According to Queeney

by Beryl Bainbridge

  At this Mr Johnson gave vent to what could only be described as a warning growl. The dog Belle, wheezing at Mrs Salusbury’s feet, struggled upright and waddled to the door. Taking a book from his pocket, Mr Johnson turned his back on the room.

  ‘Do please get the child to read to us,’ pleaded the silly Mrs Jackson.

  ‘She cannot read,’ Mrs Thrale admitted, and called for Queeney to be returned to the nursery.

  At half-past six o’clock, an hour later than planned owing to the tardiness of Langton – he protested the servants had failed to knock on his door – the company went in to dinner. Thrale had ordered the windows to be left open and flies swarmed above the table. There was discussion as to whether the windows ought to be closed, but most held it was better to have air and, besides, there were sweet perfumes drifting in from the darkening garden.

  Miss Reynolds said there was a positive plague of insects in town, and Mrs Jackson said, ‘Yes, yes, indeed there was,’ and tittered shrilly. She couldn’t keep her eyes from Mr Johnson, who, standing up and wildly dashing his glass back and forth in an effort to disperse the flies, spilled lemonade on to the cloth.

  Mrs Thrale felt a grudging sympathy for Mrs Jackson, who was openly chewing on her nails. It was obvious she had not been prepared for an encounter with Mr Johnson, and though her husband may have explained to her that she was to rub shoulders with a great lexicographer and poet, it was doubtful if he had thought to paint a true portrait. The reality of Johnson, in appearance and behaviour, the scarred skin of his cheeks and neck, his large lips forever champing, his shabby clothing and too small wig with its charred top-piece, his tics and mutterings, his propensity to behave as though no one else was present, was at variance with the elegant demeanour imagined to be proper to a man of genius.

  It was left to Mrs Thrale to direct the conversation during dinner. At the best of times her husband was a man of few words, and of none at all with a dish set in front of him. Nor could Johnson or Langton, beyond a monosyllable, be depended upon to make a contribution until the serious business of eating was got through. She looked to Arthur Murphy for support, he being a man of the theatre and fond of his own voice.

  True to form, he launched amusingly enough into gossip concerning the Reverend Mr Dodd and his scandalous affair with a woman who owned a pie shop in Frith Street. Mrs Jackson screamed satisfactorily at each twist of the story. Dr Fitzpatrick, at its conclusion, observed that Dodd would end badly, and would deserve as much.

  ‘Not so, Sir,’ barked Johnson, but added nothing more.

  To cover the sudden lull occasioned by this savage interjection, Mrs Thrale asked Murphy if he was engaged in writing a new play. He replied he was not, which she already knew, but confided that only the night before he had finished reading an extraordinary comedy written by a young man living in a remote village near Dover.

  ‘In what way extraordinary?’ enquired Humphrey Jackson.

  ‘Why,’ cried Murphy, ‘because he has never been to the city, is the son of a clergyman and by all accounts has led a sheltered life.’

  ‘There is humour enough to be found in the countryside,’ protested Dr Fitzpatrick.

  ‘And none more so than in this play,’ Murphy said, ‘for it is in seven acts and all the characters are slain in Act Three.’

  ‘Out of the ordinary, indeed,’ agreed Jackson.

  ‘Death by the sword, poison and strangulation,’ Murphy elaborated.

  ‘How can that be?’ asked Mrs Jackson, baffled. ‘Who is left to speak the lines?’

  ‘In the next four acts’, Murphy said, ‘they appear as ghosts. The final mode of death is particularly horrid … by a heated prong thrust up the nostril to the brain.’

  ‘Enough,’ said Mrs Thrale sharply, for the colour had drained from Mrs Jackson’s face and Mrs Salusbury was sitting bolt upright, fork suspended in the air. Beyond the open windows pink clouds rolled through the blackening heavens.

  Some minutes after nine o’clock, by which time David Garrick had arrived, the ladies went into the drawing room. The doors on to the grounds being flung wide and the Ian-thorns lit, the gentlemen gathered on the terrace to applaud Garrick’s exuberant re-enactment of Mr Quin’s dilemma.

