THE PROPOSITION

by Judith Ivory

  "Why, you—" Emile Lamont came up out of his chair.

  "Be quiet," Jeremy said. "Of course, Mr. Tremore. You'll want to have something to start yourself out in whatever new direction you take. It's only fair." He withdrew his ever-open notecase again, took out a bill, then with a flourish of his wrist he offered a twenty-pound note between two fingers.

  His brother, however, quickly cupped his hand over the money, holding it back. "All right," he said. "But fifty at the end only if you manage it." He smiled condescendingly. "Not a ha'penny if you're too stupid to carry it off."

  Mr. Tremore contemplated him stonily for several seconds. Then he said, "A hundred if I do it."

  Emile laughed, a dry burst of reluctant amusement: disbelief. "You have some gall," he said, then shrugged, giving in. "Done." Taking his hand off the money, he glanced at his brother. "The loser pays."

  The twenty-pound note sat there now between Jeremy's fingers, available, while Mr. Tremore stared at it for an uncomfortably long minute, as though it had turned to dung in the meantime. In the end though, he reached across and took it. "Yes," he said—Ace—"done." He stood, scraping back his chair as he pocketed the bill. "Now, where be the loo? I gotta shake 'ands with an ol' friend, if ye know what I mean. Blimey, but tea runs through a bloke. I don't know 'ow ye nobs do it."

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  « ^ »

  The Lamonts took Mick to a tailor's on a street called Savile Row. Bloody hell, it was a dandy place. And so long as Mick held out his arms or let them measure him up his leg, everyone let him crank his head and have a good look. The carpets on the floor were so thick and soft, the tailor kept having to haul him up by the arms—he wanted to touch them. The wood floor was polished up so shiny it looked wet. Old velvety chairs reflected like they stood on a lake. Tea tables floated on the floor's shine. The place had mirrors, gold vases with armloads of flowers that took up half a wall, and show-offy glass boxes as tall as a man's waist, with things inside he could buy, like buckles and buttons to sew onto the clothes they made him or neckties out of silk as colorful as peacock feathers. Who would've thought a place for blokes could get so fancy? He liked to think he'd seen some of the world, but he was impressed, he couldn't help it.

  In the end, though, the Lamonts only wanted Mick to have dull things. Pah. Some brown trousers, some gray ones, a couple shins, all white, a coat and waistcoat—Mick was allowed to pick the lining when he made surly over the whole ordeal. He picked a fine purple with gold cloverish things on it, like some draperies he remembered from a first-rate bordello he'd ratted.

  When the bell over the tailor's door rang and Edwina Bollash stepped through the doorway, he was delighted to see her. His new partner, come to fetch him, in what was turning out to be a choice adventure.

  He wanted to tell her all the good done them today. "We ordered some right fine clothes, then had some fixed up they be sending later."

  She only froze in the doorway, though. Like he was bald and naked. "I thought they were going to see to a bath," she said.

  "Naw. I don't need one."

  He looked at the Lamonts who, in turn, looked at the tailor. They'd all had a little to-do over the bath idea.

  He said right away, "You should feel some of the stuff we got, like God's own miracle under your fingers. And hoo, the rare, sweet smell what come off a bolt of new fabric." He laughed just remembering. "The whole shop smells new, don't you think? Like beeswax and varnish. No"—it was so true that it made him grin for having thought of it—"like fresh-printed money, etched and watermarked." It was a smell he knew from helping his friend Rezzo print near-perfect flyers in the cellar of the Bull and Tun. Not that he spent any of the false money himself, but Rezzo had fifteen children, and there was no other way for a dustman to feed them all.

  Miss Bollash's voice, though, was a little unsteady when she repeated, "Etched and watermarked?" She let out a fainthearted laugh before asking, "What do you know about fresh-printed money?"

  Didn't take him a second to know he wasn't answering that. He turned and said good-bye to the tailor and thank-you-very-kindly to the Lamonts.

  He and Miss Bollash stepped out into the street, with her eyeing him and him ignoring her. Begger me, he thought. There they were, starting out off-kilter. Magic, his terrier, picked up and followed them as they walked shoulder to shoulder. He kept thinking, If he could see her face, he'd know better where he stood. But he could only see the lower half of it—the brim of her hat was that big.

