Birdcage Walk

by Helen Dunmore

  ‘But, Diner, we are in England here. Whether they kill the King of France or let him live, it will be all the same to us.’

  This was heresy. Augustus would have lectured me roundly on the links that tied each one of us to our brother men, our fellows in the struggle for liberty, wherever they might be. We were bound to one another. What happened across the Channel was not obscure to us, since the cause of radicalism in England hung on the fate of France. The success or failure of the revolutionary forces was our success or failure too. I had heard it all so many times and had acquiesced with my lips, but in my heart I could not feel it. It seemed to me that there was a self-interest hidden in the core of all of us, which cooled us when we contemplated any fate which did not touch us directly. Or perhaps I was cold-blooded, as Caroline Farquhar had once accused me. I chose ignorance, she said. I chose passivity. She herself, I think, was all fire and air in her own opinion.

  ‘You cannot be so ignorant, Lizzie,’ said Diner. ‘Do you really think that the storm in France will not blow my hat off?’

  ‘I suppose, if they kill the King …’ I was thinking aloud, remembering Hannah’s stories of Garrick playing Macbeth. She had never tired of telling me how Garrick had looked as he held up the dagger after killing Duncan. To witness it had been one of the great moments of her life. ‘If they kill the King, then perhaps blood will have blood,’ I said now.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ he asked, with a pounce of anger that frightened me again. But I was determined to say out my piece.

  ‘I was thinking of Macbeth. Hannah used to recite those speeches to me so often that I have them by heart still:

  ‘It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood:

  Stones have been known to move and trees to speak.

  ‘Macbeth fears that the man he has killed will come back and revenge himself. You know the play; you know how Banquo returns after his death.’

  Diner turned away from me, towards the fire which bubbled peacefully in the grate. ‘I am tired,’ he said. His hand hung down beside his chair, and I took it up and kissed it.

  ‘Don’t think of such things now,’ I said.

  He turned his head slowly and smiled at me. ‘What should I think of, Lizzie?’

  ‘Tell me what you have done today.’

  ‘Strong and Wishart have left.’

  They were his two best stonemasons.

  ‘Is the work finished?’ I asked, but I knew that it was not.

  ‘No. They say that they have worked for too long on the promise of pay. They are short-sighted – they should know that I will reward them handsomely once the houses are sold – but there is no more arguing with them. I have stretched that rope too far. Don’t wrinkle up your brow, Lizzie. I prefer it smooth. There.’ And he stretched out and passed his hand across my forehead so firmly that it was an order, not a caress. ‘They will come back to me.’

  I could not help blinking. His fingers seemed to feel their way into my mind. ‘Those buyers who came last week – the lady with the cough,’ I said quickly, to distract him, ‘have they visited again?’

  ‘They have been to Grace’s Buildings twice.’

  ‘Then perhaps—’

  ‘They are wasting my time. She looks as if one more winter will carry her off. Her husband is indulging a sick fancy.’

  I had been sure of them. She had walked about, talking about what furniture she would put in this room or that, and how she would make a morning room from one of the bedrooms because it caught the early sun. She was so animated, clinging to her husband’s arm and laughing when there was no cause for laughter.

  ‘Are your clients always like this?’ I asked him. ‘I cannot make it out. Her husband had money, surely, unless he was flashing the gentleman. He must know whether or not he wants to buy.’

  ‘He is not going to buy a house for her to die in.’

  ‘They talked of the future all the time they were here.’

  ‘He must know she has no future.’

  It was December now. She would not survive the winter. She would be gone next year and the house unsold. The thought of it chilled me through, even though I scarcely knew the woman. It was the dead of the year too, when hope had shrunk down.

  ‘So many people have come to see the houses,’ I said. I knew Diner would not let himself give way. ‘Why does it take so long? Why do they come so often, and talk and talk, and never decide? Is it always like this?’

