I, Sofia-Elisabete, Love Child of Colonel Fitzwilliam

by Robin Kobayashi

  ‘Papai, I wish for goose-grog again. Please?’ begged I. But my bitter complaints over the loss of my goose-grog failed to sway him.

  ‘It is your punishment,’ he reminded me. ‘The alternative would be a good flogging with the cat o’ nine tails, so which would it be, drummer boy?’

  ‘By gock, the army this is not,’ mamãe shook her finger at papai. ‘You daren’t tease her in such a coarse manner.’

  ‘But…’ Papai had no sooner uttered a word of protest, than mamãe held up her hand to silence him.

  ‘Now, then,’ she turned to me in earnest, ‘your father will never use the cat on you; for, if he does, I shall use the cat on him.’

  Papai waggled his brows at her. ‘Madam, I wonder if perhaps you meant the wildcat?’

  Mamãe goggled her eyes and pointed her chin at me for some reason, and I wondered why parents must act so silly at times.

  One afternoon, while Maddison, my mamãe’s maid, and I strolled near Quay Street, I observed papai leaving the chemist’s and placing a flask inside his coat pocket. I waved, I jumped, I hallooed to gain his attention, but he acknowledged this hoyden not and thereafter ducked into The Golden Ball for a prime ale – the best thing for his health as he was wont to say. When the time for dinner arrived and we had taken our places at table, I discovered the reason papai had been skulking in town.

  ‘Colonel, where were you this afternoon?’ mamãe inquired with an arched brow. ‘Gadding about as usual?’

  ‘Mrs Fitzwilliam, you are looking at a man who takes pleasure in gadding about.’

  ‘I saw papai gadding about to-day.’ I giggled at papai who nearly spilt his wine on the table.

  ‘Oh? Where was this?’ wondered mamãe.

  ‘Near Quay Street. Papai went to the…’

  ‘My dear Sofia-Elisabete,’ exclaimed papai. ‘You shall ruin my little surprise.’

  ‘What surprise? Oh, tell me, tell me, papai,’ I gazed at him with curiosity.

  Papai gulped down his Madeira, and he became thoughtful. ‘I am now of the mind…to grant your request to learn the drum signals – yes, yes. I shall purchase a small drum more appropriate for your wee stature.’

  I jumped down from my chair with alacrity to kiss papai’s hand. ‘You’re the best of papais,’ I told him. With great tenderness of feeling, he chucked me under my chin. Mamãe bit her lip, and she tapped her fingers hoyden-like on the table, no doubt wondering why papai had changed his mind of a sudden.

  Ere long papai presented me with a small drum and small drum sticks with small buttons on the ends. MacTavish tightened the calf skin head to create a crisp sound. He slung the drum strap round my neck, and he checked the length of the drum carriage, ensuring it rested on my left thigh such that when I bent my knee, the drum balanced on it.

  Equipped with my wee drum, I mastered the drum rolls – faint roll, faint stroke, hard roll, hard flam, stroke and flam, half drag, single drag, double drag, &c. – and the drum signals, including the Rogue’s March, Troop, Retreat, General, Dinner Call and the Taptoo. MacTavish declared me a musical prodigy, a true musitioner, and he taught me the drum beating for the ‘Grenadier’s March’, ‘The Female Drummer’ and ‘Rule, Brittania’.

  Mamãe took great pride in my drumming skills, and she would sometimes ask me to beat the Dinner Call to save our old butler from having to search for papai out of doors, where he sat under his Scots pine thinking those great thoughts of his. Like a true army man, as soon as he heard the Dinner Call, he would hasten within. ‘Where are my pease on a trencher and mighty roast beef?’ he would joke.

  Once, when papai disappeared in the evening and mamãe wished him home, she shook me awake. ‘We need to find your papai,’ whispered she. I rubbed my sleepy eyes, wondering why mamãe seemed beside herself with worry. In the gloom of the night, we drove up and down the streets in our hired hackney, with a window let down, she peering into the dark alleys near Quay Street, I beating the Taptoo – the signal to retire to quarters. Sure enough, papai shuffled out of a public-house. Mamãe told him to get into our hackney, and get into it he did, albeit against his will. ‘I shan’t be henpecked, I shan’t,’ grumbled he. I thought I had dreamt it all. But the next morning when I awoke, papai lay splayed on the ground near my bed, stinking of the wicked liquor. I never did ask mamãe about our nocturnal quest, and I think she preferred that I didn’t.

