Our own house sat on the west side, directly opposite the yellow house. It was small and unpretentious, only two stories, but as charming as could be with its mellow tan walls and old white shutters, the small pear tree in front abloom with delicate white blossoms that filled the air with a lovely fragrance. Thomas Sheppard had found the place for us. It belonged to one Benjamin Mortimer, an aged writer of travel books who, wishing to spend his declining years with a spinster sister in Kent, was eager to lease. Sheppard published Mortimer’s books, and he made all the arrangements for us, obtaining the lease at a wonderfully reasonable price. We took the place furnished, bringing only one or two pieces of furniture from the Holywell Street flat. There was a tiny vegetable and herb garden in back and, luxury of luxuries, our own private pump. No more trotting up and down endless flights of stairs for water.
It was absolute heaven, I thought, crossing the yard with its rough, uneven cobbles a golden gray-brown in the sunlight. Greenbriar Court was serene, quiet as a churchyard, tucked away here in the middle of the noisy, clanging city, and Fleet Street only fifty yards away down the narrow brick passage. The court wasn’t so quiet this afternoon, though. Curious yapping noises came from the yellow house, and I noticed that the window curtains were pulled back to let in the sun. Its mysterious owner must have returned, I observed, unlocking the front door and stepping into the cool, sunny foyer.
There were only three rooms downstairs—a large, comfortable sitting room, a formal dining room we had never used and in back, a charming old kitchen, copper pots and pans hanging on the walls along with dried herbs and strings of onions. There was a large fireplace, a gigantic black iron stove that filled me with terror, a huge hutch filled with dishes and a heavy, battered oak table with matching chairs. Sunlight bathed the dull-red brick floor. Hell to polish, that floor. I kept it gleaming nevertheless. Blue and green canisters sat on the drain board, and a wonderful row of heavy oak cabinets filled the wall above it.
I set my basket down on the table and began to put the provisions away in the cabinets—apples, oranges, carrots, bread, two hard sausage rolls, a creamy wedge of cheese wrapped in cloth to keep it moist. I had picked up a pot of mustard and two meat pies as well. Plenty of food in the house now, and I could always make a jaunt to the eating house around the corner from Fleet and bring back some chops or slices of that delicious pink roast beef. One of these days I was really going to have to learn to cook, I mused, closing the cabinet door, but Cam wasn’t particular about what he ate and I’d much rather go out for victuals than try to cope with that great, frightening stove.
Pausing to glance out the windows at the small, sunny walled garden in back, I moved back down the hall to the front of the house. A narrow staircase led to the second floor. There were just two rooms upstairs, a bedroom overlooking the garden and a second bedroom in front that Cam had converted into a workroom, books and papers littering the place, a gigantic desk replacing the old worktable. Impossible to keep straight, that room, but I made a valiant effort, endlessly tidying up after him. Glancing at the slender grandfather clock that stood in the hall in its polished mahogany case, I saw that it was just two o’clock in the afternoon. What to do with the rest of the day? I was restless, at a loss without Cam underfoot to keep me occupied. I’d spent the whole morning cleaning the house. It was spotless. Laundry was all done, too—extra sheets and bedclothes neatly folded in the chest at the foot of the bed, put away with tiny bags of dried verbena to make them smell nice. No darning to do, either. No books to read.
Might as well stop stalling, Randy, I told myself. You started it. You got yourself into it, and you’ve either got to tear up those pages and forget you ever wrote ’em or else get in there and get back to work. Sighing wearily, frowning a very unhappy frown, I trudged reluctantly into the sitting room. Benjamin Mortimer had simple, exquisite taste, if somewhat limited means, and the room was cozy and charming with its pale cream walls, light gray marble fireplace and the faded, rather shabby gray rug patterned with sky blue flowers. Draperies of ancient lime green silk hung at the windows. The sofa and two matching armchairs were covered with worn sky-blue velvet. Everything had been selected with loving care a great many years ago and had the soothing patina of age.
