An Almond for a Parrot

by Dray Wray

  Thank you, my sweet Lord B, I thought as they left. I may hang, but at least my daughter will have a chance to be an independent woman.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  One evening in January, the duke and I were at the Rotunda at Ranelagh Gardens. It was a building that made me think, as we approached in the darkness, of an ogre’s lantern, lights spilling from it as if it had been accidentally forgotten and one day it would be remembered and lifted up to light the way to the ogre’s castle.

  In the very centre of this vast space was a fireplace, a stone altar, surrounded on six sides by balustrades, and columns that rose to become armless, bare-breasted women before fanning out to the ceiling. Round the walls of the rotunda were two tiers of booths, a stand for the musicians, and high above them all were arched windows.

  We were seated in one of the alcoves with his grace’s friend, a young man, Mr Luckham, who was recounting how he had recently parted from his mistress.

  ‘I took her to Italy,’ he said. ‘And one day we visited a palace where there was a lion in the courtyard. I paid for a viewing and we were shown into a chamber and from an open window had a good sighting of this most furious of beasts. When my mistress dropped her glove from the window, she told me that as I had often said I would do anything for her, now was as good an opportunity as any to prove I was sincere by retrieving it.’

  The duke was finding Mr Luckham’s story most amusing and it was while he was distracted that I noticed the French lady I had seen at the staging inn on the road from Bath. She was dressed in the most ridiculously tall wig that had in it a basket of blown glass flowers. With her was her daughter. A thin, startled deer of a creature, she was wearing a shepherdess’s costume that made her seem very young. Then I looked again, for if I wasn’t mistaken, they were accompanied by Lord Frederick Fitzjohn.

  ‘Well, dammit,’ said Mr Luckham. ‘I went down to the courtyard with sword in hand and unlocked the gate. I stared that lion in the eye, and he backed off. I retrieved my mistress’s glove from within a foot of the lion’s paw!’

  The French lady, her daughter and Lord Frederick Fitzjohn took the booth behind us. The French lady possessed a penetrating voice so that it was near impossible not to overhear every word she had to say.

  ‘I have told you, Angelina, the engagement must be broken, tout de suite.’

  ‘Maman,’ said her daughter, ‘let us not discuss it in the presence of Lord Fitzjohn.’

  ‘Pouf!’ said her mother. ‘Who better knows the problems that we face than his lordship? Sir, do you not agree? This impediment to the marriage has been going on too long without resolution. It is ridiculous and makes us a laughing stock. I will not have it, he is nothing, he has no title, no fortune.’

  ‘But, Maman, you know he is studying to be a physician,’ said the girl.

  ‘Your grace is right, by gad,’ said Lord Fitzjohn. ‘I shouldn’t speak ill of my brother but…’

  ‘Miss Truegood,’ said Mr Luckham, seeing that he didn’t have my full attention, ‘would you demand the same of the duke?’

  ‘I would not, sir,’ I said.

  ‘You see – here is a good woman. Do you know what I said to my whore of a mistress? I said as I returned her glove, “Madam, I have done this to show you that I am true to my word and henceforth I want nothing more to do with you.” How could I have any feelings for a woman who put so little value on my life as to expose me to the fury of a lion for a paltry glove?’

  ‘Well said, sir,’ said the duke, who was laughing so much that he had tears in his eyes. ‘Doesn’t that amuse you?’ he said to me.

  I smiled but said nothing, for I was still in part listening to Lord Fitzjohn’s annihilation of his brother’s character.

  ‘We will walk,’ announced his grace, and what his grace wanted to do, we all did. We went round the Rotunda, ostensibly to admire the paintings by Canaletto, but really so that everyone might admire his grace.

  We had reached the musicians’ stand and a fair crowd had gathered round us when, to my horror, Lord Fitzjohn hurried up and for one terrible moment I thought he had recognised me.

  But he gave a deep bow and said to the duke, ‘It is a pleasure to see you, your grace, by gad, it is. And who is this ravishing creature?’

