by Janet Ellis
Onions ignores him, sweeping imperiously out without a farewell. He beams, happy as a man who has secured a prize pig for breeding. ‘I am going to organise many such expeditions for you.’ He puts his shoulders back, smooths his lank hair into place and offers me his arm. I fold my own arms at him instead.
‘Shall we dine together later?’ Onions asks, as we find the carriage. ‘I am satisfied for the moment, but you have had nothing to eat.’
‘I am a little faint.’ I pat my stomach. ‘This wretched—’
‘Madam!’ He cuts me short again. ‘I fear you overstep your feminine boundaries with this candour. I am one of the most sympathetic creatures on God’s earth, indeed I am almost overwhelmed with fellow feeling on occasion, but you must understand I cannot hear of this particular misery without becoming . . .’ he screws up his face ‘. . . a little vexed.’
‘Please take me home,’ I say. ‘Whether we can discuss it or not, I am weary with good reason.’
He looks about to lecture me on a subject he has failed to bore me with thus far, and breathes deep into his chest to prepare his oration, so I pretend to become fascinated by something outside the window. Looking sideways at my companion I watch him as he picks at his nails, using the longest and sharpest as tools.
I am almost bowed over with pain now; it seems as dark red and angry as the blood itself and pulses like a heartbeat. I cannot be comfortable and inch this way and that on my seat. It will not ease no matter how I move. The journey feels like a round-the-world voyage it takes so long and, unhappy as I am to live there, I am relieved and quite lifted to see my house again.
‘Do not see me indoors,’ I instruct Onions, as he arranges his shirt ruffles to present himself. ‘I shall give your good wishes to my father, shall I?’
‘And tell him,’ he is disappointed to be cheated of the encounter, ‘that I shall call . . .’ he looks at me carefully, gauging the length of my recovery, ‘in three days’ time.’
Three days of respite! If I wasn’t bent double in agony I might cheer. When Jane answers the door, I am obviously so pale that even she doesn’t need to ask why I return early.
‘What can I bring, Miss?’ she says, her little features bunched up in concern.
‘Nothing.’
The rags are wet through. I roll them up and put them on the washstand. There’s no need to replace them, I don’t intend to be upright for a while, and even the effort of rinsing them through is beyond me. I lie on the bed breathing as deeply as I can through the clenching pain, rocked by its cruel waves.
‘Miss!’ Jane is calling me. Why doesn’t she leave me in peace? ‘Mistress!’ Outside my room now.
‘What is it, Jane?’ She can tell me her business through the door; I’m not opening it to her.
‘The boy is here.’
‘What boy?’
‘Fub. The butcher’s boy. He has some meat for you to inspect. He says—’
I am at the door before she can finish the sentence.
‘Wait! Fub is here? Tell him to wait.’ Knowing that he has come is a veritable panacea to my ills. ‘I am coming.’
She pinches her lips together. ‘Are you sure, Mistress? I can see to it today, if you—’
‘Jane, I am coming.’ I’m sure my face betrays my excitement. She looks as if she would like to say something to keep me away from him, but she cannot stop me.
He is turning over the contents of his basket when I get to the door, squatting on his haunches. As ever, Jane hovers behind me.
‘Would you brew me an elixir? I think there is a little of the Fraunches left.’ She still stands there, an insistent chaperone. ‘Go!’ I clap my hands and she flaps her arms and flees like a startled bird.
Fub laughs, watching her retreating scuttle. ‘Jane has the disposition of a chicken.’
‘Without the usefulness. There are never any eggs from her.’ I lean on the doorjamb. All my pent-up sorrow, all my self-pity at the ordeal of my day, cannot be stopped up any more. ‘Fub, I am miserable.’
He picks up a joint of beef, squeezing it and pressing his fingers into the flesh.
‘I am about to be promised in marriage. To an odious man.’
He holds the meat to his nose.
‘Fub!’ Why doesn’t he answer?
He looks up. ‘It would not matter if he were the sweetest man alive, would it? It would make no difference.’
