Ace, King, Knave

by Maria McCann

Betsy-Ann admires herself. You’re not so bad, mort. Your eyes and those pearls. Pleasure and pastime. She’s still young enough. If she moved the stock out of here, on the quiet, she could set up elsewhere.

  And what of Sam, working with Harry Blore?

  She takes a deep breath. Harry won’t seek her out and if Sam carries on like this, he’ll be in no condition to. She could set up afresh. Betsy-Ann stands motionless, picturing it.

  16

  Their shameful flight from Bath is the most abominable journey Sophia has ever undergone or – she earnestly prays – ever will. Before they are five miles out of the city, a storm breaks. The coach is buffeted about by wind, the rain finds its way inside and soaks into their clothing and at one point the accursed thing founders in a miry lane so that she is flung forward and hurts her hand and everybody, including Sophia, has to get down and break off branches to put under the wheels. Throughout this operation Titus wails like a damned soul and is savagely commanded, by Edmund, to ‘cheese it’, an expression his wife will not condescend to correct.

  After this misfortune they continue on their way, Sophia’s pelisse and gown plastered with mud as far as her knees. Each time she shifts position – which, since the coach is insufficiently cushioned, is often – she must struggle against the wet garments swaddling her legs. For all his impatience in directing Titus, Edmund insists on the boy sharing the coach with them rather than sitting with the coachman. This reduces the space available for stretching out, and at times her discomfort is so intolerable that Sophia gives way to a few wretched and unprofitable tears. Her husband sits opposite, arms crossed and his hat pulled over his face. It is impossible to tell whether he is sleeping or merely shamming.

  It seems an eternity (how she feels the force of that hackneyed expression!) before they stop at the Blue Ball for refreshments. Though barely awake, the landlord rakes up the fire, plies the bellows with zest and invites the couple to settle themselves at a table nearby while Titus and the coachman are taken into the kitchen.

  Edmund orders an adequate but not extravagant breakfast. Sophia, on the watch, detects no inclination towards lavish spending: perhaps his ‘bubble’ is, after all, nothing but rumour.

  But why, in that case, this furious dash to London? Has he suffered a loss, as she first imagined? Or is it that he has no intention of sharing out his gains? This last thought is more discomfiting than any amount of damp and dirty clothing. Not because she covets the spoils, whether honestly or dishonestly won – and if there does exist a young fool who has been bubbled, Sophia would gladly restore every penny – but to come by a fortune, and keep one’s wife in the dark . . . ! What, then, will he do with it?

  Ah, but he may not be in possession of his winnings. What has she been imagining? Even the stupidest young coxcomb does not bring with him to the tables his disposable lands, farms, horses, mortgages, everything in short that is not entailed to keep it out of the clutches of gamesters. Most likely Edmund has a note of hand. He is not yet the caterpillar gorging on another man’s sustenance, only the egg shortly to hatch into one.

  ‘Edmund,’ she says.

  He turns towards her and as he does so, the landlord brings a lamp to the table where the Zedlands are seated. The light falls upon her husband’s elegant features and Sophia starts: he is pale and haggard, hardly the exultant victor. She is touched, despite everything, with an unwilling pity; she had intended to confront him with the business of the ruined heir, but all she can find it in her to say is, ‘You look exhausted, love.’

  ‘No doubt you are more so,’ says Edmund, civilly enough, ‘and I’m sorry for it.’

  He appears to have come out of his sulk. Sophia is encouraged. ‘Shall we take a chamber and have our things dried? Wet clothing is so bad for the health.’

  Edmund checks that the landlord is out of earshot before replying, ‘We shouldn’t stay too long. Some innkeepers are in league.’

  ‘With who?’

  ‘Tobies.’

  ‘Tobies ― ?’

  ‘Is that what I said?’ He seems amused. ‘I’m tired – I talk nonsense. I meant to say that the longer we stay here, the greater the risk of meeting with uninvited company on the road.’

  ‘Very well.’ She cannot refrain from adding, ‘Would we not have been safer travelling the next day? There are always people going to London. Perhaps some of them will put up here, if we wait a day or two, and then we can all go on together.’

  ‘They won’t come this way,’ says Edmund. ‘We’ve branched off from the high road.’

  ‘Then we must tell the coachman to go back.’

  He shakes his head. ‘We left it on my instructions.’

