Patrick laughed and clapped his hands together. ‘That’s right, Miss Caroline, you stick with Cribbage and you’ll come to no harm. Play that rather than Backgammon, I mean to say. Stay away from gentlemen of the back door.’
Martin gestured at him abruptly and continued: ‘You see most women are easily influenced and made to do what men desire of them. It is their loyalty and romantic natures that combine together to cheat their minds into believing that the donkey game, as you cleverly call it, is worth suffering.’
‘How so?’ I asked, ‘you astonish me, Martin.’
‘Well, it is this way; there are a great number of men in our country who are in the habit of treating women with disdain. And it is all too often a woman’s belief, in accordance with what society has taught her, that should she put aside her dignity and succumb to this particular humiliation, the man, magically, will not only feel, but also appreciate the love she bears for him. A love that he is unable to experience otherwise . . . it is assumed. So to remove the heavy burden of his disdain, she succumbs to his demands, becomes his donkey, and thereby loses everything, as if in a card game.’
‘Stated plainly, men, or at least some men, are always pleased to encounter another bottle-headed woman easily fooled,’ Patrick said.
‘And what adds to the tragedy, is that her natural generosity has her pity him rather than despise him for his lack of feeling outside this vile game,’ Martin explained further.
‘He speaks truth, Miss Caroline,’ Patrick said, ‘although I fight shy from being quite as frank as he allows himself to be on the subject—but then he has the support of his moral friends down in the village, and they speak very plainly he gives me to understand.’
‘Well . . . I am without words, but I must take courage and ask if you yourselves have ever played the donkey’s rider?’
‘I certainly have not done so,’ Martin whispered, ‘nor ever would.’
Patrick stepped away from me. ‘I have hidden from Hog on many occasions when he has been hanging about the stables. He has forced me from time to time to be his donkey, Miss Caroline, and that is how I know I could never be the rider.’
‘Oh! Now you complicate the story dreadfully, Patrick. You are telling me that men also ride on the backs of other men. What—is the whole world playing this game?’
I saw a glance pass between them, but again, I was unable to determine its meaning.
‘You may as well suppose it, Miss Caroline and in the case of Hog, he has a high appetite for it, so you must stay watchful at all times—for you may not be able to escape him easily.’
I could feel the blood leaving my face at the thought that Hog might insist on my playing Donkey with him should he come across me, and suddenly it was startlingly clear that the particular place Mrs Rivers had referred to was not a room at all, but my own thin and bony back.
Now here I was in Gideon Ashfield’s bedroom with Lord Mallet right in front of me and I felt like a rabbit frozen into place by the gaze of a fox. He stared at me for several long moments. I could not bring my eyes to meet his.
‘Well now,’ he said, ‘look what I have found. What is your name, girl?’
‘Caroline Wilson, Sir.’
‘And so, Carol-Anne, are you stealing my valet’s belongings?’
I pressed Gideon’s book more firmly to my chest. ‘No, Lord Mallet, Mr Ashfield allows me.’
‘Allows you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Allows you to what—to lie around on his bed in the middle of the day without a care in the world?’
‘To borrow his books, Sir.’
‘So you can read?’
‘Yes.’
‘Of course you have not been to my library and seen the wonderful books I have there. Many hundreds of them on divers subjects—on design and gardens and philosophy and war and travel—and curiosities from the deep oceans. Are you interested in natural curiosities, Carol-Anne?’
I curtsied and endeavoured to look polite and attentive but I could not bring myself to study him. ‘I have heard of educated pigs before, Lord Mallet, would they be classified as a natural curiosity?’
‘That is an interesting idea, but I would say they are an unnatural curiosity, as they must be taught to count and tell fortunes by man, must they not? I was thinking of wild creatures such as giant octopuses or whales or mermaids. Do you like wild things, Coral-Anne?’
I stole a swift corner glance at him and coloured up badly as I was thinking the high-living man I was trapped by was a wild thing himself. ‘Yes, Lord Mallet. My country is Dorset, and that is a wild place.’
