An Almond for a Parrot

by Dray Wray

  Rain began to fall, tap-tapping the window pain. Wind rattled the glass and I heard a rumble of distant thunder. When lightning filled the room with its unearthly white light, the rat and I saw shapes hurry from the chamber. A clap of thunder merged with the slam of the front door. A key turned in a lock, a horse neighed and a coach pulled away. Then the only sounds were the rain and rats’ claws scratching on the floorboards.

  I lay there for what felt an eternity, tugging weakly at the ropes. It was hopeless. It was then I thought my wits would leave me as well as my eyes. Again I could see the shape – my shape – on the bed. I felt fur brush past me, up my legs, creep over my skin. I could see parts of myself, and an earthquake shook my flesh. I began to sob as I had never sobbed before. The more I cried, the more I became aware that my own sight was returning to me. I could see clearly a huge rat sitting not far from my face, gnawing the rope that tied one hand to the bedpost.

  ‘Thank you,’ I whispered, and gradually I anchored my mind.

  I pulled that hand free, then the other, but I had lain so long spreadeagled on the bed that my lacerated body was stiff and I could barely move. It felt as if a day and a night had passed before I was even able to sit up and free my feet. With every sound the house made I thought Spiggot and Wrattan had returned to kill me.

  In a great deal of pain, I at last stood upright, whimpering. The rats scurried away as I took the sheet and felt my way down the stairs, clinging to the banisters in the darkness. I wailed when the front door would not budge, but then a flash of lightning guided me towards a kitchen door. I pulled at it with what little strength I had and it opened. It was still raining heavily. Shoeless, and with only a sheet wrapped round my bare flesh, I hobbled down a gravel drive and onto a road.

  Though my feet were cut with the stones I told myself to keep walking, one step after another, one step after another. Through the trees the sky was black, raw with rage and streaked with red. One step after another, and each was harder than the last.

  Further down the road I heard horse’s hooves approaching and I stopped as the silhouette of a rider came towards me. It was too late, I thought. Wrattan has come again and now he will kill me.

  So certain of it was I that I found myself once more weeping uncontrollably and I thought I cared little if I was dead, anything would be better than to be taken back to that house. The horse pulled up sharply, steam rising from its nostrils.

  ‘Who’s that?’ asked a voice that did not belong to Wrattan.

  ‘Help me, please!’ I said, sobbing. ‘Help me. I am from Queenie Gibbs’ fairy house.’

  What possessed me to say that I do not know and at that moment I did not care.

  The rider dismounted. ‘Miss Tully?’ he said. ‘Thank God.’

  Was this a trick? How did he know my name? My eyes ran with tears and still I could not see his face.

  He took off his coat.

  ‘It’s me, Miss Tully, it’s Ned,’ he said. ‘Ned Bird. I’m taking you home.’

  I thought I was hallucinating. Ned had come to take me home? How was this possible? He put his coat round me. I was in so much pain that it was hard to think where the hurt stopped and where I began. Ned lifted me up onto his horse then pulled himself into the saddle behind me. He turned the horse and we set off at a mighty lick. I lost consciousness, dreamed we were flying and felt the world was laid out before me. When I came to myself and saw the lights of the fairy house, I wondered if I was indeed dead, for it looked as if I had arrived in heaven.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  I floated, the torn flesh of me falling away.

  I wanted to say, ‘There is no need for anyone to carry me, I’m as good as a seed blown on the wind.’

  I was laid on a bed. There were other faces, there was Hope.

  She said, ‘Oh, Tully, what have they done to you?’

  I am raw meat.

  A lamb for the slaughter.

  I once lived in Milk Street,

  The brickmaker’s daughter.

  My soul was becoming detached from my body, less concerned with the heartbeat. Let the clock stop.

  There was Queenie. I noticed that she had a new cap. I was hovering near the ceiling and I could see every detail of the lace, it shone so white. She groaned.

  ‘No, Tully, no!’

  I looked for Pretty Poppet, for she wasn’t with Queenie. Of course she wasn’t with her, she was with me.

  ‘Mr Wrattan,’ she said, and put out her hand. ‘He did that to me, what he did to you.’

