Coromandel!

by John Masters

  She said, ‘Good. We’ll have a great dish of stewed eels, then, with mulled ale, and you’ll never pay a penny. And tomorrow Dick and I will talk about your visit to Coromandel.’

  ‘Jesus’ bones, what’s all this hogswill about Coromandel?’ Dick said. ‘Where is it? Who owns it? Do they have women there better than mine?’

  ‘Never mind now,’ Emily said quickly. ‘Lend Jason some clothes. Well, damn you for a fool, Dick, how can he dance without any breeches?’

  ‘Very well,’ Dick said thinly, ‘I’ll lend him some clothes for tonight. But he’d better learn to keep a civil tongue in his head while he’s talking to Dick o’ the Ruff. This way, capon.’

  Jason gaped at all the bottles and barrels they had against the wall in the Cockpit Tavern. He had never seen so many, nor heard such a noise. And the people! You would think they were all so jammed together they could not move, but somehow they did, and there were even tables, some in alcoves and some ranged against the wall, and people unconcernedly eating at them. The Cross Keys used to get as crowded as this sometimes, but in Wiltshire men stayed in one spot, drinking and having the jugs passed to them over the people’s heads under the rafters, and the jokers took a swig out of each jug as they handed it along. In Wiltshire men drank where they stood, until they fell down or staggered out to sleep more comfortably in the hedge.

  He and Emily were sitting at one of the tables. Dick o’ the Ruff had disappeared. ‘Sir William Benson, that is, over there, with the pimples on his face,’ Emily whispered in his ear. ‘Lord Openshaw. . . . Mr Charles Fitzjames. . . . The one with the round hat, he’s a poet. He never has any money. He drinks here every night until no one will pay for him anymore. Harry Levoller . . She knew everybody.

  Jason listened half-heartedly. It was interesting enough, learning who all these people were, but now that Dick had left them alone at the table he wanted to ask her about the letter and about the dancing. They had danced together for five or ten minutes up there in the house in Chain Street, and Emily was good. Together they were very good--better, perhaps, than any couple he’d ever seen in his life. Even Dick was impressed, and whistled through his teeth and cried, ‘This country capon can dance, eh?’ And breathlessly Emily answered, ‘Dance? He could dance a ring around the moon.’ And she swung out of his grip and swirled on to the bed and flopped back on it, joyfully clapping her hands.

  He took advantage of a pause in the flow of her gossip to say, ‘Emily, what was in that letter? Why do we have to dance?’ She turned slowly. She said, ‘You don’t know at all, do you? You don’t know what Fowler’s job is?’

  Jason thought, and answered, ‘No. There were some women in his Caversham Tavern that I didn’t trust the looks of much.’ Emily laughed shortly but cut herself off as he went on. ‘I suppose from what’s happened here that he wrote in the letter that he’d seen me dancing there--I drank a lot of sack one night and danced by myself, and after that Master Fowler gave me my supper, free, every night, just to dance. That was strange, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Very,’ Emily said gravely.

  ‘But I can’t understand why he didn’t say anything about Coromandel in the letter. That’s the only reason he wrote it.’

  ‘Look, Jason,’ Emily said carefully, ‘couldn’t you forget about Coromandel--for a time, anyway? I don’t know what it is or where it is, but--I’ll tell you something. Here, people pay to see good dancers. You’re the best dancer in London. You can make a lot of money, just dancing. You can make more with the old women afterwards.’

  ‘How?’ Jason said. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘ ‘Steeth!’ she snapped. ‘You’re just a lump of Wiltshire dung, aren’t you? And what do you think I am? Shhh, here’s Humphrey.’

  A youngish man with a purple doublet, a small ruff, and a small head, had pushed through the crowd and now reached their table. Emily stood up and made a deep, half-mocking curtsy. She said, ‘My Lord Nailsworth.’

  The man had small pink eyes, reddish hair and beard, and a freckled skin. He glanced coldly at Jason and said, ‘Who’s this fellow?’

  Emily said, ‘My brother Jason, my lord. He has just returned from a successful voyage to America. His vessel lies at Falmouth now.’

  ‘I haven’t‘ Jason began.

  Emily shot him a hard look and went on a little louder, ‘His backers will receive four hundred per cent return on every guinea they lent him.’

  Lord Nailsworth’s little eyes sharpened, and he said, much more graciously, ‘A sea captain, eh? Well, we must have a talk one day.’

