Authors: Maria McCann
Slowly they began to shake down. It was true what Ned had said: Shiner adored her, watched her like the little dog did, until it was stolen away. Never what you’d call well favoured but still, he talked with her. Gave her his name.
Now he’s gelded, his power over the cards cut away. Terrible to see a man so reduced. It comes to her that this is perhaps how she looked, all those months ago: collapsed to one side. She sees his eyelids flutter, hears the faint
pop
as his dry lips part. He might be saying
Betsy.
Perhaps a figure in her shape floats about the inside of his head, dancing, laughing. The ghost of Betsy-Ann leads Sam into the bedchamber, bright in his dream with the best wax candles, and there pulls him down, gluey kisses in the damp, death-scented sheets ―
Sam farts, opens his eyes and peels his face off the window-pane.
‘Your neck’ll be stiff and no mistake,’ says Betsy-Ann, watching him rub it. He flinches and she realises that until she spoke, he hadn’t known she was there.
‘You just come in? Where you been?’
She shows him her basket with the sausage and loaf in it. He turns towards the sinking fire, as if calculating how long ago she left, and covers the move by saying, ‘Warm enough for you?’
‘I’ll put some coal on.’ She places the basket on the table, ready to unpack. Shiner lays his good hand on her arm.
‘Harry’s been here.’
‘Has he, now.’
‘I told him straight. Said I’m not going back.’
She leaps with the shock of it. ‘Christ, Sam! He’ll kill you – kill you.’
Sam’s grip on her arm tightens. He pulls her down until their faces are almost touching. ‘Not a tear, eh? You might shed a tear for me, Betsy.’
She looks away from him and in the end he lets her go. She reaches for a chair. By the time she’s pulled one close and sat down by his side, he’s slid the maimed hand into his pocket.
‘I can blub all you like, it won’t do any good,’ she says, sugaring her voice. ‘Go and take him something, Sammy. Bottle of nantz. Tell him you meant nothing by it.’
He stares straight ahead now. ‘And is that the advice you’d give Hartry?’
‘It’s not Hartry we’re ―’
‘If it was, you’d be giving fourpenny flyers in the street, paying his passage to India. Anything to keep him safe.’
‘I’m trying to keep
you
safe.’
‘So you say. I don’t see any love in you. Damned if I’ve ever seen any.’
Very quiet and cold she says, ‘He wasn’t in a position to stake that.’
He turns his head and she is surprised: just for a second there’s a flicker of something she hasn’t seen before, something that in another man she might call pity. What’s he sparing her? Ned’s catalogue of sale, perhaps:
lush around the dairyworks. Deep purse.
If so, he could spare himself the trouble. Since Kitty’s, she’s beyond caring. She says, ‘What’ll you do for readies?’
He says nothing, but takes the sausage out of the basket and unwraps it.
‘Wait, I’ll cut you some bread.’ But Shiner shakes his head. He casts aside the sausage and smooths out the wrapping paper on the table.
‘Get us a piece of coal, will you? With a bit of dust on it.’
He’s a case for Bedlam. Betsy-Ann fetches a lump and he takes it not in his good hand, but in the maimed one. He turns the coal over, running his tongue between his lips, almost as if he wants to eat the thing. Then, smiling as if at some private joke, he puts it to paper, avoiding the grease spots, and begins to scratch. She watches, fascinated, as his fingers travel about the paper on tracks only he can see, a curve here, a mass of shading there. The coal cracks, spattering the surface with black flecks, so that he is obliged to turn it about frequently in his hand. He works fast, for all that. A knot of lines becomes brows, lashes, a circle of iris, another.
‘Fine pair of ogles, eh?’
‘Dimber.’ She wonders how he’ll do her ringlets, down on her shoulders or fastened up.
‘It should be charcoal. If you saw me with charcoal, now. Or an engraver’s pen.’
‘So the plan’s to be an engraver?’ She stops looking at the picture and stares at him, at his intent profile. ‘Do you know the trade?’
‘I’m time-served. Never set up my own shop.’
‘Why was that?’
‘Fell in with bad company.’
When she looks back to the picture, she gasps. The hair is in place, but not as she pictured it, and Shiner’s hand is just touching in the lips: a wide, greedy muzzle. Even drawn in coal on coarse paper, the face compels attention.
‘Dimber. As you so kindly observed.’
‘I thought it was me,’ is all Betsy-Ann can say. And indeed, the picture does have a look of her about it. She’s not sure whether the resemblance has always been there, and the sketch has merely shown her what everyone else has seen from the start, or whether it comes from Shiner’s coupling them in his mind.
