Authors: Maria McCann
‘For
once
?’ She gives him the stare right back, though doing so produces a near-unendurable sensation, like boiling water bubbling up inside her body.
‘You don’t consider my position. Being caught by your bull-calf of a brother – that’s bad luck for you. Well, it’s
deuced
bad luck for me. Suppose Shiner asks him, by way of a favour, to break my hands?’
She can find no reply.
‘No,’ he says, ‘I prefer to keep in one piece. If that makes me a coward, so be it.’
‘I can never think you a coward, Ned,’ says Betsy-Ann.
His voice softens. ‘I’m not too proud to return the compliment. If a woman may be judged by strength of character then you, Miss Blore, are the finest woman I’ve known. You meet a man, as it were, face to face – or did so until recently.’
At the last few words Betsy-Ann feels a stab. To be accused of deception, while all the time persuaded that he is hiding something from her, is too cruel.
‘I understand your hints,’ Ned says. ‘You wish me to set you up again. There’s nobody I’d sooner take into keeping, but ―’ He gives a regretful shrug. ‘There’s Ma, too. She won’t endure you.’
‘So our meeting’s for nothing? I’m to continue with Sam?’
He lays his hand over hers, stroking her wrist with his thumb as if soothing a child. ‘You can get out from under him. There’s many a man would be glad enough – yes, indeed,’ he insists, catching at her fingers as if she might pull them away.
‘But us, Ned.’
‘What of us, my sweet?’
‘Shall we keep on with Haddock’s?’
‘We’ve been beaten from that bush.’
If he has a chamber here, now’s the time to say so. With a final pat at her fingers he pulls away and begins buttoning up his coat.
‘Easy as that,’ she says as if to herself. ‘Like some old shoe.’
He pauses in the act of fastening the buttons and regards her, head cocked, in silence. At last he says, ‘I should never have followed you that day.’
‘You’d no business to.’
‘Inclination I certainly had.’
‘I could help you,’ Betsy-Ann says.
‘Oh, child, let us be done! Spare me your ―’
‘Teach you the Spanish trick.’
‘Ah.’ His eyes flick over her, searching her face for deceit. Then, ‘
If
you did,’ (biting off each word) ‘I could tell Ma to go hang.’
‘If I did.’
‘If.’
She has his attention, all right; he’s a dog shivering for the hare. What does it mean? A brief chase and thrown aside bloody, her mystery torn out?
‘Understand me, Betsy.’
‘I’m trying to,’ says Betsy-Ann.
‘With that rig I can pay off all the creditors in a few months. I can carve us enough to live on.’
‘Together?’
‘For as long as we want. She’ll be glad to see the back of me. We’ll set up genteel, away from Shiner and Harry.’
‘And Kitty?’
‘Kitty can’t touch us. Can’t touch us, my honey,’ and Ned’s face shines. It’s the face she remembers from their first days together; she hadn’t learnt, then, to be wary of him. Still, what a look to turn on a woman. Like a purseful of gold. He says, all sweet and tickle-mouse, ‘No other woman ever gave me such a gift, Betsy, no other woman could, but you’ – though the tilt of his head says,
To me, such incense is due.
She raises her chin in turn, eyeing him: one gamester to another. ‘I might possibly be persuaded.’
‘And your condition is . . . ?’
She folds her arms. ‘I can’t talk of it here.’
Again they eye one another, until Ned laughs. ‘
Touché
. You shall have your chamber.’
‘And my chamberer, to attend on me?’
‘Him also.’
‘Your word upon it?’
‘Damn my word. My wife has my word. Whereas you ―’ He grins. ‘You have something of far greater value.’
‘What’s that?’
‘My inclination.’
37
On entering the room he sees a strange woman peering through the window. Today both grate and candles are cold and dead; anyone standing on the pavement would be looking into a dark pit, which is why she screws up her face like that. There is a moment’s fear as the woman’s eyes lock with his, but they lock blindly: she has not seen him and she moves away.
Fortunate takes what he came for – Mrs Launey’s account book, left behind after this morning’s consultation with the Wife – and is crossing the hallway when someone knocks at the door.
He dodges into the corridor, but too late. Before he can turn again and be out of sight, Eliza is upon him.
‘I’ll have that, if you please! Now go and answer, and don’t ask me why!’
She swipes the book from his hand and hurries back to her work.
