Ace, King, Knave

by Maria McCann

  Mrs Launey raises a warning hand, which Eliza ignores. ‘It’s you she’s come to see, Titus. Mrs Zed advertised you for a good servant.’

  ‘The mistress is pleased with me?’

  The girl looks at him with what he now sees is pity before turning again to the loaf and slicing it in half. ‘No, you noddy. She wants you off her hands.’

  He shivers. So he is to be passed on once more, like an animal – is this possible? Has Dog Eye permitted it?

  ‘Here.’ Eliza arranges the items on the tray. ‘Your bread-and-butter, your teapot, china, water, cream, sugar, lemon, sugar-tongs. And spoons. I’ll hold the door for you.’

  ‘The master,’ he stammers. ‘Is he know?’

  ‘Couldn’t say, I’m sure,’ the cook replies. ‘Don’t take on, love. Eliza, you carry the ―’

  ‘No, it’s got to be him. Hey, Titus!’

  He is about to pick up the tray. He looks up and Eliza fetches him a stinging slap across the face. He freezes, unsure whether to retaliate but determined not to cry at the hands of a woman.

  ‘Go on,’ Eliza urges. ‘Blubber. Cry your eyes nice and red.’

  The cook bends toward him, interested. ‘Do what she says, child.’

  ‘Titus, you must be a bad servant. Bad, bad! Do you understand? You must have nasty eyes and drop things, then Mrs Howell won’t take you. Here ―’ She pokes her finger into the butter dish, smears it along his sleeve, then runs to the flour bin and fetches out a handful, sprinkling it over the butter.

  ‘Rub it in,’ she says. The result is terrifying: an impressive white stain blooms along his forearm. The mistress will surely kill him. In his soiled livery, with his eyes watery and his cheek burning, he creeps towards the room where the ladies wait.

  *

  ‘Poor creature, it was a blessed release,’ patters Betsy-Ann, her head cocked in at the doorway. ‘Such affliction, Sir, as you’d have wept to see.’

  The Uncle says, ‘Don’t stand there letting in the cold.’

  ‘I can’t leave my cart, Sir. If I could bring it into the yard, now.’

  He grunts, slides off the stool and disappears through the back of the shop. Betsy-Ann ducks back outside, to the gate flanking the shop front, and hears a bolt shoot. The boards quiver on their hinges.

  ‘To pledge?’ asks the Uncle, peeking through the gap. His head with its small round eyes reminds her of a parrot at Kitty’s: it was forever poking its head between the bars of its cage, and one day the cat got it. She shoves at the gate, pushing in her handcart before he can change his mind. ‘To sell, Sir. All to sell. I’ve wipers, dummees ―’

  ‘Don’t give me your cant.’

  ‘Kerchiefs, pocket-books and watches. And fawneys, Sir.’

  He allows that word, or perhaps doesn’t hear it since he is now bolting the gate behind her. Betsy-Ann safely inside and his defences back in place, he unlocks the side door to the premises.

  To her surprise, what lies behind is almost the same as the shop front: another counter, another grille. ‘Stop there,’ says the Uncle. Yet another door opens, fast as a whore’s legs, and he dodges through it. Again the sound of bolts. In a few seconds he reappears behind the grille.

  ‘I don’t go armed,’ says Betsy-Ann. ‘Is this all the same place?’

  ‘Same only privater. Now, show me,’ he says, unlatching the little door in the grille.

  ‘There’s more left behind.’ Betsy-Ann wipes her eyes. ‘Such a lovely shop as she had. To think of her ending up skin and bone.’

  ‘Show me.’

  He claws at the first thing she picks out for him, a mother-of-pearl toothpick case with silver trimmings.

  ‘I’ve wipers, different colours ―’

  Through the gap in the grille she offers him a fine big one in scarlet silk. He pushes that aside and reaches for a gold-and-turquoise fawney.

  ‘I shouldn’t be standing here with my constitution,’ he says. ‘Show me the lot at once and I’ll give you a price.’

  ‘Piece by piece is my way.’

  He’s weighing her up. ‘It’d be quicker.’

  ‘We might forget something, Uncle. You wouldn’t want that, would you?’