‘Is it a good likeness?’ he enquires, head on one side.
‘I’m no judge of likenesses.’
‘You see I can earn my way. Should you like to have this? As a memento of me.’
She turns over the possible answers in her mind. None of them is safe.
‘It’s fine work.’
‘You show your ignorance, my dear. Before I was cut,
then
you could call me a draughtsman.’ Shiner takes the portrait over to the fire and drops it onto the coals. Ned’s eyes light up, defiant, as the grease on the paper catches. The face itself goes next, a red-rimmed hole appearing at his temple. Though he grins to the last, there is soon nothing left of him but a grey rag of ash.
Shiner whoops like a savage, startling Betsy-Ann. He claps his hands and crows. ‘What a pretty fellow! What a pity!’
‘Is that all you drew it for?’
He smirks. ‘Don’t you understand what I just showed you? No, nothing. Cunts and the use of ’em, that’s all the Sex can comprehend.’ Bewildered, she lets him run on: ‘A mort can’t know the hundredth part of what a man knows. Not the hundredth part.’
It’s on the tip of her tongue to say,
You talk more sense when you’re drunk
, but she is wary of this bitter Shiner who has opened up, like a magical box, to show inner workings previously unguessed-at. She says: ‘If something’s
told
me I can understand it.’
‘Ah, but you shan’t be told.’ He lays his finger alongside his nose. ‘You’ll have to wait and see.’
What she sees is that between Harry’s spite and Sam’s jealousy, she stands a fair chance of being crushed. She has to get out from under him. Ned or no Ned.
38
‘Bless me,’ cries Hetty, entering with a bustling haste which, though inelegant, speaks eloquently of her affection, ‘Who have we here? Cousin Sophia, I vow! And mistress of all she surveys.’
Sophia composes her features into the smile demanded by politeness. There is nothing she can do, alas, about her flaring cheeks.
She is quite fit to be seen. Her toilette is respectable and the room where she sits clean and orderly; even at her most wretched, she has never descended into sluttishness. Her sense of being caught out arises from the consciousness that she cannot produce Edmund, who has not been home since yesterday evening. To add to her misery, there is nobody she less expected to see than these two and nobody to whom she would sooner offer the warmest hospitality, had she only known. Though there may be something in reserve: Mrs Launey seems a competent enough person and Sophia has yet to test her mettle.
‘Darling Hetty ―’ She embraces her cousin and shakes hands with Mr Letcher, her mouth bringing out congratulations and civilities while her mind flaps moth-like round the burning questions: how has this happened? Are they expecting to stay?
‘And such a cold day, too! Pray sit near the fire and warm yourselves.’ She installs the smiling couple on the sofa; it is rather cramped for such a big man as Mr Letcher but the chairs are no better. ‘Fan, bring tea and cake.’
The girl curtseys and is gone. Sophia seats herself opposite her guests.
‘Well!’ The word comes out breathily, as if she is over-laced. ‘This is indeed a charming surprise.’
Hetty’s dark eyebrows arrange themselves into graceful arches. ‘Surprise? But I wrote we should come if ―’ Her hand flies to her mouth. ‘You haven’t received ― O, Sophy! O, Lord!’
‘It’s of no consequence,’ Sophia assures her. ‘Were you intending to pass the night here?’
‘You see how splendid she is, Letcher? No, my love, we shan’t be billeting ourselves upon you. Our lodgings are quite satisfactory. Good God, what a shock you must have had!’ Hetty is laughing now, her eyes not quite as blithe as the rest of her face. Sophia can guess at her thoughts:
Such a street for a gentleman’s house, I do hope Sophy is not unhappy
.
‘Dearest Hetty, you mustn’t apologise. Though I never saw your letter, I couldn’t be more delighted to see
you
.’
Now that Sophia has begun to recover herself, she is indeed filled with pleasure at the sight of her cousin, with the pink cheeks of one newly entered from the cold, installed by the hearth while her husband, the estimable Josiah Letcher, compliments his hostess on having a first-rate fire. Her initial impressions of this gentleman were principally of height and solidity. Now that she has looked at him a little longer, she can add to those attributes a good-tempered mouth and a pair of small but benevolent brown eyes. Mr Letcher is scrupulously but not foppishly groomed and his clothes well cut. He is a man upon whose arm one might lean in confidence and Hetty (blooming with precisely such confidence) a charming exemplar of wifely happiness.
