The Silversmith's Wife _ Sophia Tobin

by Tobin, Sophia

  There were no customers about, so Mary wrapped a cloak around her and, not heeding Grisa’s silent disapproval, went out on to the street. She stood for a moment looking up and down, when she saw Mr Digby advancing towards her. The early morning light made his red hair appear even brighter, and his blue eyes fixed on her with a mournful expression.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘It looks as though ’twill be a fine day.’

  ‘Let us hope so,’ she said. ‘Forgive me, but sir, I have meant to thank you for some time. You helped me one day, when they were taking the table on to Bond Street from Dr Taylor’s house. And then I saw you at my husband’s funeral. Are you watching over me, Mr Digby?’

  She smiled, and he smiled in return, though he seemed unaccustomed to it, wearing the expression with some awkwardness.

  ‘I am meant to watch,’ he said. ‘It is what I am for. If I have the reward of your good opinion, then there is no need for thanks.’

  Mary opened her mouth to express acquiescence, but something told her that Digby did not wish for any more polite exchanges. He seemed comfortable in the silence between them, making no move to go. His hands clasped behind his back, he looked up at the sky as though pleased to feel the sun on his face.

  ‘When I see the street all quiet in the morning light,’ he said, ‘it looks new to me. I could imagine myself a boy again, as I was when I first saw it. There is an art to looking so, do you not think?’

  ‘It is art,’ said Mary. ‘It is money, too. This street keeps alive always. I used to think it the scenery where my life is lived, but now I think that Bond Street has its own life, which will continue when we are gone. But forgive me, you must think me a madwoman, venturing out without a hat on my head, talking away.’

  ‘It is a pleasure to hear you speak,’ he said.

  ‘But such dark thoughts,’ she said, ‘I should keep to myself.’

  ‘You do not seem, to me, to be a lady capable of dark thoughts,’ he said.

  ‘I am capable of it,’ she said. ‘I am frightened what I am capable of.’

  ‘Yet if you will excuse me,’ he said, ‘I can’t believe a bad thing would cross your mind, when I see you like this, with the light on your face.’

  ‘There was a time when that was true,’ she said. ‘When I was young, and all my family was around me. As I remember it, I was surrounded by love, even amidst all the cares of life.’

  ‘And what surrounds you now?’ Digby said. He looked absorbed; his words were not formulated with intent, but spoken naturally.

  She turned and looked at him. ‘Nothing,’ she said.

  He knew that it would take some time for Mallory to come to the door, but he could not leave it. She struck him as the type of woman who did not like unexpected callers, especially if they were repeat offenders. Sure enough when she opened the door she stood motionless for a moment, looking at him with suspicion.

  ‘How can I help you, Mr Digby?’ she said.

  ‘May I come in, Mrs Dunning?’ he said.

  She opened the door wider. ‘Paying calls in the day now as well as the night, are you?’ she said. ‘We have none of the apple tart left, I’m afraid. It is buttered cabbage or nothing.’

  The hallway smelt musty and closed-up to Digby. Mallory showed him into the parlour, and in the daylight it looked even more threadbare than he remembered it. She waved him into a seat, and when a child came hurtling through the door she pushed her, rather less than gently, back in the direction of the hall and kitchen where, he presumed, there would be someone else to look after her.

  ‘I wanted to tell you myself,’ he said, ‘that a couple of us went to your shop and it was exactly as you say, nothing to worry about at all. There was a similar coffee pot, but it had been there some time, and the maid was mistaken.’

  ‘I know you’ve been there, I get my report as I said,’ she replied. ‘But it’s good of you to come and tell me that. It makes me sick to think that someone would slander me in that way, when they know it would mean the noose for such a crime.’ She moved as though she might stand up, and see him out.

  ‘And there was one more thing,’ he said. ‘The night Pierre Renard died, did you speak to him?’

  She had backbone, he had to give her that; she sat completely still. There were no hysterics or fainting away, only her dark eyes, fixed on his face. ‘Now who would have told you that?’ she said.

