Feral Park (49 page)

“You?”

“Aye!”

“That is very good news,” said Gemma. “We are quite happy for you—for

Anna was looking up at Mrs. Pickler’s dressing-room window and thinking of Perry Alford, who was imprisoned there. “Happy indeed,” said Anna, not knowing what it was that she was supposed to be happy about, but wishing to be pleasant and accommodating. “I wonder,” thought Anna, “if he has made it through the worst of it, and if he will see me. I hope that he will say yes, for I miss him, even though he spoke so harshly to me when I was last here. Yet that was not
him
speaking, but the ghastly laudanum which had taken such vicious hold of him.”

“And pray, Mr. Owen,” asked Gemma of her new friend, “what was it that you did to be sent to Newgate Prison?”

“It was the most ridiculous of all the hanging offences: I carved my name and the name of my beloved Belinda into a stone in Westminster Bridge. Doing damage to that very bridge is punishable by death, you know.”

“I did
not
know!” marveled Gemma. “Anna, did
you
know?”

“Know what?” Anna was hoping that perhaps Perry Alford would hear her voice and come to the window and invite her up to see him. She thought that it might serve her purpose to speak loudly so that he would hear her most assuredly, but then she wondered if he
could not
come to the window because he was still chained to the bed, and besides, she would not betray Mr. Owen’s whereabouts by speaking with such volume to her voice. That would be inconsiderate and could possibly have him and every other fugitive upon the premises discovered and arrested. “
Think
, Anna. Do not be a blockhead.”

“I am such a blockhead,” said Anna aloud, without thinking.

“A blockhead? Why do you say that, Anna?” asked Gemma.

“Because…” Anna amended her irrelevant statement to give it relevance: “Because I would never have thought that a man could be hanged for doing damage to a bridge.”

“It is only Westminster Bridge and none other, but that does not excuse the law which demands execution for even the smallest act of vandalism,” explained Mr. Owen.

“However did they catch you?” asked Gemma with a fascinated look. Her rapt expression caused Anna to think with sudden coarseness that she should like to have the fugitive named Owen kiss her with an open mouth.

“I scratched into the stone not only my name and the name of Belinda, who perhaps some day when this offence is taken off the books I should marry—rather
woo
and marry—rather
meet
and then woo and then marry— but also I put down where I lived so that she might see it when she passed one day and know how I felt about her and where I was and then she may come and find me so that I should give her flowers…or shoes. I am a cobbler by trade.”

“It is such a beautiful, yet heart-wrenching story,” said Gemma with a tear.

“Yes, yes, yes,” thought Anna darkly to herself, “why do you not put your lips directly to his and lick about him with your spitty tongue, you strumpet!” Anna was cross to think that whilst she must partake in a ridiculous conversation about defacing a bridge for the love of a woman, Perry lay chained to a bed and not knowing that Anna loved him still, loved him with all of her heart and would see him healed, and would, in fact, marry him and have his children and be finally afforded her very own life.
Her own life—
what a sound the phrase had to it! Not someone else’s! For it was
not
her fate, despite what Guinevere Mallard believed, that Anna Peppercorn should only live vicariously and only derive happiness from brokering the happiness of others.

“Excuse me, Gemma. Excuse me, Mr. Owen, but I must go inside now.”

Into the house Anna marched herself with serious and hopeful purpose. Inside she found Mrs. Pickler, who had just finished chaining Miss Godby to a bed and giving her a bowel-emptying clyster. To Mrs. Pickler Anna directed the request of a visit with Perry Alford. “How, by-the-bye, is he getting along this morning?” she asked with an attempt at outward composure that was not at all reflective of her internal
discomposure
over possibly being maligned again by Perry and told to go to the devil once he had detected her presence at the door. The thought of this possibility sent Anna into a sudden and shuddering panic, for surely she would then never see him again, if he chose not to forgive her for fully approving of his treatment.

“My darling girl, are you well enough for a visit? There is no colour to your face and your legs are wobbling.”

“I have not eaten this morning, Mrs. Pickler. My morning was spent subduing and transporting Miss Godby. There was no time for me even to have an egg.”

“Then go up stairs, my darling girl, and see your lover, and I will scramble you some eggs to give you strength.” At this moment Miss Pickler’s nephew Mr. Denny entered and she asked him to go and fetch some eggs from the poultry pen. The young hare-lipped man executed a moving cross-legged dance figure in happy compliance with the request, and Anna thought him both ridiculouslooking but also possessed of no small measure of terpsichorean talent.

Anna held her breath as she knocked upon the door to Mrs. Pickler’s dressingroom.

“Yes, who is it?” came a roupy voice from within.

“It is Anna Peppercorn.”

There ensued a silence.

“May I see you, Perry?”

“I think perhaps not.”

“But I will stay for only a brief moment.”

“I cannot suffer you to see me as I am now.”

“And what way is that? I know that you are fixed to a bed and you have not shaven, and perhaps even that you have soiled yourself.”

“Aye, I have not shaven, but fortunately I have not soiled myself. However, I am in a strait waist-coat, Anna, and the picture is frightening to behold.”

“I may be frightened, Perry, but I intend to make every effort to be strong—for the both of us. Pray, let me come in.”

Perry consented. Perry was correct; the picture was indeed frightening to Anna. Perry was seated upon the bed in the strait waist-coat that did not allow any free movement of the arms. He was also chained by his leg to the bed, exactly as he had been before. A male servant was giving him a drink from a cup.

“Thank you,” said he to the servant, as some of the liquid dribbled from his mouth. “You may go now.”

But the servant did not go. He repaired to the other end of the room, where he put himself into a chair.

“I thought that he
might
go since you are here now,” said Perry to Anna. “Even though I am strapped and chained, Mrs. Pickler still will not leave me by myself. Anna, I confess that I tried to kill myself.”

