The Flight of Sarah Battle

by Alix Nathan

  She is almost out of hearing when he calls after her. ‘Your child! Your child should have a father. Come, Sarah. Let us live together and bring up the child. I shall be a good husband and father. I promise.’

  ‘Your promise is worthless.’

  He shouts at her: ‘They think it’s my child. If you want to be respected it must be mine.’

  ‘They know perfectly well she’s not yours. And they forgive me. You will have nothing to do with my child. Never ask me again.’ She hurries to the nursery where she has a bed alongside Eve’s cot. Locks herself in, takes the baby in her arms, wipes tears where they fall onto the tiny forehead and rocks them both to sleep.

  She is woken briefly by studied moans from Wintrige’s room, followed by snores.

  *

  Men pour in to watch Wintrige. Dick and the waiters abandon their earlier attempts to ignore him, since much of the food and drink he consumes is bought for him by others.

  To the relief of many, Wintrige drops his newspaper readings. His role is that of clown, entertainer: to astonish, to hold the crowd. His timing is precise, they watch in suspense. Will he actually eat all that? Will he down yet another bottle of port without puking? He spins out consumption like a storyteller, expressing uncertainty, near disaster, satisfaction, obscene delectation, through the movement of his eyes and brows, through a range of subtle hums and sighs. Between dishes he crows, boasts.

  ‘Oh what a tedious life I led in the customs house!’ An imaginary actor’s existence appears. ‘Oh, what ennui in the theatre! What boredom compared to the anticipation of another of Mrs Trunkett’s pies, her lardy paste and steaming kidneys! Who needs a woman when you can thrust your fingers into puddings and suck on jellies!’

  A roar of delight from his audience.

  ‘How the juices ooze! Lick, lick, lick!’ He squeals with pleasure. ‘And another bowl of Mrs Wintrige’s punch, John!’

  His limbs and digits thicken, his face and body swell, his clothes gape open. Each evening the effort begins to tell, he groans as he chews, soaks a towel with sweat that sheets his lurid red face.

  Bets are laid, increasingly large sums won. Winners usually hand a proportion to Wintrige himself, placing it next to the by now senseless man slumped, snoring, among licked-out bowls and plates, drained bumpers.

  When Sarah insists the twice-daily event take place out of the way, upstairs, she is politely, firmly denied. And then Wintrige breaks a record, eats a whole menagerie of meat and fish. Clown becomes hero. Unknown to her, bills are posted by cronies of Dick who, for all his affection for Sarah, has never lost his loyalty to her father.

  Heroic Consumption!

  Watch the great Eater and Drinker J. Wintrige

  Beat all known Records!

  Battle’s Coffee House, Change Alley. Twice daily.

  How Sam would have loved this show: its money-making monstrousness.

  ‘’E’ll be laughin in ‘is grave,’ Dick says, to Mrs Trunkett’s disgust, ‘rubbin’ ‘is bones togever wiv glee.’

  Nor are Mrs Trunkett and Sarah the only people to loathe the spectacle. Handbills are torn down or defaced:

  Shall the Poor starve while the Spy stuffs himself?

  His shameful secret, so carefully kept, is scrawled on walls. How do they know? But who cares now that he was once a spy? The Corresponding Society is defunct. The fist is closing on conspiracies.

  Sarah is helpless. More and more she retreats to the nursery where, the sound muffled, she feeds Eve or plays with her. She is too distracted to read; instead she handles the books brought back with her from Philadelphia, lovingly opening them, holding the pages to her nose, scenting the lees of that life. How different it was! Each day, each night revealed its own new colour, its richness. Everything she did emerged from love, from confluence.

  There was no falsity, no coercion, unlike in childhood when she had been compelled to take over her mother’s role, her life dominated by Sam. Then Wintrige manoeuvred her into a marriage that failed to save her from her father and imposed its own bleak tyranny. Now, he’s dropped the bleakness, seems, absurdly, to have linked arms with the ghost of her father and imposed a dictatorship of repulsive misrule.

  Yet she had tried ways of escape before: the world of conspiratorial laughter in which she lived with Ben Newton; her deluded belief that she’d escape Battle’s through Wintrige; flight with Tom as soon as he offered it. ‘Come with me,’ he’d said, embraced her and they’d gone.

