interpretation.”
His gaze flicked over the procession of plumes, ribbons, silk flowers, and mounted birds that moved through the passage like a migratory conspiracy. “Mayfair has battlefield procedures I have not studied.”
“It has several. The hat is merely an advanced form.”
“And the fan?”
“Infantry.”
“The opera glass?”
“Artillery.”
“I see.” He considered her fan with the solemnity of a man evaluating ordnance. “And the programme?”
“A weak shield. Yours has already sustained casualties.”
Daniel folded it. “I wrote down only what deserved to survive as evidence.”
“Mr. Hartley, evidence should not be entrusted to opera programmes. They are too vulnerable to sentiment and spilled ratafia.”
“Then you will be pleased to know I used pencil. It suggests humility.”
“Pencil suggests uncertainty.”
“Humility’s better-dressed cousin.”
The corridor carried laughter, perfume, damp wool, and the distant scrape of musicians returning to the pit.
They stood in the public flow with nothing improper occurring except the speed with which the rest of the room diminished.
Genevieve was aware of the plaster busts, the eyes turning towards them and away, the necessity of remaining a woman in a corridor rather than a private mind in argument.
She was also aware that Daniel had not asked about her column, not directly. Gossip remained untouched; names, uninvited. He held the absurd speech between them as if it were enough to share a target and not yet require a wound.
This is safe, she told herself.
The thought was badly composed and therefore suspect.
The bell sounded for the next act.
Daniel stepped aside to let a duchess pass with the deference due to age, rank, and the hat of a woman prepared to annex airspace.
“Will the address appear in your column?” he asked.
“Not as itself. It lacks the resilience to survive quotation.”
“That is merciful.”
“Tasteful.”
“Still perilous.”
“Still muddy?” she returned.
For a moment, the phrase from their letters passed between them without either naming it: principle entering by the side door, loud and muddy and certain it had invented the house.
Daniel’s smile arrived, brief and genuine.
Genevieve’s fan shifted once against her glove.
“There,” he said.
“What?”
“You were pleased with yourself.”
“I often am. It is one of my economies.”
“Then I congratulate your household accounts.”
The second bell called more insistently. A footman opened the corridor doors. Music stirred below, tuning itself into discipline.
Genevieve moved towards the boxes. “Good evening, Mr. Hartley.”
“Miss Ashby.”
She had taken three steps when he added, quietly enough that no hat could hear, “I should like to read what you do not write.”
She did not turn at once. She permitted the line to reach her, settle, and become perilous entirely in silence.
Then she glanced back. “That, Mr. Hartley, would require a subscription far beyond the usual rate.”
He bowed, grave as a contract. “I shall begin saving.”
Genevieve returned to her box before her smile could become material.
During the second act, the tenor discovered sincerity after all. It arrived late, but with a high note impressive enough to excuse several earlier deficiencies. Genevieve applauded at the proper time and looked no more than twice towards the side gallery.
No more than three times.
A columnist might notice such discrepancies in another woman and make them fatal.
Genevieve, being merciful when properly entertained, declined to notice herself.
COFFEE STRONGER THAN PROPRIETY
The coffee room near Fleet Street had been chosen because neither of them could plausibly call it intimate.
It smelled of roasted beans, damp coats, newspapers, pipe smoke, ink, hot metal from some neighbouring pressroom, and the peculiar courage of men who believed caffeine could replace sleep if taken with sufficient argument.
The tables were scarred. The chairs complained.
A clerk in the corner copied figures at a speed suggesting either genius or terror.
Two printers debated type sizes as if nations might fall over the distinction between respectable and readable.
Genevieve loved it immediately and resolved not to say so.