According to Queeney

by Beryl Bainbridge

  ‘Indeed I would,’ he replied. ‘As Mrs Garrick rightly observes he is a man who calls forth love, and that in spite of faults, of which he has many.’

  ‘I thought you had little time for Scotchmen,’ Garrick said slyly.

  Johnson took this in good part, merely remarking that he found Boswell the most unscottified of his countrymen. Garrick then pressed him as to whether it was true that Boswell was keeping a journal of their conversations together, and indeed of Johnson’s discourse in general, and if so, did he not find it intrusive?

  ‘Why, no, Sir. Why should I? It will not be accurate, for man’s compulsion is to replicate himself. Think of painting – one has only to examine a portrait to see in the sitter a resemblance to the artist. And did not Mrs Garrick say that Bozzy saw his own image in the eyes of a dead man? Besides, he does not expect me to read what he has written.’

  ‘What if others read it’, persisted Garrick, ‘after you are gone? What will you think then?’

  ‘Think then, Sir! Think then …’ spluttered Johnson. ‘Why, Sir, I will think nothing, for if the “gone” you refer to is the grave I dare say I shall have nothing to think with.’

  Mrs Thrale, noting how manfully he was trying to subdue his temper, hastily changed the subject, enquiring of Dr James his considered opinion of the health-giving properties of sea-bathing. She herself, she said, found the reverse to be the case, her outer self being much in conflict with the briny following a childhood encounter with a jellyfish. ‘I have only to put a toe in the water’, she told him, ‘for a swelling to start up.’ She was exaggerating, but felt a diversion was necessary.

  Fifteen lengthy minutes later, a considerate Mrs Garrick guided the yawning Queeney up the stairs to her bedchamber, where she gave into her hands an illustrated book of fables. ‘Thank you,’ said Queeney and allowed her head to be patted.

  Left to herself, she got up and examined the contents of Mrs Garrick’s dressing table. There was a small pot of rouge, a bowl with a lid in the shape of a cat and a bottle of fragrant oil. Inside the bowl lay an amber necklace, similar to the one she had once owned. Returning to the bed she lay down and picked up the book; soon, a page or two turned, she drifted into sleep.

  The guests leaving the table and the wine liberally poured, Thrale began to make sheep’s eyes at the cousin of Dr James. The lady, all of forty years old and as yet unmarried, responded beyond the call of etiquette. She had a dab of rouge on either cheek and her gown of sprigged muslin would not have gone amiss on a woman half her age. Mrs Thrale, mortified, thought of mutton rather than lamb and smiled a great deal. Presently, Mrs Garrick sat with her and after much inconsequential chat to do with Lichfield, the weather and the service at the Swan Inn openly asked what she had made of Miss Porter.

  ‘She is strong’, Mrs Thrale said, ‘and somewhat mischievous. The company she keeps is not up to her standard.’

  Mrs Garrick agreed as to Miss Porter’s vigour of mind. According to gossip, she had shown no animosity towards her mother’s curious choice of husband, unlike her two brothers, who had been against the union from the start. ‘The eldest boy never forgave her. He went away to sea and never saw her again.’

  ‘A second marriage’, murmured Mrs Thrale, ‘must always be injurious to the children of the first, owing to loyalties.’

  ‘It is rumoured that Mr Johnson’s affections were first directed to Miss Porter and only later fixed on the mother.’

  ‘I did not know that,’ Mrs Thrale said. She did, but was in no mood to set Mrs Garrick straight. The misunderstanding had centred around a love poem written by Sam many years before, in aid of his friend, Edmund Hector, who had been sweet on a girl in the neighbourhood of Birmingham.

  ‘The younger boy,’ continued the loquacious Mrs Garrick, ‘so I have heard, called once at the house in Gough Square and ran away before Tetty could be fetched downstairs … too upset to look on his dear mother’s face.’

  Thrale’s hand now creeping across the knee of Dr James’s painted cousin, Mrs Thrale ground out, ‘We must accustom ourselves to knowing that men are fickle and have an appetite for all women. For myself, I do not mind, for I do not love any man.’ She uttered these last words with such vehemence that she flushed red. ‘Where is Queeney?’ she asked, rising to her feet in consternation.

