A Taste for Nightshade

by Martine Bailey

  She had caught the old cook out. ‘You brazen little bitch,’ she’d said with a fond sigh and ruffle of her hair. ‘Like me, in’t you? All brain sauce. But you ain’t got no choice, dearie. You been bred up to be a Nanny House girl.’

  That was the true reason she had made Charlie’s favourite sweetmeats, her fingers trembling as she rolled the nutty mixture. Sweating with misery, she’d wagered her future on those Little Devil sweetmeats. And she’d always been grateful to Charlie for taking her on, of pressing her up against the wall of Jerusalem Passage, his mouth rich with chocolate, her eyes tightly closed against the pity in his gaze.

  Now that was peculiar – they were conversing behind the grate: His Nibs as husky as a hound, his wife replying, genteel and slow. She hadn’t expected that. Sternly she told herself the job was done, the mistress was plucked; there was no turning back. Nevertheless, she felt collapsed, like an empty sack of meal, as she set off on a silent search for the writing box. And there it was in Mrs Croxon’s trunk, the little beauty. Only, damn the article, it was locked as tight as a clam. Stow it, where was the key? Where did she hide the infernal thing? On she prowled, down to the kitchen, pacing uneasily. Then that baggage Nan had the frontery to say she’d had a queer turn in the scullery. ‘I can’t be lifting the copper no more. Not at my age,’ she’d said, her jaw hanging slack.

  ‘Maybe this will help?’

  She’d pinched Nan’s arm, only for a second, mind. That had got the old dish clout hopping like a flea. A nip’s the best cure for idle hands, Aunt Charlotte had always said. When she’d worked in the kitchen at the Palace she’d been all over bruises.

  Back in her quarters, Peg got Mrs Croxon’s green sprigged gown out and had another go at removing the stain on the taffeta skirts. She had dabbed it with lye, but still it wouldn’t budge. On days like this she grew weary of the serving life. Who did they think she was, a dog to jump at everyone’s whistle? Prattling away they had been upstairs, in that big feather bed. Perhaps she should have joined Ma Brimstone’s girls after all. By now she might have snared a lord or some other rich booby. Still, she’d shunned the bunter’s life to be with Charlie. But even Charlie had not stood loyal. Grimly she remembered that pair of blue garters dangling over his looking glass.

  The same old sing-song of notions sprang up in her brain, ringing around and around like a marching tune: that if anyone deserved the good life it was her. One day they’d all be humbled all right, like those fancy lords and ladies of France whose heads were being sliced off like stooks at harvest-time. What was it the lags at the Colony had toasted, as they raised their grog? ‘May all crowned heads roll, damnation to the lot o’ them. The Tree of Liberty, lads!’ She picked up the gown and pulled it roughly over her shift. Why should she give it back? It suited her better than her mistress, who hadn’t even twigged that Peg had used a conjurer’s trick to make her choose her favourite shade of green. When two muslin samples had arrived, she had held out the lilac and green and asked which one she should send back. Mrs Croxon had hummed and hawed and finally pointed at the green, so she’d sent that one back all right – sent it straight back to be made up.

  In her looking glass the stain looked even nastier. She pulled the gown off and hung it on a hook. For a long while she inspected herself in the mirror, tossing her hair and making proud faces. Why, Mrs Croxon was a gawky girl beside herself. She deserved better than Mrs Croxon’s cast-me-downs. Taking the sharp penknife off her chatelaine she tried to cut the stain out, thinking she might patch it from the hem. Then, in a fit of impatience, she ripped at the stain and tore it right down the front, the silk tearing with a high-pitched screech that satisfied her greatly. Mrs Croxon, Mrs Croxon, she chanted, slashing the whole frock into a frayed mess. And it wasn’t just the mistress that was bothering her; there was that other one too, hanging from the ceiling. The one that wouldn’t go away. The one that always taunted her in the corner of her eye but vanished if she turned to make a proper sighting. With vicious pleasure she hacked the gown to ribbons. Then she sat down, panting a little from the exertion.

  A while later she came to herself, feeling tired and shaky. In front of her lay a heap of tatters – the lovely five-guinea dress was fit for nothing but the ragman. She blinked and yawned, not at all sure why she’d had that giddy fit. Then she remembered, vaguely, like a long-ago dream. She had fancied her mistress was wearing that dress as she stabbed and stabbed at it. For the two of them had sounded happy together, sporting limb about limb in that lovely feather bed.

