by Sara Collins
Her eyes scuttled away from me, and she dangled my old dress away from her like a caught rat. ‘Dress yourself, then. And, lest you mistake me, girl, I don’t want to have to admonish you again, regarding heathenish dress.’
‘I’m not a heathen,’ I said.
The smile curdled on her face. ‘That’s not for you to judge.’
Back in the kitchen, she took down a bowl of apples and sorted through them for a tart. ‘Who would just tip a woman onto somebody’s doorstep? Hot off the ship. A gift! A havey-cavey business, if you ask me. It might be done, perhaps, in dark places, it might be done in far corners of the earth. I wouldn’t know.’
Mr Casterwick looked up from polishing Benham’s hessians, wrinkled his brow. ‘’Tis done here, too, however, Mrs Linux,’ he said. ‘It’s been done. I have heard of it.’
‘It is a dark practice.’
‘Well, but you’ll admit there are dark things done in England, too.’
‘I’ll admit no such thing!’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t suppose it needs you to be admitting it for it to be taking place.’
I felt like a shaved cat without my serge. The linsey dress smelt like camphor, buttoned all the way up to my chin, closed like a fist around my throat.
But I didn’t have time to dwell on it. Charles came downstairs to say there’d been a commotion at the front door, early as it was: that colonial had thundered into the hall, demanded to see the master, and told him to bugger his British manners when Charles had said the master was not at home. He’d been ready to toss him onto his backside, but Mr Benham had heard it all and come down anyway. The news that Langton was in the house split me like an axe-blow. My chest pounded. It shames me to say it now, but I thought he’d come back for me.
The library door was closed. I clutched my rag, and pretended to wipe at it, one ear cocked against the wood. Their voices knocked against each other like bricks being laid, low at first, then Langton’s came louder: ‘. . . you tossed me to those fucking lions!’
‘. . . the same delusions of martyrdom . . . nothing.’
‘You still condescend to me as if we’re schoolboys.’
‘. . . still . . . behave . . . as if we are!’
Listening brought me back to my last time in there. Swarmed with questions. I’d asked if he would turn me out if I didn’t answer.
‘Well, you must do what you want, of course.’ An amused look had crept onto his face. ‘Though sometimes it’s easier to do a thing by convincing yourself you’re being forced. As you would know.’
Had there been any other path, I wouldn’t have gone down the one of appeasing him. But the truth is I was stuck, terrified of being out on the streets alone. I had to tell him something, though my answers were never fast enough or good enough.
‘We have a common object, girl.’
‘I wouldn’t presume to have anything in common with a man such as yourself, sir,’ I said. They never notice when you give your modesty a double edge.
I told him he’d find all of Langton’s methods easily enough in Langton’s book, but he already knew that to be a lie.
He gave me a look. ‘He could have produced a beautiful book of skulls instead of all that gallivanting about with skin. As soon as he saw sense he managed to lose all his specimens.’
Oh, Langton never saw sense, I thought. He was hell-bent on nonsense, right up to the end.
‘Perfectly awful,’ he said, ‘about that fire.’
‘Perfectly awful,’ I replied.
Defeat ate at me, soured my stomach. I listened for a long time, yet heard not a single word about me. The tall windows marched away down the long hall, black and silent under their yellow drapes. Those were the soft bars of my prison. My head felt empty and cold. I had already worked the skin off my fingers. Nothing stretched ahead of me but more of the same. And then what? What became of a mulatta maid in London, when her fingers grew too crooked for carrying pails?
A throat cleared behind me, and I spun around, startled. Madame.
‘Could there be anything going on in there worth spying on?’ she said, tipping her head towards the door. She wore a grey morning gown, with lace and seed-pearls stitched across the waistband, hair hanging loose as the drapes. I tugged at the stuff dress, pinching where it was supposed to be loose, hanging where it was supposed to pinch, billowing around my hips, like sheets pinned out to dry.
‘Sorry, Madame,’ I said, not knowing what else to say.
‘I do not believe you are.’ She laughed, and that jerked my head up in surprise, almost drew a laugh out of me in return. ‘I see your Mr Langton has come back at last,’ she said.