  Perhaps through lack of sleep, Sophia seems to see her own life, once just such a straight and open road, buckle and twist before running off crazily into a forest. Where will it come to an end?

  ‘Husband,’ she says at last. ‘I came away from Bath without leave-taking or explanation, just as you wished. Now you have gained your point, would it not be better if you were quite open with me?’

  ‘Ah,’ says Edmund. His expression is a curious one, part pity, part satire; at least, so Sophia interprets it. She is careful to keep her voice steady and reassuring as she pushes on: ‘My dear, your own good sense must prompt you to frankness.’

  ‘At this precise moment, Sophia, it prompts me to sleep.’

  ‘And I wish you to sleep. Soundly, without cares. All I ask, as your loving wife’ – at this instant she scarcely feels the love of which she speaks, but let that stand – ‘is to share your burdens.’

  He flashes her a bitter little smile. ‘You think so now. I believe most wives are glad to be spared the trouble.’

  ‘But try me, dear. Try me.’

  ‘I have affairs, Sophia, in which I must depend entirely on myself. Were you more experienced in the ways of men, you’d understand that.’

  ‘Certainly,’ says Sophia, summoning her courage, ‘I shouldn’t wish to keep bad company, or to be corrupted. I shouldn’t wish these things for you, either, Edmund, and if you were in some scrape, in some debt, I hope I might be your rock in time of need ―’

  ‘You are that already.’

  ‘But you tell me nothing!’ she cries. ‘How am I to support you – to be your wife?’

  ‘You’ve done well enough until now.’ He lays a hand over hers. ‘And I flatter myself you find me to your taste.’

  ‘Yes, but I wish to be your companion in everything, Edmund. There’s more to marriage than bedding together.’

  ‘Is there? You may open your thoughts to me as much as you wish, and yet never be married. There’s a deal of cant talked about esteem, and so on. The rights conferred by marriage are of two kinds, the physical and the fiscal.’

  Sophia stares at him, wondering if he can possibly mean what he says. ‘I can’t believe, Edmund, that you would ever hold such a view. It distresses me that you can propose it, even in jest.’

  He yawns. ‘Then you must blame the laws of England. When did you last see two persons marry, merely in order to converse? What did we vow in church? With my body I thee worship, with all my wordly goods I thee endow.’

  ‘But there are also other vows ―’

  ‘Imagine us unwed, chaste and respectable. We may walk and talk together, we may even share out our property in common and still be respectable, provided the world is convinced that I never fish your pond.’

  ‘Fish my pond?’ She snatches her hand away from his. ‘You speak like a libertine addressing – an unfortunate.’

  ‘Is that so?’ He bursts out laughing and then, with a wink and an attempt at wit deeply repugnant to Sophia, demands, ‘Pray, which of us has purchased the other?’

  Despite everything she can do, her face reddens and puckers and her eyes brim. She strives to overcome it, as a man might, for Sophia knows better than to trust to tears. As a child, she learned that a crystal drop trickling down a pretty face could melt the hearts of adults, but alas! the pretty fa
ce was not hers: Sophia is of the tribe of the red-faced, snot-nosed blubberers. She saw the difference between her treatment and that meted out to her cousin Hetty, and understanding it, despaired. Now, weak and ugly before this beautiful man, she suffers as acutely as she did then.

  ‘My aim was to amuse, not to wound,’ Edmund says with an edge of impatience. ‘You are too sensitive, you are indeed.’ He again touches one of her hands, stroking the back of it, while Sophia’s fingers lie unmoving under his. Plainly he forgot his company, but the thought brings no comfort, for where could he have imagined himself to be? A tear escapes and drops onto the inn table.

  ‘Come,’ he urges, still stroking. ‘Since you’re a married lady, as you keep telling me, you need not be so very prudish. Shall we talk in earnest?’ Sophia wipes her eyes and nods. ‘We will shortly be in London. If you allow me to go about my business without prying, we may yet shake down well.’

  ‘But why must you be so secretive? Why do you speak of your business, not our business?’

  ‘I mean simply that the husband has his concerns, and the wife hers, and each contributes to the common good. Surely your papa doesn’t meddle in the kitchen?’

  ‘Nor does Mama,’ she corrects him in some indignation. ‘We keep a cook.’

  ‘Of course,’ says Edmund, looking nettled. ‘But the principle, you know ―’

  ‘Naturally Papa and Mama have their own affairs. But they’ve never kept things from one another.’

