by Alix Nathan
‘This newspaper, now, Abraham. It is two months old but it tells about the seamen’s mutiny. You did mention it one time. When all the sailors in the fleet refused to sail.’
‘Read it, read it then!’
She was glad to have pleased him, though she knew the report would stir him up, make him roar and thrust her to the floor.
‘ “The mutiny among the seamen broke out on this day with greater violence than ever; owing, it is said, to a misrepresentation of certain parliamentary discussion on the subject, and to an idea that the concessions granted to the seamen would not be adhered to.” ’
‘Who trusts par-lia-ment?’ Price shouted. ‘See, do you, Catherine?’
‘Yes, but let me read, Abraham! “In the morning of that day, the signal for sailing being made by Lord Bridport…” ’
He snorted.
‘Abraham! This is the important part. Listen! “…the seamen again refused to weigh anchor. Some of the delegates from the ships at St Helen’s coming alongside the London of 98 guns, Admiral Colpoys, that officer declared that not a man should come on board; and on their persisting to enter, an affray happened between the officers of the London and the ship’s crew, which ended in bloodshed, several on both sides being killed and wounded.” ’
‘Do it say how many them did kill?’
‘No, it don’t. But listen. “The sailors having overcome the officers, the former immediately confined Admiral Colpoys and Captain Griffiths, their commanders, for whose lives, for some time, great fears were entertained.” ’
‘Confined their commanders! Oho!’
‘It finishes: “In the sequel, they were released; and this alarming mutiny has since happily subsided.” ’
It was not what she expected. Instead of banging about and cursing, grabbing her and ripping her dress in his haste, he sat silently in his chair, picking at his fingers and biting his nails. He was brewing something. Catherine’s left foot was at the ready lest she need rush to the door.
‘Us’ll do it, then.’
‘Do what?’
‘I’ll tell the men. Them’ll bring what them has. You do tell no one.’
‘Abraham, what do you mean to do?’
‘Why confine Powyss of course! Amos have a pistol, isn’t it. Us all has staves and forks. Us’ll confine him! Force him!’
‘Then the constables will come and the militia and there’ll be bloodshed and you’ll be hanged. Abraham, no!’
‘Him’ll not call the militia if he be dead.’
‘No, you must not!’
‘Him must be brought down. Everyone be against him! Him fucks another man’s wife. And keeps that man in prison!’
‘Abraham stop!’ She felt chaos, disaster roiling up. He might act at any moment and all would go wrong. She should never have brought the newspaper, how foolish to have tried to please him! She must try for all she was worth to control him. For who else could?
‘I have a better idea,’ she said rapidly to prevent him from speaking. ‘Listen to me. Sit you down and listen. We shall release John Warlow. I shall release John Warlow.’
‘You?’
‘I can do it easily. I’ll run down when Cook and Jenkins are asleep. Annie sleeps like a log. Sam in the back kitchen. I shall let him out. He’ll go back to Hannah and that will be the end of it. No more experiment for Mr Powyss and no more Hannah for him, else Warlow might kill him.’
‘Ah!’ Price relished that thought.
‘No bloodshed. No hanging, Abraham.’ The word seemed to have its effect. He must have seen a hanging.
‘Him’ll tell Powyss it were you let him out.’ He thought he’d trumped her.
‘What crime shall I have committed? It’s not murder, nor theft. I shall speak to Mr Powyss if I have to. I’m sure I can convince him it’s for the best.’ She’d glimpsed his face, tired and frowning just this morning, felt sudden pity for him.
‘I’ll break down the door first.’
‘No!’ She stood. ‘That will waken everyone. I can do it. I’ll steal the key from Jenkins, prise off the bars myself. Don’t you see, Abraham? This way we can free Warlow and wreck Mr Powyss’s plans without any trouble.’
Price ground his teeth.
‘Let me try. And look you, if it fails, then you can get your men together.’
