by Adam Roberts
‘Just round the corner to the chop palace, Ma’am.’
‘You took your own long time in coming back.’
‘There was a wait on, Ma’am.’ But the girl was smiling.
Eleanor was almost too tired for the scene. ‘None of your impudence, Sally,’ she said, in a forced whisper. ‘Mamma’s asleep, or I’d call her through to reprimand you.’
‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Ma’am,’ said Sally, looking affronted. But the smile was still vestigially present.
‘I know what you mean, however,’ hissed Eleanor. ‘I know how it’ll happen, and you’ll be sorry. You’ll fall into a shameful life.’
‘Ma’am!’ Shocked.
‘Oh, there’s no good in beating around the bush. You’ve been in a public tavern with some fellow from the chophouse. I have a care for your reputation, even if you have none. Do you wish to lose your place? Is that what you want?’
Sally glared, but kept her insolence dumb.
And all of a sudden Eleanor was too tired for the confrontation. ‘To bed Sally,’ she said, in a flat voice. ‘To bed now, away with you now.’
Eleanor came through to her own room and sat on her bed. She could almost envy Sally. She could dally with whatever man took her fancy, and not worry that he was poor. But then again, she could barely read. She knew nothing of mathematics, or of physical sciences, or political economy. Her life was small, to Eleanor’s eyes. Then she remembered her mother’s drowsy voice: my darling guilt. Had she misspoken ‘guilt’, or ‘gilt’? Either related to the matter in hand. Both commented upon the mercenary unspoken motivation behind her mother’s actions. Perhaps Mamma did after all possess a bad conscience at her daughter’s circumstance.
After making sure that both Mamma and Sally were asleep, Eleanor wrapped a shawl about her and made her way out of the house. Down the stairs and through the creaking main door, onto Poland Street.
It was a cloudless night, with a burly wind pushing up and down between the rows of houses. She pulled the shawl tighter about her shoulders and looked up. The stars were extraordinarily clear, as if the wind had rubbed and rubbed them against the black of night like a jeweller’s cloth.
She turned into Oxford Street, and wandered eastward. The road was lit with occasional gas lanterns, and the light seemed to draw human activity. People gathered in the bright ellipses on the pavement, wandered up and down the road. Coaches and carriages passed and re-passed. At Saint Giles Church she turned down Charing Cross Road and into less fashionable districts. The only light here came from lit windows, and there were few of those. The moon itself seemed a more starved sliver. An empty belly. Fallen women loitered along the street, and men - some in gentlemanly garb, some dressed as workmen - stopped to converse with them.
Eleanor felt a thrill, compounded of a sort of delicious horror, at the sight of them. A voice, male or female (it was difficult to tell), addressed her with the word ‘Evening’, and she wrapped her arms about her and hurried on. These nocturnal walks had become an increasing feature of her life. As the prospect of her nuptials approached she felt the need for the sense of release that accompanied them more and more. The sense of danger, although nebulous, was thrilling. It was not a strictly improper thing she was doing, but she was flirting with the unacceptable.
My darling guilt, Mamma had said. Gilt, or guilt? Athough, of course, she had meant neither. But some fumble of the tongue had shifted girl to guilt. How intimately, Eleanor thought, how bodily guilt is worked into the weft of life! A city pulses in sunshine with the life of empire, men of business and honour stepping briskly about their business, past elegant marble arches and needle-thin church spires under a blue sky. The same city, the same men, accumulate their guilt in the night-time, chasing their own shame and self-hatred with a devotion worthy of a better cause. How could they not feel guilty, these people? These men, pressing themselves up against bawdy women; these women, selling their daughters in the Babylonish slave market of polite society under the hypocrisy of marriage. As Eleanor crept back along Poland Street her spirit flared purple as the night, like the flame that burns from iodine or the lithium metallic compounds.
[2]
The following morning, after breakfast, Eleanor washed herself in the bowl containing her mother’s second-hand water. She dressed, and spent two hours reading in the front room, to keep company with Mamma. Mother was reading a piece of silvery fiction, The Lord of the Forest, in which a governess married a baronet, or an orphan was revealed to be heiress to a fortune, or some narrative of that sort. Eleanor was trying to concentrate on a difficult passage in Lieut.-Col. Charles Hamilton Smith’s Natural History of the Human Species, its Typical Forms, Primaeval Distribution, Filiations and Migrations, with an Appendix on the Relation of Pacifican Miniature and Enlarged Forms of Humanity to the Physical History of Mankind. She was not helped by Mamma’s fluttery and unsettled manner. Every five minutes, it seemed, she hopped up from her chair to look out the window.
At noon Eleanor put her book away. ‘Shall we take luncheon, Mamma?’
‘No luncheon today, dear Eleanor,’ was the reply. ‘I expect Mister Burton at any time.’
‘I thought he was not coming until later this afternoon?’
‘I distinctly recall him saying that he would call by for luncheon.’
This was alarming. ‘Will he not, then, expect luncheon to be provided? ’ Eleanor made a quick mental calculation. She had less than six shillings in her purse; enough for a loaf of bread, some cheese, two pints of beer, but not enough for a decent spread of luncheon - cold meat, some pie, tea.