  ‘I’ve heard it from the lips of more than one person,’ Digby lied. ‘The thing is, Mrs Dunning, I don’t feel like speaking with anyone about it. And I won’t, if you tell me what you had to say to him.’

  ‘Is there some other payment that you want?’ she said. He saw the suspicion in her eyes. ‘We may as well skip to that, if there is. I know what people think of me,’ she said. ‘Living alone as I do, with just the children.’

  ‘I have just seen your sister, Mrs Renard,’ he said. ‘I would never think of either of you with anything less than respect.’

  ‘My sister lives in a different world to me, as well you know. Well, I do not have the kind of life that she has, but she has paid dearly for it. What I am trying to say is, I don’t like men coming here and demanding things of me.’ Her voice was louder, resonating with firmness, almost aggression.

  ‘Now, now,’ said Digby. ‘I know what you’re driving at and I’m not demanding anything. I just want to know what you had to say to him. I’m sure a charming creature such as yourself wouldn’t have been involved in anything untoward. Though I am doubly sure there are men who would do anything for you, if you asked them. Men like Jesse Chamac, for example.’

  Just beyond the window a disagreement had erupted and a man was shouting, but Mallory neither looked out nor flinched. She sat as though listening for her children, a distant background noise of small voices. Eventually, satisfied, she leaned forwards towards Digby.

  ‘I can fight my own battles,’ she said, in an undertone. ‘If you must know, I did speak to Renard that evening. I went to ask him to give my son an apprenticeship. You see how I live, and I was just about done with having nothing from him but insults. It was understood by my parents that through marriage, Renard would be a help to us all; that my eldest boy, at least, could count on an apprenticeship from him. My parents may be in heaven now but I meant that man to honour the promise he made them. I went to call at Bond Street, but I met him before I got to his house, at the corner of Old Bond Street and Piccadilly. He had been drinking, and was in a hurry to get somewhere. But I wouldn’t let him move on until I had an answer from him. It was my right.’ Her eyes were bright with anger.

  ‘What did he say to you?’ said Digby.

  Mallory gave a sharp exhalation; the anger seemed to move through her posture, her breath. ‘That we were not his family,’ she said. ‘That he had suffered us long enough. That his home would not be a sanctuary for . . .’ She took a breath. ‘Idiot children.’ It was then that her hard expression crumbled, and she put her hands to her face. After a minute’s curiosity Digby realized that she was not weeping, but simply hiding herself for a moment so that she could regain her composure.

  ‘He was referring to my brother, Eli,’ she said, folding her hands in her lap again. ‘He was infirm, and Pierre had him sent away. What kind of man, I ask you, having done that, would say such a thing? Only a wretch, who has no knowledge of what love is. Renard could speak of kinship and affection but it was an aping of something he had learned; the sound of it, and nothing more. He took Mary from us, and drained the life from her as surely as if he had opened her veins. And yet he lived, and laughed, as though the harm he did to others was a tonic to him. That night, I gave him the reply I had always longed to give: I said that my only prayer was that Mary would forgive us for chaining her to him. That I would curse him every day of his life.’

  ‘How did he take that?’ said Digby.

  ‘I am sure it angered him. But he laughed, for he knew how to wound me, and like a malicious child he could not help but press on the point. He said
that Eli should have been drowned at birth; that he would have done it, had he been there. That he would have,’ she paused, ‘managed things properly.’

  She looked up at Digby, and the anger pouring from her eyes made him sit back a little. ‘I struck him,’ she said. ‘He lit such a fury in me. I could not help it; I did not think; I was half-blind with anger. I only struck out. But I did not harm him, I swear it. He cursed me, and raised his hand to me, but he did not hit me. He only set off wherever he was going, and at quite a pace. I’m glad I struck him, I tell you that. But I was not responsible for his death.’

  Another small girl appeared in the doorway, her face framed by tangled pale curls, and Digby smiled at her wordless solemnity. ‘Go back to the kitchen,’ said Mallory ‘I’ll be there directly.’ She rose, and closed the door.