  With my parents at odds with each other for several days, I turned to spying on MacTavish. One afternoon I hid behind the Scots pine, from where I secretly observed MacTavish flirting with Maddison. He followed her round the garden, beating his drum most passionately and singing ‘Hot Stuff’, an army song. When he had done serenading her about stuff, he issued her a challenge.

  ‘Dance a reel wi’ me, lassie,’ he pressed her. ‘Are ye afraid o’ my Scottish might?’

  ‘Ye doan’t freeghten me wi’ yer wee stuff,’ Maddison replied with an insolent coolness ere she stalked away.

  ‘Viva! MacTavish.’ I jumped in front of him, which made him start. I begged him to show me the drum beating for ‘Hot Stuff’, but he coloured and said I was too proper a young lassie to learn an army drinking-song, and besides, my papai would drumhead court-martial him in the garden if he did. This confused me, when the song rallied the British troops, did it not? ‘Advance, Grenadiers. And let fly your Hot Stuff!’

  ‘MacTavish, did you let fly hot stuff in the war?’

  ‘Na.’

  ‘Did your friends let fly hot stuff?’

  ‘Na, na. Blown to atoms, they were, by an exploding shell.’ MacTavish explained that drummer boys had to assist with carrying the wounded to the regimental surgeon and thus they were exposed to fire on the battlefield. And that is how his young friends had perished and never got a chance to become soldiers. He and his friends had gone to war for the glory of Britain and a’ that, but instead, he had buried what had remained of them. When he became old enough to serve as bât-man to an officer, they assigned him to the Colonel – the Colonel having been a lieutenant colonel at the time – and he has served the Colonel ever since.

  I wrinkled my brow. ’Twas difficult for me to understand how one could lose friends in an instant from a shell. With an inward shrug, my thoughts soon returned to drumming and my wish to be the best drummer boy – nay, the best drummer girl. Now that I understood drum notes and their proportion to one another, and the rules relative to time, I practised the method of carrying the drum while marching a quick step behind ‘Drum-Major’ MacTavish as he strutted to and fro like a coxcomb, marking the beat with a cane that he held high in his right hand.

  One Sunday, as MacTavish and I marched round the garden beating our drums, we nearly stumbled upon papai, who lay sprawled underneath his Scots pine, dreaming with his eyes half-closed.

  ‘MacTaveeshhh, pray lead me to…to…the front door. I do believe the house is backwards,’ papai rose to grip his man’s shoulder. ‘I wish to be at home now.’

  ‘Sir, ye’re at whome, just nae within.’

  ‘Confound your Scotticisms, MacTaveeshhh, I wish to be at home,’ demanded papai.

  ‘Sir, ye’re in Scarbro’ an’ at whome already.’

  ‘No-no-no…impudent scoundrel,’ papai wagged his finger at him. ‘I know a Scots pine when I see one. I dare say I am not within.’

  ‘Exackly, sir.’ MacTavish sighed as he removed his bres drume. ‘Aweel, aweel, did ye meet wi’ Mr O. P. Umm to-day?’

  ‘To be sure I did.’ Papai nodded slowly. ‘He is a great friend of mine.’

  ‘Ay, a raal jintilman that one,’ MacTavish drily said.

  MacTavish led papai to the house, where I could hear papai bellow, ‘A-a-a-aggie, I’m with-i-i-in now.’

  The next evening Father O came to see us, or rather, my papai, the two of them settled in papai’s study for a long while. I had never seen papai brought so low, and it frightened me. When I asked why papai seemed unhappy, mamãe turned grave as a judge, and she motioned for me to sit by her.<
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  ‘Human happiness is transient – it comes and it goes – and such is life,’ advised she.

  This puzzled me. ‘Where does it go?’

  Mamãe became wistful. ‘It goes inside your heart, where you keep it safe, and where you are reminded of it from time to time until you wish for it again.’

  ‘Do things remind you of Elias?’

  ‘Very much so,’ mamãe drew her arm round me. ‘My son died, but I have many a happy memory of him. After I had mourned him, I wished for happiness again when I met you and your papai.’

  ‘Will papai wish for happiness again?’

  ‘Oh, indeed,’ mamãe brightened. ‘We each of us must endure life’s changes with fortitude, faith and prayer. Your papai sometimes forgets this and loses his faith. He may be flawed, but he loves us with all his heart. So “let us God’s word obey, ‘love one another’, be happy whilst we may.”’

