Death and the Courtesan

by Pamela Christie

  “I suppose so.”

  “Good,” he said, and smiled. “We Catholics place a lot of importance upon that concept.”

  “You’re a Catholic?” she asked.

  “Is the Pope?” he rejoined. “I am Irish. I have no choice.”

  Arabella was thrilled to her toes. An Irish Catholic! A punch in the eye of English respectability! The ultimate in rebel chic! Here was a bad boy to her bad girl. They were made for each other.

  Wedge paused to remove a small pocket book and pencil from his jacket, and Arabella was obliged to let go his arm whilst he did this. It vexed her to let go of him, and she noticed she was vexed.

  “Miss Beaumont,” said Wedge, “would you mind sharing with me your thoughts pertaining to society women—the so-called ‘respectable’ women—and how their position relates to that of courtesans like yourself?”

  “I should be happy to, provided I have your assurance that you won’t be using the information to denounce me.”

  “You have my word of honor upon it. I shall not be using this conversation at all until I have wholly taken up my stance in your favor. Publicly, that is. Privately, as I am sure you realize, you already have my complete and ardent admiration.”

  “How nice. To answer your question, Mr. Wedge, there is no difference between the two types of women, except that the courtesan is honest about what she does, and the respectable lady is not. In our society, a wife is nothing but a sort of domestic pet, with whom one has sexual relations. That this fact should be the source of her claiming superiority over the ladies of the night, who are free to love where they will and who call no man master, is absurd. But I am not complaining; we courtesans owe our very existence to the prejudice and inhibitions of respectable ladies.”

  “How so?” Wedge inquired, with genuine interest.

  “It is their refusal to take pleasure in the gratification of their husbands’ needs that drives their men to seek our company. If all women acted like whores, Mr. Wedge, there wouldn’t be any.”

  “Women?”

  “Whores!”

  “Trollop!”

  Julia van Diggle had chosen that moment to pass by with her prospective mother-in-law and had drawn a personal and unflattering inference from this last remark of Arabella’s.

  “Don’t lower yourself to her level, Julia,” admonished Lady Ribbonhat, staring straight ahead and slightly above the bridge of her own nose. “After all, you are about to become a duchess, and I am about to reclaim Lustings!”

  “At your time of life, Lady Ribbonhat?” Wedge inquired severely. “I should be ashamed to own as much, were I in your place!”

  “You should be ashamed in any case, sir, to be seen in company with that strumpet . . . !”

  “I think I prefer ‘trollop,’ ” Arabella murmured.

  “. . . and sitting by idly, whilst she insults her betters!”

  “Her betters?” asked Wedge mildly. “Her betters do not live upon this earth, madam. Miss Beaumont is the most accomplished, the most brilliant, most wholly remarkable woman of her generation. But perhaps, not being a member of her generation yourself, you are unaware of this fact. If that is the case, I deem it an honor to have been the one to enlighten you.”

  He tipped his hat, put away his pocket book, and turned to Arabella, once again offering his arm. “Come away, Miss Beaumont. I fear the air, here, will do you but little good.”

  One may only imagine the state of high dudgeon in which they left the ladies, because at this point the two parties followed different paths, in opposite directions. And, since I have decided to follow Arabella and Mr. Wedge, I can tell you nothing of what was looked or done or said by the other pair.

  The Tattle-Tale, like most of London’s many periodicals, had its office situated on Fleet Street. The staff had recently removed to this location from a smaller office down the road, and the paper was doing very well here. For, as Oliver Wedge had more than once observed to his colleagues, “scandal sells.”

  “Have you seen the inside of a printing office before?” asked Wedge.

  “Never,” Arabella replied, gazing about her at the great presses and rollers and handsome copy boys, with sleeves rolled up over their well-turned, muscular forearms, “though I’ve been in print shops of course. I am one of Ackerman’s regular customers.”

  “I am sure you are. Well, we don’t produce art prints here . . . yet, but we don’t just print newspapers, either. I also publish books. Only limited editions for now, but one day I hope to expand that side of things.” He took her arm protectively, conducting her past the leering copyists and typesetters and printers and journalists. “I expect this office will look very different in a couple of years, once they have perfected the steam printer.”

