Now, there would be no Monsieur Renard to fix it. No Monsieur Renard to bow, one leg stretched out before him, as though he was at the court of Versailles rather than a London town house. Joanna had not mentioned his death to Harriet. She had known of a house where a servant had been turned away for bringing news of a death.
Joanna excused herself to go and give instructions to the new cook. Mr Chichester’s fashionable French chef had departed the week before, and Harriet had not taken to the new man, who mangled his vowels tortuously in a vicious approximation of a French accent. As a result Harriet had decided to start giving her instructions through Joanna, initially writing them in laboured characters, then giving them verbally, so it gave Joanna a few minutes’ respite at the kitchen table every morning, questioning whether quite so many sauces were needed on that evening’s dinner.
Downstairs, Joanna sat and instructed the inattentive cook. She was just resting for a moment when Oliver ran down into the kitchen. In the distance she could hear the faint tinkling of the silver table bell used by Mr Chichester to call for attention. ‘You’d better get up here, Miss Dunning,’ said Oliver. ‘She’s screaming the place down.’ The fearful expression on his face had Joanna on her feet in a moment.
She ran past the footman and up the stairs, into the staircase hall, where an eerie wailing sound could be heard, barely recognizable as Harriet’s voice. Two of the other menservants were already there, looking pale. Mr Chichester had emerged from the library, the table bell in his hand. ‘What is the matter with her?’ he said. He looked terrified. ‘For God’s sake, will you go to her?’
As she ran up the marble staircase, silence fell. She must be miscarrying, Joanna thought: I must prepare myself. There will be blood. She will have cramps. There must be brandy and hot water. Someone must call for Dr Taylor, due to make his first visit that afternoon. She opened the door.
Never had the bedroom, with its pale blue silk-covered walls and draped sash windows looking out over the square, looked so huge as when she opened the door, and never had Harriet looked so small to her. She was crumpled in a heap on the floor, next to the bed, moaning. She looked up at the sound of the door and saw Joanna; then she took a breath and started to scream, like a child who has seen her parent, and knows she can unleash hell at last. Joanna ran to her. She thought of the men downstairs, the footmen, and Mr Chichester, peering up, their hands over their ears.
‘What is it?’ she said, over the noise. There was no blood, no signs of the miscarriage she had expected. She got hold of Harriet by the shoulders. The girl sobbed convulsively.
‘Are you bleeding?’ she said, and Harriet shook her head.
On the bed, she saw a letter, and pulled it down with one hand while she held Harriet with the other.
It is with regret, madam, that we write to inform you of the untimely death of Pierre Renard.
‘You need to be quiet,’ Joanna said. ‘Be quiet.’ A movement caught her eye and she saw that Jane, one of the maids, had come in through the open door and was approaching them. Even with only a glance Joanna saw something in the girl’s expression that disturbed her. ‘I didn’t tell you to come in,’ she said. ‘Get out. Get out now!’ She raised her voice high enough to cut over Harriet’s sobs. The girl turned and walked out, briskly, her head held high.
Harriet was rocking herself, pulling Joanna with her. ‘I shouldn’t have said no. She’ll have killed him,’ she said between gasps. ‘He said she hated him. He said—’
‘I don’t care what he said,’ said Joanna. She felt the pressure bearing down on her head. Her mind, her imagination, only had room enough for her own secrets. ‘I do not want to know,’ she said. ‘You must quieten yourself, for the sake of the baby.’
The mention of the baby seemed to break into Harriet’s thoughts, and she began to breathe in a laboured rhythm, though there was a look of surprise on her face at the fact that she had been reprimanded. Joanna stroked her hair, wondering whether the maid was still standing just out of sight, against the wall next to the door. ‘Hush,’ she said. The word, meant to soothe, came out as a hiss, as a warning.
