Life Mask

by Emma Donoghue

  'Mrs Damer, my father is the best of men, but providence hasn't granted him any connections, nor marketable talents. No, Agnes will have to use up her sight in an engraver's studio and I—perhaps I'll be a governess.'

  A bubble of laughter escaped from Anne's lips. 'I do beg your pardon,' she said through her fingers, 'it was just the tone of intense bitterness with which you said that word! I suddenly pictured you growling at some viscount's children.'

  Miss Berry's face broke into a smile. 'You're right. I'd certainly hate them and might prove a tyrant. Perhaps I should think of another job.'

  'Perhaps,' Anne suggested, tossing her a little scarlet windfall, 'you shouldn't think so much.'

  'Impossible, I'm afraid.' Miss Berry polished the apple on her linen sleeve. 'It's the only real talent I seem to possess. I can fret in English, French, Italian, Latin and somewhat in Greek.'

  'Why borrow trouble?' asked Anne. 'Unless there are terrible debts? You mentioned the bailiffs—'

  'They're hypothetical. I'm just fearful for the future; we've bought nothing we can't afford, yet.'

  'What a refreshingly honest attitude! And all too rare, I'm afraid. Though Eliza—' Anne stopped herself just in time. Miss Berry was looking at her. 'A former friend used to say the same thing,' she went on awkwardly. 'I'm not quite so scrupulous myself, but I pay all my bills in the end. In the Beau Monde, you know, money's a sparkling liquor that's poured from cup to cup, with a great deal of spillage. Why, the Duchess of Devonshire once asked me for £50 at an assembly, lost it on the faro table and never remembered the matter afterwards!'

  Mary Berry's eyes were round. The sum had actually been £100, but Anne had halved it to shock the girl less. After a minute she bit into the apple. 'My sister Agnes doesn't brood as I do; her mind is more cushioned. She doesn't even dread thunderstorms!'

  'I love them,' Anne told her.

  'No!' The girl was pale.

  'It's nature's concerto and all performed free,' Anne told her. 'In fact, don't those dark clouds in the west look promising?'

  Mary spun round to examine the afternoon sky, which was quite clear. 'Mrs Darner,' she said, turning back, 'that was a lie.'

  Anne laughed. 'And not the last you'll ever hear from my lips.'

  Later on, when Agnes was drawing some cows—her father by her side, armed with a sharp stick—Walpole hobbled out to join Anne and Miss Mary on the terrace in the shade of his great oak. 'The slaves of Martinique are engaged in a bloody uprising,' he announced with grim relish, waving a letter. 'I blame this levelling infection that's spreading from France. For instance, one of my Paris correspondents tells me that the Assembly has decreed women are to testify in court, just like men, and inherit equally from their fathers!'

  'Now that sounds eminently sensible,' murmured Anne, to make trouble.

  Walpole goggled at her. 'If you cast aside distinction between the sexes, Frenchwomen will lose all the protection, all the special status their English sisters enjoy.'

  'I don't see why I shouldn't testify in court,' she remarked. 'After all, I'm better educated than nine-tenths of the men who presently do. So is Miss Berry, for that matter,' she said, to draw her in, but the girl kept her eyes on the grass.

  Walpole looked uneasily between them. 'As for the Marquis de Condorcet, with his call for the suffrage to be extended to women—now, that's an assault on nature!'

  'Well, yes, there Condorcet exceeds himself a little.' Anne laughed. 'But his theory of the equality of the sexes is a refreshing one. Miss Berry, are you aware of the Marquis's writings? He says that if we suppose human beings to have natural rights, we must grant them to all human beings.'

  'Rights to eat and sleep, perhaps,' cried Walpole, 'but would he extend the franchise to savages and make naked Hottentots line up to elect their own Member?'

  'You've chosen the most absurd example you can find,' Anne protested. 'But with regard to women, Mrs Macaulay argues that we've no proof of any real difference between the sexes except the physical, and we should try the experiment of educating boys and girls the same way.'

  A snort from Walpole. 'The historian you cite is best known for eloping with a man twenty-six years her junior!'

  'Perhaps,' said Anne, nettled, 'but her point stands. For instance, Miss Berry and I both care more for Latin than for needlework; that's an assault on tradition, perhaps, but hardly on nature. What do you say?' she asked the young woman.

