by Maria McCann
Betsy-Ann found it hard not to laugh. Men were so green! Only see this booby, who couldn’t spy out something as plain as the nose on his face: the whores were under instructions to dote on John, an out-of-work footman hired by the day; tomorrow there would be George, another rented Adonis with a supposed passion for ratafia. These men went upstairs with one girl after another, hour after hour; once upstairs, they stretched out and smoked while the whore in question rested and perhaps had a wash. Not even John’s good timing (for he had, of course, been on the watch for Kitty’s signal) had awoken the suspicions of the wretched flat. He could only think that the handsome young fellow was mighty as a stallion, while he, twenty years older, was not availing himself of all possible advantages.
This last shift of Kitty’s proved decisive: two bottles were purchased. Should the fool come to his senses while upstairs and grow as limp as his empty purse, Betsy-Ann would find ways. Later she would exclaim in amazement, finding him ‘monstrous strong’ for a man of his age, indeed, almost more than she could cope with.
Kitty smiled benignly and drifted away, surveying her realm. Even Betsy-Ann, whose skin stiffened every time she looked at the woman, had to respect her abilities. Appearing to carry off everything by sheer charm, Kitty was as practised a strategist as any Admiral of the Fleet. Every establishment of this type employed bullybacks to keep order, but Kitty went one further. She kept men whose constant task it was to spark jealousy and emulation: not only the athletic John and George, but fellows who appeared to bespeak suppers (at exorbitant rates) for the most beautiful whores and in return were publicly distinguished by doting caresses. There were also ‘hollow legs’ able to put away stupendous amounts of drink, and sharps who laid odds not only on cards, but on certain acrobatic games played in the parlour. All of these instructors combined to bankrupt, by their example, a great many fools. The experienced Corinthians knew who they were and what they were about; the naïve, particularly the young fry eager to compete in debauchery, were swept into the net.
The profit on ratafia being scandalous, Kitty’s whores naturally took nothing else. Betsy-Ann, who had an unforced partiality to the drink, did everything she could to get a glass or two down her cullies: it did nothing for their pricks, but was a useful sweetener of the breath.
A gift of ratafia, an invitation to Haddock’s: each a brazen call to pleasure, to the inventive and delicious vices of the Age. Betsy-Ann flatters herself she is woman enough to answer the call. Mr Shiner has departed. Long live Mr Hartry.
28
There are disadvantages to being waited on by domestics. One is that (as Sophia discovered during her honeymoon) they are liable to overhear what they should not. Another is the impossibility, even with no servant in attendance, of going out unobserved.
She has tried walking alone and has found the experience beyond anything she endured in Bath, so disagreeable indeed as to be almost impossible. On first arrival, she persuaded herself that such was the nature of town life. London is not like the countryside, where a lady travelling within her own district can expect to be recognised and looked up to. Life here is teeming and anonymous. The most infamous women go lavishly caparisoned and keep carriages, so that even the practised eye can scarcely distinguish virtue from vice. It follows that all females, even the most respectable, are subjected to advances from guttersnipes and even from men – she will not call them gentlemen – of family who have sunk and degraded themselves.
Such was her understanding a few weeks ago. Now she has come to a conclusion yet more distressing: while females anywhere in London may be exposed to casual insult, it would appear that the Zedlands inhabit a peculiarly unpleasant district. Impossible to imagine a gentleman of any delicacy wishing to live here, let alone bring home a bride. She wonders, not for the first time, if the house really belongs to Edmund. He has lied about so much, why not about that?
Not wishing to go alone to the Receiving House, she has ordered Titus to accompany her on her walk. It is high time he was let go and an English boy obtained in his place, but there is a use for everything and on this occasion Fan, with her sharp eyes and quick understanding, would never do. If only she had a footman! It was understood that a brace of them would be engaged but then Edmund said it was not worthwhile for such a short stay. Nothing, it seems, is worthwhile: engaging proper staff, decorating the house, inviting her parents have all been repeatedly put off.