In front of one of the windows stood a small, beautifully fashioned secretary of rich red-brown mahogany, the wood gleaming, and it was here that I did my secret work. Sitting down in the delicate yet sturdy mahogany chair with seat of sky blue velvet, I opened the secretary, its front projecting to make a desk surface. I took out the old silver ink pot, the quill I’d nipped from Cam, the stack of finished pages. Just fourteen of ’em, and I’d been working on the book for two whole weeks, writing on the sly when Cam was out of the house or else immersed in his own work upstairs. Fourteen pages. Two weeks. That was just a page a day, I thought miserably, and on a good day Cam could turn out fifteen or twenty. I was a novice, sure, but you’d think I’d be able to do better than a page a day, particularly when you considered the hours and hours I spent at it.
I had left Lady Cynthia waiting at the old manor, her husband safely away on a trip to France, and Lord John had just come in, admitted by the trusty old servant who had nursed Lady C. since birth and was in on their secret, abetting them in their romantic intrigue. Placing a clean page in front of me, dipping the tip of the quill in ink, I stared at the page, thinking hard. The ink dried. I toyed with the feather as brilliant rays of sunlight spilled through the window, making a sunburst on the silver ink pot. Lovely sunburst, I thought, tiny golden spokes reflecting on the empty page. Another three or four minutes passed before I finally dipped the quill in ink again and wrote eight words: Lady Cynthia watched Lord John climb the stairs.
Abject, I stared at the sentence. Boring. Lifeless. I couldn’t see either of them, couldn’t feel anything. The words conveyed nothing, and my noble characters were mere names, not flesh and blood. This wasn’t nearly as easy as I had thought it would be when I started the bloody book. I thought it would be fun, thought it would be exciting, and rarely had I known such anguish. There was a knack to it, all right, and I obviously didn’t have it. Looked so easy when you watched someone doing it. Seemed a snap when you read what someone else had already written. Nothing to it, you thought, and then you tried to do it yourself and suffered the agonies of the damned. Frowning deeply, I crossed out the words and started again.
Lady Cynthia watched … All right, she’s watching, but how does she feel about it? She’s happy. She’s elated. She’s nervous, too, because this is the first time she’s seen him since their violent quarrel and wasn’t that torture to write! I added the words with trembling heart. Does a heart actually tremble? Sounds like she has some kind of disease. I crossed out trembling and wrote the word joyous and added an a before it. Lady Cynthia watched with a joyous heart as Lord John climbed the stairs. We see Lady Cynthia, know how she feels about it, but Lord John’s still dull as ditch water, no life at all. I stared at the page some more, utterly abject, and then I smiled and crossed out the last three words and added bounded eagerly up the stairs. Lady Cynthia watched with a joyous heart as Lord John bounded eagerly up the stairs. That was better. That was more like it, yes, and it had only taken me forty-five minutes to write that one bloody sentence. At this rate I’d be seventy-three years old before I finished the first section.
Nevertheless, I forged ahead, and after a while the words seemed to come a bit easier. I continued working until the sharp, stabbing pain in the small of my back made further work impossible, and then I scooted the chair back, emitted a heavy sigh and looked at what I’d done. One and a half pages, all crossed out and marked over and looking far more messy than anything Cam had ever turned over to me for copying. Not nearly as much as I would have liked to have done, but I had fifteen and a half pages now and that was better than nothing. Would I ever be able to write a complete book? Seemed impossible at the moment, but I wasn’t going to give up. I felt a sense of satisfaction as I stacked
the pages together and fastened the top back on the ink pot. Me, Miranda, actually writing a book. Beat all, it did. Who’d uv thought it?
Closing the secretary, I got up and stretched, throwing my shoulders back to alleviate the pain in my back, and I could hear tiny bones popping. Hard on your back, this writing business. Didn’t know how Cam stood it, sitting hunched over like that for hours on end. No wonder he was so grumpy and irritable. I didn’t intend to tell him about my own writing. Wouldn’t dream of it. No telling what he’d say. If I kept at it long enough I was bound to get better, and if I did, if I was finally able to write something that wouldn’t make him hoot with laughter, then I might let him see some of it. Sure wished he was here right now. I missed him something awful, and him just gone thirty-six hours.
