the marquis's memory 11

 

Chapter 11

 

The vicissitudes of the Reverend Coot were more than that wight could bear, and whilst the ladies were in Ipswich, shopping, he quietly packed, and took himself out of the vicinity.

News of this was brought to the Running Buck by Goody Suckling, wife of a yeoman farmer, who brought milk to the rectory and the inn, as well as to sundry other people who turned up their noses at goat milk.

“I’ll write to the Bishop of Norwich, whose see covers Ipswich and regions,” said Geoffrey, and proceeded to do so, castigating the vicar as unchristian and also a coward and a knave for running out on the parish under the least provocation, and no proper regard for God’s creatures.

“Not that thass much good goin’ tu church, there be-ant much singin’ out,” said Pigeon. “Ar, and the hymns he chooses be fancy ones wass we do-ant know.”

“I’ll take the service on Sunday,” said Geoffrey. “I do have minor orders, for having a classics degree. Do we have an organ?”

“Ar, and thass played by Miss Gooding, the doctor’s sister,” said Pigeon.

“I’ll stroll down to see her, then,” said Geoffrey.  “First house over into Much Hadding, yes?”

“Or in other words, a hundred yards down the Much Hadding road,” said Pigeon.

Geoffrey strolled down to the doctor’s house, a brick edifice of Tudor origin, with stone edged windows, tall oriel windows on the ground floor, low, square on the upper floor and probably set low to accommodate the pitch of the roof taking up part of the first storey. Built in an ‘L’ shape, Geoffrey estimated it to have four or five rooms on each floor, and more than adequate for the siblings.  There had once been a Mrs. Gooding, it seemed, who slipped quietly out of life with her first child one chilly November morning, and Miss Gooding had come to care for her bereaved brother, whose hopes of a house filled with children had been dashed.

Geoffrey rang the bell.

Dr. Gooding  came out behind the maid who answered.

“Hah, so you do need me,” he said.

“I came to call on your sister, as it happens,” said Geoffrey, mildly.

“Well, you can take yourself off; I want no ne’er do well rakehell talking to my sister.”

“Those are fighting words; I have never, in all my adulthood, been called a rakehell, except implicit from that damned vicar, who decided that my efforts to avoid killing Sarey the sow and thus breaking my arm and my head was evidence of moral instability. I don’t see it, myself; perhaps you can explain?”

Gooding blinked.

“I… well, I thought Coot knew what he was talking about. He said you were here to debauch the village maidens.”

“And that, he made up out of whole cloth. Oh! Is that why they follow me about, giggling? Hoping I’ll debauch them? I’m not interested; I have a courtship to pursue, why bother with village wenches?”

“Well! You ain’t surely courting m’sister? You can never have met her.”

“I want to talk to the organist of the church,” snapped Geoffrey. “Coot’s done a runner, as doubtless Goody Suckling has told you. I hold minor orders and I wanted to discuss an emergency church service with her.”

“For goodness sake, Henry, let the poor man in; I’m not about to be ravished in my own home, even if the young man was a rakehell. You know what an idiot Coot is,” said Miss Gooding, joining the fray, arms akimbo.

Geoffrey raised his hat to her.

“Miss Gooding,” he said.  “Allow me to introduce myself; Geoffrey Calver, Marquis Calver, visiting the vicinity to put in order my distant connection’s profligacy towards his offspring. I can understand that Philip-Paul Seward is not a glowing example of my familial connections, but I assure you he is several times removed, if not as far removed as I would like, which would be several circles of hell downwards.”

  “You never said a truer word, my lord,” said Selina Gooding, crisply. “Thomas is an academic, and very learned with regards to diseases. He’s a firm believer in Leuwenhoek’s animalcule theory.”

“Really?” said Geoffrey, interested. “My respect for you increases, in that case, doctor. I can see why you find the setting of bones a relative tedium. Why don’t you take on a partner who is more inclined to the mechanical work, but who would respect your desires to wash thoroughly to get rid of animacules?”

“Because nobody who can pay my bill will have me out, and I can’t afford one,” brayed Gooding.

“Well, now, if that’s the case, I am happy to finance a doctor ready to do the rough and ready work, if you will research and treat disease,” said Geoffrey. “Not to mention a good program of inoculation.”