Like most plain women, Sophia has endured her share of complacent looks from more fortunate members of the Sex. From Hetty, however (so sprightly and attaching, so admired by gentlemen) nothing of the sort has ever been forthcoming; Hetty is, was, and always will be all generosity and good nature. And since Mr Letcher, beaming goodwill from the sofa, appears to be Hetty’s masculine counterpart, Sophia feels her awkwardness thaw to the point where she can boldly confess her predicament: though her guests will not starve, the kitchen may not rise to the occasion. It is, of course, possible to send out for something and when they have drunk their tea she will speak with the cook.
‘O, that won’t be necessary,’ Hetty says. ‘My plan was to call this morning, take the air with you – if you wished – and then have dinner somewhere.’ Seeing Sophia hesitate, she adds at once, ‘Mr Letcher’s treat, you know. He insists he shall indulge us this once.’
‘But you are too kind,’ says Sophia, a girlish excitement rising within her at the thought of such an outing.
‘Kind? I shall thoroughly enjoy myself,’ replies Mr Letcher. ‘What’s the use of money, if not to spend?’
His wife chimes in, ‘Or of matrimony, unless one may also enjoy a
partie de plaisir
with one’s dearest friends?’
‘O, I should like it above anything! I remember last year you went to Ranelagh.’
‘Yes, with Mama and Mrs Jamieson – I don’t think you know Mrs Jamieson. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Everyone should visit Ranelagh, if only for the Rotunda.’
‘And the music?’
‘Charming, if you like the English style. The price of refreshments is a scandal, of course. Everybody is shocked, and everybody continues to go.’ Hetty looks thoughtful. ‘Do you know, Sophy, I believe I wrote to you proposing this visit – now, I mean – while you were in Bath. Didn’t you receive my letter?’
‘The post’s very bad. I’ve only heard from Mama and Papa, and not always from them.’
‘How odd!
We
haven’t been inconvenienced, have we, Letcher? And you’ve missed more than one letter from Buller?’ Hetty leans forward, lowering her voice. ‘In your place I should look to the servants. I should never suggest such a thing in your mother’s house, but
London
servants!’ She shakes her head. ‘Mr Letcher’s mother once engaged a boy who wouldn’t take the trouble of collecting the post during cold weather, can you imagine? He sat in the kitchen eating buttered toast – the best butter, at sixpence a pound! – and she only found him out by accident.’
‘You may be right,’ says Sophia. ‘As for the letter to Bath, we left early and it was perhaps lost that way. Where shall we go, Hetty? It sounds as if you would recommend Ranelagh?’
‘Marylebone Garden is more convenient than Ranelagh at this time of year,’ says Hetty, ‘though you’ve perhaps seen Marylebone already, since it lies so close at hand.’
‘No, I haven’t. But I read in the papers that Ranelagh is by far the most elegant, and patronised by the
ton.
’
‘The thing is . . .’ says Hetty, glancing across at her husband.
Mr Letcher spreads his hands appeasingly, ‘Alas, Ranelagh is now closed except for very particular events. The weather, you know.’
‘O, how disappointing!’ As indeed it is. ‘But surely the Rotunda is heated? I’ve read that its warmth is much appreciated.’
‘On a chilly summer day, yes. Its fires are not equal to autumn and winter. But never mind,’ says Mr Letcher with what Sophia already recognises as his usual kindness, ‘we shall promenade quite as healthily in Marylebone Gardens. Unless, of course, there is somewhere you would like better.’
Hetty, seeing her cousin’s difficulty, moves to shield the raw ignorance of a bumpkin who doesn’t even know the months for Ranelagh. ‘One is never sure what to believe. Yesterday’s great project, Sophy, was to dine at an inn – a celebrated place, recommended by a man of taste. When we got there I couldn’t touch a thing. The mutton they brought! So high it was practically green. Was it not, Letcher?’
‘Quite green, my love.’
‘Well, you shall eat no green mutton at my house,’ promises Sophia, her mind reverting to her lost letter. That Edmund might have confiscated it she does not doubt, but would he not have put off the visitors by a counterfeit reply? Unable to solve this riddle, she pushes it from her mind as Fan reappears bearing a tray with tea things and – Mrs Launey having risen to the occasion – an entire unbroken seedcake.
‘O, Sophy, I quite
forgot
!’ Hetty exclaims as Fan sets down the refreshments, causing the maid to start. She begins to root in the knotting bag which she has evidently taken, like Sophia, to carrying outside the house. ‘I do hope you haven’t got one already. I thought, Why, that’s the thing for Sophy – ah!’ With this cry of triumph she fishes out a rectangular package wrapped in white paper. ‘Yes, the very thing.’