  'Nothing, till I'm better informed on the subject.'

  Anne felt unaccountably irritated. 'Condorcet asks why exclude women from politics for their liability to ... to feminine indispositions,' she said, hoping the phrase was discreet enough, 'when men aren't barred by their tendency to gout, say.'

  'Oo, you touch me in a sore point there!'

  She laughed with him.

  'But my dear Anne, we wouldn't dream of excluding the ladies from politics,' Walpole went on. 'Why, your friend Georgiana, or Lady Gordon in Pitt's camp, are at the heart of everything political in this country, without ever needing such a lowly tool as a vote.'

  When he'd gone in—insisting that he'd send shawls out to protect the ladies from the evening air—Anne said, 'You never dispute with him, do you?'

  'I wouldn't dream of it.'

  'But why swallow your true views? Walpole doesn't mind arguing with me, as you can see; he takes pleasure in the sport and doesn't try to exclude our sex from that realm.'

  Mary Berry was examining her knuckles. 'You're his cousin. His equal.'

  'Come now, none of that. Condorcet would say you have the intrinsic human right to an opinion.'

  'Not to express it, though, when it's barely formed. Not when I've got it out of one of Mr Walpole's own books, half a day before!'

  'Oh, this is nonsense,' said Anne, seizing her hand. 'You're a thoughtful young woman. Tell me honestly, what do you think of the Revolution?'

  There was a pause. Mary Berry was staring at something; Anne turned to see the tiny figures of Agnes and Robert Berry walking up the meadows, arm in arm. The girl spoke almost painfully. 'I consider it the most thrilling event in human history.'

  Anne let out a long laugh.

  Miss Berry squeezed her hand. 'I feel just what you were saying the other night at dinner, Mrs Damer: that the world is being hammered out afresh in some extraordinary forge.'

  'There, I knew it!' She shivered a little; the evening was turning damp. 'So why didn't you say a word in my defence?'

  'You needed no defending. Besides, Mr Walpole's been so very good to my family. He's ... more than a friend.'

  Anne's heart thudded. Surely not. The girl couldn't mean there'd been a proposal?

  'He's our constant benefactor. He sends a brace of pheasants up to North Audley Street one day, a crate of French wines the next,' said Mary Berry almost angrily. 'We roam at will through his library and print room. Out of sheer kindness he acts as tutor, guide and mentor. I believe he means to pull us up above our present rank into the World, by his efforts alone! He introduces us to the best of acquaintance and speaks more highly of us than we can deserve.'

  'You're too modest,' Anne told her. 'I don't think he acts out of sheer kindness.'

  Miss Berry glanced at her, eagle-eyed.

  'My cousin is a passionate lover of merit, wherever it lies, and in you he finds intelligence, integrity and beauty fused.'

  The girl blushed so purple that Anne was about to apologise, but Miss Berry spoke. 'When I was an infant, someone said to my mother that I looked set to be handsome. My mother said, "All I pray heaven is for her to have a vigorous understanding." Isn't that a remarkable prayer from a mother who was only eighteen?'

  Anne nodded. 'Did she tell you that?'

  'No, my father did. I was only three when Mother died in giving birth to our sister—as the baby would have been,' she finished awkwardly.

  'Do you remember anything of her?'

  Mary Berry stared into the distance. 'I can see a thin woman in a green gown—pea-green—
and I wanted to go to her, but she was ill and I was sent to play outside.'

  'My dear girl!'

  Then the other Berrys were on them and all the talk was of cows, and cross-hatching, and the warming effects of tea.

  LETTERS, crusted with sealing wax, piled high on their desks.

  M., I shall be at home the whole day, so come if you can, either soon, or late, or when you please.

  You left your Mount Etna fan here at Audley Street last night, dear A., have you missed it yet? I don't enclose it, because it must be collected in person.

  M., tell your naughty sister from me that she mustn't break in on your Italian studies with her talk of 'shopping, or she'll be visited with some dire vengeance out of Dante!

