Ace, King, Knave

by Maria McCann

  She thought back to the time when all this would have seemed riches beyond imagining. Her life revolved in those days around potatoes, cabbage, oats and salt fish, with the same rags on her back from April to October. The question was always: of what use is it? Nothing mattered but your back and your belly.

  Genteel economy was different. So many pieces of plate and china, so many vases, hangings, glasses, finishes, so many surfaces making up the fabric of her existence. There wasn’t a rug or a knick-knack of which she could have said, ‘Now this is of the first quality,’ or, ‘This looks well, but is a sham,’ or, ‘What need of this?’ When had Betsy-Ann Blore enjoyed the opportunity of learning such things? She’d passed from a hand-to-mouth life, in which a dish of fried beef made a holiday, to Kitty’s house where she’d been fed and ‘found in’ robes, a slave in Spitalfields silk, paying off the cost of her finery at a rate of interest fit to beggar a duchess. When Ned set her up, she’d played no part in managing that affair, either: he’d chosen the rooms, arranged for their decoration and opened tradesmen’s accounts for her. Even the little girl who served as maid-of-all-work, and who brought warm rolls each morning, had been engaged by Ned – and he had not seen fit to engage other servants. For such a small establishment, he said, there was no need. She entertained no visitors, kept no horses. For a whore in keeping, she lived in a damnably small way: high keeping it was not. Where, then, should she cut back?

  There were women, she knew, who understood the mysteries of cheap fish and small coal. They bought plain stuffs to make up at home; they could detect chalk or bones in the bread, crushed snails in the milk (a knack she’d once had herself, before her nose and mouth grew numb to London food). Kitty’s female servants were all of this kidney: shrewd, active, contriving women. They prepared ragoos for those in whom lust, once satisfied, brought forth greed; they stitched torn gowns, emptied and sweetened chamber pots and dabbed bread over spilt wine. Betsy-Ann had wondered at these grey tabbies, thinking them tame creatures who bedded with tame men, never once throwing back their heads and drinking pleasure down to the dregs. What could they know of such things, when they had no Knave of Hearts? Now, lying alone in her apartment, she saw them differently. Grey tabbies they might be, but they had thoroughly mastered the business of getting and selling, which in London was to say, of living.

  She must learn. One thing she did know: some people did without wine, drinking ale or cider instead. Would Ned consent to that? He might not, but surely could not resent her asking. Putting the question was itself a pledge of loyalty.

  She pictured Ned’s adoring gratitude. ‘My dove, my doe,’ he murmured, kissing her eyelids. ‘What would I do without my Betsy?’ She pulled open her gown to display her breasts. Ned knelt in worship. She was tall and beautiful as a statue: there was nothing left to wish for, now, her every wish was answered . . .

  She started out of half-sleep, her statue-body crumbling around her, the air cold on her shrinking shoulders. As she pulled up the bedclothes, she fell prey to a thought so terrible she couldn’t properly frame it at first, not even to herself. The thought was this: Ned mightn’t be short of blunt after all.

  A good sharp with a trusty second could take enough in one night to keep himself and a mistress for months. Not in your paltry, threadbare style, scraping along like a tailor’s widow. No, your winning gamester lives like Irish gentry, a good, strong, rollicking life: hot punch and silk gowns, diamond rings and beef-and-oyster pie. Ned had been out every night for weeks. If his luck had deserted him, he must be over his ears in debt; if not, was he crying poverty?

  Certain past talks came to mind. He’d spoken more than once of Sam Shiner’s having scraped together a handsome nest-egg. It was done, said Ned, by lodging very cheaply and dining once a day on bread, meat and beer.

  Another time, he’d said to Betsy-Ann while dining, ‘They say a fellow can be bred to anything.’ When Betsy-Ann asked what he wished to be bred to, he said, ‘Nothing in particular,’ then went on to remark that Shiner had advanced him a loan, ‘as he has plenty laid by’. There was no mention of Sam’s contenting himself with the weekly use of a woman, but Betsy-Ann remembered it: how could she not?

  She was on the watch for his next mention of Shiner’s prudence. Directly it came, Betsy-Ann said, ‘But my love, such a cramped way of living! Everything so pinched and mean!’

  ‘My sentiments exactly,’ said Ned. ‘What intrigues, however, is that he finds it quite enough. One wonders at him.’

