by Janet Ellis
‘The vicar will arrange the christening for tomorrow week and call here on Friday.’ At least no one can accuse me of not delivering my message.
He stands to one side, allowing me to pass at last.
‘My book?’ I reach to take it.
He holds it close to his chest then above his head. ‘You’ll have no more need of it.’ He pauses. Will he confiscate it? Instead, he hurls it into the fire. I gasp, watching helpless as the flames lick.
‘What are you staring at?’ he asks, giving me a little shove. ‘Dinner will be on the table soon and you’ll find you have only my company tonight. What’s that?’ He points to the skirt of my dress and when I follow his gaze, I see a spot of dried blood there: a perfect dark red circle. ‘What have you been up to, you stupid girl?’ He raises his arm again. I think he might strike me.
‘I walked too close to a rough sort of beggar. He clutched at me, wanting money – he must have had blood on his hands.’
‘It is not the print of a hand, is it?’
What else can I say? But before I can invent some other cause, my father’s usual boredom with any subject discussed for too long comes to my rescue.
‘Change out of your costume, that’s all.’ He goes towards his study.
As I leave, I see movement, a flash of skirts at the entrance to the kitchen, someone leaving in a hurry. Grace! She must have been listening. And it must have been her that betrayed me to him – who else knew of my errand? Well, she has got her reward. I am more captive than ever now. The damage has been done.
I didn’t want my father to see me cry, but once I am alone it comes easily. How shall I visit Fub with the terrible Onions stuck to my side? I wipe my face with the sleeves of my dress – if I am thought as scruffy as a beggar I might as well adopt slovenly ways. Perhaps the fastidious Onions might be repelled by me if I sink into the gutter in my habits. Which would leave me alone with only my family, who do not care for me either. I am truly between a rock and a very hard place and when I concentrate my thoughts on my plight, it is as painful as stubbing my toe against stone. If they would all only vanish and leave me be.
Sudden as a lightning strike, I have the thought that if they all died, together, I would not mourn. My father, Evelyn, even my mother, every last one of them. I would see them set sail in a ship that I knew would sink or watch them fall into a hole that dropped them down to the earth’s molten core and not mind. A plague could ravage or a stampede of mad bulls flatten them, it would be all the same to me. I wait for guilt to nibble at these thoughts and make me regret them, but it does not come.
There is a tapping on the door, faint as a mouse’s scrabble. Grace stands there, pale and timid.
‘What do you want?’ If she has come to apologise, I am in no mood to hear it.
‘The cover is a little charred, but some pages survive.’ She holds Donne’s verses, the little book my father sought to burn. ‘I ran to get the tongs when I saw him throw it in the hearth. I thought it was a wicked thing to do, Miss.’
I cannot speak. Like a bucket full to the brim, I have been carrying myself carefully in front of her and now this little tip of me has caused a flood. My face is running wet with copious tears. She fishes in her apron pocket and hands me a square of rough cotton. Then she puts the book gently into my other hand.
‘There is no window closed so tight it won’t give a little, Miss. And Mr Donne’s words are doubtless strong, too.’
I might as well embroider that homily on another sampler, for all the good it will do.
When Grace is gone, I open the scorched book and breathe in the faint acrid tang of the burnt pages. Her handkerchief is hemmed all round in large stitches and smells of lavender. I spread it flat on my pillow, to scent my dreams later.
Chapter 11
At supper, my father had sat in silence, except to say ‘Eat!’ when he saw that I only pushed at the food on my plate without lifting it to my mouth. Jane had caught my eye several times and I fancied she’d smiled conspiratorially. Perhaps she and Grace had discussed my plight on the back stairs or over a steaming pan. I did not smile back. It seemed to me that those two women had more freedom than I would ever have, for all that they do my family’s bidding.
This morning my stomach aches. It is a low insistent pain and, sure enough, when I squat over my pot there is a ribbon of red blood mixed in the waters. I prepare my little bundle of cloth and bind it up with wide strips round my waist. All the better to meet Onions, for I warrant that this state will repulse him mightily and I shall not attempt to hide it.
