A Song Twice Over (24 page)

She continued to lean against the gravestone, sick and shaking, her teeth chattering, her stomach as knotted and tormented as it had been in childbirth. It did not occur to her to ask the police for assistance. There were two constables now in Frizingley, she'd heard, since Sir Robert Peel had created his ‘peelers'or his ‘bobbies' as everybody was calling them, just a few years ago. But nobody liked them. Nobody had wanted to be regularly policed as people were abroad, preferring to leave it to the magistrates to swear in special constables as they'd always done in times of civil disturbance, or use the troops. Cara had seen neither member of Frizingley's force herself; nor was she in the least surprised that two men armed only with truncheons should shirk from attempting to enforce their will upon St Jude's. Exactly what duties they
did
perform she was uncertain but in matters of law and order it was Christie Goldsborough, and only Christie Goldsborough, who sat in judgement here.

There was no doubt at all about that.

And even then it took a few more strangled moments before she could force her numbed brain to function with anything more coherent than a scream of anguish. But something was becoming clear to her,
something
was emerging. And, clenching her teeth and her jaw, digging strong, pointed nails into the soft undersides of her arms, she slowly gathered herself, through pain and concentration, into some semblance of order. Stolen goods required a rapid disposal. To be taken, in fact, for the perusal of certain pawnbrokers in St Jude's Street, or to the back door of either the Beehive or the Dog and Gun. And Christie Goldsborough, who owned those pawnshops and those taverns could find out if he so wished just where her satin had gone.

He could recover it.

She jumped to her feet, her brain no longer numb and resigned to her destruction but awash, all over again, with hope and a new blaze of panic. She could be saved. Therefore she was no longer willing to be destroyed. She
would
not be destroyed. Christie Goldsborough could save her. She could think of no reason why he should take the trouble nor of anything he seemed to want from her with which to persuade him. Yet, if he would, he could. With his assistance she could return to that blessed, wondrous world of – when had it been? – an hour ago, before disaster had fallen upon her, when she had been blissfully on her way to pin Miss Dallam into the dress that would make both their reputations in Frizingley for elegance. That earthly paradise, only sixty minutes gone, when Liam had still had the chance of growing up to be a man, Odette of growing old. Before the prison doors had opened, or she had been stuffed into the hold of that ghastly convict ship, to spend her life scrubbing and cleaning and whoring for rough and dangerous men.

Captain Goldsborough –
please
.

Blindly she moved forward, panic crashing now through every barrier she had managed, through her twenty precarious years, to erect against it, flooding her whole mind, sweeping away her sense of reason and reality, so that she could already feel the coarse fustian of prison clothing and workhouse clothing against her body as she ran, could feel her skin crawl from every one of prison's basic indignities, her stomach heave with revulsion. And terror. No – she didn't want to be locked away to die, yet as she rushed across the square she escaped death by inches from a dog-cart without noticing it, the magnet that was Christie Goldsborough drawing her in a straight line, through brick walls if need be, to get at him.

And what to say to him when she did? She had not the faintest notion. Yet, when she found him, more or less alone in the bar parlour although she was aware of Ned O'Mara somewhere nearby, she couldn't stop talking, words rushing out of her, spilling one over the other, over and over ‘Please, please, oh please, you can help me if you want to, I know you can, and I'll go mad you see if they take my little boy away, because he's not – not just as he should be – more delicate than he should be. He cries in his sleep – God dammit – for my mother and if they take her away too then he'll just turn his face to the wall and fade away. And if I'm on a prison ship at the other end of the world – because that's where they send women, isn't it? I mean young women, strong enough to breed like the cows every spring time and dig the fields in between – isn't that what they want in Australia, for all those men? And I can't – I can't – for a length of brown satin I didn't even steal. I can't. I won't.
Do
something …'

She knew she was hysterical yet could do nothing to calm herself, could hear her own voice rising higher and higher, going on and on, and could do nothing to make it stop. She knew that Christie Goldsborough was looking at her strangely and that other people, somewhere in the room – pushing into the doorway to see what was going on – were looking at her too. What of it? She had always lived in a crowd, other people's dramas and her own played out through a thin wall for the benefit of anyone who chose to listen. What could that matter now?

