‘Can you get your mum to take me on? I’m desperate to get to London, but if I didn’t have a situation my mother wouldn’t let me go. What’s it like? Speak truth.’
‘Noisy and dirty,’ I said, mired in truth.
This was not the correct answer.
‘But aren’t there grand buildings? And great wide streets? And bands? And the King? And parades?’ Alice didn’t have any images against which to test my words. She gazed at me in disappointment. I was not delivering the goods.
‘There’s the Lord Mayor’s Day parade,’ I suggested helpfully. ‘That’s very grand. But in winter there’s fog all the time and mud in the streets. We live in a street near the park, where there are trees. It’s only when you go east into the city that it smells. And it’s full of beggars and thieves.’
Alice was alarmed.
‘But theatres? And musical evenings? And fine ladies in dresses from Paris?’
‘Oh yes. We have all that in our house.’ I brightened up.
‘Do you dress up?’
‘Not for the visitors. I just watch from the staircase.’
‘Like us,’ said Alice. So I wasn’t special after all. ‘Sometimes I serve the cakes at tea, but not often. Cook says I’m never clean enough. And Harold hates me.’
Harold was David Erskine’s butler, whom I had seen polishing the fish knives. An unexpected equality was now established between us, so Alice moved on to the personal questions.
‘I’d like to wear boy’s clothes too, but Mum wouldn’t let me. Can you read and write?’
‘Yes.’
And suddenly a real passion flashed into her face. There was no hesitation, only desire.
‘Teach me.’
‘All right.’
‘Starting today. I’ll find you. Promise. You’re staying all the summer. I’ll kill myself if I can’t read by harvest. Oh, promise you’ll teach me. Cross your heart and hope to die. Give me my stockings. They’re in your pocket. Don’t tell. Kiss. No silly, on the mouth. Cook says boys kiss girls on the mouth, not the nose. Don’t forget. Don’t you dare forget.’
And then she leaped up and ran away across the kitchen yard through the rain, past the gate in the wall to the vegetable garden and on down the brick path to the stables. She didn’t look back.
* * *
The bright morning had sunk into a soggy grey torrent of chill rain. It was still raining when we all sat down to dinner at four o’clock. My Beloved had insisted on walking through the shrubbery in her galoshes and had come back with her skirts and stockings dripping and spattered in mud. The geraniums on the terrace bowed down, shedding their petals, and the pansies folded up. All colour vanished, then the countryside did too. Nothing remained, just one grey sheet of rain.
The mistress of the house was not beautiful. She looked old, but kind, and she wore formidable layers of white lace, all of which vibrated as she walked. When I first saw her she was shaking in the hallway, and demanding fires in all the rooms.
‘Ridiculous weather for June,’ she said to me, for I was crouching on the staircase. ‘We shall all die of boredom. Come on downstairs, child, and let me look at you.’
I descended slowly, one step at a time. She waited, staring, clearly surprised by my appearance. When I was within reach she put both hands on my shoulders and looked at me hard.
‘Well,’ she said softly, ‘Mary Ann’s little baby. Her only child . . .’ She suddenly kissed me on the forehead. I hate it when adults touch me. They never give any indication that they are going to do so and they always smell peculiar. I sat down on the last stair, overwhelmed by the stench of musk and powder. She smelt like a damp cupboard full of linen. But she laughed out loud and drew me to my feet again.
‘Come along, my dear. I haven’t set eyes on you for nearly six years. But that’s not because I didn’t want to see you, nor for lack of invitations. You’ve grown up into someone quite different from what I had expected. Have you eaten anything at all today? Francisco went out shooting and then it came on to rain . . . they must have quite forgotten all about you. Would you like to bang the gong for dinner? Then you can go into the drawing room and tell them all that dinner is served. I always bang the gong and no one ever moves.’
