Avon Street

by Paul Emanuelli

  Belle picked up the papers from the table and pretended she was reading them, but the girl came nearer until she stood beside her. She was very young. ‘That man over there,’ she stuttered, pointing towards Harcourt, ‘he sent me to fetch you.’ There were tears in her eyes. ‘I’m only doing what he said. He told me I was not pretty enough for his friend, and that I should fetch you.’

  She looked at the girl, who couldn’t have been much older than thirteen or fourteen. Belle rose and told her to dry her tears, guiding her to the seat she had vacated, making time to think, arranging her papers purposefully on the table, knowing that Harcourt was watching her. Perhaps he expected her to pretend nothing had happened, or to be embarrassed, or to cry, or to run away. They were all thoughts that had run through her mind, but she would not give him the satisfaction of behaving as he expected. As she walked towards him, she saw his grin fading.

  ‘My friend is in need of companionship,’ Harcourt said.

  ‘Go to hell,’ she said. ‘I know the truth of who you are, and I’m not afraid to tell others if you push me further.’ He looked suddenly less sure of himself, and, just for a moment, she regretted the threat. She turned to walk away, but Harcourt reached out and grabbed her shoulder, pulling her back towards him. His grip was strong and all the pain of betrayal came back in that moment.

  Belle wheeled around and in one instinctive continuous movement slapped him with all her strength. His eyes seemed to come alive with the slap; sharp and small and cold, like a rabid dog. He stepped back, the shock as clear in his expression as the vivid red marks left by her fingers on his cheek. The bar room rang with laughter for a moment, and then equally as quickly fell silent.

  Harcourt stood frozen for a second, all eyes on him. ‘You’ll tell none of your lies,’ he said, letting loose the girl in his right arm and drawing back his hand. At first Belle thought he was going to rub his cheek, then she realised he was going to punch her; his face was twisted and ugly with hatred. She flinched, taken aback by the sudden hate on his face.

  Time stood still as she waited for the blow. Then she was aware of the other man stepping forward, putting himself between them and taking Harcourt by the shoulders. She heard the sound of her rescuer’s laughter. He looked back at her, momentarily, over his shoulder, careful to keep his body between her and Harcourt and he smiled. ‘Let’s have a round of applause please gentlemen for the next bare-knuckle female boxing champion of all England.’

  Belle could feel the hesitation in the crowd as they watched and waited for Harcourt’s reaction. Then Harcourt too smiled and began to clap, slowly. His response seemed to break the tension and soon others began laughing and clapping. Belle stared for a moment at her defender, her face burning with fear, and anger, and so many other emotions.

  Her defender turned towards her. ‘James Daunton,’ he said. ‘I apologise for my friend.’

  Belle turned and walked away. By the time she had got back to her table Harcourt was already ushering the others towards the door. The one who had called himself James Daunton smiled uncertainly over to her, as if seeking reassurance, but she looked away.

  ❖ ❖ ❖

  James breathed the cold night air deep into his lungs. It felt good after the smoke and heat of the room, and the awkwardness of the situation. With each inhalation he pictured the woman again, striding through the crowded room. She had brushed aside over-familiar bodies and hands, as though they were the thin branches of trees straddling her path. He pictured her face and remembered as she had drawn nearer the scattering of fine freckles around her nose, which the powder could not hide. Her long auburn hair had been loosely tied back in a bun, but wisps hung down here and there, framing her face. Most of all he remembered her eyes. Her eyebrows were not fashionably shaped, but dark and rounded, accentuating the deep blue-grey of her eyes. It was as though those eyes were still looking at him now. If only she had smiled, he thought.

  His thoughts were shattered by the hand that gripped his arm. Harcourt looked intently at him, half smiling, and yet there was something in his expression that James had never seen before. ‘You have saved me from my own temper,’ he said, ‘and I thank you. But never apologise on my behalf again.’

