An Almond for a Parrot

by Dray Wray

  He was silent.

  ‘Do you mind, sir, if I ask what happened?’

  ‘I was in London when news reached me that she had fallen ill. I returned home to Chippenham with all speed but she died a day later. Her death undid me. I went abroad and sought consolation from every willing woman. I made love to many but never felt anything akin to what I had experienced with my wife.’

  ‘That is so very sad,’ I said.

  ‘I haven’t brought you here to make you feel sad, my sprite.’ Rising from the table, he said, ‘I look forward to welcoming you at my estate near Bath in one week. Does that suit you?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said.

  I curtsied, he bowed, and I left.

  Queenie was delighted with this outcome. She told me that Lord Barbeau’s solicitor had been there that morning and the terms offered for my services were generous to a fault.

  His lordship required me to be well equipped with clothes for my stay. He specified sturdy shoes as well as the dancing pumps I would need for balls and attendance at the assembly rooms.

  ‘It seems he has his mind set on showing you off,’ said Queenie.

  ‘But he hardly knows me.’

  ‘It matters not an ounce. Win him over in the bedchamber – and don’t be a fool like Kitty and lose him.’

  It always astounds me how time has a habit of slowing to the pace of a slug and then, without warning, speeding into a gallop. That week was a whirlwind of dressmakers, shoemakers, and everything to do with lace, ruffles, embroidery and frippery. Then, before I’d even had time to think of the implications of what I was about to undertake, the morning for my departure arrived. I stood in the hall in my brand-new travelling gown and a jaunty hat, with Boozey in his cage and two well-filled trunks of clothes.

  ‘You will write, my ninny-not?’ asked Hope, fussing with the fur on my jacket.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I assured her.

  ‘Every week, I want to hear from you – not one detail is to go astray.’

  ‘And you too – every week.’ I turned to Mercy. ‘Will you write?’ I asked her.

  She kissed me. ‘Don’t rely upon it,’ she said.

  Even Bethany, to my surprise, came down from her chamber to say goodbye.

  ‘Have you made your will?’ she asked.

  ‘No – why?’ I said with alarm.

  ‘Ooh la la,’ she said. ‘You need to have made a will when you travel to Bath through those turnpikes.’

  ‘Why?’ I repeated.

  ‘Because the roads are grievous full of highway men, out to snatch unnatural dead parrots from innocent whores. The most dangerous part of the Bath Road is the Maidenhead Thicket.’

  I smiled, too full of excitement to be put off my journey.

  ‘You don’t believe me? Oh, fie. Tell her, Mercy. People put their trust in God when they take that road. Even those who have as good as forgotten his existence suddenly remember him well enough when they set off to Bath.’

  ‘Stop it,’ said Queenie. ‘You’ll frighten her.’

  Everyone was talking at once and all went silent when the front door was opened and there waiting was Lord Barbeau’s post-chaise drawn by four restless black horses. They were snorting steam from their nostrils and the two postilions were having trouble keeping them calm. The coachman secured my luggage, I was helped to my seat with Boozey’s cage placed beside me, and, with a great waving of hands, the carriage set off at a mighty speed. I heard Queenie shout, ‘Don’t come back too soon!’ and I sat back, wrapped in the luxury of upholstered seats and having perfect views from the front and side windows.

  We must have made an impressive sight as we galloped through the countryside. The carriage overtook nearly everyone else on the road and each time we stopped, fresh horses were awaiting us. The following afternoon, with no mishap worth mentioning, we came to the rolling hills of the Avon valley, and here, in the village of Chippenham, the carriage turned down a private drive. It was lined on both sides by tall, autumnal trees and it wasn’t until we’d rounded a bend that a spectacular house came into view. It sat in upright, square-shaped splendour and in the fading light looked as if it were made of burnished bronze.

  The size of the house and grounds near overwhelmed me. I wasn’t equipped to imagine anything quite so grand. We pulled up on a gravel drive and I was greeted in the hall by Mr Merritt, the butler who had shown me to the door of the secret garden. I hardly noticed which way we went for there appeared to be so many doors and galleries that I could well imagine that a guest having once become lost, might never be found again. Finally, we came to my chamber. It was beautifully designed, with a four-poster bed so large that five people could have lain there with no trouble at all.

