Another Heartbeat in the House (42 page)

THE MISSES THACKERAY
had painted pictures to welcome me to the house in Kensington. Annie's showed me in fine clothes standing on the prow of a ship with a misshapen green dwarf by my side.

I hazarded a guess. ‘Oh! How lovely! Is that a leprechaun I am bringing from Ireland?'

‘No. It is Clara Venus,' said Annie, with hauteur. ‘She is green because she is seasick.'

Minnie's picture showed me with a horse because, she said, she had just learned to draw horses (it wasn't at all a bad attempt, even though the animal's knees bent in the wrong direction).

After tea, William told the girls to take Clara into the garden, then set off with me on a tour of the house, talking the entire time.

‘I have given up scribbling for the
Chronicle
to concentrate on my novel,' he said, lumbering up the stairs ahead of me. ‘I am always thinking about the next instalment, Eliza, and worrying lest I cannot meet my deadline. See, how my fingernail is bitten to the quick! I rise in the middle of the night to write, for the characters parade around in my head so, and will not allow me to sleep.' He paused with one foot on the top tread and cocked an ear. ‘Listen to that – isn't it splendid? We get the evening bells at this hour.'

A wind-borne carillon resounded from churches all around Kensington. I smiled, and enquired after Isabella.

‘I have good accounts of her from Mrs Bakewell – she and her daughter Mrs Gloyne have charge of her. The change in the little woman is remarkable now that she has someone to look after her and keep her clean. She is tolerably sensible, although she does tend to go rambling off into her own little world. She has a preoccupation with the Queen of Spain, for some reason.'

‘Does she go abroad much?'

‘Oh, yes. I took her on an excursion to Camberwell Fair and to Beulah Spa – it's sadly dilapidated – and to the theatre: a private box. I think she enjoyed herself in her little way.'

‘Has she shrunk?' I asked.

‘Isabella, shrunk? No.'

‘Then why do you talk about her as though she was some kind of midget?'

‘Do I? I had not realized.' A grey cat slunk out from behind a blanket chest, and William let out an oath as he stumbled over it. ‘I was going to set an entire chapter of the book at Beulah Spa, but I have changed it to Vauxhall instead – remember you gave me such an amusing account of a brawl there? It is there that the character of Captain Dobbin comes into his own –'

‘Dobbin?'

‘My male protagonist. He is hopelessly in love with Amelia. And of course he suspects Becky is up to no good.'

I gave him a look of blank incomprehension.

‘You must remember our heroine – Rebecca Sharp? She has issued forth from the inauspicious environs of Miss Pinkerton's academy to wreak havoc in the lives of several of our characters. All the men have become quite besotted with her, of course, and she treats them abominably …'

And William continued in this vein, upstairs and down, rattling on about the Novel without a Hero that was now called
Vanity Fair
.

I had imagined that the three girls would get on famously, but in fact both Annie and Minnie were suspicious of Clara Venus. The last time Annie had seen me I had been her mother substitute – Isabella having lately tried to drown her on the beach at Margate – and she was jealous now that I had a daughter of my own. Minnie, being just two years older than Clara, imagined herself infinitely superior, and treated Clara accordingly. She spoke French at her very fast, and had two cats – Nicholas Nickleby and Barnaby Rudge – which followed her everywhere like little grey ghosts and stared at Clara with hostile yellow eyes.

The house, presided over by a housekeeper called Mrs Grey, was a haven. It was big and comfortable and cheerful and rambling and handsome and untidy. It was, I suppose, rather like William himself. It had two bowed bays at the front and a courtyard at the back, which was overlooked by William's ground-floor study. Sometimes when I took myself out there to sit with my book under the medlar tree, I would see him at his desk gazing myopically at his small garden with a look of such contentment that I felt a kind of compassion for him, this great hulking man in a house overrun by clever women (there were six of us, including the housemaid, and I suspected the cats were female, despite their names).

William had, he told me, written to his mother to say that he had engaged as his governess a clergyman's daughter – shy, drab and of an unprepossessing mien. I did not waste my breath asking why. That William felt a puerile obligation to dissemble about both my provenance and my appearance was not my concern.