Her voice went on.

It seemed that he was about to slap her and she leaned forward to take it, accepting it as the thing one did for hysteria. That or a jug of cold water full in the face. Either. She didn't care. He took her by the shoulders and kissed her instead, a real kiss with his tongue and his teeth and a strong aftertaste of brandy.

That
silenced her. Instantly.

‘Oh Christ –' she said, limp suddenly, as if that one contact had drained her of her vital energy, preparing her, weakening her, for what was to come.

‘Oh Christ …'

‘You want Christ to help you now, do you?'

‘No,' she whispered. ‘You.' And although other people were certainly present they seemed to have faded to some other level of reality, very far removed from herself and this bulky, swarthy man who was letting her know, without a word, not only that he
had
her, but that should he now refuse to open the trap and let her in she would plead with him to do so. On her knees, if he required it.

‘You flatter me, Miss Adeane.'

‘You can get it back, can't you? The satin?'

‘I do believe I might.'

‘Oh – please say you can.'

‘I have said so. Nothing goes on in St Jude's that I don't know about – should I choose to enquire.'

‘And will you?'

‘Will
you
, Miss Adeane?'

He kissed her again, several pairs of eyes watching differently as he received her submission. Ned O'Mara frozen behind the bar. The other two barmaids, all agog, who would talk about nothing else for the rest of the day.

‘I didn't know you wanted me,' she said with total sincerity. Perhaps she would have come sooner if she had. For, no matter how distasteful this was, one did not die of it.

He smiled, that flash of large, white teeth against his dark, slightly oily skin she had always disliked and which now, quite suddenly, turned her stomach queasy.

‘Ah well, I won't pretend to be precisely on fire for you, my dear, like poor Ned over there and one or two others. But they can't have you, can they? Whereas I – for a length of brown satin – do believe I can. Tell me …?'

Yes. For a length of brown satin, for her life, and Odette's, and Liam's, he could.

She bowed her head.

He nodded.

‘Very well. Then go upstairs, while I set the necessary wheels in motion, and wait for me.'

She went, moving like a sleepwalker past Ned O'Mara, who might even be in love with her, past the ginger-haired barmaid who would have been happy to settle for Ned and therefore hated her, past the mousy-haired barmaid who had a good man of her own and could therefore afford to pity her. She mounted the stairs, entered the captain's sitting-room with its Turkey carpets and leather chairs, sat down, hands folded, mind folded, heart scarcely beating, by the fire to wait for him. And when he came she went, in passive silence, to his bedroom, took off her clothes at his direction, lay down on his bed, her arms above her head, her body outstretched and unresisting, and closed her eyes.

It was of vital importance that she should not
think
of him. This was an ordeal which, like all others, would eventually end and although she had made up her mind to suffer it, nothing obliged her to accord it so much as one shred of thought; or memory. Whores did this, after all, a dozen times a day and would not recognize the man should they meet him in the street an hour later. For as long as this lasted she was a whore. But the shame was
his
, not hers. And nothing he did could force her to look at him. Even if he now commanded her, as he was undressing, to open her eyes she would not
see
his powerful, barrel-chested body as it came at her. Feel it, yes. Endure it. But that was all. And when he had done with her, she could wipe him from her mind, obliterate him. In her own private fashion, destroy him.

‘Miss Adeane,' he murmured, somewhere above her, ‘if this pose of the sacrificial victim is intended to impress me, I ought to warn you that it does not.'

He was laughing at her, of course, as he laughed at everybody. She had expected that. But what else? What more did he want from her? She put an arm across her eyes and opened them beneath it, seeing him in such a way that he could never be certain whether she had looked or not, naked and hairy and black as she might have imagined, thick-set and arrogant and very ready – that much at least was certain – to take her without any further preamble.

