Authors: Maria McCann
Sophia can only shake her head. Edmund has seen her: his hand flies to his neck as if he, too, is threatened with asphyxiation.
‘Handsome, I allow,’ says Hetty. ‘Well, my love? Are you able to walk home, do you think?’
The choking obstruction in her own throat is going down, for Edmund also appears confounded, caught so thoroughly off guard that his expression alters with the fluidity of quicksilver. She could, without difficulty, reproduce and annotate the contortions of his features:
Plate the first
, the arrogant smirk of the expectant man of pleasure;
Plate the second,
the start upon finding himself observed.
Plate the third (in colour)
affords some inadequate notion of the flush briefly exhibited by the gentleman in question (O, Edmund! ― so
very
briefly, given the shameful situation in which you find yourself) while
Plate the fourth
admirably sets forth the harrowed expression of a man who must greet one woman and cut another and is having the Deuce of a time choosing, not least because he cannot be certain – given the company in which he finds her and the damnably tall and solid whore standing plump between them – that his wife wishes to acknowledge
him.
This last insight inspires Sophia to an action deceptive in its simplicity: she stands and waves, her face brightening with innocent happiness. All happens so quickly that she scarcely knows how; as when playing a familiar piece of music, she holds to what she must do, and does it. ‘Why,’ she exclaims, ‘here’s Mr Zedland!’
Edmund favours her with a look of unmixed loathing, immediately dissolved in a smile of such sweetness that Sophia can almost feel Hetty’s astonishment.
See
it, she dare not: exchanging glances with Hetty is out of the question. She is acutely conscious of herself as one of three women, each studying her husband’s advance from the far doorway towards the chimney. The stranger is still standing, however, her back turned to the onlookers, and as Edmund approaches she moves into his path.
The crisis is come: how will he meet it?
Edmund glares at the woman, defying her to approach any nearer. His presence of mind, once regained, is astonishing. Sophia understands, as the stranger surely must, that his affronted stare is a warning, but what casual onlooker could see it in its true colours: not the disdain with which respectability turns from encroaching vice, but the signal of an accomplice? The woman stops, plucking at her hood in a gesture of confusion. At that instant Sophia recognises that her own greeting, apparently so innocent, was intended to shield not only herself but Edmund. Without giving conscious thought to the matter – there was not time for that – she has shown her husband a way out that can be seized upon only by sacrificing the other.
Edmund does seize upon it. He becomes a gentleman affronted by vulgar impertinence, swerving round the creature as he might sidestep some nastiness upon the pavement. His face, now somewhat pale, conveys his habitual
sang-froid
as he approaches the company with an easy, gentlemanlike air, greets Sophia and is presented to the Letchers, to whom he extends his hand.
Sophia scarcely need watch him work his charm upon them. It seems Hetty now considers him well enough bred, for her cheeks have turned the prettiest rose-pink conceivable. Possibly she is trying to recall what cutting remarks she passed upon him before he was introduced as her relative by marriage; Sophia cannot give Hetty’s pinkness her full attention, however, while the rejected woman, her face once more concealed, stands at the tavern table as if, like Lot’s wife, she has been turned to salt.
Unlike that Biblical lady, the stranger has refused, until now, to look behind. Upon hearing Edmund’s genteel murmur, she turns her neck a little. Her eye, set in a face hot with humiliation, catches Sophia’s.
Why,
Sophia thinks, perceiving unfeigned misery,
she loves him!
The coarse lips are twisting in a fashion that she knows only too well: the creature is on the brink of tears.
Go then
, Sophia silently urges her.
What can you do by remaining here?
It seems her rival has reached the same conclusion, since she takes one last swig from the glass and leaves the room via the passageway. Sophia is filled with a sensation rather like that experienced on narrowly missing a smash-up in a coach: relief mingled with a curious disappointment.
‘. . . invited by a friend in the course of business,’ Edmund is saying.
‘A game or two sharpens the mind,’ offers Mr Letcher.
Edmund nods. ‘Indeed.’
‘Though the dissipations of London being what they are, I imagine one must be on guard, and take care always to play with honest persons.’
‘I see you thoroughly understand the matter, Sir,’ says Edmund, quietly amused. ‘For myself, I never engage with any other kind of player.’
