The Remedy: A Novel of London & Venice

by Michelle Lovric

  When the Venom of a Malignant Fever assaulting the Spirits, Stupefies, and almost strikes them Dead; these generous Alexipharmacks (timely and frequently exhibited) inspire new Vigour, shake off the deleterious Copula, and so sometimes snatch the Sick out of the very Jaws of Death.

  Now he has all the time he wants to spend with his red-headed ward.

  He takes Pevenche to see Mrs Salmon’s Waxworks in Fleet Street, but she grows peckish before viewing half the figures there. At Don Saltero’s Coffee House in Cheyne Walk, while she consumes hot chocolates and egg-flips, he finds his eyes prefer to wander the room and its many curiosities. Don Saltero’s boasts two hundred and ninety-three unusual exhibits, ranging from a nun’s penitential whip to a whale’s mummified pizzle. His ward is mercifully silent at the important act of consumption. Then he hears her drain her final glass with audible satisfaction and ask to be taken to the Chelsea Bun House in Jew’s Row “just for a taste.”

  Three buns later, his ear bruised with her prattle, he invites her to see the beasts in the zoo at Tower Bridge, where she shows little interest in the tigers, wolves, eagles, and Indian cats, but demands to remain until the four lions devour a dog who until the very moment of his dispatch sits serenely in the cage with them, exchanging pleasantries. This grisly spectacle appears to give Pevenche a prodigious appetite for lamb cutlets. He is disconcerted when she asks him to cut them up for her.

  “Baby P. don’t dare touch sharp knives,” she informs him in a lisping whisper. “And the cutlets are so very large for her little mouth.”

  That mouth, slicked with grease, works fast and furious over the cutlets, paring them to Hansel-like bones in short order. And then she is ready for a pudding of apple and blackberry with sweetened cream.

  Tom always laughed about her feeding so enormously. He encouraged her to great feats of consumption: He could make anecdotes of them later. The girl concurred, it seemed, partly to win her father’s brief attention, but also because of a natural inclination to gluttony. While she was cunning, she did not seem to understand the trap into which she had fallen. If she refused the mountains and valleys of food, if she shed some of her bulk to become less of a grotesque—why, then she might even have been appealing. But Tom had cruelly, thoughtlessly decided on her course, and there was Tom’s temper, hung on its hair-trigger, to be faced if she disappointed him. She did not have to be a coward to be passive.

  Sickened by the death of the dog, Valentine touches nothing on his plate. He wonders if the actress has been to see the zoo. He thinks of how he would have covered her eyes with his own hands if she had witnessed the poor hound’s demise. At the thought of her translucent eyelids he closes his own and departs mentally into memories of intense pleasure.

  Pevenche is tugging his sleeve. “Where are we goin’ now, Uncle Valentine?”

  They see the dwarf Count Boruwlaski performing his diminutive prodigies at Carlisle House and the midget Corsican fairy in Cockspur Street. Later they stroll in Vauxhall Gardens for a study of the grand ladies’ dresses but she’s soon urging his elbow in the direction of the Ham Room for a slice of meat so airy that one can read a newspaper through it. It’s said that the master carver is so skilled that he could cover the whole garden with the tenuous shavings from a single joint. Pevenche consumes enough of them to line a large carriage. He takes her to the more exclusive Ranelagh Rotunda where she is not at all interested in the gilded porticoes and rainbowed ceiling but only in the regale of bread and butter, and afterwards persuades him to divert to Knightsbridge so that she may yet again sample the sweet Asses’ Milk purveyed by Madame Cornelys, the Venetian society hostess now fallen upon hard times. Valentine looks with interest upon the vivacious but withered hostess, wonders if she is personally known to Mimosina Dolcezza. The lady herself has eyes only for Pevenche, who has consumed a quart of the sweet white froth and claims, as usual, that it has utterly renovated her appetite. The professional wits of Valentine Greatrakes try to configure what strange powders have gone into thickening the brew, and how sick it will make his ward.

  But Pevenche appears to have a cast-iron belly to go with her steely will.