“That, I do do,” said Gooding.

“Excellent; and you will stay to luncheon, my lord?” said Miss Gooding. “Annie has been making raised pies with my own receipt, a layer of pork, a layer of apple, a layer of rabbit – or chicken, but rabbit is what we have, with Johnny Barnard paying to have his septic hand treated with a rabbit – and a layer of sage and onion stuffing.”

“It sounds delicious,” said Geoffrey. “Now, about your organ-playing.”

“Yes, I have to go slow with the new ones the Reverend Coot likes, not knowing them,” said Miss Gooding, “It doesn’t make for a good sing-song.”

“No, and that’s why, on Sunday, you’re going to play them in with something rousing, and we shall have ‘All Creatures that on Earth Do Dwell’ to open, which may disrespect Coot’s ignominious flight from the creature known, I believe, as Marigold; but it should please the congregation.  ‘Oh for a Thousand tongues to sing,’ the tune Lyngham; not too new for you?”

“I know Lyngham,” said Miss Gooding. “I like to take it fast.”

“Splendid,” said Geoffrey. “I hate a service where the organist is dragging us into a dirge.  Anything you like?”

“‘The Lord’s My Shepherd;’ ‘Belmont’ is a lovely old tune.”

“Good, that should do it,” said Geoffrey.  “And I can tie all those together.”

“Good luck,” said Miss Gooding. “I’ll play them in with ‘In Peace your sheep may graze.’”

“Perfect,” said Geoffrey. “What about ‘Zadoc the Priest’ for playing out?”

“Can’t do that,” said Miss Gooding. “Not with Dame Spalding’s paramour being named ‘Zadoc.’”

“Some parents have rats in their attics,” said Geoffrey. “That’s a solecism I now know not to commit.  How about a bit of Vivaldi?”

“Summer? Yes, I know that,” said Miss Gooding.

“Oh! Do you give lessons on fortepiano and organ if good enough?” asked Geoffrey.

“I… well, I could,” said Miss Gooding, absently rehearsing some very difficult fingering of a piece written for violin.

“My ward, the oldest child of Seward, is being taught how to be a lady by Miss Congreve; I would like her to have a passing acquaintance at least with the fortepiano, and if either of the other Misses Congreve want lessons, I am happy to extend the offer.”

“Miss Effie Congreve plays the fortepiano with sufficient ability to take my place if I am indisposed, so long as she knows the tune; I think Miss Alethea has covered the basics, but I will be happy to do what I can,” said Miss Gooding. 

“Excellent!” said Geoffrey. “And once we have a basic sort of doctor to patch up the ordinary tumbles of life, we shall be doing very well, and hopefully a real vicar by next week too.”

 

 

oOoOo

 

The ladies arrived home on Saturday, in a flurry of fine muslins, having opted to have some readymade gowns furbished to their tastes and fitted to their forms to more readily have enough. There would be more gowns to get for winter, and then for the next year’s season, and those would be purchased in London. Simon escorted them to the cottage which had grown somewhat in the meantime, and the Murfitts installed at the far end, and ready to take over, absorbing Patty into the servants’ quarters along with Betty.

“It seems to have moved very smoothly,” said Effie, quite shaken at being installed tenderly in a chair, with tea provided, and informed that dinner would be half an hour, if that suited her, in the dining room , and  the young misses time to lie down for ten minutes if they wanted before dressing for dinner.

“Why do we have to change clothes several times a day?” asked Pip.

“To give the ladies who don’t have to actually keep house something to do,” said Alethea.

“Alethea!” said Effie. “Although, perhaps at that, it’s not that far off the truth.”

“It’s about who can afford the time, as well as the clothes, to be leisured,” said Alethea. “And I am very grateful to Pip – yes, I know, so you need not worry – for giving us the opportunity to be more leisured, so I won’t complain too much about changing gowns several times a day. Though at home, perhaps we could limit it to changing for dinner?”

“That seems fair enough,” said Effie.

 

oOoOo

 

The ladies went to church as a matter of habit – at least, on the part of the Misses Congreve – and in some trepidation on the part of Pip, who hoped that the vicar would not recognise her and berate her for whatever real or imagined crimes he might come up with.

The music was nice, not the usual dirge, and Pip found herself humming along to it.