‘No. But this man is especially vile. He stinks like an apothecary’s closet. He is a bore and a snob. And—’ This is the worst. ‘—he lives in Derbyshire!’
Fub pretends that his heart stops at the news, replacing the meat with a thump and then clutching his chest. ‘No!’ he wheezes. ‘Not that! There are only two places I was taught to fear: the bowels of Hell and Derbyshire.’
Can he never be serious? It is like trying to catch a butterfly, watching him dart and flit while I try and pin him down.
‘Anne.’ He stands up, wiping his hands on his britches. The wedding is not happening today, is it?’
I shake my head.
‘Or tomorrow? Or any day next week? Not even next month. It is a dark prospect, I grant you, but it is only that – a prospect. It is some way into the future. How long I cannot tell and neither can you. I won’t let all that is to come, however dreary it might be, muddy the clear water now.’
‘Is this clear water?’ I indicate the little yard where we stand and the tall walls surrounding us.
He shrugs. ‘Clear enough. Who knows what’s going to happen in the next little while. Your man – what’s his name?’
‘He is not my man. It is Onions.’
‘Onions?’ Fub stamps his feet with glee. ‘You would be Mistress Onions? You would go from sitting with me next to a tray of meat to enduring such a rotten vegetable diet?’ He thrusts his tongue through his lips and squirts the air noisily. ‘Anyway, this Onions!’ More mirth – he’ll never tire of finding his name, at least, a joke. ‘This Onions: he might go under the wheels of a coach. Or fall from a cliff. Or die of the pox. Oh.’ He stops, thinking he has offended me.
‘Little chance of that, unless the poor boys of the parish infect him.’
That shuts him up. Sombre, we look at each other, measuring the space between us. Suddenly, I scream: shivering on the ground, its fur dark as oil and its maw and claws livid pink, is an enormous rat. It is close enough to me to pick up or to kick, but I do neither. Instead, I lift up my skirts and freeze, glued to the spot with fear. Fub looks me up and down, as if preserving my predicament for his edification, then kicks the creature with his boot. It scurries away, limping.
‘Oh!’ I let out my held breath with a gasp. ‘It was so near! I thought it might bite or scratch and that we’d get the plague and be dead before we could—’ I dare not say what I am thinking. He kneels in front of me and gently lifts at the hem of my dress. His dark hair is close to my hand, but if I touched it now I would not let go. He is still raising my skirt, just as I did when the rat threatened.
‘Here.’ He points at my ankle. There is a thin line of blood dried there, snaking up my leg. It would reach to the top of my thigh if he followed its path. It has come out of me as I stood. He wets his finger and smudges the place where it begins to stain my skin.
‘It is all blood with you, Anne.’ He gets to his feet. The toes of his boots meet my pointed shoes and I can smell his breath. I look at the brown mark in his eye, at the coarse hair on his chin and the rise of his forehead and they blur as I try to see everything clearly enough to remember him later, in private, when we do not stand like this.
‘I heard you scream.’ Jane appears in the doorway, flustered. ‘Is . . . are you . . . is anything amiss?’
Fub and I spring apart and speak over each other in our haste to explain. At least there is one word common to both our accounts.
‘Rat!’ exclaims Jane h
appily, seizing on the innocence of this explanation so that she does not have to fret over whatever else it might be that makes us blush. ‘I’ll get the poison to put down. There won’t be just one, that’s for sure.’
Fub positively saunters to his basket, as casual as if he’d just been caught whistling. ‘This, then,’ he picks up the first thing to hand, ‘is a tender piece of pig. Our lesson was going well till Mr Rat attended.’ He smiles at her, but Jane is solemn.
‘The lesson is over, Fub. Mistress Anne has not been well today and ought to retire now.’
‘Is that true? Oh, I am all concern for her,’ Fub says to Jane, looking at me. ‘I cannot think of anything worse than harm coming to her. Or to anyone else in this household, Jane. Including you. I shall be off, then, Mistress Jaccob.’ He swings his basket and goes up to Jane, playfully.