The knock comes again. Of course it is the spying woman. When he opens the door her face is composed and superior, her eyes commanding where before they squinted. There is even a little smirk on her lips. He would like to say to her, I saw you! And you looked very foolish!
Instead he asks her to wait and takes her card to the Pinched Wife.
‘Send her in and fetch us tea,’ the Wife says. ‘
You
are to fetch it, mind, not one of the maids.’
Today is strange, everybody seems to want him. He must go for the book, must answer the door and bring the tea.
The woman follows him along the corridor to the Blue Room. He can tell from the tiny sounds made by her clothing that she keeps turning and staring about her at the furniture and wallpaper. It is not pleasant to have such a person at your back. He is glad to deliver her to the mistress and hurry away.
In the kitchen, Mrs Launey wants to know the woman’s name and if she appears respectable.
‘Yes, I think,’ says Fortunate, who understands that by
respectable
these people mean someone cold and overbearing. ‘Her name is Mrs Howell.’
The cook picks at her front teeth. ‘Can’t say I know any Howells.’
‘Me neither,’ says Eliza, placing a loaf upon the table. ‘She doesn’t visit here. Did she seem a kind sort of lady?’
‘Not kind.’
‘What’s she like, then?’
He shrugs. What can he say? The woman made a bad impression.
‘I wish Fan was here,’ says Eliza.
‘He’s taken against her, we don’t need Fan to tell us that. Can’t you cut the bread any thinner, Liza? You weren’t taught to make doorsteps.’
‘Begging your pardon, Mrs L, but it’s crumbly. Listen, Titus. Do you know why this lady’s come?’
Fortunate suggests, ‘To look in the house?’
Mrs Launey raises a warning hand, which Eliza ignores. ‘It’s you she’s come to see, Titus. Mrs Zed advertised you for a good servant.’
‘The mistress is pleased with me?’
The girl looks at him with what he now sees is pity before turning again to the loaf and slicing it in half. ‘No, you noddy. She wants you off her hands.’
He shivers. So he is to be passed on once more, like an animal – is this possible? Has Dog Eye permitted it?
‘Here.’ Eliza arranges the items on the tray. ‘Your bread-and-butter, your teapot, china, water, cream, sugar, lemon, sugar-tongs. And spoons. I’ll hold the door for you.’
‘The master,’ he stammers. ‘Is he know?’
‘Couldn’t say, I’m sure,’ the cook replies. ‘Don’t take on, love. Eliza,
you
carry the ―’
‘No, it’s got to be him. Hey, Titus!’
He is about to pick up the tray. He looks up and Eliza fetches him a stinging slap across the face. He freezes, unsure whether to retaliate but determined not to cry at the hands of a woman.
‘Go on,’ Eliza urges. ‘Blubber. Cry your eyes nice and red.’
The cook bends toward him, interested. ‘Do what she says, child.’
‘Titus, you must be a bad servant. Bad, bad! Do you understand? You must have nasty eyes and drop things, then Mrs Howell won’t take you. Here ―’ She pokes her finger into the butter dish, smears it along his sleeve, then runs to the flour bin and fetches out a handful, sprinkling it over the butter.
‘Rub it in,’ she says. The result is terrifying: an impressive white stain blooms along his forearm. The mistress will surely kill him. In his soiled livery, with his eyes watery and his cheek burning, he creeps towards the room where the ladies wait.
*
‘Poor creature, it was a blessed release,’ patters Betsy-Ann, her head cocked in at the doorway. ‘Such affliction, Sir, as you’d have wept to see.’
The Uncle says, ‘Don’t stand there letting in the cold.’
‘I can’t leave my cart, Sir. If I could bring it into the yard, now.’
He grunts, slides off the stool and disappears through the back of the shop. Betsy-Ann ducks back outside, to the gate flanking the shop front, and hears a bolt shoot. The boards quiver on their hinges.
‘To pledge?’ asks the Uncle, peeking through the gap. His head with its small round eyes reminds her of a parrot at Kitty’s: it was forever poking its head between the bars of its cage, and one day the cat got it. She shoves at the gate, pushing in her handcart before he can change his mind. ‘To sell, Sir. All to sell. I’ve wipers, dummees ―’
‘Don’t give me your cant.’
‘Kerchiefs, pocket-books and watches. And fawneys, Sir.’
He allows that word, or perhaps doesn’t hear it since he is now bolting the gate behind her. Betsy-Ann safely inside and his defences back in place, he unlocks the side door to the premises.
