Birdcage Walk

by Helen Dunmore

  ‘Where’s Hannah?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh,’ said Augustus, and a glance slid between him and Caroline. ‘She has gone into Somerset already.’

  ‘So soon!’ I could not help myself: it came out as a cry.

  ‘There were very particular circumstances,’ said Caroline in her most condescending style.

  ‘I know that she has gone to join Will Forrest, if that is what you mean.’

  And has left the pair of you together, I did not say. It was comical to think of them in need of a chaperone. Caroline lifted my mother’s tea-pot and carefully filled Augustus’s cup before handing him the cream.

  ‘You know how I like it,’ he said, and smiled at her.

  My heart was beating so fast that I was sick with it. ‘Augustus,’ I brought out, ‘I have come because I need to speak to you urgently, on a family matter.’

  ‘I think that Mr Gleeson may be allowed to drink his tea first, my dear Elizabeth,’ broke in Caroline Farquhar, as if I were a tiresome child. But Augustus did not follow her lead. He put down his cup, unfolded his long legs and stood up, saying:

  ‘You must excuse us, Caroline. Come, Lizzie, we will talk in the kitchen.’

  As soon as the door was shut behind us, he put his hand on my shoulder and steered me to Hannah’s chair. ‘Sit down, Lizzie. You look very ill.’

  ‘I am not well. I have come to ask you, Augustus, if you will take Thomas back for a while. I cannot care for him. He will be better with you.’

  He stared at me but said nothing, although his face furrowed and tightened. Again I realised how much I had underestimated Augustus and taught myself to believe that my mother had married him almost out of pity.

  ‘Is this your own wish, Lizzie, or your husband’s?’

  ‘It is my own.’

  ‘But you were so strong against Thomas going to a wet-nurse.’

  ‘I know. I am against it still. Philo will come to stay and take care of him, and I will continue to pay her wages. You will have no trouble at all. Thomas knows Philo and she will take good care of him. They can have Hannah’s room. It will not be for long, Augustus. Only until I am better.’

  ‘Have you seen a doctor, Lizzie? You are very pale.’

  ‘No.’ I hesitated, deliberately, before adding, ‘It is not necessary. I know what is the matter with me.’

  His face clouded with embarrassment, and I knew he would ask no more questions.

  ‘When will Philo come?’ he asked.

  ‘I will leave Thomas here with you now and send her immediately, before the snow becomes too deep. Philo knows what to do. I shall visit every day.’

  As I spoke I was untying the knot in my shawl behind me. I supported Thomas with my left hand and did not loosen the folds in case it woke him.

  ‘There is everything he needs in the basket. Milk, clouts, his pap boat, his caps and dresses. Philo will bring more things with her and I will send a boy with the cradle.’

  ‘Caroline is staying with her maid at Little George Street,’ he said abruptly. ‘She and I will go into Gloucestershire on Friday, unless the snow continues. I am to speak to the mill-workers at Nailsworth.’

  ‘You need not worry about Thomas. You may safely leave him and Philo will do everything. Let me give him to you.’

  I put shawl and baby into the arms that Augustus held out awkwardly. Thomas felt the change and began to squirm. ‘He likes to be held firmly.’ I took Augustus’s hands and guided them. ‘There, that’s better.’

  ‘Do they not bruise easily?’

  ‘You won’t bruise him. He likes to feel that you have him safe. He will probably sleep now until Philo arrives.’

  ‘I suppose Caroline will know what to do, if he cries.’

  ‘He must not have any cordials, no matter what.’ I tried to soften my voice. ‘He will do very well.’

  Augustus was gazing down at the baby’s face. ‘At what age do they learn to speak, Lizzie?’ He was imagining the conversations he would have with Thomas. Perhaps he thought Thomas would be another Émile.

  ‘I am not quite sure,’ I said. ‘I am learning as Thomas learns.’