  ‘You may depend upon it that they have.’

  ‘No, never,’ Sophia insists, the tears drying in her eyes at the memory of their happiness. ‘A good wife is her husband’s staunchest ally, his truest friend. If you don’t think so, why did you ―’

  ‘Marry? How can you ask? It was because I found you irresistible.’ Again he touches her, this time with a hand on each of her upper arms. ‘Not desire intimacy? I was quite unable to rest, to sleep,’ his face is getting closer and closer to hers, his thumbs just brushing the sides of her breasts, ‘until I’d made myself your slave and your king.’

  He reaches for his pocket, his hand skimming her as if by accident, and with a handkerchief dabs at her swollen eyelids.

  Sophia sits motionless. In this precise fashion, during their courtship, he occasionally touched, or nearly touched, her bosom, or sometimes her neck: always with the lightest touch, in such a way that it appeared quite unintentional, a touch of which a lady could scarcely complain without appearing to protest too much. She recalls those orderly lists of objects to be ordered, purchased and repaired that filled his letters during that time. Was she herself entered in some private catalogue of his, some list in his brain, to be acquired if a price could be agreed?

  But this is not the worst, not at all the worst. Possibly she herself never figured as an item on his list of desirables; it was a good marriage he desired, rather than Sophia. Now he speaks of hunger, of being her slave, but where was all his hunger then?

  She remembers her own well enough, how longing for him threatened to overwhelm her: she was a fever patient craving water. Is it possible that he discerned that thirst and played on it, taking advantage of her naïvety to increase it by means that a more experienced woman would have laughed at? She can hardly bear to think so, yet she can hardly think otherwise. Those eminently proper letters: were they, then, composed for the eyes of her parents? He rated their wit no more highly than that, and (she thinks with a pang) he was right: the Bullers were quite satisfied with his productions. Tête-à-tête with Sophia, he had a fine time of it, laying on expertly with whip and spur until she was hard put to it to govern her feelings, but he never allowed himself to lapse into coarseness.

  He has grown more careless since.

  ‘Perhaps you were right,’ Edmund murmurs, breaking away from her as the food is brought in. ‘Perhaps we could take a chamber.’ His voice softens, taking on the only kind of intimacy he will permit. ‘Should you like that?’

  Sophia hesitates, understanding his purpose. She is to be contented, reduced, stupefied. How despicable, and how easy to acquiesce! Her body is as unquestioningly wedded to Edmund as he could wish, and the prospect of dry garments a powerful additional temptation.

  She resists nevertheless. ‘I think you were right, love. We shouldn’t lose time.’

  Her husband’s unprotesting nod only causes her a further pang.

  The bread is hard, the chocolate tasteless and thin, but they devour both without complaint. Edmund caresses Sophia with his eyes; after the tempers of last night and the sulks of this morning, he is coquettish as a woman. It is hard to remain angry with a husband who gazes adoringly on his wife’s crumpled, inflamed features, particularly when that wife has just refused his amorous advances. Sophia feels her resistance softening like the bread she has dipped into her chocolate. This, and no other, is the man she has married. She can take only what he has to give, and must accept that his gifts are such shallow, impermanent ones as he might bestow on any woman: beauty, and the butterfly ability of bestowing pleasure. Are there women who would be delighted with such a spouse? If so, Sophia is not one of them; but she must learn to ‘shake down’, as Edmund puts it, relinquishing her hopes of a husband who would also be a trusted friend at her side. How strange! As an unmarried girl she imagined that it all came about quite naturally, once a woman had the ring upon her finger.

  17

  Sam Shiner’s ma used to run a Puss & Mew. He’s told Betsy-Ann about this contraption more than once but tonight, since Harry Blore has come to sup with them, she must hear it again.

  ‘The old man knocked it up out of crates and sacking,’ Sam explains. ‘She’d stand inside.’ He laughs, to encourage Blore to do likewise. Betsy-Ann also laughs as she turns the beefsteaks, nicely floured and seasoned, in the pan. Her brother is like a bear, inclined to show his teeth when hungry.

  ‘Inside? What for?’ asks Blore.

  Sam lays his finger alongside his nose. ‘You get your bucket of lightning and your measure,’ he imitates someone doling out liquid, ‘and wait till someone comes up. They can’t see your face behind the frame and they never say geneva or lightning or nothing, only puss, and you go mew.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ asks Betsy-Ann, seeing Harry at a loss. Her brother can be chuckle-headed but he hates showing it in company; it’s better for her health, and Sam’s, if she helps him out on the sly.

