Fair Fight (32 page)

I took my hand back, but kept its fist.

‘Now mind you throw it straight,’ she said, ‘from the shoulder.’

I nodded.

‘Do you know what I mean by that?’

‘I am not sure.’

‘Would you like to know? You can go on drawing, if you’d prefer. It don’t signify.’

‘I should like to know,’ I said.

I noted with a kind of satisfaction the sheer brazen cheek of her, giving me permission to go on drawing. I could not imagine what Granville would think, or Mrs Bell, or anyone at all. She was so far beyond the bounds of convention as to be almost other-worldly. I might do anything, I might take off all my clothes and run about screaming and scarred and Mrs Webber would not blink at it. Suddenly I was seized with a wish to test it.

‘Dumb-glutton scut,’ I said out loud. It was the closest I could come to running about unclothed.

She had begun to move but now she stopped and looked at me strangely.

‘Do you call me that?’

‘No. I only say it because I can.’

She laughed. ‘Cursing for its own sake? You’re not anything like I fancied a lady would be.’

‘I only thought I might be able to say those words here. I thought you would not mind it.’

‘And so I don’t. Come on then, and I’ll show you how to throw a straight fib.’

‘Do you know what the words mean?’ I stood to follow her.

‘Don’t you?’

‘No. I am not sure. I think they must be something very bad. Will you tell me?’

We were walking toward the scullery. The back door was open and through it I could see the leather man, hanging from his frame. She did not stop when she replied.

‘If you can throw a good fib I’ll curse at you till the air’s blue and teach you all the meanings besides. You’re to work for it.’

I found myself laughing aloud. The light in the yard was very bright but the hedge was high and there was no one around to see us.

She had me strap her own leather mufflers to my wrists. First she made me show her the fist I would make and pressed upon my fingers until she was satisfied. Then she held them out and I pushed my hands inside. I had expected them to be warm but they were chilled and slightly damp. I could not help but think of all the sweat and blood that must have soaked the cloth that lined the leather. They smelt like an old, well-worn saddle. My arms immediately wanted to drop with the weight of them.

She laughed to see me.

‘My stars, don’t that look a treat. You with them frills and mufflers on your hands.’

I could not stop gazing at my own arms; my sleeve ending at the elbow with a fine lace trim, my white, pox-speckled arms, painted with Pear’s Almond Bloom. She was right; the brown leather mufflers looked absurd, like a fawn with the hooves of a cart-horse.

‘Here,’ she said, and without asking whether she might, she picked up my kid gloves from where she had laid them on the window sill and pulled them over her own, large-knuckled hands.

‘Now we’re both wrong-handed.’ She held her hands up.

I laughed to see it. The gloves were so very neat and strained at the wrist. The buttons would not meet. Her arms were brown and her apron coarse and spotted.

She pulled them off quickly enough, saying, ‘Ain’t they little? I’ll say they are.’

She said I need not pin my skirts up just yet, since she only meant to have me stand and hit. Then she stood me in front of the leather man.

Suddenly it was as though I saw how foolish I must appear. I could not hit the leather man. Even lifting the mufflers made my arms ache. I felt as though I might run away, or perhaps weep.

‘Come on,’ she said.

I only stood, feeling more ridiculous than before.

‘Give him a blow, he’s called you a dumb-glutton.’

‘Has he?’ I smiled but I could feel my eyes grow wet.

‘Have at him, come on.’

I hit him.

‘Not like that, fib him like you mean it. Take him down. Say he’s a lover has jilted you. Say he’s your friend, that’s bilked you. Hit him!’

‘I don’t know that I can.’

‘You can, you can. Say he’s told foul stories about your husband.’

‘I should not care.’

‘Say he is your husband, then!’

But I could not rise, just then, to rage against Granville. ‘Perhaps he is my brother,’ I said, instead.

‘He is, he’s your brother. Look at him, he’s mocking you.’

I hit him then and she cheered so that I hit him again. Mrs Webber was dancing around me. The sweat ran paint into my eyes and made them sting. I felt my hair come down around my face and still I beat Perry’s pink cheeks until his head rang. I beat him until he caught pox and was scarred.

That night I could not even put my gloves on, my skin had grown so tender. Mrs Webber said I was not to mind it. She said that true fighters pickled their knuckles in brine or liquor, to harden the skin. She said I had better not, being a lady, but would have to be brave if my knuckles stung. I sat in my dressing room and flexed my hand again. Each squeeze of the fingers was a dull, pink ache. I could not sew and so did not know what I might do with myself. At last I called for my supper on a tray and with it, a glass of brandy, and then I dabbed my hand with it. It stung murderously everywhere that the skin was broken.

