The Butcher's Hook

by Janet Ellis

  ‘She has given me a healthy baby girl and Simeon is going to transform her domain in some, um, small recompense for her labours.’ I cannot help snorting through my nose at this. If I believed in spells, I would think my father was under one that rendered him completely changed. No more the surly, frowning grump but a sparkling aesthete, in love both with his surroundings and all mankind. I look down at the book. Its pages are all stiff paper covered with rich colourful patterns, some with birds perching or great flowers entwined.

  ‘New wall coverings will greatly benefit what is already a charming room.’ Onions takes the book from me and begins to leaf through it. ‘I am trying to persuade your father that a rich yellow-gold will be like waking to a bright sun every day.’ Though his words are florid and his cadence musical, his cold dark eyes give nothing away. It is disconcerting how intricate his web is, while he sits spider-like in the centre. My father is already rolled up tight as a fly.

  ‘I have no eye for such things, I’m afraid.’ I bob a little curtsey in his direction but avoid his eyes. ‘Forgive me, Mr Onions, I have to see to supper preparations.’

  ‘Oh!’ He positively brays. ‘No, Miss Jaccob, I cannot let you leave without even glancing at my poor offering.’ His fingers trail over the book, stroking the patterned page as a snail marks its path with slime. He holds it out to me again.

  ‘This one is particularly delicious, is it not?’ He is lowering his voice now and getting closer to me. I try not to flinch. ‘I think,’ he whispers, ‘though the gods will smite me if I am wrong to attempt to sway you, that this is my favourite.’ I glance at the swirls and loops in front of me. I smell ether and cologne on his breath. The dense pattern and his odour both suffocate me.

  ‘Very fine,’ I say.

  ‘Very fine? Very fine? Thomas, I am NOT wrong to declare that your daughter is possessed of so clear a judgement, so acute an eye, that I wonder you have not consulted with her over the arrangement of the entire house!’ He is declaiming again, and I take the opportunity to step back. He steps forward to match and if it were not for the fact that the door is closed behind me, I would turn and run away.

  ‘Mr Onions will dine with us tonight, Anne,’ my father announces. ‘Make yourself tidy while we discuss these matters further.’

  Dine with us! I am suddenly longing for only my father’s silent company later. It requires nothing from me. Its very familiarity is comforting and as a beaten dog seeks out his cruel master, I want his presence. I meet my father’s gaze. He looks blankly back. I am suddenly aware of what his intention might be. Mr Onions will dine with us! We have not entertained anyone at our table in a good long while, much less included me in the hospitality, but I remember a conversation my father had (over my head) with my mother.

  ‘A good husband,’ he had said, ‘is both Anne’s right and our loving gift to her.’ He must have learned these words, he meant no kindness. He scarcely dreads being parted from me and I have no apparent worth. He would rather I were a coin he could bite to tell its value. ‘When the time is right, and after I have investigated their suit, I shall ask any gentleman I think might provide her with a good home to eat here, with us, so that we may see how he comports himself. Observe how they match. And note how she behaves.’

  I recall thinking that he might as well have been talking about taking a dog to whelp. Onions is much closer to my father’s age than mine, more suitable in years as a colleague of his than as a suitor to me. But my father would never be so fawning and craven in his business affairs. This confirms my suspicions. What else can be the reason for this sudden, strange alliance? He must intend Onions to be my wedding present. He would make an oddly shaped parcel. I should not be able to keep from shrieking in horror when I undid the ribbons and discovered him inside.

  It will take a great deal of effort for my father to remain gracious for the duration of a meal, particularly if he has the task of including me, too. At least watching him try to act the host will be diverting, or it would be if it weren’t for the fact that he will be attempting to pair us up.

  If Fub stood here, at my side, I could turn to him.

  ‘Let us leave these two old, odd men to their evening, shall we?’ He takes my hand. I lean my head on his shoulder as we leave the room. We stay close together as we go out of the house.

  Onions places his sample book on the table, placing a ribbon elaborately to mark the chosen page. He stands in front of me and takes both my hands and although I try to pull away, he is too quick and surprisingly strong. He turns my left hand over and unpeels my curled fingers where I am holding the little flower Fub picked for me.