Her shock can only be imagined when Geoffrey ascended to the pulpit.

“Good folk of the Haddingtons,” said Geoffrey, “I do have minor orders, but I hope my tenure here is very short, as I have written to the bishop, and signed it with all my names, to terrorise, blackmail, and otherwise coerce him into letting us have a vicar soonest. In the meantime, as little more than a lay preacher, I ask your forgiveness for any shortcomings.  And in light of the role played in my being here, on the part of Sarey the sow: and the vicar having left, on the part of Marigold, the goat…”

“And Sweet-Pea, Rose-Bud, and Lupin, her kids!” called out Widow Spalding.

“And indeed, Sweet-Pea, Rose-Bud, and Lupin, on whom I hope the Good Lord smiles, let us open with ‘All Creatures that on Earth Do Dwell,’” said Geoffrey, without a crack to his voice.

Miss Gooding took the adaptation of the 100^th psalm at a cracking pace, and the congregation found themselves singing to the Lord with cheerful voice.

“Ar, thass a proper hymn,” approved Gaffer Keeble.

“I have taken for the text today one from ‘Genesis,’” said Geoffrey. “About how Noah gathered two of every kind of animal to go into the ark.  I suspect that in the case of some there were a great many more when they left, but as the image of Noah looking for his Sunday best robe, and discovering stray bunnies humping in his clothes chest is not one I want to dwell upon, let us move swiftly on.” He read the tale, and moved on quickly. “Now we shall sing ‘Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing,’ and reflect that the animals also praise the Lord in their way. I rested on the foreshore last week, and listened to the larks pour forth a praise more worthy of the ears of the Lord than anything we humans can produce, for we overthink things.  So, let us join the lark in praise, and sing!”

After another good sing-song, Geoffrey regarded the congregation.

“I’ll make this brief,” he said. “Some of you know who I am, and that I briefly lost my memory, but apart from the former vicar, I was a stranger amongst you, yet you took me in and treated me as one of your own. I salute a good, Christian community, despite the supposed shepherd for your flock, and I will not forget this. I have been making this service very much about the animals, because they are God’s creatures, too, and who knows but that there was not a reason that Marigold and her kids were the last straw for Coot, to try to teach him to be a better man. I hope he will learn. I am no paragon, but I am not as black a sinner as he tried to make out, but I’m like all of you – I do my best to do what is right. Can any of us do more? Now, I don’t know how long it will take to get a new vicar, but I propose that each of you submits your favourite hymns to Miss Gooding, and she will choose three every Sunday, and the gentry will take turns to pick a reading. I hope there are no weddings booked; and nobody had better die because I don’t know how to run a funeral service.”

There was laughter.

“What about being born?” asked Gaffer Keeble.

“What, Gaffer, are you with child?” asked Geoffrey. There was more laughter. Geoffrey went on, “At the moment, we have no shepherd but the Good Shepherd himself, so, let us sing ‘The Lord’s my Shepherd’ and sing it like we mean it.”

The congregation went out, talking amongst themselves and plainly buoyed up by the marquis taking enough interest to do his best in the place of their missing vicar.

Effie stopped to speak to Geoffrey as they filed out.

“That was a pretty good extempore service,” she said. “But I’m not putting Sarey in the pulpit next week, however much she may be one of God’s creatures.”

“No, the church would never accept a female pastor,” said Geoffrey. “Perhaps we should ask Ragged Robin.”

“That goat is a sinner,” said Effie, firmly. “A drunkard, and a troublemaker. Where has the Reverend Coot gone?”

“I have no idea, and I can’t say I care,” said Geoffrey.  “When told you were dressing an orphan in Ipswich, who was to be my ward, Murfitt informs me that he declared that you had sold your soul to the devil, and forsaken Godliness for a mess of pottage in the form of ribbons and furbelows.”

“Dear me, I knew he was a fool, but not how much of one he was,” said Effie.

the marquis's memory 10

 

Chapter 10

 

From Pip’s point of view, everything happened very fast after this.  A slender lugger sailed up to the jetty, bearing Simon Endicott. She embarked, supposedly under his care, and changed without aid into the round gown left by Effie, which felt awkward and uncomfortable.  But things had changed; she was a woman, and she had to acknowledge it.

It meant that Geoffrey would touch her and make love to her, and that made Pip feel very good.

