A Catch of Consequence

by Diana Norman

  Makepeace grinned. Her life until now had lacked the friendship of a congenial young woman and, Aaron’s recovery apart, she saw it as her one profit on this benighted voyage that she had gained Susan Brewer’s. They were by no means like-minded; Susan was high Tory and had been brought up with a regard for etiquette that Makepeace lacked and without the angular Puritanism that Temperance Burke had instilled into her daughter. She had no patience with the view of men like Sam Adams.

  What they shared was not only an appreciation of female independence but a rare knowledge—Susan’s from her enterprising aunt, Makepeace’s from her own experience—that it was achievable. They occasionally shocked each other but that only added a zest to their relationship.

  It was extraordinarily pleasant and did a good deal to recover Makepeace’s equilibrium merely to indulge in female gossip—something she’d never had opportunity to do before—to exchange life stories, to discuss men and manners. Of the latter, Susan knew a good deal more than Makepeace, being an avid reader of novels imported from England, especially those of Mr Richardson.

  ‘You saved him from drowning? Sakes, he’s bound to marry you.’

  ‘Oh, very likely.’

  ‘But he is. King Cophetua and the beggar-maid. Forgive me, dear, I know tavern-keeping isn’t beggary but compared with his elevation . . . he’s practically a peer you know, Captain Strang said he turned down the King’s offer of a dukedom as too vulgar but is mightily well connected with half the cabinet.’ Susan dropped her voice. ‘Captain Strang says he only came to Boston so that he might quietly divorce his wife. I wonder what she did? I’ve never known anyone divorced, and you can tell he has a secret sorrow, so gothick yet with it all so amusing.’ She gave a sacrificial sigh. ‘I suppose I must yield him to you now, you having saved his life and all, and creep off to fade away of unrequited passion.’

  ‘Have him,’ said Makepeace, generously, ‘I don’t want him.’

  But, after all, she found that she did. It wasn’t just that her interest had been requickened by Susan’s admiration for the man but that her health was returning with rest and sea air and, with it, the realization that the two days during which he’d been closeted at the Roaring Meg had been on the one hand the most terrible yet at the same time the most wonderful of her life. At nights she would pick over the conversations they’d held in her poor room as over emeralds and rubies in a jewel box.

  She saw quite clearly that their relationship was now alienated beyond repair; she was a burden to him. It wasn’t her fault; it wasn’t really his. There was nothing to be done except keep her pride intact by being as remote towards him as he was to her.

  Makepeace allowed Susan’s rants against Sam Adams and his cohorts to go unrefuted. The very words ‘Sons of Liberty’ stank of tar and echoed with Aaron’s screams.

  She’d listened in silence when the wardroom, too, denounced the Boston rioters, but, as the Western Approaches came nearer, talk turned to the question of what the English government should do about them when it received the news the Percy carried—and that was a different matter.

  ‘ “No taxation without representation”, the saucy rogues,’ said Captain Strang, who had aspirations as a landowner. ‘Why, your common Englishman is not represented in Parliament yet submits to being taxed and do you hear him complain?’

  ‘I rather think I do,’ Dapifer pointed out.

  ‘That’s beside the point, Sir Pip, if I may say so. The point is that the plantations must obey the will of their King and his government. Concede the vote to any agitating colonist with straw in his hair who asks for it and your ploughman and cowherd at home will be demanding it too. And there you are—revolution.’

  ‘Reform, certainly,’ Dapifer said.

  Dr Baines said: ‘Captain, ye’re surely not advocating sending an army to enforce the Stamp Tax?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘If I can judge the taimper of the Amairicans, ye’d have war on your hands.’

  ‘Why not just repeal it?’ said Makepeace.

  The interjection of a soprano voice into an opus for basso profundo brought only a deliberate silence in which it was supposed to consider its temerity and withdraw.

  She didn’t care; these men weren’t American, they didn’t have to scrape and shift to pay for the damn stamps, it was none of their business. ‘Colonist with straw in his hair . . .’, she’d give him straw in his hair. ‘We don’t want it,’ she said.

  Even Dr Baines changed his position in order to repel female boarders. ‘Aye, well, Miss Burke, we can’t always have what we want.’