“Oh, gracious God!” ejaculated Anna, but softly and under her breath. “It cannot be true.”

“Depend on it. I tried to strangle myself with the chain, for I did not wish to live with the craving for the laudanum so powerful and demanding. It was as if every inch of my body were protesting, through the most horrible pain and nausea and frightful imaginings, my detachment from the opiate. I would have rather died than endured it for another moment. Moreover, the thought that I had lost you gave me additional reason to end my wretched existence.”

“But you did
not
lose me!” proclaimed Anna, her voice becoming choked with emotion. “You will never lose me for I love you now more than I ever have before, and it is
because
of my love, and the love of your brothers, that you are here. How can you not know this?”

“Even after I spoke so deplorably to you on Saturday?”

“You were not in your right mind. But I see now that you are. You
are,
are you not?”

“I am better and the fog is lifted somewhat, yet my health still has not returned, and Reggie, who sits in that chair there, was this morning for a time replaced by Poseidon, the god of the sea, seated upon his throne and smelling of fish.”

“Yesterday,” added Reggie from across the room, “Mr. Alford thought me Marie Antoinette, with a whipped cream pompadour.”

“Do
I
look like anyone other than myself?” asked Anna anxiously.

Perry shook his head. “You are you and you alone. And as the thick clouds are beginning to clear I discern that you are even more beautiful than you appeared to me in the haze of my addiction. I wish that I could throw my arms round you, my dearest Anna, and embrace you without recess, but, alas, my arms are pinioned within this jacket and I can do nothing but press against you.” To Reggie: “May we take off the strait-coat now that I no longer seek to strangle myself?”

The servant shook his head. “It remains until Mrs. Pickler commands otherwise.”

“But do not despair, my love,” said Anna with tenderness,“for I can put
my
arms round
you
.” Then Anna did this very thing, though when Perry moved his mouth to kiss her, she did not consent, for his breath was very bad.

That afternoon the word was spread that the empty shop, which used to be the butcher’s shop, had been let to Colin Alford (with earnest money lent by Mr. Groves, whose millinery and tailor’s shop was directly across the street and whose interest in seeing Mr. Alford come and go from his school wearing his tight dancing breeches had not abated in the least). Word was spread, as well, that Mr. Alford, within only a day or so, would begin to offer lessons— at reasonable terms—for whomever may wish to come and learn the latest dances and even a few of his own creation. Colin’s door was open wide to each and every resident of Payton Parish—even to those (and perhaps
especially
to those) who had never danced a figure in all their lives because they were ugly and would never have been allowed to step out upon a dance floor, and perhaps not even be admitted to a public assembly, for was it not common knowledge that a disagreeably-countenanced man or woman attending a dance would bring some of the more delicate attendees to misstep from the shock or to vomit slightly within their mouths in revulsion?

That afternoon Colin left word for Miss Pints, who was up stairs brushing her sheep (and would not wish to be disturbed), that Anna had spoken to him of her desire to learn a dance or two for the ball. It was Miss Drone who spoke on behalf of Miss Pints: “Mr. Alford, that is very good news, but I am wondering if you would consider it an imposition to teach her here within the mansion-house, as she is too shy to go to Berryknell to attend a dancing school with looking glasses hung all about the walls and the eyes of other pupils upon her.”

Mr. Alford bowed his assent. “I shall be happy to come hither and teach her in a private session.”

Subsequently, Miss Drone went up stairs to tell Miss Pints that she would now have her private lessons. Subsequent to this, Miss Pints became distraught to think that she would be left alone with a man who would be touching her hand and perhaps another place or two upon her person as well. Miss Drone was required to tell her trembling companion that such fright-filled behaviour did not become her and that she must learn that not every man whom she met sought to do harm to her in the manner of Sir Thomas, and to a lesser degree Dr. Goulding with his probing instruments,
and
even a Stornaway inmate by the name of Mudge, who possessed opaque eyes and was allowed by the asylum superintendent to reach out to her from between the bars of his cell as she passed and touch and stroke her hair with his long, skeletal fingers.

“I told her that Mr. Alford was quite different from most of the men she has known,” recounted Miss Drone to her niece that night after supper, “and that his tender kindness is as much a hallmark of his character as his galloping self-assurance.”

Anna and her aunt were sitting in her father’s library in the absence of her father, who was still unwilling to leave his bed. Dr. Bosworthy was reading silently from a volume and keeping his own counsel, except that he now looked up and said, “No one does harm to anyone in this world except those who wish to hurt others out of meanness or stupidity, and those who do not open themselves to all of life’s potential for self-improvement, and thus permit the lack of fulfillment and its resultant cankering and festering to create anger and bitter regret, which may be grievously misdirected to others. We fritter away our short terrestrial tenancies through vexing and repining and getting ourselves worked into fits over every little thing that does not matter, whilst those things that
do
are roundly ignored. I give you the institutional murder of a man for stealing bread to feed his children. I put to you the slaughter of tens of thousands of our strapping young boys upon the field of battle for the sake of governmental lust for land and treasure. I submit to you our daily cruelties to the ill-countenanced and the crippled and the dark-skinned and the slanteyed and the Mohammedan and the Jew. For the sake of almighty Jesus, allow May Dray to marry a Jew if she so wishes, and allow Mr. Grove to lick a hairy male calf if it does not incommode the calf ’s owner or destroy furniture, and let a man should he wish it get his bottom reddened,” (to the ceiling,) “—do you attend me, Henry Peppercorn?—and suffer a man for pity’s sake to take a glass of warm urine before retiring if it so be his desire! What do any of these things matter at the end of our tenure upon this bloody planet when we are but dust and bone and the stuff of fleeting memory to our survivors?”