However, I could not escape him at the table as Sylvia and Melissa monopolised Roger’s attentions, while Aunt Madge conversed with the senior gentlemen, leaving Evelyn and me to Frederick to entertain.
“How do you like the university, cousin?” Evelyn asked politely.
“Oh, very well,” said Frederick.
“It must be pleasant to be there together with your brother,” she added.
Frederick picked up a napkin and wiped his mouth before answering.
“To tell truth, we don’t see much of one another in Oxford.”
“But you share rooms, do you not?” I asked, as I had remembered Aunt Madge telling me this.
Frederick chuckled.
“We do, but I still don’t see him much.”
“But—” I began, but Evelyn gave me a warning look and I shut my mouth.
“Let’s say – how can I put it? – we keep different hours… and different company.”
Evelyn’s look suggested this had better make an end on the subject. I began to think Frederick rather a dry old stick and wished I were nearer my other cousin who seemed vastly more entertaining, as Sylvia and Melissa had been fairly twittering their heads off.
“So how did you find London?” Sylvia asked me and Evelyn, seeing to her obvious chagrin that Melissa had gained all Roger’s attention.
“We just got out of the coach and here it was!” I said. Evelyn gave me a somewhat alarmed look but everybody else laughed. Sylvia seemed a little put out, but then joined in the laughter, again without mirth.
“I see you are a wit, Miss,” she said icily.
“My niece is a very clever girl,” said Aunt Madge. “They both are.”
“I believe a clever woman will discover it a very difficult thing to find a husband who is not a fool,” announced Sylvia, in a manner that ensured she received everyone’s – in especial, Roger’s – full attention. “For myself, I think it safer to conceal my intelligence.”
“And, my dear girl, that you do most admirably!” interjected Roger and everyone laughed but Sylvia gave me a look as would kill, seeing I laughed hardest of all. From that moment on, I believe, she had me in her sights.
“In this depraved age,” old Dr Rookham opined, “most think a wife learned enough if she can distinguish her husband’s bed from another’s.”
“Dr Rookham!” exclaimed Aunt Madge. “Well! This is not the woman’s age, is all I can say. Lewdness seems to be the business now. Love was the business in my time.”
“To love!” Roger cried, holding his glass aloft.
“To love!” We all pledged our support, none so enthusiastically as Sylvia and Melissa, both of whom seemed to look on Roger as a shining god.
“Still, some things are better these days. When I was a maid, young ladies would never have gone to the playhouse without an escort – or even to dinner at a strange house without a chaperone.”
“Those must have been terribly dull days,” said Melissa.
“Indeed, now they affect a masculinity most deplorable,” interjected Mr Fluke.“They swagger and swear, game and drink like roaring boys.”
“Come now, Mr Fluke,” soothed our aunt, “you do not mean to insult the ladies present. There are some freedoms that are welcome. Now you are all able to gad about almost with the confidence of widows.”
“I should love to be a widow!” exclaimed Evelyn so suddenly that the table fell silent. “I mean,” she qualified, “of all women’s states, that is the most enviable.”
Still no one said anything, nor knew what to say.
“Their actions are less subject to… opprobrium,” she explained.
I remember I wasn’t sure what opprobrium meant but knew I had to run to my sister’s assistance.
“I think Evelyn means,” I ventured to suggest, “that of all women, widows are most free.”
Still no one said anything.
“Free is perhaps the wrong word, my dear,” Aunt Madge said, frowning. “It suggests… inappropriate liberties… a lack of modesty.”
“Independent, then,” Evelyn hastily supplied. “As a daughter, a woman must do as her father sees fit; as a wife she must do as her husband wishes; only as a widow is she mistress of her own destiny.”
There was still an uncomfortable silence.
“Indeed, looked at in that light,” Roger sighed, looking extremely serious, “it seems a shame that in order to be a widow, one must first be a wife!” Only then did we realise he was jesting and everyone burst out laughing. “To widows!” he proposed, and we all drank to widows.
“Ods bodikins!” exclaimed Dr Rookham. “Our English women have the most liberty in the world! A countess may marry her footman; married ladies may ramble, game and be lewd; a more incontinent generation of women has never been known.”
“Indeed, our women are the happy women, sir,” said Roger, raising his glass again to the ladies, though I noticed Frederick refrained from following him. What a sobersides Frederick seemed to me! And to think I had… I blushed to think of the incident on the stairs.
9
Later, when we had risen from table and had fallen into groups in Aunt Madge’s withdrawing room, Melissa, who had been talking with my sister, moved to talk to me and I saw Evelyn raise her eyebrows at me as though in warning to watch what I said.
“Don’t you think Sylvia is a great beauty?” Melissa said.
“She is very pretty,” I replied, quickly adding, “but so are you,” which, I am sorry to say, was an untruth.
“Ah, but I lack Sylvia’s je ne sais quoi. She has a host of admirers, I assure you. But I believe your cousin has a special place in her heart.” And she looked at me most meaningfully. I knew not what to say.
“She seemed to have many admirers at the playhouse,” I said.
“Oh, you have been to the playhouse!” Melissa exclaimed, as though she had hitherto assumed I chewed cud in a field all day long. “Pray, what did you see?”
“Thomaso,” said I.
“And what do you think of the actresses? They are bold trollops, or I’m no judge.”
“I thought Mistress Gwyn very pretty,” I ventured, “and a very good actress.”
“All women are actresses, don’t you know! At least, all ladies of quality,” said Melissa. “Consider Sylvia.” We looked across at Sylvia and Roger – Sylvia was affecting to be insulted at something Roger had said, but snickered all the while behind her fan.
Then Sylvia came over and, deliberately cutting me, drew Melissa aside to speak with her. Frederick began talking to me but I was distracted by Sylvia who, seeming to feel a pimple on her chin, reached across to Melissa’s face, pulled the patch off her cheek, put it in her mouth and sucked it a moment to moisten it and then stuck it on her own chin. Unfortunately, Sylvia did not fail to notice the expression of disgust which my uncivilised face must have shown. Not for the first time, I cursed myself for my lack of refinement.
“Don’t mind Sylvia,” said Frederick. “She makes it her business to wound.”
“I don’t mind,” I said. Perhaps emboldened by one humiliation, I took my opportunity to deal with another. “And cousin,” I said, “I’m sorry about… on the stair… it was a foolish game I was playing – with your brother.”