Ace, King, Knave

by Maria McCann

  Laxey’s isn’t too busy at this time of day. She’s able to bring away a big bottle with the proper French label on: it’ll set Harry up, and finish Sam, most likely, but then Sam’s finished already. Wine, the cheapest sort. It won’t matter when it’s mixed.

  After that it’s a long walk for the lemons. The woman watches to see she doesn’t lift anything and when Betsy-Ann hands her a coin she bites on it.

  ‘Charming manners you have,’ says Betsy-Ann. ‘I daresay you was in one of those young ladies’ academies.’

  The woman glares but there’s nothing wrong with Betsy-Ann’s money.

  Harry will be stamping with impatience. Her breath huffs as she runs back to the ken, taking two stairs at a time. The men are seated at the table, glasses out; the talk, it seems, is no longer of punch, but of straight drinking.

  ‘Here,’ she cries gaily, banging down the nantz between them. The lemons, escaping their paper, trundle along the table-top. Harry snatches the bottle, for all the world as if he was standing treat, and reads the label before pouring out for himself and Sam – both glasses brim-full, Betsy-Ann notices. Sam’s gone all cringey, folding in on himself like a dog that fears a kick.

  He’s going to drink the nantz.

  ‘Come on, Sis.’ Harry waves his hand, inviting her to sit down. ‘Drop of French?’

  ‘Not for me, Brother. Lightning for me.’

  ‘Then take a flash directly, because me and Shiner are talking business.’

  ‘You want me out again?’ She can’t keep the anger out of her voice. ‘In this weather?’

  ‘Didn’t bother you earlier,’ comes Harry’s voice, soft and nasty.

  Betsy-Ann clenches her fists behind her back, where he can’t see them. ‘Give me five minutes.’ She goes to the Eye and rummages in there for the lightning, slipping a couple of small bottles into her bosom and snatching up a thick woollen shawl.

  ‘I’ll be with Liz.’

  Harry shrugs as if to say she may go to the Deuce, for him.

  Liz is a long time answering her knock. When the door judders open, Betsy-Ann is shocked: the poor woman looks like Death’s Wife, so shrivelled and bleary that her neighbour forgets, at first, what she came to say. Liz, meanwhile, hangs in the doorway, spent.

  Once inside, Betsy-Ann begins to understand. Just to stand in the room is like being pressed between blocks of ice.

  ‘When did you last have a fire?’

  ‘Not for weeks.’ Liz holds out purple hands. ‘Can’t hardly break a bit of bread, look.’

  ‘Don’t say that. I’ve a message for you to put down and take.’

  ‘Who for?’

  ‘The master of the house. Or there’s a servant, a blackbird.’

  ‘You can’t trust them.’

  ‘This one you can.’ Bracing herself, Betsy-Ann pulls off the shawl and drapes it over Liz’s bony shoulders. The rush of chill air to her own neck and shoulders makes her wince. ‘Now,’ she says, producing the lightning. ‘Do as I ask and bring me luck, and you’ll have this, and a cloak, and coal. Like roast beef you’ll be, warm all the way through.’

  Betsy-Ann smiles encouragement. She reaches out, takes the older woman’s fingers and begins to chafe them.

  36

  ‘You may be sure he knows,’ Ned mutters. ‘Why else would he hit on Haddock’s?’

  ‘He knows something, not everything. But he’s suspicious, all right, and he won’t drink, and now I’m hearing fifty times a day how he can’t stick his work. He talks of piking off.’ She glances at Ned to see how he’ll take this: with fear, because he might lose her? With joy, seeing as Sam might flee and leave her behind?

  What she gets is temper.

  ‘Well, let him pike if he wants to! If he can’t stick resurrection he could at least stick to nantz.’

  ‘It’s very hard on me, Ned,’ she says as piteously as she can. ‘Being watched all the time, with him looking out for proof ―’

  ‘Proof? My dear Prodigy, in such cases a man generally convicts upon suspicion.’

  Convicts and executes too; even with nine fingers, Sam’s equal to that job. She wouldn’t be afraid, however, if Ned would only show more spark. If he stood up and declared, I’ll be your protector, Betsy! Come what may, I’ll defend you! – what wouldn’t she venture? Instead of which he sits there looking sulky and vexed.

  To be defended as a darling pleasure, even that would be something. She lays her head upon his shoulder, hoping to be gathered to him, but his arm remains motionless against her side.