‘Clever puss,’ he sneered, ‘I’ll consider it,’ and tore her clothes with such violence that she had to creep up to her room and had much sewing to do before she could appear again downstairs.
* * *
—
ONE DAY he slips on the board of a ripped book. Falls heavily. Lies in the refuse, the wreck, groaning. His wrist and foot pain him. Soon it’s cold on the ground. He should light the fire; he’s not far from it. But it’s too full of ash. Won’t draw.
Candle goes out. More candles in a cupboard other side of the room. He touches the debris around him to feel where the kicked path to the cupboard begins. Hauls himself slowly. Feeling, feeling his way. Don’t want glass splinters in his hands, his knees.
There’s a skittering on the table. Let them! They’ll keep off him if there’s orts and mammocks to gnaw.
The cupboard has no doors. Good. He takes out a candle but he’s left the tinderbox near where he fell. Stuffs his pockets with candles, crawls back, dragging the hurting foot. His hand sweeps carefully before him like a delicate brush.
Tinderbox. It’s hard to strike – nails too long. Still, he’s kept his right thumb and forefinger chewed, so he has a pincer. Middle nail’s too hard to bite off. Balances the box in the palm of his left hand with its beak-claws. Grips the steel with pincer fingers and strikes on the flint.
The candle flares; he sits on the floor, panting. Melts the ends of two more, sticks them on the ground, lights them. He looks at his legs; the ankle is swelling. Left wrist aches. Hears the lift thing creak up then down. Taking up the food he doesn’t eat whether he rings the bell or not. Sending more. He won’t eat it. Won’t eat that slop. The thought of it makes him want to vomit.
He sees the board he slipped on. Among swathes of dust, blackened dottles, shards of organ case, cracked magnifying glass. A tear of paper, shred as big as his thumb. Words. He peers through the lens. Rubs off smears to see better.
My skin is bro ken
It is that man from before. What was he called? He was like him, wasn’t he? Rob Robin. The Strange Ad ventures. He picks the paper up, holds it near a flame. Pinched between forefinger and square thumb that blots out half the words.
My flesh is cloth clothed My flesh is clothed with worms
and clods of dust
He sits back, astonished. It is so! He scratches out lice from his sleeve. In bed the biters crowd down from the walls. What parts of himself he sees are black with dirt. Feet, hands. How can that be when he’s not trod in mud for years?
my skin is broken,
yes, yes it is,
and be come loath some become loathsome.
The words are not about the man. They are about him. Him. John Warlow. It is him. Sores don’t heal. His skin is broken all over his body. Lice bite, bite.
He shifts the paper. There’s two more lines. The words are not hard. The words are speaking to him.
My days are swift er than a wea ver’s shutt shuttle, swifter than a weaver’s shuttle
Oh. Have they gone so fast? He doesn’t know one day from the next. Has he not been here for? For how many years?
and are spent with out without hope.
The words are about him. He found them here, on the ground next to him, this scrap of paper. They are for him. They tell his life. His life now. Broken. Loathsome. Dust.
He is borne down by the words. Sadness whelms him. Without hope, without hope. He cries
in gulps like a baby. Great gulps.
Through tears he pinches out two of the candles. Crawls with the other slowly, slowly. Stops, sob-racked. Moves again, ox-like. Pulls himself up onto the bed, snuffs out the light, curls into darkness.
* * *
—
‘I THINK YOU CANNOT want me much longer. I am not a lady. I know nothing.’ Hannah, entranced by the touch of fine linen, warmed by a well-stoked fire, felt with awe her inadequacy.
‘No! No, you are wrong.’
‘My mother were poor, always with child, so I must help her, not go to school.’
‘You said your father taught you.’
‘Yes. Then they did give him a peg leg and sent him back to fight. He were killed in America.’
‘I heard say your mother was a beauty.’
‘People always said. She were a lady’s maid till master got her with child.’
‘Ah. Were you that child?’
