Ace, King, Knave (11 page)

His mother didn’t stand for such gammon. Any cull who tried it got a sound milling from the bullybacks and was never admitted again – never, even after he’d cleared himself, in case he should take it into his head to return with rough friends. A little note on perfumed paper, offering to enlighten his family as to his habits, sometimes greased the way, especially if his father was a pious old moneybags who might cut him out of the will. Every girl of Kitty’s made it her business to coax such intelligence out of her culls and have it written in Kitty’s book. That might be worth ten guineas to her, should the information ever be used.

Even if the rogues paid up and never came back, there were always new cheats. Romeville was full of them as a dog of fleas. Still, this fingerpost and his mort seemed harmless. They’d asked nothing that could set her up for a touch.

She said, ‘But Sammy, you can read.’

‘And write too. What of it?’

‘And the Corinthian can read and write, can’t he? Don’t make him a flat.’

‘God rot your Corinthian,’ said Sam.

‘
My
Corinthian? What’s up, Sammy? I thought you and him was trusty.’

‘Never mind him. He’s gone. It’s you and me, now.’

For weeks afterwards she thought about going back to the autem, sitting down to her slate, until so much time had passed that Betsy-Ann would’ve been ashamed to explain herself and anyway, the autem mort probably thought she’d toddled or died. In those days Sam still had all his fingers. Had Betsy-Ann known he was about to lose one, she’d have gone back no matter what. She’d be far on in reading and writing by now.

The Curse of Scotland flies out from the deck and skids across the table. Betsy-Ann’s growing tired and cack-handed. She shuffles again and sings:

She kissed him and lay with him

Down in the valley

And then said the young maid

O when shall we marry?

To hell with Johnny and his true love. Let’s have something more like it. She digs a fingernail into the deck to mark the position of the ace and begins slowly, carefully to plant the books.

Moll of the Wood went to the fair

To see what pleasure and pastime was there.

She met with the drummer, he being just come,

She learned to beat on his rum-a-dum-dum.

Pleasure and pastime! Give her a sporting cull that’ll lay down a bit of cash, not a Darling Johnny who tastes the goods and runs for the mountains at the first whiff of trouble. She moves the books faster: three shuffles and she has them lined up. Ace, king, knave.

Knave of Hearts.

It’s no use, she can’t settle. Betsy-Ann lays down the cards and goes to the window where the sky shows iron-grey. The starved sapling rooted in the gutter of the house opposite is bent over to one side, like a schoolboy about to take a whopping.

This is what she dreamed of, all the time she was with Kitty: a ken of her own, nothing too fancy, just an upstairs pair with a stout lock on the door. Upstairs is more private, and not so hard on the windows: it’s months since these were last starred by a stone. The sash frames are stuffed tight with rag and the place is snug. What a joy, then, to have a hearth of her own with an unblocked chimney! There’s a bucketful of coal standing ready and a pan of lightning, with sugar and cloves, warming before the fire. Mrs Samuel Shiner should be like a cat in catnip, shouldn’t she?

Instead of which she’s like a bitch with the itch. She goes to the cupboard and opens up the inner door. No. Close it. No, have a look, there’s nobody to know.

She finds and opens the white leather box. O, the sweet satin shoes, embroidered fit for a duchess! She looks down at her feet: Betsy-Ann has a big foot for a woman. The shoes were made to her size, but if she once puts them on, they’ll stretch and lose their freshness. Better keep them as they are.

The ring, though; she might wear that. If Sam asks, one of the kinchin-coves brought it in. Her finger slides snug inside the gold band and the coral heart sits so pretty, so innocent. A child’s ring.
A
pretty fam deserves a pretty fawney.
One time, the hand was sweet as the ring, on the large side but soft-skinned, a graceful shape. Her fingers are coarsening with all those shirts she scrubs for Sam. She should’ve worn this before, just put it on as if it was nothing. He wouldn’t have known.

She takes an earring, black pearls and gold, and tries its wire in one of her lobes. It’s some time since she last wore any and the hole is shrunken. She licks a finger, moistens the skin and pushes hard. Like something else: lick, push, in you go. Somebody should write a song about it:
The Goldsmith’s Prentice and His Lass.

