‘But you must wear a dress. I’ve bought the material. You’re growing up now. It’s not correct otherwise.’
‘I won’t.’ My temper was rising. Obscurely, I realised that my ambiguous clothes were what had made me special and interesting in the eyes of Alice Jones.
‘But, my darling . . .’
‘Won’t!’ My ears went red. I was fighting for the right to remain interesting. I faced her, chin up.
She suddenly smiled, her eyes full of love.
‘Sweeheart, don’t be angry. You’re the image of my brother.’
I hammered her knees with my fists and all her catalogues fell to the floor. The black silk form of Louisa Erskine abruptly uncoiled out of the carpet.
‘Don’t attack your mother. It’s very impolite.’
I left off, abashed.
The serpent looked me up and down, then came to a decision.
‘We can go into town tomorrow, Mary Ann, and buy some more material and buttons. She’s so small it really won’t take long.’
I was to go to the ball in smart blue regimentals, dressed as a soldier. Costume was much more acceptable than disguise. Alice was thrilled. She had always wanted to dance with a soldier. The 13th Light Dragoons had passed through the country some months before and broken every heart in the village.
On the day of the ball two families arrived mid-morning on a fleet of donkeys, causing immense excitement. David Erskine was seen running across the fields without his hat, to greet them.
The kitchens were much too hot. Alice and I were on duty killing flies, a task which we performed with great zeal, breaking off at regular intervals to rush upstairs, stare at all the new adults and children and criticise their clothes.
‘Mrs Sperling’s lost some more teeth. Did you notice? Last Christmas she made whistling noises when she drank her punch.’
I had no idea how many teeth Mrs Sperling used to have. Alice praised and condemned like a court ambassador constructing a society column. She pointed out one of the magistrates, and revealed that he frequently beat his wife.
‘Does your stepfather ever hit your mother?’ Alice asked curiously.
‘No! Not ever!’ I was scandalised.
‘That’s interesting,’ said Alice. ‘She had a black eye once. I didn’t see it, but it still gets talked about. And it was given out that she’d fallen down in Mr Barry’s studio and had an accident. My dad hit my mum once. She hit him back and burst his eardrum. He’s deaf in one ear now.’
My favourable impression of Mrs Jones was confirmed, but I had no time to brood over the origins of my mother’s black eye, for here was the magistrate’s wife and her smile, too, was ruined by her missing teeth.
‘Maybe the magistrate knocks her teeth out?’ I suggested.
‘Oh no,’ said Alice, ‘they just rot.’
The orchestra arrived in two carts, demanding ale at once, on account of the heat. There were fiddlers tuning up in the stables and a new harpsichord unloaded through the French windows on the terrace, upended in the drawing room and carried through into the great hall, where the dancing was to take place. Two gigantic vases of gladioli were standing to attention on either side of the mirror above the fireplace, and all the doors stood open, into every room of the house. A Babel’s tower of tiny flies blocked the main doorway and the drugged blooms of Lady Elizabeth’s geraniums overflowed the window sills. We rushed ecstatically up and down the kitchen stairs, shrieking. The house was full of laughter, arguments and delicious smells. Francisco was surrounded by ladies, all alive with fans. There was no sign of James Barry.
The men setting up the tables in the orchard had gouged a channel through one of the lawns. The head gardener was hysterical and had to be dissuaded by Elizabeth Erskine herself, resplendent in sweet muslin and looking younger and more joyful than she had ever done before, from settling accounts then and there. I heard her praising the healing power of rain, but as it hadn’t rained for weeks and might never rain again, her reassurances sounded far-fetched. At four o’clock the first round of eating began and the household paraded out into the orchard, stumbling and giggling in the rough grass, supporting one another and then falling over deliberately, rushing back inside for fans and parasols. Alice and I scurried back and forth from the orchard to the kitchens, too excited to eat, intent upon our role as spies. We saw two young people who had slipped away, kissing in the shrubbery. I was all for exposure, but Alice said that it wasn’t a scandal, as they were engaged to be married.
‘It’s only a scandal if they’re married, but not to each other,’ she explained, ‘and sometimes not even then if it’s been going on for ages and everybody knows.’