She is not so easily persuaded. She may not have the mind of a scholar, but she is no fool. ‘If you spend too long at this door, your other orders will be overdue.’ There is the tiniest hint of a threat, sharp as a dart, and Fub feels it prick and nods his head.
‘You are right, Jane.’ His livelihood depends on her good word. My happiness depends on it, too.
Jane stands stockily in the doorway, her swollen middle wrapped in layers of cloth and her bonnet frayed like cabbage leaves, unaware that she holds us in her hands. She clutches a great flank of raw meat with affection. ‘We’d not find a butcher as fine as your Levener easily. Good, good,’ she says, patting it like a dog. She cuts a strange figure as a diviner of our fates.
‘Mistress,’ he bends his head as I pass him. What if I turn instead, cling on to him fast as a shipwrecked sailor to a floating branch, offer up my face to his? I know what would happen, Jane would shriek more loudly than I did when I saw the rat and Fub would be banished forever, that’s the likely outcome. I am half resentful that we may not make plans as others do but half glad that we have been together at all.
‘I have put the tincture by your bed.’ Jane makes no reference to Fub as I leave and I dare not look back at him.
‘Thank you, Jane. I am a little better, but I shall not sit at dinner.’
Chapter 12
I have not heard my mother speak above a whisper much recently, let alone shout, but her voice is raised now. There is another voice, this one heated, too, but lower in tone and slow to respond. It appears my father has no quick reply to my mother’s questions.
‘And why would you not come?’ she is saying. I pause on the landing, pressing myself to the rail to stay steady and listen. ‘My father and mother both ailing, and you would bundle the child and me off alone to visit them?’
A burbling response, some mention of ‘necessary’ and of ‘custom’ from him, but I cannot catch anything clearly.
Then she speaks again. ‘I must go to them, Thomas. And since this house was my father’s gift and you greatly enjoyed spending my dowry, it would ill-behove you to stay here. Your absence would suggest apathy or even disdain.’
‘I would not intend either.’ I can hear him now. ‘Let us at least ration the days of my visit, so that I can inform my associates when I might be expected to return.’
‘Associates! I go tomorrow, Grace will come with me and Jane can see to the house.’
And I? I think. Who will see to me? And quick as a flash I have the answer. Fub!
‘Two days,’ my father harrumphs, defeated. ‘Then I must return.’
I cannot hear what she says, but that is an end to it.
‘Anne!’ My mother calls for me in a strong voice. She sits in the drawing room, sorting her needlework box, brisker than she has been for many months. ‘Your dear grandparents are in poor health. We are to go to them tomorrow and of course I am taking Evelyn with me. I am sorry to leave you in an empty house, but I shan’t be gone long and your father will return before I do.’
‘Can I not come?’ I had better seem willing.
‘Your father suggests that Mr Onions calls on you here this week and must then depart. Your Aunt Elizabeth will receive him for us so that his suit is proper.’
I want to tell my mother that Onions and his visits would keep till her return. The further prospect of Aunt Elizabeth – a woman for whom the business of others is her life’s work – overseeing this grim charade adds more wasps to the nest. I am stung over and over.
‘Mother, you know that I am reluctant to see Mr Onions.’ I am turning sideways hoping only she will catch my words. But she looks to my father before answering.
‘Anne, you must.’
‘You must.’ My father joins his hands and flexes his fingers till the joints crack.
‘Mr Onions is an extraordinary man.’ I do not lie. ‘But I am hardly ready for marriage.’ I have walked into an open trap and my father snaps it shut.
‘You’re ready. Furthermore, it is not up to you to decide on when the time is right. Let us imagine I put it to you: Anne, how do you like Mr Onions? He has asked for your hand in marriage. What do you think of that?’
He leers and replies to himself in a high, whining, childish tone: ‘Oh I am not ready! I would rather remain here an old maid till I get too aged to be anyone’s bride.’ Would that be better, eh? Eh?’
‘I understand, Father.’ Better to cut this short than inflame him further or, worse, to have him decide to stay to make sure I comply.
Jane waits outside the door. She has her shawl on and carries a straw basket. It rustles like wheat in a field; her arm must be trembling. She has evidently been listening, for she pretends a sudden keen interest in a spot on the floor.