  For some reason he cannot rejoice in this sturdy constitution and finds himself wishing, shamefully, that Pevenche might be taken ill and put to bed for a good long time, and not just because it would thereby excuse his attendance upon her.

  And in the meantime, he could perhaps send some of his quacks to her, and do something about that appalling carrot hair.

  The next time he sees the actress it is on the arm of Gervase Gordon, Lord Stintleigh, the Member for Hearthford. The man is rumored to be tangential to the circle closest to ultimate power. He’s already served as Foreign Secretary and it is said that in his current nameless position his portfolio has been, if anything, enhanced.

  Valentine has come across the dandified wormcase before: For the man has intervened on several occasions with petty bylaws against the free-traders, in a manner that shows an intimate knowledge of their ways and means. They have also met across various polished tables: Lord Stintleigh serves on some of the same committees as Valentine does; they are both active members of the Society for the Reformation of Manners, the Repression of Mendacity and the Prosecution of Felons. These organizations supplement the efforts of those overworked parish constabularies whom in daily life Valentine spends a great deal of ingenuity in thwarting. He sees nothing strange in this dichotomy: For no one in London has as much to gain from protecting his property as Valentine Greatrakes. Except perhaps Lord Stintleigh, whose motives for serving are undoubtedly corrupt. These days the politician has risen above such petty committee work, and is no longer heard of in connection with certain scams and rackets. The man has sanitized his connections. It seems that power has proved more attractive than the short-term gains of smuggling.

  He despises Stintleigh already. And now the pink-skinned sight of him, walking from the theater with the smiling actress on his arm, strikes a cruel blow to all the softest parts of Valentine, so that he staggers away into the shadows and sinks to his knees on the begrimed footpath. The couple pass him, chattering, sniggering, never deigning to lower the line of their sight to where he hides his head mumbling like a gin-soaked beggar. He catches a few words of Stintleigh’s highfalutin burble. The politician has an unnaturally high voice: He trills like a girl, only speaks from the teeth out. He is complimenting Mimosina Dolcezza on her performance and refers to another he once enjoyed in Vienna.

  “Enormously,” he bleats, cocking his eyebrows in ironic exaggeration, like a comedic villain. There is something insinuating even in that single word.

  Valentine’s eyes swing to the face of the actress: He sees a pure complicity there, an intimate species of smile, a smile that he had thought reserved for himself. It takes a lump clean out of his heart.

  So they have met before! The actress knew the politician in the shadowy life before the one she now shares with him. Valentine feels no inclination and certainly lacks the strength to rise from the gutter even as their shadows follow them around a corner and they disappear.

  Self-pity wells up at the final glimpse of the impeccable cut of Stintleigh’s greatcoat. No doubt the work of the family’s tailor. No doubt the cost of it was not even discussed, merely billed discreetly in copperplate on manilla some months afterwards, for the rich always grow richer by trading on their credit.

  It is a gift that comes along with their other blessings.

  No riches have ever flowed upon Valentine with such insensibility. Can the actress have somehow divined this fact?

  Occasionally, he knows, he lets slip a word of dubious provenance, a lapse into the Irish, or St. Giles’ Greek, or Pedlar’s French, the copious dialects of the criminal classes. He uses them without irony—unlike a true gentleman who might play at them—these strange words made classical to his ears by long use. She cannot discriminate so finely: They must seem to her, he thinks, some kind of blue-blood patois. She would not know—how c
ould she?—the difference between his conversation and that of the weasellish Gervase Stintleigh.

  Could she?

  So now he is doubly thwarted of the comfort of his love, of his peace of mind, and this time the odious creature, Stintleigh, is to blame. The part of Valentine Greatrakes that calculates revenge like a scrupulous tax collector is now raking through the tokens in his mind.

  The hot red haze of ire eventually departs. Reason, the best friend of efficiency, cools his mind. At this point, too, his natural optimism also breaks through. Valentine Greatrakes will give happiness every last chance, even on a forced march to Hell. He tells himself that the possibility exists that this is a mere single occasion, that Stintleigh wants only to refresh his knowledge of the Venetian scene with the innocent chatter of the little actress, who might unconsciously let fall something of interest. After all, she would be easy to lure into trust, as he knows himself.