  And that is what I did. I waited and loved, I waited and loved, until papai regained his health and happiness. It seemed as though an age had passed ere he could muster a smile or tease me again with a gooseberry kiss. It occurred to me that papai’s gloom was connected to that hateful man, Mr O. P. Umm. ‘Adeus! says I’, because I never wished Mr O. P. Umm to return to our Scarborough abode.

  One morning, after breakfast, papai suggested that he and I go for an airing. While we strolled the sands of the serene North Bay, a bright white arc appeared on the horizon in the thinning fog bank.

  ‘Look, papai, it’s a Scar-bow. Viva! Scar-bow.’

  Papai turned sentimental. ‘Perhaps it portends a new resolve for me.’

  ‘Will you be happy again?’ I wondered aloud.

  ‘O, filha da minha alma,’ he reassured me, the daughter of his soul. ‘Don’t you know – I recently discovered, whilst we sojourned in the old wood, that I have a half-brother and half-sister?’

  My eyes became wide with wonder. ‘Hurrah! How lucky you found them.’

  ‘I guess I am rather lucky,’ mused he. ‘That’s why they call me Lucky Fitzer.’

  ‘Papai, I wish I had half of a brother.’ Methinks I had uttered something clever to make papai laugh for the first time in many weeks.

  As we continued our stroll on the sandy strip, hand in hand, my attention became drawn to the waves nearby that rolled to and fro gracefully upon the shore in a rhythm of their own. Could I ever produce that soothing sound on my drum? Determined to find out, I gathered some twigs, imagining how much softer it would sound than a drum stick. I then recalled the adufe and the seeds that rattled between the two skins. With great care, I scooped up two handfuls of pebbles and crushed shells that papai stored in his pockets for me.

  Once I had described to mamãe what was fixed in my mind, she sewed tiny pouches for the pebbles and shells, and she tied each pouch to a sturdy stick. She gathered the twigs I had brought her, tying them into two bundles shaped like whisks. ‘Let us surprise your papai on his birth-day next week,’ suggested mamãe. Together we practised in secret one of our favourite songs, my mamãe and I singing the beautiful melody while I worked out a unique drum beating using my different sticks.

  The day of my papai’s birth-day having arrived, Father O toasted him at dinner, wishing him many happy returns of this day, and we feasted on dressed lobster and papai’s favourite apple charlotte. When we had done, mamãe beckoned everyone to the drawing room for a musical performance. She helped me with the strap of my drum, whereupon we began to sing ‘Tree on the Hill’, the pebbles and shells creating a pleasant sound on the skin of my drum and marking the rhythm in 4/4 time – p-rum p-tush p-rum p-tish, pa-da dum-dum ta-tishhh, pa-da dum-dum ta-tishhh.

  On yonder hill there stands a tree;

  Tree on the hill, and the hill stood still…

  For an interlude, I switched to the twig whisks, which mamãe had placed on a small table near me. I stroked the whisks in a crescendo roll, followed by a diminuendo roll, bringing to mind the advance and retreat of a zephyr that makes the needle-like leaves quiver on a Scots pine. Papai always said it is then that the wind can be heard. ‘Its susurration is ancient and divine and, for me, salubrious,’ he would explain. He called it his wind music, and he claimed that it inspired many a waking thought for him and that these waking thoughts blended into his dreams.

  And on the branch there was a nest;

  Nest on the branch, branch on the tree,

  tree on the hill, and the hill stood still…

  Using the pebbles and shells this time for a second interlude, I conjured up the crackling of an egg shell as the baby bird secured his freedom and was born, marking his natal day.

  And in the egg there was a bird;

  Bird in the egg, egg in the nest,

  nest on the branch, branch on the tree,

  tree on the hill, and the hill stood still…

  I closed with a good roll using the twig whisks, evoking the sound of a sudden rush of windswept pine needles on the ground. Twwwoooooshhh. And then, slowly, I scratched the surface of the skin of the drum several times with the whisks – tsshk tsshk tsshk – to recall the scattering of a few errant pine needles. Our performance at an end, I removed my drum, and I curtseyed very prettily to my adoring audience of two. ‘Bravo!’ papai cheered me. He hoisted me up to kiss my cheek, and he teased me by tapping my nose with one of the twig whisks. With his shiny eyes and broad grin, he summoned up an earthly happiness, albeit a fleeting one, which did not signify; for, the eternal joy of music was now and for ever locked deep in his soul.

