by Diana Norman
Mr Hackbutt was displeased. ‘You’ve let the vixen go to earth,’ he said. ‘A merry job we’ll have diggin’ her out now. The divorce decree’s in it, and the ship’s marriage certificate, I saw them myself. Without those, we’ll have to send to Boston for a copy of the decree nisi, get hold of the sea captain who married them . . .’
‘Grosvenor Square,’ said Makepeace wearily. ‘There’s a box in his office.’
‘Speaking as a friend and not as a lawyer, I suggest you go and get it this minute, before our friends return from Hertfordshire and destroy its contents.’ Mr Hackbutt cracked an invisible whip at his hounds.
At the door, he held Aaron back and handed him a letter. ‘Young man, I would spare your poor sister this for fear of distressing her further but she must be apprised of it sooner or later. I leave the matter with you.’
The letter was from Cresswell and Partit, Solicitors. It informed Mr Hackbutt that an injunction was being taken out by their client, Major Sidney Conyers, against Mr Hackbutt’s client, Makepeace Burke, to prevent her from meeting, visiting, writing to or in any other way making contact with Lord Ffoulkes of Gosse in Kent.
‘They can’t do that. She loves that boy, he loves her.’
‘I fear they can,’ Mr Hackbutt told him. ‘On the birth of his son, the late Lord Ffoulkes appointed his two greatest friends to be the child’s guardians in the event of his death. One was Sir Philip Dapifer, the other Major Conyers. Sir Pip, as I have reason to know, attended to his duties in that respect most conscientiously, the Major rather less so. It may be that Lord Ffoulkes forgot he had appointed Conyers—certainly, the Major himself appeared to do so. Whatever the case, his lordship sailed for America having neglected to change his will.’ Mr Hackbutt’s mouth tightened. ‘It seems our good Major has just reminded himself that he is now in sole charge of a minor with a fortune.’
Aaron handed back the letter. ‘There’s nothing they won’t take away from her, is there?’
‘Hold up,’ said Mr Hackbutt. ‘Possession may be nine points of the law but—’
‘What the hell’s the tenth?’ Aaron asked, hopelessly.
‘Eh? Oh, I see. There are only nine. Success in a law suit requires first, a good deal of money; second, a good lawyer; third, a good counsel; fourth, good witnesses; fifth, a good jury; sixth, a good judge; seventh, a good deal of money; eighth, a good cause and, ninth, good luck.’
‘We’ve no money.’
Mr Hackbutt’s smile was unexpectedly charming. ‘Yes, well, we’ll do what we can. I pride myself that your sister has a good lawyer, she certainly has a good cause and, well, good luck is a chancy bird. It may settle on us yet.’
Aaron had expected to find one of Conyers’s troop stationed outside Grosvenor Square’s Dapifer House but there was only a solitary maid, scrubbing its steps. At the sight of Makepeace, Betty and Aaron she hurriedly plopped her brush back into its bucket and disappeared.
The door was opened by a woman whose time had come.
‘Yes?’
‘Let us in, Mis’ Peplow.’
Aaron stood back; when Betty took that tone it was best to let her have her head—or lose your own.
‘I take my orders from Lady Dapifer,’ said Mrs Peplow, smiling. ‘No hawkers.’
The closing door wedged on Betty’s boot. ‘Git.’
Greek met weighty Greek but Betty was the greater. The tussle ended with the housekeeper pinned to the wall by a black fist round her neck, her cap over her eyes. ‘We’s goin’ to the master’s office,’ Betty explained. ‘You arguin’?’
A blink from Mrs Peplow’s popping eyes indicated that she was not, but as they crossed the hall they heard her scream: ‘Too late. It’s all gone to Hertfordshire. You’re too late.’
She was right. Catty, or more probably Conyers, had acted quickly. Dapifer’s tall escritoire was empty, his deed box no longer stood on its shelf.
Idiotically, Aaron started searching the bookshelves.
Betty risked a quick foray upstairs to look for Makepeace’s clothes and jewellery while Mrs Peplow stood on the outside steps, shouting for the Watch.