  The vehemence of Frank’s reaction to the slap had taken James by surprise. He had always marvelled in the past at Frank’s quiet assurance and even temper; his ability to charm almost everyone he met, no matter what their standing in society. ‘Did you know that woman?’ he asked.

  ‘I believe I met her once,’ Frank replied. ‘She’s an actress by the name of Belle Bennett, as far as I remember.’

  ‘I was a little taken aback at your reaction,’ James said tentatively; willing Frank, somehow, to put his mind at rest. ‘What was it she said about knowing the truth of who you are?’

  ‘Ramblings and rantings,’ Frank replied, ‘nothing more. Put it from your mind. I lost control for a moment. As I said, I am indebted to you. Now let’s speak no further of it.’

  ‘The other night, in the ale house in Southgate Street, did I do or say anything untoward?’ James asked, realising that a change of subject was called for.

  Frank laughed. ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘Do you not recall? You were enjoying yourself and in a generous mood. You insisted on reimbursing me for the dinner, and kept buying drink after drink, for all the company. I tried to dissuade you, but you would have none of it. My friends all said how amusing they found you.’

  James tried to smile, if only to conceal the embarrassment he felt. ‘I believe I drank too much.’

  ‘Perhaps I should not have introduced you to the special ale there, it can be very strong. I usually avoid it myself,’ Frank grinned. ‘You kept insisting we play cards.’

  ‘I take it I lost?’ James interrupted.

  Frank laughed. ‘I’m afraid so. I hope that you at least remember that I lent you ten pounds. That’s seventy in all that you owe me.’

  ‘Of course I remember,’ James lied.

  ‘I’m sure you will fare better at our next card game,’ Frank said.

  James hesitated, misgivings flooding his mind. ‘I think it might be the sensible thing for me to bow out of the game. My gambling has cost me a great deal of late, and there is little indication of my fortunes changing.’

  ‘All the more reason to think that you are due a change in luck,’ Frank said. James sensed the anger, barely concealed by Frank’s smile, heard it in his tone when he spoke again. ‘I have gone to a great deal of trouble in setting up this game. It was on my insistence that you were included, and now you calmly inform me that you intend to bow out.’ Frank’s voice was raised and the others were looking at them. ‘It would be dishonourable to withdraw now!’ he said. ‘It would make me look a fool in the eyes of the others and as for you, well … ’ He hesitated. ‘It will not take long for word to spread that you are probably without money, and I need not explain what that would mean for your reputation and your career.’ He turned his back and joined the others.

  Frank’s outburst had taken him by surprise, though looking back James could remember other occasions when someone had fallen out of favour. He found himself thinking of when he had first met Frank. It seemed an age ago, but it could not have been more than eighteen months, he calculated. It was at a game of cards, but a very polite game with small stakes, in the Assembly Rooms. He never played for more than pennies then. Frank had talked his way into the game as though he had known everyone there all his life, though in truth he knew none of them, yet his clothes and manners were those of someone who was comfortable in a sophisticated society.

  Frank had explained that he was newly arrived in the city and James had befriended him at first, almost out of a duty of politeness, but their acquaintance had quickly grown to friendship. He had introduced him to a select group of his more boisterous friends. Frank seemed to have endless energy and an unquenchable thirst for pleasure, always able to seek out knew experiences and gain access for chosen friends to places they hardly s
uspected existed. Gradually he had supplanted him at the centre of the circle and the group had swelled considerably and grown more boisterous. Only Richard had resisted his friendship.

  He watched Frank now, organising the party, as though he were marshalling a band of willing volunteers. He had been a good friend and it would be wrong to embarrass him, even though his behaviour tonight had been unacceptable. James walked over to join the others, but most were already leaving. He shook a few hands and Frank turned to him as the last of them departed. ‘Have you thought more?’

  ‘I will play,’ James said, ‘but it will be the last time.’

  Frank smiled, more himself now. ‘So be it. I knew you would not disappoint me.’ He stroked his angular chin and turned away, as though to depart. ‘I hear you flew to the rescue of another friend earlier today, a Catholic priest I believe? I did not realise you were a Catholic?’