I gave lessons in the schoolroom on the top floor every morning, and took the children to play in Kensington Gardens every afternoon. In the evening I would sit with William and discuss the three or four thousand words he had diligently written that day of the novel which was to become as famous as any penned by Mr Dickens.

From the beginning of the year,
Vanity Fair
had appeared in monthly instalments of thirty-two bound yellow pages. William's deadline was the 15th of each month, ahead of publication two weeks later, and there were times when the printer's boy sat drumming his heels in the hallway of the house on Young Street, waiting for overdue copy. I have never seen anybody work with such single-minded determination. Every evening William would leave his study exhausted, and dine off a tray in the drawing room while I read over the day's work, commenting, suggesting, praising and critiquing.

I loved the novel. I loved its insouciant cynicism and its playful
lèse-majesté
. I loved the way William cocked a snook at London society, then took a nimble step back: his manipulation of the reader reminded me of a clown I had once seen at Astley's circus who had shared the ring with a moth-eaten tiger.
Vanity Fair
was brave and funny and tender and moving.

I knew he had based the character of Becky on me; or rather, on a caricature of me. My mannerisms were all present and correct, my speech patterns – with the occasional telltale French inflection – were there too. He stole from me shamelessly – aperçus,
bons mots
, chunks of philosophy from the numerous letters I had written him. The avowal I had made, that I could be a good woman with a thousand pounds a year was there (although he upped the ante to five thousand), and my declaration – ‘I'm no angel' – became a fashionable catchphrase overnight. But I did not begrudge William this personal plagiarism, for he had been good to me.

As the spring and summer wore on,
Vanity Fair
caused such a stir that I believe William became slightly unnerved. ‘If Mr Thackeray should die tomorrow,' wrote a prominent journal, ‘his name would be transmitted down to posterity by
Vanity Fair
.'

To his bemusement, he found himself being lionized by
le tout Londres
. New addresses in Belgravia and Mayfair were constantly being added to his day book: Under ‘L' for ‘Lords' he had listed Ashburton, Cavendish, Chesterfield, Granville, Hogg, Lansdowne, Palmerston and the comte d'Orsay. If the comte counted as a lord, I told William, he only needed two more names to have ten a-leaping.

Every month, on the day that the latest instalment was delivered, we five – Annie, Minnie, Clara Venus, William and I – would make a holiday. We would go for rambles on Hampstead Heath or Richmond Hill, or picnics in Greenwich (where the deer stole Clara's sandwiches), and pay an occasional visit to the theatre. We spent Minnie's seventh birthday at Hampton Court (where Clara got lost in the maze) and were invited to Mr Dickens's house for a children's party (where Clara puked on the conjurer's shoes), and we spent a day at the zoo where William made up a rhyme that went:

‘First I saw the white bear, then I saw the black,

Then I saw the camel with the hump upon his back.

Then I saw the grey wolf with mutton in his maw:

Then I saw the wombat waddle in the straw.'

We were taking tea in the gardens of the zoo when William spied someone he knew – a fellow contributor from
Punch
magazine. He excused himself and went to talk to the gentleman, leaving me with the girls. It had been a long day; they were tired and fractious, and had taken to bickering among themselves.

‘The wombat was the best,' pronounced Minnie.

‘No. The white bear was the best,' said Annie.

‘The wolf was the best,' said Clara Venus. ‘We have wolves at home in Ireland.'

‘Don't be stupid,' said Annie. ‘There are no wolves in Britain any more.'

‘I don't live in Britain. I live in Ireland.'

‘You do so live in Britain. Ireland is part of the British Isles, and it is ruled over by Queen Victoria.'

‘I live in
Ireland
and there are wolves in Ireland.'

‘There are not.'

‘There are so! My daddy killed one.'

‘Your daddy must be a liar.'

‘He is not a liar! My mama has a wolfskin on her bed.'

‘Pooh!' said Minnie. ‘Fancy having a smelly old wolf lying on top of you at night. You must live in a caveman sort of house.'

‘Papa told me the Irish live mostly in holes in the ground,' said Annie. ‘And that they eat potatoes and drink whiskey all day. He wrote a book about it.'

‘Do you live in a hole in the ground, Clara Venus?' Minnie asked.

‘No! I live in a palace.'

Minnie smirked. ‘A palace like Hampton Court?'