Dapifer’s bedroom was much as usual but Makepeace’s had been stripped, the top of the delicate dressing-table was cleared of creams and perfume pots, its drawers hung open. The lids of the presses in which Mme Angloss’s creations had been laid away were thrown back to display empty interiors.
There was an apologetic cough behind her. Tom the muscled footman, said: ‘Can’t let you stay, Bet.’
She indicated the room. ‘Thorough, ain’t they?’
He shook his head sadly. ‘They say as none of it was hers to begin with.’
She allowed herself to be escorted downstairs. Makepeace was sitting at Dapifer’s escritoire, her cheek pressed against its walnut lid.
‘Nothing?’
‘Nothin’.’
As they raised his sister up, Aaron was thinking of a scene his father had witnessed in his youth during an expedition to the Tiwappaty Bottom on the east of the Ohio when Indians had captured a horse from the wild herds that roamed those alluvial plains.
The horse was encircled, his father had said. When it bucked, lassoes of plaited rushes flipped through the air and tightened on each pawing leg. Two more lassoes caught the rear hooves as they lashed upwards, another landed about its neck, then another from the opposite direction, until radii of rope cobwebbed the beast into immobility and it was ready to be broken.
Catty Dapifer and Sidney Conyers, Aaron thought, had nothing to learn from Indians about entrapment. Money, houses, clothes, status: everything Dapifer had given Makepeace had been taken away in one expert, audacious move. She had nowhere to turn. They’d broken her.
‘Time to go, ’Peace,’ he said.
Mrs Peplow’s triumphant vituperation followed them as they left Dapifer House for the last time.
BOOK THREE
Newcastle
Chapter Fourteen
PHILIPPA Dapifer made her stage debut aged six and a half months in a barn at Stickney in Lincolnshire. She played Moses/e was very good.
The wind from the North Sea was moaning like a bassoon through the hayloft, a suitably mournful accompaniment to Pharaoh’s daughter’s soliloquy in the barn below on her father’s refusal to let her marry Alphanus. Draught guttered the candles nailed into the earth floor for footlights and shifted the distant turrets of Pharaoh’s palace which, last week, had been the spires of Canterbury cathedral and, the week before that, the towers of Elsinore. They could only afford one backdrop.
The hen they’d tried to dislodge from the rafters during rehearsal started to squawk, inciting a wag in the audience—there was always one—to call out: ‘That’s another dang female wants to lay a egg.’
Peg Devereux knew when she was losing an audience and cut to the last of her speech. ‘But soft!’ she exclaimed. ‘What is this that floats so gently down the Nile?’
‘What?’ asked the wag.
Peg glared at Makepeace, hidden in the prompt corner behind one of the upturned haywains that formed the wings. Concealed behind the other, Aaron signalled frantically to his sister to pull on the rope. Makepeace roused herself, pulled, and a rush basket slid into the stage area, causing gasps at the magic of its entrance.
‘But, soft!’ exclaimed Peg again. ‘What is this that floats so gently down the Nile? An offering to the river god?’
‘Danged if I know,’ the wag said, genuinely interested.
Peg kept them waiting for a few more lines, then knelt among imaginary rushes and lifted out the basket’s contents.
There was a coo from the audience. ‘That’s a real babby, look. Ahh.’
It had been a physical risk to go on the road as early in the year as March, when carts got bogged down in mud and actors died from exposure, but Aaron hoped that an untried travelling theatre company might survive if it could reach places where other companies had never been—and before they could get there.
‘Pictur
e an East Anglian winter,’ he’d pleaded to Betty. ‘Wouldn’t you lay out good money on some drama after five months of looking at sheep and cabbages?’
She was reluctant. ‘We ain’t had enough drama?’
But something had to be done; the landlord of the two Holborn rooms they all shared was becoming restive for his rent. She and Fanny and Makepeace were taking in ironing in order to eke out Aaron’s salary from the theatre but sometimes there wasn’t enough money to light a fire to heat the iron with.
‘And it’ll give ’Peace an interest,’ Aaron said. Makepeace was in the room with them but they talked about her in the third person.
‘Maybe.’ Nothing else had, not even the baby. They could see her trying to make conversation, be bright, and then her mind would drift back to whatever place it inhabited. Betty said: ‘Wish I knew what that bitch-whore said to her.’
