by Janet Ellis
* * *
‘Can you not keep a friend without it souring?’ my father said later. He did not ask why I had recorded what I did.
I will choose more carefully henceforth, I thought. I will not be swayed by dainty feet or rosy faces. I will wait until I meet the other side of my coin before holding out my hand.
Chapter 4
Tic-k-k-k toc-k-k-k. The clock and I are alone. Very gently, in riposte to my father’s gusty exit, I ease back my chair and stand away from it, then set it carefully against the table. During my mother’s confinement the house stayed close to itself. She had had many babies die inside her, and after my brother was lost it was as if we all walked about as quietly as possible so as to keep this baby safe till its time. Any sudden noise still seems rude and coarse. Except to my father, whose life runs on unchanged.
Jane stands now in the hall, her mouth open as she lets some thought or other keep her busy. She starts when she sees me.
‘Mistress!’ She tugs at the strings of her apron. This woman cannot be still in my company, she twists and fidgets so. There is a stray lock of hair on her forehead that would be usefully tucked away, instead she busies herself with her clothing.
‘Missy Jane?’ The little nurse is there. ‘Oh, Mistress!’ bobbing when she sees me. ‘Oh, Mistress, I have a message for Jane.’
‘Take your message, Jane. Oh, deliver it to her, Grace.’ Do these silly women need me to interpret for them?
‘The butcher’s boy, Warner, is here, Jane, he wishes you to inspect.’ The nurse bobs again and looks at the floor.
‘He is late to our house. It is nearly six, we have already dined.’
‘He has a reason. Mistress. To do with his uncle. Shall I send him away?’
I think of my father’s ire at the food he ate tonight and imagine Jane continually choosing fat over flesh for him, tough rather than tender. Shall I watch the transaction to make sure Jane takes the proper care? My mother lies abed; I will stand where she would.
‘Where is this boy? I will look at what he brings.’ The two women look startled at my sudden interest in matters of the home. They exchange a long glance. Perhaps if I banged their heads together, they would stop this shilly-shallying. Instead, I say, ‘I shall come with you, Jane. Let me oversee your choice. Neither of us needs to encourage my father’s bad humour.’
We go together to the kitchen. As a little child, I used to spend much time there: it was cosy amongst the warm ovens and homely smells of stock and bread. My nurse would heat milk for me, or sit me at the table while she folded cloths or somesuch. I had not visited for a long while, but here is the unchanged smell of it and the familiar pans and pots.
At the door, leaning on the jamb, stands the butcher’s boy. At his feet, a basket. In his hands, a joint of beef. I have never seen him before, but it is as if I recognise him. I stop in my tracks, because otherwise I might run to him. He looks as if he would speak but cannot remember how. We stare as intensely as if we’re about to jump together from a great height. The world gives a great lurch then resumes its customary spinning.
‘Mistress Jaccob,’ Jane announces. We both start, as if we’re surprised to find her still there.
‘Mistress Jaccob.’ I look at his mouth as he says my name. There is a faint line of dark hair above it. I do not want to look away. Everything I have done today till now seems pointless. I have wasted hours not looking at him.
He is taller than I am, but not so tall I must look up. I guess that he is older, but that may be because I am suddenly childish and gauche. Which way should my feet go to keep me upright? Where should I put my hands? I clasp them together, then let them fall by my side. I’m sure they hang lower down than usual. His hair grows long about his ears, but is a little pushed back off his face, and in the centre of his forehead it comes to a point in a widow’s peak. The brows are straight and dark, set a little in from the corner of his eyes which makes the line of his nose strong and straight. Below it, a full mouth. He smiles. His face is the only answer to any question I ask.
‘Do you choose now?’ He regards me with cool appraisal. He holds the meat closer to me; there are tracks of bright blood on the raw flesh, and it smells of iron and earth. The size of what he holds is the width of my waist, and I want his hands there. If he didn’t wash away the blood, I’d not mind.
