by Sara Collins
Then came an icy gush of terror, so swift I felt I was fainting. It was then that I came awake.
This time, Madame was in the chair. Wearing a shawl over her nightgown. The fire was dying out, but still golden on her face, her loosened hair. Everything they say beauty is supposed to be, she was. She looked up. ‘Did I wake you?’
I pushed onto my elbows. Oh, if she knew what I was thinking. What if I was a gentleman, who’d met you at Almack’s? Bent over your gloved hand? Pressed my lips to your knuckles? What then?
I saw myself giving a tongue flick to soft kid.
Her pulse a hummingbird at her throat.
No one else watching.
I saw us fencing in a dimly lit room.
I sat up. ‘Should I get fresh coals for your pan?’
‘Oh . . . no . . . I never can sleep at this time of day. It is a funny limbo hour, non? Neither morning nor night. This is how lonely death must be.’
The candle guttered out and I lit a spill from the fire, reached up to light it again. ‘Are you sure I shouldn’t fill the pan?’
She crooked her fingers into her hair, then pushed to her feet. ‘What I need is a drop more.’
‘What’s it like?’ I asked her, pulling knees to chest.
She paused with her hand on the cabinet. ‘What? Laudanum? Have you never . . . ? Well.’ She tilted her head. ‘I suppose most people think it must be dark and wicked. Pure pleasure. But it is more . . . the absence of pain.’ She turned her eyes towards me again. ‘Life makes each of us a kettle, boiling up and up and up. Imagine a gentle hand comes along and moves you off the flame. That is opium. It is . . . a gentle rowboat on black water. Sweet dreams.’
She laughed, embarrassed. ‘Still. One must be careful not to become like the ones who carry their vials at the theatre and in all the withdrawing rooms. After a time, the drug itself causes agonies nothing can relieve, not even the drug . . .’ She tipped the bottle back and swallowed. Turned, her eyes all glitter. ‘I have been thinking, you know, about the education you received. How fortunate you were. Not just a black, but a woman! You were given a chance many free women will never have.’
‘I don’t know if it was luck,’ I said. ‘Langton said he’d only trained me as one would a parrot.’
I heard his voice: You disgust me.
‘Oh. Odious man,’ she said, and shivered. She set the bottle back in the cabinet, stretched her arms. I heard the crack of bones. ‘Truly. You are so much better here. With me.’
She nodded, as if something had been decided. I pushed to my feet, needing to turn away. Decided I’d fill the warming pan with the last of the coals. I went to the fire and poked some up, held the pan with one of her towels and crossed to the bed. Her eyes followed me. I knelt to tuck it under the coverlet, and then she came beside me, kneeling also.
She leaned close. ‘We are like two playmates in the nursery saying our bedtime prayers together. And now that you are here, I will “lie down and sleep in peace”. ’
The end of her sleeve whispered against my wrist. She lifted my hand, turned it over. Peered at the lines in my palm. Words rattled to a stop inside my head. It was more terrifying than my dream, and my wrist started to quake, so I pulled my hand away, pretended to tuck the pan deeper under, kept it pinned beneath the coverlet.
My breath clutched at my chest and I didn’t dare look up. The drapes were open, navy walls lit by the moon. Many minutes passed in silence. She leaned forward, seemed to catch herself, then came forward again. She turned my face and pressed her lips to mine. So soft. I could hardly feel it. I pressed closer. The longing of iron for a lodestone. I felt a prickle in my hand, like needles in flesh. I lifted it, reached for her face –
She moved away. Put back the bed-covers. ‘I – I can manage a little sleep now,’ she said.
She turned, as if to hide herself from me, though I wanted to see every inch of her. She blew out the candle, and the room shivered and then all I could see was black.
I hardly slept. I wanted to wake her, ask her why, press myself along the length of her in the bed. At daybreak, I tidied my pallet and stood for a long time watching the street. Charles came out through the front door, and cut through the mews, off to fetch milk from Piccadilly, no doubt. Shoes loud as hand-claps. Birds fidgeting with song. I went over to the writing table and sat with my hands pressed together, my face warm as a fresh heart. Remembering how she’d caught herself, and wavered like a flame in a draught. How, as if I was something bitter, she had spat me back.