So they progress along the pavements, first the mistress, then Titus. Sophia keeps her eyes downturned and clasps her bag in both hands, crossed over her stomach. Despite the awkward gait thus produced, she prefers to keep her arms in front, never allowing them to approach her sides, lest some brute should imagine she is twitching up the edge of her gown.
Gazing downwards is both tedious and uncomfortable, especially when one has been bred to hold up one’s head. From time to time she is absolutely obliged to ask directions, lowering her voice in the hope that Titus will not understand. Even that proves mortifying: one young man shies away from her as if fearing to be accosted.
The humiliation of this last incident is still rankling in her when she at last spies her destination. Across the road is a large, comfortable-looking inn, its façade gilded by fragile sunshine. The picture thus presented has a certain old-fashioned charm.
It is the first time she has consciously approved anything in London and at the realisation Sophia suffers a pang. Everybody who can afford to spends time in this city: with a loving husband, she too would surely have come to relish it. She could defy the smoke, the relentless noise, the foul odours, even the improprieties enacted upon the streets, had Edmund only been what he ought, and her home a place of safety.
‘Stay here,’ she tells Titus before dodging the traffic and entering the inn where her business is swiftly transacted. The letter to Papa and Mama changes hands, vanishes, has already begun the first stage of its journey. When she comes out, Titus is lolling against a wall opposite, looking as stupid as ever.
*
‘Where’d she go, then?’ demands Mrs Launey.
‘From here,’ says Fortunate. ‘Then along, and along.’
‘Lord,’ she mutters in exasperation.
‘There was a corner.’ He tries to remember something nearby. ‘An inn. She said wait outside.’
The cook rolls her eyes. ‘And did this inn have a name, Snowball?’
‘A Receiving House,’ says Eliza. ‘She went to a Receiving House! Am I right, Titus?’
He shrugs.
Fan says, ‘How d’you make that out, Liza?’
‘She had a letter she didn’t want him to see.’
‘It could be, indeed,’ Fan says to the cook. ‘Why else would she leave him outside?’
‘A rendezvous?’
Fan shakes her head. ‘She was only there a minute. My money’s on a correspondence.’
Eliza hops up and down, as if delighted with her own cleverness.
‘I don’t pretend to understand half of what goes on,’ the cook complains. ‘He’s out so much it’s not worth cooking him a supper.’
Fortunate suggests, ‘Ask Mrs when her husband shall be home.’
All three women laugh together. Mrs Launey says, ‘I tell you what, why don’t you ask her?’ and they laugh again.
He thinks, I will never understand these people. He feels something brush against his coat, then a gentle pinch at his right buttock: Eliza. He stares in disbelief but she only smiles and winks.
*
‘Not the very best room in the house,’ says Ned, lying outstretched on the bed, ‘but I trust you’ll be comfortable.’ He waves his arm towards the mirror over the fireplace, a forest of silver candlesticks framed within its glittering borders. The waft of beeswax mingles with the scent of apple logs.
‘I thought it was always coal in town,’ she says wonderingly.
‘These smell sweeter. Or shall I ring for coal?’
‘O, no! Leave them.’
Burning apple wood: a
memory of a place long gone, a lost field, grass sloping down to the hedge and a calf lowing in the night.
In the far corner, away from the fire, stands a marble table holding refreshments. Until now, the seraglio formed Betsy-Ann’s idea of stylish debauchery, but this is several cuts above Kitty’s.
‘Who’s got the best chambers, then?’ she says, flinging herself down next to him.
‘His Majesty and his dear friend John Wilkes, how should I know?’ He laughs. ‘Now that’d be worth seeing. You’ve heard of Wilkes, Betsy?’
‘O, yes! Everybody says he’s for the people.’
‘For Woman, undoubtedly, though he’s ugly as Satan – why is that, my sweet?’
‘What?’
‘Why is your sex so forgiving of ugliness? It pains me to see Beauty kissing a toad, even a toad as witty as Wilkes.’
‘That’s your vanity, Ned,’ Betsy-Ann says, teasing. ‘Any woman would wish to meet the celebrated Mr Wilkes.’
‘Humph! Not Mrs Zedland, I assure you.’
‘Is it true he’s in France?’
‘He didn’t take me into his confidence. One thing I do know – he’s safer away from here.’