  ‘To add to your many undoubted talents, Miss Jaccob, we must add ‘‘lover of nature’’.’ He gives me a quick look, sharp as a needle. If I didn’t know he had been standing here a while, persuading my father to part with his money for fripperies, I might suspect he had spied on me earlier, hidden in the shadows like a ghost. He lets my hands drop, but I feel as if he still holds them, they are scarred by his touch.

  ‘Later, then.’ He smiles the words.

  In my room, I put the little blossom between the pages of Aesop’s fables. It is truly my first lover’s token. How Keziah would have loved this story! It is exactly what she had hoped for, as she held Dr Edwards’ offering out to me, her face lit with curiosity. I sit by the window, watching the gathering gloom. My heart has followed a tortuous path today, by turns fearful and then exalted and is now heavy as lead. What does Fub do now? If I close my eyes, I can see him as he washes away the bloody day and prepares for the evening. It will be spent in the alehouse, I suspect. I want to sit by him as he swigs at his bottle and jokes with his friends. Titus Levener might be there; he’ll get drunk quickly and loudly, then Fub will have to help him home, almost rolling his vast heaviness along the road. There they’ll go together, Titus singing a ribald song, raucous and off-key and Fub laughing, indulging his uncle’s pleasure. How does his heart fare? Does he think of me? I spread my fingers at the memory of his flashing knife and sigh aloud at the thought of his hands on mine. Outside, the lamplighter rattles at our lantern to spark the flame and downstairs I can hear Jane loudly getting plates on to the table. The night gathers in the corners of the room, concealing the lines of the furniture and muffling the sounds around me. I put my hand to the cold window glass and push against it: if it gave now, I swear I would climb out and jump into the street.

  When the call to dinner comes, it wakes me from a doze. I had lain back on the bed and closed my eyes as I had thought I would rest a little, but now it is pitch black, so much time must have passed. It is too late to change my dress. I hope both that my father does not notice – for it would irritate him – and that Onions does: I should like him to interpret this small thing as an indication of my antipathy towards him.

  As I reach the hallway, my father and Onions emerge from the study. They have evidently been lubricating their discussion, or at least my father has, for he’s a little unsteady and stumbles. He reaches for Onions’ arm to stay upright. I catch an expression of distaste, a little purse of his lips, as Onions feels my father’s hand on his velvet sleeve. But then he sees me, readjusts his face to a pinched smile of greeting and waves.

  ‘Your father keeps a fine cellar, Miss Jaccob.’ I saw his look though, I know his true feelings. ‘Dear girl, the hospitality of this house is positively gargantuan.’

  ‘Not ‘‘dear girl’’ yet, Shimeon.’ My father wags a finger at him, in mock admonition. ‘Although it is mosht pleashant to hear you say it.’

  This evening will be interminable. How will I survive it? By trying to catch Onions out, I decide, watching the fault line between his utterances and his feelings grow steadily wider. As we go into the dining room, my father makes great show of seating Onions first, standing behind his chair to ensure that his tiny bottom has made full contact, offering him a square of linen for his neck. He sits beside him and beg
ins to pour water from some height into Onions’ glass. Just as Jane is coming in with her first burden of victuals, I am horrified to see my mother in the doorway behind her. Is she ill? There is no place set.

  Her appearance galvanises everyone. My father leaps up, splashing water as he sets the jug down with a thump. Jane shrieks and her bowl sways from side to side in a pantomime of trembling. I stay seated, rigid. Only Onions stays calm, rising to his feet and extending one skeletal hand.

  ‘Is this vision the lady of the house? What an honour!’ He goes to her, taking her right hand from her side where it hangs limply, and bends over it. She looks blankly at him, her hand in his like a dead fish. I study her face; she is herself but not fully herself, as if she were sleepwalking. He rights himself, retrieves his hand and splays his thin fingers against the ruffle of lace at his neck like a fan.

