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.