  A., were I not confined with one of my dreadful stomachaches I'd be tucked into a corner of your workshop at this moment, watching you finish your father's retriever. I do hope he passes unpacked through the kiln. I'd give anything for a vocation like yours—some vessel to contain my brimming thoughts and feelings.

  Oh, dearest M., you're not near thirty yet! I can imagine you maturing into a woman of letters, what do you say to that? Come and discuss it over cherry cake.

  It was all very strange and quite simple. They were thirteen years apart, not to mention the difference in wealth, but their minds were hand and glove. This was wholly different from the Farren affair, Anne assured herself. This time she was standing on solid ground; this time there weren't the complications of celebrity and (she could admit it now) infatuation. Mary Berry had the most candid eyes Anne had ever seen; brown and clear like bog water. Fidelle adored her, had done from their first meeting and dogs always knew. This young woman cared nothing for her own face and everything for knowledge. Instead of the silky, glittering charms of an actress, Mary had intellect and wit, a tender heart and a black-edged melancholy that was startling in one so young. And here was another sign: Anne couldn't remember when they'd slipped into the use of first names without either of them ever having asked or offered permission. This time, she thought, there are no masks.

  Agnes and Robert Berry were delighted by the intimacy that had sprung up between their Mary and the famous sculptor—and as for Walpole, he was in ecstasies. It was more than he'd dreamed for two of his favourite ladies to become so devoted to each other—like Claire and Julie in Rousseau's novel, he suggested, with himself as the aged Wolmar.

  Anne was in her library, puzzling over a passage from the Odyssey, when Mary burst in. 'I had to see you.'

  'I'm glad to hear it,' said Anne, putting a ribbon in the book and rising to take her hands.

  'There's something you don't know. We—my sister and father and I—have for some months been thinking of going abroad.'

  'Marvellous,' said Anne automatically. 'Italy?' The girl's face lit up at the magic word. 'A month or two?'

  'No,' said Mary. There was a pause. 'Perhaps a year.'

  Anne's heart sank. Of all the cruel accidents of timing. Was this friendship to end as soon as it had begun?

  'We mean to go through France,' said Mary excitedly, 'and then winter in Florence, or perhaps Pisa. The climate will do my constitution good and Agnes's too.'

  It was true, neither of the Berry girls could be described as sturdy; Mary had weak lungs as well as her sensitive stomach, and Agnes's skin and mood both suffered in the cold. And travel was the universal panacea. But a whole year...'The South might offer a more beneficial air than Tuscany,' she said dully, 'but then Tuscan art is sovereign for the spirits. I know Florence has always lifted mine.'

  'My family took a long trip to Italy when I was twenty,' said Mary, 'and I date my real life from that point.'

  Ann nodded. 'One feels freer there, somehow.'

  'I knew you'd understand. And also the matter of expense,' said Mary awkwardly. 'Our rent in North Audley Street is really too much for us. Our little subsistence will stretch much further on the Continent; even with the costs of travel we should be more comfortably off than in England.'

  Anne had to bite her tongue. Of course she'd be glad to help in the case of any financial embarrassment, and Walpole would too. But the Berrys would never be able to bear that; Mr Berry had the dignity of the nephew of a rich man and Mary had such stern views on debt.

  'Mr Walpole will be anxious, of course,' said Mary, looking into her lap. 'That's why Agnes and I have agreed not to mention it to him till the very end of the month—to put off the evil hour.'

  The end of the month. So soon.

  'I must tell you,' said Mary rapidly, 'half my heart refuses to go. My greatest regret will be the loss of your company.'

  Anne's eyes were wet; she blinked.

  'If I didn't think it for the good of my family in every way—' Mary broke off. 'May I trust you'll be my chief correspondent?'

  'Oh, I don't know,' said Anne with a theatrical frown, 'what with the price of paper these days...'

  Mary's laugh emerged like a flower.

  But Anne's heart was loud in her throat. She was wondering why not?. What was there to stop her from travelling with the Berrys? Why not leave England behind for a year and see her beloved Tuscany again, but this time showing each arch, each canvas, each hill to Mary?

  THAT AFTERNOON, washing the dried clay off her hands, Anne found herself making wonderful plans. Her parents would complain of her absence, but they knew Italy had always been good for her and she was sure Dr Fordyce would agree.