The bolster has been polished with an iron. ‘Starched,’ Betsy-Ann says, nuzzling into it. ‘Is there really a bath?’
‘I believe there’s a tub somewhere. So, we like the treat?’ murmurs Ned, rolling over towards her.
She always forgets how big his mouth is. You wouldn’t think so to look at him, but he has the jaws of a wolf, ready to swallow her entire. She doesn’t dislike that thought.
‘Naked,’ she suggests. ‘In the linen. Lie back, my lord. Allow me.’
‘My lord, is it?’
She pulls back the bedcovers and helps him off with his waistcoat, untucking his shirt and sliding it over his head. He unfastens the breeches, wriggling out of them. Betsy-Ann pushes him back onto the bed. His skin: his fine skin. She runs her hands over him until he’s tight and trembling as a stringed bow.
She takes her time in undressing. When she is naked she lies down beside him again, pulls the sheet across and feels it close over her, cool and inviting.
‘Don’t do that, Betsy. Let me see you.’
She reaches across to frig him and he pushes away the linen.
‘Up – all fours.’
He throws himself onto her so hard that the bed shakes. They are dog and bitch, furious. It takes all her strength not to be pressed into the mattress.
*
‘When did you last see him?’ he enquires later, sitting up in bed over a dish of chicken in white sauce.
‘A good while since. You wouldn’t know him, Ned.’
‘Is he so changed?’
‘Not to look at. But he’s not the man you remember.’
‘I should damn well think not. A resurrectionist!’ He makes a disgusted face. ‘Tell me, Betsy, does he ever ask about me?’
She laughs. ‘Why should he?
‘O, I don’t know – old companions.’
‘He hardly talks about anything, hardly comes home even ―’
‘All the better for us ―’
‘And when he does, he’s reeking.’
Ned feels for a chicken bone between his teeth. ‘How does he stand it, Betsy?’ he says in a voice of unfeigned wonder. ‘How does he stand it?’
Betsy-Ann holds out a spoonful to him. ‘You should ask how I stand it.’
‘That I already know.’ Ignoring the proffered spoon, he kisses down her neck to her left breast, little feathery kisses. ‘Under here beats the heart of a lion. And here,’ he tickles between her legs, ‘the cunt of a lioness. A biter.’
She wriggles at the feel of his hand. ‘For Sammy, I can tell you in a word – nantz.’
‘Was it nantz that lost him his finger?’
‘O, no! He hired a bully to squeeze the flats ―’
‘And did he?’
‘Like oranges.’
‘There you are, ‘ says Ned. ‘Exemplary. O my dear brethren in Christ, only see what a man may become by diligent labour. Would that we were all like this admirable fellow, able to wring gold from a bankrupt. But what of the finger, the moral of our sermon? Pray point out the finger.’
‘Morson – that was the bully – got fuddled and let a man go.’
‘Tsk, tsk! And what said the Honourable Samuel to this?’
‘Threw drink in his eyes.’
‘And got himself docked.’ Ned looks thoughtful. ‘Well. Could’ve been worse.’
‘For a gamester? For Christ’s sake, Ned!’
‘True, my dove. What became of Mister Morson?’
‘Took the King’s Shilling.’
‘But naturally. A butcher born.’
‘And dead and buried, I hope! Though it’s no good to Sam. Sometimes I think – I think I brought him bad luck.’ She flushes. Up to now she has never put such thoughts into words, even to herself; if ever her mind began wandering that way, she hauled on the reins and turned it aside.
Ned gives an incredulous laugh. ‘Nonsense, Mrs Betsy! You’re his good fortune.’
‘I once thought so.’
‘But not now? Isn’t he kind to you?’
‘Not like at first.’
‘Kind enough, though, hey?’ When she doesn’t answer, he takes her by the chin and tilts her face until she’s looking into his eyes. ‘He doesn’t beat you?’
‘He couldn’t if he tried. He’s sodden.’
‘With such an intolerable trade, he’d need to be. If a man may be so impertinent as to ask, why did he take it up? Even without a finger, I’d have thought Sammy could do better for himself.’
