A Song Twice Over (14 page)

At least this dog was hideous as well as savage. And it was as she glared at it again that she heard the blonde woman, Mrs Moon, begin to speak to the captain in rapid French, not troubling to lower her voice since her husband was lying with his head on the table, very evidently asleep, and it did not occur to her that anyone else, in the bar-parlour of a provincial tavern, might have the gift of tongues.

‘Christie.' And her voice was throaty, husky, an actress's voice intending to fascinate. ‘Shall we go away again?'

‘Marie, we have just come back,' he said and although Cara could still not see him, the first words she heard him speak were in perfect, easy French, her mother's tongue.

‘I shall never forget it. Is it really over? It can't be?' Marie Moon was the wife of a rich man. She was a beautiful woman. Accustomed, in either of these guises, to getting her way.

‘Every road has its end, Marie.' He sounded tired, thought Cara, of exploring this one.

‘But you don't
want
it to be over.' It was not a question. And swiftly Mrs Moon began to outline the ways and means by which they could continue to commit adultery.

‘Why not?' he said.

‘Darling – don't you remember – Martinique?' And, her rich voice rising to the occasion, she began to remind him.

‘I remember.' Cara supposed it could not have been more than a few weeks ago.

‘And does it excite you?'

‘It does. Please go on.'

She obeyed him, laughing. He prompted her. ‘Marie, my love, don't stop. Don't, above all, be shy.'

She was very far from that, her wonderful voice regaling Cara's embarrassed but exceedingly interested ears with tales of passion a thousand years beyond either her experience or her imaginings. Not that she was much given to
imagining
the sins of the flesh, being far more concerned with putting a stop to those that were forever being thrust upon her attention. But, just the same, what an actress the woman was. What a charmer. And what a
tart
. Yet, although she supposed that these were whores' tricks that Mrs Moon was describing they had a refinement and sophistication which seemed to have little to do with the blowsy, red-headed madam in St Jude's Passage.

Cara had never considered the sexual act to be a fit subject for conversation, much less believed that it could be presented in this witty, downright informative fashion. Shocking, of course. But goodness – how entertaining. Good Lord, did people really go to such lengths just to …? Evidently they did. What a – yes, what a
lark
. Not that she had the least inclination to follow suit. Lord no. Like so many other things this was for the rich who had the leisure to get bored and the energy to invent fresh enjoyments. Rich women, in particular, for whom pleasures of this exotic variety did not inevitably end, it seemed, in the choice between pregnancy and a half-guinea abortion. Provided, of course, that one could find the half-guinea.

Marie Moon paused, more for effect than breath it seemed to Cara and then, as a throbbing finale, made her grand declaration in a voice that would have filled an auditorium.

‘Christie, you know I adore you.'

‘I know it amuses you to think so.' He sounded almost disappointed.

‘You may believe me.
Do
believe me.'

‘My dear –' and once again his voice held that provocative note of disappointment. ‘Is that wise?'

She laughed. ‘I hope not. How dull if it were.' But, for all her laughter, he had not given her the answer she had expected, had not spoken of flinging caution to the winds, of risking
all
, although of course she would not have cared to go quite so far as that.

‘Yes. As you say. How dull.'

He emerged suddenly from the shadows as if something had propelled him, pushed the empty brandy bottle aside and called out to Cara ‘You there – bring me another one of these.'

‘Certainly, sir.'

And so engrossed had she been in their conversation that she was half way across the room before she realized that he had spoken to her, and she had answered, in French.

Had he engineered the situation deliberately to embarrass Mrs Moon, using Cara as his tool? Very likely. For it never once crossed her mind that his use of French to her had been accidental. Guessing who she was and knowing the nationality of her mother – seeing, no doubt, how avidly she had been eavesdropping – he had encouraged the other woman to talk and then snared them both in a cynical, dangerous trap. Dangerous to Cara. For he had made a fool of Mrs Moon and, by her outraged expression, had made for Cara the very thing she took pains never to make for herself. An enemy.

‘
Why
, Christie?' the lovely woman said, hurt and angry and full of the bewilderment of a true beauty whom no man had ever before treated less than carefully. ‘You knew this girl could understand, didn't you?'

‘I thought it likely.'

