The Mulberry Empire. Philip Hensher

the mark. Bella advances, and submits to Lady Woodcourt’s grip, a fierce clutch like the clasp of a purse. She just drinks her in; her thin body, her brown wrinkled flesh drifting loosely within the hard carapace of her boned gown like a boat at its moorings. Bella has no idea, in reality, who Fanny Woodcourt is. But Bella, as her sister and governesses always privately remark, is quick on the uptake, and her eyes run quickly over the room, assessing each gift, each bibelot with the commercial eye of an auctioneer. Each object, indeed, has its magnificent provenance, since Lady Woodcourt buys nothing for herself, and takes only from the grandest of her admirers. Anything Bella’s father ever gave her is surely in Lady Woodcourt’s dressing room by now, if not passed on to the housekeeper. Bella drops her eyes in modesty, but if she will not meet Lady Woodcourt’s gaze, she is at least curious enough to inspect her voluble possessions. Whether each porcelain treasure, each glittering glass is the gift of his Grace, Excellency, Majesty hardly matters. Bella looks around, assessing, and sees what Fanny Woodcourt has been.

      ‘My daughter, Lady Woodcourt,’ Colonel Garraway says, with all his opium-glazed gravity. Lady Woodcourt nods, so calmly that Bella unkindly wonders whether she, too, has been drinking from the phial of the ruby witch. She has learnt how to be suspicious of anything as innocent as composure or boredom in anyone much over the age of forty-five. They all do it, she suspects; and none of them discusses it in her hearing, ever.

      ‘I’m afraid you will find us all,’ Lady Woodcourt says, ‘a very dull old company tonight. Do sit down. I am quite mortified, my dear, to inflict such a, such a bundle of dry old sticks on you. I positively fear you may never come again, and that, that, that—’

      ‘That would never do,’ Colonel Garraway supplies gallantly, handing his daughter to a settle, and sitting down after her. Lady Woodcourt laughs brilliantly, a sound as if her glassy old bones have tumbled loose, all at once, and chimed together into a heap, somewhere inside her skin.

      ‘I’m sure it will be delightful,’ Bella says, inadequately.

      ‘Such a lot of dry old sticks,’ Lady Woodcourt says, with a touch of steel, not liking to be contradicted even in this mock-apology. She seems to believe her own polite disclaimer for a second, believing what she says as she says it, as all liars must, and a cloud passes over her brow. ‘Still – that wonderful young man – the explorer, who, who, who—’

      ‘The hero of Bokhara,’ Colonel Garraway adds, smiling. ‘Yes, that very wonderful young man.’

      ‘Bokhara,’ Lady Woodcourt sighs, relieved. ‘Now that is a place, I swear, not one person in a thousand had heard a jot or, or, or tittle of one year ago. And now we talk of it as readily as we talk of, of—’

      ‘Dorsetshire,’ Colonel Garraway says.

      ‘Of Dorsetshire,’ Lady Woodcourt continues. ‘My young friends talk of nothing else. I think one or two, they fancy taking a house in the better quarter of Bokhara for the winter. Now what do you think of that?’

      ‘I’m sure I don’t know,’ Bella says, faintly alarmed as Lady Woodcourt spectacularly tinkles away.

      ‘All stuff and nonsense, of course, and I don’t believe any one of them could point to the wretched place on the map. Still, we talk of nothing else, I find, and all down to this singular, ah, fascinating, ah, ah, remarkable young man, all—’

      ‘Captain Burnes,’ Bella interjects.

      ‘Indeed. Thank you, my dear,’ Lady Woodcourt says, looking genuinely as if no one has ever done her a greater favour. ‘And now, who is this—’

      ‘M. le Duc de Neaud,’ the footman calls, or rather attempts, since what he announces is the Duck de Nod. ‘And,’ as a little woman in a snuff-coloured dress scurries in after her diminutive husband, ‘Mme la Duchesse.’