The three of them appear in excellent humour: already Edmund has turned the Letchers outside in.
‘Who was that person?’ Sophia interrupts.
‘Person, my love?’
‘That woman at the table there. She looked as if she knew you, I thought.’
Edmund shrugs. ‘Did she? I paid no attention.’
‘She quite stared at you, Edmund.’
Again that flash of hatred. It vanishes away as soon as seen and Edmund exchanges a glance with Mr Letcher. ‘My dear,’ he explains as if to a child, ‘she was doubtless one of those females who haunt public places in search of prey. Any man with a coat to his back is considered in the light of a potential protector.’
‘Had she known of your marriage, my dear, and the warm affection in which you hold your spouse,’ Sophia cannot forbear replying, ‘she would be persuaded of the futility of any such hope.’
There is a stricken pause in the conversation. Edmund seems considering how he might give a complimentary turn to this last speech, perhaps something about his known loyalty and uxoriousness, but before he can make the attempt Hetty exclaims, ‘Such a pity we are too late in the year for Ranelagh! But there, fashion rules everything these days.’
Mr Letcher comes to her aid. ‘You know very well, my dear, that it always has. I confess that, in this instance, I think fashion and common sense are in accord. We have not the climate for outdoor entertainments so late in the year.’
‘I agree, Letcher. This room is certainly warmer than the Rotunda would be. And we should not see the
ton
, even in season, for they scarcely appear until ten. Such a ridiculous habit, Sophy, do you not think so?’
‘Not more ridiculous than many farces acted in Town,’ answers Edmund, before Sophia can speak. ‘Both in the theatres and out of them.’
The four of them search one another’s faces and, finding no inspiration there, sit down to make the best of it.
39
Betsy-Ann runs through the gardens blubbing, until a pain in her side forces her to slow to a walk. It’s a warning to her – a mercy – she could give him the trick, nothing’d come of it – he’d give nothing, not he – not a smile. To look at her like that! – cast his lot with his autem mort – with his ma – he’d as soon set her up as, as ―
O, to be a man!
How she’d mill him! Punch out his lights!
She can hardly breathe for crying but she hurries on as best she can, wiping her face against her sleeve. Then, as the crying fit spends itself, a voice starts up within her, whining and pleading:
Sure he’s sorry for it now. What could he do, but go to her?
Where does it come from, this feeble voice? It’s as if some gentry-mort, all meekness, stands wringing her pitiful hands:
O,
she whimpers,
be kind! Never stoop to revenge! O, he loves you best! He suffers as you do!
She knows it now: it’s the voice of one Betsy Nobody (since she was never known, even amongst the sisterhood, as Betsy Hartry), bilked of her Spanish trick, not a gown or a greyhound to show for her pains. But Betsy-Ann Blore, termagant sister of Harry Blore, rounds on her, whip in hand, and with a stamp of her foot she drives away the simpering bitch:
Madam, he’s known for it.
She turns out of the park entrance and into the thoroughfare, around another corner and into the street where he lives. The house is halfway up, on the right. Betsy-Ann goes straight up the steps and yanks on the bell rope.
A maid, fair, plump and pert, stands gawping at her.
‘Here,’ gasps Betsy-Ann. She feels for her right earring, tears it off and flings it over the creature’s shoulder into the darkness of the hallway. ‘And here ―’ The other earring skitters away along the polished floor. She kicks off her satin shoes, put on fresh this morning in a spirit of holiday but soiled now with the earth of the gardens, and sends them after the earrings.
The maid screams, ‘Fan! Quick!’ but, perhaps hoping more baubles will fly her way, doesn’t close the door.
‘Know me?’ Betsy-Ann pants. ‘Your master’s whore, that’s who I am, and these are his gifts.’
‘My master ―?’ Behind the maid, in the deep shadow of the hallway, Betsy-Ann can make out two gleaming dots that swim in the air, and below them a peculiar shape like a knot of linen. ‘Is it Mr Zedland you mean? Am I to give them to him?’
‘To
Mrs
Zedland. From her husband’s whore.’
The dots vanish and return, like eyes blinking. They
are
eyes, she realises: the great dark ogles of the blackbird. He’s got up like a mourner and standing well back, only now becoming visible as her sight adjusts to the dim light inside. What she took for linen is just that, tied under his chin.