  ‘When I lived in a wagon, Ned, I found that quite enough.’

  ‘Aye.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘It’s a deal more comfortable to rise than to sink.’

  ‘We could try for cheaper lodgings, I suppose,’ she said, studying him. ‘Should we give notice here?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Ned, shuddering.

  The bad day came. She’d been in ill temper and ill looks from the beginning: the little maid who helped her had been called home to her mother’s deathbed, and without help Betsy-Ann could not dress her hair becomingly nor lace herself tightly enough. Her sacque, a blue-and-green silk, did not show to advantage. She sat at the window, frowsy and irritable, wishing for a pretty greyhound to stroke and pet.

  It was three in the afternoon, long after his usual time, when she heard two men on the stairs. Ned came up slowly, followed by Sam Shiner. Both men had a greasy, wilted appearance suggesting that play had been followed by a visit to a boozing-ken and that Shiner had indulged, for once, in more than beer.

  ‘Curse me for a bear,’ said Ned, crossing to Betsy-Ann, his arms open for an embrace. ‘A damnable, cross-grained bear. Betsy, I don’t deserve you – by Christ I don’t ―’

  He staggered as he approached and instead of embracing, half leaned on her. He had a sharp hogo on him, like gin drunk from a metal cup: liquor taken many hours previously, coming out in his sweat. It was an unlucky smell for a gamester.

  She wondered if his apology meant she would have her greyhound after all. At Ned’s request she fetched drink for all three of them – beer for Shiner, lightning for herself and Ned. There was some gingerbread left over from the previous day, so she arranged it on a dish and brought that, too. Shiner grinned at the sight of the gingerbread. She wondered if he ever permitted himself such luxuries.

  ‘Your hair’s ruffled, Betsy,’ said Ned. ‘You’re not in looks today.’

  She started, stung. ‘I slept badly.’

  He began rearranging her curls. ‘You were unhappy, child, I’ll be bound. When she’s happy, there’s not a woman to touch her. I’m a brute to her, a cursed brute,’ he said in a strained, maudlin voice, like a man speaking of a dead wife. Betsy-Ann noticed that he turned away from her as he spoke, addressing himself to Shiner. ‘She wanted a little dog and I wouldn’t let her have one.’

  She had never before heard him whine in his cups. Some queer game was certainly afoot.

  ‘Mrs Betsy is an example to the Sex,’ said Shiner, ‘and deserves any number of dogs.’

  Though he spoke as if to Ned, he was watching Betsy-Ann. She wondered what he meant by talking such gammon to a whore in keeping. Example to the Sex, indeed.

  Ned said, still in that strained voice, ‘Damn you, Sir, I know it. Some napkins, if you please, my love.’

  She brought napkins and the men wiped their fingers. Sam produced a pack of cards.

  ‘And now, my sweet, be so kind as to leave us.’

  She froze. ‘You don’t wish me to play?’

  ‘Not now. If you would be so good, Betsy.’

  He still wouldn’t look at her. Sam Shiner, on the other hand, was peering up from the table with hot little blue eyes. She turned her back on the pair of them and went into her chamber. At Kitty’s, they were encouraged to refer to the chambers as boudoirs; Jeanne DuPont said it meant a place for sulking in. Betsy-Ann lay down on the bed, unsure whether to sulk or rage or weep. After a while, feeling the cold, she covered herself over with the quilt.

  ‘Betsy.’
r />   She and Ned were travelling across country in Mam’s wagon, now hung about with velvet curtains.

  ‘Betsy.’ The wagon stopped jolting as its familiar shape settled down into that of her bed in Covent Garden. It was daylight, and Ned was bending over her. Her legs were difficult to move and she realised that under the quilt she was still wearing her sacque. Ned was holding out a cup. Chocolate.

  Betsy-Ann frowned. ‘Couldn’t the girl bring it? Where is she?’ Ned shrugged and she remembered the maid was at home, waiting for her mother to die.

  She realised it was not tomorrow morning, as she had at first thought, but evening of the same day: all she had slept away was part of the afternoon. The room seemed to change as she understood this. It shrank and grew stale before her eyes.

  ‘Did you prepare it?’ she asked, still not taking the cup. She’d never known him so much as boil a pot of water; he scorned any man who meddled in women’s business.

