Infernal Revolutions (28 page)

‘Go on, tell him!'

‘Yes, that would be nice, Mr…'

‘Oh, Oysterman. Mr Harry Oysterman.'

‘Sophie!' exclaimed one of the Wives in horror. ‘I promised Mr Placquet that you would not stray from this stall all day. If you disobey, we will break you on the wagon wheel like we did last year.'

The scowl returned, and was directed sideways at her overseer.

‘Don't you think you've broken me enough already?'

‘We can't have done, if you can still answer us back like that.'

I listened fascinated to these exchanges, wondering what I'd let myself in for.

‘Now get on with your work, and you, Mr Oysterman, go away and leave her in peace. She is too fragile for what you have in mind to do with her. Go and find someone your own size.'

She leaned forward as if to headbutt me, but she was merely smelling my breath.

‘Alcohol, I thought so. Fired up. Any girl – even Sophie – looks good after a few drinks, isn't that it? Or are you asking Sophie out for a dare with your friend here. For a lark. To break a poor girl's heart.'

I frowned at her poetic facility, and was envious.

‘He will only abandon you once he's had his drunken way, my dear; then Mr Placquet will not have you back. Besides, what about Verne's feelings, or haven't you considered anyone but yourself, you wicked girl?'

My hands gripped the table, on the verge of upending it. A counterattack was called for.

‘If I was drunk, and wanted to amuse my friend, Madam, I would have asked you to the dance, you ugly old blower. In fact, I would much rather dance a jig with an ordure-besmeared pig than you. But as I am both sober and serious, my choice, out of all the girls in Hackensack, is Sophie here. She is beautiful, and my intentions towards her are entirely honourable.'

‘Nice work, Harry,' whispered Dick, as I ducked to avoid an incoming swing of the Wife's open hand. ‘But ask her who Verne is'

The whisper was not quite low enough, for Sophie overheard.

‘Mr Placquet's son. I'm the family toy for him to play with when he tires of the farm girls. He was supposed to be here today, but he's laid up in bed with the flux, or – as ‘tis otherwise known – Recruiting Tent Fever.'

‘Sophie. Do not be so free and familiar with strangers. Do not tell them family business.'

‘Well, ‘tis true. He's a coward, like all men who hit women.'

Having refrained from hitting the Fat Wife, and already far beyond the Recruiting Tent stage, I felt good about this remark. Without any effort, I was slotting very snugly into all of Sophie's definitions of manhood. Feeling sure that Verne was a failure in the poetry department too, I gained confidence to push the matter.

‘I see that I am causing you grief by staying here, Madam,' I said, above the impatient cries for cordial around me, ‘Shall I return at seven o'clock, to give you time to think, and to see how the land lies then?'

‘No,' said the Fat One.

‘Yes,' said Sophie. ‘Please do…and Harry…'

She laid an electrifying hand on mine. Not a finger missing. A lovely hand, if wet and sticky with cordial.

‘You're not doing this for a lark, are you? Otherwise I might as well stay with Verne.'

Somewhat taken aback by the intensity of her feelings, I nevertheless reassured her I was not.

She smiled sweetly, and gave me a saucy wink.

‘Seven o'clock it is, then, Mr Oysterman. Don't be late.'

The few onlookers who were still interested in this modern-day version of the Balcony Scene clapped, and then dabbed their eyes with their handkerchiefs.

‘You certainly picked a right one there,' said Dick, as we pushed our way to a less crowded area of the common. He began to list the faults on his fingers. ‘One, she has a squint. Two, she's lame. Three, she has a Patriot lover who beats her up. Four, she's old – twenty-five at least, I'd say, and therefore desperate. Five, the Patriot lover has probably given her the pox or the dripper, which may account for her bad leg and his lying in bed. And Six, she could be a revolutionary plant, there to trap roaming sex-starved spies…though, thinking about it, I suppose they'd have chosen someone better looking for that purpose. If you want my advice, I say regard that as a successful practice, and let's try again with some real girls. If still no joy then come with me for a whore.'

‘I prefer to call it a strabismus,' I said dreamily.

‘What?'

‘'Tis only slight, her squint, and makes her look lovely.'

