Pugg's Portmanteau

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by DM Bryan


  From Bath to London is more than a hundred miles. Beginning, as they have, at the first light, they must travel until the dying rays of the day. At intervals, the horses must be watered, fed, rested, changed. Their own fast must be broken and, later, a midday meal obtained from some suitable public house. Sarah cannot eat from a kerchief like a serving girl. At nightfall, they must trust the driver atop the carriage to choose a reputable inn, with two rooms appropriate to their divergent social positions. In short, two long days and one night lie before them.

  Sarah folds her note and transfers it to the intimacy of an inside pocket, even as her companion shifts his gaze outside the window. At last, thinks Sarah.

  Mr. Achmet-Beg, she notices, has a leather portmanteau much like her own. Filled with urgent notes in closely spaced, masculine handwriting, she imagines. Strong downward strokes detailing schemes and expansions. Perhaps a diagram or two. A plan, like those she carries with her. Rooms, halls, buildings, paths, roads, trees, gardens. Nay, collieries, sheds, wheels, chimneys, pumps carefully delineated and cross-hatched to appear as real on the page as they would be set against Northumberland’s wizened crags. In the margin, she envisions a doodle. A Michaelmas daisy blooming from a heap of slag.

  No, Sarah decides. A man of business carries nothing but sums, carefully entered, inked in red and black. Expenditures and income. Profit. Bound books of columns, purpose-printed.

  Might Mr. Achmet-Beg explain these mysteries to her? Her printers—Mr. Newbery, like the Dodsleys before him or Mr. Richardson in his time—send her little in the way of figures. She sold Mr. Newbery her Hall for a price of thirty guineas that, if reckoned by the number of days she took in the writing of it, seems fair to her. But she knows Mr. Newbery, who spreads much joy beneath the sign of the Bible and Sun, close to the milky dome of St. Paul’s, is rumoured to be a rich man as well as a kind one. If her Hall should sell well, at the cost of three shillings, Mr. Newbery might expect to see some profit after he has sold—how many copies? Sarah tabulates. Two hundred books? No no, he has other costs as well. Paper, ink. Sarah shakes her head. Calculating in a coach makes her eyes sting.

  “Are you quite well, madam,” asks Mr. Achmet-Beg, who returns his eyes from the window to Sarah on the padded bench across from him.

  “I am well enough, sir,” she says, stiffly. Then regrets the coldness of her tone. They have scarcely left the outskirts of Bath, and through the window the rising sun touches olive hills and turns them to butter. They must travel a long way together. “I am a sufferer sometimes of the head-ache,” she says, although she is sensible she should not mention such a personal frailty. Her companion is not embarrassed, but a furrow of polite concern appears between his eyes. These are very brown.

  They are moving through the countryside, at a pace that is brisk without excessive speed. Mr. Montagu keeps very good horses. Perhaps I should say so, thinks Sarah Scott. Horses are a subject on which a man may discourse knowledgeably but not improperly. Might she not express a polite interest in questions of driving fine horses, of saddlery, of the best way to settle a tanner’s bill for a bellows she has purchased for the Bath house? If she might draw Mr. Achmet-Beg out on such subjects—subjects that must certainly be doubly beloved of him as man and homme d’affaires. Then might she not turn the topic to other forms of reckoning? Without mentioning her Hall directly, she might learn which costs a printer might account for and where, and in what order?

  “Mr. Montagu keeps excellent horses, or so I am told,” says Sarah, flushed by her daring, but she knows all the world understands the Turks to be vastly fine horsemen. English lords introduce their Arab stallions to their own brood mares to improve the breed—and Sarah Scott resolves to think no further in this direction.

  “Are they good horses?” says her companion, his fingers flexing upon his worsted knee. “I confess myself glad to hear it, for I know little of horses beyond the number of their legs.”

  “I must express my surprise, Mr. Achmet-Beg, for I imagined your countrymen uniformly expert upon this head.”

  “My countrymen, madam?”

  Sarah sees very genuine confusion in his eyes.

  “The Turks, sir, are known to be very fine riders and as much connoisseurs in that way as an Italian knows paintings.”

  “The Turks?”

  “Have I erred, sir? Perhaps I am mistaken? Your surname, Mr. Achmet-Beg, suggests you descend, at least on your father’s side, from that excellent people.”