I wait in the hall, my bonnet already tied. Just as the dining room clock creaks out its chime, there is a knock on the door. I open it myself, I don’t want to give Onions the pleasure of being announced. He is a little taken aback, for he is still smoothing his white locks into their ribbon and was probably admiring himself in the brass plate too.
‘Miss Jaccob! Anne!’ He bows, then holds out a little posy of flowers.
‘They are all wild things, picked on my way.’ He waggles his fingers at them. ‘Such brave, fragile blooms.’
‘Did they make you think of me, Mr Onions? Am I brave and fragile, too, do you think?’
‘Anne, you have many, many fine qualities and if I was to present you with a floral tribute to match every one, I should be standing here behind a veritable hedge.’
His voice has a souring effect on me, like lemon juice in milk.
‘Shall we be on our way?’ I hope that the streets will be so busy and loud I’ll hardly be able to hear him. ‘Where do we go?’
He points left, and I set off at a trot, obliging him to scamper beside me in his neat black shoes.
‘Where do you go?’ he pants, catching me up. ‘My carriage waits there.’
Of course! How foolish I had been to imagine we would walk anywhere, his feet are probably too soft to bear rough stone and his chest would most likely tighten with any exertion. But what a further punishment to have to sit with him in the confines of a carriage! The coachman holds the door for me, then takes my hand to help me up. This is the only man who’ll touch me today, unless Fub manages to breach my prison walls. I’ve no intention of even the smallest intimacy with Onions. As he settles himself fussily opposite me, spreading the cloth of his coat and shaking his sleeves, I ponder on how odd it is that, while they are ostensibly both men, there are so many differences between Fub and this offering that they might be different species.
‘Do you agree, Anne?’ Onions has raised his brows, waiting for an answer to a question I did not hear.
‘I beg your pardon, I was distracted.’
‘Charming.’ Onions smiles in his peculiar way; his wide mouth and his cold eyes do not join forces. ‘How I wish I could spend a while in your head, to see what delicate images play there, what thoughts pervade.’
We both know it is just as well he cannot.
‘I was merely opining that it is a fine day. You are very pale.’ He leans close to me, his eyes narrow with suspicion. ‘Have you applied blanc?’
‘I am not in the habit of rubbing lead on my face,’ I say. He continues to stare. ‘You have a great resemblance to Maria Gunning,’ he tuts. ‘She, alas, was killed by vanity.’
He is closer to that death than I. ‘That is unlikely to be my fate. Where do we go, Mr Onions?’
The streets roll by. He leans forward again. ‘Could I request, dear girl, that you call me Simeon? I hope, although I know I am scarcely worthy of your company, to entertain you at some length over my stay in London and thus we can dispense with formalities, I think.’ A little cough. ‘I hope.’
I lean forward, too. ‘Any time we spend together is not of my doing or is my wish. My father gives his permission for you to pay me court and I must do as he says. Let us be clear, though, that I have no desire to be with you now and absolutely no intention of being with you at any po
int in the future. Furthermore, I do not want anything from you.’ And with this, I turn to the carriage’s open window and fling the flowers out of it.
Onions braces himself against this onslaught, then takes stock. He leans back. ‘Then all is indeed clear, Miss Jaccob.’ He presses on the word. ‘But I shall be clear, too. Your father has indicated, nay, has insisted, that you should become my wife. It suits his business if I am persuaded to invest in it and of course, as your husband, I would do so. It suits my standing if I am attached. I am in no particular hurry to marry, but I am aware that an estate such as mine requires heirs and suchlike.’ He waves his hand in the air. ‘My cousin minds it well enough but I could not go to my grave thinking that his low-born wife and children would end up inheriting it. It is my duty to marry someone. In terms of mating, Anne, you are good stock.’ He looks away, sighing. ‘And I do venture to hope that you may, in time, find me acceptable.’ He sighs again. ‘I keep myself in good order and am well-acquainted with those who matter. My mother spoke often of my beauty and nobody who heard her disagreed. I read a great deal and am something of an expert in music. My writings – though I hardly take any time over them, they come so easily – are much admired.’