  Mrs Garrick took her upstairs. At their entrance the little girl clenched her fists to her chest, but did not wake. ‘Such a pretty child,’ whispered Mrs Garrick, primping her hair in the looking glass. ‘What a comfort it must be to have a daughter.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Thrale. ‘Though not as often as one might suppose.’

  This silenced Mrs Garrick, if not for long. She commenced to babble her opinion of Mr Johnson, declaring she had never seen him looking so well, and how it was doubtless due to the care he received at Streatham. He dressed better, his temper was less uncertain and he had altogether mellowed … it was obvious to all that Mrs Thrale’s influence was paramount, as was his fondness for her.

  ‘The affection is mutual,’ Mrs Thrale said, ‘though he is not always easy to live with.’

  Mrs Garrick expressed it a wonder he had not married again. ‘My husband once told me that a very fine lady had once told him that Mr Johnson was a very seducing man when he chose to be so.’

  Mrs Thrale remained mute; there was something upsetting her, and it had little to do with the humiliating conduct of her husband.

  ‘—though I understand he did consider marriage, and that in spite of his protestations of grief, a bare twelvemonth after his bereavement.’

  Mrs Thrale stared at her. She said, ‘To whom?’ so loudly that Queeney stirred in her sleep. Modifying her tone, she repeated the question.

  ‘Why,’ came the reply, ‘none other than Anna Williams.’

  ‘Mrs Williams!’

  ‘The very same.’

  ‘Never. Not so.’

  ‘I have it on good authority’, whispered Mrs Garrick, ‘that at one time there was more, much more, than a friendly attachment between the two.’

  ‘What authority?’ demanded Mrs Thrale.

  ‘Why, that of Mrs Desmoulins.’

  ‘Fiddlesticks,’ cried Mrs Thrale. ‘It is a travesty of the truth. Mrs Desmoulins has been besotted with Samuel for twenty years … her word cannot be trusted.’ Agitated, and muttering excuses to do with the lateness of the hour and the advisability of getting Queeney back to the inn, she shook the child awake and pulled her from the bed. ‘She is exhausted’, she said shrilly, ‘and is suffering from a chill. See how she clutches her chest.’

  Hurrying her bleary-eyed daughter down the stairs she called to Peter Garrick to summon the sedan chair. ‘Hester,’ her husband remonstrated, ‘she will rest here more comfortably. I, for one, was much bitten in the night.’

  ‘I am surprised you noticed,’ she retorted, ‘seeing you lay as one dead.’

  Johnson did not look up when she left, nor did he trouble to break off his conversation with Mr Darwin.

  The moon obscured by cloud, Mrs Thrale kept tight hold of Queeney in case the pole-carriers stumbled as they jolted through the dark streets. She herself would not have minded an upset, particularly one that would have bumped the thoughts from her head.

  When she arrived at the inn and laid the little girl down, she saw in the candle glow the glint of tears on her cheeks. She asked what was wrong, but Queeney merely whimpered; drifting into sleep, the child’s fists uncurled and let spill Papa’s amber necklace upon the bolster.

  Mrs Thrale tossed and turned in her bed; she could not shift the crotchety Mrs Williams from her mind. Johnson had twice brought the faded woman to dine at Southwark, professing it a kindness to include her. Both times Mrs Williams had worn scarlet. On Mrs Thrale politely admiring her choice of gown, she had said Mr Johnson liked her to dress brightly. On each occasion, her sightless eyes turned to his face, she had chided him for wolfing his food, and he, with surprising meekness, had replied, ‘Yes, yes, you do right to
check me,’ and made an effort to chew less ferociously. Was that not the response of a man much under the thumb of a wife?

  Telling herself she was being fanciful, Mrs Thrale pulled the bedclothes over her head and threw them off again at the sound of a commotion beneath the window. Rising, she peered down into the road. The sky had now cleared, and below, in the brightness of the moon, she saw Peter Garrick swaying on the cobblestones and Johnson, humped over, Thrale slung across his back like a bag of coals. After a prolonged thumping at the inn door, the landlord descended and let in the inebriates. The cacophony continued, Garrick’s voice being uppermost, and beneath it that of Johnson, urging hush. Mrs Thrale drew the bolt on her door, then released it; she did not want Henry accusing her of pique.