  Only Dapifer met her as an equal. ‘It was wrongly applied, I grant you, but it wasn’t an unfair tax.’

  ‘You didn’t have to pay it.’

  ‘The war with France had to be paid for and not just by England.’

  ‘It wasn’t our war.’

  ‘Forgive me, I thought it was a war for all Protestants. Had the French won it, their Roman Catholic compatriots in Canada would even now be swarming over the New England border. Imagine yourself under a Canadian pope—raccoon mitre and bear claws. Doesn’t bear thinking of.’

  She imagined it and grinned—and the men at the table forgave her on the instant. Two of them made up their minds.

  Dr Baines said: ‘We’ll not bore the young ladies with our political havering. Miss Burke, will ye give me the privilege of your company on deck?’

  He proffered his arm but Dapifer had beaten him to it and already proffered his. ‘Tonight, sir, that privilege is mine.’

  Outside, Makepeace found herself hustled into the captain’s—now Dapifer’s—cabin, through it and out onto the open stern gallery. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Saving our good doctor from a fate worse than death. He was about to propose.’

  She’d known that he was and had dreaded the moment. Should she marry Alexander Baines out of gratitude for his treatment of Aaron? She should not; it wouldn’t be fair to him, let alone to her.

  The Boston moon she’d shared with Dapifer had been replaced by another, which, in its turn, was waning, a frail thing like the curve on a capital D. It was the ship’s sternlight which lit the path of the wake running white behind them. She felt an anguish for the time they had stood together in another place looking out on this sea, his voice coming out of the shadows. Why doesn’t he leave me alone? I’d be all right if he left me alone.

  She said dully: ‘None of your business.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you were going to accept,’ Dapifer said, gloomily. ‘But I suppose a Dr Baines in the hand is worth two Captain Busgutts in the bush.’

  Captain Busgutt, she thought. What a time ago. Before I met you.

  ‘None of your business,’ she said again.

  ‘I rather think it is. I want you to marry me.’

  Her jaw dropped and then she was so angry that she attacked him before she could stop herself, giving him a push that sent him staggering. He had to hold onto the rail to avoid falling. ‘You dare. Don’t you dare. You . . . you shite-poke, you crap-hound, you—’

  ‘Ow!’ He retreated along the gallery. ‘A simple “No, thank you” would be—’

  ‘I don’t need your pity and your marriages,’ she hissed at him. ‘Don’t you dare.’

  She was appalled that he should offer her charity. For charity was what it was. He’d made it clear that he no longer desired her body when he’d withdrawn his offer to make her his mistress. Now, out of some dreary sense of obligation, he was suggesting a marriage that he didn’t want and that was totally unsuited to his station in life. Conscious of being the unwitting cause of all her disasters, the twisted chivalry of an aristocrat was forcing him to sacrifice himself.

  Did he think she’d be grateful? That she was so stricken and dependent she’d wed a man to whom such an alliance would be social disaster? She thought better of herself than that, even if he didn’t. She must be a prize to the man she married, not a millstone.

  Thank you for your patronage
, kind sir, I’m beholden to you?

  Beholden be buggered. She was Makepeace Burke, American. She had one hundred guineas. She could stand on her own feet.

  The pent-up anger at the loss of her home, the sore that the men who’d caused Aaron’s pain were walking free, all these things were exacerbated by disgust he should think her so weak and so mercenary . . . that he should stoop . . . think she’d stoop . . .

  She turned to go.

  ‘I can’t help feeling,’ he said, holding her back, ‘I can’t help feeling—stay still, woman—that we are at cross-purposes.’

  ‘No, we ain’t. You think you’re beholden. Well, you ain’t. I can manage. Marry you? I’d sooner marry Boocock.’

  ‘Boocock? Is he the one with the squint?’ He had hold of her fists now. ‘Calm down.’ He uncurled her hands and recurled them round the balustrade, then held them there. ‘Are you calm?’

  ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘Take a deep breath.’

  She took one, and another. The rail was cool against her palms.

  ‘Now then,’ he said. ‘Do I understand that you believe my offer to be made out of gratitude and condescension?’

