Fair Fight (42 page)

‘Go and peek out the window,’ I whispered. ‘Don’t answer it, whatever you do. Just take a peek and run back to me.’

He was back in a flash. ‘It’s Mr Dryer,’ he said. He never did call him Father.

Mr Dryer. There was scarce a cull in all creation I cared for less. I should almost rather have had the magistrates. And for him to come and pound upon the door, it made the flesh on my shoulders squeeze into bars of iron. Of course, he never had found the convent locked against him before.

Jacky hoofed it into the scullery. I couldn’t blame him; I’d have followed, if I could.

Mr Dryer’s stiff mug seemed to stare straight past me, into the hallway. I felt like a goose protecting her nest from a dog; I was ready to spring or spit even while I shrank from him. I wanted him away from us. The cull was poison, pure and simple.

I held the door open wordlessly. He walked in as though he were still lord of the manor.

‘Tom,’ I called. ‘Here’s Mr Dryer come to see how you do.’ I put my feelings into the name ‘Mr Dryer’.

Tom’s bandaged face appeared at the top of the stairs, with his ready smile. My good man was willing to smile upon even such a scaly runt as this cull.

‘No,’ Mr Dryer said, ‘I come to see Dora. Kindly tell her that I am arrived.’

Tom’s look was cast down as fast as an axe blow falling. I’d not seen, till that moment, how much hope Tom had that Mr Dryer might yet turn out straight. After all that Mr Dryer had taken from us, that he should take this, my Tom’s last shreds of hope, it was the puff that brought the roof down. I felt the fury lift me up and clench my fists.

I strode toward Mr Dryer. He knew something was up, mind. He held himself fearful stiff. Behind him I saw Tom begin to come down the stairs. Mr Dryer glanced over his shoulder and I saw he’d marked it – he was caught between us.

I stopped before him and looked full into his goatish mug.

‘That bitch has run off and she ain’t coming back,’ I said.

Mr Dryer wouldn’t flinch from me. He looked at me very level. Only the twitch of his eyelid showed I had him frit. I saw him take in the bare walls, where there used to hang the pictures and lamps that he’d paid for.

I said, ‘She’s done a flit and I don’t blame her for it. So you can forget that.’

Tom had reached the bottom step and now he stopped and looked at Mr Dryer and me as if he couldn’t tell what I might do. I wasn’t sure myself.

‘Then I will take my leave,’ Mr Dryer said.

He made to walk past me and I stepped into his path.

‘Move aside,’ he said.

Tom was at my side before I could speak, and putting a hand on my shoulder. ‘Now, Ruthie,’ he said, but that was all.

‘No, Tom.’ My fury was a cold thing, not a hot. I was probably more alike to Mr Dryer in that moment than I’d ever been.

‘No,’ I said, again. ‘This open-arse is going to give us what he owes.’

‘I owe you nothing.’

I spat, then, upon his boots. It was too late to go back, after that.

‘You owe us an eye,’ I said.

Mr Dryer did not even look to see where I’d spat. He kept his eyes on mine. It was like the moments before a mill when you stand at scratch, eye to eye with the other pug.

‘What were you before I came? I lifted you from the dirt,’ Mr Dryer said, very calm.

‘You kept us in dirt. You think all of us in this house are your playthings. You’ll find out otherwise.’ My voice had a hiss in it.

‘What will you do, then, you spitting cat? If you raise your hand against me I shall see you imprisoned faster than you can blink.’

Tom held my arm fast.

‘Be calm, Ruth. We’ll not lose anything else.’

‘You’ve lost an eye, Tom. I swear home, I’ll have one of his in return.’

‘This is nonsense. Step out of my path.’

Was he quaking now? By God, I hoped so.

It was then that Jacky showed himself, carrying a tray as careful as a nest of eggs. It was the tray he’d always brought to Mr Dryer when he came to see Dora – the clod-head hadn’t realised it couldn’t be wanted now. Here he came, into the middle of this scene, his eyes on the tray, the scented water slopping about in its cut-glass bowl. He brought it to Mr Dryer’s side and peeped up at him. I was growing used to Jacky now, and I thought that his look, which I might’ve once called sneaking, was only anxious and hopeful. Mr Dryer, mind, he thought Jacky brought the tray to make fun, now that my sister had run off and he’d never again need to wash his face in lavender-water.

‘What the devil do you mean by this?’ Mr Dryer said.

Jacky only bobbed a little on his toes, making the water jump in the bowl. He kept watching his father with that same, sly face.