‘And did that amuse you. Do
I
amuse you?'

He clicked his tongue, as if gently chiding her. ‘Alas – no.'

She shook her pale blonde head, still not quite believing it, opening her slightly painted mouth to speak some immortal lines of depth and passion which would throb in his mind forever and, in her shock, producing nothing but the merest commonplace.

‘Christie – I have given you everything.'

‘Thank you
so
much, Marie.'

She got to her feet looking tragic and beautiful and horribly wronged. An actress, after all, of some distinction, Cara remembered they had been saying in the other bar.

‘I could kill you, Christie.'

That seemed to please him better.

‘Yes. So you could.'

Speculatively, almost lazily, his eyes went to the empty brandy bottle on the table between them and then to the woman's white, frantic hands which could so easily have picked it up and smashed it across his head.

‘Yes, Marie. You
could
kill me – or try to …?' Was it a challenge? Had he instructed her – or taunted her – by his glance at the bottle as to how it could be done? If she had the speed, the strength, the resolution? If she really wished to do him harm? Would he even – until perhaps the final instant – bother to defend himself?

‘Well, Marie?'

For a moment she stood motionless, ghastly, her own eyes fixed on the bottle and held there, staring with horror and fascination at the violence he seemed to be inviting and to which almost –
almost
. And then, blinking fiercely, she released her breath in a long, hollow sigh.

‘This is a vile place,' she said. ‘I shall leave it.' Through a haze of brandy and indolence her husband woke for an instant, smiled, and nodded his head.

Captain Goldsborough did not even turn to see her go. He looked, instead, at Cara. She looked at him. He was squarely, strongly built, and as swarthy as a Spaniard. In his early thirties, Cara supposed, black hair growing low in the nape of a powerful neck, his eyes like pitch. Not handsome with the lean, arrow-straight beauty of Daniel Carey, which was the only beauty her heart could recognize. Heavier than Daniel in bulk and in feature. Coarser, she thought. But a man who made the hairs on her arms and her neck rise, her skin tighten like a cat's with the knowledge that
here
she must be very wary.

She put the new bottle on the table, her stomach knotted and uneasy, her skirts – and her ankles – too close to that damnable, hideous dog. Yet her instinct told her that if they sensed her fear, both man and dog alike would use it, enjoy it, play with it. And smiling, playing the barmaid – for what else was she? what else could she do? – she tried hard to grow angry, believing temper, although it might get her into trouble, to be at least more dignified than panic.

‘So you're Ned O'Mara's new fancy, are you?' His voice, speaking English, had the lazy drawl of a drawing-room gentleman.

‘No, sir. Not that I've noticed.'

‘You have a look of your father, Cara Adeane.'

‘Thank you, sir.'

‘Have I paid you a compliment?' The tilt of his heavy eyebrow indicated that, in her place, he would not be too sure of it.

‘I take it so.'

‘Then you're fond of your father?'

No longer. But she did not choose to tell him so.

‘That I am.'

‘Good. And is there not a little matter to be discussed, concerning him?'

‘Whenever you like, sir.'

‘Precisely.'

She had been dismissed, yet something in the movement of her skirts, or in her tight-clenched apprehension, disturbed the dog, bringing it upright and snarling on short, bandy legs, still attached by his chain to the captain's chair-leg, but blocking her way.

‘My champion doesn't seem to like you, Miss Adeane.'

‘No.'

‘Perhaps you don't care for him either?'

And as the man and the dog fused together in her mind, both equally detestable and ugly and vicious, she shook her head.

‘I can't afford to get bitten, Captain Goldsborough, I have my work to do.'

‘Then do it, Miss Adeane.'

He was watching her, she suddenly realized, as speculatively as he had watched Mrs Moon a moment ago, his eyes
interested
– no more – as she had contemplated the act of violence he had himself suggested, and then scornful when – predictably, it seemed – she had decided against it. And now, recognizing Cara's fear of the animal, he had manoeuvred her into a corner from which she must either beg him to release her: or not.

‘Certainly, sir,' she said and, closing her eyes, walked blindly straight ahead, feeling the dog's warm, snuffling breath through her skirts, the skin of her back stone cold and cringing long after she had passed out of range of the fangs.