  Augustus glanced up with a sudden, childlike smile. I had never seen him smile so before, but it came to me that this must be how he had looked at my mother in their most private moments. I wished I had mistrusted him less, while Mammie was alive. I could not break the habit now. And if I spoke, what could I say? I had defended Diner from the moment I met him. I had told everyone over and over again that they did not understand Diner as I did, who loved him. I had persuaded them out of all their criticisms. I had told them that they did not understand the world that Diner and I would build together, because it was not their world. But what was worse, I had told myself all these things. I had convinced myself that words were cheap, compared to stone. I had poured scorn in my heart on our little band, dismissing Augustus as a gullible idealist, Richard Sacks as a prosing bore and Caroline Farquhar as a rich hypocrite who posed as a radical. I had even blamed Mammie for her steadfast turning aside from what the world considered to be good. I saw now how they had humoured me. They must have talked long into the night, fearing for my future and hoping that I would find some happiness in my new situation.

  How could I tell Augustus now that there were thoughts I did not dare to think? How could I reveal that if I was drawn and pale it was not because there was a child in my belly but because I was afraid?

  Dread filled me again, like sickness. I had parted with Thomas. He had been my burden but my anchor too, and now I did not know what depths lay under me.

  ‘Will you need your shawl, Lizzie?’ asked Augustus. ‘You must not be cold.’

  ‘I have got my cloak.’ I did not want to unwrap Thomas. At least he knew my old shawl and it would smell like home to him. He would wake and expect to see my face. He would bat the air with his fists, crying.

  I must go home quickly, to send Philo on her way to him.

  25

  It is three days now since I took Thomas to Augustus, and still I have not been able to say a word to Diner of what I think and fear.

  The snow has not melted, but every day it evaporates a little more into the winter sunlight. The temperature never rises above freezing. The ground is so hard that even if everything had been quite different, it would still be impossible to build.

  Diner goes out each day, for three hours or four. While he is out of the house I brush and scrub and lift and scour. I empty our chamber pot and swill it round. I cook soup for us with bones and barley. I make bread and porridge. There is a five-pound bag of oats in the larder, and a stone of flour. Because I never leave the house there is very little fresh food: no milk or cream cheese or meat. There are carrots and onions enough to last us a few days longer, and a fat cabbage I bought from the market before the snow came. We have not touched it yet. Diner does not complain when I set another bowl of soup before him. Indeed, he praises me and says how savoury it is, and how delicious. He cannot break the habit of shaving a little sugar for himself from the loaf and holding it between his teeth while he drinks his glass of wine. There are two bottles left.

  The house is as clean as it was when Philo was here. She was crying as she left with her basket and a bundle of Thomas’s things. I tied her wages into a cloth and told her to give them to Augustus directly. I knew that I could trust her. She would fetch the milk for Thomas just as usual.

  ‘If Thomas is ill,’ I said to her, ‘you must send for me immediately. And do not allow any medicine to be given to him without sending a note to me first.’

  She stared. ‘But you’ll come and see us, miss?’

  ‘Lizzie,’ I said. ‘Remember. Yes, I will come, Philo, but not immediately.’ I kissed her and she clung to me until I put her away gently.

  Three days. Diner goes out and returns. The French Ambassador has been expelled from London following the execution of the King. Pitt will not have it, Diner says. There will be war.

  We go to bed soon after d
ark. We cannot keep a fire for longer and our stock of candles is dwindling. Diner forages for wood and comes home with a barrow-load. I think that he no longer goes to Grace’s Buildings or to Corn Street where money is lent and repaid. I am not certain where else he goes and besides it does not matter much.

  We fold into each other. He penetrates me and I penetrate him. We lie together for a long time, barely moving. If we cry out it is into each other’s mouths and the sound does not escape. The room is cold but we burn. Sometimes we throw off the bedclothes and walk naked to the windows. The shutters are never closed. There is the Gorge, and the forest beyond. When the moon rises everything swims into being. The landscape lifts towards the light as if from the depths of the sea. They call the moon silver but I do not think it is. It is more alive than that. We stand and watch and then we plunge back into our bed.