Standing there in the sitting room with the afternoon sunlight making bright patterns on the floor, I thought of all the changes that had occurred in my life these past months, and it was amazing. Didn’t seem quite real. Half a year ago I had been sleeping in a filthy coal cellar, picking pockets for a living, going without food much of the time and freezing my arse off on the streets, and here I was in this lovely house with plenty of food on hand and plenty of money tucked away in the ginger jar I still kept on the mantel beside the lazy old brass clock. I had been all alone in the world without a living soul to care whether I lived or died, with the possible exception of Big Moll, and now I had someone of my very own. Sometimes, when I really thought about it, it was almost scary, too good to be true. I had the feeling I was in the middle of a glorious dream, and I feared I might wake up at any minute and it would all disappear and I’d be back in St. Giles again, desolate and alone.
A peculiar scratching noise broke into my reverie, and I cocked my head, listening. It seemed to be coming from the front door. Someone scratching on the door. Didn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t they knock? The noise continued, scratch, scratch, scratch, and then there was a thin, shrill yapping sound. Stepping into the hall, I opened the front door and looked out. No one there. Something small and fluffy brushed against my skirts then, and tiny paws pattered merrily on the hall floor as my visitor explored eagerly. Startled, I watched the tiny ball of pale golden-brown bouncing around, ears flopping, tiny puffed tail wagging vigorously.
“Who’re you?” I inquired. “And where did-ja come from?”
The preposterous creature paused in his exploring and tilted his head to one side, considering my questions gravely, and then he yapped at me and dashed into the sitting room. I had left a newspaper on one of the chairs. My visitor made an energetic leap, caught the edge of the paper in his mouth and then raced down the hall with it, the newspaper flapping noisily, ten times the size he was. I watched with consternation and amusement as he dropped the paper, backed off a few steps and then attacked it, happily tearing it to shreds.
“Really!” I exclaimed. “That ain’t at all polite. You’re messin’ up my ’all!”
He turned, gave me a sassy yap, then continued to shred. He couldn’t possibly be more than six inches long and four inches high, if that, and he firmly believed he was a great, fierce mastiff. He growled as he demolished the paper, though his growls sounded more like gurgles. Finally bored, he stopped, eyed the mess he’d made and then cocked his head at me again, tail wagging like mad. His eyes were dark brown and enormous, and his fur, I decided, was the color of champagne.
“Pleased with yourself?” I asked.
He yapped again, and I could have sworn he nodded.
“What kind of dog are you, anyway? You’re no bigger than a mite, much too small to be payin’ calls without a chaperone.”
Head still cocked, he began to sniff audibly, and then he spun around and trotted into the kitchen quick as a wink. When I joined him, he was sitting up and staring at the cabinets, tail thumping. He began to yap again, although in an entirely new tone. The yap was full of entreaty now, and his eyes never left the cabinets.
“You ’ave a good nose on you, mutt,” I told him. “You smelled my sausage, didn’t-ja? Expect me to give you some. Regular little beggar, you are. Very well, I’ll cut some up for you.”
He waited patiently and, to my relief, silently as I took down the sausage, cut a few slices and chopped it up into small bits, placing them on a saucer for him. When I set the tidbits before him he sniffed them, backed away in disgust and started that shrill, distressing noise again. He looked at the cabinets and then looked at me and then back at the cabinets again, informing me in no uncertain terms that what he wanted was yet to be served.
I sighed, sliced one of the meat pies, put some on a saucer and tried that. He looked at me as though I had insulted him. Desperate, I took out one of the carrots. He began to bounce up and down eagerly, tail wagging so hard I feared it would fall off.
“This is absurd!” I said. “Dogs don’t eat carrots.”