Mr Dryer’s hand shot out as fast as a snake and cuffed Jacky on the side of his head, hard enough to send the boy sprawling, the tray and all it carried crashing to the ground. The bowl smashed upon the flags. The scent of the spilled lavender-water filled the hall.

Tom’s shoulder knocked into mine as he charged at Mr Dryer. In the shock of it I grabbed for him to keep from tumbling; perhaps I meant to stop him, perhaps I wanted to fib Mr Dryer myself. There was no thought in it. Tom leapt forward and in grabbing at him, I went with him. So it was that we both struck Mr Dryer together, not with our fists, but with our bodies – Tom had been moving at speed and we went hard into him. We all three of us fell to the ground. Tom’s skull knocked against mine. Some other piece of him – his knee, it could’ve been – smacked into my thigh, hard enough to leave it numb. Jacky screamed, and scrabbled to press against the wall. Upstairs the babe woke and joined his screams to his brother’s.

‘Blasted hell!’ Tom cried out, struggling to his knees, one hand to his bandaged eye.

I couldn’t sit up straight off, my leg being numb. My only thought was for Tom’s eye.

‘Are you hurt? Tom, are you much hurt?’

He was rocking back and forth upon his knees but he still answered, ‘No.’

I’d got myself up a bit and was reaching for Tom when Jacky screamed again. I’d forgotten, in my fear for Tom’s eye, to see what had befallen Mr Dryer. He’d fallen to the ground with us, and now he was behind us, on hands and knees. He seemed not to be able to stand. In the dark of the hall he looked to be wearing a hood of tar, as though his head had been dipped and he waited for the feathers. Of course, it was not tar but blood that covered him.

‘Oh dear God, no,’ Tom said.

A piece of the cut-glass bowl stuck out from the back of Mr Dryer’s head, catching what light there was like the shaft of a diamond dagger. I cried out to see it and Jacky screamed with me. The babber was still wailing upstairs, a rise-and-fall cry. We made a devilish harmony.

‘Oh blasted fuck. Oh! We’ve killed Mr Dryer,’ Tom moaned.

We were all of us still sitting on the floor, except Jacky, who’d pressed his back to the wall as though he might pass through it and run away. I could feel my hands waving in the air, unsure what to do.

‘It is I who will kill you,’ Mr Dryer said, still on all fours. He did not raise his head. His voice was thick, perhaps with blood.

I came back to myself a little way. I got to my feet, though I seemed to feel my head swoop.

‘There,’ I said. My voice was weaker than it should’ve been. ‘There, he ain’t dead. And nor are any of us.’

The glass poking from Mr Dryer’s skull seemed to be looking at me. I couldn’t stop looking at it, in any case.

‘You will be,’ Mr Dryer said.

I thought then about kicking him. It would’ve been so easy and so foolish, both. Tom got to his feet and I turned to him instead.

‘Tom, is your eye . . .?’

‘I jolted it only, I think.’

‘Thank God.’

Tom went to Mr Dryer then, and knelt beside him.

‘Sir, I’m going to help you up,’ he said.

My heart twisted to hear him say ‘sir’.

Mr Dryer let Tom help him to his feet, though he swayed about and Tom had to hold him.

‘Jacky,’ I said, ‘fetch the parlour chair.’

‘We ain’t got a chair in the parlour.’

I’d forgotten the chair had been whipped off.

In the end Tom helped Mr Dryer into the parlour and sat him on the brocaded settee, where he’d so often waited for Dora.

I sent Jacky for a lamp then, and for rum for all of us.

When the rushlight was brought we were all of us struck silent by the sight of the blood. There was so much of it. Mr Dryer shuddered and I think began quietly to weep. His shoulders were slumped; he wasn’t so stiff now.

The light wavered violently as Jacky’s hand shook. I took it from him gently.

‘Go and see to the babber,’ I said.

It was easier to think without his goggling eyes upon me.

‘What’ll we do?’ Tom said, as soon as the boy was gone. ‘Shall we pull the glass out?’

‘Glass?’ Mr Dryer said.

Tom and I looked at each other over his head.

‘You’ve some glass sticking in you,’ I said, at last.

‘No! Don’t you touch it,’ Mr Dryer said. ‘Don’t touch me. You must call a doctor. You must call a carriage to take me home.’

I might’ve done it, but Tom said gently, ‘I can’t, sir, can I? You’ll see us snapped up if we let you out of here. You’ll say it was assault, though it was an accident, pure and simple.’