  Mrs Thrale noticed her mother was staring fixedly in the direction of the garden; her expression was watchful, as though she saw in the flickering night something other than shadows. Alarmed, she confided in Frances Reynolds. She said, ‘The brightness of her eyes when listening to Mr Murphy disturbed me. Her own life has not been free of torment, my dear father being wild to the point of cruelty.’

  Miss Reynolds replied that perhaps she stood too close for impartiality. ‘To my mind,’ she said, her eyes watching the moths that spun above the candle flames, ‘Mrs Salusbury appeared more drawn than terrified.’

  Mrs Thrale trusted Miss Reynolds, whose manner, though friendly, was always tinged with melancholy, like that of someone who had suffered a great deal. The blame lay with her brother, who was in the habit of making her the butt of his caustic wit. Johnson liked her too, though for different reasons, namely that she had shown kindness to Mrs Williams, his poetical friend.

  Just then, Mrs Salusbury said loudly, ‘Hester, I am not deaf. I assure you it was not the prong up the nose that affected me, rather the talk of ghosts …’

  ‘Such things are mere superstition,’ cried Mrs Thrale.

  ‘No less a person than Mr Johnson thought otherwise,’ retorted Mrs Salusbury. ‘He was gullible enough to investigate the Cock Lane Ghost.’ She was referring to the unquiet spirit of one Fanny Lynes, which, some years before, had supposedly manifested itself to an eleven-year-old girl residing in Smithfield.

  ‘It’s true he investigated,’ Frances Reynolds protested, ‘for his mind is always open, but it was at the insistence of the Rector of Clerkenwell.’

  ‘He could have refused,’ countered Mrs Salusbury.

  ‘It is not in his nature to stand aside,’ Miss Reynolds said. ‘A curious mind must always be in search of the truth. Besides, he found the scratchings and knockings heard by the child could only have been made by herself.’

  ‘I heard no scratchings or knockings,’ said Mrs Salusbury. ‘My ghost rose out of the lake, naked save for a shimmer of light that near blinded me.’

  Neither Hester nor Miss Reynolds heard her, for just then the gentlemen came in, Mr Garrick riding on Bennet Langton’s back. In the ensuing uproar Mrs Salusbury, unlamented, retired to her bed.

  Towards midnight games were played, a favourite one being the choosing of a colour that might best express the character of each of those present. Miss Reynolds knew it to be a cruel entertainment and steeled herself.

  Mrs Jackson was pronounced scarlet by her husband and pink by Henry Thrale, who, in sentimental mood, trapped her hand in his and now and then leant his head on her shoulder. Mr Johnson, by common consent, was dubbed purple, of the darkest hue, until Mrs Jackson changed her mind and bravely declared him brown. ‘Of the lighter shade,’ she said, ‘like curled autumn leaves or the spots on speckled eggs.’ Johnson was so taken by this that he came and stood extremely close to her and fingered the stuff of her gown.

  Thrale chose yellow-green as most befitting his wife, a shade vigorously disputed by Johnson, who held it to be sickly.

  Next, they played the fool as to what plant or flower each most resembled. Mr Thrale named Mrs Jackson as an orchid of the rarest sort and Hester a dog rose. Mrs Jackson was both flattered and disturbed by the comparison; she had no wish to cause discord between husband and wife. Blinking the powder from her eyes – in studying her dress Johnson had twice jolted her hairpiece – she stole a misty glance at Mrs Thrale and was astonished to see she was smiling. Either she is deaf, thought Mrs Jackson, or else saintly.

  ‘Samuel is a nettle,’ Murphy said. ‘And Hetty a sprig of myrtle,’ inspiring Johnson to add gallantly,’… which the more it is crushed the more it discloses its sweetness.’

  Later still, by which h
our Henry Thrale had slid under the cloth with a saucer of ices melting on his chest, Mr Johnson announced that earlier that afternoon he had come across two items of small significance caught in the rushes of the lake. He and Davy Garrick would mime what he had found and the company would be allowed two questions each to guess what they might be. Accordingly, Garrick, hand on hip, minced up and down the room, waving his hand back and forth. At his side, on all fours, pranced Johnson, kicking up his heels, his wig falling over his eyes.

  Observing him, Langton shouted, ‘Richard III … deformed, unfinished, sent before his time.’

  ‘That is a description, not a question,’ opposed Johnson.