  ‘They are fearful,’ said Diner. ‘They wonder why others have not bought before them, if the terrace will be everything that I say. There is no reason in any of it. I could have sold each house in Canford Square twice over, and still had them coming for more. These houses here are twice as fine – three times – and then there is the situation: it will never be matched again. The whole of the Gorge open before them …’ He clenched his fists again, and then slowly relaxed them. ‘They do not see it. They refuse to see it.’

  ‘They will see it.’

  ‘You think so, Lizzie? I’m not so sure. They look at the empty houses and the ones not yet built. They ask me questions that I cannot easily answer. But I will have them. They need to believe that a better and luckier man will snatch at the chance of buying, if they do not. They must be brought to fear that more than they fear any other loss.’

  He had won so many times. He still believed that things would turn and he would get the better of these shilly-shally skinflints. But he was anxious now. He had laid off men before, plenty of times, but he would never have chosen to lose two skilled masons who had both worked with him for years. Whatever he said, he knew that they would quickly find other work and be engaged when he needed them again.

  ‘There is a certain point, Lizzie: I cannot exactly explain it to you, but once I have brought a buyer to that point, I know I can tip him over. I am a wrestler and I use my opponent’s momentum to make him fall. But if he will not come to the point, then I am powerless. I cannot very well lift the money out of his purse. That is, unless you are willing to come into the business as my accomplice, and lift his handkerchief and purse from his pocket.’

  I was glad to see him smile at last. ‘I might be willing. I am quick with my hands,’ I said.

  ‘You are, I know.’ He took my hand between his, ran his lips over it and gently bit the cushion of flesh at the base of my thumb. ‘But what should I do if you were transported?’

  ‘You’d come with me. They must need houses there.’

  ‘Felons are not very likely to pay me for my work.’

  ‘But think how cheap we could live.’

  ‘You would dislike the company, Lizzie. Australia is not America: there is no society there. Only a wilderness which is no doubt as full of savage animals as the menagerie at Exeter ’Change.’

  ‘But I would have your company.’

  It struck me, suddenly, how little there was to hold me here, if we could take Thomas with us. Hannah would remain with Augustus, growing old. Augustus would be himself, whatever happened. He was an unchangeable creature.

  I could step out of this life, and find another. It seemed suddenly as easy a thing as opening a door to walk through it. I would not be leaving safety behind, because there seemed to be no safety anywhere. Since the day Mammie died I had barely kept my footing. The life we’d had was gone. There was nothing left of it and nothing in its place but this: Diner nipping the flesh at the base of my thumb with his teeth. I would never see Mammie look up and smile as I came into the room and say, ‘How’s my girl?’ I was not her girl and never would be again. No one would ever look at me with such tenderness, simply because I existed. I did not know who I was. I felt safe only when Thomas was in my arms.

  Perhaps we really could begin our lives again? Diner was right: Australia would not do, but America might. They were building there. We heard of new towns and cities rising where there had been wilderness only a few years earlier. Diner’s skill would be much in demand.

  No one would know that Thomas was n
ot our child, I told myself. There would be other children later. In America they had already had their revolution and cast off the yoke of the King. The sky had not fallen.

  Diner’s lips moved over my palm and I shivered.

  ‘Let us go upstairs, Lizzie,’ he said.

  That night I lost myself. I forgot everything except the dark place where we clung together. We were one creature, made out of sweat and salt and all the juices of our bodies. This time he did not pull out of me but came inside me, shuddering, and I did not push him away.

  Afterwards, when he was asleep, I came to myself. His weight on my arm began to be heavy, and very gently I shifted myself to ease it free. He murmured but did not stir. I lay awake for a long time. I was not falling now but floating free. My thoughts of a hut in the wilderness seemed childish now. I remembered Mammie’s voice, reading of the Indian chiefs and the wonders they revealed to Bartram. Her voice was low and clear and easy. I could still hear it yet I would never hear it again. Thomas would never know it. These days I had to remind myself that he was her child. He would miss her without ever knowing what it was that he missed. I vowed that if I had a child of my own, it would make no difference to my love for Thomas. For once I felt no anxiety about him. He was safe and sound, upstairs with Philo. There was no need for me to steal upstairs to be sure that he was still alive. Every day he grew stronger. I loved to kiss the creases of his neck and his soft feet that had never yet trodden on the ground. Philo blew raspberries on his back and we laughed together over his laughter.

