Another Heartbeat in the House by Kate Beaufoy Page A

I realized; the affluence on display downstairs did not extend beyond the first-floor landing. Here, hidden away behind closed doors, were the accumulated relics of Mrs O’Dowd’s ancestral home. The folderols and fine clothes were for show in her reception rooms, while her private apartments were the repository of all that was ugly and antiquated. It was my guess that Mrs O’Dowd could not afford to finish decorating her house.
    The dinner bell rang. I descended to find the mistress below, poking about in her work basket. ‘Those wretched kittens have tangled my embroidery silks,’ she said. ‘You might help me wind them after dinner.’
    â€˜With pleasure. Are the children to join us later?’
    â€˜No. They are above in the nursery. We shan’t see them again today.’ I sighed and made a passably regretful moue at the prospect. ‘My husband and my father will be dining with us. Grady – some champagne cup for Miss Drury.’
    The butler, standing by a sideboard, obliged.
    â€˜Champagne cup? Is this a festive occasion?’
    She pretended not to hear. ‘Tell me more of London, my dear Miss Drury! Have you been to the Beulah Spa? I have heard that the fireworks there are more spectacular than were ever seen at Vauxhall.’
    â€˜Oh, they are delightful, Mrs O’Dowd, but Vauxhall boasts by far the finer refreshments.’
    I spoke warmly and knowledgeably of the pleasure gardens and the entertainments on offer (I had held the paintbox for my father while he executed
aquarelles
of Beulah Spa, and the tightrope walker who performed at Vauxhall had been a friend of my mother), and Mrs O’Dowd drank a quantity of champagne cup – Grady refilling her glass discreetly on a signal from her pinky finger – until we were joined half an hour later by Mrs O’Dowd’s decrepit, taciturn, grey-faced father and her husband.
    I am disinclined to furnish you, the reader, with even a thumbnail description of that man. But if Wordsworth claims that powerful feelings are best recollected in tranquillity, then I must try.
    Mr O’Dowd was a man of some thirty-five years; perhaps younger – it was hard to tell. He had been handsome once, I dare say, but now was grown to fat. He had a dissipated expression about the eyes, and a brutal set to his mouth. His forehead was low, made lower by a horizontal sweep of black hair; his nose might have been patrician had it not been realigned by some blow to the face, and his jaw and chin sagged beneath an excess of flesh. He wore a green-striped waistcoat which strained against gilt buttons, and a coat of plum-coloured drap-de-Berry.
    At regular intervals he withdrew from his pocket an embossed gold watch-and-chain, from which hung many decorative fobs and seals. This he consulted with much frowning and squinting, as though it were advising him of matters of great import.
    We dined, the four of us, on vermicelli soup, roast loin of veal and cabinet pudding. After some preliminary
politesse
for my benefit, Mr O’Dowd discoursed to his father-in-law on the steeplechase and the local stag hunt, then of a disputed case of trespass in petty sessions which led on to a far graver case of criminal conversation in the High Court, which in turn branched out into a heated monologue about political iniquity and the state of the nation in general. During this one-sided debate the hock goblets were taken away and replaced with burgundy glasses, and the burgundy was succeeded by a decanter of port. Mrs O’Dowd treated herself to a ‘thimbleful’ of cherry brandy to wash down the last crumb of cabinet pudding, then took curaçao with her coffee in the drawing room when we left the gentlemen to their cigars.
    As I passed Mr O’Dowd’s carver he caught hold of the end of my sash.
    â€˜Is not that Maud’s gown?’ he asked, in a low voice.
    â€˜Mrs O’Dowd was kind enough to make me a present of