  She was sure a puzzle, Edwina Bollash. He thought she could be pretty. It was possible. She dressed nice. Quality. Her clothes sounded pretty, like reedy grass rubbing together in the wind—a noise that always sent him into heaven, silk on silk. He loved, too, the way she smelt like sunshine or clover or something. Not all flowery and perfumey, but a little cloud of smell around her. He wanted to get closer to it, sniff it in, but even he knew it wasn't polite. Anyway, she could be pretty under that hat. Or not.

  She was a long girl, that was certain. In her shoes here, she must've pushed six feet. Almost as tall as him. A lot of woman, lengthwise speaking. Width-wise, though, the top of her was on the skinny side. Long bones, small bristols—sweet though, little dumplings on her chest. The bottom of her wasn't so skimpy maybe. Her backside looked pretty full, though it was hard to tell what with the way fancy ladies padded out their bums these days.

  She didn't have a pretty woman's way about her. He couldn't say why he thought so, except maybe how her hat tilted down when she walked. Like she was looking at the pavement, keeping track of it to make sure it didn't leap away from her. Smart steps, no doubts or dithers, but there was something nervy in her quick movement. Like a jill who been down the rat hole once too often, he thought: knew the job, knew her part in it, but knew, too, what it was like to be bit and just couldn't get over it. He wondered what bit her.

  At the carriage, Mick could tell he surprised her when he held out his hand. He'd seen gents do it, so he tried it out.

  He helped her into a carriage that had all its windows open, then got a bonus as he followed her in: a chance to look close up at her bum, no one to tell him not to. And yessir, it was all her own, he was pretty sure. A bottom as round as a pear. It made him smile. Her jacket fanned out into a little ruffle over her backside. It pinched in at her waist. Pretty. My, oh, my, he thought, weren't the gentry's clothes full of details plain folk didn't dream of—gold buttons, velvet ribbon sewed around the edges, skirts the color of lavender—

  Wait one minute.

  Tall.

  A purple skirt. And Miss Bollash's legs here'd be long.

  Did they go forever?

  Would there have been time for his leggy lady to put on her dress, walk over, and order tea? As he reasoned this out, though, another woman walked past them—in a skirt with a lot of dark purple in it—and Mick laughed at himself. After what he saw in that mirror this morning, he must have legs on his brain, hoping they were walking under every skirt he glanced.

  Still, as he sat down opposite Miss Bollash, he couldn't help but stare at where her knees made her skirt bend. Yessir, her legs'd be right long. Slender, too. There was no telling, though, how pretty a woman's legs were till you actually got her undressed. He folded his arms, sat back, and stared, smiling. He wondered if the woman under that hat fancied mud in any form.

  Besides a lot of hat, she was a lot of skirts. Her legs were buried under folds and folds of that thin sort of stuff a man could almost see through, except there was enough of it he couldn't see through nothing. Edwina Bollash was like that herself. Lots of her, none of it coming to much. Hard to see through.

  Being a long, thin thing lost in a pile of skirts didn't keep her from complaining though—as hardy as the Queen with her toes on fire—when Magic jumped into the carriage.

  "May as well let him ride," Mick said. "He be the damnedest dog. He'll only run alongside till he drops, then find us a day later from the smell of the wheels or something."<
br />
  She didn't like damnedest any more than she liked the dog in the coach, but she settled back and let both ride. Magic, Mick could tell, was grateful. It'd been a hell of a day.

  As the coach pulled away, he realized it was finer than fine. All leather and soft cushions and springs in the ride. Funny thing, it wasn't near as strange as he might've thought to trot off in such a handsome bit of conveyance. Felt good. Felt right. All-bloody-right. Well, Mick thought, who would've predicted? A nice coach. Him sitting in it across from a long piece of fluff who was willing to squawk over a man getting his head bashed in. He liked Edwina Bollash. Good girl, this one.

  The two blokes he did not like at all. He didn't know their game, but he knew their kind a mile off. Not that he could say—a ratcatcher didn't call gentlemen hum-bugs. Especially, Mick smiled to himself, if the hum-bugs were going to pay for him having gentleman lessons from a sweet little teacher in a fancy dress that made sliding jsh-jsh sounds just sitting there fidgeting.