  ‘I hope it’s to your liking, madam,’ said my new maid. ‘His lordship was most particular as to how the room was to be arranged.’

  I stood at the window and, looking out over the distant hills, felt most ill-suited to the position I found myself in.

  My maid had reset my coiffeur, which I wore unpowdered, when I spied on the dressing table a jewellery box with a note.

  ‘A welcoming present for my sprite.’

  It was a pearl necklace that tied with a pale pink ribbon and set my gown off to perfection.

  ‘You look beautiful, madam,’ said my maid.

  I was indeed satisfied that I was a credit to the fairy house.

  I found his lordship in the drawing room, the wolfhounds lying by the fire. They raised their heads sleepily when I entered then, sighing deeply, lay them down again.

  Lord Barbeau bowed and asked if I had had a comfortable journey and if everything was to my satisfaction.

  I curtsied prettily. ‘Yes, sir,’ I said, ‘very much so. And I thank you, sir, for my necklace.’

  ‘Excellent, excellent.’

  I hadn’t expected there would be guests and was surprised when a sombrely dressed parson entered, followed by a woman whose skin seemed to be scrubbed raw.

  Lord Barbeau introduced me to his nephew, Mr Jonathan Ainsley, and his wife, who had arrived unexpectedly from Bath.

  Mr Ainsley smiled a condescending smile. ‘We were pleased to come and welcome my uncle to Bath,’ he said in such a way that one would be forgiven for thinking that he alone held the keys to the city.

  He regarded me with something resembling a sneer.

  There was an awkward silence, which I had no idea how to fill.

  At dinner that night, Mr Ainsley did most of the talking while his lordship looked bored and drank his wine. I wondered if Mr Ainsley had ever seen his lordship’s secret garden and doubted it.

  ‘Who are your people?’ he asked me suddenly.

  I had so long been left from the conversation that I was lost in sweet reminiscences of Avery. I had to ask if Mr Ainsley would be kind enough to repeat the question.

  ‘I asked about your family,’ he said curtly.

  ‘You wouldn’t know them, sir,’ I said. ‘Our name is Truegood.’

  ‘And in which county is their residence?’

  ‘London, sir, Milk Street.’

  ‘London – the capital of sin.’

  I had a feeling that here was a man formed in the Smollett mould.

  ‘I have heard,’ he said, sniffing in the air, ‘that a virtuous woman cannot walk in Covent Garden for all the abuse that the painted harlots might throw at her.’ He took a breath and I feared we might be in for a sermon. ‘What, I wonder, is this country coming to when every other woman in the metropolis is a whore?’

  I shouldn’t have said anything, but such foolish sentiments irritated me greatly. ‘What, I wonder, do you suppose drove them to it?’

  ‘Wanton lust,’ he said emphatically.

  ‘I disagree, sir,’ I said, and the moment I had spoken, regretted doing so.

  Mr Ainsley let out a snort which I think was supposed to be a sardonic laugh.

  To my surprise, Lord Barbeau, with a mischievous look on his face, said, ‘Perhaps you would enlig
hten us further, my dear.’

  Oh, feathers and dust! Now I had done it.

  ‘Women…’ I said, and stopped and looked at Lord Barbeau.

  ‘Pray continue, my dear,’ he said.

  ‘Women are the property of men. If they marry, all their worldly goods belong to their husbands.’

  ‘And may it ever remain so,’ said Mrs Ainsley.

  ‘Amen,’ said Mr Ainsley.

  ‘But therein lies the problem,’ said I.

  ‘Madam, I do not follow,’ said Mr Ainsley.

  ‘Women have no money in their own right and many are subjected to the tyranny and cruelty of neglectful fathers and husbands. If a woman leaves this so-called protection, she finds the road to virtue closed to her by poverty and necessity. Her body is the only currency she possesses.’

  ‘Oh, Mr Ainsley,’ said Mrs Ainsley, ‘I think I’m going to faint.’