  An hour or so later there was a further uproar on the landing, after which the door opened with some force and Johnson staggered in, supporting Thrale under the armpits. Propelling him forwards he came to the bed and tossed his burden down. He muttered something when he left, but it was in Latin and Mrs Thrale, cowering beneath the quilt, could not make out the words.

  The weight of her husband’s shoulder pinning her to the mattress, she punched him. The blow was ill judged; waking, Thrale rolled on top of her. His thrustings afforded him little relief and much exertion. He uttered not a word and neither did she, and when the unsatisfactory business was over she toppled him roughly from her. Just then the moon shone full through the window and in its cold light she was bewildered to see a froth of petticoats above his naked buttocks.

  Queeney slept fitfully and woke at first light from a dream in which she had been captured by a highwayman and robbed of all her jewels. The highwayman wore a handkerchief over his nose and mouth, and when she pulled it away it was Papa’s face underneath.

  She got up and dressed herself, then practised walking up and down the room. Her left shoe was not comfortable, but she adjusted her stocking so that the stain of yesterday’s blood was visible. From her window she watched a barefooted boy creeping towards the goose pen in the yard.

  She went downstairs and let herself out into the grey dawn. The boy would have run away at her approach had she not called out that she would not tell on him. He had been sent for, he stuttered, by the landlord. A lady who was lodging in the inn wanted a letter delivered most urgently to a house in the Close. Queeney said, ‘Give it to me. I am just on my way there,’ at which he dug obediently into his pocket. One of the eggs he was hiding in his ragged shirt fell to the ground and splattered its yolk across his feet.

  Queeney went back into the inn and was about to return to her room when she was arrested by the picture hanging on the stair wall beneath the antlers of a stag. The painting was of an old man dressed in a black linsey gown and a snuff-coloured velvet coat with gold buttons. One hand was thrust into the bosom of his shirt, the other held out a letter with the subscription: ‘To Mr Farthingale’. She had looked at the picture before, but until now the letter had escaped her attention.

  She was turning the bend of the stairs when she spied Mr Johnson tiptoeing from her mother’s room. He did not see her and continued in the direction of his own chamber, trailing a petticoat behind him.

  At mid-day, horses having been hired, Johnson and the Thrales, accompanied by Peter Garrick, prepared to ride into the countryside. Thrale was pale as a ghost, Garrick stupid and Johnson lethargic.

  Very early that morning Mrs Thrale had dispatched a note to Mrs Garrick, apologising for the abruptness of her departure the night before and quoting, by way of excuse, the dear lady’s own innocent and well-meaning reference to daughters being of comfort. The subject is a painful one, she wrote, for though I have three living girls, my sweet, lost Lucy was dearer to me than all the rest.

  Now exhausted, she had intended to let the others gad off without her, but the transformation wrought in Queeney at the sight of the white pony waiting in the yard altered her mind. Such a shine on her face, such a pleasing curve to her pink mouth, lightened her heart. At breakfast the child had gazed at her coldly and when spoken to had twice pretended deafness.

  In spite of the lack of sleep suffered by all, it was not long before the beauty of the day affected the mood of each and every one. The stormy weather having dissipated and the sun now serenely beaming in a blue heaven, it was hard to remain dull. Johnson went so far as to assert that sunlight was possessed of chemical properties, as yet undiscovered, similar to alcohol and conducive to a heightening of the spirits. ‘How else’, he said, pointing at Thrale just then galloping ahead, voice raised in song, ‘are we to explain Henry’s renewed energy? Four hours ago he had not the use of his legs.’

  ‘Nor of any other part,’ murmured Mrs Thrale, recalling her rude awakening.

  Trotting beside Stowe Pool, she was startled by a kingsfisher thrashing among the rushes. ‘There, there,’ she cried, spreading her arms in imitation of its awkward wings. ‘That is nothing like,’ said Queeney, although her tone was free of scorn.