  He tells himself that after a decorous supper in some public place, Mimosina Dolcezza will return to the bed he has widowed, and lie there in the dark, thinking of him, and wishing with all her heart to have spent her evening—and her night—very differently and far more robustly.

  He has her followed. He does not care to be seen at that employment himself and nor can he yet bear to see what it might reveal.

  Instead he toys with business and busies himself with Pevenche taking her to Sadler’s Wells to see Scaglioni’s troupe of performing dogs, led by a brave canine named Moustache, acting The Deserter. This entrances the girl, and on succeeding evenings, which he might otherwise have spent trailing Mimosina Dolcezza, he is yet again to be seen with his ward, this time watching bulldogs ascending in a Montgolfier balloon and a prodigy of a pig, “well versed in all Languages, perfect Arithmetician and Composer of Musick.” After applauding the pig, who reads the minds of sundry ladies in the audience, Pevenche feeds so voraciously on pork and crackling that she breeds a temporary famine in Valentine’s pockets.

  Every night, when he finally returns to the depository, it is to find no letter of apology from the actress despite the fact that he feels one is virtually owed to him now for her harsh words and silence; she cannot know he is aware of her small leaning in the direction of betrayal with Stintleigh.

  Silence, eh?

  He can maintain a manly silence, too. He sends no note, no flowers, and no diamonds. Instead he takes his ward to Regent Street to see Signor Cappelli’s cats. The corps dramatique consists of a mother cat, two sons, and a daughter who beat upon a drum, turn a spit, grind knives, play music, strike upon an anvil, roast coffee, ring bells, and grind rice in the Italian manner. Then he must submit to Pevenche’s command that they attend a lecture by the quack doctor Katterfelto, whose necromancing black cats flash and sparkle when electrical currents are passed through their coats. The doctor also projects images of enormous influenza-spreading insects on to a screen, offering the only possible remedy, at five shillings a bottle.

  With difficulty, he persuades Pevenche that it’s hardly suitable entertainment for a lady to attend the cock-fight at Hockley-in-the-Hole at Clerkenwell, and that the ghost of “Scratching Fanny” in Cock Lane is certainly a fraud and not worth the nighttime vigil she urges on him.

  Instead he invites a woman friend, the pretty widow of one of his colleagues, to share their next outing, thinking to cheer both of them up with a fine tea party at an excellent establishment in Bond Street. To his mind, the women have their bereavements in common, and may offer comfort to one another. Widow Grimpen is no dealer in cullies, but a respectable young mantua-maker. She is also a onetime amour of Tom’s, and in the back of Valentine’s mind lurks a desire to see his ward together with Sylvia Grimpen, in case some symphonic arrangement of features might confirm his old hunch about the girl’s maternal parentage. He cannot remember the time of the liaison. And he never can put his finger on the exact age of his ward. Her great size indicates adolescence, but her behavior is often that of a child considerably younger. Seeing the two of them together will perhaps settle the thing once and for all.

  Pevenche confounds his sociable plans. With the expression of a wall upon her face, she refuses the hand of the widow. She positions herself at an angle that precludes conversation with the woman and also prevents a clear comparison of their features from his side of the table. At first, the girl sits in flinty silence, her shoulder aimed at Widow Grimpen. But every time the woman speaks, Pevenche snorts loudly or interrupts with a different tangent of conversation addressed exclusively to himself. Valentine feels himself dissolving in a smelt of embarrassment and pity for Widow Grimpen.

  Having taken the measure of Pevenche, and of the weakness of the girl’s guardian, the widow decides on her own course. Which is to charm Valentine Greatrakes, the object of almost any lady he encounters, though he himself is not aware of it, merely thinking the female sex a charming one altogether. He is always a little bemused at other men’s tales of shrews and viragos.

  Ignoring the girl, the widow chats brightly and generally, two crimson spots nippling her cheeks. All three swallow their tea and consume their pastries. They present a spectacle of utter misery. And when finally the widow leans over and touches his arm to thank him for the treat, Pevenche starts to scream, “Go! Go! Go! Go!” at a pitch high enough to scald a dog’s ear.