O no, my dear prentice, this never will do

Your wire is too thick, it cannot go through.

My sweet, said the prentice, Pray leave it to me . . .

She’d like to make a rhyme with
key
but can’t be bothered. The inside of her ear-lobe feels enormous as she tries to guide the earring through it from front to back; she imagines corridors inside there, dead-ends of flesh glowing with pain, red like your hands when you cup them round a lantern. She won’t give up. She closes her eyes and twiddles until the earring is in place. Seen in the mirror, the throbbing labyrinths she has been probing are nothing, just a slice of skin. The other earring passes through without trouble.

Betsy-Ann admires herself. You’re not so bad, mort. Your eyes and those pearls. Pleasure and pastime. She’s still young enough. If she moved the stock out of here, on the quiet, she could set up elsewhere.

And what of Sam, working with Harry Blore?

She takes a deep breath. Harry won’t seek her out and if Sam carries on like this, he’ll be in no condition to. She could set up afresh. Betsy-Ann stands motionless, picturing it.

16

Their shameful flight from Bath is the most abominable journey Sophia has ever undergone or – she earnestly prays – ever will. Before they are five miles out of the city, a storm breaks. The coach is buffeted about by wind, the rain finds its way inside and soaks into their clothing and at one point the accursed thing founders in a miry lane so that she is flung forward and hurts her hand and everybody, including Sophia, has to get down and break off branches to put under the wheels. Throughout this operation Titus wails like a damned soul and is savagely commanded, by Edmund, to ‘cheese it’, an expression his wife will not condescend to correct.

After this misfortune they continue on their way, Sophia’s pelisse and gown plastered with mud as far as her knees. Each time she shifts position – which, since the coach is insufficiently cushioned, is often – she must struggle against the wet garments swaddling her legs. For all his impatience in directing Titus, Edmund insists on the boy sharing the coach with them rather than sitting with the coachman. This reduces the space available for stretching out, and at times her discomfort is so intolerable that Sophia gives way to a few wretched and unprofitable tears. Her husband sits opposite, arms crossed and his hat pulled over his face. It is impossible to tell whether he is sleeping or merely shamming.

It seems an eternity (how she feels the force of that hackneyed expression!) before they stop at the Blue Ball for refreshments. Though barely awake, the landlord rakes up the fire, plies the bellows with zest and invites the couple to settle themselves at a table nearby while Titus and the coachman are taken into the kitchen.

Edmund orders an adequate but not extravagant breakfast. Sophia, on the watch, detects no inclination towards lavish spending: perhaps his ‘bubble’ is, after all, nothing but rumour.

But why, in that case, this furious dash to London? Has he suffered a loss, as she first imagined? Or is it that he has no intention of sharing out his gains? This last thought is more discomfiting than any amount of damp and dirty clothing. Not because she covets the spoils, whether honestly or dishonestly won – and if there does exist a young fool who has been
bubbled
, Sophia would gladly restore every penny – but to come by a fortune, and keep one’s wife in the dark . . . ! What, then, will he do with it?

Ah, but he may not be in possession of his winnings. What has she been imagining? Even the stupidest young coxcomb does not bring with him to the tables his disposable lands, farms, horses, mortgages, everything in short that is not entailed to keep it out of the clutches of gamesters. Most likely Edmund has a note of hand. He is not yet the caterpillar gorging on another man’s sustenance, only the egg shortly to hatch into one.

‘Edmund,’ she says.

He turns towards her and as he does so, the landlord brings a lamp to the table where the Zedlands are seated. The light falls upon her husband’s elegant features and Sophia starts: he is pale and haggard, hardly the exultant victor. She is touched, despite everything, with an unwilling pity; she had intended to confront him with the business of the ruined heir, but all she can find it in her to say is, ‘You look exhausted, love.’

‘No doubt you are more so,’ says Edmund, civilly enough, ‘and I’m sorry for it.’

He appears to have come out of his sulk. Sophia is encouraged. ‘Shall we take a chamber and have our things dried? Wet clothing is so bad for the health.’

Edmund checks that the landlord is out of earshot before replying, ‘We shouldn’t stay too long. Some innkeepers are in league.’

‘With who?’

