Golden Hill

by Francis Spufford

  *

  It was two o’clock before he was ready to knock, as quietly as may be, upon the street-door of the house at Golden Hill. He had glanced around the corner: the counting-house was still stubbornly open for business, and the occupants engaged. When Zephyra opened the door, he pressed his finger to his lips, and darted straight past her, running on silent feet along the hall and up the staircase, past the windows where again ships’ masts were swaying, past the cruel little gardens of quill-work, trapped in their boxes, to the landing from whose shadows he had first seen the Lovell girls.

  Tabitha was sitting alone, grimly sewing, a hardly-touched plate of food beside her.

  ‘Oh look,’ she said. ‘It’s the killer. What do you want?’

  Smith, returning instantly to the state of irritation which was so easy to forget when out of her company – the sensation of a few grains of grit always between the teeth, something niggling or scratching at the skin – saw that she was in better looks; not as supple and rose-brown as when they had walked together in the rain, or as bold and illuminated as on the way to Tarrytown, but not shrunken and dried-up in malice either. She no longer reminded him of a winter wasp. She must have been eating, at least a few meals. Her skin was restored, her wrists were not such sticks. But she seemed, for her, unusually cautious, rather than combative. She had stood up, when she saw him, and edged back, behind a low table, toward the mantel-shelf.

  ‘I came to beg your pardon.’

  ‘Really? What for? There are so many things to choose from, now.’

  ‘I thought we’d agreed to treat the older offences as squared, and to sink them into oblivion.’

  ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘That was before you took up with your gross doxy, in the public square, where all could see; before you declared to the world that you would rather be rolling in blubber. Since then, all your sins are fresh again.’

  ‘That is certainly how they seem to me.’

  ‘Is that so?’ she said, politely. Her voice was effortfully calm. She did not fly out, she did not catch fire, she did not frown or grin. She compressed the muscles around the mouth and raised her eyebrows as if that was needful to keep her eyes steady. ‘Go on, then: say what you must.’

  ‘I am … sorry I hurt you. I am sorry I betrayed your trust.’

  ‘There is no trust to betray. Your amours are your own business.’

  ‘You were just beginning—’

  ‘Not any more. That is all gone.’

  ‘If I could explain to you, how very much what happened – no, what I did, with Mrs Tomlinson – was a piece of cowardice – or, of impatience – or – of succumbing to the greed of the moment, a shallow greed, and stupidly sacrificing for it – something – something more—’

  ‘I don’t want you to explain. I don’t understand you. I don’t want to understand you. You have said what you came to; now, please go away.’

  It seemed as cold in the room as on the street outside. Smith, looking at her white hands twisting together, understood that she was frightened. That he could not appeal to some resigned, if outraged, sense in her of the stupid things humanity was wont to do, in the grip of desire, and men proverbially; that what had happened had fallen, for her, quite outside the scope of the game, and perhaps outside of her experience altogether. If only she would fight, he thought. It seemed dreadful that such a fierce soul would not.

  ‘I am also sorry,’ he said, as gently as he could, ‘that you found out in the way you did, through Flora. I am sure she did not tell it you very kindly.’

  ‘If you had heard the things she said!’ cried Tabitha suddenly, her voice going high and wobbly. ‘She was so pleased. She said – such things to me—’

  Smith thought for a moment that she was kindling, that the familiar fire was returning, on this more familiar ground; but Tabitha bit off what she had been going to say, and clamped shut her mouth. Smith hesitated.

  ‘Well,’ he said, like a man spitting gin onto hot coals, to try to rouse a flame, ‘she had a lifetime of mockery to pay back, didn’t she?’

  Her eyes rounded indignantly, but she did not ignite. Animation stirred in her face; and faded back into fear.

  ‘No doubt,’ she said. ‘No doubt’ – wavering upon her way at first, but steadying as she went, into a voice to close accounts, formal and decided. ‘Now please go away.’

  ‘I am going away. I am leaving New-York.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I mean, now. I am leaving New-York now.’

  ‘Good. Goodbye, Mr Smith.’

  Smith gazed at her, and she returned the gaze, whitely level. He looked an appeal at her; a question at her; a beseeching incredulity at her. That cannot possibly be all? But her miserable, resolute, still gaze repelled them all unmoving, like a pane of glass against which snow-balls thump. There seemed no way, from here, to reach the things he had thought his soul required of him to say before he left, no matter how ridiculous he made himself thereby, or how much she might scorn them.

  In desperation, he smiled at her, foolish and huge and heartfelt, and made his best bow, and walked from the room.

  He was through the green-painted pine door-way and descending the first stair before she spoke.

  ‘I know why magicians clap their hands,’ she said, as if she couldn’t help it.

  Mr Smith froze in place upon the staircase.

  ‘Do you?’ he said.

  His eyes prickled. He turned, with infinite slowness and precaution, and came back to her where she stood in the long room in the same manner, as if approaching a bird on a bough that would take wing at the slightest startling movement. He made sure he stopped at a good distance.

  ‘And why is that?’ he said.

  ‘To keep our eyes busy. So that we should not see something else.’