She took my hand and rattled on cheerfully, handing me a giant drumstick and introducing me to a gong the size of a cathedral door. It was engraved with intertwining Chinese dragons and serpents. I hammered its glossy sides with zeal and then pranced ahead of the moving caravan of lace into the drawing room.
But there my tongue was tied. The fox and the rabbit had been joined by people I had never seen before and one of them was even more extraordinary than the lace tower. She was wearing a loose black silk dress with a tight high collar, and her hair was scraped back into a mean little roll at the nape of her neck. She wore neither powder nor paint, but had a pale, faintly yellow skin. Her face was timeless, unlined and utterly still. It was her stillness that unnerved me. Everyone else in the drawing room was talking, or waving their hands. Even my Beloved was smoking; an elegant white clay pipe, dappled with love knots all round the bowl and down the stem. But this woman sat quite still in the midst of them. And looked at me.
‘Lost your voice, sweetheart? Don’t bother. Here, I’ll call them all.’ And the lace woman clapped her hands, so that a little shower of powder fell down upon my head. I stared at the black silk woman in alarm as the chatter surged on above me. She finally moved, very slowly, like a serpent uncoiling, and rose to her feet. I flung myself into Beloved’s arms.
‘My darling, have you been amusing yourself? Have you broken anything?’ she asked gently, giving me a hug.
‘One flowerpot,’ I confessed.
‘Met any other children, soldier?’ Francisco was beside her, his long legs stretched out towards the fire.
‘Yes.’
I did not like to admit that I was already under contract to Alice Jones for reading lessons. They all began to disentangle themselves from their sofas and chairs. I edged away from the rustle of black silk and placed myself carefully between the white lace tower and my Beloved. Their voices rang above me as I sat staring at rows of silver cutlery. It was the first time in my life that I had sat down to dinner with the adults.
‘Did you wash your hands and face, soldier?’ whispered Francisco, as the master, David Erskine, who looked like a stringy mass of red flesh and white whiskers, rose to say grace.
‘Yes,’ I muttered.
‘. . . per Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.’
I was staring at the coil of black silk with her still hands and steady gaze. She was either a spectre or a debt collector. And now she was staring at my uncle, James Barry.
The old painter shuffled in halfway through grace and took his place behind his chair at the end of the table, wiping his brow and thick lips with a paint-spattered handkerchief. He drank his soup without looking up once, making terrible slurping noises. No one rebuked him, as Beloved would have done if I had been the one to slurp. I understood very little of what they said. They talked, laughed, gossiped, argued, disagreed. Every so often one of them would claim everyone’s attention and hold forth until another interrupted. Sometimes one of them, usually one of the men, told a joke and the whole table rocked and chuckled. Then they all paired off and talked very earnestly to the person next to them. David Erskine rapped his glass, which tinkled like a tiny bell, and made a short toast and they all rose up, dropping their napkins and snagging their chairs on the carpet. Francisco poured a mouthful of wine into my glass and I watched it shining like fresh blood, afraid to drink.
Outside, the rain attacked the terrace and poured out over the rims of the gutters, creating a thick waterfall in front of the windows and rushing in a little river down the mossy steps. The cupids astride the dolphins soon found their naked toes bathed in water. I slid down from my chair between courses and pressed my nose to the windows. The world was swallowed up in an unnatural early dark. Candles were lit on the table
and all around the room. Now they were talking politics, peace and war, and the necessity for both. Barry described his journey across the Alps, chewing his mutton chops at the same time, so that we could all see a mess of meat at the bottom of his mouth. He talked, indifferent as to whether anyone was listening or not. Then David Erskine told us how much he had paid for a huge oil painting of the St Gotthard Pass and Barry told him that there were no landscape painters of any significance left in England and that he had certainly been cheated. I was listening to the rain, the wine glass’s dangerous crystal pressed against my lips. And the black silk serpent was staring at the white tower of lace, forcing her occasionally to smile, nod or glance anxiously down the table at my mother. Our hostess was not at ease. But I was used to this. This was the world of women and men, who always seemed to be demanding something of one another, implied rather than honestly spoken out loud.