He looks at me full in the face. ‘I think, in all honesty, and please forgive my frankness, that you could not do better.’
His vanity is outrageous. I could point to almost any person going by and demonstrate the many ways in which they outshine this man. His scented breath makes me gag; his every movement makes me recoil.
He taps on the roof, ‘Hurry, now, driver!’ and sits back, satisfied, as the carriage sways and jolts and rumbles. My stomach tenses and the pain there pulses and throbs. I am glad of it. Like the arrows through the martyr’s sides it is a physical reminder of all that I fear and all that I desire.
At length we pull up at the gates of a great building, with a wide avenue before it for carriages to enter.
‘Where are we?’ I ask. Onions pouts, petulant as a child. ‘Ah, she speaks! I had not thought you could hold your tongue for so long. I am tempted not to reply, to see how you like it. But—’ he taps my arm, ‘I have decided to treat you as a pupil and school you in the ways of wifely companionship.’ He gestures outside. ‘This is the foundling home. I have not the least interest in the fallen women who clutter its doorways, nor the children who need its services,’ he shoots me an arrogant glance, ‘for that is their doing, and they must pay the price. But it is a repository of art, in which I take great pleasure. And of which I naturally know a great deal. I shall be your teacher and your guide. It will be a positive Grand Tour!’
How have I been cursed in my tutors! They are instructing me in all the wrong ways: the one with his graphic illustrations, the other with his fawning and fakery. Teaching me how to be his wife! Lecturing me about paintings! Surely I have not been so sinful thus far in my life as to deserve all this punishment? Perhaps I pay in advance for my wickedness in the future. There can be plenty of it to come, in that case, to make up for this torture.
When we come to the door, it swings wide as if invisible hands tug at it. From behind its great bulk creeps a little man. He is bowing so low that he could easily inspect the floor while he’s down there.
‘Where is Legge?’ says Onions, irritably, to the back of the jacket below him.
The man straightens upright in instalments as if each vertebra instructed the next to move. ‘He sends his regrets,’ he says. He has a curious manner of speaking as if he were about to break into laughter in the middle of his sentence.
Onions bridles. ‘Most unfortunate.’
‘Yes’, agrees the man, still jocular. ‘Shall I—?’ He points up the staircase in front of us.
‘I can find my way,’ Onions cuts across his words and his amusement.
‘As you wish,’ the fellow chortles.
‘Where are the children?’ I ask.
The two men exchange a look.
‘They do not come here,’ Onions explains, as if to an idiot. ‘They live at the back of the house.’
‘As they first come in,’ the man guffaws.
If he were to actually encounter humour, perhaps he might expire in a paroxysm of mirth since he finds such prosaic things so funny. I rather wish he could accompany us, nevertheless, as Onions obviously finds him tremendously annoying and I would relish the entertainment of the two of them in conflict. Instead, the vast space of the hallway echoes only to our footsteps as we cross it alone. ‘Elliot’s clock,’ Onions says as we climb the stairs past a polished walnut casing. Its blank face marks the exact moment of my despair and its hands will turn impassively throughout my ordeal here.
Onions is inclined to greet the paintings as if they were servants who were suspected of stealing from him. He scurries past crossly, not wishing to make contact, flinging the names of the offending artists at me. ‘Collett,’ he hisses, ‘Hogarth, Reynolds, Brooking.’ I stop at this last, a study of huge ships under a darkening sky. Although they are all straight on the water, the waves around them threaten to tip and tilt them dangerously before too long. ‘He is dead now,’ says Onions, over my shoulder.
‘This lives,’ I say, under my breath.