‘Pfah, I've seen prettier turnips.'

‘Is Dickie a little jealous?'

‘
Dickie
's a little disappointed, certainly – you can do better than that, if not in this town. I mean, how can you drool over Eloise one day and fall for Sophie or whatever her name is the next? No man has beauty parameters that wide. Besides, I don't like to see a novice under my tutelage end up with a girl like that. ‘Twill give me a bad name.'

‘Eloise only possessed conventional beauty. Sophie is unique, and beautiful only to the true connoisseur.'

Dick sighed.

‘You're just flattered that a girl, any girl, has taken an interest in you, after all the disappointments of the afternoon.'

‘Of course I am. But there's more to it than that, Dick. Could not you feel the electricity between us?'

‘No,' said Dick.

‘Well I could, and I will return in an hour no matter what you say. You had your fun at De Witt's, now let me have mine.'

‘You confuse love with desperation, Harry. ‘Tis a great mistake.'

I opened my mouth to remonstrate again, but Dick had not finished.

‘But never let it be said that Dick Lickley stands between a soldier and his moll. I'm not your mother after all. If you really want her, go ahead – ‘tis none of my business. Consider the matter dropped. Good luck, I think you'll need it.'

‘Thank you, Dick. Magnanimity indeed. Now, I suppose you want me to help you get a girl. Then we can make up a foursome at the dance tonight.'

‘Wouldn't that be like the blind leading the sighted?'

‘Fie, Dick. I offer to pay you back for the assistance you've given me, and you throw it back in my face. If I wasn't in such a damned fine mood I should be very put out at your continuing derogation of my tastes and abilities. After all, aren't we booksellers, my Bully?…' I gave him a one-armed hug around his shoulders, very uncharacteristic, ‘…aren't we brothers-in-arms? Won't we remember these times even unto the ending of the world, or however that speech goes?'

‘You might,' said Dick, not taking to this hearty camaraderie at all, and uncoiling my arm from his neck as though it were a snake. ‘But I doubt if I will. As far as I'm concerned, I'm still waiting for something to happen that doesn't happen in Walthamstow every day of the week.'

‘Tch – you're a jaded dog, Dick. But to me, you see, this life of open-air adventure is still new, and therefore full of surprises. The regular rhythms of both my life and my poetry have gone to wrack and ruin, and for the first time I'm forced to stare what is termed Real Life full in the face. One minute I feel like committing suicide, the next minute I feel like jumping on the moon. Perhaps a stint as the Bard of Brighthelmstone would do you the world of good. ‘Tis all a matter of change being as good as a rest.'

‘I want many things, Harry, but that is not one of them, I can assure you.' He looked around at the green, and adjusted his neckerchief. ‘Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to find myself a whore.' Eager to see how it was done, in case Sophie reneged on her promise, I began to follow him, but he pushed me away. ‘Alone.'

I pretended to be hurt at this, but secretly I was glad to be free of the surly dog: it meant I could spend the next hour indulging myself in romantic reverie. I was already walking away from Dick when he added: ‘Whatever you do, Harry, remember you are a spy. Because not only will they hang you if they found out, they will come looking for me too.'

I assured him I would do, and we parted. With Dick gone, my first instinct was to return to the scene of my success and stretch out on a grassy knoll or sturdy bough, there to spend my time contemplating the divine woman who was to be, I felt sure, my Companion Through Eternity. But, like a bridegroom before his wedding, I feared ill-luck would attend us if I saw her again before the appointed time. I also feared, of course, seeing her in animated conversation with another scowling suitor, lovers like problems coming together in clumps. I decided therefore to leave well alone until the appointed time, but I confess I did not know where else to while away the idle hour. Then, just as my loitering was starting to attract the attention of the suspicious, I was spotted by my new Militia friends, and dragged laughing to one of the entertainments.

‘What do I do here, then?' I said, as a musket was thrust into my hand.

‘See that turkey in the tree up yonder?' said Saul Pipe. ‘Shoot it.'

‘What, dead?' I said, horrified.

‘You can wound it if you want, but that would probably be worse,' said Half-Cock Henderson, ‘They can make a terrible squawking sound if you don't kill ‘em clean. Upsets everyone.'