  Caroline Farquhar wanted to write great things on Mammie’s tombstone. The Matchless Eloquence of Her Instrument Was Ever Tuned to the Delight and Benefit of Her Fellow Creatures. Hannah pursed up her face and remarked privately to me later that it made my mother sound like an opera singer. Augustus stared about him with a clouded look and said, ‘Excellent. What you propose is excellent, Caroline,’ but without doing more than glance over the words. It came to me that he could not bear to think of it, and in the dark and quiet my heart softened to him. Caroline Farquhar would go back to London. When my mother’s tombstone was set, it would have none of Caroline’s words on it. It would have her own name on it, and her dates of birth and death.

  Augustus would agree. He would not want fancy carving, when it came to it.

  America was another pipe dream. I saw clearly now that it was not so easy to step out of the life which held us. No matter how far we went, we would take with us not only our selves but all the ghosts of our lives.

  Besides, Augustus would not willingly part with Thomas, and Diner did not want children with me.

  13

  Diner woke me. I did not know what had hit me but then I came to myself and knew that it was his hand, flung out, striking me across the face. It was not a heavy blow, but enough to startle me out of sleep. I rubbed my cheek. He was shifting from side to side as if trying to dodge an opponent. I remembered what he had said to me about wrestling, how he would bring his opponent down by getting him off balance. He was wrestling now, with something I could not see.

  The blow went through and through me. He groaned in his sleep and then said something, a word I could not make out. I was afraid he might strike out again and I sat up carefully so that he would not feel the movement and eased myself to the very edge of the bed.

  He was asleep, I told myself. He did not know what he was doing. But he had hit me. Where was he in his mind, to forget that I was sleeping beside him?

  My skin smarted. I sat and listened until he lay still and his breathing deepened. It was no lighter now than it had been when I went to bed. There was so much dark at this time of the year, lying over the earth like a lid. It lifted for a few hours and then closed down over us again. One day it would close down forever. Here was I and here was Diner: two lumps of flesh that were alive now and would soon, inevitably, be as cold and unresponsive as—

  I was not going to think of that. Her body had been stiff within hours, all the warmth fled. Her eyes solid when I touched the cold lids. No impulse towards me.

  I did not know what breath meant until she died. It was everything that gave quickness and life: it was thought, feeling, animation. Without it there was nothing.

  It was only time that lay between me and that day when life went out of her and she was still warm but utterly absent. She was warm when I bathed and washed her, and helped the midwife to stop up the orifices of her body. I could do this for her at least. Trapped air wheezed out of her as we turned her. It sounded for an instant like life but it was death. She would never take another breath.

  I worked so fearlessly that the midwife praised me for it, but I knew she thought me unfeeling.

  Time could not distance me from it. Every moment was distinct. Even her hair had no warmth in it when I combed it out. It was rough and matted from her struggle towards death. The shine was gone, with the scent that had always clung to it. It was dead stuff, and I could not bring myself to cut a lock to remember her by, although the midwife urged me to do so.

  Augustus cut a lock of hair, tied it with a black thread and put it away in a box.

  I could not kiss her lips or cheek but I kissed her forehead and felt the resistance of her flesh. The lines in it were slack. I fetched rosewater and rubbed it into her temples, behind her ears, over her breast. I had rubbed her with orange-flower water while she was alive. She would smell sweet, at least. But even so there had been a smell from her body that the rosewater could not mask. She smelled of meat that had been kept too long. I flinched at the smell and at my own betrayal of her in noticing it. A good daughter – the daughter Mammie deserved – she would have known nothing but the purity of love and grief.