  “Why?” asked Arabella. “What will those look like?”

  “I don’t really know, but I intend to get one the moment they’re available. Supposedly, they will make it possible to increase our output tenfold. Right now, each of my presses prints two hundred sheets per hour. Imagine one that could turn out eleven hundred! This is my office,” he said, opening the door. “We shan’t be disturbed in here.”

  Arabella took the proffered seat, and Wedge sat, not behind his desk but opposite her, placing his chair very close to her own. “The more London knows about Arabella the woman, as opposed to Arabella the courtesan,” he explained, “the more it will pity your plight, and fight to save you. Your salvation, Miss Beaumont, lies with The Tattle-Tale’s readers. Please, won’t you tell me your story?”

  Arabella decided to oblige him, for she guessed that he would find it interesting. And doubtless the reader of this book will, too.

  The Beaumont siblings—Arabella, her older brother, Charles, and her younger sister, Belinda—were the children of a baronet and his wife, a squabbling pair of Georgian roués and close friends of William Beckford’s, if not of each other. This precious pair gambled and gamboled, perpetrating scandals, staging monumental rows in public, losing prodigious sums at the gaming table, and ruining their constitutions, to say nothing of their bank account, until both were quite played out.

  Before that happened, though, their relentless pursuits of pleasure leaving them time for little else, they left the raising of their three children to nursemaids. And if there is one thing that argues in favor of being brought up by nursemaids (though it is doubtful that there could be more than one thing) it is that it gives one the chance to be completely objective about one’s parents. Arabella soon found that she detested hers.

  Lord, what awful people, she thought to herself when she was five. And inwardly she resolved to have as little to do with them as possible. But children do not grow up in vacuums, and Arabella had developed a passionate attachment to her nursemaid, Molly. So when that sweet-natured young woman died, suddenly, of an inflammation of the lungs, Arabella considered herself an orphan, even though both her parents were at that time still alive and kicking. And hitting. And, in at least one notable instance, biting.

  When at long last they did die, they left nothing behind but the family manse. This went to Charles, of course, and he promptly lost it at cards.

  Charles and Belinda were both uncommonly attractive specimens, but without the favor of fortune neither could hope to marry well. And Arabella, practical though she was, refused to entertain the thought of marrying at all. So when the cost of her parents’ funerals used up the money realized from the sale of the family carriage, the Beaumonts were faced with almost certain starvation.

  Fortunately, Lady Beaumont’s funeral had been attended by the notorious Fortescue sisters, first cousins to the orphaned Beaumonts, and whilst the son used his mother’s death as an excuse for a drinking binge, Amber, Ivy, and Claire had whisked her daughters off to a party. The girls had a wonderful time and were eventually inducted into the family establishment, where they learnt all manner of pleasing arts. There they might have remained indefinitely, but for the lucky chance of Arabella’s capturing the heart of th
e Duke of Glendeen. She had toyed with it for a time, but now he had withdrawn that organ from her, in order to make a formal presentation of it to Julia van Diggle.

  “. . . and that is my story, Mr. Wedge.”

  “Very compelling, too,” he said, glancing up from his tablet and fixing her with his admiring and therefore seductive eyes. They were the color of malt whiskey. Rather than inspiring Arabella with Dutch courage, though, they filled her with a kind of panic. She held his gaze just long enough for convention’s sake, with slightly raised eyebrows and a cool, ironic smile. Then she shifted her eyes to the painting that hung on the wall behind him, Wedge’s own portrait.

  “That’s a Thomas Lawrence, is it not?” she asked, being too far away to read the signature.

  “It is,” said Wedge. “And it cost me a pretty penny! Or it will, when I’ve paid for it. But that doesn’t matter, because, you see, I am planning a newspaper empire that will eventually become powerful enough to change the course of world events. When that happens, years from now, this portrait will hang in the conference room of an enormous commercial building.”

