Richard swallowed. 'I am grateful, Father. Truly.'
'There!' Anne smiled.'I told you he'd be pleased. Boys, you are going to love it here. There's so much going on. So many interesting people to meet. I can't wait to present you to my friends.'
'I'm looking forward to it, Mother.'
'And please don't speak that way, Richard.'
He looked puzzled. 'What way?'
'With that accent. It really won't do in London society. Makes you sound so… provincial.'
'Provincial?' Richard looked surprised. 'It's how I've always spoken.'
'Precisely,' his father cut in.'And that's why it must change.You don't want society making assumptions about you.That applies to you two as well. I'm sure you'll get the hang of it soon enough. Things are different here, and you must make every effort to fit in unless you want to be cut from everyone's list. I'm sure you wouldn't want that to happen to your mother and me, as a consequence of any mistake that you might make.' Garrett looked at his eldest son fixedly.
'We understand, Father.'
'Good! That's settled. Now we can enjoy ourselves. Oh, I nearly forgot! Arthur, I've found a new school for you. Brown's in Chelsea.Term starts next week. I'm sure you are looking forward to it.'
Arthur smiled weakly.
'Make a nice change from that backwater at Trim.'
'I quite liked Trim,' Arthur replied. 'Once I got used to it. And Dr Buckleby was a fine teacher.'
'Yes, yes, he was. How was he when you left? He must be getting on.'
'He is old, but his mind is sharp.' Arthur looked up brightly. 'He wrote a piece of music for me. I have it upstairs. Would you like me to fetch it?'
'There'll be plenty of time to see his little ditty later, Arthur. Perhaps we can find some time to sit down together and play it through.'
'I'd like that.'
'But not today. I have a head like a blacksmith's and I need to lie down this morning.'
Anne rang the small handbell on the table. When the maid appeared she ordered coffee to be sent to her bedroom and rose from the table.
'Now, boys, I must get ready for the day. Please feel free to explore your new home. You can play with the others in the nursery when they return. Then, after lunch we can take a carriage to Cortfields and have you three measured up for some proper clothes. Until later.' She turned and waved over her shoulder without looking round.
'Well,' Garrett smiled, 'I need to rest my head. It's good to see you again.'
Once he had left the room the three boys were alone again. Arthur felt that an important bond with his father had been broken and he feared that it would never be restored.
Chapter 19
Brown's in Chelsea was an undistinguished prep school on the fringe of a fashionable area. Arthur was escorted to school early each morning by O'Shea. The headmaster was a bilious ex-army officer, Major Blyth, whose educational philosophy was that a curriculum needed to be limited to the fewest possible skills delivered in the most repetitious manner. William had been sent to Eton and Richard had gone up to Oxford as soon as a place had been found for him at one of the colleges. Accordingly, the house felt strangely empty and, since it was rented, very impersonal. The thick, gritty air of the city became even more of a stew as spring gave way to summer and the almost permanent haze that hung over the centre of London shrouded its inhabitants in a sweltering gloom that depressed Arthur's spirits.
By the time he returned from school it was suppertime, and more often than not he ate with his younger siblings while his parents dressed for yet another engagement. When it was not a ball, or a party, it was the theatre, occasionally opera or even a prizefight. His father was still composing and had scheduled a series of free public concerts at venues across the city. However, the busy social scene left Garrett too little time for recital sessions with his son and Arthur was left to practise alone in his room. At first he made a great effort to learn Dr Buckleby's composition, but time passed and his father showed no sign of setting aside a few moments to hear the piece.
Occasionally there was a family outing. Usually it was to one of Garrett's concerts, in order to boost the numbers in the audience and Anne prompted them to wild applause after each piece. At other times the children were taken to the races or cricket, and were frequently left in the care of one of the staff while their parents circulated amongst the other aristocrats and swapped invitations. Whenever Lord and Lady Mornington entertained at home the children were expected to keep discreetly out of the way in their rooms or the nursery.Thanks to the war in the American colonies the capital was filled with the colourful uniforms of officers either on their way out to fight the traitor General Washington and his ragtag army, or recently returned from campaigning. From what Arthur heard from such men the war was not going as well as the London papers implied.
In any case, the people of the capital were concerned with events much closer to home that summer of 1780. Lord George Gordon, a fervent opponent of the Church of Rome, had been stirring up the London mob. At a series of public meetings he claimed that there was a conspiracy behind the Catholic Relief Acts that had been passed two years earlier to restore some of their civil rights. Arthur and his father had been walking in Hyde Park one Sunday when they came across a crowd listening to one of Gordon's fiery attacks on the Catholics plotting to seize power in England. Gordon, red-faced and spluttering, punched his fists into the air as he raged against his enemies, and played his audience like a cheap fiddle. Their grumbling assent to his rhetoric soon turned into a seething expression of hatred. It was the first time that Arthur had witnessed the raw emotions of the mob and the experience frightened him.
'Father.' He tugged Garrett's hand. 'Please can we go home? That man is scaring me.'
An old woman with black, crooked teeth overheard the remark and leered at Arthur. 'Why bless you, young 'un, that's 'is point. We've plenty to be scared of. Them Catholics'll 'ave us for breakfast, less we 'ave 'em first!'
Garrett stepped between them. 'Please leave my son alone.'
She glared at him. 'I'm only tellin' 'im the truth, sir. Best he knows it, 'fore it's too late.'
Garrett, holding tightly to Arthur's hand, eased them away from the old woman. He paused a moment longer, listening to Gordon's impassioned ranting, and gauging the response of the crowd. Then he said to his son, 'He's scaring me too. Come, let's go, before there's trouble.'
At the start of June a crowd gathered outside the Houses of Parliament, and shouted their fury at the politicians as Gordon and his followers stoked up their rage with yet more speeches and pamphlets. Inevitably the mob turned to violence and in the days that followed,Arthur saw thick clouds of smoke spiral into the sky as the mob raged through the streets of the East End. On the morning of 7 June, on the way to school, Arthur had had to stand in a shop front while a drunken mob of men marched past, yelling anti-Catholic slogans, as they hurried to join the rioters. He stared at them in wide-eyed fright until they had passed by, and then ran the rest of the way to school.
'And what is the meaning of this?' Anne waved the note from Major Blyth at her son.
She sat in a velvet gown at her make-up table in her boudoir where she had been applying beauty spots for that evening's party. She would be attending by herself since Garrett had been bed-bound for the last week with a cough.The doctor had prescribed rest and leeches. Garrett had consented to the first treatment but insisted that his bankers provided more than enough of the second.
Arthur had been summoned from his room the moment she had finished reading the note and now stood in the doorway, eyes downcast.
'Well, speak up!'
'There was a fight, Mother. These things happen in schools.'
She fixed him with a cold stare. 'Don't you dare address me in that tone.'