  I was about to take her hand. There wasn’t much to return to in the bloody sack upon the bed. Nought but pain. But as I looked down at myself, there was Mr Crease, leaning heavily on his cane. And there was Avery.

  Quite detached, I saw him touch me on my wrists, on my forehead, and with every touch there were filaments of light darting up to catch hold of me.

  I couldn’t think why he was there, couldn’t make any sense of it. I watched, riveted, as he lifted the body of me. I was still in Ned Bird’s coat and I wondered why Avery hadn’t taken it off me. He couldn’t. I had become stuck to it, glued there by my own blood. Mr Crease talked to Avery, words tumbled, somersaulting over one another, language losing its ties. All that kept me were the filaments of light that sprung to me from Avery’s touch.

  I was in water, watching as it slowly turned red; thin, wispy lines of blood running together. The sting and the shock of the warm water for a moment brought me down and I loomed above myself, closer to my body than before. I was washed out of the coat and the sheet, they floated away from me, Avery’s hands healing, not intrusive, his shirt wet as he lifted me from the bath. He wrapped me in warm towels and gently dried me. I was on the bed once more and Avery tended to my wounds, his hands kind, urgent, determined to heal me, determined to keep me.

  He said softly, ‘Who would have done this to you, my love?’

  My love. Had I heard him correctly? He said, ‘my love’ and I knew then that I couldn’t leave my body behind, however tempting it was, for without it, how would I know if he meant what he had just said? There must, I thought, be a part of me that longed to have a reason to stay. Perhaps those two words were enough. My love.

  Days slipped into nights, nights slipped into mornings, the endless stitching of time. All the while, there was Avery, constant, caring. Little by little, word by loving word, I returned, eased back into my broken body.

  Often in the nights that followed, I would wake, certain that Spiggot was in the chamber. I saw him emerge out of the darkness and come towards me. ‘I will kill you,’ he said. ‘I will kill you.’

  I always woke screaming, always thinking myself to be alone, thankful to see Avery who would put his arms about me, hold me tight, tell me to take a deep breath and another and another.

  ‘You’re safe, Tully, safe,’ he said.

  I knew the smell of him and, in that space before dawn broke, it was the greatest comfort there was.

  Still the nightmares came without fail: Spiggot waiting in the shadows, standing over me. I dreaded sleep.

  At night Avery took to lighting all the candles in the chamber and sleeping in the chair by my bed, but the image of Spiggot stood solid and haunted the dark places where the lights didn’t shine.

  I thought I might never sleep again. I was exhausted by the ghost of a living man. It’s not the dead we should fear – their souls long to depart. It’s the living that never leave us alone.

  I often woke from the nightmare, drenched in sweat. One night, after Avery had had the bedlinen changed and brandy brought up, I realised that I had to sleep if I was ever to find safe harbour in my mind again.

  I was shivering and Avery said, as he always said, ‘No one will harm you while I’m here, I promise.’

  And I thought, Should I judge all men the same as Spiggot and Wrattan? If I do, what a small prison I would have locked myself into. I have the right to be free, to love and to be loved.

  ‘It’s the chill that sits in t
he heart of me that nothing can warm,’ I said.

  He took my hand and rubbed it, and I asked him to lie beside me, to hold me. I wanted to feel he was there, nothing more. For the next week we slept that way and at last I felt safe enough to dream.

  Queenie came and asked to have some time with me alone. I didn’t want Avery to leave me, but Queenie had on that face of hers, the one that would brook no argument.

  The minute he had gone, she said, ‘Do you think there isn’t a whore, or, for that matter, a lady in this great city of sin, who hasn’t been raped or abused, whether by a man she trusted, or loathed, or was married to? The real question is, how do you survive such an onslaught? Do you let it destroy you, send you to Bedlam? Believe me, I’ve seen some go that way. Or are you wise like Hope? She would tell you it is a hazard of the job. You, Tully, are wise.’

  Queenie was standing in the middle of the chamber and I could almost see sparks of rage fly off her. The fury of the injustice crackled in her every word.