  The widow, bestowing pitying rather than pitiable looks, stands up and backs away. The staff of the coffee shop and other customers avert their eyes at the din. Valentine follows the widow to the door and discreetly presses some coins into her hand.

  “I’m sorry, Sylvia,” he whispers, but stops short. He sees cynicism in her face.

  She will not meet his eye, turns and disappears into the Bond Street crowd. Only when the door has closed behind her does Pevenche desist from her screams. She posts a large confection into her still-open mouth. Lush petals of cream bloom around her lips and daub tendrils of hair caught up in her moving jaws. She chews stolidly, throwing baleful glances at the door. She does not look at Valentine as he returns to the table, and when he looks at her he finds himself mesmerized by the trembling of a large crumb on the busy pinkness of her wet lips. He would like to run after the widow catch up with her and speak kindly to her—for, after all, she too is in need of comfort—but something about Pevenche’s malevolent munching holds him trapped in his chair. When she has finished every cake on the platter, she puts her sticky hand in his and whispers confidentially: “It’s excellent that she has gone. She was putting us off our food. She didn’t like me. I have no friends, you know.”

  For the occasion Pevenche has drenched herself in some kind of perfume that stinks horribly of violets, and he fears that the stench will never be rinsed from his wrist, not the way she is prodding it with her fingers now, demanding his agreement, which he cannot withhold or she will never stop stubbing those fat digits against his flinching skin.

  “Yes, dear heart,” he offers. She nods in a businesslike manner.

  He does not repeat the experiment.

  In the end, he has found that Pevenche does not provide a welcome distraction from thoughts of Mimosina Dolcezza. Instead, the missing of his mistress has provoked some unkind thoughts in the direction of his innocent ward. He knows poor little Pevenche does not deserve for him to hate her presence, and he decides that it is better to ease off in his attentions to her, for her own sake as much as anything, for what use is a grumpy old guardian to a nice young girl? Yes, less of Pevenche, for her own good, until his mind has reached a state of equilibrium, until he has caught up with his work, until he knows just what the actress is up to with the politician.

  He refrains from asking any questions, and strains to wait passively for Dizzom to bring him any news that is of relevance. Every day that passes without news is a blessing to him. It means that there is nothing to report, that nothing has developed, that the actress is innocent.

  But on the sixth day comes the blow. At the end of a long and tedious report, Dizzom stutters: “And in
the morning, our man saw him leave.”

  In the morning he saw Lord Stintleigh leave.

  The heart of Valentine Greatrakes breaks in two with a great crack. He marvels that Dizzom is not felled by the apocalyptic noise.

  Dizzom is saying, “Shall we deal with him?” His face is all distorted, as if seen through a magnifying glass. Valentine realizes that his own tears are doing this to him. Angrily he slaps his eyelids and the shameful droplets are gone, slipping between his knuckles.

  Dizzom, whey-faced, repeats, “Shall we…?”

  With a subtle twitch of his left shoulder, he indicates the trappings and detritus of his experiments in new-fangled methods for undetectable and mysterious sudden deaths. He casts a parental smile in the direction of his favorite protégés, his Fulminating Balls, glass globules the size of a pea, primely placed in a wool-wrapped jar among bottles of fast-acting poisons. These pretty marbles each contain half a grain of fulminating silver. If a candidate can be encouraged to alight upon a chair, under the feet of which four of these Balls have been secreted, the unfortunate will disappear in a mysterious explosion, the means of which are elegantly destroyed in their act of usefulness.

  But Valentine cannot answer. His head is afire with painful images, battling for space with a torrent of guiltless explanations. Perhaps she has fed the detestable politician on those high-flavored foods with which she first tempted Valentine himself: Not every man boasts a constitution as strong as his own. That’s it: Stintleigh was taken ill with the excesses of her table. Or he slipped out in the night, and returned in the morning with a gift, or some news: It was possible that Dizzom’s man had dozed in the interval. They always do. It’s a lonely job loitering on a street corner, with only a flask of gin to keep a man warm.