‘Mistress Anne, I am going to the Leveners,’ she says, scraping at the dirt with her shoe.
‘Why should I know this?’ I begin to go past her, but she stops me with a hand on my sleeve. I look hard at where she touches me till she takes her hand away.
‘You had asked me to instruct you in domestic matters,’ she says.
I was not quick enough to see where her announcement might take us. A thousand reasons not to go with her scatter in my head, inviting me to choose one. They are all either too insubstantial or might be argued against, even by someone as slow as Jane. She knows of my parents’ plans and that they leave me free. I shiver to think of us lined up together at the Leveners’ counter, Fub so close to me I could touch him, but as out of reach as if he were behind glass.
Perhaps he will be on an errand. Or I might feign fatigue and insist that I wait for her nearby. ‘So good of you to take me with you,’ I would say, ‘But I’m afraid I will have to forego your demonstration of good housekeeping.’
Buoyant with her plan, Jane sails out of the house with me in her wake. She glances over her shoulder to make sure I am still there. I watch her halloo and wave to several people as she goes. From my vantage point, I can see them make only the tiniest greeting in return. Sometimes they do not acknowledge her at all. Blithely, she continues, looking this way and that for her next quarry. I drag my feet, the distance between us increasing. She may simply lose me by dint of getting too far ahead. She reaches a corner and stands stock still, aware, without investigating, that I am not with her. When she turns round, she puts her hands on her hips and smiles broadly at me.
‘Mistress Anne, how can I be swifter than you? When I am carrying all this bulk and you are so many years younger?’ We might have been playing a game of hide-and-go-seek, so thrilled is she that I have caught her. ‘Have you ever walked this way before?’ Jane says.
Is she trying to catch me out? What else is there on the route I might have visited? ‘I do not believe so,’ I say, cautiously, ‘but I am not familiar with much beyond our house, and I might be mistaken. I do not recognise this place, anyway.’ I blink as if I cannot see clearly. ‘Do we even go East or West, Jane? I cannot say.’
‘I will lead the way, you have no need to mark where we are. It all looks different from a carriage,�
� she says, satisfied that my breeding might explain my myopia. She tries a few times to engage me in conversation. She and I have never talked much before, but the fact that she is facing away from me yet keeping by my side makes her bold. She points out places of significance or notoriety, but I am so conscious of where we’ll end up that I’m either curt or mute. This does not diminish Jane’s enthusiasm. She trots as happily as a pony pulling a gig. Fortunately, she is just as blinkered with her purpose.
She pauses momentarily at a point where the road forks. She inclines her head, puzzling as to the way. I am about to suggest we take the wrong path, ‘Shall we try here?’, but she chooses correctly. She identifies some landmarks to confirm her choice and, satisfied, settles back into her babbling and bouncing. As we approach Meek Street, as I knew we must, I can make out a figure outside the butcher’s. It is engaged in some task. It is Fub. ‘No!’ I say aloud.
‘What’s that?’ Jane looks at me, then all around her in case I can see something she can’t. A thief, perhaps or a pothole.
‘I said, are we here? I saw the sign.’ It is facing almost away from us.
‘Did you?’ Jane says, perhaps wondering how my vision has improved so much in the last mile. I walk forward more boldly than I feel, to halt this line of enquiry.
Fub is hammering a nail into the leg of a stool, holding it between his legs to keep it steady. His hair hangs down as his head bends over. He looks up as my dress swings in front of him. ‘Anne!’ he says, springing up and smiling broadly. Then – too late – he spies Jane.
She does not say anything, but her face is a mixture of rebuke and glee. Neither sits well. Beyond Fub in the shop, coming into focus as though they surface from a deep pool, Levener and Bet swim onto the street. They greet Jane, but their fish eyes look at Fub and me. The three of them circle us.
‘Mistress Anne is come to see how things are done,’ Jane says, clasping her basket to her chest.
‘Again?’ says Bet. The plug is pulled and I am left gasping.
‘Eh?’ says Jane.