The adults ate, laughed, talked and sang, sitting under the trees in the golden light. They looked happy and innocent. Or at least I thought so. Alice didn’t. But then, Alice understood more of the world than I did.
At last the orchestra took their places on the creaking stage in the great hall and began tuning up. They sat sweating behind a barricade of fresh flowers. The great hall was not often used. Beyond it was the portrait gallery, burdened with pictures of long-dead members of the Erskine family caressing numerous horses and dogs which had held honoured positions. The curtains smelled of damp, and ivy had almost covered two of the windows. Alice had told me which members of the family were bankrupts or murderers. There they hung, unsmiling, blackened beneath layers of varnish and grease, all looking equally culpable. Now both the great hall and the portrait gallery reeked of beeswax and honeysuckle. And as we danced in on a faint breeze, we heard the glass chandeliers chiming in the draught.
And here are the refreshments, laid out in coloured rows: jellies, fruits, iced cakes, chicken and fish sandwiches, expensive white wine wrapped in linen and iced punch in huge silver bowls with devil’s spoons. I guarded the food, stiff in new trousers with the regimental stripe and far too hot in my military jacket with brass buttons. Everyone described me as charming. Mrs Emmersley, the vicar’s wife, told my mother that she had been quite convinced that I was in fact a mechanical doll, perhaps even a musical one, as I was so realistic. The fashion then was for flat shoes and loose dresses. Gentlemen’s trousers were daringly tight. I suspected Francisco of wearing a corset, but I couldn’t prove it. Alice said that we could hide in his rooms, inspect his chests and find out. He was glamorous, foreign and shockingly radical in the eyes of the country people. So everyone wanted to dance with him. There was the odd minuet and even a mazurka, but for the most part we danced country dances, with the top couple calling out the dance as they chose. This meant that no one was left against the wall; everybody danced, until they sank onto chairs fanning themselves, the survivors stamping with gusto. As the night went on and the candles guttered there was a good deal of ogling, flirting, squeezing and pinching, accompanied by shrieks and giggles. It was very indecorous, very uninhibited. The women’s ribbons swirled in the reels and I danced with Alice Jones.
Alice was cleaner than I had ever seen her. A layer of sunburn must have been rubbed off. She wore a light blue dress and dark blue ribbons cut out of one of Elizabeth Erskine’s cast-offs. She had no shoes on, but nobody noticed. She knew all the dances and bullied me into position with shouts of ‘No, left hand, silly!’ and ‘Quick, down the other way!’ For most of the dances we swopped partners in every set for the different steps and sequences. One moment I was cavorting like a dwarf around Elizabeth Erskine, then gazing adoringly at my mother’s beauty, the next clasping once again the cold hand of the black serpent. My uniform was stuck to my back with sweat, fear and excitement.
Supper was announced at midnight.
‘Look, look,’ cried Alice, gorgeous in her ribbons and her audacity, ‘Mr Barry’s wearing a clean shirt.’
* * *
We had both fallen asleep behind the sofa in the drawing room when I felt someone gently shaking my shoulder. The curtains gaped apart. Outside, the earth was in the grip of a metamorphosis, the dark was already lightening into a deep
grey-blue. The cattle shifted, ghostly in the fields.
‘Wake up, child, you must come with me now.’ It was Louisa, cold, unhurried, dark against the slow dawn.
I disentangled myself from Alice Jones and followed the black outline of the woman, drowsy and confused. I could hear the music, still thudding in the great hall. She led me out into the gardens. The chill hit me in the stomach and the face. I gulped cold air and shivered. The grass was wet with dew and spiders’ webs hung from the flowers. The statues loomed, pale and fragile, above the yew hedges in the Italian garden. The yew remained a solid block of darkness, darker now than the night sky. Louisa stepped firmly into the maze.
The maze was on the east side of the house. We often played hide and seek there in the afternoons. It was a perfect square, each avenue parallel, a duplicate of all the others. There was nothing sinister about the maze. But I had never breached the labyrinth at dawn. Now it was uncanny, the hedges giving out a strong scent, the earth glimmering beneath our steps.
