The Lace Balcony

by Johanna Nicholls

  ‘The reason no longer matters. Fool that I was I came to ask Fanny Byron to marry me. I can see she doesn’t live here – never has. So, is Vianna Francis going to offer me a drink?’

  Mungo’s more frightening when he’s calm but I mustn’t let him see that.

  ‘Certainly. Jane said to save the champagne to drink with you.’

  ‘How like my mother. A born Romantic. It has been her undoing. She’s had several offers of marriage. But she remains true to her first love – my father.’

  He raised his glass in an ironic toast. ‘To the notorious Vianna Francis.’

  ‘I would prefer to toast my teacher – who taught me to read and write.’

  ‘To Vianna Francis!’ He drank the wine in one draft then threw the glass to shatter in the fireplace. ‘That’s an ancient custom, isn’t it? A toast so important no one must drink from the same glass again.’

  Vianna snapped. ‘Why are you here, Mungo? I don’t deserve this. Yes, I admit I saw Severin weeks ago, by accident. Unknown to Felix I went in response to an answer to his advertisement. I expected to meet J.D. Esquire, who claimed to have details of Daisy. Severin tricked me.’

  Mungo threw back his head and laughed, but there was no pleasure in the sound. ‘By God, you’re good, girl. You could tread the boards at Drury Lane and have all London at your feet.’

  ‘If you’re only here to call me a liar, please leave. I intend to repay every penny you have spent on my expenses.’

  Mungo poured them both another glass of wine and sat smiling at her. ‘You truly want to repay me, do you?’

  ‘Just as soon as I am able.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  What’s the trick? Her head ached with confusion, accelerated by champagne.

  He removed from his waistcoat a small velvet bag he placed on the table.

  ‘You thrive on love stories, Vianna. They are food and drink to you, yes?’

  She nodded, uncertain, aware she was a captive audience.

  ‘Allow me to amuse you with a true story. It will either make you laugh or cry. Who knows?’

  He crossed to the balcony, glancing out at the stars. Or was it to check if they were being observed by Felix’s telescope? Whatever the reason, Mungo drew the curtains to close off the outside world. He flung his coat across a chair.

  ‘There’s a saying,’ he said, ‘ “Who has not fallen in love at first sight, has not loved.”’ I don’t know who said that, but I discovered it was true for me. That first day we met I did more than kiss you – I gave you my heart. At Moreton Bay I was more often crazy than sane. Some prisoners cracked under the lash. Cried for their mothers. Not me. It took solitary confinement to break me. I talked to ghosts – they talked to me. Only one thing prevented me falling into the bottomless pit of insanity. A beautiful golden girl came to me at night. She told me that no matter what they did to me, I was her man. Sometimes she came in a cloud of white – her wedding gown, her veil floating behind her . . . she was so real. She lay with me. Told me she loved me. That she was waiting for me. She kept me alive.’

  Vianna felt her throat constrict. This was no tall tale.

  ‘Was she a dream, a memory, sheer hallucination?’ he asked. ‘I didn’t care. Her promise kept me sane.’

  Mungo turned to face her. Strong and virile, he showed no visible sign of emotion but the images in Vianna’s mind were enough to break her heart.

  She tried to cover her face but Mungo held fast to her hands. ‘Look at me, Vianna. I haven’t finished yet. I haven’t made you laugh – or cry!’

  She forced herself to meet the intensity of his eyes but there were no words strong enough to ease his pain.

  ‘When I was set free I returned to Sydney Town to search for Fanny, the girl who gave her scarf to the right man with the wrong name. Me. When I saw you again, that day in the carriage, I saw that Severin controlled you like a puppet-master. You were afraid of him. I had only one choice – to set you free. Make you my wife. Give you my name.’ He shrugged. ‘Quayle is the name of a bastard, but I wear Mother’s name with pride.’

  ‘Any woman would be proud to marry you. But you deserve far better –’

  ‘Enough!’ he said. ‘From the day I brought you here – a mermaid, kicking and screaming – I have treated you with respect. You know I have. Despite my lust, every fantasy in my head, wanting to throw you down on that bed and make love to you all night. I waited – gave you time to turn your back on your old life. Time to give yourself a chance – give me a chance!’ He made an ironic gesture to the sovereign purse. ‘That was for you to buy a bolt of silk for your wedding gown.’