Carrying home some washing, Betty had seen the Dapifer carriage drawing away along Holborn from the front door leading to their rooms and had run after it, hurling mud and abuse at its elegantly pretty passenger. Then she’d raced back and up the stairs. ‘How’d she find us? What she say?’
‘She asked somebody at the theatre.’ Makepeace was sitting on a stool, perfectly still, the baby in the drawer that served as its cot beside her.
‘What she say?’
‘Nothing.’
‘She must’ve said something.’
‘No.’
Whatever else Catty had done, she’d scattered some coppers on the floor for Makepeace to pick up; they were still there. The old Makepeace would have rammed them down her throat.
So Betty had said, yes, they would join Aaron’s touring company. ‘But we ain’t actin’, we ain’t fallen that far.’ It would be a living of sorts, Aaron said it would be a fine one, and maybe, maybe, it would bring Makepeace back from the dead.
The money for three carts and the mules to draw them came from Susan Brewer, who’d been saving the tips given her by Mme Angloss’s aristocratic clients. ‘Oh, Lord’s sakes,’ she said, when Aaron worried about taking it, ‘Pip helped me enough.’
She’d had the opportunity denied to the rest of them of watching the reception given to Makepeace’s downfall by the best drawing rooms. Mainly it had been one of amusement and a vague relief, even by those who had received Makepeace while Dapifer was alive. Yes, yes, how naughty of Catty and how typical, a stroke worthy of her grandfather—you remember old Lord Falworth? Recaptured his ship singlehanded from the mutineers? Hanged every man jack of ’em?
An interloper had been taught a lesson, the old order restored, the rightness of things-as-they-should-be now flowed seamlessly over the rift.
‘Just you make a fortune,’ Susan said, ‘so that we can all go back to Boston where we belong. I’ll form a whole new force called the Daughters of Liberty and its aim will be to cut any female throat with blue blood in it. Aaron, these people are foul. For two pins, I’d come with you.’
But the prospective touring company had too many nonprofessionals on its books already, it couldn’t support more; its actor-manager was looking for performers with theatrical experience—and desperation.
He didn’t need to look far; there were enough of the outworn and the broken-down to choose from in the area of Goodman’s Fields itself.
Peg Devereux joined because she was thirty-seven and saw the chance in a ramshackle company like Aaron’s to continue playing the romantic lead, as well as staying one step ahead of her pursuing creditors. Aaron welcomed her, partly because she was a good actress but mostly because her lover, Frederick Tortini, was a talented musician and he came with her.
Tom Capper was another addition escaping a debtor’s prison, a comedian of genius, who could roll an audience on the floor with one twitch of his eyebrow. The difficulty, as Aaron found, was to stop him doing his own floor-rolling in the nearest ale house.
At first it didn’t occur to Aaron to ask Mr and Mrs Hartley Witney to join him; they were too grand and, well, too old. Between them they’d appeared with everybody who was anybody in the established theatre, including James Quin, the last of the great Restoration actors, on whose declamatory style Mr Witney modelled his own, so that a simple ‘Pass the salt’ thundered like an edict from the gods. Aaron, an aficionado of Garrick’s naturalistic acting, had passed them over. But so, it appeared, had the established theatre; they’d been asked to retire to make way for younger luminaries.
‘It’ll be hard going,’ Aaron said, doubtfully, when they applied to him.
‘We have supped too long from the flesh-pots of Egypt, my dear boy,’ Hartley Witney said. ‘It is time for us to take our art to the untaught, to awaken bucolic souls to a glory beyond them.’
Or, as Penthesilea Witney put it, ‘We’d rather drop in harness than be put out to grass.’
Mr Burke’s Touring Company was complete.
Before it set out, John Beasley shambled into the Holborn attic and looked shiftily at Betty. ‘Where’s that youngling of yours?’ He never said ‘hello’.
‘Runnin’ errands.’ There was an emphatic bang of the smoothing iron. ‘Earnin’ his keep.’ Betty could never believe that people who merely wrote things were earning theirs. Nor could she see that the newspaper campaign Beasley was conducting against Catty and Conyers and their usurpation of Makepeace’s property was doing any good. She admired his loyalty but was easily offended by him.