‘Dumb-glutton,’ I whispered to my hand. I had wondered, once, whether the word might not lose its power once I knew the meaning but instead I savoured it. Dumb-glutton: the private parts of a whore – a scut – the part that is always hungry but cannot speak. I thought of Perry, calling me that name so long ago. I thought that if I hit the leather man well enough I might ask Mrs Webber for a filthy name for a gentleman. I thought of Perry’s face, were I to call him so.

I took up the hem of one of my old gowns to make a boxing costume. I wore my stockings, but even so I felt the strangeness of the breeze. Mrs Webber laughed to see me. The more unladylike I showed myself, the easier she was with me. It drove me on to new measures to please her. I tucked all my hair up underneath a cap. I brought brandy. I even, once, brought a cigar I found in Granville’s library, but I could not like it and even Mrs Webber declared it tasted like straw bonnets and wood chips.

I learnt that I had been standing in the wrong posture, after all; Mrs Webber made me lean at an unnatural angle, to keep my middle from harm’s way. My knees she said I must keep bent, my left leg advanced a little, and both arms directly before my chin. I felt foolish.

‘You look less a fool than if you stand open, for another cull to strike you,’ she said, and bid me practise my posture until I found it as natural as walking.

I practised hard and she began to greet me with something approaching eagerness.

One afternoon, as I prepared to leave, she finally said, ‘I reckon you’ll be ready to learn a bit of science soon. It’s no good throwing a fib if you can’t get shy of someone else’s maulers. And now you’ve that frock, you’ll be able to dance about a bit.’

I nodded. I had been wondering all that time,
How far will she let me go? Will she stop at my hitting a leather man? Will she let me hit her one day? Will she hit me?

I might have just gone on beating the leather man until the day she grew bored of me. I was not sure I would ever have asked to do more, but I could not stop thinking of it. In bed at night I wondered how it would feel to be struck in the face. I found I hungered for it and dreaded it equally.

The next day the doctor called again.

‘I have had word from Mr Dryer asking that I look in on the patient,’ he said. ‘I thought I would give myself the pleasure of your company first.’

Why had I not expected this? Of course Granville would want her progress – our progress – reported upon. I smiled and bid him sit and pulled the bell for service. Thankfully it was Henry who answered my bell. I blessed Lucy for her idleness.

‘Bring us tea and something sweet,’ I said, ‘and then run down to the gatehouse and bid Mrs Webber make herself nice for the doctor.’

Henry’s eyes widened just enough that I thought he understood.

‘Oh, no, Mrs Dryer, I think it better if I come upon her unexpectedly. A more complete picture of how she does,’ the doctor said.

I smiled again. ‘You know best, Doctor, of course. It is only that I wished you to see how obedient she is grown. If I send word by Henry that she is to make herself pleasing you may have it on my honour that you will find her neat and ready to receive visitors just as I have been teaching her. It is the sweetest thing.’

This was enormously risky, for of course I had taught her nothing. Even if Henry were to give her the message as I meant him to, she still did not know how to be sweet. But she must be forewarned. He could not come upon her if she was working the leather man, her hair sticking to her sweating face, cursing under her breath.

The doctor rubbed his chin. Henry bobbed slightly on the balls of his feet as if he were about to run. I kept my smile.

At last the doctor said, ‘Yes, perhaps you are right. You have made her obedient, you say, Mrs Dryer?’

‘She is still a little rough, but I believe she progresses well. I do hope you will be pleased,’ I said. ‘You may go, Henry. Have Lucy send up the refreshments. And shall we have wine, Doctor? Or a glass of rum-and-water?’

‘Yes, perhaps a strengthener would be wise at this time of day, Mrs Dryer.’

‘Of course. See to it, Henry.’

The doctor did not return to see me after he visited the gatehouse and I could not be sure how long he was there. I sat in my window and looked for Henry but I did not see him. At last, though I knew that it would only fuel the servants’ talk, I rang for Lucy and bid her send Henry to me. He arrived looking perfectly cheerful.

‘I helped her tidy up a bit. She changed her dress and agreed to curtsey and call the doctor “sir”. Wasn’t much else I could do, madam.’

‘She agreed to call him sir! I am amazed and, if she did it, I am relieved indeed.’

‘I told her to do it for your sake, so that you’d not have trouble from Mr Dryer. I knew she’d have to if I told her that.’

‘Did you? Does she like me, then?’

