Wild

by Nathan Besser

  Inside Warbleton House, I noted the ornate yet crumbling ceiling roses, the candelabra sullied with yesterday’s wax, misalignment in several frames and the flagrant presence of scullery maids going about their business. Rich, yes, but not like Uxbridge with his expertly run, whisper-quiet Wren-designed rooms. The Lemons’ home had a curious, troubling quality, that after some time wondering over it, I realised was best described by the equally troubling word, warmth. I looked about me, trying to pinpoint how exactly this quality was exuded: to the askew portrait of Lemon himself snuggled between two elder Lemons, to Cumquat and Aubergine roasting by the fire (their two snoozy hounds), to the frayed tapestry on the firescreens, to a father’s blind love for a son desperate to avoid it.

  Scottish are as you would expect them; fat, incomprehensible and at least one in every four eyes lazy. No matter what came out of the Baronet’s mouth, he both sounded and looked like a hot, whistling kettle. His feet pointed outwards and his wife, Lady Lemon as she was called, had more the comportment of a cook than a lady, with a puffy décolletage the mottled red of crabshell. She moved about the room like a drunkard, colliding into people or furniture and muttering my my or hee hee. Astley, however, had boarded at Oxford since a boy and he wore a patch on his coat to ensure the world knew of it.

  ‘I only have one question regarding your military service,’ asked I to Astley, as we each took a snifter from the butler’s passing tray. ‘Is a lieutenant and a leftenant the same thing?’

  Astley looked upon me blankly. ‘It is the same rank, yes.’

  ‘Whit say ye, Gentlemans ay the Juries?’ Sir Stephen called, making a gesture as though he were gathering clouds. ‘Stud Poker or Brusquembille?’

  Astley groaned.

  The Baronet looked to me. ‘Lit uir esteemed visitor choose.’

  I bowed. ‘I couldn’t impose.’

  Lady Lemon’s arse played a discordance upon the harpsichord. ‘Hee hee.’

  ‘But we insist. Maybe Quadrille or Lanterloo?’

  I bowed again. ‘Very well, the last one.’

  ‘Lanterloo it is!’

  The name of the card game seemed to summon phlegm in the Baronet.

  ‘You can’t play Lanterloo without Isobel,’ cried Lady Lemon. ‘She’ll never forgive you.’

  ‘Mahh Lady Lemon,’ said the Baronet with conspiratorial grinning. ‘We uir entertaining.’

  ‘Oh my, a young lady will do no harm.’

  ‘Gentlemen,’ apologised the Baronet, to us four. ‘Mah dochter adores Lanterloo.’

  ‘Prithee,’ said I. ‘I am new to the game. She can be my instructor.’

  ‘Gregory! Sit th’ table fur seven.’

  A few minutes later the doors were opened from the centre by an unseen force. The twelve candles on the hall table were obscured by the bell of her cherry-red dress, the enormity of which only served to highlight the slenderness of her frame that was laced tightly in a rising symmetry of knots. I couldn’t say that her hair was red, because it wasn’t, it was a colour I’ve only seen in polished copper cookpots swaying on hooks in morning sun. Nor could I say her hair was coiled – or straight, for that matter, for it was somewhere between the two extremes, and voluminous enough to cover her back and shoulders and fall tremulous and suggestive past her bosom, which from my position I couldn’t decipher the stage of development. Her name was Isobel. Where was Orkney?

  The Earl of Aylesbury gave me a conspiratorial elbow. The Baronet’s eyes went weak for his daughter, visibly retreating into the wet cavities of his head. The other two men – an elderly banker, Marmaduke, and another Scotsman whose name I hadn’t gleaned – hungrily swirled their viscous ports. Astley was bored, so sheathed and unsheathed a show-sword, repeatedly.

  Her nose was small and her lips were incongruously different, the bottom large and bulbous, the top non-existent, and in keeping with family tradition her cloudy emerald left eye moved at half the speed of her slightly pellucider right.

  Unlike the rest of us, the hounds Aubergine and Cumquat were unashamed in their interest, leaping to their mistress, nibbling at her fingers and pushing their snouts into her dress. She bent down, thumping their backs.

  ‘Back to your fire now,’ said she, cajoling her dogs, which in her Scotch was more like beck ti yerr fyrrre narrr. They lumbered reluctantly back to their place, slumping snout between paws.