  Diner takes no precaution now. He enters me and he remains and I would not let him go even if he wished. I cannot remember what we were doing before this, or what I was thinking of: this is all there is. The King of France is dead and I am not sorry for it. I believe that he was a vain, luxurious man, as Mammie and Augustus believed, and that he was content if thousands starved. Or, at least, he was content to remain in ignorance.

  But I cannot blame him too much. We are all content to remain ignorant, if it suits us. We know that we eat while other bellies cramp with hunger. Our houses are palaces to those who have none.

  I am not sorry for the King’s death but I cannot get the manner of it out of my mind. I wrestle with it while I scrub the floors and Diner hunts for wood. I have never seen a guillotine but I have seen an engraving and it is an exact contraption. It works very smoothly. We are ingenious in our cruelties. There is no need for an executioner to face his victim or huff with strain as he wields the axe. No more botched killings, because the machine will always be precise. I suppose it is better than a hanging but it works too well for me. They say the lips still move and the eyes open wide in terror when they see the trunk from which they have been severed.

  I do not know whether they buried the King or poured quicklime over him so that it would be as if he never existed. Diner says that they would not want his bones to remain, for fear that royalists would make relics of them. In the news reports they write that people sprang forward to dip their handkerchieves in the blood of the King.

  I try not to think of Thomas. He is with Philo and Augustus, and he is perfectly safe.

  Sometimes dread rises in me when I am alone. I resolve that I will speak to Diner, and then he comes in. He lays his bundle of wood on the pile and says:

  ‘How is my Lizzie?’

  ‘I am well,’ I answer.

  ‘You are too pale,’ he says. ‘You must eat more.’

  ‘I am very well.’

  He lifts me into his arms and holds me tight. We rock from side to side, from side to side.

  ‘My Lizzie,’ he says. ‘My girl.’

  He kisses me all over my face, hot and quick. It is as if we have never touched each other before and that we must devour each other before we are devoured.

  He says, ‘We are at war, Lizzie. The French have declared war on us, and we shall not be slow to respond.’

  I am not surprised by this. Everyone has been talking of it so long that it is almost a relief. War has come and we are ruined. Our world has not yet crumbled but it shivers on its foundations like a child’s tower of bricks which cannot help but fall.

  ‘No one will build now,’ he says. ‘No one will buy.’

  That night, when we are asleep, there comes a banging and roaring outside. I do not hear it clearly at first. It weaves itself into my dream and I live through hours and days and years before I wake. The noise continues. It is not part of my dream, but real. Diner leaps out of bed and goes to the window.

  ‘Stay there, Lizzie,’ he says, but I do not. I go to the side of the window where I can see without being seen. Diner is at the other side. Our bodies gleam white although the moon is half hidden by a curd of cloud. The men are there below us, carrying torches. The flames go straight up because there is not a breath of wind. The men are muffled in rough clothes with caps drawn down over their faces. Two of them stand back, on the lookout, while the others thunder on our door. They shout for Diner; they call out vile names and kick the wood.

  I look at Diner and see that he is smiling; or, at least, his lips are drawn back so that his teeth gleam.

  ‘Will they burn us out?’ I whisper.

  ‘Stay still, Lizzie. They will go away.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Men who have worked for me. They want their money.’

  ‘Will they break down the door?’

  He shakes his head, judging, listening as they batter on the heavy panels. ‘They will go away,’ he says.

  The torch plumes move. There is a crash and splinter of breaking glass. They have smashed the glass above the door. I start back, but Diner says, ‘The shutters are barred. They will not come in, Lizzie. If they meant to do that they would have brought the mob with them.’

  I cannot see the men clearly for they are hidden by their caps and those who are at the door are under the porch. I stand stock still while the cold sheathes me until I begin to shudder with it.

  All at once they are gone. We see them tramp away along the high pavement, bearing their torches. Their shadows lengthen on the flattened snow. Five men. Only five men, although it sounded like many more.