She was nervous about meeting Effie as Philippa, and especially Alethea; Effie knew, and understood, but Pip had no idea how to react to girls her own age.

Fortunately, Simon Endicott effected an introduction.

“M… Miss Congreve, and, er, Miss Congreve, may I introduce Miss Philippa Seward, and… and I am to be your escort in Ipswich, to give you more consequence.”

“I’m sure we will be very grateful, Mr. Endicott,” said Effie, blushing slightly. “I did bring both maids, my own maid, Patty, and young Betty, who is to be Miss Seward’s maid,” she indicated Betty.

“Oh! It will be nice to have some help, I never had decent clothes before,” said Pip. “Indeed, I only have this one roundgown, which I believe is borrowed from the younger Miss Congreve; and I am much relieved not to look a quiz, especially next to such respectable ladies. I hope you will help me if I make any solecism.”

“Oh! I am sure we will be friends,” said Alethea, impulsively, happier in feeling slightly superior.  “It suits you very well, and I am taller than you and had grown out of it, and there are only so many ways a gown can be lengthened when it has been much let down.  Effie always puts generous hems on my gowns, you know, as I grow like a weed. Please call me Alethea.”

“And you must call me ‘Philippa,’” said Pip, knowing that she must become accustomed to it.

“And try not to mention letting things down,” sighed Effie. “We are likely to be looked at askance as it is, in home-made clothes when we buy new wardrobes, and of course the reason Mr. Endicott is here is as a buffer to those who will assume that one or all of us are being bought clothing by a wealthy man for less than honourable reasons.”

“They had better not,” said Simon. “Miss Congreve! Perhaps you should tell them that you are a connection of Geoffrey’s?”

“Why, Mr. Endicott!” said Pip, “It would seem so much more natural if his lordship had entrusted the care of his ward to your betrothed wife and her niece, would it not?”

Simon spluttered.

“Are you trying to manipulate me, brat?” he said, falling back on Geoffrey’s habit of so naming Pip, knowing, of course, who she was.

“Mr. Endicott!” said Effie, shocked. “The child may not have the advantage of the background she should have had, but you should not call her ‘brat,’ it is unseemly!”

“Er, yes, sorry, Miss Seward,” said Simon.

“I noticed that you were spoony on Miss Congreve so it didn’t seem too excessive a fiction,” said Pip.

“Nonsense!” said Effie, colouring. “Why, he scarcely knows me!”

“Miss Congreve! I do not want to do anything underhand, but I admire you sincerely,” said Simon.

Pip grabbed Alethea’s hand and dragged her up on deck.

“What are you doing?” demanded Alethea.

“He spoke very warmly of your aunt when he collected me, and I thought maybe he could do with a little help,” said Pip.

Alethea made a face.

“I was hoping the marquis would fall in love with her; well, I mean, I was hoping it when he was the mystery man. I don’t know that I’d like to be around his mother, though.  I heard all about her from Betty.”

“Well, we can find out about the lifestyle when he gives us a season,” said Pip. “But it would be nice to make a kind person like your aunt happy, and I think Mr. Endicott is a kind man.”

“He called you a ‘brat,’ though, he plainly despises your birth.”

“It’s nothing to do with my birth, it’s because I tested him by playing jokes on him, and he said I was as big a brat as one might find at any school, and it stuck,” extemporised Pip, hastily. “It was not said with derision.”

 

Effie found herself blushing.

“I have rather given up the hope of romance, in raising my niece,” she said.

“What a shame, in such a fine woman as yourself,” said Simon. “I… I should like to get to know you well enough to court you, but I do not intend to get carried away; Geoffrey considers me clear-headed enough to stop him from doing anything crazy.”

“I like clear-headed,” said Effie. “Alethea was hoping that our mystery man, who turns out to be the marquis, would take a liking to me, but I think he is too heedless for me.”

“He’s not really heedless, but his mother knows how to hurt him,” said Simon. “No, wait, I don’t need to talk Geoffrey up; especially as most women throw themselves at him and I am unnoticed in the background.”

“And, I fancy, a very efficient helpmate to him.”

“I do my best,” said Simon.  “And I have documented his mother’s behaviour in the two years since his father died. I don’t put it past her to have poisoned him, but I can’t prove it.  Geoffrey… well, he has his problems, and she constitutes most of them.”