  ‘I had a daughter – you know that. Pretty Poppet was her name. She was my little angel. I paid well for her to be looked after like a princess. She was brought up by a Mrs Inglis, who I believed to be a God-fearing, honourable woman. She ran a little school for girls. Too late, I found out what she was teaching and who the masters were. A gang, the cream of society, broke into Mrs Inglis’ house. They took each and every girl. But the one they gave special consideration to was my Pretty Poppet. She lived less than a day after that. And the worst part was that all those rich men walked free. After all, what are the lives of a few girls compared to the honour of such noble young gentlemen?’

  ‘Wrattan killed her,’ I said, and all Queenie’s rage evaporated, and in its place were the cracks of grief.

  She put her arms round me. I held on to her and we both wept.

  ‘At least you’re not with child,’ she said after a while, ‘and you haven’t got the pox.’ She took out a kerchief, blew her nose and took a deep breath. ‘This, my gal, is your profession and you are at the height of your game. Make the most of it. It’s the only way you will ever buy your freedom from such men as Wrattan and Spiggot. So stand up, show the bastards you are one of Mrs Gibbs’ gals. You are the pride of this house.’ She stopped and a stray tear rolled down her cheek. ‘As Crease said, “You are no hen-hearted girl.”’

  ‘Why haven’t Wrattan and Spiggot been arrested?’ I asked.

  ‘They both have alibis,’ said Queenie.

  ‘What of the coachman who drove us to the house?’

  ‘He said he didn’t know them.’

  ‘So they still walk free?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. Yes, Tully, they do.’ She wiped my eyes. ‘Sir Henry Slater is your champion. He wrote a piece that was published in the London Gazette. He called it “The Great Injustice”.’

  She shook her skirts and dusted down her bodice as if freeing herself from any more unpleasant thoughts. ‘This came from the Duke of H,’ she said, producing a letter. ‘Do you want to read it?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I can well imagine the pomposity of it. It ends our agreement, or rather his agreement.’

  ‘And enclosed is fifty pounds,’ said Queenie.

  We both laughed. Laughter feels so much better than tears.

  ‘I take it the big-busted Miss Dolly Kemp has moved to Pall Mall?’

  ‘You are correct in every detail. All your possessions, including your parrot, were sent back.’ She took my hand. ‘There’s so much to tell you,’ she said. ‘It feels an age since you were here. I now have one assembly a month, with cards, dancing and, of course, little sexual intrigues. Last month we had a full masquerade ball, with musicians and singers. It ended with everyone naked apart from their masks. Tully, you would have laughed at the sights! Lady Montgomery with that round tummy of hers – she nearly smothered skinny Mr Wescott. It was a sight to relish. That’s what the art of pleasure is all about and the fairy house is the only one of its kind. You haven’t seen the Chinese room – all the furniture is Chippendale. It’s so beautiful, a work of art, that’s what the clients say.’

  ‘I want to know,’ I said, ‘how Ned Bird knew where to find me?’

  ‘Mr Fitzjohn hasn’t told you? Well, if it had been left to the duke I doubt whether we would ever have known of your disappearance. When Mr Fitzjohn saw that you weren’t in the theatre with his grace, he was worried, especially as he had seen you earlier, talking to a hackneyed prostitute.’

  ‘Flora,’ I said.

  ‘So I heard,’ said Queenie. ‘Poor, foolish girl. Anyway, he left the theatre and made enquiries outside. In Russell Street he found a flower girl who said she’d seen you bundled into a coach, and it had dark windows. Mr Fitzjohn came immediately to tell us what had happened. Crease and Ned went to Covent Garden and found the yard where the coach had been hired. The stable boy, after some…encouragement, remembered his master saying he was going to Enfield with two gentlemen. Ned spent the rest of the night and most of the following day touring the stews of Covent Garden and St Giles, and eventually heard of another gal who had been taken to an empty house up that way – and survived. She was able to tell him enough about the place for Ned to find it. He hired a horse, and the rest you know.’ Queenie sighed. ‘Mr Fitzjohn came again and again to see if there was any news of you.’

  ‘Have you told him who Captain Spiggot is?’

  ‘No,’ said Queenie. ‘Have you?’

  ‘I can’t bring myself to,’ I said.