  For the first time tears had pushed behind my eyelids. I dabbed the inside of her wrists. I had never touched her there before without feeling for the jump of her pulse.

  And now I was alone, with my husband beside me. I must not think about it. I would get up. I would put food into my mouth, chew and swallow it, wash my face, twist my hair into its knot. I would do all these things, day after day, even though all the time there was an end appointed for them which I did not know. My pulse might as well cease now, I thought as I lay in the darkness, since one day it was bound to do so. My blood would be still and thick in my veins. There were so many years to get through and for the moment even Thomas could not rouse me to feeling. He would do as well without me. Better, perhaps.

  Mammie was out there in the dark and cold. No one would ever bring her in, to warm and dry and cherish her. There was rain seeping through the earth and into her coffin. Water gets everywhere. It finds a way, no matter how tight the carpenter dovetails his joints. When rain spattered on the windows I could never run to open the door for her, take off her cloak to dry it by the fire, kneel to take off her boots. She was part of the cold darkness. She would never come in. And here I was, still putting food into my mouth and swallowing it.

  I lay bound, as heavy as if I too had the weight of six feet of earth above me.

  Diner stirred. He spoke thickly, indistinctly, and I again could not catch what he said, but then he repeated it and my brain made out the word: Lucie.

  He was dreaming of her, as I was thinking of Mammie. In his dream the earth had lifted from her coffin. She had risen and come to him. She did not stink of the grave; she was not streaked with filth and suckered with worms. She was herself again and come to find him. They were talking together in their own strange, sweet language, questions and answers tumbling out of them. When they broke off at last she glanced at me without curiosity and with a certain disdain, as if she had expected to discover him with a creature such as me. But now she had come back, all that could be put aside. She chattered to him softly as she smoothed out the covers and prepared herself to slide in beside him.

  I got up out of the bed. I did not dare look behind me as I snatched up my clothes from the heap where I had thrown them down the night before. They smelled of my own body and I held them close. My feet fo
und the path to the door and I squeezed the handle so that it opened noiselessly, then I went up through the house like a ghost.

  There was no sound from Philo’s attic. I longed to lift Thomas, to hold his warm damp heaviness and snuff the smell of his skin. I must not do it, I thought. I must leave him alone. He would be frightened. He would cry and I would not be able to comfort him. I must leave him to Philo.

  I dressed myself blindly, felt my way down to the kitchen, broke open the fire and lit a candle. I would not go out looking like a wild creature. I smoothed my hair and knotted it, took water from the barrel, dipped a cloth and wiped my face.

  I must eat or I would be weak. I chewed a piece of bread but could not swallow it and spat it out into the fire. There was milk in the jug, more than enough for Thomas, and so I drank a little. The kitchen hung about me, so strange that I could not believe I had ever set foot there before. It was beginning to frighten me. I must get out, I thought. Where can I go?

  There was only one place. I would go there and perhaps Hannah would be as she was before, crisp and capable, scolding me but making me at home. I knocked against the dresser as I blundered to the passage and the garden door. There would be a bruise and Diner would ask me about it when he scrutinised my body, inch by inch, as he so often did. I drew back the bolt stealthily, as if he were breathing behind me, and slipped out. The garden door was bolted too, but it gave way easily. It opened on to the lane behind the houses, where Philo threw the ashes. I lifted my skirts high, out of the dirt.

  I slipped through the streets silently. When I passed another living creature we went by like shadows, not guessing at each other’s business. It was dark but I knew from the stir of the wind that it was almost morning. There were people waking. The yellowness of a candle sprang up in an upstairs window as I went by. Soon the men would be at work on the terrace: those who remained. But there was frost on the ground and the earth was hard. Diner would not like that. I slid on a frozen puddle and went down, cracking my knee, and then I realised that I was running. I must not run though the streets like a madwoman, I thought. Hannah must not see me like this.