  ‘Uir guest, Mr Wild,’ said Sir Stephen, ‘needs instruction.’

  ‘What about five-card Loo,’ asked Isobel, clapping her hands delightedly. ‘Or division Loo?’

  ‘Standard Lanterloo,’ said Astley.

  ‘Very well, plain old Lanterloo.’

  We took our places around the velvety table, Isobel’s chair drawn slightly behind my own. We were beneath a pair of sconces blazing with the loose, haywire, smoky brightness of candles burnt almost to their wicks, and in this dancing, discombobulating glow I noticed that Isobel’s small nose had a soft freckling, a speckling not dissimilar to spots on a near-rotten citrus.

  ‘Chips ur at a shillin’ per pair,’ said Sir Stephen. ‘Agreed?’

  There was a grumble of assent and the men pulled out their purses.

  ‘I’m entirely in your hands,’ said I, handing my purse to young Isobel. ‘Bet as you will.’

  ‘Uir guest has an unfairrgh advantage,’ giggled the Baronet. ‘Isobel. She has a knack fur th’ Pam …’

  Astley rolled his eyes, crossed his legs, and threw ten shillings to the table.

  Cards were flicked around the table and without looking, I handed mine to Isobel, who eagerly rearranged them.

  ‘You’ve almost a Mouche, I suggest we revoke,’ she whispered into my left ear.

  ‘My thinking exactly,’ said I.

  There was a tinkle of ivory chips, an assortment of suspicious eyes. Words were spoken that I couldn’t understand, followed by silences and the crackly swallow of sherry down throats. I stared at the table but concentrated on the closeness of Isobel, of which there was little, for her presence was entirely in the game.

  ‘You’re mighty looed, Lemon,’ said Marmaduke.

  ‘Bold stand,’ said Astley, doing something with his cards.

  ‘Play on.’

  More chips were reluctantly thrown.

  ‘A moment to confer, please,’ said Isobel, leaning in. ‘May I bet a handsome amount?’

  ‘How do you assess the risk?’

  ‘Marmaduke and the Baron Guernsey are out, my brother is looed. But it will be close with Daddy.’

  ‘Bet it all, Isobel. Bet it all.’

  She smirked evilly.

  ‘I defend miss,’ said Marmaduke, the dealer.

  ‘Bold stand,’ said the Baron Guernsey.

  ‘Flush,’ said the Baronet, laying down mostly royalty. ‘An’ ah doooubt thar lies greater.’

  ‘Mr Wild,’ said Isobel, poker-faced, ‘is yet to draw.’

  She pulled the middle card from our overlapping hand and flicked it to the table, followed by four more, gliding into a splayed arc. The men snorted, took up their empty drinks. Sir Stephen tittered proudly before pushing a pile of cascading chips towards me.

  We were as good as alone. The old banker Marmaduke was in the room, but he was liquored into the arm of the Chesterfield, a wellspring of spittle slowly rising in one of the leather dimples. Isobel – or Izzy to her brother (the diminutive calling to mind dizzy, fizz, itchy) – sat on a low stool near Cumquat. There was a pile of old pamphlets sitting near the fire, and presently she lifted one, leaning both her elbows upon her knees, and tore strips that she launched towards the fire. The flimsy paper combusted mid-air and went dancing orange up the chimney.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ asked I, as though only now aware of our intimacy.

  ‘Setting fireworks,’ replied she, indignantly.

  ‘Fireworks?’

  ‘It’s November fifth.’

  ‘I had entirely forgotten.’

  ‘Every year I beg to assist in the preparation. My parents for
bid it.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Our groundsman once went kablooey,’ she furthered, showing me an explosion with her fingertips.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Astley is an expert with the powder, though. There’s no danger.’ She stewed upon the injustice, continuing to throw paper onto the fire like letters of ill-fated love. ‘Is it true what they say of you, Mr Wild?’

  ‘I pray you’ll have time to form an opinion yourself.’

  She fidgeted, first smoothing her skirts, then patting the dogs.

  ‘Isobel,’ said I, observing her discomfort. ‘Watch this.’

  I stepped to Marmaduke the banker and tickled his nose with a cushion tassel. He moaned like a hurt cat and rolled his eyes.

  ‘Shhh,’ I cooed, patting his shoulder, and he was out again.

  ‘Mr Wild!’ she reprimanded, unable to suppress her giggle.

  ‘Isobel,’ said I, opening my hands to her. ‘When may I call on you again?’