  They settle to the business of haggling, though Betsy-Ann relents so far as to group the handkerchiefs together. As he examines each item he adds it to a list, Betsy-Ann watching to make sure nothing is left off. When a price has been agreed for everything, he reads the list aloud, pointing to the price and at the same time moving the goods from one pile to another so that she can see for herself. She insists on him going slowly; she can’t read but she can add up. Even so, by the time she is satisfied that everything tallies, her hands are nearly as blue and corpse-like as his. The pawnbroker’s cough smokes in the hard, dead air.

  Before his eyes she bites each piece of gold he slides across the counter, then signs, with a cross, a receipt he’s made out for her in the name of Mrs Flatt: their one shared joke.

  On the way home she stops to buy bread and sausage from costers. Her feet are light; she trips along humming one of Mam’s favourites, Young Robin and His Love.

  Young Robin was of high degree,

  He loved a simple maid

  She’s offloaded about a third of the Eye’s contents. First she took the small precious things, leaving the bigger ones to make a show. At a glance, which is all he’ll spare them, the boxes and buckets look as full as ever. Thrust down her stays, digging into her ribs, is the fruit of her labours: a tight little leather bag. What Sam’d give, to get his crippled paws on that! In a couple of days she’ll hand him a guinea, tell him she’s doing all she can to get him to St Giles.

  And there he saw a wondrous sight

  The like was never seen

  A thousand horses, red and white

  A-riding on the green

  He’ll be well and truly bitten. She tries not to think about how he’ll look when he finds out: though he doesn’t trust her any more, he did once, or wanted to.

  Damned if she’ll weep for him, though. When he had gold he got a piece tight in each fist and struck out like a man that meant business. A regular prize-fighter he was, coming slashing in with his old one-two, when she and Ned were at their weakest.

  He is not here, the mother cried

  For Margaret is dead

  And ’neath a grove of willows green Are she and Robin laid

  Now Sam’s star is on the wane and the Age of Ned dawns. She’s game enough to take that chance, go where it leads: Pamphile and Prodigy seated at the table, playing to the end, Prodigy with aces roosting in her hand, aye, and Pamphile in there too.

  For a while. No man is in the palm of a woman’s hand forever. Her time in Kitty’s would have been spent to little purpose indeed, had she failed to understand that.

  *

  Shiner is asleep in a chair, his cheek pressed to the window. He must have dozed off while watching for her. Even the rattle of her key in the lock fails to bring him round; he only grunts and shifts position.

  Betsy-Ann puts down her basket and sits to study him. He’s a ruin, his face crumpled all on one side. His fam lies palm upwards in his lap, the purple gristle of the scar exposed. When he wakes, he’ll put that out of sight.

  There was a time, a little breath of a time before he lost the finger, when she thought she and Sam might do something, after all.

  Not at first. At first she couldn’t talk for grief. She was a blind girl, Ned’s pretty picture burnt in at the backs of her eyeballs, a girl sitting dumb and motionless while somewhere in the room Shiner bustled about, taking pains to please her: bringing coal upstairs to spare her the trouble, washing his face before bending it towards her for a kiss. She did not turn her lips away but let them hang slack. One morning she woke to find him bending over the pillow, his blue gaze no longer sly but bruised. Poor bastard, she thought. Her pity made him real.

  Slowly they began to shake down. It was true what Ned had said: Shiner adored her, watched her like the little do
g did, until it was stolen away. Never what you’d call well favoured but still, he talked with her. Gave her his name.

  Now he’s gelded, his power over the cards cut away. Terrible to see a man so reduced. It comes to her that this is perhaps how she looked, all those months ago: collapsed to one side. She sees his eyelids flutter, hears the faint pop as his dry lips part. He might be saying Betsy. Perhaps a figure in her shape floats about the inside of his head, dancing, laughing. The ghost of Betsy-Ann leads Sam into the bedchamber, bright in his dream with the best wax candles, and there pulls him down, gluey kisses in the damp, death-scented sheets ―

  Sam farts, opens his eyes and peels his face off the window-pane.

  ‘Your neck’ll be stiff and no mistake,’ says Betsy-Ann, watching him rub it. He flinches and she realises that until she spoke, he hadn’t known she was there.

  ‘You just come in? Where you been?’

  She shows him her basket with the sausage and loaf in it. He turns towards the sinking fire, as if calculating how long ago she left, and covers the move by saying, ‘Warm enough for you?’