I lost interest in their long significant glances and eager chatter and thought about Alice Jones. I tried to remember how I had learned to read. And I found that I could recall the exact moment, when I had taken my finger away from the printed line of The Arabian Nights, realising that now each word followed the next effortlessly, flawlessly, in a vast ascending curve. But that was after several years of trying. Start with the alphabet. A is for Apple. B is for Bird. C is for Cat, which has eaten the Bird. D is for Darkness, where no one can see her. E is for Emerald, which she wears on her breast. The black silk serpent was wearing a large green brooch just beneath her left collarbone. And now, once more, she was staring at me. But I had grown bolder, and I stared back through the red glow of my crystal wine and it looked as if her face was on fire. As I watched she smiled ever so slightly, and raised her glass just a little, in an almost imperceptible toast. It was a wry, small smile, breaking her stillness. And then she winked at me.
Before I was ten years old, I had learned, as all children do, to watch the shifting winds, to learn the high tides of adult friendships, adult loves. But now I was at last knowingly implicated in the intrigues of the adult world. The serpent woman had presented me with her visiting card. I looked down at the wine in the glass. And, almost imperceptibly, I blushed. Our complicity was complete. But the agreement had not gone unseen. Francisco had watched the serpent wink. And at once he leaned down to cut my meat, which lay cold and congealing in a mixture of fat and gravy. I held on to the edge of his coat, and stared into my plate.
When the ladies rose to take coffee in the drawing room Francisco pulled back my chair too.
‘Hop it, soldier. Off to bed. And don’t bother your mother. Can you find your way up all those staircases?’
I nodded and fled.
On the second landing my arm was seized by a pink scrubbed hand hiding under a sideboard, which, by coincidence, also had painted pink legs.
‘Hssssst.’
It was Alice Jones.
‘You haven’t forgotten?’ She scurried up the staircase just in front of me, increasing speed with every step.
‘No, but I don’t have many books in my room. I’ve looked.’
‘One will do. Any one. Surely once you’ve read one you can read them all?’
‘Some’re more difficult. Like the Bible.’
‘I’ve already learned most of that by heart,’ declared Alice breathlessly as we reached the room at the top of the stairs in total darkness. ‘Or at least, all the bits that really count.’
There was only one candle, but someone had lit the fire, so that the small room was alive with leaping shadows. The smell of damp had gone. Outside the rain battered against the windows. Alice climbed straight into bed with all her clothes on and without removing her boots, while I undressed clumsily, desperately nervous, and fumbling with all the buttons. No one came to help me. There was no water in my pitcher and the morning’s piss was still floating in the chamberpot. I had been completely forgotten.
‘Come on. I’ve not got that long,’ said Alice, balancing both pillows behind her head.
I picked up the book with the largest print, which was Pilgrim’s Progress, and climbed into bed beside her.
‘As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted upon a certain place where was a Den, and I laid me down in the place to sleep; and as I slept I dreamed a Dream. I Dreamed, and behold I saw a man clothed with Rags, standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a Book in his hand, and a great Burden upon his back.’
We read the same passage again and again, learning the alphabet as we went. Alice learned to recognise three words. BOOK. WORLD. DREAM. Then the candle burned down, flickered, vanished into a smoking pool of greasy tallow and went out. Alice was already fast asleep.
* * *
The storm blew itself out in the night. When I awoke there was sunlight behind the curtains and Alice Jones was long gone. Her side of the bed was cold and the only trace of her visitation was a dry sliver of mud on both sheets. The room too was cold and I now faced a chamberpot that was dangerously full and occupied by a large, floating turd. The murky water in the basin was left over from yesterday. I gave my face and ears a perfunctory wash and sped away down all the long staircases, straight to the kitchens.
Alice was watching the bread rise.