  It was enough to make Peg sick, seeing the mistress panting after His Nibs like a wide-eyed doxy. True, she did keep Mrs Croxon well dosed with Hystericon, so she scarcely noticed what was happening in the very same room. Though she did at least wake up when the goods began to arrive from York. Such lovely stuff there was, and all of it the very finest. There were even gifts: for the master a pitch-green riding coat and boots of mirror-shining leather. For herself a caddy of Souchong tea, that was so fragrant she rationed herself to a dish a day. When the master returned to Manchester, Mrs Croxon again fell in the dumps. Peg tried to interest her in trimming her older hats, for she had bought some lovely ribbons and feathers, but the woman couldn’t settle. Then, to her surprise, Mrs Croxon asked if she could paint Peg’s portrait.

  Peg was unpacking a set of glorious gilt candlesticks in the dining room. A moment earlier, she would have said nothing could have excited her more. But a portrait done of herself? ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, setting the last one down with care. ‘I always fancied having a go at that.’

  Peg tapped at Mrs Croxon’s attic door, her complexion smoothed with a liberal dollop of Pear’s Almond Blossom. She brought an offering too; a plate of airy caraway seed cake. But it was wasted on Mrs Croxon, who took only a hurried bite, so anxious was she to get started with her blessed paints and pencils. Half an hour, she’d beaten those eggs. And, damn her, the mistress had complimented Nan’s Omelette of Herbs that very day.

  ‘I always fancied being done like one of them actresses,’ Peg announced, catching her reflection in the glass and moving her head to find her best profile. ‘Can you not do me like some famous character, wearing robes and all that?’

  ‘Peg, it is you I am painting. Look up at me – that’s it – no, with your usual expression. I need you to be true to yourself.’ Mrs Croxon was holding up a pencil like a measure, looking at her with faraway eyes. Naturally, she wanted to paint her as a nobody; a downtrodden domestic. What sort of picture would that be, with her lovely red hair tucked under her cap, instead of cascading down her shoulders? It mortified her, it truly did, to be painted in servants’ drabs.

  ‘Stop fidgeting, Peg. I’ve barely begun.’ Her mistress looked up from her scribbling with a frown. ‘Tell me about yourself. It will help me portray you if you talk to me.’

  Peg stiffened. She liked to be the one asking questions.

  ‘Come along – it will pass the time. Were you born and bred up here?’

  Even that was a tricky point. ‘Not likely, Mrs Croxon.’

  ‘Where then do you hail from?’

  When fabulating, keep close to the truth, Charlie always said. ‘I once lived in Manchester.’

  ‘And what brought you here?’

  That stumped her. She hesitated; thinking, calculating.

  ‘Never mind,’ her mistress sighed.

  After a considering pause, Mrs Croxon spoke again, very warmly.

  ‘I must thank you, Peg, for all your help with the house and—’ she smiled conspiratorially, ‘—the advice you gave me. It has all worked in a most satisfactory manner.’

  ‘So all is – going nicely between you?’ she inquired. As if anyone needed to ask. The master and mistress shared a chamber regularly, maybe every third night now. She had checked the bed linen herself.

  ‘I know we call you “Mrs” in respect of your position. But tell me, have you ever been married?’

  Peg’s mouth closed like a solid door. ‘No.’
<
br />   ‘But you have had proposals?’

  She sighed loudly and twisted her lips in distaste. ‘Oh, I’ve had a few offers.’

  ‘Poor Peg; never to have known love. You must seek it out. Love is life’s greatest blessing.’

  Mrs Croxon continued sketching in a silence that stretched like cat-gut between them. Not found love? What rot! Jack had been her truelove, he had come back to her, damn it, after all her troubles at Sodom Camp. It had been at poor Brinny’s flogging, after her pal had gone on a hunger-crazed rampage through the camp. Brinny was to be lashed before a gathering of skull-faced, tottering convicts. The marines, almost as skeletal in ragged pink coats, beat their drums while Brinny’s sentence was read: a mere fifty strokes compared to the thousands of lashes the men might endure. Brinny fought gamely as she was tied in place. Each time the tarred and knotted cat-o’-nine-tails was swung upon her friend’s back, she had tried to stifle the sound of fifty cat-like shrieks.