Oh, bloody damn, he might
,
I thought.
How can we let him go? But then, how can we keep him?

Mr Dryer had the same thought. He tried to rise and only flopped in his seat like a fish. His head tipped back against the settee, surely driving the glass in deeper. He didn’t cry out, only gasped aloud and dropped his head forward. Blood dripped softly onto his lap, catching the lamplight like crimson sealing wax.

‘Will you keep me prisoner, here, perhaps to die?’ Mr Dryer spoke toward his lap. ‘You will certainly hang if you do.’

Tom put his hand to his head as though he were stuck with glass himself, rumpling his bandage. ‘What in hell are we to do, Ruth?’

He sat down beside Mr Dryer, though there was hardly space for him to do it. I suppose he felt too weak to stand.

I stood before them both, shaking, making the lamplight wobble on my own account. I could only think,
If he dies, what do we do with him?
If I’d a good answer to that, I might’ve thought of helping it along. Mr Dryer was lucky, then, that I didn’t. He was lucky, too, that he had his own answer.

‘You must send for my wife,’ he said. ‘She is in Bristol, at Queen Square. Let her come and carry me away.’

‘I’ll send for her,’ I said. ‘Though what we’ll do when she comes I don’t know. You’ll have to give your word that you know we never meant to harm you.’

‘You threatened to take my eye.’

‘You still have it, don’t you?’

I went to fetch her myself. Who else was to go? Tom must stay to watch Mr Dryer and I’d not send Jacky out, alone, to walk the streets at night. It was not so very far – it took me less than ten minutes, I swear home – and that was going round by the drawbridge over the river. Bristol’s like that; the swells and the common folk pressed together, street by street.

I felt nervous to set foot on the paths of Queen Square, it being so grand. Probably they had servants or sentry men, whose job it was to keep my kind away. No one stopped me, mind. I didn’t know that I’d ever walked there before. Even in the twilight it was so vast and clean you’d hardly know, once you were in it, that it was surrounded by the docks and dirt of the working streets. I wondered how it’d be to be a lady there, and have nowhere much respectable to go but around and around the square. I supposed they all had carriages and could drive away when they liked.

Mrs Dryer’s house was at number thirty-six. It took an age for anyone to come to the door, and when they did I had to wait while what seemed like a hundred locks were turned, and bolts drawn back. At last an elderly cully opened the door just far enough to peer out.

‘May I help you?’ he said. I could see he was only a moment away from closing it in my face.

‘Please, I must see Mrs Dryer. Mr Dryer’s been taken ill. I’m Mrs Webber. Tom Webber’s my husband. The prize-fighter. Please.’ I said this as fast as ever I could and with every word the frown on his mug grew looser. By the end of the speech he looked almost kind, and worried with it.

‘Please wait here,’ he said, and then he did close the door, but gently.

I waited, shifting from foot to foot. I was beginning to feel how cold it was.

A carriage came around from the back of the square and drew up beside me. I watched it warily, half expecting some stiff to order me away. When I saw it was Henry at the reins I felt almost like kissing him. He jumped down from the box and ran to shake me by the hand.

‘I’m glad to see you, Mrs Webber. I’ll say I am. But I was so sorry to hear. I expect I took it near as hard as you did. How does he fare, now?’

For a moment I thought he meant Mr Dryer, and looked at him queer. Then I realised he meant my Tom and I clapped him on the shoulder.

‘He’s growing stronger all the time. You should come to see us.’

The door opened again to show the old butler cully and, behind him, wrapped in a fur-lined cloak, Mrs Dryer. Her face was quite free of paint and I could see just by looking that she’d been asleep when I knocked. I could smell drink on her. She didn’t smile to see me; she looked fearful.

‘Will you come, Mrs Dryer?’ I said. I’d an urge to be gone. I was half froze and I didn’t like to explain with the old cully there.

‘Very well.’

She followed me down to the carriage. Henry held the door and let her in first. I dithered, wondering if she’d rather I got up on the box beside Henry. She’d still not smiled. Then I thought,
To hell with it, I’m freezing out here
, and climbed inside.

The ride was no time at all. I barely finished explaining what had gone on – sparing her the mention of Dora – before we were arrived at the convent. She’d scarce replied.

Henry came and opened the door of the carriage.

‘You go in, Henry, and fetch him out,’ she said, in a queer voice. It was too dark to see her face much.

I thought,
Oh, bloody damn, she thinks I tried to kill him
.