  ‘I’ll put some coal on.’ She places the basket on the table, ready to unpack. Shiner lays his good hand on her arm.

  ‘Harry’s been here.’

  ‘Has he, now.’

  ‘I told him straight. Said I’m not going back.’

  She leaps with the shock of it. ‘Christ, Sam! He’ll kill you – kill you.’

  Sam’s grip on her arm tightens. He pulls her down until their faces are almost touching. ‘Not a tear, eh? You might shed a tear for me, Betsy.’

  She looks away from him and in the end he lets her go. She reaches for a chair. By the time she’s pulled one close and sat down by his side, he’s slid the maimed hand into his pocket.

  ‘I can blub all you like, it won’t do any good,’ she says, sugaring her voice. ‘Go and take him something, Sammy. Bottle of nantz. Tell him you meant nothing by it.’

  He stares straight ahead now. ‘And is that the advice you’d give Hartry?’

  ‘It’s not Hartry we’re ―’

  ‘If it was, you’d be giving fourpenny flyers in the street, paying his passage to India. Anything to keep him safe.’

  ‘I’m trying to keep you safe.’

  ‘So you say. I don’t see any love in you. Damned if I’ve ever seen any.’

  Very quiet and cold she says, ‘He wasn’t in a position to stake that.’

  He turns his head and she is surprised: just for a second there’s a flicker of something she hasn’t seen before, something that in another man she might call pity. What’s he sparing her? Ned’s catalogue of sale, perhaps: lush around the dairyworks. Deep purse. If so, he could spare himself the trouble. Since Kitty’s, she’s beyond caring. She says, ‘What’ll you do for readies?’

  He says nothing, but takes the sausage out of the basket and unwraps it.

  ‘Wait, I’ll cut you some bread.’ But Shiner shakes his head. He casts aside the sausage and smooths out the wrapping paper on the table.

  ‘Get us a piece of coal, will you? With a bit of dust on it.’

  He’s a case for Bedlam. Betsy-Ann fetches a lump and he takes it not in his good hand, but in the maimed one. He turns the coal over, running his tongue between his lips, almost as if he wants to eat the thing. Then, smiling as if at some private joke, he puts it to paper, avoiding the grease spots, and begins to scratch. She watches, fascinated, as his fingers travel about the paper on tracks only he can see, a curve here, a mass of shading there. The coal cracks, spattering the surface with black flecks, so that he is obliged to turn it about frequently in his hand. He works fast, for all that. A knot of lines becomes brows, lashes, a circle of iris, another.

  ‘Fine pair of ogles, eh?’

  ‘Dimber.’ She wonders how he’ll do her ringlets, down on her shoulders or fastened up.

  ‘It should be charcoal. If you saw me with charcoal, now. Or an engraver’s pen.’

  ‘So the plan’s to be an engraver?’ She stops looking at the picture and stares at him, at his intent profile. ‘Do you know the trade?’

  ‘I’m time-served. Never set up my own shop.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘Fell in with bad company.’

  When she looks back to the picture, she gasps. The hair is in place, but not as she pictured it, and Shiner’s hand is just touching in the lips: a wide, greedy muzzle. Even drawn in coal on coarse paper, the face compels attention.

  ‘Dimber. As you so kindly observed.’

  ‘I thought it was me,’ is all Betsy-Ann can say. And indeed, the picture does have a look of her about it. She’s not sure whether the resemblance has always been there, and the sketch has merely shown her what everyone else has seen from the start, or whether it comes from Shiner’s coupling them in his mind.

  ‘Is it a good likeness?’ he enquires, head on one side.

  ‘I’m no judge of likenesses.’

  ‘You see I can earn my way. Should you like to have this? As a memento of me.’

  She turns over the possible answers in her mind. None of them is safe.

  ‘It’s fine work.’

  ‘You show your ignorance, my dear. Before I was cut, then you could call me a draughtsman.’ Shiner takes the portrait over to the fire and drops it onto the coals. Ned’s eyes light up, defiant, as the grease on the paper catches. The face itself goes next, a red-rimmed hole appearing at his temple. Though he grins to the last, there is soon nothing left of him but a grey rag of ash.

  Shiner whoops like a savage, startling Betsy-Ann. He claps his hands and crows. ‘What a pretty fellow! What a pity!’