  ‘Your place is here, Mistress.’ He indicates the seat he left for her to sit there, and stands where there are no waiting irons and crockery. In turn, my father seizes his guest’s arm a little too hard and pulls Onions towards his own vacated seat. Jane is trying to follow this charade, taking little steps in all directions and, when it seems as if it is my father left at the empty seat, she puts her brimming bowl down and scuttles off to find the things he needs. The room settles like the sea after a storm.

  Onions beams and addresses my mother. ‘How very fortuitous that you join us tonight.’ He turns to my father, who is assisting Jane with her placement by roughly grabbing from her every item she proffers.

  ‘Yes!’ He takes a glass from her. ‘Yes!’ Then a napkin. ‘Yes!’ Now he clatters knife and fork onto the table. His voice is too loud, his movements too brutal and I see my mother wince.

  Ignoring this, Onions leans towards her, as if they were alone.

  ‘Another daughter, I hear. And if she grows to be as beautiful as your elder, then the world will be truly dazzled. But seeing you, Madam, I can fully understand how such loveliness came about. I am no poet but, when I need to, I draw on the rich panoply of verse already created by the masters of our tongue. Now is such a moment.’

  He stands. From the corner of my eye, I see Jane look nervous. Does she need to take something from the table? Guests getting up by themselves are an unnerving thing, against the laws of etiquette. She looks at my father, who is in turn looking at Onions with his mouth agape. My mother stares ahead. The man pushes back his chair a fraction, to afford himself room to take position, one hand on his hip, the other held in the air with his palm upwards. He joins the tip of his index finger to the end of his thumb. Clearing his throat, he tips his head back and recites to the ceiling:

  ‘Come, little infant, love me now,

  While thine unsuspected years

  Clear thine agèd father’s brow

  From cold jealousy and fears.’

  And on he goes, drunk with his own voice, oblivious to our expressions, regardless of the text.

  ‘So, to make all rivals vain,

  Now I crown thee with my love:

  Crown me with thy love again,

  And we both shall monarchs prove.’

  There is silence and with a tweak of cramp I realise my toes have been curled up tight in my shoes. Then Jane claps her hands together, and the mood is broken. Onions seems almost grateful as he acknowledges her applause. My father merely taps the table once with one hand, he cannot bring himself to do more.

  ‘Very fine,’ says my mother, the first words she has uttered tonight.

  I say nothing. Onions catches my eye, and he is angry that I don’t praise him. But because he cannot show his displeasure, he turns to Jane with great energy and swagger.

  ‘Dear lady! Do you admire the work of Marvell? I think, if I may be so bold, that he is, quite simply, the finest poet. I hope I do him justice.’

  She looks at the floor and mutters: ‘Sir, it was—’ But she cannot find a word.

  ‘Tell me, Madam, what is your name?’ He holds his head on one side, and speaks in a soft, emollient tone, as if she were a child.

  Jane looks nervously at my father, anxious to know if she may speak to this man without getting into trouble. My father is flummoxed, though, and only shrugs his shoulders at her.

  ‘Jane.’

  ‘Jane. Your full name, Jane?’

  Jane swallows. This is becoming a little too much of an interrogation for comfort. ‘Jane Bradshaw.’

  I am startled. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her name as more than a simple, plain ‘Jane’.

  ‘And how does Mr Bradshaw do, may I enquire?’

  There is a pause. Jane opens and close her mouth twice before answering.

  ‘He is dead, Sir.’

  ‘Ah.’ Onions offers no sympathy, he is just taking notes.

  ‘He died twenty years before, Sir.’ She clasps her hands in front of her and twists them together. Her voice has dropped, so she almost whispers. She breathes in deeply, steadying herself.

  It is as if she is taking shape before me. I had not known she was a widow. I have never even thought of her before as a woman, much less a wife. She has hitherto been a deliverer of plates, a boiler of meat. I did not know she was ever loved. That she had once loved someone. That she had risen from her bed with the thought of her lover, wanted and waited for him all day and slept with dreams of him. My stomach knots with a mixture of sadness and frustration. We should let her go now, dismiss her to her room to remember her loss, to mourn. I cannot meet my mother’s eye in case I see tears shining there.