Joanna had expected Dr Taylor to be a small, sprightly man with a feminine face; her strong imagination had made him so real that the lumbering man who met her at the bottom of the stairs, with his large curved shoulders and his cheerful, blunt features, seemed an impostor. He moved slowly but with a grace that was surprising in a man so large, as though he thought carefully about every manoeuvre. He had greeted Joanna with bright-eyed kindness, but at the sight of Harriet his expression lost some of its warmth. When he rested one of his large hands on the silken arm of the pale blue daybed, Harriet shrank away. He smiled, his gaze distant, as though his eyes were fixed on some faraway horizon rather than his patient. ‘Mrs Chichester,’ he said. ‘You must not worry yourself. I will be as gentle as possible. Lady Whiteacre said she had never known gentler.’
Harriet smiled. ‘I am a little afraid,’ she said.
‘There is no need to be afraid. You will have the best care. Your husband told me you were in great distress,’ said Taylor, rising and beginning to lay his hands carefully on her stomach. ‘Is there some discomfort?’
‘No,’ said Harriet, her voice small and wavering.
‘If I may, Dr Taylor,’ said Joanna, trying to make her tone clipped and cheerful. ‘It is an excess of sensibility. Mrs Chichester has been reading novels. She is very susceptible to them. They provoke strong emotions in her.’
The doctor paused, as though he was trying to process what she was saying. Then he smiled, and spoke with a mock severity. ‘I would put them in the fire, if I were you,’ he said. Joanna forced out a laugh.
‘They are from Mr Holt’s,’ she said. ‘I will return them.’
‘Without delay,’ said Taylor, holding Harriet’s wrist. ‘If you could wait in the next room, Miss Dunning?’
As Joanna waited in the dressing room, her hand went to the small indent between her collarbones, the place where she had planned for the pendant to lie. Having initially despaired, she had begun to hope that it might be waiting for her in Renard’s shop. She had a ribbon ready for it: a small and simple glazed locket, containing what he had described as ‘artfully arranged’ hair, though the weeping willow shape he had suggested didn’t seem to fit with Stephen’s memory at all. Her fingertips pinched the spot where her neck met her décolletage, and the skin felt slacker than she remembered it. A storm was approaching: the rain slapped angry streaks on the windowpane, and she heard the distant threatening heave of thunder. She was glad of the noise; if Harriet cried out, she didn’t want to hear her.
When the doctor left he told Harriet that he believed it was true: she was to have a child. He recommended rest, plain food and quiet occupations to calm her spirits. Joanna sat with Harriet and they ate oat biscuits, warm from Mrs Holland’s oven, and drank milk together, fresh from the cows in St James’s Park. Later Joanna tucked Harriet into bed and she promptly fell asleep, exhausted by her exertions. Warily, Joanna sat beside her for some time, watching her sleep.
It was long past the dinner hour when Joanna went downstairs. When she opened Harriet’s door the staircase hall was dark, chill and empty, and from the upper floor she could just make out the black and white tiles below, and the glistening streaks of water on them where someone had come in out of the rain. There were no footmen in attendance; she warranted they were off drinking and dancing somewhere, playing cards with the valet and losing their money. And crooked Mrs Holland would be melting candle ends into the fat pan, before she sold it on tomorrow.
She was tired, and her flux had started, the pain tweaking at her, beginning its monthly test of her endurance. She looked forward to lying down in her room. But as she walked towards the hidden door to enter the back-stairs section of the house, the library door opened, revealing a vertical rectangle of dim flickering ochre, and a figure silhouetted there.
‘It’s you,’ said Nicholas Chichester. The way he spoke
was not as precise as usual, she thought, though she could be mistaken for his voice was echoing in the hall, and she was tired. She curtseyed unsteadily on the stair she had halted on. ‘Will you come down?’ he said, and turned away to walk back into the room.
As she entered the library, she saw he was more than usually dishevelled, dressed in a dark nightgown over his breeches, shirt and cream waistcoat, his neckcloth undone. His dark hair had shed its powder and it stood upright, as though he had passed his hands through it many times. He was wandering aimlessly up and down in front of the far fireplace, as though lost in thought. The fire blazed happily, and its light jumped and flared, casting shadows on the wall. ‘Sir?’ she said, wanting to alert him to her presence.