Knowing that a watched face won’t long stay sleeping, I drew in a breath, opened the door, slipped out.
I confess that I doubted it. It seemed the whole night had been a dream, from the Surgeon to the kiss. I would doubt it still, if not for what happened next.
Chapter Twenty-One
Longreach was the house of Sir Percy, Benham’s brother. Sugar-bought, like everything they own. Madame and Benham were invited there to a party. She wanted to bring her own dresser, she said, since Benham was taking Casterwick. Now she’d no longer have to put up with the long-toothed girl Lady Catherine insisted on giving her, with the cold fingers.
We drove out to Wiltshire in a hired carriage, leaving at dawn and stopping twice to change horses. After a day’s travel, Longreach loomed ahead, spread across the landscape. Sprawling and broad-shouldered. A snaking line of elms led to the front door, and inside was all velvet and polished wood and brass. Their rooms looked out onto the lawn. Soft towels had been set out on the washstand, and little pink soaps carved into roses. As soon as we arrived, I unpacked the trunk and her portmanteau, and then she had to be dressed for the fireworks dinner. We were late, and had to rush, and afterwards – wanting to be anywhere but the long corridor where the visiting maids were being kept – I slipped outside and wandered down to the garden, gravel crunching beneath my feet. I kept myself to the side of the path. Hundreds of tiny lanterns swung from the trees. The sky was heavy and purple, and a smell in the air reminded me of the mint Phibbah grew at Paradise. Glasses and laughter tinkled out from the ballroom, where the doors had been left open.
Sir Percy’s guests drifted out, and I hid myself behind a stand of trees. Flashes of silk, among the black suits, like oil on water. Ladies in their dresses, gentlemen in their tails. Here were the people the world tells us to admire. I pictured their tinkling laughter choked off by the fear of being whipped, like dogs. Standing in the kind of heat that closes your throat, glancing up at a sun that might kill.
They could not do it, I thought, looking at them. Not even for an hour.
I was angry, yes. So would you have been; so would anyone. The real madness would have been if I had not been angry.
I looked and looked, but could not see her. Then footmen in bright livery came down the pavilion steps to hand out blankets and shawls and I turned away. The dark was split by one crack of light after another, until the whole sky was cleft by light, and the air filled with fireworks, battlefield noises that seemed they’d never end, ribbons of smoke, drifting like ladies in a park. I put my head down and walked quickly towards the lake, keeping myself hidden behind the stand of trees. Some distance away, I sat and curled my hands in the grass, took a slow breath. We are friends, then we are not. That is her world. I will never belong. It was what novels and romances had done to me. It was what she had done. The water lay ahead of me, wide and flat and black. I shut my eyes to it.
Footsteps behind me crunched like apples.
‘Here you are! I saw you slip away.’ She tramped over to me, dragging her skirts. She sat down, following my gaze out to the lake. The long path was lined with hedges. ‘In the morning we will see the primroses here,’ she said, ‘that we cannot see in the dark. There will soon be beds of lavender, by the boat-house, and later geraniums and peonies. You should see them. Well – you will see them! English spring is beautiful, you will see – the only thing that makes it worthwhile to live through the winter.’ She fell silent and I said nothing. ‘Sir Pe
rcy’s groundskeepers stock the lake with creels of fish to get ready for these parties, you know,’ she said. ‘Imagine. Pouring fish in just to hook them out! He might as well have them bring out the china service and line the dinner plates up on shore. When I first came to Longreach, I realized I had married into a family who could have anything they wanted. I was just one more thing poured out of a creel.’
She waited, again, for me to say something. I gave a jerk of my head, fumbling with my thoughts.
She lifted a hand to play with one of her diamond ear-bobs. ‘You are a woman of few words.’
I raised my eyes, braved the sight of her. ‘What did Mr Benham say?’
‘What?’
‘When you told him you were a fish.’
‘Oh,’ she said. She laughed. ‘I did not tell him that! I told him they might as well pour the fish from basket to plate and he said, “Now, Meg, where would be the sport in that?”’ She looked out across the water.
‘Won’t you be missed?’ I nodded towards the ballroom.
She leaned closer. ‘You are cross?’
‘I am nothing.’
‘Non. You are something, Frances.’ She reached down, plucked at a blade of grass. ‘But . . . you are not happy.’