Having no intention of killing anything, but unable to get out of my social duties, I shook some powder into the firing pan, rammed home the cartridge, lifted the musket high, and aimed into a completely different tree from that occupied by the poor turkey. I fired quickly and casually, waited for the smoke to clear, then handed the musket back to Saul Pipe, feigning disappointment. I was just about to walk away when there was a rustle in the tree I had aimed at. Moments later out dropped three dead turkeys, one after the other in quick succession. I could not believe it.

A huge cheer went up, followed shortly afterwards by the continued chanting of my name. The turkeys were brought to me, but I insisted they were given to the poor of the town, an act which only shot my esteem higher into the empyrean. Feigning happiness, and promising I would meet the boys again later, I wandered off deeply depressed at the slaughter I had committed. I hoped that this was not a bad augury for my meeting with Sophie.

To ensure that it was not, and to expiate my sins, I headed straight for the church, where I found a pew and prayed desperately for the souls of the dead turkeys.

Within ten minutes all my guilt was gone, and within eleven I was lusting over the usual scenes of earthly glory, involving literary success, financial success, military success and of course – the lynchpin – sexual success. So stirring were my thoughts on this latter topic that my pious demeanour was hard to maintain, and I fear I slipped on several occasions into expressions of bright-eyed, open-mouthed ecstasy, which – had anyone been watching – I supposed could have been mistaken for religious frenzy. Moving on, a natural derivation, I saw clearly the War Won, with Myself being hoisted cheering onto General Howe's shoulders and Myself throwing oranges at the manacled George Washington. I saw ‘Gentleman' Johnny Burgoyne's face green with envy as my plays became the toast of the English-speaking world. I saw Sophie ecstatic with pride at my achievements. I saw little Sophettes hobbling across the floor of our nursery. I saw Amanda Philpott, Vickie Tremblett, Eloise De Witt and The Bitches Of Hackensack all squalling the words ‘He could have been mine!', and contemplating suicide. I saw our fine house, donated to us by a grateful King George, set in gardens designed by the fawning Capability Brown. I saw pictures of Sophie and I painted by Mr Gainsborough. I felt Burnley patting me on the back and congratulating me for being a man. ‘Twas all Me, Me, Me, and I knew it was wrong – doubly so sitting in a church – but I found it easier to indulge my fantasies to the point of sickness and have done with them, rather than keep my thoughts and emotions well regulated. After all, I now had a Lover – the first of my life – and surely Jesus understood how hard it was for me to keep a lid on my excitement.

I was still at it when someone grabbed me roughly by the shoulder. Turning round in a daze I saw it was Dick, a gnarled look of frustration on his face.

‘Can't find a whore, mate, so I'm off. What are you doing, staying here or coming with me?'

‘Staying here, of course.'

‘I thought so. Then let us go outside and discuss our plans.'

Readjusting to reality was a difficult and tiresome business, but I followed Dick outside and simply agreed with his plan to meet back in New York by mid-November – the date, possibly random, set by Pubescent Pete for our return – unless destiny intervened in the meantime. Then I took a good long look at the dog as he walked away to retrieve his horse from the
Ax and Plow
.
Spy
, to my mind, was written all over him, and I felt a pang of concern for his immediate prospects – a bookseller with no knowledge of books, whose bullets were suspiciously hollow, and whose private papers reeked of treachery. But if he expected me to run after him in a belated show of fraternity and tears, then he was badly mistaken; my mind was too full of love to succumb to any such emotional brinksmanship. After all, I reassured myself as Dick vanished behind thickening clouds of Hackensackers, I was not umbilically attached to him. I was a man in my own right – proud, lusty, and suddenly damnably dependent on the fidelity of a crippled Rebel girl. As hurriedly as I could for a distinguished bookseller, I made my way back across the common to the cordial stall, to see if Sophie in a different light and a different mood was still the girl for me. If I found her crabby after a hard day's work, like Eloise with the painters in, or kissing lasciviously with the loathsome Verne Placquet – Lazarus now that the Recruiting Men had packed away – I would be up on my horse and galloping after Dick in an instant.