‘No, it were stillborn. When Mother were a widow four of her bairns did die, all Kempton’s and her mind did wander. She were never the same after.’
Powyss lay next to her, exhausted by the energy that always possessed him when, politeness over, they were alone in his room. Her mother’s story seemed barely to touch him. He envisaged her life as here, only here, in his bed.
‘I think of nothing else but you all day.’
In fact he sometimes thought of the Harriets, Anna-Marias, Sophies at Mrs Clavering’s, though he could never remember a face to fit each name. Wondered if, in recalling their attractions and what they used to do, he might resist this fatal compulsion. But it was hopeless. For always when he’d finished in Jermyn Street he would feel nothing but a little bruised, forget which girl it was who’d exerted herself. The hours there were not memorable. He would look forward with more eagerness to a long discussion with the nurseryman on the morrow. Useless. Hannah’s was the body he wanted, incessantly.
He was obsessed. Besieged by exigent lust and rage. Racked.
‘I cannot understand you. Herbert.’ She used his name rarely, uncertainly. ‘You are a gentleman. You do as you wish. But I have no learning. Nothing.’
‘That doesn’t matter, Hannah. I cannot understand myself. All my life I have despised everything except the life and work of the mind. Now my plans, my interests have vanished. I care about nothing except you.’
And he could see no relief. Lust and rage. The two were indistinguishable. To fuck Hannah was to destroy Warlow. Over and over again.
‘I did say it before: I am yours. I will be always.’
He bowed his head with the weight of this sad honour, and she raised up his face with both hands and dared to look into his black eyes.
‘It’s no good,’ he said, ‘we can do nothing while John Warlow lives.’
‘There be folk live not married.’
‘But it is impossible that you live here with me. You and all the children while Warlow seethes below! There is always Warlow!’ he said, raising his voice and grasping her hands. ‘Always down there in who knows what frame of mind, while we take our pleasure.’
She looked away. Pleasure. A word she’d never used. It was exactly what she felt.
‘Can you stay him from your thoughts. Hannah?’
‘I have decided. It is best. While we can.’
‘But you are married to him. Did he court you, Hannah? Did you, did you want to marry him?’
‘John did save me from Kempton. When the illness came and Mother were not herself no more Kempton did turn to me. I were a girl. John did black his eye, break his nose.’
‘Warlow the hero!’
‘But then he did take me himself for his reward. Jack were his child, so then we must marry.
‘He is a wilful man. He get his way. He did want the £50 a year though others told him not.’
‘So we punish him for his wilfulness?’
She didn’t answer.
‘It helps me to think of you. Your children. You look so well now, Hannah. There is a beauty in your face that was hidden when I first encountered you. You wouldn’t let me see your eyes! Grey now in this firelight. You have sent out blossom after years in the dark.’ He held her head and smelled her skin, her hair. Could Warlow ever have known her as he did?
‘And your children are surely well. Aren’t they? It’s a while since I’ve met them in the garden. Little Polly, who likes flowers, is she in good health?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s good, then. And yet. And yet we cannot forget him, can we? He is our punishment. And now the servants are against both me and you because of him. And I began it all!’
There was nothing she could say.
‘This may shock you. In my whole life I have only ever paid for women. When I was young, in Athens, Rome, Naples. In London I pay expensive harlots.’
‘Oh.’
‘You are like none of them, Hannah. I want to keep you. Like treasure.’
‘Then you shall keep me in your library in a glass cupboard!’ she said, laughing.
He was pleased to see her laugh, acknowledged the dart of truth in what she said. For that’s what he would do, if it were only possible: keep her, a precious piece in his collection, to touch, to have whenever he wanted her.
Sometimes it occurred to him that he should protect her from the lust which now he had begun, near drowned him like the brandy and laudanum. Hadn’t he always shrunk from physical violence? What he did sometimes seemed like violation, though she didn’t complain. Before long it might crack her innocence. She might begin to resemble the older whores.