His eager leaps and whirling cartwheels assured me that I was quite mistaken about that. I peeled the carrot, washed it and chopped some of it up. When I set the third saucer down he bounded toward it with such zest that he overshot the saucer and did a flip, rolling about like a fluffy acrobat. Finally getting his legs back, he greedily devoured the ambrosia and licked the saucer clean, doing it with remarkable speed.
“Full?” I asked.
He looked at me with appreciative eyes, glanced disdainfully at the two other saucers and pranced back into the hall just as frantic knocking sounded on the door. His owner, no doubt, I thought, hastening to the door. When I opened it, my visitor started yapping again, quite loudly, and the woman standing before me gave a cry of relief.
“Thank goodness! Naughty, naughty, naughty!” she exclaimed. “Gave me such a fright, he did, running off like that and this our first day home! He’s just two months old, got him in York three weeks ago. I’ve been touring, my dear, and I don’t mind telling you it’s a relief to get back to London. They adored us, of course, I sometimes think the provincials are far more appreciative of the arts, they’re so starved for it. It was one triumph after another every stop along the way and that’s very gratifying but, my dear, the wear and tear!”
She fanned herself, pantomiming exhaustion, and I fear I stared at her with total dismay. Plump and fleshy, though pleasingly so, she wore a pink silk gown with long sleeves, squeezed-in waist and preposterously full skirt, a white lace fichu draped over the shoulders and fastened in front. Her face was powdered and rouged, her mouth a vivid red. Her lively blue eyes were lined with black, the lids a dark mauve, and her painted black eyebrows were arched in perpetual surprise, giving her a startled look even in repose. She wasn’t quite as tall as I was, but her towering, powdered pompadour made her seem much taller. It had to be at least a foot high, I thought. A bright pink silk bow was affixed atop it, and three long, girlish ringlets dangled down in back. Although it was impossible to determine her age behind all that paint, she had to be fifty and was probably much older than that.
“I’m Marcelon Wooden, my dear,” she said, pronouncing it “Maw-suh-lun.” “I live in the yellow house across the way and, I must say, I’m delighted to have a new neighbor. Benjamin was a dear but, frankly, a bit tedious, always wanting to talk about his travels and in the dreariest monotone. Put me right to sleep soon as he opened his mouth. Major Barnaby’s even worse. Fine figure of a man like that tending flowers, writing his memoirs, never going out for a bit of fun. A bachelor, too! Needs a good woman to look after him at his age, and I don’t mean that hideous creature who skulks around like a demented deaf-mute. Couldn’t keep a house if her life depended on it. You, Brandy! Come to Mother! Shame on you, giving me such a turn.”
She scooped the dog up into her arms, and it flicked out a tiny pink tongue to lick her chin.
“I’ve tried and tried to be neighborly,” she continued before I had a chance to speak. Her voice was rich and rolling, extremely dramatic. “I took him a cake, took him a bottle of port, invited him out to dine, invited him to the theater, my treat, and you’d have t
hought I was trying to kidnap him. Brusque, bristly, I’ve never seen such rudeness in all my born days! I don’t care if he is straight and tall and ever so distinguished with that sandy gray hair and those piercing gray eyes and that mustache, there’s no excuse for treating a kind, concerned neighbor so rudely. Practically marched me out of the house, the brute!”
Lips pursed, she shook her head. The towering white pompadour was beginning to list a little to one side. Brandy snuggled against her bosom, gazing up at her with adoring eyes.
“What kind of dog is that?” I inquired.
“He’s a poodle, my dear, I do hope he’ll grow a little. Rambunctious as all get out, this one, much more so than Pepe or Sarge were at that age. They’re his older brothers, you’ll meet them. When I discovered he’d slipped out of the house I flew into a positive tizzy, my dear, hurried over here to see if you’d seen him. Someone told me that Roderick Cane had moved into Benjamin’s house and I must confess I haven’t read any of his books but I admire anyone who writes and I must say, he’s certainly successful, isn’t he? You must be his wife.”
Once More, Miranda Page 32