  He made her nervous. He should've tried to put her at ease, said something, but he sort of liked that she was nervous.

  He decided to mention, "They be puppies, you know."

  "Puppies?"

  "Confidence men," he explained.

  "Who?"

  "Them two Mr. Lamonts."

  "Don't be ridiculous. They're rich gentlemen."

  He shook his head. "They be setting us up for something."

  She clicked her tongue in a sort of high-minded way. "Granted, they aren't too nice to each other, but they were perfectly nice to us. Besides, they have money. They don't need to set up anyone."

  He shrugged. It was all one to him, nothing he had to prove. It would prove itself.

  After a while, though, in a very quiet voice, she asked, "Why don't you like them?"

  He shrugged again. "They be arseholes." While you, me darling, be a lovely long bit. He really liked the look of her. Though he wished for goodness sake she'd take off the blooming hat.

  At arseholes, the only part of her face that he could see under the hat squinched up like she had a drawstring in her lips, a drawstring she pulled tight. Ha, he could've predicted. She made another one of those little clicks, teeth and tongue, that he was sort of coming to like. Then said, "Are."

  She was correcting him.

  It made him blink, frown. Well, hell. He knew fixing how he talked was what they were both going to do, but here it was, and he didn't like it. "Right. They are arseholes," he said.

  The hat tilted. Her mouth pinched tighter.

  He laughed and leaned back, stretching his arms out along the top of a leather seat, stretching his legs in front of him across fancy wood floorboards. Yes indeed, a fine day. A pretty ride.

  * * *

  When Miss Bollash's front door swung open, a fellow was standing behind it like he been waiting on the other side of it the whole time she was gone: ready to open it the moment he spied her come up the walk. He held it wide so Mick and her could enter, then closed it silent-like behind them—it made Mick turn around there in the entry hall just to see what happened.

  Her house wasn't what Mick expected. Not like her clothes. It was plain. Better than anything he could claim, but not as big or fancy as he would've guessed.

  She owned lots of books. Hoo, if the woman read all the books she had, she never did nothing but read. He'd been in lots of fancy houses for his job. Some had flowers for decoration. Some had carpets and fancy drapes or pictures all over the wall. Miss Bollash's house had books. Lines of them. Rows of them. Stacks of them. All neat. No mess or nothing. Just everywhere. They lined walls and filled tables.

  "Thank you, Milton," said the lady as she pulled at the fingers of her glove. "Is Mrs. Reed still here? I'd like her to make up the east bed-sitter. This is Mr. Tremore. He's going to be our houseguest for a few weeks."

  A few weeks. Mick frowned to hear the length of time. It seemed long all at once. He had regulars. He hadn't thought about that till now. Some might wait, but some for sure would take their problem to someone else when they couldn't find him.

  As he walked down a hallway—with small marble statues in the niches of walls covered in faded green silk—a crawly feeling tickled up his spine. The way it did sometimes when he started to smell more under the planks of a job than he'd counted on.

  Milton, the bloke who opened the door and looked old as Eden, was saying to Miss Bollash, "Mrs. Reed just left, your ladyship, but I can make up the rooms. And Lady Katherine is in the solarium. She's arrived early for her lesson."

  "Thank you. I'll get to her in a few minutes." Miss Bollash slid her glove off as she said to Mick, "Milton will take your, um … tablecloth. Then, if you'll follow me, I'll show you upstairs."

  Rooms. She meant it. Two of 'em. In Cornwall, Mick'd shared one room, smaller than the bedroom here, with his five brothers. His bed in London was in a cellar. In this house though, if he understood right, he got a big room with a four-poster in it to himself—he asked if he shared it with Milton, but the answer was no—and a room connected to the bedroom that had a desk, paper, pens, ink, lots of stuff. And of course more books.

  It made him stop and think. Looking at an actual bed, rooms, thinking of the clothes, all so different than what he knew … well, the crazy, fool bet, what it really meant, all at once seemed to matter in a different way. No one else had the same investment as him. A bit of money. Some pride. And Miss Bollash was keen for bookish reasons, too. But him … why, they were all talking about changing how he was.

  What kind of man, he wondered, slept on a bed that had curtains on it and a skirt around its legs?