He’s not mine. I wanted to ask if she knew whether he’d come back for me, or what was to happen to me, where I could go. I wanted to shout, How could he leave me here? Too many thoughts crowded my head and smothered each other, so I said nothing. Silence threaded itself between us. At last, she smoothed her palms down over her skirt. ‘Well. I must go in there and be presented to him. No choice.’
‘No,’ I said, shook my rag, turned back to my cleaning. ‘Me neither.’
She laughed, and leaned towards me, with such a warm sweetness on her breath, whispered right into my ear: ‘Faith, as you say, there’s small choice in rotten apples.’
CHARLES PRUITT, manservant of Mr George Benham, sworn
A. Mrs Benham was always gadding. I said nothing, while she lived. But it can make no difference to her now. Gaming halls. Unsavoury places, you know. She disguised herself. Breeches, jacket, flat cap. No, I wasn’t comfortable about it. There were times I wondered should I say something to the master.
Q. Did you?
A. I was caught between the two of them, you could say. I conveyed her, and brought her back, and any more than that was not my business. I ‒
Q. Yes?
A. It’s just ‒ I did once take the pair of them, the prisoner and the mistress, to a gathering of blacks, in some tap-room off Fleet Street. I heard talk that it was Radicals the mistress was mixing with, towards the end, though I can’t say yea or nay to it. Also, I did at one time convey her to an address on Gant Street to meet a Mr Cambridge, Laddie Lightning he called himself. The pugilist? I’m only sorry I did not say something to the master after all, seeing how things turned out.
Chapter Fourteen
February weather drove us down to the kitchen like rats to a hole. Two Saturdays after I arrived, Linux made a fruit cake with raisins for Benham and allowed us a small piece each, and then Mr Casterwick said he would bring his fiddle out, and Pru and Charles set a row of lighted candles down the table, which made it seem festive, though we were just as worn from that day’s labours as any other, and the room was musty and dim, and still reeked of salt and old mutton fat. The cake made up for it. Golden and sweet, and no matter that I knew only too well how the sugar was made, I couldn’t resist it. I’d drawn my own chair near the door, where I could watch Charles and Pru bicker and carry on, and I let a raisin melt sweet on my tongue, rested my head against the wall. I felt that small measure of ease you get from music, the same as from reading, and the flames flickered low under the stove, giving off a good warmth.
Then, Mr Casterwick’s bow scuffled, came to a stop. When I looked up, I saw Madame, hands flat on the door frame on either side.
‘Mr Casterwick, you play? I didn’t know. I didn’t know.’ The French way she said it sounded like, No. I didn’t no. No, no, no.
Linux thumped down her sherry. ‘Were we disturbing you, Madame?’
‘Oh, no! Non. Not at all! Not at all! It’s . . . My father . . . he plays the violin. Played. Please.’
‘I’m sure I won’t be playing what you’re accustomed to, marm,’ said Mr Casterwick.
‘It’s the violin, Mr Casterwick! Whatever you play will be a lament.’
Some of the cheer left the room, for a mistress among her servants is like a fox among hens: no one knew whether to sit or stand, and even the cat slid out from under the
table, shook its backside and nosed out through the open door. Mr Casterwick kept glancing up and losing his place, violin clipped between shoulder and jaw. Linux got up, poured another glass of sherry, cut a slice of the cake. She brought both across the room and set them on the table, swooping her hands above the plate like sea-birds.
‘Where is Mr Benham, Madame?’ she said.
Madame ignored her, gazing about as if she’d never seen the room before, and perhaps she hadn’t: the lady of a house like that never has cause to visit her own kitchen.
‘The master, Madame?’ Linux repeated.
She laughed and shook her head. ‘That is a very good question, Mrs Linux. I suppose you know as well as I do.’
Linux straightened, dusted her hands. ‘Well. Here’s a bit of cake. Shall I send Pru with it, upstairs?’
Madame crossed the room to where the bellows hung on the wall beside the dresser, bent to peer into the baskets of turnips and onions that Linux lined up below the work-bench, and the locked drawers of knives she kept there. Linux watched her, then went back to her place and clamped her hands together in her lap, all the while casting suspicious looks at the rest of us as if we were the ones responsible for disturbing her peace.