  ‘No!’ The cry escaped her.

  He turned her face so she was forced to meet his eyes. ‘I can’t marry you, Mungo. Believe me, if I could love anyone, it would be you.’

  ‘Come come, Vianna, I may be nuts but I’m no longer certifiably insane. My offer of marriage is no longer open. But if you want to repay me, the choice is yours.’ He gestured to the coins. ‘Just for one night in your life, fulfil my fantasy. Give me my wedding night. Surely that can’t be too difficult for a courtesan? Tomorrow you’re free to take the money and leave. I promise you I won’t follow you – now or ever.’

  Vianna felt she was plucking random thoughts from the air. Nothing was real.

  ‘One night. Then you are willing to let me go, forever?’

  ‘One night. I give you my word – not as a gentleman. The word of a Currency Lad.’

  They waited. The dark silence outside was broken only by the plaintive, far-off howl of a dingo. At last Vianna found the words she needed to set them both free.

  ‘If you accept that I can never marry you, Mungo – I shall give you a wedding night to remember on your deathbed,’ she said coolly.

  She was overcome by a sudden impulse to hurt him. Was it to release his pain – or her own? She weighed the coins in her hand.

  ‘It’s a little light but near enough to be acceptable for a wedding night – above a stable.’

  Vianna crossed over and knelt by his chair. She shook her hair free to fall like a cloak around her shoulders in the time honoured message of seduction. She lifted his foot and placed it against her breast. Then with the ghost of a smile that promised him the world, she removed each of his boots in turn. Holding his gaze, she untied his silk neck cloth, unfastened the linen at his throat, caressed and kissed his naked chest.

  Mungo studied her with a faint smile, but she could not read the expression in his eyes. He allowed her to stroke and kiss his body to arouse him but he did not touch her. Her hands were trembling as she began to remove his shirt, but when he caught her hand she made no protest, realising that the pain was unintentional. She sensed she had not even scratched the surface of his anger.

  ‘No. Leave it,’ he ordered. ‘My back is heavily scarred. Not a pretty sight.’

  ‘I am your bride. There can be no secrets between your body and mine.’

  When she had made him naked, she coiled herself around him, kissing his neck, his chest and finally his back, where the white ridges of deep scars made by ‘the cat’, were long healed yet forever a part of him, like the initiation scars of tribal men.

  At last Mungo gave in to impulse and laid his hands on her.

  Softly she whispered the words that had always aroused men to fever pitch.

  ‘Yes, my darling. I want to set you free. Do everything you want to me. Anything. No rules. No barriers between us.’

  ‘Really?’ he asked. ‘Then tell me you love me.’

  She did not hesitate. ‘I love you with all my heart, Mungo.’

  ‘Words are easy. Now comes the hard part – make me believe it!’

  She unfastened the bodice of her gown and slipped out of it to stand before him, her hair wild, no hair on her body. Her simple white shift was a world away from the wicked French lingerie in a courtesan’s repertoire of seduction. The slip sank to the floor, leaving her stripped down to the bare essentials she possessed to gi
ve him pleasure – her mouth, her hands, her body, the wild flights of her imagination.

  ‘Make me believe you love me, Vianna. Just for tonight – I’ll make it worth your while. Money can buy anything from a courtesan, can’t it!’

  ‘You don’t have enough money to buy my love. Only my freedom. When we met the timing was all wrong. Nobody’s fault. So these words come too late. But for what it’s worth, for the first time in my life I know what it is to truly love a man.’ She turned away. ‘By morning you’ll know that’s either the truth – or the lies of a whore.’

  He rose to follow but Vianna gestured him to remain. ‘Wait a moment longer.’

  She closed the door between them and with trembling fingers opened the box.

  On her return she held out her hand to him, seeing a range of expressions cross his face, each fighting for control.

  Vianna stood before him as motionless as the living portraits she had portrayed on stage at Severin House. Covering her like a silken cocoon was the long, cloud of tulle that Jane had made for her wedding veil, held by a diadem of orange blossoms. Beneath the veil she was naked, except for a dark neck cloth knotted at her throat.

  Mungo’s voice was husky. ‘My scarf. Does that mean . . . ?’