  Jason glared at Emily, who met his eyes unwinkingly. He looked away from her as Lord Nailsworth touched her on the arm and began to mutter into her ear.

  The woman at the next table was staring at him with undisguised interest. He noticed that she was plump, dark, over forty, and alone--which was strange. She had four rings on her left hand, and a big purse chained to her girdle. She couldn’t have helped hearing what Emily said just now. He cursed Emily and looked away from the strange woman.

  Dick o’ the Ruff elbowed his way to them and sat down. Emily and Lord Nailsworth were giggling and drinking and whispering in each other’s ears. Jason sat brooding, as far away --from the others as he could get. The woman at the next table was watching and listening.

  What did he think Emily was? She might be a strumpet, only he didn’t know what a strumpet would look like. Old Voy used to talk about them sometimes, but about what they did, not what they looked like. Could a strumpet dance? He wanted to like Emily, but he didn’t understand her.

  A man stuck his head through a far door and shouted above the heads of the crowd, ‘Four to one on Lord Openshaw’s white.’

  ‘Taken, taken!’ several voices cried.

  Dick o’ the Ruff called, ‘Are they in the ring yet?’

  ‘Aye, just starting, Dick.’ The man’s head disappeared.

  ‘Come along.’ Dick beckoned Jason.

  Jason said, ‘No, thank you.’ He did not want to leave Emily alone with Lord Nailsworth.

  But Emily frowned at him, and Dick took his arm so firmly as to lift him out of his seat. He followed Dick through the far door and found himself in a low room where the walls were lined with benches. A few men were sitting on the benches, and others were standing behind them. The two fighting cocks were sparring for position. The lamp smoked under the rafters, a haze of tobacco filled the air, and the floor was covered with sand and spilled wine.

  The cocks leaped into the air, and the long steel spurs glittered on their heels. Jason stood back against the wall. Voices shouted bets in his ear, hands threw money across him. This was London. He saw long, lean faces, tight at the spilling blood; shaved and powdered faces, slavering with greed; stubbly beggars’ faces, wet with sweat; murderers’ faces, smiling. He saw greased hair tumbling over white lace collars as the heads jerked up in the frenzy of watching. He heard Dick o’ the Ruff shouting odds as the cocks fought, and saw him catching money with one hand and throwing it away with the other.

  The fight ended. Lord Openshaw stepped into the ring and kicked his bird disgustedly. ‘Twenty guineas you’ve lost me, you!’ The cock lay in the stained sand, kicking feebly, its blood matting the spotted white feathers at its throat. Lord Openshaw wrung its neck, flung it down, and stalked away. A woman at the ringside stooped, stuffed it under her skirt, and winked at her companion.

  ‘Lost six guineas,’ Dick said. ‘We’ll make it back in the next match. Pen Grave’s bird can’t lose. Hey, where are you going?’

  ‘I’d rather listen to the music,’ Jason said. He had heard a fiddle and a drum strike up in the middle of the cockfight, and now their music came quite clear to him at the side of the cockpit.

  ‘Well, leave Emily alone, d’you hear?’ Dick said coldly. ‘She’s got her teeth into ten thousand a year.’

  Jason shouldered through the press and back into the front room. Emily was still at the table with Lord Nailsworth. The plump woman was still there,
gazing and listening, her rings flashing. Jason leaned against the wall close to the fiddler.

  Emily’s face was averted from his as she whispered to the lord. Did the lord love her? It seemed impossible that people could do anything as ordinary as ‘love’ each other in this place. This was a world turned upside down. How could Emily stand being with that lord? He was worse than Ahab Stiles. But Molly was going to marry Ahab. That made Molly a strumpet. Ah, now he knew what a strumpet looked like. Like your sister.

  He laughed shortly, and the owner of the tavern brought him a drink. The man said, ‘Any time you want anything, master, just say the word. Any friend of Dick’s a friend of mine.’ He winked. Jason took the big mug of mulled and spiced ale in his hands and sipped it.

  He found that his feet were tapping to the fiddler’s time. It would make a good dance.

  A drunken woman jumped off a man’s lap and staggered about the sanded floor. She waved her arms, her hair falling over her eyes in a brown mass like seaweed, and sang in a faulty voice, ‘ “ ‘Twas he and me and never thee, that went to the lonely haymow, haymow, haymow. ‘Twas he and me and ” I can’t remember any more.’ She held the sides of her skirt and swayed violently.