  “What did you call me? Achmet-Beg?” And Sarah’s companion, as though to prove himself as English as a bell-tower, claps out a high, nervous peal of laughter.

  “You are not Mr. Achmet-Beg?”

  “Lord, no. Gotobed is my name.” Enunciating each syllable so that she might not be taken in a second time by the jutting of his vowels, the swallowing of his consonants. Why had she not before noticed London on his breath? The gurgle of the Thames in his throat?

  Now Mr. Gotobed cannot stop talking. At first, he celebrates the comedy of her misapprehension, laughing and professing himself delighted to have his name so mistaken. Then, apologizing, lest he make too much of a lady’s honest error, he makes himself speak seriously. Her mistake is most understandable, he tells her, for in London no man’s history need be known to any but himself. That city is the whole world’s crossroad and a glory, where a man might reinvent himself, if he has the need. He is not, he confesses, a Turkey merchant, but only a pretender to the title of trader. He thought once of going east to trade for cotton, but he got no further than Brest. There he found himself deceived in the soundness of the scheme and came away no richer than before. He was, he told her, no better a judge of ships and captains than he was of horses.

  “But my sister was most exact on this point. I was to travel with a Turkey merchant and an agent for Mr. Montagu.”

  “I am more usually a print-setter, madam.”

  Sarah says nothing but is glad she did not quiz him on her own business concerns. What if the man had guessed her purpose. Printers, pressmen, and booksellers alike form a cabal. Suppose word passed from tongue to tongue that Sarah Scott suspects herself the victim of sharp-practices by honest Mr. John Newbery—what would the world think of her then?

  “Shall I explain myself?” says Mr. Gotobed.

  “If you can, sir. I should be most happy. I should not like to think my sister misled.”

  “Never,” says her companion, striking the side of the carriage with his hand. “Oh, I should not wish—” and he breaks off, too confused to continue.

  Soon, however, Mr. Gotobed recovers himself sufficiently to ask, “Have you seen, madam, the announcements of the good Dr. James’ extraordinary Fever Powder?”

  Sarah is more jostled by this change of subject than by the coach, and she wonders if the man might be a little mad. “I have,” she says, speaking with care. And she has. From sachets and endpapers, from broadsheets and periodicals, she knows the illustrated advertisement of the tumbled man awaiting his Good Samaritan. She doubts the nostrum has the same power for good as an act of charity, but her skepticism has never prevented her from taking an interest in the printed picture. In Dr. James’ advertisement the invalid is gaunt, the Samaritan but a pinprick on the road, and the frame a distressing mélange of curlicues and French curves.

  “I have myself inked and pulled many copies of that ingenious advertisement,” says Gotobed, leaning forward. “Dr. James makes a prodigious number of claims, but set in a fine typeface, they appear convincing, even to me, and I know how the trick is done.”

  “Print has that magical capacity,” says Sarah.

  “Would it surprise you to learn Dr. James’ Fever Powder does not, in strict point of fact, belong to Dr. James, but rather to the man listed only as his agent?”

  If Sarah is surprised, it is only to find Mr. Newbery appearing in the conversation despite her inclination to keep him at a di
stance, for she knows full well, it is he who is listed as Dr. James’ representative on every bottle.

  “And,” says Gotobed, waving a finger in the air, “I know as a fact that the substance the patent so boldly asserts on the page is not the same as that in the sachet. Yes, indeed, and the contents themselves alter materially from purchase to purchase.”

  The carriage rocks gently from side to side while Sarah considers what she might say. “If that is true, sir, the claims made upon the bottle appear very deficient,” she says at last.

  “Deficient, madam. Yes, the very word. The medicine, in short, is worthless, and every Doctor knows it. But, for all its deficiency, Dr. James’ Fever Powder can cure patients—that is, when it does not kill them. Men and women alike return to health, having swallowed the contents of those famous sachets. Given the impotency of the powder, do you not wonder that this should be the case, madam?

  Sarah, who has a paper of Dr. James’ wonderful powder at home, with which she takes pains to dose Lady Barbara whenever the Doctor’s remedies fail, does wonder. She allows her brows to rise quizzically.

