Wide is the Water (27 page)

‘An outcast? You?' But it made horrible sense.

‘You're seeing it now, aren't you? The Bonds … Having to meet you here … My mother's ill; really ill this time; it's all been too much for her. When she is better, she and I are going down to the country. Once there, I shall put
away my finery.' A loving hand stroked the shimmering silk. ‘I shall learn backgammon and cribbage, take soup to the village sick, and, if I am very lucky, go into a decline and die young, of mere boredom.'

‘Julia! I won't believe it. It can't be true. You, so beautiful, so full of life. With all your admirers. There must be something—'

‘Open another bottle, Hart. It's sad work, this. There must be something, you say. Well – I could beg you to buy me a passage to India. I'd be bound to snap up one of John Company's clerks there before I died of the heat. Or – do you see me as a governess, Cousin?' She smiled at his expression. ‘No need to try. If Dick's court-martialled, no respectable family would have me.'

‘I think I hate England. Julia, you must come back to America with me.' The words filled him with terror as he spoke them.

‘Dear Hart, as what?'

‘As my cousin and dear friend. Our society's not mean-minded like yours—'

‘You'd find me a husband?' Her eyes were huge with tears. She brushed them away impatiently. ‘We're here to talk sense, Hart, not build dream castles. You're a prisoner, in danger of the Tower. It's you we should be thinking about. As for me, I'm past praying for. I'm a proud woman, Hart; there's only one way I'd come to America with you.'

‘Julia!' How could he help taking her hand? ‘If only—' He was ashamed as he said it.

‘Oh, ifs!' She rose gracefully from the table and moved over to tug at the bellpull by the door. ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we part.'

‘Tomorrow! You're really going?'

‘I know now that I must. I've tried so hard to be strong for us both. I don't think I can keep it up much longer.' She turned at a knock on the door. ‘At once, if you please,' she told the page boy. Then, back to Hart: ‘So now, Cousin, let us make merry together on my last evening of London. I'm glad I am to spend it with you.'

‘Dearest Julia.' He had thought he was hungry, but now the food choked him, and he was grateful for the champagne the boy had opened. ‘A strange thing happened to me on my way here.' At all costs, he felt, he must get the conversation back to a more normal level.

‘Yes?' She helped herself to lobster patties, her tone as neutral as his, and he blessed her for her understanding.

‘I passed through the makings of a mob in the Haymarket.' He paused to tell her about the soldiers and Mr. Burke's house, then went on. ‘I heard a voice in the crowd – a gentleman's voice. I almost thought I knew it. He was telling someone that they would attack Mr. Burke's house at ten o'clock. “Crowbars,” he said. I'm sure I know the voice.' For a moment he had almost had it. ‘But what shall I do, Julia? I must tell someone, but circumstanced as I am, who would believe me?'

‘No one,' she told him. ‘Dear Hart, even I, who love you, find it difficult. Are you quite sure you did not imagine it or, not so much imagine as misconstrue? A chance scrap of conversation, heard in a crowd? Whatever you do, I beg you will tell no one else. It could do us all infinite harm.'

‘Harm? I don't understand you.'

‘Don't you see? No, of course you do not. You are so open yourself, so unsuspecting, that you do not see how it might look to other people. That story Dick told, about the firing of his ship, was not entirely true, was it? No, no' – she put a restraining hand on his – ‘no need to protest. I understand it all and love you both for it. But look now, here is Dick, threatened with disgrace, and you with him. Suppose you come forward with another story, also uncorroborated. Do you not see how it might be interpreted?'

‘Oh, my God! You mean I must do nothing because no one will believe me? And let the plotters plot on, who knows what horror and destruction?'

‘What else can you do? But don't look so desperate.
I
will do something. I will see Piers Blanding in the morning. He is a good friend. If I drop a word in his ear, he will
see that it gets to the right place. Without involving you. I wish you would let me ask him to take charge of you.'

‘Dearest Julia, you must see that I cannot seem to be abandoning Dick.'

‘You would be well advised to abandon us all.'

‘Never! Julia!' Somehow he was on his feet; somehow she was in his arms

‘Hart! Do you understand at last?' She raised her lips to his, confidingly, like a child.