‘Do you approve?’ His voice is deep. I imagine him saying my name. Then I think I would like to hear him whisper or howl it.
‘Let me see it, Fub.’ Jane comes up close behind me, her hands outstretched, but while he proffers the beef to her he keeps his eyes on me.
I have the curious sensation of being observed from all angles. I am aware of the lace at the bosom of my dress and the small buttons at the nape of my neck. He continues to stare and I feel the colour rise in my cheeks. I wonder if he likes what he sees. His gaze strips me and slices at the world. I fear that if I turn round, I will face a sheer drop behind me, and tense my feet in my shoes so I don’t fall. At the very least, I cannot be sure my dress still has a back to it.
Jane is twisting the beef this way and that. She sniffs at it, then puts it on the counter and turns her attention to the basket. As she holds up each piece, she prods and pokes at them and I am reminded of living flesh. Of the skin on soft arms or stout legs, of the smooth warmth of bellies and thighs. I shiver as if something touched me, as if his fingers stroked.
‘Will you,’ says the boy at last, ‘will you always come to the door now, do you think? Shall I teach you to examine what Jane will cook?’ He speaks softly, his words innocent enough, but I know there is no mistaking what he means. Be here again. Let me look at you. Look at me.
‘Yes, I shall.’ But I hear my voice tremble a little and see from his face that he knows why I falter. I should not be so quick to agree. ‘When it is convenient for me,’ I add, then: ‘When I have no other business.’
Oh, hush! I am ashamed of my prattling.
‘See to it now, Jane,’ I say as I retreat, not catching his eye, although catching myself a glancing blow against the counter with my hip, which makes me want to gasp in pain – though I suppress it.
* * *
Later, in my bed, after I have blown the candle out and lie in darkness, I find I cannot summon his face. A curl of hair about his forehead, perhaps, and that steady amused stare, but his features elude me. As my hand steals beneath my nightdress and seeks to find my place of quick wet softness, it is my mother’s breast I see, as she places the pink tip of it in my sister’s mouth. And with this vision, I speed my hand about its business to a completion of spinning stars.
Chapter 5
My room is full of the aroma of roasting beef. It will be cooked to the exact measurement of my father’s disapproval by the time it is served. And as soon as I smell it, my mind is full of that boy Fub, the width and the weight of him. I was buried under thick frosts, till he woke me. There is nothing soft or sweet about my feelings for him – they throb like a heart cut living from a beast and I am as ravenous as a bird of prey. I must see him, but I cannot wait to catch him by chance at our door. Days may pass before his next visit; I could fade and die of hunger before he comes. I will find him myself. I will have to ask Jane where he stays, of course, and my cheeks burn to imagine what I might say to her to extract this information without arousing her suspicions.
I’d thought that Keziah and I held either end of a ribbon and would skip towards each other in full sunshine, until I found out that I held both ends myself. Perhaps it is better now that I dig, secretly, blind as a mole, to meet Fub in darkness.
I feel the little bruise on my hip, pushing at it to a satisfying point of pain. My insides contract to remember his looking at me, how he’d stopped me with his stare. My exhaled breath is white in the room’s cold air, though the light outside the window is bright with the late summer sun. From the room below, I hear the cat-like cry of my
new sister. It snags and catches against my ear, urgent and insistent. She will get attended to with swiftness, that is certain. I sit awhile, waiting until I think her needs have been met. I have no desire to witness her care. None at all. But I still want my mother’s embrace. There is something for her where my heart used to be, but it isn’t as warm as love.
I pause outside her door till I am sure I can hear no crying infant or any whispered words. I knock softly and enter the room without waiting for a reply. My mother’s face is pale still, and drawn, but she smiles at me, and pats the bedcover beside her for me to sit there.
‘Anne,’ she holds my hand, her fingers curl round mine. A little squeeze. ‘Shall you hold your sister while she sleeps?’ The hairs on my arms rise with chill, but I nod in answer.