‘D-R-E-A-M. Dream,’ she said, smiling. And pinched my cheek. We sat happily on the bench, swinging our legs and chanting the alphabet. A is for Apple. B is for Bird. C is for Cat. D is for Donkey. E is for Elephant. F is for Fox. G is for Garden . . .
I crouched among the sprouting dahlias, eating bacon rinds and bare toast, the first of many loving and edible presents from Alice Jones. She explained that this was all advance payment for the next lesson.
‘I’ll find you in the gardens as soon as they’ve eaten their luncheon. Cook says I’m to serve and help clear. But I’m not in the scullery today. Swear that you won’t forget.’
‘I swear.’ We clapped each other’s hands in rhythm. I had made my first friend. Indeed, I was already in love with Alice Jones.
The adults spent hours eating or lounging in armchairs. Sometimes there was a burst of activity and they all dressed up and went out, riding and shooting, or visiting the neighbours, in capes, hats and feathers. I was never taken with them. If it rained they sat in melancholy groups, emphasising their imminent demise from utter boredom. In the evenings, I dozed on the window seat, while they sang, danced, flirted or played cards. Dinner was a nightmare of anxiety. Sitting in between Francisco and Beloved I was painfully visible. I tried eating as little as possible and refusing to look up.
At night Alice kept me awake in a frenzy of sentences, sometimes frustrated, once bright red with tears, she insisted on every single word by John Bunyan. She upbraided me if I did not know their meanings. I was obliged to consult Francisco on the finer points of Protestant theology. But Alice would not be defeated. And she would not give up.
Gradually, towards the end of June, the summer weather pulled itself together, took hold and closed in. The days were transformed into a burning fiery furnace and the nights were breathless and sweating. We reached the Slough of Despond. The adults fanned themselves and sought out agreeable breezes. They organised boating parties and parasols. James Barry had nothing to do with any of their activities. He went on painting.
Alice ran to and fro with iced drinks. We loved the ice house, with the great blocks wrapped in sacking. Cook taught me how to hack little pieces off with a hammer and an ice pick. When I wasn’t helping Alice I lay flat on my stomach in the shrubbery, spying on the wild life with Lady Elizabeth’s purloined opera glasses. The rabbits basked on dirt mounds in the evenings and the dogs were far too hot to chase them. The dew steamed on the grass in the early light, the air lost its freshness at once and the heat grew steadily. The people working in the fields covered their heads with broad hats and scarves. The hot rotting smell of the cut hay and the buzz of flies accompanied my lethargic adventures. I lay with my feet in the stream that encircled the meadows before ending its course in Davi
d Erskine’s ornamental pond. I often saw him, strolling in the meadows, pausing to inspect his ducks. He was always cheerful and gentle when he spoke to me. He had lumps of stale bread in his pockets which I could feed to the aggressive flotilla. If the bread was not immediately delivered the creatures climbed out of the water and pursued him across the lawn, bellowing. The old earl had holes in his stockings. He and James Barry were the only men in the company who still wore wigs and his also stank of ancient powder.
‘Is he really very rich?’ I asked Alice.
‘Mmmmm,’ she said, chewing grass and staring at the open book before her, ‘very, very rich. Richer than all the kings like Belshazzar and Nebuchadnezzar. He owns all Shropshire and most of Staffordshire besides. All the villages, churches, farms, woods, parks. Occasionally he sells off a bit of land to pay for his gardening improvements. What does this mean? Here.’
Alice could spell every word now, but couldn’t yet link them into coherence.
‘Why doesn’t his wife mend his stockings?’
‘Lady Elizabeth? She’s much too grand for that.’
‘But he’s got holes in his stockings.’
‘Does it matter?’
Alice looked at my feet. I no longer wore stockings or shoes and my sunburnt freckled legs were as dirty and strong as those of Alice Jones.
‘Come on,’ she insisted, kissing me on the nose, not the mouth, and then biting it a little, ‘help me with this bit.’
* * *
James Miranda Barry Page 5