We continue to hurtle through the rooms. There are no signs of any of the inmates here, or of their fabled education and entertainments. From time to time, Onions looks about him and listens keenly, like an animal scenting prey, but we are by ourselves and there are no sounds of life from elsewhere in the building.
‘Do you look for something, Sir?’ I ask when he next performs this ritual.
He starts as if he had forgotten I was with him. ‘No, no,’ he smoothes the ruffle at his neck.
In the next room, white cornicing as rich as cake decorates the ceiling. The paintings crowd onto the walls: it is a feast laid out for the famished.
‘The finest exhibition,’ he says, proudly, as if he had painted them all.
‘Can we rest a while?’ I sink on to a stone bench. I feel as full as if I had eaten a large meal, although nothing has passed my lips.
Onions looks puzzled. ‘The female has a complicated constitution,’ he pronounces. He stares at me as if I were an object behind glass in a display. We are in front of a vast picture of a woman, a child and an angel; they form a triangle of anxiety as each one seems on a different mission to the other. A gash of light behind the pointing angel indicates that all will not go well for the woman he gestures to. Certainly, her clothing is inadequate for the storm clouds above her. Her nose shines like a beacon.
‘Casali,’ breathes Onions, close by. He looks at me without sympathy as I sit. ‘Shall I leave you a while?’ He seems keen to do so and I, too, crave my own company.
‘By all means,’ I reply.
‘I may seek out a little food,’ he says. ‘Will I bring you something?’
I shake my head and close my eyes, stopping any further conversation.
At last, I hear him leave. I might imagine it, but I think he has quite a spring in his step. It would appear that art is not quite as nourishing to him as he made out and he seeks to satisfy his appetite elsewhere. I open my eyes gingerly. I am alone. The room is quite silent. I regard the shiny woman and accusing angel with solemnity. The overgrown child beside them seems ignored. The room is cold, both with the lack of a fire and a chill in the atmosphere. Do the unhappy women who must leave their children at the secret door of this place breathe their grief into the atmosphere, where it collects in a mist? With each inhalation I take in their misery and mix it with my own.
After a while I wonder if Onions has forgotten me, or at least has forgotten where I am. Perhaps I should seek him out – the huge doors could close without anyone realising I am here. The key could turn in the lock and, even if I do not relish his company, I am afraid of being shut in. I go back the way we came. There is no one on the staircase and I cannot hear a sound from any o
f the rooms beside. I walk softly, to catch any noise. There are voices at last, someone is speaking so gently that I have to strain to discover where they are.
In an anteroom, in its far corner, almost hidden, Onions has his back to me and does not hear me come in. He is close to a boy, not far into his teens by the look of him, and the boy’s hand is on Onions’ arm. He wears the foundling uniform, dull brown and short-trousered, and he looks into Onions’ face with a patent urgency. They speak in low and sibilant whispers. I screw up my eyes and lean forward, but I cannot make out what they are doing or hear what they are saying. The boy moves but Onions stands still as a statue, his legs braced apart. I step back sharply, my heartbeat thumping in my ears and then I catch the boy’s eye.
His look is one of conspiracy.
I wait as long as I dare to make sure Onions has not heard me, but he doesn’t turn round. Then I retrace my steps, going backwards out of the room, walking on tiptoe lest I make a sound.
I sit down where Onions left me, my chest heaving in exertion. Otherwise I am quite still. I close my eyes.
‘Are you rested now?’ Onions is there, calm as a sleeping cat. ‘You are a little flushed, Anne, are you unwell?’
‘I bleed.’
‘I beg your . . .?’
‘It is my woman’s time, Sir, I bleed. And my body aches with it. I am—’
‘Enough!’ He holds both his hands out in front of him, to silence me. The palms are yellow white and I can see the long nails curling like carved ivory over the tips of his forefingers. ‘You do not need to explain further.’ He waits for me to get up, then whispers next to my ear. ‘And now I know you are capable of carrying a child, at least. That is a comfort.’
The laughing man swings the door wide for us. ‘I trust you found everything you wanted to find?’