She disengages her hand and turns to the crib, bending over to slide her arms beneath the bundle of baby. I remember how often I had cuddled my brother. I would wake him from his nap simply for the pleasure of smelling his soft neck and nuzzling his tiny ears, holding him up close to have his hot breath on my cheek. But the love I had for him is atrophied and shrunken inside me, and this plump skin and wet cry cannot revive it. Still, I open my arms as my mother lays her small daughter gently into them, and I peer at the little doll face and beam as if I mean it.
‘Has my father attended?’ I say.
‘Attended?’ My mother leaves a little space round the word, to show she thinks it an odd choice. ‘Yes, he has attended.’ She holds my gaze, looking amused the while. ‘It would be an odd father who did not want to inspect his new child.’
I reflect briefly on the number of ways my father is odd, but it’s best not to include her in this musing. She has long ago absented herself from his doings – certainly she seems not to care if he blethers at Jane or ignores me. They move around each other without grace, scarcely exchanging words beyond the essential. Once, as we sewed together, I asked her about love, how should we know if we feel it and did God’s love feel the same? She coloured beetroot red and told me not to be so demanding, that it was not for any of us to fashion such queries and greater minds than ours could not provide an answer.
I stare at the baby. Fortunately, gazing down for longer than is necessary is expected when you hold an infant. Her eyes are shut tight, while her mouth sucks empty air, hoping to be filled. She is as heavy as a dead cat. I shift her to spread the weight on my lap and she starts, flinging her arms and legs outwards, her limbs pointing to all four corners of the room. She quivers but doesn’t wake.
‘Say your welcome to Evelyn,’ she says now, and I put on a good show of following the instruction.
* * *
When I leave the room, holding my fingers to my nose, I can still smell the baby’s scent. I hurry back to my room, pour water from the ewer into the basin and keep my hands immersed till it is gone.
‘Anne!’ My father calls from the hall. The house holds its breath to listen as my feet tap tap down the stairs to find him – we are both wondering what he might say.
‘Come!’ He is at his study door and indicates I should follow him in. I lift my skirts a little as I enter the room as if crossing shallow water. It is the moat of my father’s constant disapproval that I try and avoid, for it wets so much and stinks when it dries.
‘Sit!’ There must be a tax on words, that he uses them so sparingly. Well, this conversation has not cost him much yet. He sits at his desk, pushing aside some papers and books to place his arms there.
He gestures at the chair set at an angle to him, the only other sitting place in the room. This is where he comforted me when my first tooth fell. I recall it now, just as if I still had to look up at him. At six years old, I had thought I was dying – crumbling away mouth first – and he had laughed and reassured me, then conjured my tooth gone from his hand to replace it with a shiny coin.
I look at him square on and it is hard to do, for I know that I have much the same face. The same wide eyes and high forehead, the same rounded cheeks and straight mouth. His mouth, though, is held now in an expression of irritation, all pulled up at the edges, and between his brows there are two dark, straight lines of concentration.
‘Will you go—?’ As he speaks, he searches through the piles of papers in front of him. ‘Letter, letter, letter,’ he mutters to himself, moving them into different configurations. He shifts left and right on his chair, unwittingly polishing its leather. One less job for Jane to do, though if he knew that he spared her a task with his action he would stop and sit as still as a basilisk.
Around us there are shelves of books that have not been disturbed in a good long while. A thick rime on top of each volume, the idle browser would sneeze and cough. All those words locked up there! They should be strung up like bunting, lines of them fluttering in a breeze. It is marvellous how rearranging their order can completely transform their meaning. I long to take a book down, blow the dust away and begin it. ‘Shall we read together, Father?’ I do not say. ‘Which is your favourite book?’ I will not enquire.
I still keep two precious books that Dr Edwards had lent to me, forgotten in his haste, one a dictionary and the other full of fables. They are opened and read so constantly I almost know them off by heart and they are soft and translucent with use, unlike these that are all hard and closed tight shut.