The blonde is seized by giggles. ‘La! Madam! I can’t use such language to Mrs Zedland!’
‘What words you will, sweetheart, only be sure to say it.’
There is a sound of heels striking on floorboards: another maid. A pale gown and apron surge forward into the light. The girl inside them elbows first the boy, then the first maid aside. She stands framed in the doorway an instant, her coral-coloured mouth fallen open, before wordlessly slamming the door.
Betsy-Ann stands there on her exposed feet, the cold of the pavement striking up through her heels. A faint tittering leaks from within the house and a glance at the window to her left shows her both maids peering out from between the shutters. She’s fumbled it. She should have said nothing about whoring, only
Take all this to your mistress
, so the autem mort would be sure to see them.
She’ll see them anyway. Let’s see what Mister Edmund Zedland can find to say about the earrings. If those sly bitches don’t pocket them.
She walks away from the house, her stupid head held high. Now she’s done it. She’ll have to walk the rest of the way to Sam’s ken with only thread stockings between her flesh and the pavement: nothing for it but to make herself as hard as the paving stones. Her feet will be cut, what of that? All the more excuse to lie down and rest, but not yet: for the time being keep moving, keep moving.
After three roads, her toes that were cold are warm. After five they are stinging. Another road. Halfway now. Her skin feels as if it’s being scraped off inch by inch; more and more often she has to stop, but when she does, she can’t rub her torn feet because of the filth sticking to them. Such tender soles. Time was, she could walk over rocks and snow. She didn’t know what it was to have a shoe on her foot.
This is nothing. Soon be there. Another road. The ken is waiting with a hot fire – only think of that, girl, coal in the grate – and a bowl of water to bathe her blisters.
Standing waiting at a crossroads, she feels something touching the ends of her toes. Stained with mud and blood, her stockings seem part of the street dirt, but she can make out something else there: a clot of fur, shit-coloured, run over so many times that the meat of the animal is long gone, the bones ground under the wheels of carriages. Only this scrap of pelt remains, so tattered that she can’t tell whether it was once a dog or a cat. She nearly trod in its soft uncleanness. Were she wearing shoes, she would have done so, and gone on regardless. As it is, she steps round the horrible pitiful thing, not liking to touch it, and as she does so the tears start up again.
*
Shiner’s at home, hugging the fire. There he was all the time, sitting behind the golden windows of domestic happiness, but somehow she left him out of the cheery picture, thinking only of her bowl of warm water. He looks up as she enters and she sees he’s mending his stinking coat.
‘I’ll do that for you,’ says Betsy-Ann.
He lets the coat slide off his knee onto the floor. He’s staring at her: at her face and neck, at her stockings stained brown and red and grey.
‘What the Deuce ― ?’ He stops, noticing her knotting-bag. She should’ve thrown it away. ‘Where are your shoes?’
Her soles feel as if they have stones embedded in them. Possibly they have. With a groan that she couldn’t hold back to save her life, she hobbles to a chair. He comes over to her, kneels and cups one of her heels in each hand, raising them to peer underneath.
‘Christ, Betsy, you’re flayed! Where are your ―’
‘Nabbed.’
Shiner lays down her feet on the boards, causing her to wince. ‘Did he chivvy you?’
‘Eh?’
‘There’s blood ―’ He puts up a hand to lift her hair, and grimaces. ‘Your ears are slit.’
Betsy-Ann looks longingly at the fire, where a kettle is warming. ‘Put me some of that water in a bowl, will you?’
He leaves his questioning for the moment so he can stand nurse to her, first wiping her swollen eyes, then sponging the blood off her earlobes. Betsy-Ann paddles her feet in the bowl, waiting for the remains of the stockings to soak off.
‘He never took your bag.’
She was waiting for that. ‘I fell on top of it.’
‘Easy put off, wasn’t he?’
‘Someone was coming.’
He pushes up her gown to unroll her stockings. ‘Everything you lost,’ says Shiner, ‘you got from Hartry.’
He’s a noticing sort of man when sober. Betsy-Ann bites her lip.
‘Why’d you sport
his
things, when you’ve duds and trinkets I bought you?’