  ‘We only went there the once,’ he says, signalling for another pot of capuchin, after which he sits staring into space. Betsy-Ann shifts awkwardly. This morning she enlisted Liz to lace her extra tight and her stays are making themselves felt. All this to set off her new gown, yet he’s hardly given it a glance.

  ‘You said Haddock’s could keep a secret.’

  ‘And I maintain it. Consider what would become of the place, otherwise.’ He pauses as the coffee is set down in front of him, continuing with growing conviction, ‘Someone outside spied on us.’

  ‘Us? We went in separate, came out separate.’

  ‘Precisely.’ He’s waiting for her to twig. She stares at him, nonplussed; then realisation comes. ‘Someone that knew us – knew us before.’

  ‘Very good, Miss Blore. Pray proceed.’

  ‘How do you mean, proceed? It wasn’t Sammy. He was at home, I saw him.’

  He pushes a cup towards her and this time he meets her eyes. ‘Certainly not Sam Shiner. Our man is a Mr Blore.’

  ‘Harry!’

  ‘He, or someone very like him, was in the street when I came out.’

  ‘And you kept mum?’ Betsy-Ann stares in astonishment. ‘You saw him spying and you never told ―’

  ‘What I saw was a man near a bagnio door. What should I think? You know the trade, child. Men hang about such places like flies, drawn by the scent of flesh.’ He plainly expects her to smile at this witticism but instead the coffee house shifts and blurs. She turns away from him, wiping her eyes on her sleeve.

  ‘I wasn’t even sure of my man,’ Ned says to the back of her head. ‘He moved off directly I saw him. But now Shiner’s acting queer – it has to be.’

  She nods. ‘Has to.’

  ‘Still, who’d have thought Harry would peach on his own? And to Shiner, of all people!’

  Betsy-Ann gives her eyes a final wipe and turns to study him. Is it possible he’s forgotten? She told him long ago how Harry barred the door and sent his men to fetch away Mam. When Ned first heard the story, he called Harry a foul name and pressed Betsy-Ann to his heart as if he bled for her.

  Yet he’s forgotten. She feels it in the casual way he now drapes his arm about her shoulders. ‘Ah, Betsy!’ he says, as if disappointed in her, ‘How was it you didn’t notice? Your own brother.’

  Betsy-Ann breathes fast and thinks of potatoes, a trick for staving off tears discovered in childhood and strengthened by long practice. Had Ned embraced her ten minutes ago, she might now give him some lover’s prattle: I was too happy, something of that kind. As it is, she replies, ‘Suppose I noticed, what could I say?’

  He takes her hand, squeezes it and says, ‘Afraid to speak to him, eh?’ as if she were a kinchin with a fear of dark cellars.

  ‘I’ve seen him frighten you,’ she retorts.

  ‘I think not.’ He grins. ‘Though I admit he’s not to my taste. Too much of the driven ox about him.’

  ‘Say what you like, I notice you keep away. When you cut me the other day ―’

  ‘Cut?’

  How black and glassy his eyes can go, and how his fingers have tightened on hers. Betsy-Ann braces herself. ‘Outside your house. You saw me and you went into the alley. Ned – you’re hurting me ―’

  His grip relaxes. ‘Darling girl, when? As if I would cut you!’

  ‘That’s my eye, Ned! You saw me and toddled. Harry was behind me, I know that now, but I never knew it then.’

/>   He stares at her. ‘Have I accused you? Would I give you the rendezvous, if I thought you were in league with – anybody?’

  Of course not. She bows her head. ‘No. I never said so. But there’s something you’ve not told me. About you and Harry.’

  He scowls and flings her hand away, striking her knuckles against the table. ‘Sometimes, Prodigy, there’s not a hair between you and my wife.’

  ‘I only want to help.’

  ‘Sophia’s precise words, as I recall.’

  Betsy-Ann nurses her fingers. Ned sighs, glances towards the door and asks, ‘Is Shiner out of blunt?’

  ‘He soon will be.’

  ‘He should take up a new calling. A man of his talents . . .’ He smiles to himself. ‘I see him as a wigmaker. What do you think? Would it not suit him admirably?’

  ‘He can’t leave the crew. Harry came ―’

  Ned whistles. ‘Did he, by God!’