  ‘Sam.’

  ‘He makes free with the place.’ She again caught that metallic stink on Ned’s breath. There was something menacing in the thought of Sam searching along her shelves, spying out her chocolate and sugar.

  Ned said, ‘I want you to come and talk with him.’

  ‘You sure about that? You wouldn’t rather I stood outside on the stairs?’

  He laid down the cup without further speech and went out of the room.

  Betsy-Ann sat up in bed, her heart stammering. Evening sunlight threw apricot-coloured squares onto the wall opposite the window: he would soon be setting off for the tables again. What a wretched day was this! She perceived a wisp of steam trailing upwards from the rim of the cup: despite the sunlight, the room remained cold.

  She rose, tidied her hair and smoothed down, as well as she could, the rumpled sacque. The men, when she returned to them, were still seated at the table. Ned stared down at the cards lying there; Shiner glanced up and smiled.

  ‘Well, mort, I trust the chocolate was to your liking.’

  ‘I didn’t care for it.’

  Ned said, ‘Betsy, don’t,’ and something in his voice told Betsy-Ann that, since she was last in the room, Shiner was become king of his company.

  She thought, Ned owes him.

  Shiner was watching her. He said, ‘No? I’ve been told I’ve a knack with chocolate.’

  ‘Much obliged, I’m sure,’ said Betsy-Ann, her hands now icy. Too late, she wished she still had the cup with her, if only to warm her fingers. ‘Have you something to say to me, Mr Shiner?’

  ‘Hartry speaks for both of us.’

  ‘Sit down, Betsy.’ Her lover looked like a dying man, his face waxen and his brow all of a sheen. Betsy-Ann thought he would be cold to the touch. She pulled the sacque straight, as well as she could, and sat.

  ‘We’ve been talking, Sam and I,’ Ned tilted his head towards Shiner in a ghastly attempt at lightness, ‘about this and that ―’

  ‘In a gentlemanly way, you know,’ Shiner put in.

  ‘About the troubles that might – on you, I mean. Descend on you. As a result of my affairs being so – irregular.’

  There was a pause. Ned’s breathing came ragged, as if he had run a race.

  ‘I’m not liable for your debts,’ said Betsy-Ann, a tremor starting up in her hands so that she had to squeeze them between her knees to conceal it.

  ‘The rent’s in my name,’ Ned replied. ‘The coal, the butcher, the wine.’

  Betsy-Ann thought, He’s forgotten the plate.

  ‘There’s no more credit to be had, Betsy. Ma and me – word’s got round.’

  She said, ‘I was thinking about that, Ned. What if I ―’

  He burst out, ‘No, child!’ and then, more softly, ‘Don’t you see? There isn’t time for anything of the sort. And here’s my good friend Sam Shiner – my right hand, Betsy. He’s agreed to help us out.’

  Agreed. They’d settled it, whatever it was, without so much as a word to her and by God it must’ve been a filthy bargain. No point sending her out of the room, else.

  He’d have to say it to her face, then. Say it himself, all of it; she wouldn’t carry him an inch. She smiled like a daisy and said, ‘A friend in need, eh? So how is Mr Shiner to help?’

  If they hadn’t been sharps they would have looked at one another. The cold had spread from Betsy-Ann’s hands all over her body, except for her face which was burning. She pictured it a mottled red, peering over the crumpled sacque. What an enticing prospect for Harris’s.

  ‘Sam and I had a wager,’ Ned said. ‘Best of five games.’

  She waited.

  ‘Sam’s stake was that if I won, he’d settle everything in my name.’

  ‘Not in mine?’ Betsy-Ann asked.

  ‘Yours too. You see the use of it, Betsy? For both of us.’

  He’d lost, then. It was hard to speak or even nod, so painfully did she strain towards him. Both men were now staring at her, Ned as if imploring, Shiner with a mask-like absence of expression.

  At last Betsy-Ann said, ‘So that was his stake. And yours . . . ?’

  Ned said, ‘The best thing I had in the world, Betsy. The one I loved most.’

  Betsy-Ann’s mouth opened and let out a wail. She could not, for the world, have held that sound in; she felt as if it were crying her, and not the other way round.

