The Mulberry Empire. Philip Hensher

her these previously delightful entertainments. So it was that, to beguile the long August days, purchases had to be made, and Bella and Elizabeth found their last weeks in Hanover Square taken up with visits to the drapers, to the booksellers, in search of some prospective amusement.

      7.

      The bookseller’s shop was full, and Bella and Elizabeth had to pick their way through a forest of acquaintances, all despatched on the same desperate errand, to fetch the season’s novelties to while away the long country summer. In a street off Piccadilly, the brown little shop was enduring its busiest week of the year, and the gentleman proprietor was wringing his hands as he tried to satisfy each lady with an interesting novelty; and Bella could see, as she quietly picked over the loose-bound piles, that the task of reconciling an individual recommendation with the sort of book which, fashion dictated, all London would be raving over by November, would indeed drive anyone to wring his hands in despair. Just now, Mr Sandoe was attempting to pacify a substantial marchioness, whose bulk and wide-mouthed face made her, without reason, appear actually to be hungry for a few volumes. Bella, waiting patiently for his attention, picked up an unbound volume; a limp volume of poems about rivers, lakes, mountains, trees – she turned the pages, but no human being was there, only the poet and his trembling emotions laid out for the admiring reader like the last stages of a dissection. There was enough of that, Bella felt, in the country already, and she wanted no slim volume of tremulous awareness, silently deploring her own infallible sense of desolation when she looked at an unpeopled mountain. Bella, who always thought that the one thing the view of an empty meadow wanted to complete it was a picnic of fifteen or twenty well-dressed gentlefolk artistically arranged, set down the exquisitely self-satisfied volume with an uncharacteristic burst of dislike.

      ‘Miss Garraway,’ a voice broke in. ‘And Miss Elizabeth Garraway – charmed, how pleasant to meet old friends when out on an errand – so tiring, so enervating, so refreshing to meet, merely, with two such—’

      ‘How do you do, ma’am,’ Bella said, bobbing to the Duchesse de Neaud, who was accompanied by one of the sour-faced Gilbert girls. ‘You are, I perceive, on the same errand as we are—’ then, recollecting herself, ‘—though you, ma’am, will have the benefit of a great library to while away your days.’

      The Duchesse, indeed, was going to Windsor with the Court, as she acknowledged with a profound and unspeaking nod of the head. She was a great favourite of the King, who had known her in his sisters’ nurseries for half a century, and was an intimate, she felt able to imply in conversation, of the Queen.

      ‘I long for the day – quite long, my dear – when I am able to spend a moment in a chair with a book at Windsor – quite impossible. HM, you know …’ (this in a confidential whisper) ‘… remarkable little body, great energy, of course – entirely unable to set down, to lose oneself – quite exhausting, although—’ the Duchesse seemed suddenly terrified, as if another pair of listening ears might retell this comparative lack of enthusiasm and cast the Duchesse from her blissful social position into the outer darkness, ‘—nothing but pleasure in the duty, you know, nothing but, so simple, so easy, so pleased with every small service. And Windsor, you know, where every prospect pleases …’

      The Duchesse looked around her a trifle wildly, perhaps recalling, far too late, how the second half of the line went. The Gilbert girl took the opportunity to force a simper and bob at Bella and Elizabeth.

      ‘When do you leave town, ma’am?’ Bella asked.

      ‘Yes, indeed – Tuesday next, I believe – thank you Miss Garraway – or so I believe, quite, entirely, happily dependent on the wishes of others—’

      ‘I hope M. le Duc is well?’ Elizabeth asked.

      ‘Thank you, yes, quite well, quite mad with uncertainty, constantly requiring his trunks to be unpacked for some favourite jewel, naturally, though happy, as I say, to be – I expect, Miss Garraway, you have read this – most entertaining, most instructive—’

      This, naturally, was Burnes’s book, which the Duchesse seized with both hands from a pile on the bookseller’s table. Bella had the presence of mind not to blush, and, though Miss Gilbert was smirking to a painful extent, she could assure herself that the Duchesse probably meant nothing by it. Elizabeth had wandered off, thankfully, affecting to be engaged by some other book.

      ‘Indeed, ma’am,’ Bella said collectedly. ‘Mr Burnes and I, you know, are quite friends.’

      That did the trick, and Miss Gilbert went off to squeeze Elizabeth for gossip.

      ‘Most timely, his book, I must say,’ the Duchesse went on, apparently not much caring whether Bella was friends with Burnes or not. ‘Lord Palmerston – at the opera, you know – only last Wednesday – no, Thursday – most concerned, most intrigued. You see my dear, as Burnes says very truly, nature abhors a vacuum – abhors – and where we refuse to step in, others may. You mark my words—’ and a black, glittering and sombre eye now engaged Bella’s own, ‘—others may. Thank heaven for Burnes – excellent, splendid, most timely warning, Palmerston was saying so to me—’ again that tactful drop in volume, to impress Bella that it was only the significance of what the Duchesse was saying that led her to invoke Lord Palmerston, and not a desire to display her glittering connections to a crowded bookseller’s shop, ‘—he and I were talking about it – Malibran, in The Sleepwalkerine, most enchanting, ringing top notes, last Thursday – no, Wednesday – and we agreed, he and I—’ now speaking again at normal levels, ‘—that we must go to the rescue of these poor people. Helpless, quite helpless, in need, if anyone is, of our assistance – and, as I was saying—’ sotto voce, ‘—to him: if we do not, others may. The Russian Bear, my dear, the ravening hungry Russian Bear. Thank heaven for Burnes.’

      The Duchesse, now finished, fixed Bella again with her gaze, and then, astonishingly, gave a great ursine growl. Bella jumped back, having no response whatever to make to this; she could hardly growl back, as if she were in the nursery with this small brown wrinkled duchess – a mental picture of the Duchesse in her infant frocks, clutching a rusk, shrunken but entirely the same, and growling, shot across Bella’s mind. Nor, in all conscience, could she respond in any way to what the Duchesse had said; she understood nothing of what she was referring to.

      Elizabeth returned, and Bella felt able to escape. As they left, the Duchesse, still deep in her own thoughts, cried, ‘A word to the wise, my dear—’ and then, as Bella nodded her goodbyes, she made her astonishing bear’s growl once more. The surprising fact was that no one else in the bookseller’s shop – not even Elizabeth – seemed remotely troubled or interested by the remarkable performance. Bella stepped into the pillbox carriage waiting for them with a persistent and worrying sense that it was she, and not the extravagant old woman, who had made a spectacle of herself.

      8.

      She felt able to plead fatigue, and John took them back to Hanover Square, their errands almost complete. Elizabeth, inexhaustible, let Bella off at Hanover Square before asking John to take her on, wanting to make her farewells to a friend in Green Street.

      It was three in the afternoon, and Burnes had been waiting, ‘no more than five minutes, I assure you’.

      ‘How did you know I – we should return soon?’

      Burnes smiled. ‘I did not. I had set a limit on my patient waiting.’

      ‘And how long was that, Burnes?’ Bella said, long ago having passed to this intimate, military form of address. She began to unpick her bonnet as they sat down. ‘I would like to know what value you place on my company, and the length of time you would wait for my return seems as accurate a measure as any. For some truly important person – let us say for the Governor General, the King, or my sister’s friend Goethe—’

      ‘I believe Herr Goethe is dead, Bella.’

      ‘No matter – for these, let us say they would merit a whole afternoon’s