  A man, he figured, who better get by to feed the other dogs and ferrets, then see if Rezzo would watch over them till … till whatever it was he was doing here came to whatever end it did. A man with a case of nerves, he guessed, and a few arrangements to make.

  Sometimes Mick dreamed of a fancy life. (Money and legs. He would have been embarrassed to tell anyone how common-minded his ambitions were.) He always felt guilty doing it. Disloyal or something. He was a workingman. A good, solid man of the working class. He didn't think fancy fellows were happier than him. Didn't think they were nicer to their families or that God gave them an easier time of it. They still got sick or lame or died, just like everyone else. So why was he here?

  Aside from a hundred and twenty pounds, twenty of which he already had in his pocket—the total being more than he made in a year?

  He laughed at himself. That was why. Hell, he sure didn't have dreams that turning himself into a gentleman for a few weeks was going to make him a better man somehow. No, sir, it wouldn't.

  But the life nobs led seemed easier, he admitted. It smelled better maybe. They had time to think about things. Is that what he wanted? Was that the reason he dreamed of a rich life some nights? Time to think?

  Meanwhile, all he seemed to have here was time to be surprised. Another door, one that he thought opened into the hall, opened into a loo, and not just a hole in the floor neither. There was a flush-toilet with a chain to pull on. And bloody hell, there was another pull overhead that made light come on. Electricity. He'd seen that once in a building he ratted over near Parliament. Miss Bollash's whole house had it, not a candle or gas lamp anywhere to be found.

  She showed him all this in the time it took for her to pull off her other glove as she walked her quick walk and pointed at rooms. Then, in his new sitting room, she said, "Do you need anything I haven't thought of? Will it do then?" She was in the doorway, about to leave him here.

  He tried to sound chipper. "Not a thing, love. Cozy as a mouse in a churn." But he wasn't chipper.

  "Love," she said.

  He smiled, looking at a tall, thin woman in a big hat. Right friendly of her. About time.

  But then she ruined it. She explained, "You said loov. It's love."

  He frowned, feeling addled by a lot of correcting without much understanding doled out.

  She stood there. She wasn't being na
sty, he didn't think. Hard to tell. More like she was sizing him up. It was a nervy feeling, being sized up by a hat that looked right at him, being spoke to by a mouth with no eyes. What was wrong with her? he wondered. Were her eyes crossed? Was she bug-eyed?

  She was ugly, he decided. Had to be a fright to wear her hat all the time.

  "We'll work on it, though," she said. "We'll start in the morning. I have students this evening." Then she turned again and called over her shoulder, "Milton? Mr. Tremore will have a bath now. Will you please draw it. And see to a shave for him. Take off the mustache."

  Mick blinked, then snorted. He went as far as the doorway, looking at the back of her. She was at the stairs in a second, on her way down. Hell, what was this? Even he knew gents wore mustaches. And he wasn't having no bath. He might've said, but she was going at her fast clip, a woman with the devil on her tail, not looking back. Her hat disappeared into the stairwell. Hell. All right then, he'd settle with old Milton.

  As it turned out, though, the fellow was as stubborn as Magic.

  "If Miss Bollash says you're to take a bath," old Milton said with a poke, poke—Mick took hold of his finger to stop it—"then you'll have a bath, sir." With a big, stirred-up show of disgust, he added, "Just look at yourself!"

  Now, Mick wouldn't mind cleaning up. He'd sort of had that in mind. It'd been a hard day. But he wasn't doing his private toilette the way Milton wanted him to, and not how Miss Fancy-Skirts wanted neither, for that matter. Too personal. Being a reasonable fellow, though, and just to be nice, he let Milton pull him into the room to show him the tub—the bloke was so bloody proud of it. A big, white, claw-foot thing that was just for bathing a body. The damnedest waste. Mick could've washed a month's laundry in it.

  "Right nice," he told Milton with real wonder in his voice.

  Things degenerated from here, though. No, sir didn't slow the old fellow down. Not on your life, Cap'n didn't give him the hint. Not me. Not Mick. And still that Milton ran a lot of hot water in the tub, talking like Mick was going to hop in any moment. When he started pulling on Mick's clothes, though, well—Mick was not the sort to let another bloke undress him for any reason. It pretty much sent him over the top.