  But how can she extract herself from this present vileness? She can think of no way to do it. She longs for quiet, for love, for Tom. For Martha’s companionship. Relives those joyful, short-lived days; murmurs the tenderness to her gurgling baby.

  *

  In retreat one day she stops before a picture. She’s passed it often without noticing, for surely it’s just a pretty country maid? The expression catches her. It’s an engraving of a young woman, flowers in her hair and hands, singing perhaps, her face and dress slightly disordered. It isn’t just a pretty country maid. A delicate desperation looks out of the frame.

  She wonders about this young woman. Who has engraved it, who painted her in the first place? It’s not a picture Sarah knew as a child. Her father must have bought it when she was in America, but from whom? She looks through the account books, finds purchases made soon after she’d left, from an engraver, J. Young, Little Russell Street:

  2 Morocco-bound portfolios 60 gns

  Engraving, coloured, framed 8 gns

  Of course, the portfolios were those Amorous Scenes she failed to get Dick to burn. She supposes Sam bought the young woman with the flowers to appear respectable.

  She writes a note to J. Young who replies that yes, indeed, he both engraved and painted the original of the Ophelia he sold to her father, Mr Samuel Battle, and that he has many more engravings in his series of Shakespeare’s women if she’d care to visit Little Russell Street.

  She’s welcomed into the shop by the same young woman in the engraving. Without the flowers, pretty; not disordered, though not calm.

  ‘Yes,’ says Lucy Dale. ‘I was the model for all Joseph’s paintings of the women in Shakespeare’s plays. Well, except for Emilia, of course, but that’s a small part. I know the plays so well now, you can imagine! He read them with me or told me everything there is to know about them. The paintings were so popular he made engravings and I coloured them in for him. People are always asking for the engravings. Some even buy the whole series! The paintings are mostly all sold, I’m afraid. He has the sketches for them, though. Perhaps he could paint one or two again from those sketches, if you were interested.’

  She pours out her words as though she’s not spoken for days.

  ‘I am interested,’ Sarah says, drawn to the puzzle of the girl.

  ‘Shall I fetch Joseph? He is at home today. He will tell you about the series and what he might be prepared to do. Whether he could reproduce any of the paintings. I wouldn’t need to sit again because of the sketches. Besides, I cannot look at all the same. I am much older and I have a child now.’

  ‘Oh, I can assure you you are quite recognisable. But please do fetch your husband.’

  When, momentarily, Joseph and Lucy stand together, Sarah knows she’s seen them before. But Lucy leaves the room and Joseph, in lively mood, soon dazzles Sarah with information about the subjects. Though she read slowly through Macbeth in the early days of her marriage to Wintrige and had learned more from Tom, she has never been to the theatre. Joseph suggests a price and she agrees to buy paintings of Cordelia and Desdemona, whose stories, as told by Joseph, move her much.

  ‘I feel certain I’ve seen you before, Mr Young. You and Mrs Young.’

  ‘It is not likely, Miss Battle. We rarely go anywhere together.’

  Sarah is driven home in a hackney, pleasingly distracted from the horrible events in the coffee house. She suddenly remembers when she saw Mr and Mrs Young: on her return from Philadelphia, when she disembarked at Wapping. The girl w
ith the bag frantically searching every passing face. The tall man, his fair hair tied back, remonstrating with her, pulling her away. Not consoling her.

  4

  On the anniversary of Tom’s death Sarah remains downstairs supervising the waiters, interfering in the kitchen, even standing behind the bar for an hour or two taking orders. To lock herself all day in Eve’s nursery, crouch on the floor and sob her sorrow into the floorboards would be inadmissible luxury.

  However, later she allows herself to write to Martha.

  Battle’s Coffee House, Exchange Alley.

  26th October 1800

  My dear Martha,

  I am sure your sister Mary will be happy to read this letter to you.

  It is a year since my beloved Tom died. I remember the day so clearly, every moment of it. I shall never forget your kindness: I do not know how I would have lived afterwards without you, Martha.

  I have a dear child, Eve, now more than three months old. I wish that you could see her.