I smelt cigars. From the core of the maze, where the fountain bubbled at the feet of the goddess, rose the blue-grey cloud of smoke. We stepped into the heart of the maze, into the last square, and there, sitting round the fountain, was the triumvirate of cigars: David Steuart Erskine, Earl of Buchan, General Francisco de Miranda and James Barry, RA. They all looked very powerful and very drunk.
‘Here she is,’ said Louisa quietly. She let go of my hand. I thought I was dreaming. Francisco opened his arms to me. I clutched onto his uniform, which stank of sweat, alcohol and my mother’s musk.
‘Well, my dear,’ said David Erskine, ‘we’ve been discussing your future. We can’t waste you. You’re a very clever child. Something has got to be done.’
James Barry stared at me. He said nothing, but puffed convulsively at his cigar. His shirt was no longer clean.
‘Listen, soldier,’ said Francisco, ‘would you like to study properly? At a university?’
‘Yes,’ I whispered, suddenly feeling sick and shivery.
‘Well, that’s what you’re going to do. There’s just one thing that you’ll have to remember from now on. You never will be a girl. But you won’t find that hard. You’ll just go on being a tomboy.’
The light was gathering strength. I could see their faces now. These were men who were getting older, fatter, grey-haired; the adventure of their lives was already undertaken and achieved, their roads already chosen. Now they were choosing for me.
‘From now on you’re going to be a boy. And then a man. Your uncle and I are giving you our names. And David’s volunteered to be your patron and your guardian.’
David Erskine laughed hoarsely. It was a wonderful idea. A trick, a masquerade. A joke against the world.
‘I’ll put my money where my mouth is. And gladly. It’s about time I did something for you, child. I’m your banker from now on.’ David Erskine chuckled wickedly to himself. He loomed over me in the lightening blue.
‘Welcome aboard, James Miranda Barry. You’d be wasted as a woman. Join the men.’
Then they all laughed.
* * *
All around us, the entire village and every single member of the household, whether chapel, church or Papist, bellowed out their thanks to God. David Erskine, Earl of Buchan, had a three-line whip out for the harvest festival, so that we would all be obliged to marvel at the size of his pumpkins. A row of them burgeoned on the altar, enormous, orange and opulent. Bouquets of wheat and barley were fastened to the pillars down the aisles, purple Michaelmas daisies and fountains of goldenrod sheathed the pulpit, baskets of apples, tomatoes bulbous as clenched fists, ginger lilies with huge protruding stamens which the Reverend Emmersley described as unsuitably suggestive, were massed upon the altar steps, tea roses, delicate but unscented, were wound round the crucifix, Christ’s crown of thorns blossomed in the autumn sun. Mysteriously, a keg of cider, last year’s, was positioned near the font.
We thought about our sins. But not very seriously.
We asked Him to forgive us as we forgive those who trespass against us. Alice was convinced that this was Jesus’s warning against persecuting poachers. She had at last understood the sign on the gates by the woods: NO TRESPASSING. She asked to be forgiven for two rabbits and a pheasant.
‘What happens to the fruit afterwards?’ I whispered.
‘The vicar gets to eat it all. Some goes to the curate’s family.’ Alice gazed regretfully at her cucumbers, bottled in vinegar. The choir belted out the Gloria, Mrs Emmersley conducting, her head on one side and her elbows gyrating like windmills.
As the vicar picked his way through the mass of farm produce towards the pulpit to give thanks at length and to exhort us to do thou likewise, I noticed my mother getting out her sewing. She and Louisa were absorbed in a frenzy of tailoring. I was to have a whole new wardrobe. My new life had begun. My red curls were already cropped even closer to my head and I was stuffed into Alice’s youngest brother’s shirt. The vicar was talking about valour and the progress of the war in an unknown foreign part. He had explained the meaning of sacrifice and was getting on to the importance of tradition when Alice began tugging at my sleeve.
‘Come on,’ she hissed. ‘I want to read the last bit. I practised last night. You can tell me if I’ve got it right.’
‘Where are you two going?’ snapped Mrs Jones, as we disrupted the entire row.
‘He’s got to piss,’ lied Alice calmly, putting all the blame on me.