  Condescension. That was the word. At the sound of it, she tried to pull away but his right hand clamped both of hers against the iron rail.

  ‘You are an extraordinary female,’ he said. ‘Most women would at least have pondered the proposal. I admit my looks may not measure up to Able Seaman Boocock’s but I’m certainly richer than he is.’

  ‘I don’t want your stinking money.’

  ‘So I gather.’

  He let go of her hands and moved away to put his forearms on the rail so that his head was directed towards the sea at a level with hers. ‘I married within my station once,’ he said, reflectively. ‘It was a union that pleased all Society except my wife and, as it turned out, me. What I’d thought to be love transpired to be a form of sickness and I came to America in disgust at women, Society and, most of all, at myself. There I was plucked from the briny deep by a female who was . . . well, I can only describe it as healthy in both mind and body. So much so that she managed to imbue me with a vigour I haven’t felt for years.’

  ‘Makes me sound like a patent medicine.’ But she was coming round. After all, that she now considered herself a prize for any man was due to him in the first place; he’d made her think better of herself, realize she was attractive—something Captain Busgutt had never done.

  ‘More a tonic,’ he said. ‘In fact, Mistress Burke, if I may say so without offence, you give new meaning to the term “rude health”. Of course, had I understood your passion for Mr Boocock I would not have offered, but I thought your inclination might lie in the direction of poor Dr Baines.’

  ‘And what’s wrong with Dr Baines?’ Blast it, he always managed to amuse her.

  ‘Nothing, nothing. An admirable consort for you—could dress his own wounds and everything. It’s just that I thought you might accept him and I wanted to get in first.’

  ‘Oh Hell,’ she said, defeated, ‘what d’you want to marry me for?’

  ‘Not out of gratitude or pity, I can tell you that. The man who pities you, Makepeace Burke, will have to wear chain-mail.’

  ‘What, then?’ She was beginning to fill up with an unbidden, rapturous happiness. It was true she was good for him; despite his sorrow for the death of his friend, he’d clearly lost the pervading despair that had led him to want to drown. She’d done that.

  ‘Because I was wrong in asking you to be my mistress, I see that now. There’s little point in making a dishonest woman out of one of the most honest females I’ve ever met. You’re not mistress material, Makepeace Burke. I don’t know how you’d go down with London Society and I don’t care, you go down with me. I need you. I need you as a permanent fixture. To forgo that privilege merely because of the outworn shibboleths of prejudice would be the act of a fool.’

  She said nothing, thinking of the consequences for him and for her, the launch into uncharted difficulties and whether they could survive them.

  The ship’s bell struck seven—it was nearly the end of this watch.

  Her silence unnerved him. ‘Please, Procrustes.’

  Until then he’d been assured, amusing, but there was that in his voice now which echoed with the loneliness of the abyss he was going back to. Holy Hokey . . . She closed her eyes. She really was his necessity. ‘Oh well,’ she said, ‘if it’s a matter of doing you a favour . . . ’

  ‘I’d be obliged,’ he assured her, catching her tone. ‘Since making you my mistress is out of the question, marriage is the only way I can think of to get your clothes off.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, and took in a deep, glorious breath. ‘I see. Why didn’t you say so? In that case, I accept.’

  Captain Strang, who was authorized to perform weddings, married them the next day.

  Chapter Seven

  IMMEDIATELY they’d anchored in the Thames, Robert was sent ahead to prepare the staff of the London house for its master’s arrival. He was rowed ashore with Captain Strang and the dispatches.

  For the rest of the party the goodbyes took some time; it had been a safe and friendly voyage and Makepeace in particular was grateful to the tarry little Eden that had mended Aaron as well as he could be mended and where she had been made happy.

  After she’d thanked the crew and while her husband distributed largesse, she and Aaron stood at the taffrail with Susan Brewer to be introduced to the landmarks by Lieutenant Horrocks.

  Ahead, the great span of London Bridge was outlined against a dusty, lowering sun. Opposite, a modern Custom House gleamed and the mouth of Traitors’ Gate yawned at the water’s edge of William the Conqueror’s Tower. All around loomed a bespired, cupolaed, multi-roofed skyline of such history, complexity and loftiness that it demanded obeisance from those looking on it for the first time.