  The question stung like an accusation. ‘I used to be,’ James said. ‘Sean Brennan is an old friend, but how did you know … ?’

  ‘News travels quickly in Bath,’ Frank interrupted. ‘Your friend the priest is involving himself in things he does not understand. I know the reputation of those he has made enemies of, and they are not to be crossed. Ask your friend Dr Wetherby, he’s always nosing around Avon Street.’

  ‘I was simply helping an old friend,’ James said, ‘as I would help you, if you were threatened.’

  ‘So be it, James, but I must ask another favour.’

  ‘Ask it.’

  ‘The money you owe me, I need it to be repaid.’

  ‘I do not have that amount about me at present,’ James replied, taken aback at the request. He would have to repay the loan at once now, he knew it. It was a debt of honour. But that would leave him with only sixty pounds – forty pounds short of the stake he needed for the game.

  ‘I did not expect payment now, James,’ Frank said. ‘Perhaps you could bring the money to me in the Pump Rooms, tomorrow? Shall we meet at noon?’ He hesitated. ‘I would not ask, but I find I need the money more urgently than I had thought and I must have cash for our card game. Our opponents will not accept markers.’

  ‘But are we not going on somewhere now?’

  ‘No, I will see you tomorrow in the Pump Rooms. I have another engagement this evening.’

  ❖ ❖ ❖

  As Belle stood at the back of the large stage waiting for her next cue, it felt like an eternity since she had delivered her last line. The part was undemanding, a serving maid whose major function was to be murdered at the beginning of the first act and to reappear as a shrouded ghost in the last.

  Daisy was stuttering through her part with a broad grin, as though it was a comedy. At times the audience laughed when the line was not meant to be humorous, but they remained for the most part polite. The play, poor though it was, seemed to hold their attention well enough, and the house was three-quarters full.

  Belle had loved the Theatre Royal since she was a child and her parents had performed there. The dressing rooms, and scenery stores, and costume rooms had been like an enchanted kingdom then, and she still felt much of their magic now. At times she almost sensed the presence of her mother and father in the wings, as though they were waiting for their cue; waiting to walk back into her life. Sometimes, at least for a while, she could even convince herself that they were still there, ready to make their entrance.

  She looked out at the brightly lit theatre. Three tiers of boxes lined the sides of the auditorium, the highest rising far above the stage, reaching almost to the lofty ceiling. It was the boxes that brought in the most money, each with its own ante-room for entertaining. Almost half of them, she noticed with satisfaction, were occupied.

  The uproar from the stage box to her right, as its door opened, took her by surprise. The noise from the ante-room drew even the audience’s attention. From the volume of sound a sizeable crowd might have been expected to emerge, but there were only two men and two women.

  Belle studied the people who had entered. The box was so close as to be almost part of the stage. There was no doubt. It was Harcourt and he smiled at her and affected an elaborate bow. Then the two men turned to the audience and bowed. The redhead and her friend curtseyed and blew kisses, displaying their ample cleavages, and received a round of applause and whistles from the young bucks in the audience.

  They took their seats as noisily as they entered and it was some time before the audience took any interest in what was happening on the stage, by which time Daisy had lost her place and Cauldfield was speaking the same line for the third time. By the time Daisy spoke, the audience was laughing again and the mood was broken.

  When Belle’s cue came, she looked, as if he had compelled her, up to the stage box. As she began speaking, Harcourt smiled and stood, whistling loudly. The others in the box began laughing and soon the audience joined in. As Belle stumbled over her words her voice was drowned by the tumult; then, as if satisfied with the uproar he had created, Harcourt and his party bowed to the crowd and left.

  Chapter 11

  The following morning James went to the Catholic Church in Orchard Street. The day was warmer than he had expected, the air suffused with a fine drizzle. The church was unlocked and deserted, heady with the sweet scent of incense and candles. James made his way down the aisle between rows of oak pews, shaking the water from his coat. The droplets caught the light like tiny jewels as the sun pierced through the early morning mist and shone through the windows.