‘And are all the young girls there wild also?’ I could feel his eyes upon me, but I durst not meet his gaze. ‘Come, come; do not be bashful with me; the question is a simple one, is it not?’
‘I would suppose Dorset girls are much the same as girls anywhere, Sir.’
‘Ah, good answer, I do declare! They are wild then. I have encountered you before, have I not, Coral-Anne—what is your role at Hogsmoor?’
I curtsied. ‘I work in the scullery, Lord Mallet.’
‘And you claim that you can read?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘Well you shall come to my library, and perhaps as my eyes are growing dim, you might read to me sometimes; that would be kind in you. There would be a little money for the service, and I am sure we do not pay you very well here. What do you say?’
‘I would have to ask Lady Mallet,’ I whispered, glancing past him to the freedom of the long corridor.
‘There is no need to be shy, Coral-Anne,’ he said, ‘look at me and study me well, as I can see that we shall become good friends.’
So, I did look at him, almost unabashed and quite slowly, as I was in such an agony of horror and alarm that it seemed to me I had nothing left to lose. I could hear no sounds in the house at that moment, and I felt myself begin to tremble; it seemed as if only he and I were left in the world. His hands were filthy and he smelt of an obnoxious odour I had never encountered before, sweat was in it and vitriol perhaps, and something yeasty about the origins of which I could form no conjecture.
He had on a long dirty yellow waistcoat stained in several places and of which only the top few buttons could be fastened, and those with strain. The lower fifteen or so could not be employed over his great belly that peeped through the middle of his waistcoat like a giant face looking out between theatre curtains. My eyes did not want to proceed further in that direction, so I looked upwards instead. His wig gave his great square head even more height and pomposity. It was one of a style you see less often these days, high-parted in the middle like a deep-ploughed furrow and hanging stiffly in white curls to his shoulders. The area between his great nose and flabby questing lips was stained brown with snuff taking, and it did make him appear as if he had an unnatural interest in the contents of the cesspit.
I could not bear it longer. ‘Please forgive me, Lord Mallet,’ I said, ‘I must immediately hasten for I am wanted downstairs this very minute.’
‘So suddenly?’ he asked, ‘I did not hear anyone call you. Are you playing a little game with me, Coral-Anne?’
He adjusted his wig with one hand and smiled at me as if I was a small pet dog, and did not move. His eyes, weepy and red-rimmed and devoid of eyelashes, glinted as he stared at my hair. He took but one shuffling step towards me, before I sprang up and ducked swiftly under one of his outstretched arms and bolted through the door. I did not look back as I fled along the corridor to the safety of the stairwell, and down, two steps at a time, my throat numb from fear and tightly closed up.
When Mrs Rivers found out the cause of my distress, she slapped me—and then again on the other cheek harder so that my head span. I bore her no ill-will for it, for I could see that she was driven by mortification, then shortly after that came the day Lady Mallet took me to the upper areas of the house and installed me as her personal maid.
***
I hardly need say that I was in constant
fear of coming across Hog, but my anxiety abated somewhat on learning that his gout had worsened and kept him shackled most days. Gideon Ashfield assured us that it was only towards evening Hog could be found limping about in his huge flapping shoes in preparation for his gentlemen gambling guests and their personal servants, followed usually by a group of whores smelling of rotting violets and stagnant river water, their faces highly-painted with abundant black mouches upon them, some of an outlandish size.
I did once encounter this group of women when I was on a night errand for Lady Mallet and was much taken aback by their raucous laughter. I must have stood looking all amazement at them as they passed me in the main hall without a glance in my direction.
‘They attempt to imitate their superiors and that is why they wear their faces so white,’ Lady Mallet told me one afternoon as I played Scatternail with her. ‘Some of those punks consider it amusing to wear many patches, but to my way of thinking, it makes them look as if they have the smallpox, rather than to disguise its marks. And, anyway it is certain they have the big pox to match—that given to us by the French—and I suppose we can only thank God that French pox isn’t something seen at a glimpse. Well, thank God or modest clothing . . .’ she mused.