  Lord Fitzjohn looked straight at me, his eyes resting impolitely on my low-cut dress, his indecent thoughts flashing clearly in his eyes. Finally remembering the party he was with, he introduced the French lady as the Duchess de Vauquelin, and her daughter, Countess Angelina.

  La duchesse, a small woman made taller by the wig, was trying and failing to look down her nose at me.

  Waving her fan, she said, ‘Madame, was it not you I met on the Bath Road?’

  I curtsied. ‘Indeed it was, your grace,’ I said.

  ‘Then I have to thank you for paying my bill. Are you the wife of his grace, le duc?’

  ‘Maman!’ said the young countess, sensing the question was inappropriate.

  ‘No, your grace,’ I replied, staring into her face.

  She surmised the situation and moved to shield her innocent daughter from the influence of a fallen woman. Although I was better dressed than her and may have looked like a lady of quality, her nose had sniffed out that I was not. She called Lord Fitzjohn, who was deep in conversation with the duke, and he was reluctantly forced to return to his party.

  I longed to leave, and just as I was thinking that the only comfort to be taken from this embarrassing scene was that Avery was not present, to my utter horror I saw him enter. Quickly, I turned away and went to stand with the crowd that was listening to the music, interesting myself in the programme, until the duke found me and reprimanded me for leaving his side without his permission.

  ‘I have a headache, sir, and would like to return home,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not yet awhile.’

  And we walked round the Rotunda with the unavoidable outcome of meeting Avery Fitzjohn. He was speaking to the countess when we neared their party. She had her eyes fixed on him and it was clear that she adored him.

  Lord Fitzjohn introduced Avery to the duke, and the duke introduced me to Avery.

  I examined him discreetly. He had lost the sparkle from those beautiful blue eyes that I once would willingly have fallen into for ever. It was as if something hung too heavy on him. A maudlin sadness overcame me as I remembered myself when I had first lain with him, the pleasure he had given me, the joy we had found in our lovemaking.

  We walked in a party, round and round. To start with he was far away from me and Mr Luckham was telling the story of the glove and the lion to Lord Fitzjohn. As is the way with parties that walk in circles, eventually I found myself alongside Avery. The closeness of him brought on a physical ache. I longed to touch him, to tell him I loved him and I always would. Even though the remembrance of his kisses sent a delicious tingle through me I was saddened to know I had lost him. His voice, his manner, told me that his feelings for me had died.

  ‘How are you, madam?’ he said.

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘And you, sir?’

  And so we took our places to commence the dance of false conversation, for everything I said there were a hundred other words I would have spoken, but such truths polite society avoids.

  We left shortly after. I sat in the carriage with the duke, silent, which was the way he liked me best.

  Suddenly, he said, ‘You know, I think that silly fluff of, thing will in the end be persuaded by her maman to marry Frederick. He’s far more suitable. The brother’s damn good-looking but you can’t base a marriage on looks. What was his name?’

  ‘Avery, I believe.’

  ‘No, la comtesse will marry Lord Fitzjohn if la duchesse has anything to do with it. His half-brother’s had long enough to sort out the problem.

  ‘What problem is that, sir?’

  ‘I’m not certain,’ he said and yawned. ‘Some impediment to the marriage. God knows why anyone would want to marry. I hope to avoid it if I c
an. No, a mistress is much to be preferred. You can always hand her in when she grows too old; a wife you have until death. The law sticks you together and together you remain.’

  ‘What impediment?’ I asked.

  Why are you interested?’

  ‘I’m curious, that is all.’

  ‘Like all women,’ said the duke. ‘I heard that old Fitzjohn put a clause in his will which resulted in his legitimate younger son being disinherited in favour of his illegitimate older son. Why the old fool would do such a thing, God only knows. His mistress – Frederick’s mama – who became Fitzjohn’s second wife, was one of the most scheming women I’ve ever had the misfortune of meeting.’

  ‘Is she still alive?’ I asked, staring out of the window, overwhelmed by sadness for Avery, and for myself.

  ‘No. And I’ve had enough of this conversation. My mind is on other things.’ The duke put my hand on his erect weapon. There it was, that smell that I loathed. ‘Come here,’ he said, pulling up my petticoats. ‘Have you ever been ravished in a chariot?’