‘I understand nothing!' Only that he was kissing her, crushing her to him, helpless with a long hunger.

Afterwards his memories were blurred. It must have been she who pulled back the curtain, revealed the door into the next room. But he had picked her up and carried her in and thrown her on the bed.

‘I'll never forgive myself.' Cold sober, Hart looked down at Julia as she lay there, naked, luxurious, satisfied.

‘Oh, dear Hart.' She put up a hand to touch the lips that had fed on her so hungrily. ‘It had to happen. It was too strong for us, that is all. We must forgive ourselves, forgive each other. I love you, Hart.' She raised pouting lips.

‘No! Julia, it's no use.' It was almost a groan. ‘I'm a married man.' Quite horribly, just as she yielded to him, just as they moaned together, he had remembered Mercy's body, the feel of it, the difference …

‘Married! Oh, my dear Hart! To the woman who's the toast of Philadelphia! Who does not even trouble to write to you!' She raised herself a little in his arms, and a hard nipple brushed his chest. ‘Hart!'

‘No!' he said again, and began gently but firmly to disengage himself. ‘I'm sorry, Julia, more sorry and ashamed than I can say. I must take you home.' He picked up his shirt and breeches. ‘I'll leave you to dress.'

In the other room the candles had been snuffed, the table cleared, and a new bottle and glasses set ready. He looked at them with disgust as he put on his clothes. All part of the expected service. How many other men had Julia met here, for the same purpose, and had she really thought he would not know? What an innocent she must have thought him. He felt sick with shame. A drunken fool; a sot …

She joined him as he was tying his cravat, exquisite as always. Even this disgusted him now. Did English ladies
have special clothes that took off easily? And was that why she had worn her hair unpowdered? All planned, all carefully planned …

Like the riots. What in the world had put that idea into his head? ‘We must be going,' he said. ‘It's late. Put on your domino and mask.'

‘Why should I? Dear Hart, I am proud to be seen with you. You must not blame me because I love you so much. I cannot help myself. You are my fate. I knew it the first time I saw you. Here, let me—' She reached up to the cravat with which he was still fumbling. ‘You're making a terrible botch of that.'

‘Julia, I tell you, no!' He finished tying the cravat. ‘If you wish me to take you home, you will put on your domino and mask this instant and come with me now.' He put on his coat as he spoke, wrapped himself in his own domino, and picked up hers.

‘Oh, so masterful.' She smiled up at him over her shoulder. ‘You will make me fall in love with you all over again.' But he had turned from her to pull the bellrope and demand the reckoning.

‘And call a chair,' he said as he paid the bill, which was even higher than he had expected.

The chairmen did not want to take Julia to Charles Street. ‘Mob's out down there, sir.'

‘Still?' He had hoped that the streets would be quiet by now.

‘Making a night of it, by all accounts.'

‘What shall we do?' Julia was clinging to his arm. ‘I'm frightened, Hart! I can't stand anything more. Take me to the Bonds.' Her voice rose. ‘I can't face the mob. Or my mother. Take me to Susan!'

‘But we met the mob there last time.'

‘It never strikes twice. Like lightning. Then you can leave me there, Hart Purchis, and be quit of me.' She was close to hysteria.

‘Best get the lady home,' said one of the chairmen. ‘Where to, sir?'

‘Is the mob out between here and Lincoln's Inn Fields, do you know?'

‘Not that I've heard of. They did their business there the other night, by what I hear.'

‘Very well. We'll go there. I'll walk beside the chair.'

It was not so late as he had thought. But at least here the streets seemed quiet enough, though he could hear the horrible, too familiar roar of the mob from somewhere south of them, nearer the river, and saw the sky red in that direction. A sporadic outburst of shooting suggested that the soldiers must be out and actually going into action. In Charles Street perhaps? Should we have taken Julia back there? He knew, suddenly, that he could not face it. She would tell her father and mother what had happened. The pressure to a mad, bigamous marriage would become intolerable. He was a coward – he knew himself for one – but he was not going back there. He would find himself a lodging for the night. Things would look better in the morning. They could hardly look worse.

They were approaching Great Queen Street where he heard shouting ahead. The chairmen stopped and put down the chair. ‘Sorry, sir. They're ahead of us after all. You and the lady will be better on foot.'