  ‘We must all bear some sorrow.’ Onions looks piously round the room at us all, appointing himself minister and sage. It is a lucky thing that he does, because it has the effect of a bucket of freezing water – his sentimental posturing wakes us abruptly. We stiffen to attention like soldiers called to battle. Jane is first to speak.

  ‘It is a long time since,’ she says, and pats at her apron with brisk hands. ‘Some meat, Sir?’ She bustles to the table and reaches for a platter, knocking the glasses into a tremble as she leans. With relief, I see her restored to both bustle and clumsiness.

  ‘Mr Onions,’ my mother turns to him. She is calm. Solemn, even. ‘Do you conduct business in London?’

  Onions brushes the air in front of him, to indicate that while he has some poetry in him, there are serious matters to attend to, besides. He leans one elbow on the table.

  ‘I won’t go into detail, Mistress Jaccob, as I have bored your husband with my enterprises and while he has listened tolerantly –’ he smiles indulgently at my father, who harrumphs in return, ‘suffice it to say that the running of the estate should be easy enough but the getting of good staff is hard.’ He raises his eyes heavenwards. ‘Goodness only knows why the common man does not understand that regular employment is a boon to him, and he will do no better than to find himself a regular, menial task, apply himself daily and thus get a little money for it. But they drink or fornicate themselves out of work, and have not the wit to stay sober and chaste. They are hardly going to fill their idle hours with such occupations as thinking, are they? They had better get on with hard graft and be grateful.’

  Not a moment since, he had encouraged Jane to join in the conversation, now he dismisses her kind with one swipe.

  ‘What employment do you offer, then?’ My mother’s tone is sweet, but I detect a little sharpness.

  Onions pauses. I think he can feel a prickle, too.

  ‘I have the good fortune to have inherited a large chunk of Derbyshire.’ He stresses the words, implying that it is in fact a careful strategy rather than an accident of birth on his part. ‘That is the correct measurement for the place, is it not? Derbyshire is counted in chunks, isn’t it, I think?’ He sniggers, but no one joins in.

  ‘A cousin minds it for me,’ he continues, ‘so I do not have to concern myself with the day to day events. Too much talk of accounts and in
ventories and I feel quite faint.’

  Jane is beside him now, placing his food on the table.

  He glares at the plate in front of him. ‘Ah, forgive me,’ he pushes it away with both hands, ‘but I cannot tolerate meat.’ He pulls his mouth into an expression of distaste. ‘Do you have any milk or a little bread?’

  Jane looks as if she has been beaten. Her head shrinks to her shoulders. My father, who has been listening to all this with a deepening frown, now takes charge. He slaps Onions across the back – it is meant playfully, but Onions is too slight to stay fully upright and sways forwards with the blow.

  ‘No meat!’ my father bellows, regarding Onions with amused curiosity. ‘Then fetch what we have, Jane. But I will continue to eat the stuff. Avert your gaze, if you must.’ He spears a slice of meat from Onions’ plate and slams it on his own.

  ‘I am sorry our dinner disappoints, Mr Onions.’ My mother smiles at him. ‘I hope Jane can find something else to tempt you.’

  Onions smiles back, shaking his head ruefully. ‘I should have thought to warn you, Madam. But if I eat meat, delicious though it might be,’ – it is obvious he doesn’t believe any meat, particularly our offering, to be delicious – ‘then I suffer for it.’ He pats at his chest, then strokes there. His insides must be purring with all this affection. ‘My mother used to say I have inherited a certain delicacy.’ He holds my mother’s gaze, inviting agreement.

  Her expression is one of faint pity, perhaps, nothing more.

  Jane returns with a platter of bread, a little cheese and a pear. They sit apart with naked acres of china between them. It hardly looks like a feast. Onions nods wordlessly at her, giving her a tiny, brave smile to show he forgives what she offers.

  My father laughs, though, not caring that he might offend. ‘You’ll hardly grow fat on that!’ He chews at a tough mouthful as he speaks and there is more than a glimpse of revolving meat on view.