  ‘Annie Mobbs is dead of jail fever,’ Jack told her later, as she dabbed saltwater on Brinny’s shredded back. It seemed his Devon doxy had snuffed it, just one week after falling ill. Jack himself was all bones and knuckles, his teeth over-large and his once flaxen hair, brown and stringy. Yet who was she to pick fault? She was blistered and flaking away, her body like a risen corpse, her rags leathery brown.

  When she had been stronger, she might have put up a brave show, and made him grovel. But across the camp ground Stingo cast looks like poisoned darts at them. So the Tawny Prince did listen: her prayers for Annie to die had been answered. Passing the blood-stained clout to Ma Watson, she raised herself to standing, swatting away the frenzy of flies. Though her own hand was claggy with blood, she grasped hold of Jack and silently followed him to his hut. The next day Brinny mercifully snuffed it, and a few weeks later Ma Watson gave up the ghost, accidentally left to wander on the beach at the end of the day, there being none of the old crew left to look out for her.

  Jack’s hut was no more than a few planks of rough board with a dirt floor, but it was theirs alone; a sanctuary from hollering and drunken carousing. The scum of exhaustion began to lift from her thoughts and her old clear-sightedness returned. She persuaded Jack to go out with the fishing crew at night, dragging the seine nets through the inky waters. Soon the hut filled with the smell of crisply roasted fish and, afterwards, with full stomachs, they could talk without listening ears. They were newly rich too, for the extra fish Jack smuggled could be traded, food being the only currency left in the colony. At last she had gained proper standing in the camp, at the side of a smart loyal man.

  Peg could bear the silence no longer. To be reckoned inferior in love to such as Mrs Croxon? Never to have known love? Damn her sorry heart, that was a lie.

  ‘Course, I did know it once,’ she burst out suddenly.

  ‘What’s that? You knew love?’

  She nodded, suddenly stirred up at the memory. ‘Aye.’ She glanced up at the ceiling, weighing the urge to let it all spill out. She would have to tell it differently – invent a few bits and bobs, and curb her rambling tongue.

  ‘Tell me,’ Mrs Croxon urged. ‘I promise on my own love, I will keep it secret. Who was it?’

  Swear on her own love? What, her and the master? That was the last straw.

  ‘He was a sailor. His name was Jack.’

  ‘So where did you meet?’ Mrs Croxon was scribbling away fluently now, making long sweeping strokes.

  ‘We met at sea. On the Queen Mary, it was.’

  Mrs Croxon’s face swung up at that. ‘I never knew you went to sea, Peg. I thought you had been cook to an alderman.’

  ‘Yes, well – this was when I was very young. My father was a sailor. That was how it started. When I was fifteen, he persuaded his ship’s master I might go with him as a passenger to Cape Town, in Africa.’

  As she spoke, Peg became aware of how hard an artist scrutinises a face as it is drawn. Mrs Croxon’s peering appraisal of her features made her uneasy. The art of the patterer was distraction; the spinning of tales was best accompanied by flashy gestures. She faked a little cough, so she could rearrange her features.

  ‘What route did you take?’ her mistress asked, coolly. So she wanted to test Peg’s geography, did she?

  ‘Our first port was Tenerife – that was about three weeks from sailing. It was as hot as a flatiron, mind, you wouldn’t believe how our laundry dried across the rail. And the sea were like blue glass, you might see the fish twinkling silver in the depths. I asked my father if we might live there forever, but he had his business in the Cape and would not leave off it.

  ‘Well, it was there I first noticed a fair-haired youth, casting me the eye. One night the men sang about the mainmast in such a stirring manner, of home and sweethearts, and foreign lands that I ventured outside to listen. My fair lad was playing the penny whistle and seemed to know every tune in the world. Later, when we got to Rio, he shared his grog with me, and I let him kiss me, for the stars shone upon us like diamonds, and the scent of flowers drifted from the gardens of the city.’

  Peg smiled at the empty air, for that at least was true. Not that they had been allowed to disembark at Rio, but the captain had allowed them a little air on deck. Mrs Croxon nodded encouragement, her pencil working fast.