  ‘Shakespeare,’ Aaron said, ‘Dryden.’

  ‘Gloriana,’ Susan breathed.

  ‘They ought to do something about these docks,’ said Makepeace.

  The hurry of wharfingers; squawking, scavenging seagulls; the hit-hit of halyard against mast; a smell of weed and sewage; the bluster of sails; boats ferrying back and forth between the ships, commands and cries issuing over the water: these were Boston again. But in a comparison of the two ports, the Pool of London, main artery of the trading world, came off worse.

  Where Boston’s forty or more quays provided ease of access to shipping, London itself had twenty and these were crowded side by side together between the Bridge and the Tower. All the way up from Woolwich, merchantmen had congested the river, waiting three or four abreast for lighters to unload them.

  ‘Wait for weeks, some of ’em,’ Lieutenant Horrocks said, ‘by which time they can lose a quarter of their cargo from pilfering. Oh yes, you’ve got to keep your goods and your purse battened down in London.’ He offered the information as if both his capital’s beauty and its criminality were a matter of national pride. ‘But don’t be afraid, ladies.’

  Susan, who wasn’t, rewarded him with a tremulous, ‘Oh my.’

  Makepeace wasn’t either, although she knew she should be. She was entering this ancient city as Lady Dapifer and had no idea how to fill the space encompassed by those two words. Already some of the difficulty she would encounter had been exemplified by, of all people, Dapifer’s manservant.

  Robert had shown much kindness to her and Aaron during the bad weeks of the voyage, raiding the galley and pestering the cook for little treats to tempt their appetites, finding a silk pillow for Aaron’s head, bestrawing the passageway outside their door to quieten the footfalls of passers-by. Even during Makepeace’s and Dapifer’s estrangement she had been aware of his benevolent, if somewhat gloating, sympathy.

  But the marriage brought a change. His ‘And what does Lady Dapifer require of us today?’ and ‘Certainly, Lady Dapifer, of course, Lady Dapifer’, were issued, out of his master’s hearing, with a deliberate
grotesquerie of subservience which made it clear that, in his eyes, she couldn’t fulfil the role and never would.

  She’d actually heard him say with apparent sadness to Susan: ‘Of course, the first Lady Dapifer was such an exquisite dresser.’

  She didn’t complain to Dapifer—this was a straight fight between the man and herself. She took him aside: ‘I ain’t the first Lady Dapifer, I’m the present Lady Dapifer, so what’s grumbling in your gizzard, Robert?’ but she couldn’t pin him down; he slipped from confrontation in a flutter of spurious apology.

  ‘What can your ladyship mean? Mea culpa, have I offended your ladyship?’ She recognized jealousy, pure and simple, and was sorry about it, very sorry, but there was nothing to be done.

  It was, she knew, a mere foretaste of the hostility and mockery awaiting her from the society her husband moved in: she didn’t walk right, couldn’t talk right; the presence of the first Lady Dapifer, that exquisite dresser, would forever triumphantly stalk her shadow.

  As if to point up the complications ahead, the weather had changed immediately as they entered the Western Approaches and the marriage ceremony on the quarterdeck had been performed under blustering clouds, with a warm wind whipping away Captain Strang’s words and fluttering the petticoats of the women and the ribbons on the sailors’ hats. They’d scampered through spots of rain to the wardroom for the wedding breakfast.

  ‘Think the weather’s trying to tell us something?’ she’d whispered to Dapifer during the speeches.

  ‘Too late, dammit,’ he’d muttered back, ‘it should have mentioned it last night.’ She closed her eyes and he’d dug her in the ribs. ‘Stop swooning, woman. It’s not Puritan.’

  They had consummated the marriage ahead of time. One consensual, unstoppable, liquid move had taken them from his proposal in the stern gallery to his bed and what was officially, deliciously, still a sin. No preparation, no bridal rites, no waiting, nothing to make her tense, just an unthinking swoop into passion.

  When, later, in post-climactic quiet, he’d asked her what her experience of losing her virginity had been, she said: ‘I enjoyed myself.’