  The tune changed to ‘Meadowsweet,’ and from her table Emily looked up quickly. Jason shouted eagerly to the fiddler, ‘You know that?’

  ‘It sounds like it,’ the little old fiddler said sarcastically, bowing away.

  ‘You’re from Shrewford Pennel?’

  ‘Never heard of it.’

  The drunken woman sat down on the floor. A man came up, bent over, and hauled her to her feet. Holding on to him, she bellowed angrily at the fiddler, ‘Why don’t you play a tune a girl can dance to, you whoreson pimp?’

  The fiddler snapped, ‘Go home and trull in Salop, and you’ll be a queen. It is a dancing tune. This gentleman knows it.’

  ‘Oh, he knows it, does he?’ The woman came and leaned against Jason and then fell away, holding on to the front of his silk coat.

  Dick o’ the Ruff stuck his head round the far door and said, ‘Mind that coat, you. She’s going to be sick.’

  The woman shouted, ‘If he knows it, why don’t he dance it? Little pretty boy!’ She stroked his cheek.

  Jason said suddenly, ‘I’ll dance it.’ A moment of Silence had passed across the room as he spoke, and everyone heard him. He flushed furiously and turned to escape, but a lazy voice said, ‘Oh, no, you dance for us now.’

  Emily was at his side. She smiled sweetly at the speaker and said, ‘We’ll dance, Master Levoller, my brother and I together. But our purse is empty.’ Aside she muttered to Jason, ‘And I thought you were an innocent farmer’s boy.’

  Jason said, ‘What do you mean?’

  Levoller tossed a golden guinea to the floor at their feet and said, ‘More if it is good.’

  Emily said, ‘Mean? Why, you donkey, if you dance in public before Dick makes the arrangements, and the people like you, you can force Dick to give you better terms. But you’re not going to steal a march on me that way. Come on!’ She held out her hands.

  Jason took them and said earnestly, ‘Emily, I wasn’t thinking of--‘

  She interrupted harshly. ‘Oh, hold your tongue. Dance!’

  They pointed their toes. The fiddler said, ‘One, and two, and--‘ They began to dance.

  It is the spiced ale, he thought--but I am not drunk. It is all the things that I have seen today, or the floating-away feeling of being so tired. But I was only tired when I began, not now. It is the warmth inside here and the blowing sleet outside. I can see faces pressed to the windows as I turn. ... He knew he was dancing better than he had ever danced. His body swung, and his feet flew. He saw Emily’s face shining before him; their fingers met, locked, parted; she swung away. She lifted the sides of her skirt, and her bare calves flashed. In the tavern they had stopped talking, stopped drinking, eating, breathing. Emily’s eyes flashed, and her white teeth flashed. She laughed defiantly and met his eyes. ‘See!’ he heard her say. ‘This is how I live.’ They left the known dance behind and made up new ones as they went along, never missing, never failing. In his own leaps his head flew along under the black beams. Emily twirled and swirled after him, arms out, skirts flying.

  Now they’d end, this great leap and turn--and then together with her, fingers locked, eyes locked, and the sweat running down their faces, into the curve of Emily’s breasts, into his eyes, blinding him.

  They stood still, facing each other.

  A moment of silence; then the applause exploded like a cannon. Jason stepped a pace back from the sudden fierceness of it. It was like anger, like a mountain falling on them, like a sword piercing in through clothes and skin to the pit of the stomach. Levoller’s face was pale, and his mouth wide open and bellowing meaningless words. They were all shouting, clapping, throwing clothes and money and hats with both hands, the golden rain of guineas bursting like hail on the stone floor. Jason stood with his chest heaving and his eyes wide. The gold was right; it made a good carpet for their dance; it was good and musical to walk upon. Dick o’ the Ruff was sweeping it up quickly into a small sack.

  Lord Nailsworth was hugging Emily and shaking Jason’s hand and gabbing, ‘Never seen such dancing. Wonderful!’ Levoller was shouting in his ear, ‘More!’ Jason shook his head. Dick o’ the Ruff said, ‘Perhaps tomorrow, Master Levoller, if there is enough support.’

  Levoller recovered some of his posed lassitude. He said, ‘Support? By’r Lady, I’ll empty Whitehall and bring them here.’