  ‘Mr Wild?’

  ‘I’m tired of acting the man. With you I might be a boy again.’

  She rubbed rhythmically at the nearest dog’s ear and its corresponding hind leg pumped the air. ‘I believe the fireworks will be ready.’

  ‘If you agree, I shall request permission from the Baronet to call on you. But you must first agree.’

  She turned to me. Her ginger brows were folded into a frown. ‘But Mr Wild –’

  ‘If you refuse me,’ interrupted I, ‘it will be my heart that goes kablooey.’

  After a weighty silence, she gave me a quick and unromantic triple nod. I knew the Baronet would never agree. Isobel Sacrifice Imelda Lemon was destined aside a man like her brother, with a handsome commission and peerage stretching back centuries, a man with breast medals and an ancestor who didn’t wear underpants.

  We walked awkwardly through Warbleton House and out to a rear lawn, where clouds sidled slowly above, gaps wide enough to catch a distant twinkling. Astley was on one knee, examining a rocket, with his father and two men commentating.

  ‘Angled law, Astley. Tay law.’

  Astley paused to glare at his father.

  ‘Braw, braw,’ allowed the Baronet. ‘It’s yer show.’

  I watched Isobel take a lone place on a settle-bench, her hands like well-behaved children, sitting one each knee.

  ‘The honours?’ asked Astley, handing me a flame. I looked at Isobel.

  ‘Your sister,’ responded I, ‘would, I’m sure, be more delighted.’

  I watched Astley approach, Isobel briefly acknowledging me, then taking the lucifer and laying it carefully to the fuse before her father could protest.

  She returned to her bench, sitting straight-backed in time for the first whistling pop to explode in the sky, illuminating the lawns and rectangular hedges in green, yellow and gold. The blackness became a drifting smoky slate that was punctured again and again by new and more brilliant pinpoints that launched outwards with the smooth, even velocity of a struck shuttlecock, fulminating into a surging net of colour. I’d never seen anything like it. There were parrot-plumage blues, union-flag reds, wet turquoise greens, all surging heavenward. I couldn’t help but make the conclusion that God had made creatures that had surpassed their inventor’s skills at inventiveness; for I could predict God’s miserable narrative, but never could I predict this.

  But it was the small upright figure on the settle-bench, which, with each repeated starburst, revealed the scale of this magnificence. She was startled by an early detonation and the sky filled with a spray of chemical white that hurt the eyes to observe. Isobel then leaned far enough back to reveal her milky neck, her hair burnished even brighter and her two little eyes hungering innocently for the (not so innocent) world.

  WILD

  I buy some French candies and am engaged to be married

  February 1724

  I had come to complain about Bessie’s continual collecting of cats about my rooms.

  ‘You’re no longer a whore in Dirty Lane,’ said I, at the entrance-way to a room she called her office.

  ‘There are more pressing matters, Jonathan,’ she jibbed, looking over her eyeglasses. ‘How will you respond to the Lord Mayor?’

  ‘Two cats were fighting over a milk dish on my new sarcophagus. Do you have any idea how much –’

  ‘What sort of a fool buys that ridiculous –’

  ‘’Tis an investment!’

  ‘If you’re going to make an investment, make it in a considered answer to our new Lord Mayor, George Merttins.’

  ‘I have enough of this with Carrot and Silver. Now you too? And besides, I’ll have you know, I’m inveigling nicely with a well-connected lord.’

  ‘Which lord is that?’

  ‘The peerage of Orkney.’

  ‘Orkney?’

  ‘Aye, Orkney. The Lemon family. Connections in banking and … the fireworks industry.’

  A stray ginger with white slippers and missing tufts jumped from the window and tiptoed circles on Bessie’s desk.

  ‘To what purpose, Jonathan, are you buttering the peerage of Orkney?’

  ‘Bessie, have I ever let you down? Trust, my dear. Now, which do you prefer?’ asked I, holding up two collars. ‘For inveigling.’

  She let out a moan. ‘The Lad is sitting in St Clement’s Roundhouse. Under Nibblo. Who authorised this? Was it your doing?’

  ‘There were witnesses. It’s done.’

  ‘You’re not answering my question.’

  ‘Everything in this city is my “doing”.’

  ‘Why didn’t you consult me, Jonathan?’

  ‘I wasn’t aware I had to consult you for every decision I make.’