  ‘Don’t you understand me, Ned? Sammy’s not free to leave.’

  ‘So your brother came to remind him of his obligations. Excellent Harry! The moral polestar of this erring Age! If any will not work, neither shall he eat.’

  She looks at him, blank.

  ‘St Paul,’ Ned adds. ‘And for once I’m of his opinion – cadavers won’t steal themselves. Ergo, Mr Shiner must go back on the bottle. As I’m sure Mr Blore persuaded him.’

  ‘He wasn’t short of persuasion.’ Indeed, what with the nantz, beer and wine they’d had a pretty batch of it. ‘They sent me out of the way. That’s how I got my note written, see.’

  He’s not interested in how she got her note written. ‘A man can talk as he likes about leaving off drink, one cup generally settles him.’

  ‘Not Sam. Guess what he did when Harry was gone.’

  ‘Threw sweet herbs on the fire?’

  ‘Put a feather down his throat and was sick as a monkey. Got himself sober.’

  Ned makes a disgusted face.

  ‘Yes, I grant you,’ replies Betsy-Ann, ‘but determined.’

  ‘So where is he now?’

  ‘Seeing a lodging in St Giles. O, Ned, I’m weary of it, so bloody weary.’

  ‘Ah, my sweet, my honey,’ says Ned, embracing her. She leans into his shoulder, smelling coffee on his breath and the bitter amber scent of his skin. But only his right arm squeezes her, pressing her against the buttons of his coat. The left is occupied with the coffee pot, lifting it and setting it down.

  How small, the word that could change everything. Ned must know that word. She can almost see it on his lips, poised like a bird – a tiny, daring wren – about to fly the nest.

  ‘I should be wretched in St Giles,’ she whispers.

  Ned studies the inmates of the coffee house as if to commit them to memory. A silence grows. Betsy-Ann sees herself and Ned as they must appear to others: a handsome man, looking about him as if bored, and a shabby, spoony female glued to his side. Her cheeks growing hot, she pulls away. Still he does not speak. Betsy-Ann takes up the coffee pot and empties it into her own cup.

  ‘My affairs are so – so irregular,’ he says at last. ‘I should be a brute to make any poor bitch dependent upon them.’

  ‘Like your autem mort?’ It is out before Betsy-Ann can stop herself.

  ‘A different case entirely.’ Ned stares at her, unsmiling. ‘It seems to me, Madam, that you spend a deal of time, lately, considering how best to worm your way round Ned, how to make Ned say this or that. Let us understand each other for once.’

  ‘For once?’ She gives him the stare right back, though doing so produces a near-unendurable sensation, like boiling water bubbling up inside her body.

  ‘You don’t consider my position. Being caught by your bull-calf of a brother – that’s bad luck for you. Well, it’s deuced bad luck for me. Suppose Shiner asks him, by way of a favour, to break my hands?’

  She can find no reply.

  ‘No,’ he says, ‘I prefer to keep in one piece. If that makes me a coward, so be it.’

  ‘I can never think you a coward, Ned,’ says Betsy-Ann.

  His voice softens. ‘I’m not too proud to return the compliment. If a woman may be judged by strength of character then you, Miss Blore, are the finest woman I’ve known. You meet a man, as it were, face to face – or did so until recently.’

  At the last few words Betsy-Ann feels a stab. To be accused of deception, while all the time persuaded that he is hiding something from her, is too cruel.

  ‘I understand your hints,’ Ned says. ‘You wish me to set you up again. There’s nobody I’d sooner take into keeping, but ―’ He gives a regretful shrug. ‘There’s Ma, too. She won’t endure you.’

  ‘So our meeting’s for nothing? I’m to continue with Sam?’

  He lays his hand over hers, stroking her wrist with his thumb as if soothing a child. ‘You can get out from under him. There’s many a man would be glad enough – yes, indeed,’ he insists, catching at her fingers as if she might pull them away.

  ‘But us, Ned.’

  ‘What of us, my sweet?’

  ‘Shall we keep on with Haddock’s?’

  ‘We’ve been beaten from that bush.’

  If he has a chamber here, now’s the time to say so. With a final pat at her fingers he pulls away and begins buttoning up his coat.

  ‘Easy as that,’ she says as if to herself. ‘Like some old shoe.’

  He pauses in the act of fastening the buttons and regards her, head cocked, in silence. At last he says, ‘I should never have followed you that day.’