  ‘Is it Mrs Ford attempting to be rid of Quin’s breath?’ asked Mrs Thrale.

  ‘It’s that woman in Cheapside,’ cried Miss Reynolds. ‘The poor soul who set fire to the orphanage and danced among the flames.’

  ‘Wrong, wrong,’ sang Garrick, peeping at her through spread fingers and fluttering his eyelashes; all the same, he stood on his toes and pirouetted.

  No correct answer being forthcoming, and Johnson finally collapsing on to his back – legs, beetle-fashion, feebly waving – the fan and the button were produced and passed from hand to hand. Mrs Thrale argued that in mentioning Mrs Ford she had been almost right, but Garrick said he couldn’t allow it, at which moment Henry Thrale, emerging from beneath the table and staggering upright, demanded to see the button. First he examined it and then, striding to the open doors, flung it out into the darkness. Of a sudden, he jerked backwards; a gust of wind swept in from the terrace and sent the shadows racing. Mrs Jackson clutched at her husband, mouth open in a silent shriek of alarm.

  When Thrale turned back to the room he was rubbing the palm of one hand violently up and down his coat as though to relieve some irritation. All were startled at how diminished he appeared; a long shadow cast by the candlelight hollowed his cheeks and turned him old.

  Garrick and Dr Fitzpatrick helped him to a chair and a glass of brandy was fetched. Restored, though constantly scrubbing his hand across his knee, he attempted to explain, in his usual stilted manner, what troubled him.

  A hundred years before, he told them, a young woman had been seduced by one George Farthingale … the heir to a fortune … and then abandoned. ‘She had a little dog … followed her everywhere. Weeks passed … young woman vanished. Little dog found trotting up and down beside the lake holding fan in its jaws.’

  ‘Bow-wow,’ barked Garrick, and hopped about, hands held up like paws.

  ‘Rich man come to his senses,’ continued Thrale, ‘returned only to learn that the woman had drowned herself. Full of remorse … had buttons made for his coat with the image of the dog upon them. No sooner stitched to the cloth …’

  Here Garrick, who in lightning fashion had transformed himself from leaping dog to floating body, features first distorted in agony and then smiling beatifically, sprang upright from the carpet and began to thread an invisible needle with imaginary thread.

  ‘… than the man … in period of weeks … sickened and died.’

  ‘And I suppose, Sir,’ said Johnson, ‘that the dog, snatching the coat from the corpse and wearing it, flung itself into the lake.’

  ‘Of the dog … nothing known,’ Thrale said.

  Soon after, Johnson, looking sombre and placing his feet as though the ground was unsafe, walked out on to the terrace.

  ‘Why did Mr Garrick look so merry when drowning?’ whispered Mrs Jackson to Miss Reynolds.

  ‘Possibly out of perversity,’ Miss Reynolds replied tartly.

  There is always something behind what they say, thought Mrs Jackson, and quivered with excitement.

  Presently Mrs Thrale went in search of Johnson. He was standing at the far end of the terrace, emitting strange hooting noises. At her approach he held up his hand for silence, head cocked to one side. Beyond the buzz of voices coming from the drawing room she heard nothing, and said so.

  ‘Shhh!’ he bade, and out of the darkness came the answering call of an owl. Beside himself with delight, Johnson clapped his hands and did a jig on the spot.

  When he grew calmer, she asked, ‘What did you think of the tale of the button?’

  ‘Why, I thought nothing of it,’ he said, ‘for there was nothing in it that would engage the thoughts of a sensible man.’

  ‘My master thought different,’ she snapped. ‘It has made him quite ill.’

  ‘His illness is caused by an over-burdening of the stomach,’ Johnson said.

  ‘There is a distinct swelling on his palm where he held the button.’

  ‘A swelling no doubt caused by the sting of a drowsy wasp. It is that time of year. As for his fiction, there was no lake here thirty years ago, let alone a hundred. It was an excavation begun by your father-in-law and only recently completed by Henry.’

  ‘There is a pond in the field beyond,’ she said. ‘What difference does it make … lake or pond, this year or last?’