  Mr. Gotobed hastens to supply her with an answer. “The powders work,” he says, “entirely on account of the advertisements that fill the backs of the broadsheets and gazettes that circulate from coffee house to coffee house. The readers have confidence in whatever they read, madam, and belief accomplishes what Dr. James’ vile concoction cannot. My point is, good Mrs. Scott, if I might call you that?” He pauses while a reluctant Sarah nods. “The point is this, patient, kind Mrs. Scott. Upon my introduction to your valuable relations, I only wished to represent myself a Turkey merchant in the same way that Dr. James’ Fever Powder shows itself a valuable medicament. Do you take my meaning, or am I too obscure?”

  “You are not obscure in meaning, sir. Let me see if I understand you. You went before my brother, representing yourself as the very man he hoped to find, and you intended, by dint of his wishing, to become that man.”

  “You understand me very well, madam. I puffed—I advertised myself as something better than I am, for I can be a printer no longer. I am sick to death of ink and lead. Of damp paper. Of so little in my pocket.”

  “And so, you are now employed as Mr. Montagu’s agent?”

  Mr. Gotobed does not appear to comprehend Sarah’s question. No, Sarah corrects herself—the man does not seem aware she has even asked a question. He stares at her, all self-satisfaction, head nodding and smile broad as the landscape through which they sweep. Thin bands of sun cross the interior of the coach, and lie like strips on Sarah’s lap. She looks again at her companion, at his agreeable dark eyes. The man has lied to Edward and Elizabeth Montagu. Sarah finds she does not mind so much as she might—as much as she should. Surely, she should mind.

  “Such misrepresentation is not quite right of you, sir.”

  “No, I am ashamed of myself.”

  Then why is the man still grinning?

  And somehow, this performance, safe inside the confessional of the coach, makes friends of Mr. Gotobed and Sarah. They travel together cheerfully now, accustomed to the swaying of the coach. The public houses and tollgates of Box, of Chippenham and Calne, occur as a predictable change in rhythm, like the chorus to a song. At Beckhampton, the coach slows first to a banging walk and then to a jiggling halt. Sarah gathers her skirts to her, for they are to eat their midday meal at the Waggon and Horses. She feels, rather than sees, the coachman clambering down, and then, there he is, opening the door and presenting a gloved hand. He sets Sarah down beside a gabled building of grey fieldstone and greyer thatch. The yard is sprigged with straw and bejewelled with Minorcas, so black they shine like emeralds. Sarah is heartened by the crimson combs and white ear patches. The farmyard reminds her of Batheaston.

  Mr. Gotobed stands beside her in the yard. She turns to him. “I should not mind, Mr. Gotobed,” she says, “if we women were encouraged to imitate those Minorcan fowl in our dress, for I believe they look very well in their feathers.”

  Alas, Mr. Gotobed has stepped in the leavings of another coach’s horse and cannot answer, for he must occupy himself with scraping the substance from his boot. When he at last dislodges the disobliging mass of half-digested hay, a serving girl appears to lead the two of them into a furnished parlour. Under the smoke-lowered ceiling, by the light of the leaded window, Sarah seats herself at the polished table pleasantly placed before the hearth. She likes this inn very much, from the fresh rushes on the floor, to the cracked Mr. Nobody on the mantle. Some of the plates are pewter and some are earthenware—but all speak to her of the countryside. She turns in pleasure to Mr. Gotobed, who sits beside her.

  “It stinks,” says that person, before sharply exhaling. “It stinks even inside.”

  The man, Sarah discovers, has hardly been beyond the fogged skirts of London, and now that he sticks his head from out under those layers, he does not like what he sees. The gammon he orders reeks of sweat, the bread tastes of chaff. He finds fault with the rustic bench on which he settles his thin quarters, and then he condemns the stalks that keep his besmirched foot from the clean flags. The girl, he tells Sarah, cannot be English, so odd is her dialect, and he must repeat each word she speaks as though translating to an invisible foreigner. Only the ale seems to him palatable, and this he consumes without benefit of anything solid until Sarah fears he will come off the rustic bench and settle among the reeds he so despises.