I shrugged. ‘That’s a small word.’
I turned my palm over, dug my thumbnail into it, thinking. I looked up, and held her gaze, and did not look away. ‘What we did,’ I blurted. ‘We have not even spoken of it. As if it never happened.’
She blinked.
‘And it is sending me mad.’
Oh, I knew I should not have spoken to her in that way. She was my mistress. But I could just as soon stop my own breath as hold the words back. I felt as if my heart was packed tight as gunpowder. I’d had enough of silence, of endless wanting. Of knowing my place, and staying in it.
‘I –’ She twisted her fingers among the grass stems, plucking and plucking until she pulled one loose and lifted it to bite at it.
At last, she spoke. ‘What we did . . . It was wrong of me.’
Behind us, the murmur from the ballroom, like water over rocks. She pointed towards the lake. ‘Scoop a thimbleful of that lake under a microscope and you’d see a thousand beings in it. A world in a drop. All frantic, dizzied, colliding . . . dying . . .’
My head thumped, like something beaten against a rock. ‘So?’
‘So. There are some things that cannot be brought into the light, Frances.’
‘Then let it be done in the dark!’ I cried. ‘Only let it be done.’
She turned to face me again. ‘You are a surprise.’
‘I don’t want to be a surprise.’
She laughed. ‘You are so grave . . .’
‘You’ve done it before.’
She hesitated. ‘Yes.’
A picture of Hephzibah Elliot. Watching, always watching. But, perhaps, behind that, another picture also. The one of the boy whose mistake had been to become a man.
‘With one of those other quality ladies?’
She rested her hand on my arm. ‘You are a quality lady.’
A cry rang out, behind us, and made me jump in my skin.
‘Fox,’ she said. I let out a breath, and the soft cloth of her voice wrapped around me. Kerseymere. Jersey. Silk. ‘A thing like this . . . can be warm and dark, in the beginning, delicious . . .’
‘You make it sound like molasses.’
She laughed again. ‘Even more delicious.’
Then she pulled me to her, breast to breast, leaned us against the splayed tree trunk, made her thumb a lever on my lip. ‘Open.’ My mouth parted wide as the lake, and she kissed me on my lips. Her mouth bitter as almonds. Laudanum. I saw my buttons weave in and out of their hooks, I saw her fingers, working their way down the front of me, I felt air on my breast –
Then she bent her head and took my nipple in her mouth. I jerked like somebody wasp-stung. My back struck tree bark.
‘What?’ she said. A frown tugged her brow. She pulled back.
I shook my head. The world peeled back to black sky and black branches. Bare and lonely and cold. Stars like chipped ice. Through the open windows, across the grass, came pops of laughter, like the corks from their champagne. Then she caught me and held me fast and kissed me again, and all went quiet.
‘Well,’ she said. She gave a thin laugh and stepped back and brushed her hands on her skirts. We stared at each other. ‘Well . . . I . . .’ She looked towards the house.
‘Go,’ I whispered.
I went in a few minutes behind her. Past the silent trees, down to the long hallway behind the kitchen where the pallets for the visiting maids had been lined up, like dinner plates on a shelf, and I lay on mine, which had been rolled out beside that of a plump girl who smelt like cheese, and who asked me if I’d come down with any of the Londoners.
I felt Madame’s narrow hands hot around my waist, and all down the length of my shivering flesh I felt her mouth, though it had only touched me in two places. Lips and breast.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The old heaviness returned, as soon as London lay before me again. Smoky, soot-streaked, hot. The old unease. What would happen now? For two days, I’d been back to wondering, thinking the affection between us was a thing I had dreamed. I was her maid again. Nothing more. Benham was always at her side, or one of the other ladies. I’d brought her plates filled with fruit or pastries, which she took without saying a word. I’d fetched her shawl. Carried her picnic basket when she joined Hep Elliot beside the lake.
The horses strained as they pulled towards Levenhall. Benham blinked, turned towards her, took her hand in his. ‘You and Frances are quiet with each other, my dear. Have you had a contretemps?’
She glanced over at me. ‘Not at all. I am sure we are all simply tired.’
He called across the carriage, ‘Quite a treat for you, girl, wasn’t it?’
I looked at her. The feeling of my nipple in her mouth was like a thorn inside me.