  ‘And did your father approve of him?’

  She answered without hesitation. ‘No. Jack was young and starting out in life.’

  ‘And when you reached Cape Town?’

  ‘We never got there.’ Peg looked boldly into Mrs Croxon’s startled face. ‘We was shipwrecked.’ She didn’t blink, just held the woman’s gaze, willing her to swallow it.

  ‘You? Shipwrecked?’ Mrs Croxon gave a mocking little laugh. ‘Are you certain?’

  Damn her eyes; Peg’s influencing stare didn’t work on her. Still, she ploughed on. ‘Oh, aye. Stranger things do happen in life. Stranger than you might fancy.’

  Mrs Croxon’s features stiffened very slightly. ‘Wait a moment. I need to fetch a new brush.’ She left the room, leaving Peg’s challenge ringing in the air.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  ‘I’ve had me fill of this place,’ she had told Jack one night as they sat in the hut at Sydney Cove. ‘We should make a bolt for it now, while we’re strong.’

  They were drinking the broth she remembered Granny boiling up, leftover bones and a handful of herbs and roots. Her body was regaining strength. Now she had Jack to help her, and her own pot and fire, her country upbringing gave her an advantage over town-bred lags. Everyone talked of escape, but no one succeeded. In the early days, they had thought that China lay to the north, and bands of convicts set off on foot, most returning footsore and sheepish a few days later. The less fortunate were found with native spears in their backs, or gnawed to bits by wild beasts.

  ‘I’m thinking of the fishing boat, Jack.’ He had scratched his hair that was newly washed and tied back with a plait of grass.

  ‘Head for the Indies, you mean? It’s thousands of leagues away, sweetheart.’

  The more they talked of escape, the harder it was to dowse the flame, for it shone like a gateway to a golden world. The Dutch Indies were famed as the most beautiful string of islands in the world, green hillocks scattered in calm blue seas, blessedly free of the head-hunters that plagued the Pacific. As for food, Jack had heard tell of luxurious feasts, of roast pig and yellow rice: the very words made their stomachs rumble.

  The notion of escape coursed through them both like a witch’s tonic. They would live a while on some peaceable island, before taking a passage to Holland, then secretly sailing back to England. Making ready, they began to trade spare fish, all on the sly, in return for extra dry rations and a compass. Mary helped with the fishing, too. They worked separately, Jack chatting with those who looked after the cutter, sharing tales of life at sea and learning how the boat was guarded. Mary moved amongst the redcoats, wheedling out gossip that might affect their plans. Like everyone else, they lived on their nerves, h
omesick eyes forever trained on the horizon in hope of the first sight of a ship carrying food. But no ship came. The anniversary of two long years passed. Even the marines were downhearted; outraged at being abandoned by the old country.

  In three months they were ready. Jack and Mary had a cache of desiccated meat from kangaroos, rats, possums and other nameless creatures, buried near their hut. They were pals with the two guards who would be on duty at midnight when the tide changed. And Mary had exchanged her precious store of salt pork rations for a compass. It was the work of a few desperate minutes to surprise the guards at knifepoint and secure them with ropes. With the water above their waists, they waded out into the rolling waves of Sydney Cove, and scrambled aboard the cutter. Sailing off from the camp had felt beautiful and dangerous, the vast Pacific sky as black as the Prince of Hell’s cloak. As Jack set the boat to float silently on the tide through the Heads, they toasted the plan with a mouthful of grog. The tropical warmth, the stars like numberless diamonds, the urgent speed of the ocean’s pull; she had thought her heart would burst.

  The first few days they rejoiced on the rolling waves. But it was their sixth night at sea that their joy turned to fear. Goose pimples rose on her skin as the night air plummeted from hot to cold. There was a snapping noise, like little gunshots – the tug of the sails in a mischievous wind. Yes, she would have no trouble talking up a storm for Mrs Croxon.

  Her mistress returned with a tiny parcel and unwrapped a doll’s-sized brush. ‘Tell me, then, about this shipwreck,’ she said guardedly.

  Peg described gales that howled like wolves, and a sea that heaved and rolled; the king of all storms, threatening to crack the sky in two. Once she had manoeuvred her and Jack into a fabulated lifeboat she relaxed into the tale, for now every word was true.