‘Letter!’ He holds a single slip of paper, closely written on, and folds it small.
‘Take this to the priest at the Marylebone Chapel. It requests a christening. Which must be done,’ he adds, but there is no joy in this, no promise of celebration.
‘Yes, Father.’ Is this to be our exchange? Will he make no more conversation with me than this perfunctory example? I pause, as if to prompt him to fill the silence, but he is already busy with something on his desk, and does not even look up.
I do not go.
‘Where is my tooth, Father?’
‘Eh?’ He raises his head. His tough grey hair sways and settles. It is the only wild thing about him. His simple thoughts are ordered, there is no frivolity in his conduct.
‘My tooth. When I was a little girl, when I lost my first baby tooth, I was frightened. You—’ I pause. I do not want to become sentimental or vulnerable, or he would find me easy to dismiss. I keep my tone even and calm. ‘You comforted me, and magicked my tooth away. You gave me a coin for it. It was in this room, do you remember? Did you keep it afterwards?’
He stares to the left of him, to the unhelpful volumes. ‘Your tooth?’ He shakes his head, looks back at me.
‘It was still bloody, fresh out of my mouth.’
He exhales. ‘I don’t remember, Anne,’ he says. There is no softness in his tone, it is only hard fact he delivers. ‘I don’t keep such things,’ he says. ‘Why would I keep such things?’ He throws his arms wide to the crowded shelves, as if to suggest even one more tiny object would overfill them and bring them crashing down.
We examine the silence between us. I cannot think of a reply, save ‘Because it was of me.’ Unbidden, even as I have this unspoken thought, I feel tears spring in my eyes. He must not see this! I turn around to the door and feel for its handle as my sight blurs. A rustle of papers behind me and he has turned his attention to his desk again.
From the kitchen, a low clattering murmur suggests Jane is ordering things about in there. I pause at the door, rehearsing in my head a reason to step inside. Before I can, Jane flings the door wide. As ever, she is startled to see me and her genuflection takes the form of a quick, urgent cross of her legs, as if she were in need of a pot.
‘Jane,’ I don’t let her see me smile as she untangles herself, ‘I must go to the church with a missive from my father, and if there is any merchant we have outstanding business with, then tell me so that I can combine my errand with that office.’
A little frown. Jane’s eyes and mouth are small, they cluster close together as if to keep her nose company. And her
nose turns up sharply at the end in a bid to escape them, revealing her nostrils, wide and red.
‘No, thank you, Mistress Anne.’ I can see she is flummoxed by my enquiry. ‘All is in order.’
‘I would like to pay visits to our suppliers in turn, as my mother will be abed a while yet.’
At the mention of my mother, Jane casts her eyes to the ceiling and smiles as if there were a little window there, revealing to her a delightful picture: the mother and her child. It is strange how the presence of a baby softens everyone all at once. Perhaps if those in danger at the hands of others cried ‘Baby!’, they would avert the crisis. Instantly, the dagger would be sheathed and the strangling rope loosened.
She catches me smiling this time, and assumes I share her sagging, soft feelings. ‘You are good to think of it, but your mother left us well informed before her confinement.’
‘Nevertheless . . .’ Oh, I only need one bit of information from this silly dolt. I will go about it another way. ‘I am minded to visit them. I mean you no injury, Jane’ (for I can see she is beginning to interpret my queries as correction, her little eyes are becoming moist), ‘I wish only to practise my household duties, all of which I shall most certainly need when I am wed.’
And as swiftly as the mention of an infant melted her, so too does the notion of me as a bride.
‘Oh, indeed!’ She claps her hands together, inclining her head and grinning as if she already sees me at the altar. ‘It will stand you in good stead.’ She is practically choosing flowers for a bouquet.
‘So, where is our butcher found?’ I had meant to delay this question, but my mouth is so full of it now it must be spat out.