‘It was, sir,’ I said. ‘Quite a treat.’
She gave a small shake of her head, like someone jolted out of sleep.
A cold, sour feeling pressed into me as I watched them, and then I was the one who had to turn away, when he lifted her hands and pressed his lips to her knuckles and called her his dear.
At Longreach, he’d been full of a play-actor’s cheer, his smile greasy and slick, his voice loud and self-satisfied. ‘Meg!’ he’d shout to her. ‘Somebody you must meet.’ And she’d go over to him, dutiful, every time, the smile hemmed tight between her cheeks. One afternoon, I’d overheard one of the ladies say: Open doors will improve any marriage; only truly happy marriages survive closed ones.
Now he held her hand over his lap and pressed each of her fingers, like piano keys. All the while his eyes sneaked towards me, and I thought he must surely know what had happened between us. The way he fluttered her fingers, like flags. Her face was pale. At finding herself so close to him? Or was it me? With her free hand, she plucked at her skirt. I stared and stared, wondering what she was thinking.
‘Do you know, Meg?’ He twitched their joined fingers across his lap. ‘Some of the westerly farms have been allowed to fall into such a state of disrepair . . . I had another word with Percy, told him it’s high time he undertook a programme of improvements. Told him the tenants will work much more productively for a benevolent master than a neglectful one.’
There can be no such thing as a benevolent master, I thought. I laced my hands together in my lap, and bit my tongue, thinking perhaps I’d tell him so when he next called me to the library.
She glanced up. ‘Is that right, Mr Benham? Well, that is a wonder.’
He gave her a tap on the wrist. ‘Not a wonder, my love.’ He shook his head, laughed. ‘You meant to say wonderful, of course . . . That’s wonderful.’
‘Yes.’ She drew her hand back into her own lap.
Mr Casterwick snored beside me, legs poking out like tent poles.
I watched, and waited. I wanted her to look up at me, but she kept her eyes down.
Benham called her up to his library as soon as we came through the doors, saying he wished to speak to her alone. I stood to watch them go, Charles hefting their bags ahead. Then I turned slowly and followed Mr Casterwick downstairs. Cold chicken and boiled potatoes had been left out for us and Mr Casterwick set his portmanteau under the table. Pru asked him about the party and I heard him telling her about the new periwinkle livery Lady Catherine had got from Harper’s in March, and the fireworks, and the rows of ham hocks in the basement where the visiting valets had slept, how the smell had given him dreams of being smothered by dirty stockings. Linux busied herself clearing away the tea things, and asked him if he’d noticed whether the Longreach housekeeper used dried fruit in her stuffing. But she watched me all the while.
Mr Casterwick had been given a slice of lemon cake, by the Longreach cook, to give to her, and when he got up to fish for it in his bag, she turned to me, lips small as pin-tuck seams. ‘Homer is missing.’
I frowned. ‘Who?’
‘The cat. The cat. The cat is missing.’
A laugh cracked out of me. It went on and on. I couldn’t stop it.
The scrape of my chair made Pru whip up her head.
‘Are you accusing me of something to do with the cat, Mrs Linux?’ I said. She pinched her lips tighter. ‘You think I took him? I have been miles and miles away!’
‘How would I know the machinery of heathen business? What I do know is that when you sup with the Devil, you’re best to bring a long spoon.’
I stepped back. ‘I haven’t taken the cat, Mrs Linux. I haven’t eaten him. Nor do I have his bones. If you believe I have, you must take that up with Mr Benham.’
She tipped her head. The buttons of her grey dress stared at me, like hard little eyes. ‘Going, are you?’ she said. ‘Upstairs? Yes. Flee. Fly! Flee to her!’ Her voice followed me, louder and louder. ‘There’s no salvation for you up there! No good thinking there will be.’
Shadows fell across the walls and the bedclothes. It was getting dark, too warm for fires. Books stood sentry in the dim light. On the shelves around the room, on the mantel, on the floor. A line of them, leading to her. I stood clumsy at the door, closed it, and kept my hand behind me on the latch. She was at her desk, and rose when I came in. All was quiet. How long did we stand thus? Long enough to see she was herself again. I watched the little dip in her throat when she swallowed. She laughed. ‘I thought surely you would be frightened of me, after . . .’