  Mr Johnson held the landscape much changed and for the worse. His father’s parchment mill had been allowed to fall into decay. Even the ruins of it had vanished, obliterated under nettles and bindweed. The weeping willows, whose branches had once swayed above the waters of the pool, had been hacked down. ‘In my yesterdays,’ he told them, reining in his horse and indicating the lower reaches, ‘it was here my father taught me to swim. In a mild voice he instructed me to breathe out, breathe in … to wield the legs in the actions of a frog.’

  ‘Frogs have legs,’ said Queeney. ‘They are not like fish.’

  ‘Nor are we,’ Johnson said, ‘which is why they are worthy of copy.’

  Continuing along a rutted path between fields of rough pasture, they passed into the shade of an ancient oak. Johnson dismounted and bade the others do likewise. He wished them to look back at Lichfield, at the spires of the cathedral and the tower of St Mary’s church. ‘It is often advantageous’, he said, ‘to view things from a distance. Close up, we are apt to see a part rather than the whole.’

  Mrs Thrale stayed on her horse; the ground was waterlogged and she feared for her shoes. Upon Queeney jumping down, mud rose up and spattered her dress. Johnson, staring into the hazy distance, intoned, ‘He left a name, at which the world grew pale, To point a moral, or adorn a tale.’

  ‘If I am not mistaken,’ said Mrs Thrale, ‘you are speaking of Charles XII.’

  ‘In this instance,’ he said, ‘I am remembering my poor father.’

  His adult companions kept a respectful silence and looked sombrely towards the town. It was rare for Johnson to refer to his father, and rarer still for his memory to be recalled in such an exalted manner.

  Addressing Mr Johnson, Queeney asked if he knew a man called Farthingale. He repeated the name several times and then shook his head. He asked why it mattered to her, and she explained it was on account of the picture in the Swan Inn and the letter in the old man’s hand. ‘I had not noticed the letter before,’ she said, at which Mr Johnson remarked that a similar thing had happened to him in regard to the painting, in that he had not been conscious of the old man’s gold buttons until he had observed that one was missing.

  ‘Missing?’ said Thrale.

  ‘What old man?’ asked Mrs Thrale, baffled.

  ‘The third one down,’ Johnson said.

  Mrs Thrale could make neither head nor tail of the conversation and said no more.

  Presently Queeney wandered off in search of wild flowers. Peter Garrick stretched his arms above his head and proclaimed it a capital morning. He acknowledged his wife was displeased with him owing to the bedraggled state of her petticoat, but she was not a woman long to hold a grudge.

  ‘Perhaps I should make peace on your behalf,’ said Thrale. ‘I seem to recall it was I who wore it through the streets.’

  ‘You did indeed, and to great effect,’ Johnson told him. ‘In Bird Street, Sir, you were accosted by a ruffian who called you a pretty wench and offered you sixpence for a trembler agains
t the wall.’

  ‘The moon was hidden,’ Garrick said, ‘which accounts for the proposition. You would have obliged, but I dragged you away lest he should squander his money.’

  ‘A fool and his money are more easily parted than a man from his petticoat,’ remarked Johnson. ‘When I made haste to retrieve it earlier this morning, you fought for possession.’

  Amid laughter, Thrale asked him if he considered a pretty woman to be superior to one of a studious disposition, to which he answered in the affirmative. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘a pretty woman may be foolish; a pretty woman may be wicked; a pretty woman may not like me, but beauty of itself is very estimable.’ At this Mrs Thrale spurred her horse forward and waited further off. She did not think herself pretty, nor ever had.

  After some minutes Johnson came to her. He said, ‘We are having merry times, are we not, Hester?’ She refused to answer him and busied herself flapping away gnats. He laid a hand on her arm. ‘Come, come,’ he said, ‘do not spoil the morning. We are all men in our own natures frail, and capable of frailty.’ ‘Frail indeed,’ she snapped, at which, chuckling, he murmured, ‘Dear, peevish little creature,’ and patted her hand as though humouring a child.

  They rode in a wide circle back to Lichfield. Queeney had threaded meadowsweet into her pony’s mane. Now and then she leant forward and pressed her lips to its neck.

  By degrees, conversation faltered and finally died. Entangled in separate dreams, the party swayed through the balmy morning to the hum of bees.