      Everyone rises with an audible relief.

      ‘Delighted – charmed – delighted – quite on time – feared to be early – my dear Fanny – my dear—’ the Duchesse de Neaud spills over. She is English, a chatterbox, resented by no one, welcome everywhere, if she does not come first or leave last. The Duc limits himself to a quick bow and a scowl. He came over after the Revolution and, penniless, married one of those spinsters who attended the old Queen Charlotte, to everyone’s surprise, including hers; her future had seemed to be mapped out in the series of faintly dictatorial books for children she wrote in dull afternoons at Windsor. She turns from Lady Woodcourt to Bella. ‘My dear – my dear—’

      Colonel Garraway snaps into awareness. ‘Duchesse,’ he says. ‘My daughter, Bella.’

      ‘Miss Garraway,’ the Duc says. ‘Charmé.’ But he is already turning, already charmed, it seems, with the next entrants, and Bella sees no reason not to sink back into her chair as the room starts to fill.

      5.

      ‘Charmed – delighted – couldn’t be more—’ the Duchesse says, sitting down by Bella. But she is talking, not to Bella but to a fast-approaching young man, pink in his half-worried, half-confident face. He bows rapidly, crumpling at the middle like a man who has been punched hard.

      ‘May I inquire,’ the young man says to the Duchesse. Bella stops paying any attention, and concentrates on her fan. The old people are coming in, showing no emotion, walking smoothly around each other, bowing automatically, like puppets on casters. The boy at the door is keeping up, but there is now quite a queue outside, waiting to hand their card and have him call their name. She is called back by her name.

      ‘I quite doted on Bella when she was too little to know who was kissing her goodnight,’ the Duchesse glitters, aiming her smile somewhere beyond the young man, bowing and smiling nervously. ‘Quite doted on her. I would hug her and affection her, and – such a pretty little thing, and now, quite such a beauty, now, don’t blush, my dear.’

      Bella bows, remembering very well what it was like to be clutched to the swarthy old Duchesse’s bosom, heavy and spiked with trinkets; it felt like falling through the window of a jeweller’s shop. The Duchesse bows back, and then the young man bows, and they are all precisely like an entire yard full of tired chickens. She was no Duchesse then, but only an old spinster. The young man presents a familiar face to Bella.

      ‘How do you do, Miss Garraway,’ the familiar face says.

      ‘How do you do,’ Bella says firmly back, smiling like the audience at a vaudeville.

      ‘Miss Gilbert,’ the yelping barker cries into the room, ‘and Miss Jane Gilbert.’

      She sees from the smiling guest’s proprietorial security, his relaxed saunter back into the chair, that this is the son of the house. She corrects herself, looking at Lady Woodcourt, who has no sons. She is no more fecund than a sideboard. This, surely, is the guest of honour. ‘How do you do, Mr Burnes. Do you find the climate here suits you? Or do you long for the East?’

      ‘Have you read Mr Burnes’s book, Miss Garraway?’ the Duchesse interposes. ‘I rave over it – the learning – the wit – the fierce fierce tribes of the exotic East. How brave – how heroic you have been, sir. Have you read his book?’

      ‘I have tried, sir, so many times, and each time the bookseller sends me back empty promises, leaving me abandoned. I am not entirely hopeless, but your bookseller is quite the jilt, Mr Burnes.’

      The Duchesse laughs brilliantly, flutingly; a youthful and yet historic noise, a descending scale directly from old Queen Charlotte’s nurseries. If the Duchesse laughs, there can be no impropriety whatever in this corner of the blue and gold drawing room. Two sisters approach, their faces long as doors: the Gilbert sisters. In mourning, as they so often are, they scrutinize Burnes efficiently. The elder is twenty-seven, and five years ago was sadly disappointed in love; the younger is no older than Bella, but already has her sister’s half-angry air, and will come to nothing in the end.

      ‘Quite the jilt,’ Bella says, as the sisters move on.

      ‘You