‘I should say she does, madam. She said she hasn’t had you spar with her yet. She said she can’t let you go before she’s felt a real lady’s hand hit her chops.’

I know my face showed my shock because Henry looked anxious and said, ‘Please, Mrs Dryer, I’ll never breathe a word. I’ve known of it a good while and I’ve never let slip to anyone.’

I could only nod, so breathless did I feel.

I brought it up, stammering over my words, the moment I was through the gatehouse door.

‘He’s a good boy, though, Henry,’ she said. ‘He’s got a good hit on him, as well. I’ve been teaching him a bit in the mornings and we sit together, sometimes, and look at the pictures in the papers you bring me.’

‘My goodness,’ was all I could say. ‘I did not know.’

‘You’ll have to look about you more, won’t you? Else you won’t know what’s coming at you. We’ll begin today with that.’

19

T
he air on my legs had begun to be familiar but I was acutely aware of it now. I felt aware of everything; not only Mrs Webber standing before me, the leather man visible over her left shoulder, but the curls escaping my cap and tickling my forehead, the packed earth beneath my half-boots, the wall of the gatehouse a little distance behind me, the sunlight bright against my eyes.

‘Now, Mrs Dryer, what disadvantage have I put you to?’ she said.

‘You know everything and I, nothing. The advantage is all yours.’

She waved a hand. ‘You’ve the sun in your eyes. You put yourself there, all lit up and half blind. Come, move about. Let’s both stand sideways to the sun. Now,’ she scuffed two parallel lines across the yard with the toe of her boot, ‘let this be scratch. Stand ready, put your fives up.’

I did so, but not to her liking, for she stepped forward and, taking my wrists, moved them into a position she thought better.

‘Now you fib me,’ she said, ‘just as you would the dummy.’ In the sunlight her eyes were lit the golden brown of a cat’s.

‘I cannot.’

‘You’d better, or I’ll fib you.’

I threw my fist and she hit my arm away with a force that I had not expected. I stumbled and she moved with me. Her own hand she stopped just inches from my cheek.

‘There, you see? You were too slow and left your face open. Now try again, and quicker.’

Again I hit out at her. Again she hit my arm away, in the same spot, so that I felt a dull pain. Again her fist stopped just before it struck me.

‘You ain’t trying! Will you leave your head there for me to fib it? You can’t stand so still. Keep your hand here,’ she grabbed my left wrist, roughly, ‘and cover your face. Now think, Mrs Dryer. I’ve shown you what I’ll do. I’ll not change it, this time. But will you let me?’

‘I do not know! Cannot you show me what to do?’

‘I’m showing you. I’m also bidding you think. Get those tears from your eyes. Don’t you weaken now. Strike me!’

I threw my fist again and again she hit my arm. I should have a bruise there later. As she did, however, I threw my other hand, wildly and with desperation. It struck, not her face, but her wrist, as she moved toward my cheek. It was not a strong hit, being knocked sideways by her own strike upon my arm, but it was enough to prevent her blow from reaching me. She dropped her hands and I dropped mine. She smiled so that all her odd teeth were displayed.

‘There! That’s thinking. Now, I’ll hit you, and you try to stop me.’

And so we went, turn and turn about, until I was quite ragged with exhaustion. Still neither of us had struck a true blow upon the other, I because I could not, and Mrs Webber because she would not. It did not matter; my heart beat with a wild joy that sometimes swooped toward despair. I could not do it, I could not do it, but here, I was doing it! It was harder than I thought, but I was more capable than I had thought myself. Both were true at once. When at last we stopped I was trembling all over with the exertion and the thrill.

Of the doctor’s visit Mrs Webber said only, ‘He just wanted a bit of sweetness. I told him he was every sort of hero. He’s just like any gent I ever met, in that regard.’

‘And you did not mind it?’

‘I never do mind it, if it’s sham. And I thought, if I did it right, he might never come back.’

‘Unless you were too sweet, Mrs Webber.’

‘I didn’t give him any, if you mean that,’ she said. ‘Though he would’ve took it if it was offered. He had the eye on him.’

She flexed her hands, grimacing with satisfaction as the joints cracked. I only stood, looking at my own as though I had never seen them before.

I slept that night without strong drink and without dreams.

We had entirely given up the posing and the drawing. Instead I paid her two shillings daily to strap gloves onto my arms and have me dance about the yard. I began to learn to watch her movements, and what those movements meant. Once she saw that I was watching she began to play tricks on me, twitching her left shoulder so that I thought she would move from that side and then striking from the right. I learnt that it is better to dodge than to block a blow when you are smaller than your opponent. I studied hard and still she avoided my every attempt to strike her. In return she defended herself and stopped her fist as she had that first day, to show me where my own defence should have been. She would not strike me. After a week of this I grew peevish.

