The Mulberry Empire. Philip Hensher

with the vast eyes as soon as the Duchesse could be safely handed over to the guest of honour. Lord Palmerston raised a questioning eyebrow. There were few moments when no one was trying to speak to him, and he cultivated the appearance of a melomane, in part, to allow himself a moment free from the rival demands of the town. The Duchesse was in full spate.

      ‘… most interesting – most interesting young man – remarkable book …’ she was saying, before spooling back wildly to the outset of her conversation. ‘You see, sir, it simply is no good to stay as we are, to be satisfied with our Indian possessions as they are.’

      ‘I promise you, Duchesse—’ Palmerston began.

      ‘What if other hands than ours were to be tempted – yes, tempted, I said, yes, I agree, very fine form, never purer in her top register – tempted by the idea of these virgin lands?’

      ‘India, madam?’ Lord Palmerston had no idea how he was allowing himself to be drawn into such a conversation.

      ‘No, sir, the kingdoms of Kabul and Bokhara and – and – if you look at Mr Burnes’s maps, it becomes perfectly apparent that there are others who have as clear an interest in it as we—’

      ‘That interest being none, I suppose, Duchesse, eh?’ the old Duc called from the back of the box.

      ‘No, monsieur, no, no – I mean Russia, Lord Palmerston.’

      ‘Russia, madam?’ Lord Palmerston said, hoping by a display of incredulity to bring an end to a conversation he was being subjected to at all hours of the day and night by the most improbable people. The Duchesse, however, was not so easily cowed.

      ‘And once Russia has established itself in Bokhara, moving on from its Crimean possessions—’

      ‘Madam, I hardly think—’

      ‘Crimean possessions – very true, very possible, not at all – imagine, sir, a Russian empire stretching to Kabul – do you suppose for one instant that they would be satisfied with that? No, sir, it would be onward to the kingdom of the Sikhs, and then, I assure you, our Indian possessions begin to look very vulnerable indeed. I doubt we could defend them against such an onslaught.’

      ‘I assure you, Mme la Duchesse,’ Lord Palmerston said, now entirely giving up on the opera, ‘that these are all most remote possibilities which I am confident the Governor General would meet appropriately. But, really, madam—’

      ‘Not remote – not possibilities – not for one moment remote,’ the Duchesse went on, her words spilling out of her snuff-coloured silk. She clutched at ribbons in her enthusiasm. ‘Have you read Mr Burnes’s travels, sir? The most efficacious manner, I assure you, of meeting the Russian threat – yes, threat, sir – is to move at this exact moment into Kabul, to Bokhara – these vast and peaceful countries, new markets, sir, and labouring under the yoke of an oppressive superstition – sir, do you not think it our plain duty as Christians and Europeans to bring enlightenment to these benighted people and save them – rescue them – from the – the threat of a fate worse, worse, I say,’ the Duchesse’s voice rising as she lost her own thread, ‘than their own?’

      Behind her, Chapman and the pink silk heiress were taking refuge behind her fan, which trembled alarmingly. Lord Palmerston gave up.

      ‘I think, Duchesse,’ he said wearily, ‘you make a point which I know many people will agree with.’

      There was something so final in his tone that even the Duchesse had to sit back in her chair, assuring herself that she, at least, had succeeded in bringing these very important matters to the attention of somebody who would attend to the situation. She turned her attention to the opera, but the act seemed to be over now. Malibran, in a most unbecoming braided blonde wig, was bowing beneath a vast weight of flowers, behaving, at least, as if she were receiving the acclaim of a grateful multitude. The Duchesse, triumphant, prepared to rise and retell her conversation a hundred times.

      6.

      In the Duchesse de Neaud, the infection represented by Burnes’s book had found a fertile carrier; truly a carrier, one might say, since she passed on the main features of the contagion without proving profoundly susceptible to the virus itself. Like those wealthy invalids who complain bitterly of an influenza while all the time suffering far less than those to whom they will pass on the illness, she made a great deal of noise for a season on the subject of the central Asian principalities, and, having stirred up a great deal of pained opposition and concern, was satisfied to forget the subject and never again mention Burnes, Kabul or Bokhara with her former fervent tones.

      The weather in London changed, quite abruptly. The streets dried into dust which settled like a veil over everything; fruit from the market seemed to have been stored for centuries in the dungeons of some belle au bois dormant, so thick did the dust of the streets disguise the bloom of the fruit. The Season began, all at once, to come to an end. There were a few landmarks by which the Season might be considered concluded, but it felt like a rapid collapse of business, and not a cleanly marked boundary. There was no doubt that after the Court had withdrawn, after the last Drawing-Room, after the old Duke’s Summer Ball, there was no Season but a hastily convened retreat, as every house from Park to Park resounded with the beating of carpets, the single occupation of dustsheeting furniture and the sealing-up of trunks, in so much grim-faced hurry that a stranger might have concluded that a marauding army was hammering at the gates of the city, and not merely the unimagined, unexperienced phenomenon of an August in London. But at a certain moment in the year, it was clear that the Season had lost what purpose it had. Perhaps – Bella thought – it ended as soon as an acquaintance remarked, however casually, that he was leaving town early this year. The next day, in fact. The thought presented itself with an attendant melancholy which was quite unfamiliar to her. Never before had the simple fact of having to leave London struck her as so sad a loss, so devastating a revelation of what she must always have known, that the round of parties and Park and dinner was, in truth, at best wearisome and at worst a stale and unprofitable waste of existence. It made no sense to her, to feel like this, and yet that was how she felt. She could only understand it by thinking that, after the last steamy night at the opera, after the last agonizing Drawing-Room, some wardrobe-faced courtier prodding you in the back and your ostrich feathers shedding by the minute, there would be no more Burnes. She understood that very well. He was this year’s novelty, and next year there would be another.

      The idea of a different state presented itself to her; the idea of an August where Bella and Burnes together could walk the empty London streets, their happiness observed only by costermongers.

      For Bella, now, in this year of Grace, the idea of her departure from London with so much unsaid – even granted that she did not know what she would say, even if she could say it – brought to mind images of collapse. Soft yielding sand, collapsing inwards in an hourglass; a bathful of water sliding unstoppably into the drains; Bella alone, in the drawing room at Hanover Square, hearing only the clink and knock of the opium tantalus in the sounding empty house, waiting for departure, and nothing else.

      In these last days, there was so much to be done, and the preparations for the months in Gloucestershire were as detailed and solid as for a siege. Gloucestershire was all very well, but there was much which could not be acquired there at any price. For the long siege of dullness, dictated by the fashion which would separate Bella so irresistibly from Burnes, food was needed. The current books, French novels for upstairs, English for the drawing room, old Italian poetry for the library; these things would represent a brave assault on the grim boredom of a Gloucestershire afternoon. New clothes, naturally; it was astonishing how much time could be stolen from the long day by bathing and dressing, but the trick only worked if there were new bonnets, new dresses to hand. Other than that, there remained the resort of driving about the countryside, calling on families; even a country curate’s wife, however crass or absurd, would serve to alleviate the ache of ennui as swiftly as her father’s unvarying solution. Other amusements were now closed to Bella. Fishing with worms, digging for treasure in the rose garden, dropping grandpapa’s folios from the battlements into the moat with a still memorable,