I found, however, nothing at all; no, not even an abandoned wooden leg. I stood in the very spot where I could have sworn the stall had been and scratched my head in puzzlement. Other stalls were still standing and doing business, but nothing was left of the cordial stall except a large patch of crushed brown grass. ‘Twas as though a very strong and very selective gust of wind had blown the business clean away. This notion igniting my poetic fancy, I looked to the sky for signs of angelic interference, but it was just as blue and rational as always. I was about to run after Dick when someone spoke.

‘Looking for something, soldier?' came a breathless female voice behind me.

‘Yes,' I said distractedly, not bothering to look round at what I assumed to be an asthmatic whore. ‘But ‘tis nothing you can help me with.'

Then I realized my bluff had been called, and turned to look in terror at the girl sagacious enough to know that I was indeed a soldier. Expecting to see someone flanked by Hackensack Militia boys, muskets levelled, it was with wonderful relief that I saw Sophie instead, alone and leaning on a stick. It was obvious now that the
soldier
appellation had just been a term of endearment, for she had a great big toothy grin on her face, and her eyes reflected relief back at me. Indeed, she looked so captivating standing there smiling and panting, that I wanted to hug her with joy, whether she knew my true identity or not. Instead, however, I extended my hand, and she shook it politely.

‘Well,' I said, suddenly shy and awkward. ‘We meet again, Madam.'

‘We do, Sir,' wheezed Sophie, before succumbing to the rackings of a nasty cough.

‘You've been running,' I said, when she'd finished.

‘Well, walking very fast; I can't really run because of my foot.'

‘Oh, is there something wrong with it? I hadn't noticed.'

‘Yes, it got caught in a gintrap when I was a child. The bones didn't set properly – you know what sawbones in New Jersey are like – so ‘tis a mangled mess now. More like a pig's trotter than a foot.'

‘I like pig's trotters.'

‘You'd soon spit this one out,' she retorted, sharp as an arrow. There was no coyness about this girl. ‘Anyway, enough of my foot. I've been waiting for you at the cockfighting stall.' She pointed, and waved wildly at a bonneted girl behind a distant trestle table, who waved back. ‘That's Nancy, she's another indentured servant like me. She bet me a turkey leg that you wouldn't come. Silly cow.'

‘But where have the Wives Of The Revolution got to?'

‘Back home to their Revolting Husbands. Ran out of juice about an hour ago; but if ‘tis my opinion you seek, they ran out of juice years ago, in another sense.'

‘From what I saw of them earlier, it can't have been easy obtaining permission to stay behind.'

‘'Twas impossible!' Sophie exclaimed, rolling her big blue eyes in exasperation at the very memory. ‘They wouldn't listen to my arguments, and I wouldn't listen to theirs. They tried to tie me to a wagon wheel, but I was having none of that. I may have no rights and no money, but I'm not a nigger. In the end I told them I would stay the night with Nancy, whether you returned or not. And I will, unless better offers come in.' She stared up at me with ardent eyes, as if expecting one immediately.

‘I have nowhere to stay at all,' I said, starting to tremble. ‘Everywhere around here is full. My colleague has already gone on to the next village in search of accommodation.'

‘What made you stay behind then?'

‘You.'

We both blushed, and turned coy.

‘Well, that does make things interesting,' was all she had to say about this.

‘Won't you get into trouble with your master if you stay out all night?'

‘Oh, he'll take me back. He couldn't find a nigger as cheap as me. He'll hit me a few times and make empty threats to kill me, but that's all. His bark is worse than his bite.'

‘So how did you escape the wagon wheel threat?' I asked, astonished at all this.

‘A couple of Quakers came to my rescue. They're the only decent people around these parts, present company
perhaps
excepted, of course.'

‘Don't I look decent?' I said facetiously, warming once more to the raillery of romance.

Sophie scrutinized my face for evidence of decency.

‘No, you just look
odd
. But decent is as decent does, and I must give you full marks for returning when you said you would.' She looked back at Nancy, now busy with a late customer. ‘It shut her up, at any rate.' Then she continued to weigh me up, but it was obvious from the frown on her face that she could not quite place me, ‘Perhaps you're a Quaker?'