  Lord Nailsworth stood up, clutching Emily’s arm. She said to Jason, ‘Good night. We did that well, didn’t we?’ She wrapped her cloak around her and went out on Nailsworth’s arm. Jason found himself alone in the small clear space by the musicians. He had left his hat--Dick’s hat--on the table where they had eaten the stewed eels. He went over to get it.

  The woman at the next table was still there, still alone. As he took his hat she said, ‘Pray let me tell you that you and your sister dance like angels, sir. I have always liked to dance, but my husbands did not approve. I suppose you practise on board your ship?’ She had a round weatherbeaten face and round blue eyes set wide apart, and a snub nose and wide mouth.

  Jason said, ‘What ship, mistress?’

  ‘Now don’t try to tease me, sir, just because I’m a lonely widow. I know you are a rich sea captain.’

  Jason’s head still whirled with the dance and the applause and the golden money. He liked the woman’s face because it reminded him of Mother Bolling’s in Shrewford, but he could not think what she was talking about. He said, ‘I’m not rich, mistress. I wish I was, but I haven’t got but a few pennies except what people have just given us for the dancing.’

  She looked at him closely, and his manner seemed to force belief on her; and at the same moment Jason remembered the foolish lie with which Emily had tried to impress Lord Nailsworth. His shoulders slumped, and the gaiety went out of him. He said aloud, ‘The damned trull!’

  The woman said, ‘You mean Emily? Well, I never! But you ought not to speak of your sister like that.’ She shook her head reproachfully and said, ‘And all that about the ship was not true? Well, I never!’ She looked at him with an admiration that was not now mixed with her previous archness, and said, ‘Won’t you sit down, sir, and allow me to toast your health in a bottle of sack? My name is Dempster, Mabel Dempster.’ Jason said, ‘Thank you, Mistress Dempster, but I am very tired. I must be going.’

  She fumbled in her purse and pulled out two guineas and slipped them into his hand. She said, ‘There. I didn’t give any before because I thought it was not right to throw money at a sea captain. But--’

  Jason looked at the gold sprinkling his palm. Then he gave it back to her and said, ‘I don’t want any money. Please give it to someone else. Give it to the musicians.’

  He went out, leaving Mabel Dempster staring in amazement after him. He ran down the street among the clanging Christmas bells.

&n
bsp; The bells were silent, and Jason swam out of sleep to the sound of voices. He found he was curled up on the hard floor under the window, with a couple of blankets over him, and there was a harder white light that hurt his eyes, shining down on him from the ceiling. Emily and Dick o’ the Ruff were talking, Emily in her bed, Dick sitting on the edge.

  Jason got up, yawned, and shook his heavy head. The snow lay thick in the street and on the window-ledges, and the sun shone, and people moved about soundlessly in the untainted whiteness.

  ‘You’re awake at last, are you?’ Dick said. ‘I want to talk to you.’

  Jason said, ‘Can I have a drink of water?’

  Emily showed him the jug on the table. He broke the thin ice on the water and drank. The water seared his throat as the hard light had seared his eyes. His tongue felt sticky, and his feet weighed a hundred pounds apiece.

  Dick said, ‘Why did you run away? We could have got another ten guineas if you’d come round the tables with me later.’

  ‘I went just after Emily went,’ Jason said sullenly.

  Emily looked rosy and pretty and innocent in the big bed, sitting up with a blanket round her, and over that, her cloak. Jason had been asleep in Dick o’ the Ruff’s bed when she came in late during the night. No one had showed him any other place he could sleep, so he’d climbed angrily in there, muttering, ‘Let the bastard pull me out and see what happens.’ But it was Emily who came and whispered for him to get out or Dick would kill him. He’d cursed her for a whore; she’d dragged him out, and down to her room. The sleet had already turned to snow by then. There was snow on her cloak and on her big, sweeping hat. She’d told him to sleep in the corner, and no tricks. He’d shouted that he wouldn’t touch her with a dung fork. Someone had knocked angrily on the ceiling below. Then she’d tried to kiss him, and told him she did not love Lord Nailsworth or any of the men, that this was only a stepping- stone to something better. She was making a lady out of herself. Couldn’t she have dreams too? What in damnation was this Coromandel but a dream? Only, a woman couldn’t go out seeking Coromandel. He had refused to be softened and refused to sleep in the bed with her, though she was tearful and drunk; and had lain down on the floor.