  I thought of Avery, of the skill of his lovemaking, of the clumsiness of the duke’s.

  ‘Sir, I am not feeling well,’ I said.

  ‘Nonsense. I pay for you, remember? When I need you, I need you.’

  His grace had already undone himself and he pulled me onto his lap so that his weapon found aim and quickly fired.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  I had, by the end of that month, moved out of the fairy house into more suitable lodgings, as the Duke of H put it, in Pall Mall. I had asked him if I could take Ned Bird with me but he wouldn’t hear of it. I tried to explain why I needed him. His grace raised his bejewelled hand to silence me.

  ‘No,’ he said, firmly. ‘All connections must be severed. I will it so and so it will be.’

  Rich and fashionable society has, as far as I can see, little breadth to it and even less depth, being on the whole obsessed with itself and itself alone. Its sport lies mainly in scandal, its nourishment comes from gossip, and it is hard to imagine how society would pass its days without them.

  Shortly after I moved, the duke commissioned a portrait of me by one of society’s most eminent artists. It showed me in a white shift, leaning on the arm of a chair with my hands together, a string of pearls over my right shoulder and my left breast exposed. I stared out of the canvas with a soft smile on my full lips, my cheeks rosy, my hair pinned but not powdered. His grace was delighted with the results.

  ‘There isn’t another face like yours,’ said the duke, who prided himself on being a connoisseur of everything fashionable. ‘Don’t you agree?’ he asked his friend Sir Henry Slater, who I’d met at the fairy house the night I was still innocent, the night I’d first loved Avery.

  ‘I declare,’ said Sir Henry, ‘even if Miss Tully were not a beauty, her style would always attract attention. As would her keen intelligence.’

  To the fury of the artist, copies by good, bad and indifferent engravers were made and sold so my image could be bought in many sizes, some so small as to fit into a snuffbox. Now I was recognised wherever we went.

  I found Sir Henry entertaining company. Unlike the duke, he had no desire for me to sit silently in front of him – far from it. Wit and conversation was what he craved. He once asked my opinion of what might happen if the Duke of H should become king.

  Without too much thought, I replied, ‘There would be a revolution.’

  Sir Henry was the only person to lighten the ever-increasing boredom of the shallow life I now led. Gossip, bibble-babble. Fashion faux pas strangely held the same weight as the scandals that went on behind bedroom doors. The duke was forever recounting dull stories, embarrassing moments in society. These amused him no end.

  One involved the Duchess de Vauquelin. He had been playing cards with her one night and she had lost badly. Her face aglow, she put her hand to her forehead and in doing so dislodged an artificial eyebrow made of mouse fur. Unnoticed by its owner, the eyebrow began, by degrees, to slide down the coating of powdery paint on her face.

  ‘How we laughed,’ said his grace. ‘Including the duchess, until her daughter pointed out what had happened. She hasn’t been seen in public since.’

  I thought, this is what kills you in the end: mindless prattling, stupidity that eats away at your very soul.

  Time passed and I became less sure of who I was. I saw myself more and more as an actress playing a part – the wordless part of a courtesan.

  In April, a month that is neither governed by spring nor ruled by winter, the duke held one of his more intimate dinner parties at his house in St James’s Square. It was for a small circle of his closest male friends. They had one characteristic in common: a great interest in themselves. I had hoped that I might be excused, for I hadn’t had an opportunity to invite Hope to Pall Mall and longed to catch up with all the news from the fairy house. His grace, though, was insistent that I attend the dinner. Among the guests were Sir Henry Slater, Mr Luckham – he of the glove and the lion story – and Lord Frederick Fitzjohn.

  He was hoping to become betrothed to the Countess Angelina.

  ‘The damn countess would be mine,’ he told us, ‘if it was not for my brother. He is all that stands between me and a fortune.’

  I wasn’t acquainted with the last guest, a young rake who went by the name of Selway.