‘Tobies.’

‘Tobies ― ?’

‘Is that what I said?’ He seems amused. ‘I’m tired – I talk nonsense. I meant to say that the longer we stay here, the greater the risk of meeting with uninvited company on the road.’

‘Very well.’ She cannot refrain from adding, ‘Would we not have been safer travelling the next day? There are always people going to London. Perhaps some of them will put up here, if we wait a day or two, and then we can all go on together.’

‘They won’t come this way,’ says Edmund. ‘We’ve branched off from the high road.’

‘Then we must tell the coachman to go back.’

He shakes his head. ‘We left it on my instructions.’

Perhaps through lack of sleep, Sophia seems to see her own life, once just such a straight and open road, buckle and twist before running off crazily into a forest. Where will it come to an end?

‘Husband,’ she says at last. ‘I came away from Bath without leave-taking or explanation, just as you wished. Now you have gained your point, would it not be better if you were quite open with me?’

‘Ah,’ says Edmund. His expression is a curious one, part pity, part satire; at least, so Sophia interprets it. She is careful to keep her voice steady and reassuring as she pushes on: ‘My dear, your own good sense must prompt you to frankness.’

‘At this precise moment, Sophia, it prompts me to sleep.’

‘And
I
wish you to sleep. Soundly, without cares. All I ask, as your loving wife’ – at this instant she scarcely feels the love of which she speaks, but let that stand – ‘is to share your burdens.’

He flashes her a bitter little smile. ‘You think so now. I believe most wives are glad to be spared the trouble.’

‘But try me, dear. Try me.’

‘I have affairs, Sophia, in which I must depend entirely on myself. Were you more experienced in the ways of men, you’d understand that.’

‘Certainly,’ says Sophia, summoning her courage, ‘I shouldn’t wish to keep bad company, or to be corrupted. I shouldn’t wish these things for you, either, Edmund, and if you were in some scrape, in some debt, I hope I might be your rock in time of need ―’

‘You are that already.’

‘But you tell me nothing!’ she cries. ‘How am I to support you – to be your wife?’

‘You’ve done well enough until now.’ He lays a hand over hers. ‘And I flatter myself you find me to your taste.’

‘Yes, but I wish to be your companion in
everything
, Edmund. There’s more to marriage than bedding together.’

‘Is there? You may open your thoughts to me as much as you wish, and yet never be married. There’s a deal of cant talked about esteem, and so on. The rights conferred by marriage are of two kinds, the physical and the fiscal.’

Sophia stares at him, wondering if he can possibly mean what he says. ‘I can’t believe, Edmund, that you would ever hold such a view. It distresses me that you can propose it, even in jest.’

He yawns. ‘Then you must blame the laws of England. When did you last see two persons marry, merely in order to converse? What did we vow in church? With my body I thee worship, with all my wordly goods I thee endow.’

‘But there are also other vows ―’

‘Imagine us unwed, chaste and respectable. We may walk and talk together, we may even share out our property in common and still be respectable, provided the world is convinced that I never fish your pond.’

‘
Fish my pond
?’ She snatches her hand away from his. ‘You speak like a libertine addressing – an unfortunate.’

‘Is that so?’ He bursts out laughing and then, with a wink and an attempt at wit deeply repugnant to Sophia, demands, ‘Pray, which of us has purchased the other?’

Despite everything she can do, her face reddens and puckers and her eyes brim. She strives to overcome it, as a man might, for Sophia knows better than to trust to tears. As a child, she learned that a crystal drop trickling down a pretty face could melt the hearts of adults, but alas! the pretty face was not hers: Sophia is of the tribe of the red-faced, snot-nosed blubberers. She saw the difference between her treatment and that meted out to her cousin Hetty, and understanding it, despaired. Now, weak and ugly before this beautiful man, she suffers as acutely as she did then.

‘My aim was to amuse, not to wound,’ Edmund says with an edge of impatience. ‘You are too sensitive, you are indeed.’ He again touches one of her hands, stroking the back of it, while Sophia’s fingers lie unmoving under his. Plainly he forgot his company, but the thought brings no comfort, for where could he have imagined himself to be? A tear escapes and drops onto the inn table.