‘I was hoping,’ said Mamma, her agitation more palpable, ‘that he would offer to take us out.’
This was too nakedly mercenary for Eleanor’s comfort, but she held her peace. In the event, Burton did not call by until after two, by which time Mamma was in an almost agonised state of agitation. Eleanor’s stomach was griping with hunger, but she said nothing.
Burton had that shyness that appears especially ridiculous in a large and burly man. He moved awkwardly, half-shrinking then pressing suddenly on. At the door he hesitated, started forward, stopped, before surging finally into the sitting room. He bowed too deeply to Mamma, nearly stumbled, and in grasping to stay upright he disarranged the carefully drawn night-time curtain, revealing the divan within. This awkwardness caused him to blush claret-red, and bumble back towards the door as if he were about to leave. He hovered there a moment, then lurched back in. ‘Mr Burton,’ said Mamma, in as soothing a tone as she could manage. ‘Mr Burton.’ She took him to the window, directing his eyes to the significant features of the street scene outside as Eleanor rearranged the curtain.
Finally Burton sat himself down upon the chaise longue with his legs pressed together in front of him as if to provide a platform for his overhanging belly, and his right hand propped on his red-and-gold-topped cane. Even his sitting was strenuous, as if it took an enormous physical effort to relax in a chair. His jacket looked new, the brushed felt of his lapels almost gleaming. His bald forehead shone in the daylight as if it had been polished. A strong scent of macassar came off the hair at the back of his head.
‘Mrs Davis,’ he said, mumblingly, his tongue seemingly too big for his mouth. ‘Miss Davis.’
‘Mr Burton,’ said Mamma.
‘It’s . . . good,’ he said, and then revised his sentiment with a little irritated shake of his head, ‘it’s very good to see you both again.’
‘Thank you, Mr Burton,’ Mamma replied. ‘You are very kind. And we are delighted to receive you.’
There was a silence. It lengthened.
Mamma drew a breath, but Burton said nothing.
Eleanor felt the spiderish rustlings of embarrassment in her innards. Was she truly to marry this man? It was too hard to believe. Such a man! Mamma drew another breath, and then launched into some politely meaningless utterance to at least fill Burton’s silence; but as she spoke Burton coughed into speech himself, and t
hey overlapped one another.
‘I trust you are well . . .’
‘I hope I am not forward in . . .’
They both fell silent. Burton was blushing a deeper portwine shade.
‘After you sir,’ said Mamma, lowering her eyes.
‘After you Madam.’
‘Please, Mr Burton’.
‘No, Madam, I insist.’
Mamma gave a little shriek of laughter; Burton flinched as if stabbed. ‘But this is ridiculous! We are all friends here, sir . . . your betrothed, sir!’ She smiled, and gestured languidly in Eleanor’s direction. Eleanor smiled in turn at the prompt. Burton’s beard waggled minutely, ambiguously. It was possible he was smiling underneath it. There was sweat on his brow. Little star-dots of sweat.
‘What was it,’ he said, doggedly, in a low tone, ‘what was it you were about to say, Mrs Davis?’
‘I was merely enquiring after your health, sir.’
‘My health is good, Madam. And yours?’
‘We are both well.’
Another silence grew, mould-like, between the three of them. Eventually Mamma prompted him. ‘Mr Burton? You were about to say something?’
Words tumbled out. ‘I was hoping that Miss . . . Miss Davis would accept a small gift, a small gift, a little book that I purchased at Arthur Shipley’s bookshop upon the Strand, Ma’am.’ He fumbled in his jacket pocket and brought out a small red-bound volume. As he held it out for Eleanor to take up his hand was visibly trembling. ‘I was hoping that Miss Eleanor . . . that Miss Davis . . .’ The sentence floated away with conclusion.
Eleanor plucked the volume from his fingers. ‘Thank you indeed, sir,’ she said ‘This is very kind.’ She checked the spine: Poems, by Elizabeth Barrett Barrett.
‘Is it a book of science, or political economy?’ enquired Mamma, with another piercing shriek like a whistle. ‘Is it a book of mathematics? My darling Eleanor loves mathematics. ’Tis hardly natural; I sometimes think I have brought a calculating machine into the world, not a feminine being at all.’ She laughed at her own joke with a little whinny. Nobody joined her. ‘Sometimes think I have brought a calculating machine into the world,’ she repeated.
‘Do you not read poetry?’ Burton asked, his face bent in two by sudden concern. Eleanor, irritated, nonetheless could not help but console him.
‘It is a fine present, sir, and I shall enjoy reading it very much.’
‘I enquired at my club,’ said Burton, ‘and they . . . the members, I mean . . . thought that poetry was an appropriate gift for a young lady.’
But Mamma, with one of those startling absences of tact of which she was often capable, said in a giggly voice: ‘Oh, Eleanor’s the least poetic girl in Europe!’
‘Mamma!’ Eleanor rebuked her. ‘Don’t listen to her, Mr Burton. She is teasing you. I like poetry a great deal.’