  ‘How dare you?’ said Mr Ainsley. ‘How dare you speak in such a manner in front of my wife? Uncle, will you allow us to sit here and be insulted by this… this…’

  I felt my cheeks turn red and had risen to leave when Lord Barbeau said, ‘Sit, Tully. Jonathan, Tully has spoken with great honesty and has made, I believe, a very valid argument.’

  The parson was as purple as the port. ‘Uncle,’ he said, ‘I had hoped you had at last discovered the path to godliness. But I find you are… you are the very devil!’

  Lord Barbeau calmly asked Mr Merritt to have Mr Ainsley’s carriage sent round.

  As the dining-room door closed behind the parson and his wife, we could hear Mr Ainsley in the hall, delivering a short, angry sermon.

  ‘And I’m damned,’ he finished, ‘if I will be preached to by a little whore.’

  Lord Barbeau looked at me, his eyes sparkling, and we burst out laughing.

  ‘My sprite,’ he said. ‘My sweet, clever sprite.’

  Lifting our glasses, we drank to the future.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Lord B, as I came to call him, was one of the most honourable and generous men I have ever had the privilege of knowing. Up to then, my experience of older men had shown me little to recommend them. My father had been a drunken sop and a buffoon; Mr Smollett a licentious leek, the dancing master a milksop. Only Mr Crease could boast integrity, yet still he terrified me. I had no understanding of any of them. I soon realised that Lord B was in a different category altogether. Due to his patience and patronage, I grew from a noodle-headed girl into something resembling a thoughtful human being. He took a collection of unorganised thoughts and planted them in a bed of books. He watered them with encouragement, pruned their unruly stems and sprinkled them with praise until my learning blossomed into something approaching wisdom. But it took time and it nearly didn’t take at all.

  I had no idea what was required of me in the early days in that grand house with its large, well-proportioned rooms, its elegant windows with their eyebrows of drapery. Every night I expected Lord B would come to my bedchamber and, when he didn’t, I began to wonder what his purpose was in bringing me there, and if he wanted me at all. After London and all the excitement of the fairy house, my new life was not what I had imagined it to be. We had no more visitors, or rather none that Lord B wished to see. In the morning, weather permitting, we would walk together arm in arm through his various gardens and he would tell me the names of trees, of plants that relished the sun, and those that fared better in the shade. He took me shopping in Bath and, honestly, I could have become most terribly spoiled. I only had to glance at a bauble in a window of a shop and make some comment to find it was mine. I was very flustered by his generosity, especially as he seemed to want nothing in return.

  ‘Sprite,’ he often said. ‘It is my privilege. I have the design and the means to spend money on you.’

  I was worried we might bump into Captain Spiggot or Mr Wrattan, for I knew well that Bath was a place that made good pickings for gamblers and rogues.

  As the weather grew colder, I spent my time exploring Lord B’s library. He had a vast collection of books, some still with their pages uncut. I would sit in a wing-backed chair with a paper knife and slice them open; delicious wafer-thin food for the mind. When Lord B discovered that I had an interest in literature, he began to orchestrate my reading and we would often sit together, both of us lost in books. In the evening we would dress up and dine as if we had guests and he taught me how to play chess. But as for the reason I thought I was there, in that he showed no interest in me. Every night he would bow, say goodnight, kiss my fingertips and leave me to my slumbers. I admit to begin with I was most grateful. I told myself fortune had indeed been kind to me. Here was a man who enjoyed my company. I was fooling no one. I knew it wasn’t enough, he had not paid so handsomely just for the privilege of teaching me French. As the days passed I became deeply concerned that I wasn’t doing my duty by this kind man. I’d lain awake often thinking about going to his chamber but I never quite had the courage.

  One evening we were called upon by a Doctor Gallicot, a gentleman whose features were permanently sucked in as if he had eaten something disagreeable. He was not tall, but stood ramrod straight, and an eyeglass hung on a chain from his waistcoat pocket. He bored my poor Lord B with a list of his ailments and supper was a lugubrious occasion that night.

  ‘By your diagnosis, it is a wonder I am not dead,’ said Lord B.

  ‘My lord,’ said Doctor Gallicot, ‘it is in the express hope of avoiding that calamity that I am here.’