  “Hmm,” said Arabella. “It isn’t like you, somehow, and Lawrence is usually very true to his subjects.”

  “His portraits of the Prince of Wales aren’t like him, either.”

  “No—that’s flattery. This doesn’t make you look better. Just different. It’s crooked, too.”

  She rose and crossed to the portrait, to straighten it.

  “Be careful of the canvas,” cautioned Wedge. “The paint’s not dry yet.”

  Arabella stood for a moment, gazing up at the picture that was and was not like Oliver Wedge. It was odd.

  “Bell?” called Belinda up the stairwell. “Neddy and Eddie are here!”

  Half siblings Edward and Edwardina, the unlawful progeny of Charles Edward Beaumont, stood in the foyer amidst a profusion of toys, portmanteaus, tennis racquets, and mothers. Arabella paused at the top of her curving staircase in order to fully appreciate the scene, which reminded her of a setting for one of Mr. Gillray’s cartoons.

  The children looked nothing like their parents, yet both resembled each other a good deal: white skinned and rather sickly, with pale, flat hair and colorless eyes. Eddie had potential, though. Girls like this, provided they survived past adolescence, often grew into stunning beauties. Boys, on the other hand, tended to remain as they were, only larger.

  Neddy was pink and swollen around the eyes and nose today and on this account looked something like a white rat—a white rat holding a large box in front of it and emitting loud, wet sniffles at regular intervals. Evidently, he had recently thrown one of his signature tantrums.

  “Here you are at last, my dears!” cried Arabella, pretending to be glad.

  Edwardina made her a fine little curtsy, but the churlish Neddy merely fixed her with a pink-rimmed, sullen glare.

  “Neddy’s sulking,” said his mother. “Pay no attention to him.”

  Polly was a hardworking, somewhat hard-boiled young courtesan, who had little patience with her whining son, while Sarah-Jane, Eddie’s mother, had nothing but goose down where her brains should have been.

  “What have you there, Neddy?” asked Arabella. “May I see?”

  The child continued to glower, without answering, so she removed the lid herself, and they both peered in at the contents.

  “Oh! What lovely turtles! What have you named them?”

  “Klunk and Stupid Looking. That turtle is Klunk and that turtle is Stupid Looking,” said Neddy, pointing.

  Why was it that children generally took so long to master the pronoun?

  “Klunk?” said Belinda, wrinkling her nose. “That’s a funny name! Whatever does it mean?”

  “Doesn’t mean anything,” the boy replied, sticking out his lower lip. “That’s the sound he makes when I kick him downstairs!”

  “You mustn’t do that, Neddy,” said Belinda seriously. “It’s cruel, and you could break his shell that way.”

  “Good!”

  “Why have you given these wonderful creatures such hateful names?” asked Arabella.

  “Because,” the child replied, raising his voice, “I wanted a puppy!”

  “As if I hadn’t enough to do without housetraining a puppy!” Polly explained. “I shall observe his interactions with the turtles and review the matter again. But based on what I have seen so far, I very much doubt that we shall be getting a dog.”

  She addressed herself chiefly to Belinda, as Arabella had already grown bored with the conversation and seemed scarcely to be listening.

  “Polly,” she said, glancing out the window, “did you notice the Bow Street Runners standing guard in front of my house?”

  “Yes. They must be a great vexation to you!”

  “Oh, not so much. What do you think of them, Sarah-Jane?”

  “The dark one is awfully handsome!”

  “Really? Actually, I had him in mind for Polly. Could you like the fair one?”

  Sarah-Jane shrugged. “I prefer my men dark,” she said. “Always have done.”

  “What do you say, Polly?”

  “I wonder why you are asking these questions,” said Polly crossly. “What you do with your time is your own business, but I want it known here and now that I have no intention of participating in any of your drunken debauches!”

  “Heavens! You mistake me!” cried Arabella. “I was just thinking how nice it would be if Neddy and Eddie were to have real fathers.”

  For if they had, thought she, their mothers could stay at home and take care of them properly and they wouldn’t always need to be coming out to Lustings. (Arabella sometimes engaged in altruistic schemes, but this was not one of them.)