He stopped pacing, and looked at her. ‘You look done in,’ he said, concern in his voice. ‘Sit down.’ His voice slurred slightly; the decanter on his desk was nearly empty. There were piles of books there too. As she sat down on one of the fauteuils covered in fine French tapestry, she noticed The Gentleman’s Magazine, carelessly thrown aside.
‘You must be exhausted,’ he said. ‘Would you like a glass of wine?’
She said nothing, startled by the question, but his eyes followed hers to the decanter, and he smiled.
He poured the liquid out unsteadily, slopping some on to the surface of the desk. The fancy silver wine label chimed against the side of the glass as he put it down. Joanna thought of Renard when she saw it. She took the glass and drank the wine back in two gulps: ruby red, iron rich.
‘Dr Taylor said my wife is well and healthy,’ said Nicholas, standing before the fireplace. ‘That her screaming and yowling like a dying fox was due to a temporary derangement. That ladies sometimes have strange fancies when they are increasing. What is your experience in the matter, if you will excuse the indelicacy of the question?’
Joanna was still savouring the taste of the wine. ‘Every lady is different,’ she said.
Nicholas was nodding, as though he had expected her reply. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yet it was unusual, was it not? All Taylor would advise me to do was let her eat what she has a fancy for, though not in excess. I believe she mentioned sweetmeats from Gunter’s.’
He laughed, and as the firelight flared she noticed a slight tic, that shivered his skin in the side of his face. She fought off a wince as the squeeze of cramp claimed her. She longed for another glass of wine, but knew she couldn’t ask.
‘I don’t think of you as a servant,’ said Nicholas suddenly, and, surprised, she brought her eyes to his face. ‘Harriet’s mother said you are a woman of gentle breeding, who has been brought low in the world. But I hope you will always feel more than a servant in this house.’
Ah, she thought. My false character. Perhaps I went a little too far. She had wanted to leave her past employer so much that she had written herself a lavish character and faked the signature. She said nothing.
‘Why do you always wear black?’ he said. ‘Grey, or black? Are you in permanent mourning?’
She said nothing, trying to think of some answer that would satisfy him. Seemingly aware that his sally had failed, Chichester sat down opposite her.
‘I feel I can talk to you,’ he said. ‘You seem calm – always the same.’ He was drunker than she had first thought. His neck, close to, was mottled with red. Four bottles at least, she thought. He leaned back in his chair.
‘I first saw my wife,’ he said, ‘in the ballroom of some house, not far from here. I told the doctor, she seemed so perfect, if it were forty years ago I would have transacted a Fleet marriage that night.’
Perfect and rich, thought Joanna. Best not to treat the doctor like a fool, if you wish for his candour. The doctor knows all about the marriages of his betters. She imagined the round-shouldered Taylor reading the marriages section in The Times, noting the day on his pocketbook, counting the months and making another mark, waiting to bestow his patronage on another birth. In his own way, he was like her, she imagined: always keeping his eye on things; after all, it was good to be prepared. It was necessary for survival.
‘I speak to you with more candour than I should,’ Chichester said. ‘But only you can comprehend, living so close to her. She was trained for the marriage mart. And she is not what she seems. You know that.’ He groaned. ‘I have feared for you. It has vexed me to see the burden you have been under. And as for me.’ He seized his glass, and tossed back the contents. More for me too, if you please, she thought, but managed to look attentive.
‘I feel as though I am cursed,’ he said. ‘She seems to me to be unstable in her temperament. I am told things will change with time, but I am a logical man, and with the material I see before me,’ he waved his hand, and she feared he would send the glasses crashing to the floor, ‘I doubt it.’
They sat in silence, their glasses empty, the flames in the fireplace rising and falling.
‘But what are you to do about it?’ he said. ‘Forgive me. You need your rest.’
‘If I may be excused, sir,’ said Joanna. ‘I am rather tired.’