  ‘I gave you my scarf years ago. Tonight I wear yours. True to the underworld code of thieves and strumpets – just for tonight, Mungo Quayle, I am your wife.’

  He came to her as naked as Adam and carried her to bed. At first rough and clumsy, he soon caught the rhythm, gave her in full measure his body, passionate, angry and demanding. And because she had long known the ways of men, Vianna responded to his every need, sensing when he wanted to dominate her, excite her, use her, make her use him, please her, enchant her and make her beg.

  And somewhere during the union of their bodies, all the tricks and artifice that had become second nature to her dissolved like mountain mist. It was as if Vianna Francis was watching her from a far-off distance . . . supplanted by naïve Fanny Byron who was hungrily, joyously, truly making love to a man for the very first time in her life. She abandoned all control, crying with pleasure, with pain, with loss and with discovery. So this is what love was always meant to be. Why did I discover it too late?

  All boundaries between their bodies vanished. She relinquished her right to protect herself from the one thing she feared above all . . . to lose herself in an act of love from which there was no return.

  • • •

  The cock crowed – but it was beaten in the contest with the kookaburras’ laughter to announce the dawn of a new day. Mungo’s voice was warm and teasing. Now sure of himself, he rubbed his nose, his lips and his unshaven chin into her neck and the warm valley between her breasts. He stroked her hair as if rewarding a child.

  ‘There, that wasn’t so hard, girl. Admit it. You’re sorry you kept me waiting so long, eh? Well, there’s plenty more where that came from – and you’re going to get more pleasure from what I have in mind now than you ever dreamed of.’

  His tongue licked her lips then played inside her mouth. And now that they were sure of each other’s bodies they fought each other for supremacy – to be the one to give their lover the most pleasure.

  This time they made love long and hard, interrupted by smothered laughter, gagging each other’s mouths to avoid their involuntary cries at climax – aware that Jane Quayle’s bedroom was on the other side of the common upstairs wall.

  Lying limp in his arms, Vianna was now confident enough to remind him. ‘Why are you still here, Mungo? You paid for one night only.’

  ‘I lied,’ he said smugly. ‘As you knew I would.’

  Vianna took his face between her hands and opened his weary eyelids with gentle fingers to gain his full attention, while he clung to the last moments of sheer pleasure as he rested inside her.

  ‘Yes, Mungo, but I also lied to you last night – and told you the truth. I doubt you are clever enough to know the difference.’

  ‘Which was a lie? When you told me I was the lustiest man God ever invented? Or that I could buy you for one night only? Or when you said, “I’ll never marry you, Mungo,” then moments later offered me your body, wearing nothing but my neckscarf! You knew perfectly well what that would do to me!’

  He took the end of the scarf in his teeth and bit into it with a look in his eyes that told her exactly what to expect next.

  This time she could not hold back her words any more than she could control the passion that ricocheted between them, as they played like two children forbidden to light matches. She gave and took everything he wanted – but refused to say ‘I love you.’

  This time he left her satiated. She fell asleep, startled awake by torrential rain on the iron roof, even more by the sight of Mungo disappearing down the ladder.

  ‘What’s the matter? Where are you going?’

  He called from the stables. ‘Some ruckus outside. Stay here, I’ll handle it.’

  The door slammed behind him. Rain drowned out the distant sound of early morning farmers’ carts on their way to market. Rainwater plastered Vianna’s hair to her face as she looked out the window into the street below. Nothing in sight except a single, stationary hansom cab at the far end of Little Rockingham Street.

  She was distracted by the strange, lovely vision of a shower of exotic blossoms rising in the air like fireworks to fall down again, carried away in the gutters that gushed like rivulets. Severin’s flowers.

  The sole figure in the street was a crazy man. Soaked to the skin and naked except for material knotted around his hips like an Otahitian, he knelt in front of the stables. Arms stretched up to the sky, he turned to all points of the compass, crying out at the top of his lungs. ‘Hey, wake up. You hear me? My bride loves me!’

  His face was shining with happiness. Like a drunk craving drink, Mungo opened his mouth wide and drank the falling rain as if it were champagne.

  Vianna covered her mouth, torn between horror and laughter. Mungo’s gone stark raving mad.

  ‘Say it, Vianna. Tell the world you love me!’