  Back in the coach, they ride in silence for many miles, Sarah pressing her face almost into the louvers to admire the changing of the country. The frame of the carriage window converts land into landscape—a succession of vantages and light effects. Hedgerows mark perspective, arriving together at the crucial point between the fall of this hill and the rise of the next. Moisture breaks up distant views into distinct brushwork. Meanwhile, Mr. Gotobed sleeps off the effects of his lunch.

  At Marlborough, the coachman halts to rest the horses. Mr. Gotobed wakes and excuses himself. The carriage jostles as the horses spread their legs, and the sound of pissing, equine and human, fills the air. Sarah uses the pot beneath the seat, arranging her skirts and her expression with equal care. When she is done, she opens the door and tips the content into the mud beside the front wheel. The liquid sinks neatly into the rut. By the rear wheels, a wide pool of animal urine steams and overflows the grooved ground. Sarah returns the pot beneath the seat and closes the carriage door tightly. Her companion knocks at the other door, but before she will admit him, she pries the cork from the small vial of lavender oil she carries in a pocket and dowses her kerchief.

  “Does your head ache?” he asks her as he takes his seat.

  He is more solicitous than properly polite, but she nods regardless.

  Unbidden, a memory returns to Sarah. When she was a child, her brother Robert had a book—a collection of scrap pages, to be more exact—called The Progress of a Harlot, which amused him very much. Secretly, Sarah borrowed it, taking it from its hiding place beneath his bedclothes, wishing to show off her daring to Elizabeth. Neither sister liked to touch brother Robert’s belongings, for he was a little piratical even then, long before he went to sea and died in foreign lands. But on that day, Sarah dared, and she stole the pages, rolling them in her hand and covering all with her skirt. In the open air of the garden, with breezes further tattering the pages, she pored over the ink-clotted print, struggling to understand. She read, imagining hoarse male voices, battered and low, or barking with laughter. She puzzled over the meaning, feeling rather than comprehending what lay beneath the words—some ugly leviathan swimming below the surface. Flushed and unhappy, Sarah returned Robert’s book to its hiding place. She never told Elizabeth she had taken it, for she hoped to forget such books existed.

  Now, thirty years later, in a coach in Marlborough, Sarah’s memory returns to her an entire passage from Robert’s pages—a long jest concerning noxious bodily effusions unloosed in a st
agecoach. A gentleman passes off the unpleasant odour on each of his female travelling companions. Now, Sarah discovers herself smiling at the jest. The long-submerged leviathan swims into view, trout-like and disappointing.

  Sarah suspects the Bath Road encourages allegory, for after Marlborough comes the steepest part, a check to tired travelers and horses alike. Ahead of Hungerford, comes the hamlet of Halfway, named like something out of Bunyan. Halfway amuses Mr. Gotobed with its absurd tollhouse—tiny but castle-shaped, with a crenelated roofline. To Sarah, he ridicules the ambition of its architect in designing a building so above its station. She wants to ask him how he, a printer-cum-Turkey merchant, dares censure another man’s presumption, but, of course, she cannot. Instead, she watches the sun drop behind the Halfway tollhouse, red rays streaming from beneath a thick bolster of cloud.

  Sarah and Mr. Gotobed sit in silence while the coach jostles them a mile or so further to Speen, where each finds accommodation to suit in a new-built inn. Under the elegant, fanned transom and up the stairway, Mr. Gotobed mounts higher than Sarah, climbing past the grand balustrade, to where only spare, wooden banisters mark the passage of his boots. Sarah sleeps but poorly and awakes in the morning to an indifferent breakfast, taken in a high-ceiling but damp room. A fire burns distantly, and the light through the sashed windows is green with rain. Afterwards, Sarah waits with her portmanteau inside the inn’s door.

  Mr. Gotobed, whom she does not see at breakfast, joins her there, crushing against her skirts in the narrow passage. Finding himself thus incommoding her, he sets down his portmanteau and takes to the rain, plashing in the puddles. When he stops and stares intently for a moment or two at the front of the Inn, Sarah realizes he scrutinizes the sign that swings audibly over the door. From the shelter of the porch, she calls to him, asking him what he sees.

  “The signpost,” says Gotobed, peering upwards. “I understand the foremost animal to be a hare, but the resemblance is not convincing. The creature is strangely split lipped, snaggle toothed.” Gotobed continues to walk to and fro while Sarah watches him. “The two shapes on the left are clearly hounds,” he says.

 

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