  There was little to show that the church had formerly been a theatre, though James could make out the outline of a stage box in the plaster to the left of the altar; to the right, where its companion box should have been, stood an organ. The former Catholic Church in Bath had been burnt down by a rioting mob in 1780 with little opposition from the authorities, or so Sean had told him. Dr Brewer, the Catholic leader, was apparently hounded through the streets, refused sanctuary in the Guildhall by the town council, and turned away from every other church. It was the management of The White Hart Hotel who in the end gave him refuge and saved his life. Perhaps that was why, James thought, that though few of them could now afford to eat or drink there, let alone stay, ‘The Hart’ was still viewed with almost religious reverence by the Irish community.

  James looked up at the altar with the crucifix at its centre, flanked by eight sombre stone pillars. He felt compelled to make the sign of the cross. It was an instinct of upbringing rather than faith, yet still he couldn’t stop himself. He made his way behind the altar to the small chapel beyond, but there was no sign of Sean. Turning to leave, he instead sat in the front pew, staring up at the three niches built into the wall behind the altar, one each for Christ and two of his disciples or apostles or saints. He wondered vacantly who they were and then remembered his father’s funeral. It was the last time he had been in a church.

  He had been sitting there for some time, lost in thought, when Sean emerged from the chapel behind the altar and genuflected before approaching him. ‘Where did you come from?’ James asked. ‘I went into the chapel and you were not there.’

  ‘The monks of Downside were a canny crew, James. When they converted the old theatre they built a tunnel from the church to the priest’s house. The riots were still fresh in their memory, so they were. I confess that I use it occasionally, but only to stay out of the rain.’

  ‘It’s very grand in here,’ James said.

  ‘Too grand,’ Sean replied, ‘particularly when most of the parish live in destitution; still it is as it is.’

  ‘Have you already sent the fifty pounds to my brother?’ James asked, aware of the abruptness of the question. He could see the surprise on Sean’s face.

  ‘The man who was taking it left at dawn,’ he replied.

  ‘What of the other twenty pounds?’ James asked, almost forcing the words through his dry throat.

  ‘I still have it.’

  ‘I am very sorry, Sean, but I need the money back,’ James said, avoiding th
e priest’s eyes. ‘In a few days I will give you double the amount. It is as much for Michael as it is for me.’ He heard the tremble in his own voice and watched helpless as Sean stood looking at him, his expression slowly moving through anger and disappointment, to pity, or was he just imagining it. Either way, each expression seemed to hurt more than the last.

  ‘I’ll fetch it now,’ Sean said.

  When he returned Sean pushed the money into his hand and James took it, almost running from the church. He called over his shoulder, ‘I’ll more than double it when I bring it back,’ but the words did nothing to assuage his guilt.

  ❖ ❖ ❖

  As James walked into the Pump Rooms his conversation with Sean was still echoing in his mind. This was the centre of Bath’s social universe, a world that James knew well and one in which at most times he felt comfortable, but not at that moment. The room was full of people and noisy voices, as it always was at midday, but the sound could not drown the conversation in his head.

  He looked around at the elegantly dressed, vying for each other’s attentions whilst assessing the degree of style of their neighbours. The comings and goings, arrivals and departures, of the people who mattered, were posted daily on a notice-board to keep the other people who mattered informed about who they could, or could not, hope to see, or hope to be seen with. Thomas Hunt’s departure would not be listed, he thought, final though it was, nor the comings and goings of his wife and children.

  The ritual here was well established and James knew it as well as any of those gathered. The social elite would meet daily in the Pump Rooms, between seven and ten in the morning, as a string quartet or Hanoverian band tried to compete with their conversations. They would talk of the weather and politics, the theatre and the royal household, but mostly they would talk of each other. From there they would emerge into the town to take the air in Henrietta Gardens, or the Royal Victoria Park, or Sydney Gardens, where stewards ensured that the commoner classes, or anything which might cause offence, were excluded.