Let him take her then, and have done.

He took her, or began to, in the direct, unsentimental manner in which she had always understood men took their whores, hurting her slightly not from any particular roughness on his part but because her body had turned dry with protest, resisting him as her supple mind did not.

He grunted something she did not catch. Why should she even listen? She could not avoid his penetration. She had agreed to that and named her fee. But what more could he reasonably expect of her? Did a bitch do more than submit when she was mounted by a strange dog in the street, held down by his teeth in the loose flesh of her neck to keep her still and ensure his better satisfaction? What else was this? She closed her eyes again, wondering how long, and then opened them wide, staring in disbelief as he withdrew from her, his act far from complete, got up and with the purest gesture of impatience she had ever seen, threw an Oriental robe of some kind in garish, tribal colours, around his shoulders.

She sat up, puzzled. She had had only one lover so far, a very young man who had taught her little more than caution. And she was uncertain now whether she was getting off lightly, or had been rejected.

‘Dear Miss Adeane,' and once again she saw that unpleasant gleam of white teeth against his dark face. ‘
Most
kind of you. But I think I shall decline. Vices I have, but commerce with marble statues – or unfrocked nuns perhaps – is not among them.'

She stared at him again, not moving, not really knowing what to do. He told her.

‘Miss Adeane, you have my leave to go.'

He had dismissed her, then. That much was clear. Very well. Very good, in fact. Wonderful. Unless …?

‘My satin?' she said.

And now she was staring to the full capacity of her vision and her mind, reading him, sensing him, willing him – for God's sake, for
God's
sake – not to make further sport of her now. Of her, perhaps, and Ned O'Mara both together. He had sent her, with Ned and the barmaids and Heaven knew how many others watching, to wait for him in his bed. So far as they were all concerned he had had his way with her. Indeed, so he had, for she had stripped meekly for his observation and had allowed him to do everything else he had wanted. And how were they to know that he had not wanted very much? Or was that to be his real pleasure? Did he mean to let Ned know that he had not found her up to scratch and then, after so much humiliation, deliver her over to the Dallams?

Something seemed to open or to expand in her brain, releasing a cold voice which she had never heard there before, telling her that if he cheated her she might just as well kill him. Why not? And then she could go off to Australia with a real crime on her conscience.

Not that it would trouble her overmuch with guilt.

‘My satin?'

And she was already looking around the room for the gun or the knife that he would surely have about him somewhere.

‘Satin?' he yawned, showing her those wolf's teeth again. ‘I think not. You haven't kept your part of the bargain, have you? Why should I?'

Whatever it was that had expanded in her head snapped now, very distinctly, convincing her that no gun would do Not even the more intimate destruction of a knife. And so she threw herself at him, leaping for his throat, a tall, strong, totally desperate girl with nothing whatsoever to lose, who would have been hard for any man to handle, even a man as powerful and totally unchivalrous as Christie Goldsborough, had he not been ready for her. And had he not been perfectly willing, of course, to hit a woman every bit as hard as he would have struck a man.

And even then she managed to land one blow on the side of his head, to get her teeth, albeit briefly and not very deep, into his shoulder, to kick him a time or two although her bare feet fell short, each time, of a vital spot.

‘That is rather better,' he told her.

‘I'll kill you!' she shrieked back at him.

‘I doubt it.'

She tried, not caring how much pain it cost her.

‘I hate you!' She meant it, a fierce spike of hatred which seemed to impale her. She said it again, spitting a cat's venom, a snake's venom at him, menacing him with claws and teeth and a most glorious savagery, her eyes out of focus perhaps but glittering like jewels, her supple, slender, long-legged body having lost all consciousness of its nakedness, her firm, high, amber-skinned breasts rising in their fury; doubly enticing.