‘Are you truly fretting that I won’t fib you?’ she said. ‘If you must fret, let it be because you can’t land a hit.’

‘I wish to know what it feels like! I have never been struck. Even when I was a girl my nurse would not spank me.’

‘I reckon you were a good little girl, who didn’t need spanking.’ Mrs Webber looked at me sideways.

I laughed. ‘I was not! I was punished in other ways.’

‘I was funning with you,’ she said. ‘I know you were bad. No good girl would’ve come here to me begging to be struck about the chops.’

‘Will you, then?’

‘I’ll spar with you in earnest, if you mean it. If I hurt your looks you mustn’t cry over it.’

‘My looks were spoilt long ago.’

‘You’ve all your teeth, which is more than I have.’

I thought of that tooth flying through the air but it was not enough, any longer, to give me pause.

I stood before her with my fists raised. I felt my own eyes narrow.

‘Good,’ she said, seeing this. ‘We ain’t playing now.’

‘We are not,’ I said, and stepped forward.

I hardly knew what happened next. I had scarce begun before my head was driven sideways.
Why, it does not hurt at all
,
I thought.
It was only so surprising, and so powerful. I barely kept my feet. It was like being swept away by a stream.

Mrs Webber had stopped and was regarding me anxiously, her arms dangling by her sides. I put my hand to my cheek and straightened myself. Now I could feel the pain begin, muted and irritating, like a fly droning in my ear.

She opened her mouth to speak but before she could I rushed at her, hitting every part of her that I could reach, all ideas of science and defence gone from my mind, as wild as a hoyden. The sheer surprise of it drove her backward and she stumbled for a moment. Then she began to defend herself, as I was forgetting to do. Later I realised that she could have struck me many times, but she let me whirl about like a windmill and only protected herself. At last she grabbed my wrists and twisted me so that she was behind me and holding me by my arms.

‘Now will you be still, you cat?’

In answer I bucked as hard as I could and felt the back of my head crack painfully against her own. She cursed aloud – ‘Hell!’ – and let me go. I turned to face her, feeling a terrible mixture of anxiety and excitement that I had hurt her in earnest, for I had not meant to strike her with my head at all – I turned, and turned straight into her fist, which struck me squarely on the chin and knocked me to the floor. I crouched in the mud, my hands to my face. My eyes were running with water.

She helped me up and we went slowly inside together, her hand upon my elbow. She put me in a chair and went to make tea while I sat and touched my chin, the tender and marvellous softness of a new-born bruise.

The next day Mrs Webber had me back in gloves and working at the leather man – for she said we would not spar again until my head was healed, ‘Lest it turn you queer; too many knocks on the crown will do that, you know.’

I was thrashing at the leather man and, while each hit seemed to jar the insides of my head, I felt differently now that I had struck a real person and been struck myself in return. Each pain only drove me on to hit, as though it were the leather man that injured me. Mrs Webber stood by and watched.

‘Don’t drop that hand. Bring it back up, cover your face. Good! Now, what’s he imagining you’ll do?’

‘I cannot say. Hit him again?’

‘Yes, and in the same way you’ve been doing, for it’s all you’ve done. Do it again, and now, quick – poke him in the belly. Turn that elbow out. Now if he comes up you’ll fetch him a jab with its point.’

‘I don’t understand.’

Mrs Webber looked over my shoulder. ‘Henry, come and show Mrs Dryer what I mean.’

I span about; I had not known he was there. It was one thing for him to know my secret, but it seemed another to have his eyes upon me while I hit out at the leather man. I felt clumsy and foolish and haughty, all at once. Henry walked over to us and shrugged his coat off.

‘Now, Mrs Dryer, you give him a blow to the guts. Not a real one, mind.’

I did so.

‘More real than that, just don’t hurt him! There. Now, Henry, if that were a real blow, what’d you do?’

‘I’d block a blow like that quick as anything.’

Mrs Webber clipped him about the head. I jumped a little, so unexpected was it, but Henry seemed not at all surprised.

‘I meant you’d fold up,’ she said.

Henry obediently bent over as though winded.

‘Now, Mrs Dryer, instead of bringing your arm back here, bring it round, like this, and when he starts to stand – come up, Henry, slowly, mind – you’re to dart him in the peeper with your funny bone. Like that, good. You’d have his eye ruby, then.’