  The duke’s idea of an informal dinner party had all the informality of a state occasion. Under a crystal chandelier, the long table was laid with the finest glass and china, and footmen lined the walls. I, being the only woman present, was the first to enter that evening. I saw her standing on the table in her stockinged feet, wearing nothing but a shift. She was about sixteen years of age and around her neck was a noose. She was trying to attach the other end of the rope to the chandelier. I knew no one else could see her and wondered which of these gentlemen had unwittingly called forth this unhappy spirit.

  As we took our seats, she looked wildly about and kicked a plate from the setting in front of Mr Luckham, sending it flying to crash loudly upon the floor.

  ‘How strange,’ he said, I didn’t touch it.’

  A footman hastily picked up the pieces and a new plate was put before the startled gentleman. As usual, I sat, not speaking, watching as more and more wine made its way round the table. All the while the girl skilfully tiptoed among the plates.

  Mr Selway said, rather too loudly, ‘I hear, Miss Truegood, that you have a pearl hand.’

  I smiled and said nothing.

  The ghost was unpinning her hair so that it fell over her shoulders. She now moved among the dishes that were being served and, to my amusement, rested her hand on the duke’s wig. He shuddered and demanded that more coal be put upon the fire for the room had a chill to it.

  The meal was over, and I had risen to leave the men to their port when Mr Selway said, ‘You didn’t answer me, Miss Truegood. Is it true? Do you have a pearl hand or is it only a myth?’

  To my utter surprise, the duke said, ‘Tully, why don’t you show the sceptics here what you can do with just one touch?’

  ‘I am sorry, your grace…’ I said.

  ‘Show them, woman. Come on, I demand it. Who wants to volunteer?’

  There was a moment’s silence and then I suggested Mr Luckham for the ghost was standing behind his chair. She looked at me and smiled.

  ‘Very well,’ said Mr Luckham. ‘I’m up for the sport but I wager you will have no success with me. I am made of firmer metal than you, your grace.’

  ‘I will bet ten thousand guineas that Tully will do it with one touch.’

  Mr Selway said, lazily, ‘I will bet double that she cannot.’

  The atmosphere had taken on a more serious quality. Such hefty wagers brought with them a certain sobriety.

  ‘Sir,’ I said to the duke, ‘this is not wise.’

  ‘Not wise,’ he repeated. ‘And who, pray, asked you for your opinion?’

  I positively hated this man, and I’d had mor
e than enough of being thought of as nothing but an empty-headed doll.

  The duke asked where I wanted Mr Luckham and if he should be seated or standing.

  ‘Seated,’ I said, and pointed to a spot furthest from the table where everyone would have a good view.

  A footman duly put a chair there and Mr Luckham seated himself. I knew what I was going to do and I doubted that it would end well. If the fools wanted amusement, I would let them have it. I stayed where I was on the other side of the table and began to will the spirit to be visible to all in the room.

  ‘By Gad,’ said Lord Fitzjohn. ‘How long does this nonsense take?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the duke, impatiently. ‘I don’t remember having to wait so long. What are you doing standing there? Go to him, Tully.’

  I didn’t move.

  ‘Come on, madam,’ said the duke. ‘You must…’ He stopped, for there she was, for all to see.

  There was a gasp.

  ‘Where the hell did she come from?’ asked Lord Fitzjohn.

  ‘Quiet, man,’ said Mr Selway.

  The girl knelt beside Mr Luckham and, speechless, he stared at her as if trying to remember just how much wine he had drunk. She undid his breeches. No one at the table dared breathe.

  ‘It’s a ghost,’ said Sir Henry. ‘How amusing.’

  ‘Silence!’ commanded the duke.

  Mr Luckham, his voice trembling, said, ‘Mary…’

  The spirit began to sing:

  Mistress Mary,

  Quite contrary,

  How does my garden grow?

  ‘You remember me,’ she said, ‘Your Mary.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Mr Luckham.

  ‘You remember…

  With Silver Bells,

  And Cockle Shells,

  And so my garden grows.

  ‘You was going to marry me, you were. Remember all them fine words you spoke? Promised you did, if I would ride your cock horse. You ain’t forgotten? And I, all innocent, believed you to be an honourable man.’