  ‘There, there – there, there.’ Shiner murmured as he might to a kinchin but Betsy-Ann barely heard him. She held out her hands to Ned, as if by taking them he could haul her up from the pit of a nightmare. Ned observed the outstretched hands but made no move to touch them, and Betsy-Ann’s arms fell back to her sides.

  ‘He’d nothing else so precious, you see,’ said Shiner mournfully, as if he, and not Ned, had lost.

  Her tongue was dry. She scraped it round her mouth until the spit came. ‘I’m not some damn fawney you can pass from one finger to another.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Shiner said.

  ‘Dear girl, nobody said you were,’ Ned protested. ‘Nobody would ever think it ―’ She waited, watching him fidget. He cleared his throat. ‘Will you hear the conditions?’

  At that she rose, walked to him and caught him a good slap across the cheek. Ned stiffened but remained motionless, the mark of her fingers darkening on his skin.

  Betsy-Ann said, ‘No conditions, no nothing.’

  ‘You shall have your dog,’ put in Shiner.

  She gave an incredulous shriek of laughter. ‘I’m not wapping you for the price of a greyhound!’

  Ned looked from one to the other. ‘Go out, Sam.’ Shiner hesitated, frowning. ‘Give us some time alone.’

  Betsy-Ann ran to the door to make sure Shiner had descended the stairs. She stayed there, peering over the banister, until Ned pulled her back into the room. Now that Shiner was gone, he attempted to embrace her. Pushing him away, Betsy-Ann saw him open his eyes wider, as if to snare her in his crackling black gaze. She observed with pleasure the handprint on his cheek, and was conscious of something hard pressing against her stays, a steely point about to burst out of her skin. It travelled up her chest and throat into her face, into her own eyes, which she fancied must be glittering as much as his. In a voice like the sharpening of a blade she said, ‘I wonder what you can find to say for yourself.’

  ‘I thought I’d win.’

  Betsy-Ann gathered the last drops of moisture left in her mouth and spat in his face.

  Ned wiped away the spittle with his sleeve. ‘He’ll take you under his protection. You’re made.’

  ‘And you, I bet.’

  ‘Me? There’s nothing for me, child. Your debts only.’

  ‘Sam Shiner’s ―’

  ‘A coming man, Betsy, a coming man! And he worships you, you couldn’t wish for more – and in honour, in honour ―’

  ‘You – slaver!’ She lunged at him but Ned caught hold of her arms. ‘I’ve heard it all, now,’ she moaned. ‘You might as well sell me in the street. How can you, Ned?’

  ‘Don’t you see?
I staked so that if I won, we’d both be free, and if not, you’d be safe. No matter how it fell out, you’d be safe.’

  Safe, away from him? She bowed her head in despair, seeing now how it had been: their vows of love, never set down on paper but made a hundred times over in words, in smiles, in caresses, in cries and moans – they were all on one side.

  ‘He’s no duddering rake, Betsy, he’ll do you no harm. You’ll see, my sweet,’ he raised her chin with his finger, ‘it’s not so very bad. And when you’ve shaken down together, I shall call on you.’

  He did not shrink from her gaze. There was even a faint glimmer in his eye, a hint that Sam Shiner couldn’t keep watch on her seven days a week. There might be times, said that glimmer, when she would be glad of company.

  Betsy-Ann said, ‘If you come near me again, I’ll cut off your prick.’

  This seemed to amuse Ned. ‘You, my doe, maim a pretty fellow? It’s not in you to hurt a man.’

  ‘Is that what you are?’

  After some whispering on the stairs between him and Ned, Shiner sidled back into the room. He promised to call for Betsy-Ann the following day but she refused to look at him, preferring to stare out over the piazza. Shiner addressed himself to the back of her head: he was vastly sorry she chose to take it in that way, he could assure her there was nothing to fear, he was confident that a connection begun in such an unusual fashion could prove a happy one. Betsy-Ann only continued to stare, twisting her hands together.

  ‘So. I’ll call here tomorrow, at two,’ Shiner said. ‘And you, Ned, shall I meet you at ―’

  ‘Not now,’ Ned snapped.

  Shiner hemmed, crossed to the door and went out. Hearing his footsteps, light and rapid, die away on the stairs, Betsy-Ann at last turned away from the window. ‘I’m surprised you don’t go with him,’ she said, ‘you being such very good friends. Watching over the goods, are you, so you can deliver them in person?’