‘The boy still want to paint?’
‘How you know that?’ She was defensive, she found her son’s love of art mystifying and a touch effeminate, as if he showed a propensity to play with dolls.
‘She told me.’ He nodded towards the other side of the ironing table where Makepeace, having smiled brightly at him, had returned drearily to her goffering. ‘Only, you want to bring him to Leicester Fields with me? There’s a place going in Josh Reynolds’s house. Might suit him.’
‘Who he?’
‘He’s a painter.’
‘He earn money for that?’
‘A hundred guineas for a full-length portrait.’
A whistle escaped Betty’s teeth.
‘And for your information, Leicester Fields is full of royal residences. Not that our dear King’d patronize a good liberal like Josh Reynolds.’
‘He goin’ to teach the boy? Or do he just want a little black servant?’
‘He wants a little black servant—at least, he don’t, his sister does. She keeps house for him. But Reynolds says he’ll let the boy mix paint, do jobs around the studio.’ Beasley became grumpy. ‘He’ll learn more’n he will watching you two take in ironing.’
It was a job at least. Josh was found, washed, brushed and lectured: ‘I think there’s any nanny-boying round that house an’ you comin’ straight home, paint or no paint.’
The three of them went off together, Betty suspecting every step of the way that her son was about to be plunged into a pool of homosexuality.
She came back reassured. Mr Reynolds had been charming—in a manly way—and allowed Josh a peek into the great octagonal room where he worked, watching the boy—in a manly way—as he explored it.
He hadn’t seemed surprised that a black child should be interested in art. ‘See him sniff the paints for their bouquet? He may be a natural, ma’am. If he shows promise, I shall bring him on, yes, bring him on.’
As for the sister, who would be Josh’s real employer: ‘Reckon that Miss Fanny’s a fuss-budget,’ Betty said, ‘but she kindly, she goin’ to take the boy to church every Sunday. Mr Reynolds, he don’t go, but she do.’
It was wonderful yet heartbreaking. There was no room for Betty in the Reynolds’ household and if she stayed on in London to be near it she would descend to a level of poverty below even the one she endured with Makepeace. But Josh had lived his entire life among those who loved him.
Makepeace managed to say: ‘Certain sure this is what you want, Josh? We can’t be with you for a while.’
He nodded through tears. ‘I want it
.’
As she held him, Makepeace thought: He’s being brave. He don’t want to be a burden on us, that’s why he’s going. And felt the advance of an agony she couldn’t afford, so she thought: But it’s his opportunity. He’s got to go.
They saw him settled in the house at Leicester Fields. When they said goodbye, he was being led off to be fitted for his livery.
The next day the new company was gathering in Holborn to load the carts before setting off when another young boy presented himself. ‘There you are. I’ve had the devil’s own job finding you. I wish you’d tell a fellow your address.’ Lord Ffoulkes’s round, freckled face was aggrieved and desperate. ‘I’ve run away from school. I’m coming with you.’
Gently, Makepeace kissed him goodbye and walked away from him. As she climbed the stairs to the attic she heard Aaron begin the explanation: ‘Andrew, you can’t. The injunction—’
‘I don’t care about the injunction . . . They’re pigs . . .’
She shut the door of the attic to keep the voices out, to stop hurt from piercing the dullness. No chink through which the pain thrashing outside could seep in. Don’t feel.
Betty came up, sobbing: ‘First his pa, then Sir Pip, now you. Ain’t nothin’ those whoresons’ll spare that boy. Take his fortune now, I wouldn’t wonder.’
‘Has he gone?’
Betty rubbed the window. ‘He goin’. He cryin’ but he goin’.’
Makepeace picked up her daughter and looked around the attic. ‘We’re off, then.’
Betty turned on her. ‘When you goin’ to get mad?’ But she had to follow Makepeace down the stairs unanswered.
Aaron had been right. Avoiding urban centres like Norwich, where there were established theatres, they took themselves to the barns, inns and booths of small towns and villages. The people of rural Norfolk, and then of Lincolnshire, had come in droves—or at least small flocks—lured by Aaron’s playbills which, no matter what the play, always promised an endangered virgin.