  ‘You’d no business to.’

  ‘Inclination I certainly had.’

  ‘I could help you,’ Betsy-Ann says.

  ‘Oh, child, let us be done! Spare me your ―’

  ‘Teach you the Spanish trick.’

  ‘Ah.’ His eyes flick over her, searching her face for deceit. Then, ‘If you did,’ (biting off each word) ‘I could tell Ma to go hang.’

  ‘If I did.’

  ‘If.’

  She has his attention, all right; he’s a dog shivering for the hare. What does it mean? A brief chase and thrown aside bloody, her mystery torn out?

  ‘Understand me, Betsy.’

  ‘I’m trying to,’ says Betsy-Ann.

  ‘With that rig I can pay off all the creditors in a few months. I can carve us enough to live on.’

  ‘Together?’

  ‘For as long as we want. She’ll be glad to see the back of me. We’ll set up genteel, away from Shiner and Harry.’

  ‘And Kitty?’

  ‘Kitty can’t touch us. Can’t touch us, my honey,’ and Ned’s face shines. It’s the face she remembers from their first days together; she hadn’t learnt, then, to be wary of him. Still, what a look to turn on a woman. Like a purseful of gold. He says, all sweet and tickle-mouse, ‘No other woman ever gave me such a gift, Betsy, no other woman could, but you’ – though the tilt of his head says, To me, such incense is due.

  She raises her chin in turn, eyeing him: one gamester to another. ‘I might possibly be persuaded.’

  ‘And your condition is . . . ?’

  She folds her arms. ‘I can’t talk of it here.’

  Again they eye one another, until Ned laughs. ‘Touché. You shall have your chamber.’

  ‘And my chamberer, to attend on me?’

  ‘Him also.’

  ‘Your word upon it?’

  ‘Damn my word. My wife has my word. Whereas you ―’ He grins. ‘You have something of far greater value.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘My inclination.’

  37

  On entering the room he sees a strange woman peering through the window. Today both grate and candles are cold and dead; anyone standing on the pavement would be looking into a dark pit, which is why she screws up her face like that. There is a moment’s fear as the woman’s eyes lock with his, but they lock blindly: she has not seen him and she moves away.

  Fortunate takes what he came for –
Mrs Launey’s account book, left behind after this morning’s consultation with the Wife – and is crossing the hallway when someone knocks at the door.

  He dodges into the corridor, but too late. Before he can turn again and be out of sight, Eliza is upon him.

  ‘I’ll have that, if you please! Now go and answer, and don’t ask me why!’

  She swipes the book from his hand and hurries back to her work.

  The knock comes again. Of course it is the spying woman. When he opens the door her face is composed and superior, her eyes commanding where before they squinted. There is even a little smirk on her lips. He would like to say to her, I saw you! And you looked very foolish!

  Instead he asks her to wait and takes her card to the Pinched Wife.

  ‘Send her in and fetch us tea,’ the Wife says. ‘You are to fetch it, mind, not one of the maids.’

  Today is strange, everybody seems to want him. He must go for the book, must answer the door and bring the tea.

  The woman follows him along the corridor to the Blue Room. He can tell from the tiny sounds made by her clothing that she keeps turning and staring about her at the furniture and wallpaper. It is not pleasant to have such a person at your back. He is glad to deliver her to the mistress and hurry away.

  In the kitchen, Mrs Launey wants to know the woman’s name and if she appears respectable.

  ‘Yes, I think,’ says Fortunate, who understands that by respectable these people mean someone cold and overbearing. ‘Her name is Mrs Howell.’

  The cook picks at her front teeth. ‘Can’t say I know any Howells.’

  ‘Me neither,’ says Eliza, placing a loaf upon the table. ‘She doesn’t visit here. Did she seem a kind sort of lady?’

  ‘Not kind.’

  ‘What’s she like, then?’

  He shrugs. What can he say? The woman made a bad impression.

  ‘I wish Fan was here,’ says Eliza.

  ‘He’s taken against her, we don’t need Fan to tell us that. Can’t you cut the bread any thinner, Liza? You weren’t taught to make doorsteps.’

  ‘Begging your pardon, Mrs L, but it’s crumbly. Listen, Titus. Do you know why this lady’s come?’

  Fortunate suggests, ‘To look in the house?’