To her surprise, what lies behind is almost the same as the shop front: another counter, another grille. ‘Stop there,’ says the Uncle. Yet another door opens, fast as a whore’s legs, and he dodges through it. Again the sound of bolts. In a few seconds he reappears behind the grille.
‘I don’t go armed,’ says Betsy-Ann. ‘Is this all the same place?’
‘Same only privater. Now, show me,’ he says, unlatching the little door in the grille.
‘There’s more left behind.’ Betsy-Ann wipes her eyes. ‘Such a lovely shop as she had. To think of her ending up skin and bone.’
‘Show me.’
He claws at the first thing she picks out for him, a mother-of-pearl toothpick case with silver trimmings.
‘I’ve wipers, different colours ―’
Through the gap in the grille she offers him a fine big one in scarlet silk. He pushes that aside and reaches for a gold-and-turquoise fawney.
‘I shouldn’t be standing here with my constitution,’ he says. ‘Show me the lot at once and I’ll give you a price.’
‘Piece by piece is my way.’
He’s weighing her up. ‘It’d be quicker.’
‘We might forget something, Uncle. You wouldn’t want that, would you?’
They settle to the business of haggling, though Betsy-Ann relents so far as to group the handkerchiefs together. As he examines each item he adds it to a list, Betsy-Ann watching to make sure nothing is left off. When a price has been agreed for everything, he reads the list aloud, pointing to the price and at the same time moving the goods from one pile to another so that she can see for herself. She insists on him going slowly; she can’t read but she can add up. Even so, by the time she is satisfied that everything tallies, her hands are nearly as blue and corpse-like as his. The pawnbroker’s cough smokes in the hard, dead air.
Before his eyes she bites each piece of gold he slides across the counter, then signs, with a cross, a receipt he’s made out for her in the name of Mrs Flatt: their one shared joke.
On the way home she stops to buy bread and sausage from costers. Her feet are light; she trips along humming one of Mam’s favourites,
Young Robin and His Love
.
Young Robin was of high degree,
He loved a simple maid
She’s offloaded about a third of the Eye’s contents. First she took the small precious things, leaving the bigger ones to make a show. At a glance, which is all he’ll spare them, the boxes and buckets look as full as ever. Thrust down her stays, digging into her ribs, is the fruit of her labours: a tight little leather bag. What Sam’d give, to get his crippled paws on that! In a couple of days she’ll hand him a guinea, tell him she’s doing all she can to get him to St Giles.
And there he saw a wondrous sight
The like was never seen
A thousand horses, red and white
A-riding on the green
He’ll be well and truly bitten. She tries not to think about how he’ll look when he finds out: though he doesn’t trust her any more, he did once, or wanted to.
Damned if she’ll weep for him, though. When
he
had gold he got a piece tight in each fist and struck out like a man that meant business. A regular prize-fighter he was, coming slashing in with his old one-two, when she and Ned were at their weakest.
He is not here, the mother cried
For Margaret is dead
And ’neath a grove of willows green
Are she and Robin laid
Now Sam’s star is on the wane and the Age of Ned dawns. She’s game enough to take that chance, go where it leads: Pamphile and Prodigy seated at the table, playing to the end, Prodigy with aces roosting in her hand, aye, and Pamphile in there too.
For a while. No man is in the palm of a woman’s hand forever. Her time in Kitty’s would have been spent to little purpose indeed, had she failed to understand
that
.
*
Shiner is asleep in a chair, his cheek pressed to the window. He must have dozed off while watching for her. Even the rattle of her key in the lock fails to bring him round; he only grunts and shifts position.
Betsy-Ann puts down her basket and sits to study him. He’s a ruin, his face crumpled all on one side. His fam lies palm upwards in his lap, the purple gristle of the scar exposed. When he wakes, he’ll put that out of sight.
There was a time, a little breath of a time before he lost the finger, when she thought she and Sam might do something, after all.
Not at first. At first she couldn’t talk for grief. She was a blind girl, Ned’s pretty picture burnt in at the backs of her eyeballs, a girl sitting dumb and motionless while somewhere in the room Shiner bustled about, taking pains to please her: bringing coal upstairs to spare her the trouble, washing his face before bending it towards her for a kiss. She did not turn her lips away but let them hang slack. One morning she woke to find him bending over the pillow, his blue gaze no longer sly but bruised.
Poor bastard
, she thought. Her pity made him real.