  Oh Martha, if only you lived here: how we could talk and laugh together! Would you and Willie come if I sent money for your passage? Please think seriously about this; I’d do it so gladly.

  I hope that you and Willie are both in good health.

  In fond remembrance and hope,

  Your friend,

  Sarah Cranch

  She seals this letter and encloses in a cover addressed to R. Wilson, Bookseller and Publisher, Zane Street, Philadelphia, writing separately to Robert:

  Dear Robert,

  Before Tom died I promised him I’d do what rapid illness prevented him from accomplishing. After his death I was too upset to carry it out. Now, a year later, I ask you to consider what he would have said to you had he lived.

  Martha is your lover and the mother of your child. Treat her as you should, not as a servant. Best of all, marry her once you’ve divorced your wife under the Pennsylvania divorce law of 1785.

  In attempting to persuade you, Tom would have admitted that he and I were not married, there being no divorce law available to me in England and my having not yet become an American citizen. You will know that nevertheless in truth, indeed in God’s eyes, we were man and wife. Certainly we would have been legally married had we been able.

  I trust that you are in good health and will give consideration to this letter as you would have done to Tom’s own words.

  Sarah Battle (Cranch)

  *

  When the year ends customers demand a sight of Sarah’s child to accompany their Christmas dishes.

  ‘If we are to obey the King’s proclamation and reduce our consumption of bread and abstain from pastry, let alone use economy when feeding our horses, how can we enjoy ourselves and celebrate the birth of Our Lord, Miss Battle?’ Thynne asks, his smile a hair crack in a wine glass.

  ‘We can drink! No proclamation against that,’ says Bullock, stouter and breathless as he ages, ‘and let us admire that babe of yours, Miss Battle, whom we trust will charm us as much as you do!’ Thynne and Bullock agree: a wonder!

  A semicircle the size of Wintrige’s girth has been cut in a table so that he can sit closer to his plate. Sarah finds a time when Wintrige’s head has dropped upon the ledge of his stomach in urgent sleep, whirls around the coffee house with Eve in her arms, fast enough to escape comments about resemblance to her mother Anne or even Sam. In her mind Eve can only resemble Tom or her own younger self. When a note arrives from Joseph Young, she is glad to hand Eve to the kindly, doting nurse and deal with his request.

  He’d like to visit Battle’s, he says, to see where the paintings might hang and how they should be framed. She is surprised by this attention to detail, suspects he hopes to persuade her to commission more. And why not? Much of what hangs on the walls should certainly be replaced. The large, embrowned mirror in which men once adjusted their wigs, but now, wigless, preen themselves with remarkable vanity; the notice of rules and orders governing conduct: fines for swearing and excessive arguing, never imposed within her memory; cheap prints of faded landscapes; framed cuts from Laroon’s Habits and Cryes of the City ofLondon, grime-grey.

  Joseph arrives at a bad time. Someone has laid a bet of five hundred guineas against Wintrige eating the day’s supply of turtle soup, a fowl smothered in oysters, an entire leg of mutton with caper sauce, boiled onion and mashed turnip, a salad, a huge bowl of syllabub, dessert of nuts and candied fruits and a three-pound cider cake, washed down with claret and two bottles of brandy. Wintrige has begun on the soup, each spoonful noted by a gleeful circle around his table.

  ‘And what if I just fancied turtle soup myself, today? Did you think of that, Chaloner, when you laid down your money?’ says a man in mock annoyance. ‘Nothing left of it!’

  Wintrige is tackling the leg.

  ‘Oh! Oh! The fat! Let me die of it!’ His frog chin is spotted with capers.

  Do frogs have chins?

  Joseph’s attention is caught.

  ‘You know I make satires, Miss Battle?’

  ‘I saw some in your shop window, yes.’

  ‘This scene is perfect. It would sell well and act as advertisement for your coffee house.’

  ‘No! Please don’t think of it, Mr Young. This spectacle is entirely against my wishes. I have tried to prevent it, but have failed. We have plenty of custom.’

  They watch as Wintrige, his face purple, abandons his knife, takes the mutton in his hands.

  ‘How this man holds his audience! Who is he, Miss Battle?’

  ‘James Wintrige.’