  I wondered as I sat there if Avery would be as dogmatic once he became a physician and decided he wouldn’t. Lord B drank more wine than usual and refused to listen to a word the disagreeable doctor had to say, but Doctor Gallicot continued with unsavoury prescriptions for his recovery.

  ‘You should be in Bath, my lord, not out here,’ he said. ‘You must take the cure.’

  ‘Along with a throng of fops who stink in their dirty shirts and tinsel, annoy the senses and offend the soul.’ Lord B stood up and said, ‘I’ve had enough of this. Goodnight, sir.’

  I followed him into the hall. ‘Please, sir, will you tell me what’s wrong?’ I asked.

  He turned and looked at me as if he had completely forgotten who I was. ‘I think it would be better that you returned to London. I am not fit company for you.’

  I stood in the draughty hall, listening to the click of his shoes on the stone floor as he walked away. I had no idea what I was meant to do.

  The following morning Doctor Gallicot was back, accompanied by an apothecary who brought with him a collection of potions. The doctor’s first prescription was that I was to be barred from his lordship’s presence. He instructed Mr Merritt to make immediate arrangements for my return to the metropolis.

  I was devastated and felt a complete failure – and dreaded what Queenie would say. I begged to see his lordship, if for nothing more than to say goodbye, but Mr Merritt told me it was impossible and handed me an envelope containing three twenty pound notes. I was outraged and refused to take it. I stormed off to my chamber.

  My only solace was the arrival of a letter from Hope. Mine to her, written before Lord B became ill, had been dull for there had been so little to report. But I had confessed to my catastrophic failure to seduce Lord B and written that I had no idea how to remedy the situation. The reply arrived just when I needed Hope’s wisdom most. After relating all the gossip from the fairy house, she wrote:

  You must use your imagination. There are many forms of seduction and not all of them involve spring carrots – oh dear, I forget – what did Mr Smollett call the male root when under the influence of the female root? It still makes me giggle.

  Seriously, my ninny-not, Mr Crease told Queenie and Queenie told me, that Mrs Coker granted you a wish. Mercy thinks it is all hocus-pocus, but I do not. If Mrs Coker did, and it is indeed, as Mr Crease said, a pearl hand, then I for one am green with jealousy. By the by, I simply have no idea why jealousy is green, do you?

  But back to
the matter in hand – or rather, pearl hand! There is an art in it which, if used well, can save you a great deal of inconvenience and by that I mean pregnancy and the pox so use it to your advantage, my dear.

  Do not, whatever you do, come back to London. Captain Spiggot is having the fairy house watched and he has accosted Bethany, asking your whereabouts. She told him she knew nothing – and told him more besides! That woman is quite fearless.

  Fortunately, my journey was delayed due to snow and, lost in the library, with the wolfhounds, I was all but forgotten. To keep me company I often took Boozey with me and read to the dogs and the parrot. I loved hearing the words out loud, their sound echoing before being sucked back into the books.

  One afternoon, I was sitting in my usual chair with Boozey flying about, when I felt an icy draught as if the door had been opened. The dogs gave low growls and their hair stood up. I looked round.

  Her clothes were old-fashioned, her hair dressed in an outmoded style, her face so sweet – I knew at once who she was. The late Lady Barbeau beckoned me to her. I put down the book, returned Boozey to his cage and warned the dogs not to eat him. But they were snarling and wouldn’t stop so I picked up the birdcage and went to where she was standing.

  I thought I knew the library well but Lady Barbeau pointed to a book and I pulled it out to find the handle of a hidden door. I opened it and followed her through to another, secret library. Lady Barbeau had disappeared into the darkness and I was thinking she had gone altogether when I jumped for she had her hand on my sleeve, pulling me urgently towards to a wooden spiral staircase. I climbed it after her. At the top she put her finger to her lips and I held my breath for I could hear voices coming from the other side of a curtain. Cautiously moving the curtain aside, I saw Doctor Gallicot leaving Lord B’s bedchamber with a bowl in his hand. Quietly, so as not to cause too great a shock, I went into the room to be greeted by the noxious smell of illness.

  ‘My lord,’ I said, putting down the birdcage.