  ‘Is that all you drew it for?’

  He smirks. ‘Don’t you understand what I just showed you? No, nothing. Cunts and the use of ’em, that’s all the Sex can comprehend.’ Bewildered, she lets him run on: ‘A mort can’t know the hundredth part of what a man knows. Not the hundredth part.’

  It’s on the tip of her tongue to say, You talk more sense when you’re drunk, but she is wary of this bitter Shiner who has opened up, like a magical box, to show inner workings previously unguessed-at. She says: ‘If something’s told me I can understand it.’

  ‘Ah, but you shan’t be told.’ He lays his finger alongside his nose. ‘You’ll have to wait and see.’

  What she sees is that between Harry’s spite and Sam’s jealousy, she stands a fair chance of being crushed. She has to get out from under him. Ned or no Ned.

  38

  ‘Bless me,’ cries Hetty, entering with a bustling haste which, though inelegant, speaks eloquently of her affection, ‘Who have we here? Cousin Sophia, I vow! And mistress of all she surveys.’

  Sophia composes her features into the smile demanded by politeness. There is nothing she can do, alas, about her flaring cheeks.

  She is quite fit to be seen. Her toilette is respectable and the room where she sits clean and orderly; even at her most wretched, she has never descended into sluttishness. Her sense of being caught out arises from the consciousness that she cannot produce Edmund, who has not been home since yesterday evening. To add to her misery, there is nobody she less expected to see than these two and nobody to whom she would sooner offer the warmest hospitality, had she only known. Though there may be something in reserve: Mrs Launey seems a competent enough person and Sophia has yet to test her mettle.

  ‘Darling Hetty ―’ She embraces her cousin and shakes hands with Mr Letcher, her mouth bringing out congratulations and civilities while her mind flaps moth-like round the burning questions: how has this happened? Are they expecting to stay?

  ‘And such a cold day, too! Pray sit near the fire and warm yourselves.’ She installs the smiling couple on the sofa; it is rather cramped for such a big man as Mr Letcher but the chairs are no better. ‘Fan, bring tea and cake.’

  The girl curtseys and is gone. Sophia seats herself opposite her guests.

  ‘Well!’ The word comes out breathily, as if she is over-laced.
‘This is indeed a charming surprise.’

  Hetty’s dark eyebrows arrange themselves into graceful arches. ‘Surprise? But I wrote we should come if ―’ Her hand flies to her mouth. ‘You haven’t received ― O, Sophy! O, Lord!’

  ‘It’s of no consequence,’ Sophia assures her. ‘Were you intending to pass the night here?’

  ‘You see how splendid she is, Letcher? No, my love, we shan’t be billeting ourselves upon you. Our lodgings are quite satisfactory. Good God, what a shock you must have had!’ Hetty is laughing now, her eyes not quite as blithe as the rest of her face. Sophia can guess at her thoughts: Such a street for a gentleman’s house, I do hope Sophy is not unhappy.

  ‘Dearest Hetty, you mustn’t apologise. Though I never saw your letter, I couldn’t be more delighted to see you.’

  Now that Sophia has begun to recover herself, she is indeed filled with pleasure at the sight of her cousin, with the pink cheeks of one newly entered from the cold, installed by the hearth while her husband, the estimable Josiah Letcher, compliments his hostess on having a first-rate fire. Her initial impressions of this gentleman were principally of height and solidity. Now that she has looked at him a little longer, she can add to those attributes a good-tempered mouth and a pair of small but benevolent brown eyes. Mr Letcher is scrupulously but not foppishly groomed and his clothes well cut. He is a man upon whose arm one might lean in confidence and Hetty (blooming with precisely such confidence) a charming exemplar of wifely happiness.

  Like most plain women, Sophia has endured her share of complacent looks from more fortunate members of the Sex. From Hetty, however (so sprightly and attaching, so admired by gentlemen) nothing of the sort has ever been forthcoming; Hetty is, was, and always will be all generosity and good nature. And since Mr Letcher, beaming goodwill from the sofa, appears to be Hetty’s masculine counterpart, Sophia feels her awkwardness thaw to the point where she can boldly confess her predicament: though her guests will not starve, the kitchen may not rise to the occasion. It is, of course, possible to send out for something and when they have drunk their tea she will speak with the cook.