  ‘He’d have everyone watch each mouthful. Such determination! He seeks fame, adoration, would like nothing better than to appear in a print.’

  Sarah is aware of an intelligence in Joseph Young in strength not unlike Tom’s, though in nature different, arrogant and wayward. He lacks Tom’s intense, mercurial energy; projects instead a tall man’s easy confidence.

  ‘I’ve observed so many in their cups or eating, smoking,’ he continues. ‘Enjoying themselves. I’ve drawn so many. This man is not like them. Something drives him on. What is his occupation?’

  ‘This is his occupation.’

  ‘But what used he to do?’

  ‘He, he once worked in the Customs Office. Actually, he spied for the government.’

  ‘Good lord! First he shuns attention, living in the shadows and now he seeks it!’

  ‘We must decide on the best wall for your paintings, Mr Young,’ she says, to turn the subject. Nor can she bear to confess who Wintrige really is. ‘Perhaps, if people like them as much as I’m sure I shall, I might decide to buy others.’

  ‘It’s hard to think that those keen to watch a man stuff himself like this would care a jot for paintings of Shakespeare’s women.’

  *

  Sandwiches are taken off the bill of fare at Battle’s when the Brown Bread Act comes in, for who’d eat a sandwich made from coarse crumb in place of a pleasing wheaten loaf? The kitchen maids are put to more onion-slicing and fish-descaling.

  After winning the five hundred guineas himself, Wintrige takes to his bed for three days, carried there by his supporters, since his legs, vast though they are, won’t hold him. While Sarah is pleased he’s out of sight, for the first time in her life she feels a strand of pity for him, though it’s tangled with despising. She never loved him, had once admired him, or rather, had fallen under his strange frog-like spell, had quickly learned dislike, disgust. Watching him with Joseph Young, she sees the desperation she’s chosen to ignore, the craving for applause.

  But how can she be kind to him when she denied the dying Tom as he looked at her with such longing? When she couldn’t, wouldn’t smile at the man who’d smiled at her always. Tom, whom she loved with her soul. Loves with her soul. She’d put her pain before his need in a moment of selfishness. She will never forgive herself.

  Battle’s customers, those not siphoning financial information, making deals, reading as many newspapers as they can, are at a loss without the entert
aining guzzler.

  ‘Do we know exactly what ails him? Has he been bled?’

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Rothesay. Excess, the simple ailment, excess!’

  ‘Can we be sure it isn’t something worse? What if it’s locked jaw? The poor fellow may never be able to eat again!’

  Lyons pipes up. ‘They cure locked jaw with electricity now.’

  ‘This is another of your philosophic fantasies, Lyons.’ Bullock pinches his lumpy nose, still trying to press it into a more seemly shape.

  ‘By no means. I have it on good authority. A small receiver is filled with electrical fluid, discharged through the jaws of the affected person and the jaws fly open instantaneously.’

  ‘And is the affected person capable of closing his jaws after that or is he forever agape?’

  *

  Joseph comes again to Battle’s and then often. Sarah wonders if he is secretly making sketches of Wintrige and will produce a finished series despite what she said. However, he asks for her and she drinks coffee with him while he describes the painting he’s working on for the newly bared walls of the coffee house, the dramatic moment he’s trying to portray.

  He’s amazed to learn from someone that she’s married to the monstrous Wintrige. Wonders how it can possibly have come about, surely not from choice, respects her too much to ask. Briefly he’s sorry for her, soon prefers impressing her, finds her responsive to his knowledge, tries to overcome the shades of scepticism he detects. She particularly likes to talk about sketching and caricatures, seems to have known an artist once, who she thinks was very skilled. Says she’ll show him some of his work one day.

  Of course she believes he’s married to Lucy, which for the moment he won’t correct. Not only is it not true, but Lucy is not living in Little Russell Street.

  He’d returned from Wood’s to find her and the baby gone. There was a note:

  I am going to William Digham. It is better that we do not live together. Lucy

  When he awoke thirty-six hours later, dry, hungry, grimy, he was relieved not to see her paleness, her expression of hurt and incomprehension. Her lingering love that so irritated him. Relieved not to hear the baby’s bawling. What she wrote was true. He had need of her no longer.