  ‘Will they come again?’

  ‘I think that they will, but not tonight.’

  It takes us a long time to grow warm. We huddle together but no heat catches from his body into mine. I am hungry and I want the chamber pot but I am too cold to get out of bed. We shiver. Diner begins to stroke back my hair.

  ‘I am sorry that you were frightened, Lizzie.’

  ‘I was afraid that they would break down the door and burst in on us.’

  ‘Next time, they may. It is no use for us to hide in this house, Lizzie. They built it. They know every cranny of it.’ He speaks almost triumphantly as if this is something he has always foreseen. ‘They see by the smoke rising from our chimney that we are still here, and it enrages them because we are living in comfort while they have nothing. Or so they believe.’

  ‘Could we live without a fire?’

  ‘You know we could not. We must go from here, Lizzie.’

  ‘Hush,’ I say, and I put my hands around his face and press his lips to mine. At last the heat comes. We are no longer cold and separate: we are one creature and we move together. It does not matter what happens now. There is no world: it has fallen away from us.

  I wake again. It is dark of course; it is always dark, hour after hour. I think it must be the heart of the night now. I have been dreaming of Lucie. In my dream her back was turned to me. She was walking away, lifting the hem of her silk dress so that it would not be soiled. She walked quickly, lightly, and with purpose. In my dream I knew her destination and my body clenched with terror. I tried to call out to her: ‘Don’t go that way!’ but my voice rasped and squeaked in my throat and no words emerged. She turned back as if she heard me but she looked through me, smiling at nothing. A breeze blew and the folds of her dress stirred, then rippled until she caught them down with her hands. My mouth opened and I said to her: ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To see my husband, of course,’ she replied, and as she spoke those words a chill of terror rippled over my skin like the wind lifting her skirts.

  I am not dreaming now. I lie awake and think of Lucie and what took her from the house she shared with Diner to the grave not far from Mammie’s. Diner did not want me to know that she was buried there. He lied to me.

  I feel as if I am pushing back a weight, like a weight of earth that threatens to topple over me. I raise myself on my elbows and peer through the gloom at the hump of Diner’s body, curled away from me. He sleeps on, breathing steadily and easily. He seems untroubled. We shall have to leave this house
, and I shall have to go with him. I wonder where we shall go.

  ‘Diner,’ I say, but he does not stir. I am not speaking loudly enough. If I were braver I would lean over him and cry out his name. Or her name – it does not matter.

  I sleep again. I dream again of Lucie. She has her back to me and she is walking away. She picks up her skirts and hurries, as if she is eager to get to a place I cannot see. In a moment she will be out of sight. Dread thickens in my throat and I try to call out but my voice will not come. I know that I must warn her but I cannot name her danger. She is wearing the silk dress and it ripples about her as she walks faster. Suddenly she turns and looks back, not at me but through me. She smiles and waves a greeting, her face warm with delight. Whoever she can see, the sight makes her glad.

  ‘Lucie,’ I say. The word drops from me like a stone in the freezing air and suddenly she knows that I am there. Her face does not change from its look of welcome but now she raises her left hand and beckons me on. She is not wearing gloves. I see the ring on her marriage finger and I know it. It is the same ring that I am wearing now. I understand that I must go to her but I cannot move, not even to turn around and discover who it is that she sees behind me.

  Lucie isn’t afraid. Her face glows like a summer day as she beckons me again. I must go with her, and then all will be well. I look down and see that my warm cloak has gone although I was dressed for winter. I am wearing silk, like Lucie. I run my bare hand over the folds of my dress and my ring catches the light. But already she is turning away. She is going and unless I follow quickly I will lose her forever, but I cannot move. I cannot go forward although my back prickles with terror, as if some beast that lies behind me has begun to pad forward on its sheathed claws.

  I wake with a jolt, panting. I don’t know where I have been, but something has flung me down on the bed, discarded.