‘No, I'm not a Quaker.'

‘No, I didn't think you were. Yet you can't be a soldier – your hands are too white and your eyes are too full of inner doubt.' Sophie pondered on, then came up with an idea. ‘Well, you are not from these parts, so perhaps you are a travelling clerk of some kind, an aide-de-camp or adjutant to some Revolutionary general, with a great future before him and a seat on a Revolutionary Council only months away.'

The relish with which Sophie expressed this hope was quite disheartening. My vanity was crushed, and my hitherto high opinions of Sophie were somewhat shaken. A committee man indeed! Me – a man of stirring action, who had already weathered more setbacks than Job. But I could not tell her yet what my real history was.

‘I am, Madam,' I announced stiffly, ‘a poet and a bookseller.'

‘Lord,' said Sophie, ‘You
are
odd!' And then, with astonishing presumption, she took hold of my hand and led me away to her secret lair, which turned out to be a wooden bench beneath a Liberty Tree. ‘Come on, sweetie,' she said, as I cast despairing looks over my shoulder in Dick's direction. ‘I want to know all about you.'

The
sweetie
appellation immediately transported me back to Amanda Philpott's garden, but this time the word held only excited fears for me. Seated together in stimulating proximity, I inhaled her blackcurranty fragrance and proceeded to feed her the same story I'd fed the tavern patriots. I felt bad about this, but there was little else I could divulge to a girl clearly keen on British removal from the colonies. She was impressed with the lies, however, and asked if I could obtain for her a cheap copy of
Dolly Potter's New Continental Cookery
. I said I would see what I could do. Then she went into rhapsodies about New York and Philadelphia, and sighed that she'd always wanted to live in those places.

‘Philadelphia especially,' she swooned. ‘All those lights, all those paved streets.'

‘Well,' I said, puzzled at the lowliness of such enthusiasms, ‘come with me and you will see them.'

She looked at me narrow-eyed.

‘I swoon, Sir, at your offer. But I do not know you yet. If I come with you tonight, what is the betting that you will have your fun with me, get me pregnant and then dump me. Most men would.'

I was about to protest that I was not most men when she was off on another tack.

‘Besides, ‘tis only a matter of waiting here for the excitement to come to me. The British are coming, you know…' She mimed with her walking stick the firing off of a musket, ‘…and I want to bag my share.'

‘Do you hate the British that much?'

‘Why do you ask that?' she said suspiciously. ‘You're not a Tory are you?'

‘No, I'm….'

‘Good, I can't stand a Tory. Or, even worse, a Tory pretending to be a Whig, like most people around these parts. The British are
monsters
, and that is all there is to it.'

‘Well, I'm sure….'

‘What religion are you?' Sophie demanded next, catching me completely off guard.

‘Religion? Well, er….I don't know. I have never thought about it much.'

‘Think about it now.'

I tried to cast my mind back to my
Twinkle
musings, but I was as confused now as I was then. I improvised an answer as truthfully as I could.

‘Er…well…er…I am not a regular churchgoer, but I believe in a Creator and Providence….so what does that make me?'

Sophie pondered, sifting through various creeds in her head.

‘I think perhaps you're a Deist, with a little Fideism on the side.'

I glowed with pride, having never considered myself such an important person before.

‘A man should know what his beliefs are,' she added, swinging her legs beneath the bench and gazing out at the passing crowd. ‘They give him a bit of anchorage in the world.'

‘So,' I said, glad that the interrogation appeared to be over, ‘that is me in the proverbial nutshell. What is your story?'

‘My full name,' she announced grandly, ‘is Sophie B. Mecklenburg.'

‘That's a big name for a little girl.'

‘Don't patronize me, Sir. I get enough of that at home.'

‘Mecklenburg, Mecklenburg…' I pondered, chastened, ‘…that sounds familiar. Isn't it the family name of our Queen?'

‘
Our
Queen?
Our
Queen?'

Sophie's eyes blazed.

‘
We
don't have a Queen any more. I'd have thought a Patriot bookseller, whose business and livelihood has been ruined by the British locusts, would know that better than anyone.'