  ‘Nothing to swear to, Betsy.’ He turns back to Harry. ‘There’s a drawer in the frame, see, open both ends. The cull hears the mew, puts in a penny. Ma takes it out her end, puts a flash in its place. He’s under the sacking, he drinks up and he’s on his way. Nothing wrong here, nothing but a cove looking for his poor old cat.’

  Blore lifts his glass with a dirty grin. ‘Freedom forever.’

  ‘Freedom forever,’ echoes Sam, and clinks with him. Betsy-Ann, crouching by the fire, raises her glass but takes no more than a sip as the steaks are just fit to be taken off and laid in the dish. Christ, if she should burn them now! Her hand slippery on the frying-pan handle, she lays the meat atop the onions and potatoes already prepared, and pours the juice over.

  ‘Something smells good,’ says Sam. Blore says nothing, but then she knows better than to expect compliments from him.

  ‘Was she ever nabbed?’ Betsy-Ann asks so that he can come to the next part.

  ‘You had to watch for noses. One day she’s on her pitch and a mort comes in. Puss, she says. My ma goes mew, takes the penny and hands over the dram. Next thing she knows the bitch starts screaming – This woman’s selling gin! This woman’s selling gin! – Ma didn’t know what to do with herself.’

  ‘Toddle,’ suggests Blore.

  ‘Can’t, not in the frame. She can’t get it off, neither, not quick enough, and she’s pissing herself for fear. Next thing she hears another shout – A nose! There’s a nose here! – and a sort of rushing noise, and then a screaming, terrible, like a scalded child, and people running. Then it all goes quiet. Nobody’s laid a han
d on her. She unbuckles, climbs out. First thing she notices is the street. All empty.’

  ‘Empty! Fancy that!’ Betsy-Ann comes in on cue.

  ‘Next thing there’s this noise behind her. She looks round and sees a mort, must’ve been the mort, in the road.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘No, but all over blood, and crawling.’

  Blore grunts. ‘Weren’t the Excise with her?’

  ‘If they were, the mob saw them off. My ma made herself scarce, I can tell you. She left the Puss & Mew standing with the lightning still in it, and the woman, dragging herself along, crying, Don’t leave me!’

  ‘They should’ve scragged the bitch. Her and all noses.’ Blore pours himself another glass, brimming, and downs it in one.

  Betsy-Ann wonders why the woman thought Sam’s ma would stay with her. Perhaps when you’re dying you don’t know who you’re talking to, or you forget you’re a nose. Or you don’t care because anybody’s better than the company on the other side of that door.

  Harry’s should’ve scragged the bitch gets on her nerves. He puts it about that he’s a regular trusty Trojan; for herself, she’d trust Old Harry himself before Harry Blore. Sam claims not to, either, but he doesn’t always act according.

  At last the food is on the table. There are the beefsteaks nicely smoking in their dish, bread, butter, wine, stewed mushrooms, buttered cabbage, some cheese and pickled salmon and an almond pudding (fetched in by Liz this morning from the pastrycook’s). It’s a mystery to Betsy-Ann why the men are eating with her. As a rule Harry conducts his business in his own ken, along with the rest of the crew. She’s already asked Sam what the rig is but he won’t tell her; he just says, ‘Never trouble yourself,’ and laughs.

  ‘Here’s to greatness,’ says her brother. He’s forever making toasts, these days: Betsy-Ann wonders when he took up the trick.

  The talk dies down as the three of them settle to the meal. The men eat noisily, Blore in particular: he half-chews his food with an open mouth and then swills it down his throat with wine. Betsy-Ann’s never prided herself on her refinement, never been in a position to, but she hates that squish, squish, like a bloody cow on the cud. She turns her face away, towards the fire. Brisk and clear it is, just the thing for beefsteaks. She draws comfort from its snapping flames, from the plump coal-sack in the corner and from the Eye whose contents Blore has never seen. There is also, under a floorboard unknown even to Shiner, a stash of darby, sweetly conveyed from his pockets whenever he comes home drunk as David’s sow. Lately this stash has been growing apace. Betsy-Ann often thinks of it as she goes about her daily round and is filled with a pleasurable sense of virtuous enterprise, the independence of the true-born Briton.