  ‘Tolerance,’ he chided, ‘in regard to matters of truth, merely pardons the weakness in ourselves. If you excuse the folly, instead of condemning, you will begin to imitate it. Dear Mistress, one must always be on one’s guard, for, as the Spanish proverb observes, a clattering hoof signifies a nail gone.’

  ‘Pf!’ she exclaimed. ‘There are nails enough in this world.’

  He touched her cheek with his finger, as though ready to impale an unspilt tear, and gazed at her so fondly and with such compassion that she trembled; in his large eyes leapt the reflection of the lanthorn flame. ‘It is of small comfort,’ he said, ‘but it should be remembered that misery is an affirmation of life.’ Cupping his mouth in his hands, he emitted a low and tremulous hoot.

  Save for Bennet Langton and Miss Reynolds, the guests left Streatham Park a quarter after three o’clock. Before being helped into his coach Garrick took Johnson in an embrace. They swayed together on the gravel, the small man pressing his cheek against the big man’s chest.

  ‘Sam, Sam,’ Garrick moaned, and for once was lost for words.

  ‘There, there, dear Davy,’ soothed Johnson, ‘God bless you,’ and stood waving until the carriage had crunched from earshot.

  The noise of wheels woke the child in the nursery; she cried out, but Old Nurse slept on.

  When Johnson went up to his room he shut the curtains against the light that was already spreading above the fuzz of the trees. He lay down and almost immediately fell into a dream in which he and Davy walked home from school across the Market Square in Lichfield. A cabbage lay in the gutter, leaves splayed out like wings, and he kicked it clear across the cobbles and over the railings into the basement of the bookshop. Descending the steps, he spied through the window a man, head in hands, sitting at a table untidy with papers. Rubbing at the glass, he peered closer and knew it was his father. Behind him stood Dr Swinfen, practising the violin. He rapped on the window to make Father glance up, and when he did so his eyes were those of a dead man. He ran back up the steps and told young Davy to go home; he didn’t want the boy to see those eyes. And now, the whine of the violin grew louder, intensifying in pitch until it resembled a long-drawn-out scream.

  He woke on the instant, gaze fixed on the shelf above the fireplace; the spines of his books were stained with blood. The cause of such a delusion, he told himself, springs from an inward morbid discontent. Turning towards the window he observed how the sun beat against the curtains.

  A shocking incident took place two days later, an hour before Johnson left for London. Mrs Thrale was coming down the second flight of stairs when she saw Queeney standing on the landing with Belle at her side. Something in the child’s strange rigidity of posture made her pause.

  ‘Queeney,’ she called, but the girl stared past her, eyes popping, face darkening. In a flash Mrs Thrale remembered just such a distortion on the face of a cooper’s boy who had choked on a fish bone. Terrified, she ran forward and bending the child double smacked her violently about the head. Suddenly Queen
ey coughed, then spat, then screamed; the button that had caused Henry Thrale so much perturbation flew from her mouth and fell to the rug. Overcome, Mrs Thrale sank to the floor and burst into tears. Still screaming, Queeney scrambled up the stairs, the dog snapping at her heels.

  After some moments, anger replacing fear, Mrs Thrale sought out Old Nurse and boxed her ears, at which Queeney, restored save for an attack of hiccoughs, rushed from a corner and kicked her mother on the ankle. ‘Wicked, wicked girl,’ wailed Mrs Thrale, limping from the nursery.

  She was sure Johnson must have heard the hullabaloo and would be waiting anxiously in the hall, but found him instead in the breakfast room, his wig perched beside the butter dish. ‘Such a fright,’ she shouted. ‘My heart was in my mouth—’

  ‘There is something I must tell you—’ he said.

  ‘If I had not been there … if I had not come down at that exact moment—’

  ‘Of the utmost importance,’ he persisted. ‘It will not have gone unnoticed that I have not been myself these last few days.’

  ‘There are many things that pass unnoticed,’ she snapped. ‘Some of them considerably more important than others.’

  Pushing back his chair, he told her it would be best if they spoke outside. The weather still uncommonly warm, she protested it would be less tiring if they stayed where they were; he shook his head peevishly. All at once she wanted him gone. He wore her out with his daily demands on her time, his nightly insistence that she sit up with him into the small hours, pouring his tea.

  ‘You cannot begin to imagine what I have just endured,’ she said.