  ‘You are right. And do you know what it is I did not want people to see?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I don’t.’ There was the faintest flush of frustration in her voice.

  ‘Would you like me to tell you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said: the same emotion, stronger, almost amounting to an edge. Yes, obviously. Yes, you idiot.

  It seemed to Smith that he had her on the frailest, slenderest hook imaginable, made only of curiosity; like a fish-hook of ice, ready to shatter at too much force, or to melt at too much warmth; but that he might play her back all the way to safety on this hook, to the safe shore of her happiness and his own, if only he were subtle enough, if only he were wise enough, if only he had limitless time. But he did not have limitless time.

  ‘I will tell you in five minutes,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I will tell you five minutes after you leave the house with me.’

  ‘You want to be out in the street, for this great secret?’ she said, not understanding.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I mean, I will tell you if you come away with me. If you put on a coat, and pack up a bag, and leave the city with me; for good; now.’

  ‘Did you – did you not understand what I said to you, a moment gone?’

  ‘I did. I just didn’t believe it.’

  She stared. The fear was plainer again, yet not quite dominant in her face; exasperation vied with it, and something else, startled and very tentative.

  ‘I know you,’ he said. ‘At least, I believe I do. You have instructed me of your nature. The lessons were painful, and the pupil was stupid, but I learned in the end.’

  ‘And what am I?’ she said, trying for scorn, yet arriving closer to entreaty.

  ‘A bird and a cage. Not a bird in a cage, as you like to imagine: that is sentiment, that is you indulging yourself in the pleasure of conceiving yourself a victim, and being warranted by it for any amount of clever poison. No, you are yourself the cage. It is not made of your circumstances. It is made of your passions; which, by the way, are very nasty ones. If you were happier, you would be ashamed of yourself. But the cage is small, and getting smaller as time goes by. It is too small for you a
lready, and there is a bird inside, who requires to be let out.’

  ‘If this is your idea of a love-note, Signor Smooth, I am not surprised that you end up taking your pleasures in the sty, with the sows.’

  ‘It is my idea of the truth.’

  ‘How do you even dare to offer me this stuff? You! When you have blundered and battered your way around, from the moment you have arrived. And now you are going to set up for a truthteller? Do you not know how ridiculous you are?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I do know how ridiculous I am. It has been brought home to me, I assure you. And you are right about the sty: I have rolled in shit in this city. I have had my soul stripped naked, in this city. What further can I lose, by telling you what I think of you? Besides, you like it.’

  ‘“I wonder that you will still be talking—”’

  ‘“—when nobody marks you”,’ finished Smith. ‘But you are not Beatrice and I am not Benedick, as we have already established. And you do like it. Listen to yourself. Your voice has got its strength back. Look in the mirror. Your eyes are bright again. I accuse you of enjoying yourself, right now.’

  ‘I am not.’

  ‘You are smiling.’

  ‘I deny it.’

  ‘Of course you do, Mistress No. You are the queen of denials, rebuffs and contradictions. But you like it, alright—’

  ‘No—’

  ‘You do; you like being matched. You like playing with someone who is as quick as you, as clever as you, as rude as you. Don’t you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Aha!’ cried Smith, and crowed comically like a cockerel: but quietly, so as not be overheard from downstairs.

  ‘You fool,’ said Tabitha, with a kind of undeniable fondness.

  ‘Yes. – The trouble is, you think I’m insulting you. You think we have begun the game again; and we have not, I don’t have time. What I am telling you is, you like being known, for it makes you feel less lonely – and I think you are the loneliest person I have ever met. And I am trying to tell you that I like you.’

  ‘Despite all the flaws I have, according to you?’

  ‘Despite them; because of them; who knows? I like all of you. I like the bird and I like the cage. I like the polished mind and the rough tongue. I like the tearing claws and the warm hands. I like the monster and I like the girl.’

  ‘I do not like myself very much,’ said Tabitha painfully.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Since you came I have been very … confused. – You make me angrier, you know, because I cannot win very easily with you, so I have behaved worse with you than I think with anyone, even my mother; and then I feel worse about it than with anyone. Is that good? Can that be a good thing? It is a relief when I can just hate you.’

  ‘You should try the experiment of seeing yourself through my eyes.’

  ‘What would I see?’

  ‘Beauty. – And rage, and bitterness, and solitariness, and a very foul temper; but first of all, beauty. You make everything else in a room look dull. Your face is more alive than anyone else’s, to me. All the other faces are dirty windows, to me, smeared with chalk and street-spatter; yours is clear through, to the soul behind. – And I know the shape of your mouth by heart. I know the colour of your eyelids when they are closed. I know your long legs and your careless walk. And what I do not know, I would like to learn; all of it, for many years, gently, greedily—’

  Too much. She had been coming closer to him, stepping wonderingly in, as if he had some small flame in his hands she might warm herself at: but now she blushed, the rose-brown going to glaring unhappy carmine, and she drew suddenly back.

  ‘That’s enough,’ she said nervously. ‘Stop; that’s enough of that. What are you asking me, Smith? What are you proposing? Be plain.’