Very well. He had had his amusement. Would he leave her alone now? For tonight at least, she hoped so.

They took torches and lanterns out to the back yard at midnight, the sporting elite of Frizingley with money in their pockets or stuck into the band around their hats, navvies from the railway encampment on the moor above Frizingley Green swaggering in their corduroys and gaudy spotted neckcloths among foundry workers and loom tuners and colliery lads, a few sporting gentlemen and gentlemen ‘travelling'in the textile trade, and a sprinkling of masters'sons, a fifteen-year-old Braithwaite whose mother believed him to be spending the night with a friend from the Grammar School; the slightly older black sheep of the Methodistical Colcloughs of the foundry who did not allow strong drink of any kind to pass their lips; a young Mr Lord of the brewery whose father could not object to drink but would have been seriously displeased, nevertheless, to see him squandering hard-earned guineas – earned by someone else, that is – on the ability of Captain Goldsborough's black and white dog to maul and mangle the brown bull dog from the Rose and Crown.

There were few women present. Just the red-haired madam from St Jude's Passage who seemed well acquainted with the landlords of both taverns; a thin, excited young girl pressing herself against Master Braithwaite of the Grammar School, prepared to relieve him of his virginity if it could not be avoided, certainly of his wallet; a frantic woman, her head concealed in a blanket shawl, looking for her husband before he gambled
all
his wages; and Cara.

‘He says you're to stay,' Ned O'Mara told her. ‘He has a word to say to you after. If he wins you'll be all right.'

‘Will he win?'

‘Likely so. A good dog he's got. Not that he cares. I reckon he only does it to watch the lads losin'money. To see how they take it – or not …'

And so she stood by the window in the bar parlour looking carefully at nothing as the human seconds led their gladiators past her and out into the tumultuous, torch-lit yard to be cheered and jeered and wagered upon as Ned himself had been in his prize-fighting days; the ugly bandy-legged black and white bull dog and the brown, smooth-haired killer from the Rose and Crown. Damned dogs, she thought. Mad dogs, deliberately maddened by these stupid men so they could throw their money away and call it sport.

Had they no homes to go to? No children? She knew, all too well, that most of them had.

‘Have you seen a man in a brown checked cap and a red shirt?' The frantic housewife had rushed up to her, almost wringing her hands in anguish. But the yard was full of checked caps and gaudy, Sunday-best shirts, full of pay-packets that were needed – every bit as much as this one – to buy shoes for undernourished children and pay the rent. To get this poor woman's boots out of the pawnshop, very likely, since her feet were in clogs, the hem of her skirt badly worn.

Cara shook her head, closing her eyes again. But she could not close her ears to the hoarse yelling, the guffaws of mindless laughter, and then the avid hush, the greedy silence of the Roman arena as the snarling started. Not much at first, no more than one could hear at any street corner any day of the week until the seconds went to work, whipping it up to mutilation and murder, setting the crowd howling and swaying, one voice, one movement, one pair of savage eyes looking for blood and money, one pair of nostrils savouring it. One single, unsound thrill reaching its crescendo –
Get him, boy. Kill him. Hang on there, lad. Mangle him
. – and then dying down like the sighing tail-end of a high wind leaving a mutter of sick excitement as the seconds went in to prise loose, if they could, the winner's teeth from his opponent's throat.

Damned dogs. The woman in the shawl went away, downcast and probably weeping, her husband's wages gone now, one way or another, beyond her recall, leaving Cara alone in the bar-parlour as the crowd dispersed, the winners to celebrate, the losers to console themselves with an extra drink, on credit if the landlord should be so kind, or – if not – to start a fight. And there would be cards, of course, now. And dominoes.

No one came into this smaller, quieter bar now that the Moons and the rest of the carriage trade had gone. Could it be that Captain Goldsborough – winner or loser she had no notion – had forgotten her? Ought she quite simply to take the custard tarts and the pieces of chicken she had managed to conceal behind the bar, wrapped up in Sairellen Thackray's clean calico handkerchief, and make her way home before these men spilled out into the streets and became troublesome? A whole grimy rabbit-warren of alleyways lay between the Fleece and the comparative safety of her door, and if any of these brawny men took it into their heads to come after her, then her only hope would be in speed.