  Chapter Five

  World in the Moon

  MY FIRST ROPE DANCE, thinks I, was with my cousin Anne de Bourgh, whom I called cousin Annie. Papai referred to her as our crazy country cousin, she being an eccentric who lived with Lady Catherine far away in the land of Kent. There, the mother and daughter lived on an estate called Rosings, its manor-house boasting over a hundred glazed windows, its grounds bedecked with parterres and curiously clipt hedges. One day, though, Annie had had enough of Xanthippe, it being the name she used for her overbearing mother, and with cunning and dare, she ran away, escaping somehow in her ladyship’s elegant equipage. And come to Scarborough she did in the beginning of July 1815, for she had convinced herself that she was in love with my papai.

  All remained calm the first evening because mamãe, being a good hostess, made her guest feel welcomed. However, the next day, mamãe departed for Bunberry school to attend to her students, and while she was from home, the quarrels began. They started after dinner to be exact. We had retired to the drawing room, when Annie announced her intent to exhibit for us. With a sigh, papai motioned to the pianoforte and advised her to have at it then. On a sudden, Annie executed a kind of sideways somersault – like a human wheel – where she landed on her hands, her feet high in the air, and she ended the trick on her feet. I thought it brilliant, whereas papai thought it ridiculous – nay, scandalous – and he goggled, as did I, at the buckskins that she wore underneath her skirts.

  ‘What the deuce! Did you steal my buckskins? I shall never wear those again if they are,’ thundered he.

  With a smirk at papai, Annie introduced us to two comical-looking puppets – a girl puppet and a mamma puppet.

  ‘Hurrah! A puppet-show.’ I clapped my hands.

  Papai shook his head in disbelief. ‘One wonders, Miss Hoyden, how long you can hide in Scarborough before Lady Catherine finds you.’

  ‘You daren’t write to my mamma,’ squeaked the girl puppet. ‘If you do, cousin Fizzy, I shall tell everyone our little secret when you mistook me for your chambermaid.’

  ‘Stop calling me Fizzy.’

  ‘By the bye, cousin Fizzy,’ the girl puppet tapped her chin. ‘I cannot help but wonder why “Senga” is embroidered on the inside of your buckskins. I do believe that’s an anagram, a half-palindrome, for “Agnes”, is it not?’

  ‘Confound it!’ Papai coloured a deep red as he strangled the girl puppet. ‘Those were my favourite buckskins that Mrs Fitzwilliam gift
ed me with.’

  ‘Gak…gaaak…gak,’ the girl puppet half-choked.

  Mamma puppet shook her head. ‘Tut, tut. It seems I was in the right, nephew, when I warned you against this marriage to an old widow. Why, she’s at least seven years older than you, is she not? You don’t wear the breeches in this house. For shame!’

  ‘If you weren’t such an old tabby, I would knock you on the head.’ Papai shook his fist at mamma puppet.

  What a hullabaloo it was. Now, believe it or not, papai did not have the heart to send Annie back to Rosings, even after she stole his favourite buckskin breeches and goaded him to madness with her puppets. Nor did he do so after she tossed a handful of quaking pudding into his face, when he claimed that women like her knew nought of life except how to make a pudding. And nor did he do so after she thumped him on the backside with a bed warming pan, when he told her to make herself useful by scrubbing the kitchen-pots.

  I hear you cry, ‘Why ever not, when she’s a little crack-brained?’ What happened was this. The rector, Mr Collins, appeared at our door like a common thief-taker, he having been sent by his patroness, Lady Catherine, to seize her spinster daughter as if she were a common criminal. He stood thus with handcuffs to remove Annie by force from the premises until papai, who felt a thousand pities for his cousin, placed her under his protection, claiming that Lord Matlock, my avô, had decreed it so. Annie, with tears in her eyes, expressed surprise at papai’s show of mercy, and from that moment on, she embraced him as her champion.

  Annie became a member of our family, and she proved to be the best of cousins to me. Together we did many a hoydenish thing, much to papai’s despair. Annie taught me how to turn a somersault, how to stand on my head and how to cross my toes. She taught me the art of mummery, assuring me that our second-rate mummery would bring papai immense pleasure and happiness, and given his wide-eyed wonderment, I think it did. She taught me her favourite songs – ‘Pease Pudding Hot’ and ‘The Jolly Ploughman’ – and we would sing ‘too-ran-nan, too-ran-nan, too-ran-nan nanty na’ all day long, which drove papai to distraction.