Madame returned to the table, forked up a bite of cake. ‘Delicious! But that goes without saying, Mrs Linux.’ She spoke brightly, though she appeared unwell, hair clinging to her brow. She didn’t look at any of us, but closed her eyes and took up another bite, and we all gawped at her, the music suddenly too slow and too loud in the close room. When it seemed that she would chew for ever, she suddenly clattered fork to plate, and clapped her hands together. ‘We should be dancing!’ Pru and Charles blinked in confusion, as if she was speaking Turkish, but she waved them onto their feet anyway, swept them into the cleared space, then came towards me and held out her hand. ‘Frances? It seems we are a man short. You or I must play the breeches role.’
I jerked backwards.
Kiii, it was like being slapped. First, a moment of nothing, then the lightning inside. I remember worrying about the sticky damp that prickled under my arms from beating rugs out against the hawthorn all afternoon, whether I’d smell sour with it; worrying about my calluses that would no doubt feel rough as sackcloth to her, and about where to put my eyes. But then there wasn’t time to puzzle about any of it, for she took my arm and pulled me into the cleared space, and Mr Casterwick tapped his feet and made his bow sing. There wasn’t space for more than a hop and a gallop between table and dresser, and there was nothing in me but held breath. My chest was tight with it. Our knees bounced the table and jostled the chairs. When Pru happened to knock one over she shook with laughter, and that made the rest of them laugh too, and Madame smiled around at everyone and looked pleased.
We latched hands, and I kept my eyes down, watched their feet, copied what they did. It was some English music the rest of them knew, and they stepped together, touched hands, made bow, then curtsy, then bow, like they were speaking some language I didn’t understand, and left me always stumbling two steps behind.
Linux sat tall and straight, flicking her eyes over each of us in turn. Now and then she took small, sucking sips from her glass, twisting her face like a squeezed-out rag. Not even that could dampen my mood. I felt my ribs swelling as if they’d split my chest. Music spilled around us, and the floor was loud under our feet, and we laughed and danced. The four of us forgot ourselves, if only for that hour. No one at Paradise had spoken to me much, let alone asked me to dance. So that was a measure of happiness, being part of their dancing. Forgetting time, forgetting the house, empty and silent above us ‒ forgetting all notions of who we were supposed to be to each other. Four people, dancing.
Langton once told me that when the English soldiers rounded up the obeah men in Jamaica, after Tacky’s rebellion, they experimented on them. Tied them with shackles, prodded them with electric machines and magic lanterns, gave them all manner of jolts and shocks. It must have felt like thunder going through their bones, or pops of lightning cleaving their skulls. When they could no longer stand it, they were forced to admit that the white man’s magic was stronger. The white man is the measure of all things, and of all things the measure is the white man.
That was how I felt when we latched arms.
Oh.
No matter what any moment holds, memory makes of it either nothing at all, or unending terror, or ceaseless grief. All I have left of that night are flashes of her diamond ear-bobs, the swells of her moving against me like tides, the feel of her, like a taste I couldn’t get out of my mouth.
Chapter Fifteen
English winter is a season of dying things, of long waiting, and wool-thick skies. Underfoot the crunch of gravel, the wet slip of frost turning to mud, a meshwork of rotting leaves and damp grass. It was into such an afternoon that Pru and I were sent out the following day.
Linux had found us at the table, cutting old sheets into tinder to fill the boxes. Madame had flown the coop, she said, tucking chin to neck, like a skewer to a joint of pork. She was likely in the park, and we were to go down ourselves, the pair of us, and see if we could fetch her back in time for Lady Catherine’s morning call.
Pru said we should go our separate ways, for many hands made light work, so we separated when we came to a fork in the path. As soon as I was away from her I quickened my feet, heart keeping pace. The park that day was a stew of carriages and foot passengers, boiling in the fog. I soon came to a quieter part of it, a small garden leading down to a stand of elms, where mist hung white as milk, the air as clouded as my thoughts. Winter showed on the trees also, rough peeling aprons of black bark, and curling moss. After I came to the end of the path there, I saw her ahead. Wearing her black spencer, skirts flaring red beneath it, head tilted, dark hair swinging below her waist, hands gripped behind her. Something about her called to mind the image of a bird beating against glass.