We scuttled out of the church and round to the vestry, jumping all the graves. Alice had hidden the book under a cassock. We settled in amongst the clerical robes, once Alice had checked through the pockets of all the coats. Out came the book, battered, dented, grass-stained, some pages loosened, smelling faintly of chicken shit.
‘I see myself now at the end of my Journey, my toilsome days are ended. I am going now to see that Head that was crowned with Thorns, and that Face that was spit upon for me.’
Alice moved her finger from one word to the next, slowly, intoning the text. One word after another, like a rite chanted. Through a crack in the door we heard the vicar doing the same thing.
‘I have loved to hear my Lord spoken of, and wherever I have seen the print of his Shoe in the Earth, there have I coveted to set my Foot too . . .’
I held my breath, willing Alice not to make any mistakes. She was shaking with excitement and pride.
‘I may give those that desire it an account of what I am here silent about: meantime I bid my Reader Adieu.’
‘That’s right! You can read, Alice, you can read!’
She hugged me till my bones cracked.
‘I want to try a French novel next.’
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost, As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be. World without end. Amen.
Part Two
North and South
James Miranda Barry was ten years old when he signed the Matriculation Roll of Edinburgh University in December 1809. He paid two shillings and sixpence for his university library ticket out of his own pocket, spoke to no one, turned up the collar of his greatcoat, which almost reached his ankles, and walked out into an icy wall of rain, becoming sleet. He was small, pale, red-haired and very quick to lose his temper. He lived at 6, Lothian Street with his mother, an elegant lady with a fine profile and impractical ideas, and her companion, a sinister woman called Louisa Erskine, who was known as The Black Widow in the butcher’s shop. They lived in absolute seclusion. Their landlady reported that the widow and the mother sometimes spent their evenings shouting at each other, that the mother wrote and received several letters every day, and that the boy was a studious little chap, who said nothing and read a lot of books.
This was the general opinion of the household at 6, Lothian Street. The neighbourhood awaited further information.
* * *
2nd January 1810
To General Francisco de Miranda
My Dear Sir,
&
nbsp; In a letter I had the honour of receiving from my inestimable friend and patron Lord Buchan he says that in consequence of your kind enquiries about my health and pursuits he did not conceal his pleasure that I had applied myself so assiduously to all the subjects in which I am required to acquit myself to the best of my ability. Under your personal tutelage, for the which I am most grateful and bounden to you, always, Sir, I first made acquaintance with chemistry, botany, anatomy, Greek, natural and moral philosophy, to the which I must now add medical jurisprudence and two optional subjects upon which I have already embarked, that is, midwifery and dissection. Dr Fryer, who is to supervise the payment of my allowance, assures me that you are known to him by reputation and that he had been introduced to you, my dear General, upon your arrival in this country. I could not help telling Dr Fryer what a treasure you possess in London and how often you permit me to partake of it – needless to say, I mean your very extensive and elegant library. Excuse my troubling you with this letter but I could not deny myself the pleasure of wishing you many happy returns of the New Year in which my mother Mrs Bulkeley and Miss Louisa Erskine join with me. I must beg the favour when you see Dr Fryer to tell him that Lord Buchan desires me to say that we drank his health at his house in George Street this day week. Neither Dr Fryer nor anyone else here knows anything about Mrs Bulkeley’s daughter and so I trust, my dear General, that neither you nor my esteemed uncle will mention in any of your correspondence anything of my cousin’s friendship and care for me.
I remain, Sir, your admiring and obedient servant,
James Miranda Barry
Dissection was carried out on the remains of the unfortunates who had died either in the poor house or on the gallows. James Miranda Barry studied dissection as a private pupil with Dr Fyfe, who still wore a pigtail and was himself a relict of the previous century. He was well known in the town and reputed to encourage his medical students with personal chats and mouthfuls of hard liquor. The aspect of the corpse at the first meeting of the dissection class was so horrible that one of the pupils alongside Barry fainted away. He was a young man called Jobson. Barry caught the boy in his arms to prevent him gashing his forehead open on the edge of a table in the laboratory, then put Jobson’s head firmly between his knees and massaged his temples. The grim chill in the room ensured that Jobson’s unconsciousness would be a temporary affair.
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