  ‘I am asking you to come out of the cage. The door is open.’

  ‘No; no! I don’t want to hear it in pretty figures. I am a merchant’s daughter. We sell cloth and rum and metal goods. We ship grain. We lend at interest. We buy mortgages. We are not poets. You want me to – run away with you? And be – what, exactly? Your wife? Your mistress? An entertainment for the road?’

  Smith hesitated again. He was impeded by the reflection that, if she came with him, and five minutes later as promised he explained himself to her, she might by no means then agree to stay with him. He was sure of his own intentions, but he was not so sure of her that he could rule out her being horrified. It was difficult to make somebody a declaration of honourable devotion, when you were conscious of this conditional check to it, so near a prospect; this no that might follow so hard on the heels of a yes. And what would he do then? Would he leave her at the last house in New-York, at the gate of Rutgers’ Farm or at the snowy crossroads in Greenwich, after an engagement of five minutes’ duration? This stumbling-block, this awkward juncture at which he was trying to elicit trust without yet bestowing it whole-heartedly himself, he had contrived to glide over, in his planning, without examining its difficulty too closely. Yet here it was, arrived at. – Perhaps he must take things by stages.

  ‘As … my friend, to begin with?’

  ‘Oh, your friend,’ she said, with a relieved derision. ‘What an anti-climax. What a very small delivery after such a mighty labour.’

  ‘I meant to suggest, that you would be protected; honoured, as a friend; that nothing would be expected of you, at all, until you knew the whole truth; till you were able to consider without, um, prejudice, the proposal I would like to make you. To be making you now. Tabitha, I want to say, just, m—’

  ‘Heavens, how your eloquence has flown out the window all of a sudden,’ said Tabitha, ignoring the later parts of this speech. ‘You know, your reputation for protecting your friends is not very good, lately. It is a dangerous business, being a friend of yours. Do you think I would end up dead in a ditch, too?’

  ‘I promise—’

  ‘Where are you going, anyway?’

  ‘I … can’t tell you.’

  ‘I see. How tempting! I might end up dead in a ditch on the way to Trenton; or dead in a ditch on the way to Philadelphia; or, maybe—’

  ‘Tabitha—’

  ‘—or maybe, dead in a ditch on the way to Boston! Wouldn’t that be exciting? I have always wanted to go to Boston!’

  ‘Tabitha.’

  He held her with his eyes, and she steadied somewhat, though she was breathing fast. They seemed to be going backward; he seemed required to make his most delicate declarations as she skittered away from him into hostile gaiety.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You will be surprised, if you come with me, yes: and perhaps you will be shocked, and the – complexion of things – might seem very different to you, from what you had expected; but I swear, I swear to you with utmost seriousness, that you would not learn anything about me that made any essential difference to what you know of me now. I am as you see me. You may trust what you know. Please, trust what you know.’

  ‘I don’t see an occasion for trust,’ she said. ‘I see a resistible invitation to ruin myself. I see you asking me to make a mad gamble with my future. You are a felon, and a liar, and a mountebank, and careless with those who love you. And you have been unfaithful to me with that slug of a woman before we even begin.’

  ‘Those are all true,’ said Smith. ‘But they’re not the reason you hesitate, are they? Not really. The real reason is that you’re afraid to let go of what you know, even if you don’t like it; even if you hate it; even if it won’t let you breathe. Come on, Tabitha. I dare you. The world is wide. The cage door is open. Come out. Won’t you come out?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said in a tiny voice. She had wrapped her long arms around herself, and was looking at the floor.

  ‘What is there for you here?’ he said, coming closer. ‘Nothing. Nothing but the chance to make trouble; and that isn’t enough for a life, you can’t make a life out of that, can you? Come away. Bring your temper and your tongue, and come with me, love.’

&n
bsp; ‘I don’t know,’ she said, louder, with a dry intensity, with an anguished deliberateness, as if she could not let go of not letting go.

  He took the last step and put his hands on her shoulders. He felt them shifting, warm and live, the whole slender quire of bone and muscle and spirit that composed her, moving articulate beneath his fingers, trembling. She looked up at him with big astonished eyes, and it seemed to him that her trembling was between possibilities, that she stood irresolute on the brink between two different lives; not strong enough, he thought, to decide to jump, yet too strong to let herself be carried over passively. He tried to look courage into her. She took a gulping breath, he thought to steady herself, but the tremble grew bigger, grew to a positive shake, so that she rattled from side to side in his hands; and when she took another, still more convulsive, her eyes still fixed on his, her face began to heave and twitch, and to pull out of true. Something was coming loose in her, boiling up from beneath, struggling to the surface. – He nodded. – Her eyes swam, and he expected tears, but the drowning look in them wavered, held; helpless, unable to help herself, but strangely, very strangely, content, almost smiling, as if she had decided not to help herself, but to surrender to some oncoming pleasure. And her mouth kinked, stretched, worked, widened, into a desperate grin; and then stretched on and out and into a vibrating black square from which burst a scream so loud and painful at close quarters it felt as if a knife had been stuck in Smith’s ear.