  Once the children were settled in, their mothers left and their aunties took them onto the roof, where the telescope was. The views were splendid from up there, and a little promenade fence round the perimeter kept people from falling off.

  Neddy generally tried to spy into other people’s windows, but Eddie always looked down at the roads. Neither child was interested in the heavens.

  “What can you see?” asked Belinda of her niece, who was squinting through the eyepiece.

  “A coach!” she said excitedly. “It looks like a post chaise, and it is headed this way! It’s simply crowded with trunks and things!”

  “How do you know it’s a post chaise?” Neddy sneered. “You couldn’t possibly read the door from this far away. It’s probably a private carriage!”

  “I said it looks like one,” said Edwardina. “It’s yellow, it’s got luggage on top, and it’s going very fast. Besides, why should anyone with a private carriage want to paint it to look like a post chaise?”

  Eddie had promised her mother not to squabble with Neddy, but why did he always have to be so disagreeable?

  “Here,” he said, suddenly shoving her out of the way. “Let me look!”

  “Ow!” she cried, for Neddy had knocked her against the telescope, nearly upsetting it, and injuring her elbow.

  Arabella would not stand for this. She pushed her nephew suddenly in the chest, propelling him violently backward.

  “No,” she said. “I am going to look, because it’s my telescope, and I think that coach has my uncle inside it! You see?” she said to Neddy, who was rubbing his chest and looking aggrieved. “It hurts to be pushed around like a sack of turnips, doesn’t it? Well-bred young ladies and gentlemen do not push one another; they wait their turn, like civilized persons.”

  “You pushed me,” he remarked rudely.

  “Yes. Sometimes it is more effective to demonstrate a lesson than merely to talk about it. And I suspect you to be the type of child who learns best by doing, or, in this case, by being done to.”

  Belinda had taken advantage of the impromptu lesson to snatch a look through the telescope herself. “It is Uncle Selwyn,” she pronounced, with satisfaction. “Let us go down and wait for him in the porte cochere!”

  Arabella’s port
e cochere was a dual-purpose structure. It was both a shelter where carriages could load and unload during inclement weather and a wonderful place to have tea. The roof was supported by eight Corinthian columns of Portland stone, with marble caryatids arranged between them. A table with collapsible legs and a set of folding chairs could be lowered from the ceiling at a moment’s notice and set up to accommodate six persons.

  The post chaise, for that is indeed what it was—Eddie stuck out her tongue at Neddy when no one was looking—pulled up easily beneath the loaded ceiling with room to spare and discharged its distinguished passenger.

  The last time Arabella had seen him, Sir Geoffrey Selwyn had been an imposing, corpulent man, with a big, florid face. Now he was grown alarmingly spare and his complexion was a sickly gray. As Arabella’s grooms came out to unload the equipage, His Lordship handed one of them a mysterious-looking dome-shaped parcel, swathed in Indian calico, which he had been nursing on his lap.

  “Mind you be careful of that,” he said. “It is Miss Belinda’s birthday present!”

  But as Trotter was taking hold of the object, a malevolent voice thundered out of it, and the coachman nearly dropped it in surprise. The sudden jolt apparently occasioned a stream of obscenities from within, articulated in a particularly nasty, insulting tone, and its hearers were thrilled with a kind of delighted horror.

  “What have you there, Uncle? A Pygmy?” asked Arabella.

  But Belinda knew what it was. “Oh!” she cried, her eyes sparkling with joy. “It’s a parrot!”

  When Sir Geoffrey’s gear had been unloaded and carried off to the house, Arabella had the table and chairs brought down from the ceiling of the porte cochere and dismissed the children to play in the stream.

  “May we take our shoes and stockings off?” asked Eddie, her eyes nearly popping from her head with unbearable expectation.

  “I insist that you do so,” said their aunt. “You will ruin them, otherwise.”

  She turned to one of the Runners, who’d been standing a short distance away, trying to look inconspicuous. “Mr. Dysart, would you be so kind as to ask Cook to send us out some lemonade?”