He needed a drink and poured another glass of brandy.
‘I do think you must not, Herbert.’ She touched his face. ‘It will be a harm to you.’
He downed it quickly. Smiled at her concern.
‘Someone at the door!’ she suddenly said.
The bedroom led off from the small upstairs sitting room. On the other side of it was Powyss’s dressing room, so that, wedged between the two, they were always assured of privacy. They had never yet been disturbed. Without being instructed, Jenkins knew he mustn’t. Until now.
Powyss buttoned his breeches, pulled on his coat and shoes.
‘Don’t worry, you are safe in here. I shall deal with this in the other room. It must be urgent.’
He closed the door. The knocking increased on the sitting-room door.
‘What is it? What is it at this time of night?’
Jenkins appeared, flushed, annoyed. Powyss saw that his clothes, too, had been hastily pulled on. Jenkins didn’t have a wife. Did he fuck the maids? He knew nothing about the man.
‘Sir, there is an attempt. Catherine Croft has opened up Warlow’s door. There is a commotion.’
‘Damn, Jenkins! Can you keep no control of the staff?’
‘Sir, it is night. All were asleep.’ He looked accusingly at Powyss.
‘Has she let him out?’
‘She have tried to. I don’t know if he be gone.’
Powyss hesitated, distracted absurdly by the collapse of Jenkins’s usually correct grammar.
‘Go and find out. I shall come down shortly.’
He stood, uncertain what to do. If Warlow was out, it could be disastrous, given his probable mood. There was no likelihood he’d not hear about Hannah and him and then she’d need protection. He’d have to keep her here. But of course not! There were her children, would they come, too? All of them live in Moreham House terrorised by Warlow?
The experiment was over, that was clear. He heard his father’s voice thanking God, with that laugh that made him wince. He’d have to bribe Warlow heavily to compel him to treat Hannah well.
For she would return to him. Must. And life for them all would resume its past condition, except that the Warlows would be richer and he…
He would lose her: No! No. How could he possibly abandon this life he had with her? That tormented him when she was not present, overwhelmed him when she was.
He saw himself reduced to glimpsing her through windows. Strangling acute desire with plants, books, brandy.
He uncorked the phial in his coat, smelled the kindness of cinnamon and cloves before the opiate struck, went back into the bedroom and sat by her.
‘Hannah. Jenkins tells me that someone has opened up the door and let out your husband.’ He saw her eyes gape with shock, her hands fly to her face.
‘Fear nothing yet. Put on your clothes, but stay here, in this room. Stay until I return. I’m going down to see what’s happening.’ She pressed both fists against her mouth, her eyes wide with terror.
As he closed the door there was more knocking.
‘Yes?’ It was Jenkins, as expected. ‘What now?’
‘I have apprehended the maid Croft. Cook has hold of her. No one has seen Warlow. But, sir, a visitor has arrived. Mr Benjamin Fox. Shall I bring him straight up?’
8
HE WAKES TO THE THROB of blood in his ears. And another noise. In the other room. Different. Not rats. Not the creaking. He sits up, pulls a blanket about him, hunched. Holds the ends together just under his nose, ears free to hear.
The door into his place. Outside it. Against it. A tool against it. Wood screaking. Someone’s prising off the planks.
He doesn’t move. Noise stops. He breathes again. But he’s too far in to hear everything outside. Strain hard. Listen. Listen!
Key in the lock. Turning. Squawk of thick-rusted iron.
He is rigid. Someone is there. Someone has come in. Someone! His hearing, refined by years of silence, begins to pinpoint the sounds. Each movement.
Someone is there. Crunching on debris. He hears a gasp.
Steps stop. Scuff through it. Stop.
He imagines it looking round. Is there one? Or two? Lookin for him. He mustn’t move. They don’t know where he is.
No sound. Then: ‘Are you there?’ A woman’s voice. Woman! Them wouldn’t send a woman. Why a woman?