  ‘Thank you for speaking freely,’ said Digby. ‘I keep my word, I will not speak to anyone of what you said.’

  ‘I thank you for it,’ said Mallory, her face turned to the door. ‘I do not wish to hear that man’s name again, not if I live until I’m a hundred.’

  ‘I’ll wish you a good day, Mrs Dunning,’ said Digby.

  As he turned out of Castle Street and set off for home, Digby no longer noticed the bright morning. He was deeply troubled. Maynard was bound to come after him soon, sniffing for more information, and he was damned if he knew what he was going to say. He had hoped for some titbits to feed the man, something to keep him satisfied. But he did not wish to drag Mallory and Mary into it all. He knew how precious the memory of love was; and if one of them had killed for it, his instinct was to protect them.

  After the door had closed behind Digby, Mallory stood for a moment, leaning against the door in the suffocating darkness of the hallway. She did not know if she could move; if, suddenly, her legs might give way. I must keep on breathing, she thought, and tried to fix herself on the rhythm of it: in, out, in, out. If I keep on breathing, if I wait through the moments, things will become calm again. I can carry on with my life.

  ‘Mama?’

  She moved her head slowly, glanced over her shoulder at her daughter, at the child’s eyes – her own – and her tangled curls.

  ‘Get your sister to brush your hair,’ she said, her voice catching on the first word. The girl looked at her with her mother’s sagacity, knowing that something was wrong.

  It was not the first time Mallory had been spurred on by her children. She believed that she owed them nothing, not even if she thought about it with a quiet mind; but they were the reason she opened her eyes, some days. She pitched herself forwards. ‘Come on,’ she said, her fingers grazing the child’s hair. Reassured, the little girl followed her, down the hall and into the noisy kitchen.

  ‘Lis, brush your sister’s hair,’ said Mallory, and then she pushed through the smell of vegetables, the noise of her children’s voices, walking through the darkness until she was out in the open air, if you could call the small courtyard that. She looked up, at the fragment of blue sky that was visible, the clouds moving quickly, twining and untwining themselves, until everything seemed to be moving too fast.

  Then she knelt, and vomited.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  1st September, 1792

  I have, this day, written a codicil to my will, honouring the connection I have with Sarah, through Benjamin. We must hold on to the blessed connections we have in life, even if they are over in the form we wished them to take.

  Joanna had a half-day off. Always cherished, this week it was vital, for she felt the walls of the house closing in on her. She had written to the master, telling him what she knew of Harriet’s love for Renard, and the letter lay folded in her locking box, haunting her.

  It was her custom always to dream some tale of what she would do: she would walk further than before and see places she had not imagined. Maybe she would even reach green fields, where the air was not grey with smoke and people did not walk too close to you. They were always too close. Once she and Stephen had dreamed of opening a tavern far from London, and sometimes she thought if she walked far enough she would find the life she had been supposed to live, a cheerful tavern and him with their daughter, waiting for her.

  As she checked her appearance in the fragment of looking glass from her locking box, she thought: it is gone. That elusive quality that made men look at you as you passed them in the street. There is not even the suggestion of it left; it stole away in the night.

  Once outside, she followed her usual path, her feet carrying her by habit. She went to St James’s Park, where the river was near freezing over. One or two people had lit fires on the banks, and she could smell chestnuts being roasted. She bought a handful, and ate them greedily, feeling the sweet, soft richness of each burst in her mouth. The young boy that had sold them to her watched her with impassive eyes. He is like me, she thought, always watching. ‘If the Thames freezes solid,’ she said to him, ‘there will be a Frost Fair. They will roast an ox on the ice, just as they did in seventy-six.’

  ‘I wasn’t born then, missus,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose you were.’

  She walked along beside the water, and watched a swan trapped by a thin tissue of encroaching ice. It swam forwards and nudged the edge with its body, as though it could swim a path through it. She stayed a moment to watch, and felt some of the tension in her muscles release.