  When she left I lay back on the pillows and remembered what Lord B had said when I told him about my clandestine marriage.

  ‘Marrying in the Fleet is the beginning of eternal woe.’

  Never had I felt the truth of it more. The beginning of my eternal woe was Captain Spiggot.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  When sleep wouldn’t come, I talked to Avery in drowsy words.

  ‘Where do you think this hypocrisy began?’ I asked one night.

  ‘What hypocrisy?’

  ‘The hypocrisy of a society that accepts it is perfectly right for men to be rakes, gallants and dandies and to enjoy the liberality of whores, harlots and courtesans, but expects women to stay pure when all they have to put their trust in are deceitful men, who hunt out virgins for their amusement but only want virtuous wives for the marital bed.’

  ‘Is that what you think of me?’ And before I could answer, he said, ‘Yes, you are right. I was a hypocrite. I was prepared to marry the countess, who I didn’t love, and willingly set you on the path to being a whore. It was the act of an unthinking man. I am not that. Could you forgive me, and believe me when I say I have changed?’

  ‘What changed you?’

  ‘In France, I heard people talk of freedom. They argue that it is not God given that women should be subservient to their husbands. I have heard speak of a new order that one day will come, when women will have equal rights with men. I don’t want a passive wife, who doesn’t enjoy the pleasures of amour, who has been educated to be ruled by the whims of society, rather than love and passion.’

  ‘Do you think such a dream is possible?’

  ‘I would fight for it.’

  ‘What happened to the Avery Fitzjohn who said to me that he had the weight of a name, and…’

  ‘I am truly sorry,’ he said. ‘I behaved badly. If I had been an honorable man, I would have taken you away with me after I had seduced you, and protected you.’

  ‘If I remember correctly,’ I said, ‘you were betrothed and wanted a virgin – I suppose so that you wouldn’t catch the pox.’

  ‘Yes, that was the notion, but it didn’t…’

  ‘I think Adam and Eve would have much to answer for in a court of law.’

  Avery laughed. ‘I am being serious.’

  ‘So am I. Adam was a coward – he wanted to taste the apple that his father had told him not to touch. What did he do? He tricked Eve into picking it for him. The snake is just a lie.’

  ‘You didn’t study the B
ible?’ said Avery, smiling.

  ‘No. But I think the trouble began there.’

  ‘And can you forgive me?’

  ‘For what?’ I asked.

  ‘For being a hypocrite. I should have had the courage to tell you what I felt and I didn’t.’

  ‘What did you feel?’

  ‘Don’t you know? I fell in love with you. I think I fell in love with you when I first saw you in the coffee house in Covent Garden.’

  ‘You knew?’

  ‘I wasn’t sure until you bumped into the street-seller. You were so enchanting in your confusion. But when I saw you at the Rotunda, I hardly recognised you. Everywhere I went, people spoke of you and I thought I could offer you nothing, not even my name.’

  I embraced him and that night, with his arms round me, I slept deep and safe.

  When I woke the room was full of sunshine. Avery lay watching me.

  ‘I have lost all sense of time,’ I said. ‘How long have I have lain here?’

  ‘This is the sixth week,’ he said.

  ‘And you have been with me all this time?’

  ‘Yes. I have had to leave you occasionally when you were sleeping but, if the truth be known, I have had no desire to be anywhere else. And, if you would have me, I would never want to leave you again.’

  I ran my fingers through his thick curly hair and remembered the delights of our lovemaking when we first had lain together. Here was the man who had taken not only my virginity but my heart, and still was the keeper of it.

  ‘I thank you, sir, for healing me on the outside,’ I said. ‘Perhaps, by the possession of me, you would heal me on the inside too.’

  He kissed me, a timid kiss filled with desire. Nervously, I stretched out and his hands stroked my body. I took his fingers into my mouth.

  ‘Oh, Tully,’ he said as he kissed my neck.

  I watched him undress, feasting on the sight, and by degrees began to tingle with anticipation. I trusted him, I wanted him – oh, how I wanted him. He was the most beautiful man, every part of him in perfect proportion, his noble member already risen to greet me. He took his time undoing my shift, kissing me all the while