She sighs. ‘Harry lost one of the crew. He thought Sam’d be more trusty, see, on account of being with me.’
‘Any man of sense would.’
Ned strokes her cheek. She loves it when he talks like this: as if it matters what happens to Betsy-Ann Blore when Ned Hartry isn’t with her. Such sweetness never lasts. Soon he’ll be singing the old tune and Betsy-Ann left to get by, as usual.
‘Better Harry than a stranger,’ he’s saying now. ‘He’ll look out for Sam.’
‘Same way he looked out for me and Keshlie?’ Betsy-Ann flashes back. ‘I believe you know where we ended up.’
Ned frowns and stops stroking: a warning sign. Like others she’s known, he prefers to think of whores as ‘given up to love’, as Harris’s puts it, slaves to their passions, rather than to despair and Kitty Hartry.
In her early months in the seraglio she marvelled at this blindness: how could a fellow who paid for every caress fancy himself desirable and desired? Later, she came to understand that fancy was in the very air of the place, was its bricks and mortar. More happens inside the skull than between the legs: a man would favour an ugly whore over Venus herself if she had but the face or voice to fit her for some private play inside his head. If you only had that, imagination did the rest.
There were others, stony-hearted culls who knew themselves unwanted and took delight in it. Kitty kept a list of such, supplied them with innocents – real or fake – and charged extra. She had rules to protect her property: these men were only to be catered for in certain rooms, with concealed doors that could be pushed aside and a member of the household on spyhole duty. The spies – said Lina Burch, an old hand at virginity – were sometimes slow in opening the door. It was even whispered a man could pay to have them dismissed entirely.
Yet here is Ned, knowing all this and utterly out of tune with his mother, still so much her son as to talk, on occasion, of ‘love’ between a sixteen-year-old rose and a pox-ridden gargoyle of sixty.
She’d better watch out. Mustn’t cross him just now. She smiles and says, ‘Well, I met you there, so I can’t ever regret it, can I? For myself, I mean.’ She has to add those last words because of Keshlie: a regret if ever there was one.
‘A blessed chance for both of us,’ Ned says, lowering the tray of food to the carpet and lying back in bed. ‘Ride St
George, there’s a dear girl.’
She does so, squeezing him inside her, holding him tight and snug. He loves the woman on top, says he can get in deeper that way.
He gives a curious sigh, half pleasure, half regret. ‘I wish I could do you good.’
‘But you do, Ned.’
‘Should you be in need – real need, but you understand that Betsy, you’re a woman of sense – send word by the blackbird. He’s mine entirely, can’t stomach her.’
‘And if I asked you to visit Sam?’
Ned cocks an eyebrow. It seems he’s not willing to descend quite so low as a resurrectionist’s ken.
Very well, let us enjoy what we have. She pulls away, slides against him, belly to belly, tongue in his mouth, in his ear, kissing his neck, stroking his chest, running her nails across his back. He’s smooth and slippery as satin and oh, the smell of him. Knave of Hearts. She moves more slowly, more deeply, then faster. Chink, chink, from a dish tangled in the bedclothes. Ned stares at her body, arched and thrust towards him. He reaches forward and takes her titties between finger and thumb, pinching, teasing. She rides harder, nearly there, there. Pleasure breaks over her and she clenches and bucks under the force of it. Ned’s hands tighten, expertly cruel.
*
During the hours of darkness they continue to talk, weaving in and out of sleep, touching, lying tumbled together and apart. Betsy-Ann is exhausted, hollowed out. She’d like to drop off entirely, the way she used to when in her own rooms – curl up, Ned curled round her, and wake with the two of them still folded together – but she’s reluctant to waste these last few precious hours.
‘You’re thrown away on that sot,’ says Ned towards morning. ‘You should get yourself another keeper.’
Is it an opening? She hesitates before she ventures, ‘Do you know a man who’d suit me?’
‘I know one who’d love the position but he’s no good to you, Betsy. There’s still a creditor or two. Until all that’s settled ―’ He presses a finger against her lips. After a moment he adds, as if to himself, ‘And what a figure he cut, tied to his ma’s purse-strings!’