When we had done and were sitting beside the fire, feeling our chilled skin thaw so fast that we courted chilblains, then Henry told us why he had come.

‘I heard from the coalman, who heard from a fellow in Keynsham, that two ladies are set to fight tomorrow night, in a field at Lansdown.’

‘Ladies?’ I said.

‘Females, then.’ Henry blushed. ‘Will you come?’

‘I should think we will!’ Mrs Webber said.

‘I? How can I go to see ladies – females – fighting in a field?’ I said.

‘How can you not?’ Mrs Webber asked.

‘It would not be proper. People would talk.’

‘I promise you, you shan’t meet your quality folks there. We’ll give you a plain cloak and a scarf about your head and no one will blink at you.’

‘But at night! Where would I say I went? Who will take me? Henry? Mrs Bell already thinks I favour him.’

‘And so you should. He’s the only one of your servants worth ha’penny.’

‘I cannot think of a place I would go, at night, with Henry. They already say that I am queer.’

‘I should think they say you’re lovers, more like.’

‘They do not!’

‘Look you at Henry’s face and tell me they ain’t whispering something like that. What do you care?’

Henry blushed. ‘They don’t say anything so wicked. They do tease me that I’m your particular favourite, madam. They call me a catch-fart, they say I follow so close behind you. I tell them to still their tongues. I say they’re run mad.’

‘I expect that makes it the worse,’ Mrs Webber said.

I could feel my breath begin to come quickly. Mrs Webber softened.

‘You may not credit it,’ she said, ‘but I know what it is to feel your name made dirt. But they – people of all kinds I mean – they’ll say whatever they will to please themselves and you’ll not stop them. But you can stop them from stopping you, Mrs Dryer.’

‘I am not sure,’ I said, ‘I am not sure.’

‘Well, we won’t judge you. Henry and I’ll go and he’ll tell you all he learned.’

‘But already he knows so much more than I do.’

‘Well, he ain’t waiting home so that you can catch him up. Either come along or hold your peace.’

‘I will come,’ I said.

‘Of course you will. Henry’ll help you.’

Henry, it transpired, had thought of something so simple that I could hardly believe that I had not thought of it myself two years before; he fetched Granville’s old one-horse cart out and made it clean. I had seen the servants drive it so often that I had quite forgotten that once it had been a respectable gig. He scrubbed it down and put a blanket over the seat. He told Mr Horton that I had asked that it be made nice and the old man had not blinked at it. Nor did Mrs Bell, when I said that I went to see my brother and that she need not expect me home that night. I could not believe that I had been so much confined when liberty came so easily.

For his part, Henry solved the problem of how he was to join us and gave the servants something to talk about at the same time.

‘I told Mr Horton there’s a kitchen maid I’ve a fancy for, up at Aubyn Hall,’ he said, as we set off. ‘I asked if I might be allowed to drive you, so as to see her. He didn’t want to come out on such a cold night as this in any case, and gave up the reins almost before I finished. Mr Horton hates to play the groom.’

‘And is there? A kitchen maid?’

Henry smiled.

‘There is!’ I said.

‘She don’t like me, I don’t think,’ he said, ‘but I keep hoping, if I’m sweet enough, she might look kindly on me.’

‘She is a fool if she does not,’ I said.

Mrs Webber was waiting outside the gatehouse, carrying a bundle. I leant over and put out my hand. She took it and I felt the full weight of her as she scrambled up. Once safely aboard she thrust the bundle at me by way of greeting.

It was a black homespun cloak, old and smelling somehow of rabbits. There was a scarf, plain wool, in a greyish blue. The scarf smelt as rabbity as the cloak, but they had been bundled up together, so perhaps it only borrowed the scent. I dared not comment upon it, but put them on and raised the hood.

‘There,’ Mrs Webber said, ‘no one will tell you ain’t a common Judy. It’s luck I’d another cloak. I’ve given you the nicest one.’

How glad I was that I had not spoken. I looked at the cloak Mrs Webber wore but the sky was darkening so that I could not make out much of it; perhaps it was thinner, a little more frayed.

Henry started the cart moving. The sunset was turning the sky to autumn shades of gold and bronze. I had never before been so utterly without chaperone. Oh, I had been out with only a servant, but Henry and Mrs Webber were not servants, they were conspirators. I thought,
I am out at dusk, in unsavoury company
, and felt the joy of it bubble in my throat. Henry whistled a tune that caught my rising excitement so exactly that I felt as though he read my thoughts; Mrs Webber was looking upon me with a smile somehow doting and roguish together. I felt absolutely wild.