‘Of course,' I muttered humbly. ‘But old habits die hard. The Queen of England, I meant. Farmer George's wife.'

‘I don't know and I don't care,' snapped Sophie, as if she both knew and cared. ‘'Tis an honourable old name from the Palatine region of Germany, and I like it. Or did, until you made that reference. I wasn't named after her, you know; she was named after me!'

‘Yes, I'm sure,' I soothed, careful to keep patronization out of my voice. ‘'Tis a lovely name. And the B? What does that stand for?'

‘Belinda,' said Sophie, after some hesitation. ‘Though I used to think it stood for Bastard, because that's what I am, you know, a bastard.'

Had Sophie said this in a Brighthelmstone salon, there would have been a crash of falling gentility, but out here under a Liberty Tree it seemed the most natural revelation in the world. At this rate I'd know everything about her in half-an-hour, and still have time to join Dick for supper.

‘Literally or figuratively?'

‘Certainly literally. And figuratively too, some of my friends say. Though you wouldn't think that by looking at me, would you? Sweet girl like me, and all that.'

‘Have you never met your father, then?'

‘Oh yes, I meet him every day. He's my master, Mr Placquet. He denies it, of course, but I'm sure ‘tis him. I've got his nose, you know.' She rubbed the feature alluded to, and sighed. ‘Yes, my mother was a maid in his service. Her husband died from the Bloody Flux on the voyage over from Germany. She died of smallpox a year after having me. Smallpox or shame anyway. Who knows, except my mother? This is her, look…'

She opened up a locket hanging from her neck, and after I'd finished peering deep into Sophie's cleavage, I looked in. It was another Eloisian-type miniature of nobody in particular, with curls on top. I expressed my unconditional approval.

‘The locket's definitely from Germany anyway – see, engraved on the side, KARLMEISTER, DRESDEN – so it might be a genuine family heirloom.' We stared at it for a few moments before Sophie snapped it shut without sentimentality. ‘But I'm keeping it, heirloom or not. Only piece of jewellery I have – ‘tis my dowry.'

The word
dowry
lingered in the air between us, vibrating with a life of its own.

‘Anyway,' went on Sophie, ‘now Mr Placquet's son Verne is trying to do the same with me. It could go on till eternity unless someone breaks the chain by giving birth to a baby boy.'

‘And what sort of work do you do for your master?'

‘Oh, everything. I spin and weave. I clean pewter. I set dye. I make candles. I cook and wash. I milk cows. I'm a domestic drudge, in short. He gets his money's-worth out of me, and no mistake. He makes my blood seethe, just like those vermin there…'

Sophie nodded over to the road, and watched with interest as a refugee wagon rumbled west, all its pots and pans and furniture rattling. When it was as near as it would get, she cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled ‘COWARDS!!' at the top of her voice. ‘STAY AND FIGHT LIKE THE REST OF US!' she added, her torso tilting forward with the effort of the call.

There was no response from anyone in the wagon, which did indeed have a curiously furtive look about it. ‘Wonder there's not a slime trail coming from that,' Sophie remarked conversationally as she sat back on the bench. ‘I would spit on them if I was not such a little lady.'

‘Belinda's a fine name though,' I said, a sudden thought making me return to the matter in hand. ‘In fact Belinda is a wonderful name – ‘tis the name of the heroine in my favourite Pope poem,
The Rape Of The Lock
.'

‘Well, you're not raping me, sweetie, no matter how many books you've read. Anyway, Belinda's only my middle name, and I prefer B to Belinda. Write a poem about a Sophie if you want to woo me – and I assume you do or you wouldn't have come back, would you?'

‘No,' I said, ‘and I
will
write a poem about a Sophie.'

‘It has to be original, though. ‘Tis not the same having a poem dedicated to you at second-hand. I get hand-me-down clothes; I don't want hand-me-down poems. The problem is – you being so clever and me being so stupid – you might already know a poem about some Sophie or other, and palm
that
off onto me. I'd never know the difference, would I? That's what Verne would do if he knew how to write.'

I was already jealous of the illiterate, cowardly, but no doubt vigorously handsome Verne.