I wiped my mouth, made my way towards her. When she heard me, she swung her head. Her eyes bright and wide as the eyes of a doll. Indigo-painted cotton. She smiled. ‘Oh! Frances. I’m so glad it’s you. I am tired of being hauled back by Charles.’
My own smile stumbled out and I followed a little behind her as we walked, struck so dumb with wanting to amuse her that at first I said nothing at all. Before I could, she was speaking again, saying she couldn’t imagine me learning to read in such a dreadful place, and I understood that she’d been talking about Paradise for several minutes.
People always ask the same question, wondering how I could’ve been so taken up with novels, there of all places. They blame me more for reading through it than suffering through it, I think. Novels are heresy, in their opinion; man creating man, no need for God. But how could I not read? I always want to ask. How else would I have survived it? What would you do, sitting in a dark, locked room, if someone brought in a lighted candle? I’ll tell you. You’d read your single copy of Moll Flanders over and over until you’d oiled the pages thin from your fingers. ‘It was a wager,’ I said abruptly. ‘Between your husband and my – between Mr Benham and Mr Langton. They wanted to see whether I could be taught.’
‘Oh!’ The wind shuffled her hair. She crossed her arms and gave a little shiver. ‘They made a wager of you, and then a gift? How perfectly awful of them. But sometimes they can be perfectly awful men.’
I coughed. I couldn’t speak about Paradise, but I couldn’t be silent either. ‘Books were my companions,’ I said at last, raising my voice above the wind sweeping the leaves and her skirts. ‘And I am grateful I could learn something, no matter how I came to do so. It was a way to know that lives could change, that they could be filled with adventures. There were times I pretended I was a lady in a novel or a romance myself. It might sound foolish. But it made me feel a part of a world that otherwise I could never belong to.’
I stopped. We’d come to the end of the path, I could see the gates that would lead us back to the street, black railings staked into the cobblestones, an
d Pru standing there waiting for us. I felt I’d made a fool of myself, but I’d also felt weight spilling out of me. My head going light. The memory flying into it of that other weight, wriggling in my hands. I’d thought to forget it, blot it like an error on a page. But everything a body does is still there inside it, even under all the time that bleeds over it.
I jumped in my skin. The memory seared my mind, like a kipper held in a hot pan.
When I looked up, she was watching me. ‘I know that feeling,’ she said. ‘Though I think the point of reading is not to feel more a part of the world, but less. To take oneself out of it. On paper, everything can be hammered into shape, though the world is shapeless.’ She reached up to hold her hair back. The wind knocked into her, made her seem to be swallowed by skirts and hair. ‘The trouble with writers is they spend their lives trying to lie to themselves.’
Mist suffocated trees and sky and grass, made everything so cool and quiet, like we walked under water. Two women passed us, turned and wagged their chins, and suddenly I didn’t know how to answer her. My throat closed like a fist. So, I started back, towards the gates, with her following me.
‘What did they speak about, in the library, after you went in?’ I asked, at last.
‘Nothing. Nonsense.’ She laughed. ‘Themselves. Nothing of any consequence, in other words.’
Here is another beginning. The moment I realized that the sensation she stirred in me was a feeling of wanting. Unlikely. Unnatural. Impossible. Because the thing I wanted was her.
There was a fair just beside the gates, I remember, and the three of us walked through it. Chestnuts and cider spiced the air; boards covered with paper spoke of mermaids, two-headed men, fire-eaters. Tops spun like wind. We stopped to watch a tightrope-walker, a rat frisking across a shorter rope strung beneath him. From a tent to the right of us, a man led an elephant tied with a length of hemp. An elephant! I’d seen a picture of one before, in a book written by a naturalist. But reading about something can never be the same as seeing it. The grey leathery wave rearing up and up, and then the quiet crash, the giant-legged curtsy. The people at the front hopped backwards, made a show of bringing their hands up to their mouths, shrieking laughter. Some people love to be frightened in a crowd, tossing fear around like a hot potato. ‘Step up! Step up! Ladies and gentlemen!’ the man cried. ‘All creatures, little or large, fall under man’s dominion!’