  Mrs Moll brought up the post on a silver salver. There was a letter from one of Walpole's distant relatives asking for her support for a Society for Bettering the Conditions of the Poor—its main aim was to teach them how to make soup—and a second cover, in an odd, convoluted hand Anne didn't recognise. The blob of red wax had no imprint. The page, opened out, bore some kind of verse, just four short lines.

  Her little stock of private fame

  Will fall a wreck to public clamour,

  If Farren leagues with one whose name

  Comes near—aye, very near—to DAMN HER.

  Anne sat down in a high-backed chair and read it again. Then one more time. She didn't understand. Or rather, she recognised what was hinted at all too well, like a nightmare come back in broad daylight—but hadn't those obscene rumours been banished long ago? That was all part of the bizarre aftermath of John's suicide; it had been a dozen years at least since the publication of those filthy pamphlets. Anne had lived through the whole ludicrous episode and lived it down; she believed she'd retained the respect of everyone who mattered. She hadn't thought of this dreadful subject—or rather, let herself think of it—in years. But a word published can't be recalled, as Horace put it. Why now, though? Why was this coming back to haunt her at forty-one? What could she have done to provoke this malice?

  Anne read the nasty verse again, trying to be rational. It didn't say much in itself; it only gestured at the old rumours. To say that her company might damn the actress only meant something to those who knew what it meant already. But that was small consolation; a story this peculiar spread very easily. Oh, the foul injustice of the thing!

  Who could have written it? Possibly her old enemy, William Combe, the hack with the grudge against her whole family. As far as Anne knew, he'd been the first to call her such names. But whyever would he start up his mad campaign again so many years later? It mightn't be Combe at all; there was no scarcity of scurrilous wits in London, God knew. Some of them maintained that carnal knowledge between females was impossible—but they kept on writing about these impossibilities nonetheless. Anne couldn't say whether it was possible or not; she had no information on such topics and no curiosity. She suspected the whole thing was an obscene fantasy of newspaper men, merely a novel way of attacking famous women. Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Ponsonby, for instance, two Irish cousins living in famously hermitic quietude in the Vale of Llangollen, had recently been made the subject of a sneering attack in the Evening Post.

  But the fact that Anne wasn't the only victim of such abuse was little co
mfort. She read the horrible epigram again. It struck her that it sounded more like a warning to Miss Farren than a denunciation of Mrs Damer. If so, it was puzzlingly belated; for this verse to have been composed over a year ago, when she and the actress had been visibly devoted to each other, now that would have made some kind of sense—but what could have provoked it now, when all friendship between them was over? This was salt in an old wound.

  And then she thought of something. Had Eliza Farren heard this verse already, or received an anonymous copy in the post? As early as last summer, even? If she'd guessed what it meant—or had it explained to her, God forbid—that could account for her having turned so cold and pulled away from Anne. Yes, it was all coming clear. It was even some kind of paltry relief to Anne to find a plausible reason for the collapse of that friendship. Instead of blaming herself, or Eliza, Anne could blame the enemy—the man (or even woman, she supposed) who'd cut through their bond with one slash of a wanton pen.

  But still she puzzled over something: why had the mysterious enemy sent this verse to her now? She and the actress hadn't met in many months; there was no need to warn Anne to stay away from her. Was it simply meant to hurt?

  Or did it refer, obliquely, to a newer friendship? Her heart leapt into her throat nearly choking her. Not Mary. Miss Berry was an innocent newcomer on the outer fringes of the World. What did anyone care whether Mrs Damer befriended her? How could such a private, harmless friendship bring down disaster?

  But perhaps it had. Anne steeled herself. She thought, the Berrys will be better off out of England right now. And I mustn't dream of going with them.

  ROUND THE corner, in the smaller parlour at Derby House, Eliza studied her cards. The theatres had been closed for six weeks, by order of the Lord Chamberlain, to mark the death of the King's brother, the old Duke of Cumberland. Sheridan was convinced that this act of slavish royalty worship had the sole purpose of bankrupting him. Kemble was drinking to kill the time; brandy turned their manager from the most ceremonious and gentlemanly of men into a bad-tempered lout. For Eliza, unemployed, the days were hanging heavy on her hands for the first time since she could remember.