‘It is much nicer! We have a lake and a forest and a donkey and goats –'

‘Are there wolves in the forest?' asked Annie, with a snigger.

‘Yes! My mama tells me not to go too far in because one might get me.'

‘Then your mama is a liar, too.'

Clara Venus jumped to her feet. ‘And your mama is mad! She is locked up because she –'

It was time to intervene.

‘Stop it, you three!' I said. ‘Clara Venus – come with me. Annie, Minnie – stay there.'

I took Clara by the hand and stalked to the other side of the tea garden, where I prepared to scold her roundly. ‘I know you are tired,' I said, ‘but that is no reason to behave badly, and no excuse for saying what you just said.'

I waited for Clara to square up and come back with some riposte, but she did not look at me. She stood with her shoulders drooping and her face averted, and when I crouched down to her level, I saw that she was crying.

‘I hate them!' she said. ‘I hate Annie and Minnie. I hate their house and I hate London. I want to go home.'

I was shocked into silence. I had had no idea that Clara Venus was so miserable here.

Behind us a bench faced the orang-utans' cage. I sat down upon it, and took Clara on my lap.

‘Tell me why,' I said.

‘They are hateful to me. Annie is far too clever, and Minnie speaks French all the time.'

‘You are clever,' I said, ‘and you know French.'

‘I don't want to speak French. I want to speak Irish. Nobody here understands me when I speak Irish. Annie laughs and says it is bogtrotter language. And Mrs Grey does not love me the way the Biddies do. And I miss my donkey and I miss my papa.'

I felt as if I had received a blow to the heart. In my determination to escape from Ireland I had never thought to ask myself how Clara Venus would feel at the disruption to her life. I had summarily uprooted her from the place where she had been born and reared: Lissaguirra was her world. I had barely given her a chance to bid farewell to her father, for we had parted daggers drawn the very day after he had arrived home, and when Old Biddy had asked when I might return, all I had said was, ‘I'll write'. I had left Ireland in such a hurry that I had not even thought to bring my daughter's favourite doll with us.

I took my handkerchief and dabbed Clara's eyes and wiped her nose. There was a blister on her mouth, I saw. She had been chewing at her lips, pulling away slivers of skin with her teeth until they bled.

‘Can we go home, Mama?'

‘Do you mean to Young Street, or to Ireland?'

‘To Ireland.'

‘Do you miss it so very badly?'

‘Yes. I miss it so much it makes me feel hungry. It makes me so hungry I cannot eat. And I always have a pain here, in my tummy.'

She pressed the palm of her hand against her solar plexus, and I noticed that she had taken on that pallor that I always associated with malnourished city children. Why, I wondered, as I reached out to smooth her hair, was the heart said to be the seat of all emotion? They claimed that people were ruled by either their head or their heart, but it was clear that my daughter was ruled by a more visceral instinct.

‘It is called homesickness,' I said.

‘Homesickness. That is what my wolf has.'

‘What wolf?'

She reached into her pocket and took out a tiny carved wooden figure: a wolf, with spiky tail and pointy ears. I recognized it as belonging to the Noah's Ark that St Leger had given her on our last night in Ireland.

‘He is called Romulus,' she said, ‘like the twin wolves who made Rome. He misses his brother.'

‘Why didn't you leave him in the ark?'

‘Because I knew that if I took him, we would have to come back. I promised Remus that we would not stay away long. And now he is in the ark all by himself.'

‘He has all the other animals for friends,' I said. ‘He has the monkeys and the elephants and the sheep and –'

‘He is a
wolf
, Mama. He has no friends.'

I looked across at Annie and Minnie. They were sitting, heads together, speaking in that arcane language that only sisters or best friends speak. No wonder my girl felt excluded. I had no friends in London either. I could not visit Maria, who was residing at her sister's house, for I would not be welcome there after my defection from Doneraile Court. William's circle was made up of literary men, and I disliked them and their wives as much as I knew they mistrusted me. Like Becky Sharp, I had made no friends at Miss Pinkerton's academy with whom I could reconnect, and as an unmarried woman with a child I was unlikely to make any new ones. After all, as I had once remarked to William (not realizing that I had furnished him with yet another aperçu for his novel), the greatest tyrants over women are women.