‘Like it?’ echoed Mamma, mockingly. She seemed to have worked herself into one of her occasional little hysteric states. ‘Lord, she could no more like it than a natural girl could like books with numerical tables and diagrams of levers. Like it!’ She laughed again. Then, belatedly, she blinked, peered about her. ‘Not,’ she said, looking a little confused, ‘not but that your gift is not greatly appreciated.’
‘Indeed, I am very grateful for the book.’ She opened the volume, but the pages were uncut and she did not have a paper-knife to hand. ‘I do not know the authoress, however,’ she said. ‘Is she famous?’
‘I am informed so,’ mumbled Burton.
Of the whole volume only half a dozen pages could be read without cutting the paper. Eleanor opened the volume in the middle. The phrase ‘deep-hearted man’ caught her eye, and she thought to read the verse aloud in tribute to Burton himself. She cleared her throat and read:Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy dead in silence most like to death;
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe,
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it: the marble eyelids are not wet—
If it could weep it would arise and go.
She stopped; Burton and her mother were looking at her with widened eyes. ‘Perhaps that is not a very well chosen piece,’ she said.
‘Is that poetry?’ said Mamma. ‘But that is merely dismal! Dear me, how dismal that is. That’s not my idea of poetry at all.’
‘It is a little dismal,’ said the wretched Burton. ‘I should apologise again.’
‘Tush,’ said Eleanor. ‘It is fine poetry. Fine. I’m sure other pieces in the volume have a lighter tone. Thank you, Mr Burton.’
She closed the book.
The Dutch clock on the mantel ticked quietly to itself. It had a miserly and a muffled tick, as if it were hoarding seconds to itself and counting its fortune out to itself, tick by tick. Burton shifted in his seat.
Eleanor started to draw a breath, and was abruptly aware that she was breathing roasting fire and violence. Why? Wherefrom? It hardly mattered. A sudden, piercing sensation of hatred ran up and down Eleanor’s body like a galvanic shock - she wanted Burton to leave, wanted him away from her for ever, wanted him dead - wanted to strike the blow herself with a switch of her arm across his face, his idiotic and ugly-flabby face. The feeling swept through her, like fluid forced through a pipe-section at tremendous pressure. She froze in her chair.
The intensity of the emotion shocked her, scared her, even, but at the same time it carried her away, like a modern Saint Theresa in an angelic ecstasy. The sheer weight of this Burton-man, the huge, lumbering physical presence of him in their little room, was too provoking, just too provoking. It was all too provoking, the mass of him, an immovable deadweight dropped upon their lives. She held herself perfectly still in her chair, afraid that any movement would cause her to burst out, to leap up and scream. She could feel her cheeks colouring slightly but otherwise the internal tempest vortexed round and round with such velocity that it seemed to acquire a stillness of its own, of the sort that they say is to be found in the middle of tornadoes. Every blockage in her life, every repression of passion and every sacrifice she had ever made in the name of necessity and respectability became focused intensely in the awkward male form seated before her. On some savage inner level she thought that if this man could be knocked aside then all her life would lighten and brighten - everything would then be all right. And why not? Why couldn’t her mother and she live together, as they had done for seven years now, just by themselves, without interruption or adulteration? They lived modestly enough, didn’t they? They never asked for luxury or expensive flimflam. Eleanor knew many people for whom £150 was a mere trifle - why should those people have that money and she and her mamma none at all? How was that fair? It was a crushing weight laid across them, and the weight was this large man, with his absurd bear-like beard and his sack-of-meal belly. He was the weight.
The inevitability of Burton, the inescapability of him, stung her again and again, a vicious horsefly inside her head. And, yes, she knew the reasons: but they all boiled down only to money, to money. One hundred and fifty pounds; three hundred half-sovereigns; three thousand shillings; and (three-twelves-are-thirty-six) 36,000 pennies, the money multiplying like biblical locusts in her head, pennies swarming down from the sky copper-skinned to plague her and her mamma. And Burton owned more money than he could possibly need, he had sacks of coins as large as his own belly, had them scattered around his ogre-palace down by the river, that ogre-palace he called his manufactory, in which all the little faerie people were enslaved. And so, only because he had money, she must marry him, and spend not just one afternoon but every afternoon, and morning, and evening, in this gross company. Only because he had the money, a superfluity of money, more than the £150 they needed, so much more, doubtless more than £15,000, than £150,000, more (for all she knew) than £1,000,000; and the zeros spawned in her mind like maggots.
Her clenched self-control quavered, and a little gasp escaped the
enclosure of her teeth. Burton twitched forward in concern.
‘My dear?’ said Mamma.
Eleanor looked up, with feigned innocence in her eyes. ‘Mamma?’
‘Are you alright?’
‘Quite alright, Mamma. Perhaps you could ring for Sally? She might bring us a glass of water. I feel a little dry.’
‘It is dry,’ said Burton, fumbling for a comment. ‘I feel a little dry myself.’
‘Water,’ said Mamma, and tinkled the little handbell that stood, in their reduced circumstances, for a proper bell-pull. Sally, who (of course) had been waiting directly on the far side of the door hoping to overhear the conversation, came straight through, and was dispatched for water from the pump downstairs with some severity.