He stood and bowed. The motion was slight, yet it had the weight of a revelation for her, the gesture cutting dead her cynicism in a way that words never could; for in that moment it seemed he looked at her as though she was a lady, and not a lady’s maid.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
16th June, 1792
This morning I delivered my designs to Mrs Chichester, so for an hour or two I was all delight. I came home, and wretchedness wrapped itself around me. Dinner. Then, to a rat pit, where Mr Rowan’s bitch did well. It does me good to see a little blood let. It releases some of the anger from me.
Afterwards I played some cards. Dr Taylor was always near me, a benevolent presence, but I got into a vicious contest with young Maynard. He is a fiery, headstrong creature, with something missing in his eyes. I was so in my cups, I told him so. He laughed at me: ‘They say the same about you, Frenchman,’ he said. I played him then – on, and on – it was like taking money from a child. Then I thought that half the money he was playing with was lent by me – and I could not help but laugh and laugh, and that got him into a temper. When he set a snuffbox on the table, I played him for that too, and took it. Even in the half-light, I would have recognized it anywhere, for it was of a type that I had looked over many times. The chased gold mounting was the work of Mary’s father.
‘If that child makes any more noise,’ said Digby, I’ll kick him down the stairs.’
His neighbour looked up at him, silently, from the lower stairs. In the morning light her pale hair, only partly covered by a cap, looked like a halo to his blurry eyes. He had meant to shout more, but the image made him pause, and slowed his tongue. ‘If you please, keep him quiet,’ he said. He rubbed his eyes. Sleep was departing from him: chased away by the child’s footsteps, it fled down the stairs like a mocking ghost.
She turned away without a word, or a smile. He went back to his room, feeling foolish for having softened towards her, and slammed the door.
Holy women, holy women: in the past they had all come to him, seeking for something, and now it seemed he saw them everywhere. He had come close to marrying one once – what had her name been? He was not so cynical that he did not feel ashamed at forgetting her name. He could still conjure up her face, the look she had often given him: as though he was the source of her joy, the object of her worship, a kind of alchemist who could transform the dirt and ashes of their lives into gold. It had not lasted; over the years of their long engagement that joy had faded, and she had found it more in response to the priest’s words than in Digby’s company. One day, there had been no more words to say, and they had both realized that whatever glue had held them together had melted away.
He did not remember the ending of it. Only that she had said, with a half-smile on her face so that he didn’t know whether it was an insult or a sign of affection: you have no soul, Edward. And if he could bring her back now, back to his door, and walk her up the shadowy stairway to this ro
om, with its dirt in the corners even though he tried to keep it clean, he would say to her: Alice, or Jane, or Emma, whoever you are, you are wrong.
There was a gaping tear in him. Not in his body, but in some other part of him. He felt it. And thus he knew that, though he had never considered it before, he had an immortal soul. Before he had seen himself only as a physical entity, a collection of features and habits, ruled by the world: he could point to this or that and say, that is why. His mother had told him that he’d been born from a tumble with a nobleman. Much as he scorned her words out loud there was part of him that believed it. His features were fine: his aquiline nose and pale blue eyes seemed proof of it. He had kept the secret of his birth in his heart, occasionally uncovering it and looking at it. It had bred a sense of entitlement that had unseated him from the one real opportunity that had been given to him.
As a boy, he had been apprenticed to a silversmith, and had gone to a rich man’s house to deliver a message. He was a child of fourteen, standing dwarfed in the entrance hall as a priest is dwarfed by St Paul’s dome. He had heard of how the rich lived, of course, but he had not seen until that moment: one had to see it. Paintings. Silk. Marble. Silver. In their presence, these things had moved through him, given his hitherto disparate resentments focus and force. His bitterness made him difficult; so he had lost his place.
Over the years he had cultivated that bitterness, stoking it by dwelling on the lives of those he watched. There were times when he walked around Berkeley Square and the streets nearby even by daylight, hardly knowing why, only feeling the compulsion to know and see everything. But now he knew he was more than just the sum of his resentment and bitterness.
The Silversmith's Wife _ Sophia Tobin Page 15