‘On foot!' Julia leant out of the chair. ‘I never heard such impudence. Tell them to go on, Hart. The mob won't hurt us; why should they?'

‘Sorry, ma'am.' The spokesman opened the chair door. ‘You can risk your life if you fancy to; we're not risking the chair. It's our bread and butter, see? Take you back, if you like.' He turned to Hart. ‘Charles Street, did you say? Might be clear by now. Ten o'clock was the word there.'

‘The word? What do you mean?'

‘Nothing, I'm sure. You take a man up so short. Not Charles Street then.' He reached up an ungentle hand and pulled Julia out of the chair.

‘Bumpkin!' she exclaimed. ‘Hart—' She swayed towards him, and he had to support her, but his whole attention was for the chairmen.

‘Who told you the mob would be In Charles Street at ten?' he asked.

‘Why, no one, sir, how should they?'

And while Hart was still helplessly encumbered with Julia, they picked up the chair, turned smartly to the right-about, and vanished back down the dark street without even waiting to be paid. If it had not been for Julia, he would have gone after them, tried to hold them as evidence that the mobs were being directed, but she was sobbing now, clinging to him. ‘I'm frightened! Take me to Susan.'

‘Very well.' No hope of catching the men now. ‘Keep quiet if we have to pass through the mob. There is no reason why they should molest us.'

‘Or why they should not.' She clung to him, trembling, and he could feel nothing but impatience with her. ‘I wish we had blue cockades,' she went on. ‘Why did I not think of it? But you will cry, “No Popery,” if they ask you to?'

‘No.' He pulled her forward towards the sound of the mob. Emerging warily into Great Queen Street, he saw it entirely filled with the now familiar torch-bearing, chanting crowd. ‘Nothing for it but to pass through them,' he told her in a low voice. ‘Hold tight to my arm.' Was it mad to venture? Well, if it was, he was mad. He wanted more than anything in the world to be rid of her, to escape … He began, very carefully, very quietly to try to gentle their way through the shouting, chanting groups of people. Some had torches; some had crowbars; some were carrying an extraordinary variety of loot, fitfully illuminated by the tossing flares. An old, bent man hugged an armful of clothes; a boy carried a pair of fire tongs as if they had been a rifle; a young girl clutched a huge pie and bit at it as she walked. And everywhere was the smell of people and of spirits.

‘Faugh!' said Julia.

‘Hush.' He tightened his grip on her arm, sensing a change in the movement of the crowd. When they had joined it, it had been making a fairly purposeful way up
towards Kingsway. Now, from somewhere ahead, eddies of uncertainty seemed to be building up.

‘Soldiers,' said a voice, and, ‘Back,' said another. ‘High Holborn's blocked.' And then, buzzing through the crowd, came the words ‘Leicester Fields' and ‘Sir George Savile.' And gradually, strangely, the crowd began to move again in the other direction.

Hart had an uncomfortable feeling that Julia's exclamation of disgust had been noticed and resented by the people immediately around them and thought it wise to go with the tide of humanity for a little while, hoping to be able to edge their way gradually into one of the side streets by which they could get through to Lincoln's Inn Fields. But Julia had her handkerchief to her face. ‘Faugh,' she said again. ‘The stink! Get me out of this, Hart, or I will faint.'

‘Gentry,' said a voice beside them. ‘A gentry mort as don't like the honest stink o' man. Faint, she will. Shall us give her something to faint about, brothers?'

At the words the crowd solidified into a threatening circle round them. A torch, thrust dangerously close, singed Hart's cheek, and illuminated them for their tormentors. A scarecrow of a woman reached out to pluck off Julia's mask. ‘Look at the doxy then. And the swell cove, too! Catholics, are you?' The crowd around them gave a growl. ‘Bloody foreigners? Looking for that chapel of yours? She has a foreign look, the doxy, don't she?'

‘Not at all.' Hart flung back the hood of his domino and faced the woman. ‘We're as Protestant as you are. The lady is English. Speak to them, Julia. Let them hear your voice.'

‘Of course I'm English.' Julia seemed to have forgotten fear in rage. ‘And a better Englishwoman than any of you scum. Now let me pass, please.'