Andrew Taylor - Bleeding Heart Square

I met Mr Howlett, who is the Chief Beadle at Rosington Place. He is looking after Jacko for the time being. Jacko seems quite at home in Mr Howlett’s little lodge. Joseph says that he has taken care of everything, but I gave Mr Howlett an extra ten shillings just to make sure that Jacko has all he needs. The little darling looked so sorrowful as we were leaving him that I had to keep turning back to pat him .

Afterwards, Joseph asked if I should like to see inside the chapel in Rosington Place. We strolled up the cul-de-sac, and it seemed deliciously natural for me to take his arm. He gave my hand a tiny squeeze .

We went through a door and walked along part of the lovely old cloister. Joseph pointed out the remains of the staircase that must once have led up to other apartments in the Bishop’s Palace. The chapel itself is on the first floor. It is surprisingly large, much bigger than it seems from the outside, with a great deal of interesting stained glass, old statues of saints, etc., etc. We had the place quite to ourselves .

After we had looked around the chapel, Joseph showed me the crypt. This runs the whole length of the building and is very plain and simple. A room to one side is called the Ossuary, but the door was locked. He said that he always thought this to be a particularly holy spot. I told him I felt its aura of sanctity as well .

He smiled sadly. ‘As God is my witness in this sacred place,’ he said, ‘I meant every word I said the other day.’

My eyes filled with tears. He said he didn’t want to offend me but he thought of me as his very own darling. Would I make him the happiest man in the world by agreeing at least to consider his proposal of a private marriage? He went on to say that of course as soon as he was a free man, we could be married in the eyes of the world as well as of God .

‘I’m not as young as I was,’ he said in a voice that shook with emotion. ‘I feel I must take my happiness when I can. It won’t wait for me.’ He looked meaningfully at me and said that of course we had both learned that from experience .

I knew that he was referring to Vernon, my lost love. Isn’t it odd? I hardly think of him now. At the back of my mind was the thought that, as I’m older than Joseph, I have even less time than he does .

There and then, in this sacred and beautiful place, he went down on one knee and took from his pocket a small maroon box. He held it out and opened it. Three diamonds sparkled on a gold hoop. It was the most beautiful ring I had ever seen .

He spoke these very words: ‘Will you — dare I hope that you will consent one day to be my wife?’

I could hardly breathe. I let him take my hand, my left hand, and gently remove the glove. He slipped the ring onto my finger. It fitted perfectly. He bent his great, grizzled head and kissed the hand. I was trembling violently. With my right hand, I stroked his hair, so surprisingly vigorous for a man of his age. I heard him give a sob .

I can write no more this evening. My heart is too full. Joseph, my own dear one .

The ring and the chapel, that beastly little dog and all those sickly sweet nothings — didn’t she understand what was happening? Joseph Serridge was asking a respectable spinster several years his senior to come and live in sin with him. Did she really think he loved her? Did she really think that her money had nothing to do with it?

On Thursday morning Rory went to the library in Charleston Street to fight his way through the crowd and consult the Situations Vacant columns on the noticeboards. Living at Bleeding Heart Square was more expensive than boarding at Mrs Rutter’s, mainly because he had to find all his own meals. I must economize, he thought, perhaps learn to cook. It can’t be that difficult.

Hopelessness threatened to overwhelm him. Employers wanted reliable gardeners and experienced parlourmen, not reporters or copywriters. In any case, you probably needed to buy the newspapers when they reached the streets at six in the morning, rather than wait until the library opened. Even if he found a suitable job advertised, it might well be gone by now.

His eyes strayed towards the shelves of reference books in search of distraction. He caught sight of a familiar red spine: Who’s Who . He fetched the portly red volume and turned to the letter C. Cassington leapt out at him, giving him a jolt of recognition tinged with dismay.

George Rupert Cassington, second Baron Cassington of Flaxern, born 1874, educated Rugby and St John’s College, Oxford. And so on. He had two sons by his first wife, who had died in 1904, and a daughter, Pamela, by his second wife, Elinor, whom he had married in 1908. There were three addresses — 21 Upper Mount Street in Mayfair, Monkshill Park near Lydmouth, and Drumloch Lodge, Inverness-shire.

Rory closed the book. He had learned a little but not enough. The fever was upon him. Not a fever, exactly — more a malign hunger: as a child he had stolen a box of chocolates from his eldest sister, carried it to a hiding place at the bottom of the garden and gobbled the contents in a furtive haste that had little to do with pleasure; even as he ate, he knew he would soon be sick, he knew his theft would lead to punishment.

He took down Debrett’s Peerage, Baronetage, Knightage and Companionage . There were the Cassingtons again, and this time there was more information about the peer’s second wife. She had previously married Captain William Ingleby-Lewis, whom she had divorced in 1907 and by whom she had had a daughter, Lydia Elizabeth. He looked up the Langstones, and there she was again, wife of Marcus John Scott Langstone. She had been born in 1905. So she was twenty-nine; she looked younger. Marcus was older. No children, as yet. They lived at 9 Frogmore Place, Lancaster Gate, when they were in London — not as grand an address as the Cassingtons, Rory thought — and at Longhope House in Gloucestershire. Langstone had been at Marlborough.

Rory swore under his breath, and a slumbering tramp sitting across the table from him opened one eye. He and Lydia Langstone might at present live under the same roof but they belonged to different worlds. Not that it mattered, since she was married and besides he still considered himself engaged to Fenella, whatever Fenella might say. What galled him was the disparity between them. He was forced to live somewhere like Bleeding Heart Square because he was poor and getting poorer. But, given her background, Lydia must be playing with poverty. The French had a phrase for it as they had a phrase for everything: she was living en bon socialiste , toying with being poor, being ordinary, and it was a damned patronizing insult to those who were really poor and really ordinary.

Just like that fellow Dawlish that Fenella is so fond of .

Was that the real reason he was angry — simple, unjustifiable jealousy? Rory closed the book with a bang. The tramp opened both eyes.

As Rory stood up, Lydia Langstone herself came into the reference room. For an instant he felt like a guilty schoolboy caught in the act of something dreadful and clutched the book to his chest as if to hide it from her. She caught his eye, nodded to him and turned away to select a magazine, The Lady , from a rack by the window. He put the book back on the shelf, seized his hat and went out. She didn’t look up.

A grey pall of rain hung over the city. It suited his mood. He walked aimlessly down to Holborn and allowed the flow of pedestrians to draw him steadily westwards. So why the devil was Lydia Langstone living in Bleeding Heart Square when she could have been living in comfort in Bayswater? It was quite a puzzle, and if nothing else a distraction from his inability to work out what to do with his own life.