“Yes, I can quite understand why,” said Effie. “But I suspect that, whilst he may have been looking for a woman who could replace his mother with someone of greater sense, and yet still be motherly, it will do him more good to have someone who will not desert him and yet needs a measure of protection.”

“Well, who knows,” said Simon. “If his mother is confined, it will give him a better chance to be himself. You can watch, from the sidelines, how next season goes, when bringing Miss Alethea and Pip out.”

 “He seems protective of Pip.”

“And Pip has been looking after him; lud, I’ll have trouble with pronouns for a while.”

“It will be easier with her dressed as a girl.”

“Indeed, yes.”

 

oOoOo

 

Both Poppy and Marigold belonged to Widow Spalding, a shabby-genteel widow of uncertain years, an undisclosed income, and the owner of a smallholding where she lived in sin quite openly with her man of all work, Zadoc Squirrel, on the other side of the hill to the road down to the shore, and technically in Haddisham St. Martin. Missing Marigold, she discovered her errant goat in the vicarage, and divested her of her unwonted clothing in time for Marigold, who was in an interesting condition, to produce three kids in the vicar’s surplice, and Widow Spalding used it to rub down the two doelings and the buckling.   By the time the reverend had come to and come down stairs to discover the mess in his previously clean surplice, the widow and her lover had returned Marigold and her progeny, newly named Sweet-Pea, Rosebud, and Lupin to her smallholding, where the widow explained to Zadoc that her new buckling, who was pugnacious, was so-named, because he was a wolf in goat’s clothing, as Widow Spalding had an acquaintance with Latin.

Poppy had not yet bred this year, but Widow Spalding was happy with Marigold’s efforts. Poppy was a wayward creature, and not much of a mother when she did breed. She did not, at least, go to demand a pint of ale as the patriarch of the flock was wont to do, which was where Geoffrey first encountered Ragged Robin, the buck.

Robin was quite amenable, once he had had a bowl of his favourite brown ale, and meandered back to his barn in a tipsy sort of way, pausing only to challenge the pump on the village green when it loomed aggressively at him, and to tip Dr. Gooding into the village pond. This was amusing – from Robin’s point of view – in two respects; first, he had been able to upend Dr. Gooding, whom he disliked, and second, having startled the ducks, it gave him something to chase.  Robin was a belligerent drunk.

Geoffrey observed all this from his bedroom window, and laughed uproariously.

He met the doctor when he went down for dinner, and discovered that Gooding had come into the inn to have his clothes ironed dry, whilst he sat, disgruntled, in Pigeon’s best suit, which met where it touched.

“You’ll be the young fellow with memory loss, a concussion, and a broken arm,” said Gooding.

“That’s right,” said Geoffrey.

“How come you didn’t consult me?” demanded Gooding.

“I’d heard of you,” said Geoffrey.

“Now, then! I don’t know you, how could you know me?” demanded Gooding, irritably. “Especially if you had lost your memory!”

“I listened to gossip,” said Geoffrey. “Well, what would you have done first, to aid me?”

“I’d have bled you, of course,” said Gooding.

“Point made,” said Geoffrey.  “As I was checked for broken bones first, my arm tied up, and my head treated to vinegar and brown paper until I smelled like a whelk stall, and nobody bled me at all, I was the gainer.”

“Well, if you had a fever, it was your own fault for not being bled.”

“I had no fever at all, thank you,” said Geoffrey.  “I trusted to Jinny Pigeon being used to patching up pugilists.”

“That’s all very well for such rough types, but for an obvious gentleman, whether you know who you are or not….”

“Oh, my memory returned, and I prefer the rough and ready treatment to being bled,” said Geoffrey. “Nothing personal.”

“Well!  It’s your choice,” said Gooding.

“Yes, I believe it is,” said Geoffrey, with a smile.

 

 

oOoOo

 

Once in Ipswich, Simon ordered a cab to take the ladies to the Golden Lion Inn, on the Corn Hill, approached from behind next to the Corn Exchange, and fronting onto the great market square with its rotunda around the market cross, the Moot Hall dominating the square, and the sad remains of St. Mildred’s church across from it. The inn had a large model of a lion on a bracket outside it, the gilding on it shining in the afternoon sunlight. Mr. Thomas Skitter, the proprietor, saw them tenderly to quiet rooms at the side, away from the busy coach yard, and also distanced from the commercial noise of the market square. Alethea and Pip were to share a room, with a big, down-mattressed bed, and Effie had a room adjacent to theirs.