  ‘Mungo! Please come inside!’ she begged.

  Jane Quayle looked down from her upstairs window and rolled her eyes.

  ‘For God’s sake, tell him! Before the traps cart him off to the lunatic asylum.’

  Jane slammed her window shut.

  Vianna began laughing, her tears mingling with the rain on her face.

  ‘God help me, Mungo Quayle. I love you – and only you.’

  The vehicle was now approaching and as it passed Mungo, it slowed its pace. The old cab driver shook his head in wonderment at Mungo then caught sight of Vianna.

  Vianna quickly covered her breasts with her hands and ducked so that only her chin rested on the windowsill. Too late!

  The cabbie gave Mungo a cheery wave. ‘Aye. Yer not so crazy lad!’

  One moment she was shaking her head and smiling like a mother at a wild child’s antics. The next moment her smile froze on her lips. As the carriage drove off, a curtain was drawn back from the window. Just for one second she saw his eyes. And knew who he was.

  Severin’s bloodhound, Blewitt.

  Chapter 41

  Felix ringed the date on his desk calendar with a dual sense of triumph. October 19, 1831 was a turning point in Colonial history – the departure of the Governor, Lieutenant General Ralph Darling. But the date was of far greater personal significance. It marked a watershed, the eve of his new clandestine life with Vianna at Mookaboola.

  Tonight is the climax to twenty-four years of trying to live up to my parents’ expectations of the perfect son.

  He had good cause to feel jubilant. That morning, Vianna’s note, delivered by Molly, his trusted go-between, asked him to come to her alone that evening. The timing was perfect. The whole L’Estrange household would be absent, celebrating Darling’s departure, along with most of the Colony.

  The whole town knew that William Charles Wentworth, whose Australian newspaper had long campaigned aga
inst Darling, had invited hundreds of friends to his Vaucluse estate to enjoy a huge bonfire, fireworks and a bullock roasted on a giant spit, along with twelve sheep. He had also set up marquees with piles of loaves and casks of Coopers’ Gin and Wrights’ Strong Beer for Sydney’s lower orders.

  An open invitation like that will draw thousands of riff-raff flocking to Vaucluse. No doubt Wentworth has one eye on his political career. But who cares? Tonight there’ll be no one here to spy on me. I’ll claim what is rightfully mine – the fulfilment of my contract.

  His eyes were drawn to the loft where a light shone brightly like a star of Venus. He withdrew her letter from the pocket over his heart and re-read it. Written in her surprisingly meticulous, schoolgirlish handwriting, the words warmed him.

  Dear Felix, It is important we discuss your plans for Mookaboola before I honour our contract. Please meet me tonight. I shall unlock the gate at the entrance to Little Rockingham Street after supper. If you are unable to join me then, I shall walk down to the common to watch the bonfires. I must see you alone tonight. Your true friend, F.

  ‘Unable to join her?’ I’d happily burn in hell if that’s the price I must pay!

  A shadow of guilt marred his happiness. His possession of Vianna was a wilful decision that would deeply hurt his mother.

  He had an involuntary rush of his first ever memory . . . as a toddler somewhere in Prussia . . . running and stumbling in the snow, crying until his mother picked him up and comforted him . . . his surprise as he brushed the tears from her cheeks, sensing she was crying because she felt his pain . . .

  Mutti has always been the linchpin holding my world together. Now that woman will be my Venus.

  Dressed in his new black velvet evening tailcoat, he squared his shoulders at his image in the mirror, a gentleman ready to claim victory. Through the window, across the garden, he caught sight of Toby’s face pressed against the window of Jane Quayle’s cottage, waiting for Mungo to take him to the bonfire.

  The boy’s eager face reminded him of the Guy Fawkes Day bonfires of his childhood, shared with Mungo. Their excitement, building the bonfire and the ‘Guy’, the life-sized rag effigy painted with a man’s face that Jane stuffed with straw to throw on the bonfire at its height. How Mungo always ended up happily besmirched by dirt and soot, his face shining red from the fire, his hair singed from fireworks, darting about barefoot in his ragged pants. While Felix stood on the sidelines giving directions that Mungo ignored, inhibited by the need to keep his scarlet soldier’s uniform immaculate on Mutti’s orders.