  She sighed. ‘The Lad is an asset. He is loyal, skilled and, most importantly, loved. I can’t understand the purpose of –’

  ‘I have no time for arguments.’

  I sneezed violently and my pistols rattled. I pulled out a handkerchief; creamy silk with burgundy monogram (T.T.G. for Thief-Taker General).

  ‘You see what these cats are doing to me?’ said I, wiping at my nose.

  ‘Sheppard will know he didn’t commit it,’ continued Bessie. ‘Why would he take two spoons from a Charing Cross tavern when he is skilled enough to take fifty from the King’s kitchen?’

  ‘We have our quotas, Miss Lyon, and they must be filled.’

  Bessie groaned and rubbed her eyes.

  ‘I’m going to insist,’ said I, ‘that the Mayfair house be completely feline-free. You can have this place to yourself. I’m also thinking we’ll need a newer cabriolet …’

  Hell-and-Fury appeared at Bessie’s door, hat in hand, with Quilt following soon after. Both were panting.

  ‘Miss,’ gasped Quilt. Upon seeing me, he bowed. ‘Excuse me, sir.’ Hell-and-Fury tugged him on the arm, and he removed his hat.

  ‘Miss, have you heard about The Lad?’ Hell-and-Fury asked.

  ‘He is being held by Nibblo, Miss,’ added Quilt. ‘Nibblo can’t be bribed.’

  ‘We are doing what we can,’ replied she, sympathetically.

  I sneezed again, twice. ‘Boys, the coach readied,’ said I.

  ‘Aye, sir,’ said Hell-and-Fury. ‘T’where?’

  ‘Warbleton House. Sir Stephen Lemon, Baronet of Orkney.’

  The sky was clear as we drove first via Piccadilly to a candy store owned by the Frenchman Cassis de La Rochefoucauld, purchasing a dozen hardboileds shaped like itching monkeys, individually wrapped and set in a tin box lined with silk, then to the old vermicelli dealer who, after some dispiriting conversation, provided me with an array of imported delicacies – moulded cheeses, salamis, preserved fruits – inside a cane hamper. Finally, on Shaftesbury, at a whim I bought a bouquet of the finest fake flowers so Lady Lemon might never forget the kindness.

  From the fine interior of my new Felton & Hatchett carriage, with its brass-riveted leather, velvet drapery, elm spokes and burnished sconces, I looked to the crowded streets – the barrow boys, the kn
ife-grinders, the fishwives, the sedan-runners, the milkmaids, the piemen, the box-sellers, the mud-cleaners – each and all hurrying about their dismal occupations. Ten years of their income couldn’t buy a single box of such candies. But I wasn’t going to pity them; my concern was not a small one and it relied upon the pitiable.

  Upon my carriage’s ingress to the Warbleton estate, a bunched cream curtain on the second floor divided to reveal a single eye. The sun struck the glass a deep afternoon orange, and momentarily, Isobel’s hair was aflame.

  ‘You weren’t long at tea with Father,’ said Isobel, surveying the Warbleton grounds. The three-tiered hedges fenced us into a lawned rectangle. In the centre of the poorly maintained fountain, three stone babies dribbled outwards.

  Despite the chill, she had taken off her stockings to walk barefoot over the cut lawn; little clippings were visible between her toes. The possessed Lanterloo expert I had first met was now apparently affronted by what I could only deduce was me. Her cheeks and the neck below her ears had a splotchy flushing. We sat on the grass and she hugged her knees.

  ‘You’re his Queen,’ said I.

  ‘Both Astley and I,’ said Isobel after a moment, ‘care more for tradition than our parents.’ The skin of her nose rippled.

  ‘I’m not sure I understand.’

  ‘No matter.’

  The belly of the sun touched the horizon. Within a few minutes we would be called to sup. The tin of candies sat between us.

  ‘Isobel,’ said I. ‘Isobel.’

  She refused to look at me.

  ‘Will you not try even a single of these candies?’

  ‘What did Father say?’ replied she, pushing the candies away. ‘Tell me, I implore you. Am I to marry you or not?’

  ‘Such a matter would never be decided so swiftly.’

  ‘He’s taking it under consideration?’

  ‘What is your opinion of it?’

  ‘My opinion,’ said Isobel defiantly, ‘is that I shouldn’t have an opinion. Why does Astley get his wife chosen for him according to title and worth, yet when it comes to me, they’ll consider …’