‘They are not well, you mean?’ I asked.
Lady Mallet reached over and poked my arm with her finger. ‘No, Wilson, they are riddled with diseases of every type and some of those they hand on to men like gifts.’
‘Like gifts?’ I repeated.
‘The gifts men deserve. Curses rather than gifts, I mean. How little do you know about life, Wilson?’
‘I cannot answer that, but lately I have found out some strange and particular things which I wish I did not know.’
She laughed. She could have pressed me to tell her, and I would have described her husband’s pursuit of me and my discovery of the donkey game—but she did not.
In the course of our conversations, which over time became less restrained, I learnt that Hog had not been near Lady Mallet’s chambers for a long time, and I realised she was grateful to the whores, or punks as she called them, in keeping him and his drunken friends entertained. Therefore, I also came to look upon those women with kindness, although some of them seemed far too frail to be able to play the donkey game in the first place if that is what they were about on Lord Mallet’s side of the house.
My devoirs for Lady Mallet were many and various and for the most part connected with her comfort and appearance, two ideas that seemed to me strangely at odds one with the other in her case. As much as I was afraid of her, I was still glad to feel a little safer in Hogsmoor House than I had done as an unprotected scullery maid in the dampness downstairs. Each morning I opened the curtains in her chamber to let in light, then drew apart the bed drapery and took breakfast chocolate to her as she awoke. Then I was to find what she should wear for the day, and take to one side clothes for washing and muslins for starching. When finally she arose, I washed her feet in pimpernel water sweetened with sugar of lead, half-dressed her, and transformed her face from one that was expressive to a stiff white mask. Then, on finishing the dressing, I pushed the long pins into her gown and she was complete. However, every three weeks or so, followed the complicated business of attending to her hair. She told me that some ladies had their hair disassembled and reconstructed every two weeks and she thought I should be thankful that she was less vain than they. I was required, using hot tongs, to curl her hair and cover it in the lard of a pig to which I applied white powder, and having fashioned it high and with some horsehair pieces woven in—for she seemed to have less hair than she should have done—I adorned it with flowers and feathers. On most evenings, I removed the wilting flowers and the pretty feathers, but on some nights, her most mournful, she slept in them.
In the afternoons I mended linen and darned socks, removed stains or prepared her many unguents, and did all I could to bring order to her wretched cluttered bedchamber. I was glad when we stepped out together away from the stuffiness of Hogsmoor House, even if it was only to go to the perimeter of the estate where the wooded area began, an excursion we made most often during the dog days of summer to look for new feathers for her hair, or to pick herbs for her bedchamber.
I confess that I found the preparation of her concoctions the most interesting, but at the same time the most frustrating of all my tasks. The making of her lead face powder was simple enough because Patrick remembered to keep fresh horse manure for me, and we had a plentiful supply of vinegar in the stillroom. As I had free reign in the back kitchen, I was able to leave my thin plates of lead steeped in vinegar on a good bed of dung for close to a month, and it was pleasing to pound the softened lead into powder, and when it had dried out to further grind it and add a perfume of flowers or scented wood.
Making a paste for Lady Mallet to rub on her teeth was arduous business, as she would complain if I had not ground the eggshells and cuttlefish bone finely enough, and with her liking for sweet things, she insisted that I soak the powder in vinegar in a lead bowl to sweeten the mixture.
I do not think she was any different from other women of her class in her horror at how small pox causes numerous pits on what might otherwise be pretty skin. She had never been afflicted with the disease herself, but nonetheless she feared it greatly. There was a cluster of pock marks on my forehead that constantly drew her attention. ‘Do they not trouble you, Wilson?’ she asked. ‘Do you not want to put your fingers into them and feel the ridges and become frenzied by their existence?’