“It’s a real adventure; I’ve never been anywhere else in my life,” said Alethea. “You come from Ipswich, don’t you? You could show us around.”

“I don’t, actually,” said Pip.  “Oh! You were thinking that because Mr. Endicott brought the boat from Ipswich with me in it, I had come from here; well, he picked me up on his way back to Cross Haddington, from the coast, because he had word of me from someone.  It was in good time, too, because I don’t have any relatives any more.”

“Goodness! How lucky for you that the marquis hurt himself outside our house,” said Alethea.  “Well, I would not wish hurt on anyone, but you know what I mean.”

“Oh! Yes,” agreed Pip. “Look here, Alethea, I don’t want to start a friendship with a lie, and it sort of is, which your aunt thought would be for the good, because she says you blurt things out.”

“I do not, if told in confidence!” said Alethea, indignantly. “I blurt things out if I don’t know they are important, and then people sigh at me.”

“Oh! Well, in that case, it’s an important secret because some people are downright nasty and would say awful things,” said Pip. “You see, my mother tried to protect me by dressing me as a boy, and making me think I was a boy.  And I only found out recently that I was a girl, because I was valeting and nursing his lordship in the inn, because I’m Pip, and… and being a girl is a big shock, and finding out that men and women are very different privily.”

“Oh, my!” said Alethea. “Oh, Philippa! How awful for you to find out that you’d been living a lie all your life, even if to protect you! You must have felt so scared when the marquis found out – I assume he did find out?”

“Yes, and he is very kind, and trying to protect my good name,” said Pip.

“Well, I think we should both try to forget that you have been Pip, and remember that you are Philippa, and move forward,” said Alethea. “And now I know, I can stop you doing anything which Pip might do but Philippa might not.”

“That will help no end,” said Pip, embracing Alethea. “I don’t want to let anyone down.”

 

According to the Ipswich Journal, the best places for obtaining gowns and fabric was in Brook Street, a short walk down High Street from the Golden Lion, and thence the ladies repaired, looking at the establishments of Mrs. Markin, and Mrs. Press, and learning that whilst straw hats and cottage bonnets were still in favour, ribbon caps were also favoured, and the newest of morning dresses was the York wrapper, made of jaconet muslin, and buttoning down the back, with the front a profusion of lace or embroidery, high to the neck and with diamonds set in to the front showing alternate lace or embroidered work.

“And let me introduce you ladies to the robe a la flore,” fluttered Mrs. Press, delighted to have the dressing of three ladies. “So tasteful and elegant, in white crepe, second only to muslin, but not as thin, for cooler days and dressier for full dress. It’s shorter in the waist than other gowns of the month and a convenient walking length, as full dress is losing its trains.”

“Thank goodness for that,” said Pip, who had been dreading having to learn to dance without tripping over a train.

The ladies left orders to be made up, and spent an hour or two looking at stockings, gloves, fans, slippers, and shawls. Their purchases were to be delivered to the lugger, save for a few which would mean that Pip had luggage of her own.

And if Pip secretly wished that the luggage of her own was her male garb, she kept it to herself.

It was a wildly exhausting couple of days, and if Pip found it all a little bewildering, she was also secretly hoping that Geoffrey would find her attractive when dressed as a woman, and suffered her hair to be cut and styled, rather than merely combed out, as she was accustomed to do, and tie her locks in a queue.  As her hair curled naturally, it suited the current look for artless ringlets, and when Pip looked into the mirror, after the hair dresser had finished, she gasped.

“Is that truly me?” she asked.

“Indeed, it is,” said Effie.

“I do scrub up quite nicely,” said Pip, in satisfaction.

“You are a vision of loveliness,” said Effie. “As is Alethea, and you both look sufficiently different that you are foils for each other.”

“We’ll knock them for six in Haddington,” said Pip, happily.

Effie sighed.

“You will turn heads,” she said. “Not knock them for six. Sporting terms are not suitable for ladies.”

Pip was too excited to sigh.