  In 1788 she had walked alone on the frozen Thames. Stephen was dead, but she had conjured him so strongly in her mind it was as if he was beside her. For that afternoon she had taken his name, and she still had the ticket, set in one of the presses that sold souvenirs: printed for Mrs Joanna Best on the ice, 1788. She had walked past the crowds and games, not wanting the day to end, the snow making the city beautiful, and before her, a river of light. Joanna had been unafraid of the light then, or of whether men looked at her as she passed. It had felt as though she and the spectral Stephen could walk along the ice forever, her hand encompassed by his. She would find a place along the river where the ice was broken, and slip into its blue darkness, and there would be no more pain.

  But she had stopped. Something had beckoned her back from death in the freezing river, some niggling invitation within her to live.

  Now, she shook off all thoughts of the past and retraced her steps. When she reached home the other servants were about to eat their dinner, but Joanna felt no need for food. Light-headed, she was filled with a humming excitement: she didn’t know if it was terror or delight, but it quenched everything else, leaving no room for thinking about normal concerns, and dissolving her customary hunger. The taste of the chestnuts was still in her mouth.

  A small evening fire, thanks to Mr Chichester’s orders, was built in the grate in her room. She took out the letter she had written to the master from her locking box, tore it, and surrendered the fragments to the flames, watching until they had burnt into ashes before she went back downstairs.

  The light was nearly gone, and the staircase hall was still and empty. In the cold air, and the half-light of sunset, Joanna felt the vibration of a kind of tension that was echoed in her own state. She suddenly felt very tired, the kind of deathly tiredness a street walker might feel at the end of a night that was dangerous to be surrendered to. She walked down the stairs. The space was hers alone: the black and white chequered tiles, the churchlike silence, the complex gilt ornament of the walls and ceiling which she did not understand. She wondered if it could be read, like some secret language.

  She lay down on the floor. In the centre of the staircase hall, stretching out on the black and white tiled surface. The floor was cold and hard the length of her body, and her hair in its plain style pressed into the back of her head, barely cushioning her skull. She felt a lightening of her spirit; an unprecedented lack of fear. She didn’t care if she was found. She stared up at the coffered dome of the ceiling, so far away in the failing light, decorated with squares of gilded plasterwork. The thought of Mr Chichester was her ta
lisman: for wasn’t she protected from on high by him, like one of the gods that flourished on the ceiling of the Salon? She had suffered much, and now she would be rewarded. Her uncertainty dissolved; she would survive, and her future would unfold in wonderful ways. Mr Chichester seemed like Jupiter himself: giver of favours and blessings, and she was bathed in his golden light.

  She felt she could have lain there forever, until the dome crumbled and the house was open to the sky, and vines twined their way around the lyre-shaped ironwork on the balustrade, green around black, twines around twines. Green luscious fronds grew up before her eyes, until she could not be sure if she was dreaming or awake.

  Then she heard voices coming from the depths of the house. She sat up, got to her feet, and brushed her skirt off. With irritation she realized she had been listening, with heightened senses, all the time.

  Digby was rather enjoying his evening in a new tavern; its liveliness was easing his disquiet. The Running Footman was so full that he was forced to stand. When he was also asked to pay for his drink he felt aggrieved, but decided that nothing would put him off his intended purpose. The place was full of servants, all bright-eyed and vigorous, laughing and gossiping as though they’d never done a day’s work in their lives. Well, thought Digby, they are London servants. Everyone knew that London servants were sly and lazy and wanted to do less work for more money. And who could blame them. Still, their careless attitude to work and loyalty would be certain to help him.

  Digby didn’t care when people stared at him. He’d had little sleep, and Watkin had told him he looked hollow-eyed. His cough didn’t seem so bad even though he had spent too long in the cold today, walking around the streets as though they offered the solution to his conundrum. The warmth of the tavern was welcome and long overdue.

  He looked around hopefully, watchfully, standing tall, his hat off. He’d put the word out. He guessed it wouldn’t take long. He saw people glance in his direction, sometimes still talking, sometimes just looking. After a few minutes a man approached him. He was a tall young man with broad shoulders, a wide face and a too-wide smile. Digby instantly mistrusted him.