I laughed, but not in a way that caused her displeasure—and I had learnt how to do that by studying her moods. ‘I never notice them, Lady Mallet,’ I said.
‘When you come to think of marrying, you will,’ she told me.
‘How so, if you would permit me to ask?’
‘Well, because when all comes to all, above the slenderness of an ankle, the turn of a hip and the smoothness of a bosom, men delight in beautiful skin. Picture an animal, Wilson—a polecat if you will; you want to see its fur perfect; you do not want to see it ravaged with mange do you? So when men gaze at women, they look at their skin first and all their desire begins there. And if the skin is rotten, it ends there too.’
‘As though we were animals?’ I asked.
‘What else are we?’ she replied.
I struggled to find an answer for her. ‘Should the common marks of pox be an unpleasant sight to a man who might otherwise find me engaging, and who at any rate might have them himself, then I would not be inclined to give him my attention in the first place,’ I whispered, knowing full well that I was talking to Lady Mallet at a level slightly too intimate and uncomfortable for us both.
I was painting her face at the time. I had put on the lard and gently powdered her cheeks with white lead, and extended it downwards, covering her neck, shoulders, and the swelling of her breasts. Where blue veins showed through, I manipulated the lead powder so that they were not covered up. I was thinking that high society had arrived at an extreme position where men almost wished the women they owned were transparent. Although I had never said this to a living soul, I was beginning to think that powerful men would, if they were able, turn their women into beings deprived of all colour and strength. It seemed to me they wanted wives and daughters to belong to a nebulous place of mystery where they were floating ghosts, beautifully painted, elaborately dressed, and forever silent. Yet at the same time, they wanted their lovers and whores to be vivid and vulgar, bedizened, and properly red and screeching.
Lady Mallet’s voice came at me suddenly from nowhere. ‘Why are you staring at me in that manner, Wilson?’ she asked, and I could feel the anxiety rising in her. I stepped back and thought swiftly. ‘Well, girl, what was the meaning of that unworldly look?’ she persisted.
‘I was thinking . . .’
‘—something you do too much of. You should know that if my household had its full and rightful quota of servants each with his speciality, I would not have needed to
make an upper servant out of such a conceited young girl as you.’
‘I am sorry, Lady Mallet. I was thinking only of the concoction for skin after smallpox you have asked me to prepare.’
‘Then I am glad, Wilson, because you should begin to gather the ingredients today. The Venice paper has arrived and I have instructed the gardeners to find snails. You should use a new linen cloth so that all remains pure. Patrick has informed me through Grace Rivers that the woodsman’s dog had her pups yesterday, and so eight days from now you can make the preparation. Have you read the instructions thoroughly?’
‘Yes, Lady Mallet, I did so this morning. I will need lemons.’
‘They are arriving; I have sent word for them. What is wrong?—yet again you are staring.’
‘You are exquisitely beautiful and you do not have the disease Lady Mallet. Do you really need the smallpox wash?’ I asked her. My heart was beating.
She drew back from me and I could see that at any moment she might become angry at my impertinence, but I feared having to make the solution so greatly that it had made me reckless.
‘It is a wash that will keep a long time, so should I ever get smallpox while I am in London, I will be prepared,’ she answered. ‘And we have plenty of sugar of lead to add to it later.’
‘It is the most complex yet of the preparations, Lady Mallet, I do not know if I can rise to the occasion.’
She stared at my face. ‘That was also the opinion of Grace Rivers when I asked her to make this particular wash for me. It is the dog that troubles you, is it not?’ I shook my head and stepped back further from her. ‘Are you sure it is not the dog? You must be truthful with me. My last maid was unable . . .she fled in the dead of night from the estate.’
I found I could not be truthful with her; I could not tell her of my dream since first she had me look at the recipe for smallpox wash, a dream in which I was covered in the blood of a puppy as it chased me with its head flapping close to its body attached only by one piece of twisted skin—a dream in which a child called out my name repeatedly, and a filthy woman prised open my fingers.
Seven Strange Stories Page 3