Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife (14 page)

That was not to be. Not only did a man of Reed’s brutality have an extensive memory for such affronts, he liked to let them fester. It would not be vented in a fit of anger. Reprisal would be exacted with savage and lengthy precision. When Reed did seek her out, the inn had emptied and Abigail was face down upon her bed not much in her senses. Providence for her, for had she the means to try to fend him off, it would have only prolonged the abuse.

Her boy made a feeble stand at her door, but Reed’s brachmard made an indention in his gullet deep enough to persuade him to take leave.

“Abbie’s expectin’ me.”

Whilst she snored loudly in the corner, Reed shoved the boy out of the room. Then, without bothering to remove his boots, let alone his pants, he heaved himself upon her. That was what awakened her: The scraping of his boots upon the bedstead. She did not query as to whom rutted upon her; the rancidity of his breath identified him.

“Reed,” she croaked miserably.

She might have struggled then, but in previous servicings, she knew that grappling only incited his lust. Moreover, time was her ally. He had a propensity for failing in the furrow. Regrettably, he did not that night. Vengeance came with malevolence and was paid for with considerable abasement. For a man of little imagination, Reed managed to spend the better part of an hour without duplicating a single degradation. Eventually, he tired of his play and left. Thenceforth, Abigail was sober. Sober she did not want to be.

Her head had ached when she had arisen. She drew a wrapper about herself, but the bright light made her lurch about blindly. When she finally managed to peer out the door to see if Reed was about, she stirred only her son. He was sitting with his back to the door, his knees drawn up beneath his chin, but hopped to his feet when he felt it open. The odd mixture of anguish and anger upon his countenance did nothing to soothe her.

By mid-afternoon her temples pounded ferociously. Any stale ale she found in the bottom of the mugs, she emptied down her throat. She drank steadily and much on the sly, for old Turnpenny would dock her if he knew how much of his brew she was consuming. But she cared little. Once Darcy had gone and the mugs were drained, she saw no particular reason to stay. She abandoned her tray and staggered to her room. It was empty—empty and grim. Rifling through their sparse belongings, she found a half bottle of gin. That was her drink of choice and she had been hoarding it. She plopped down two glasses automatically, smiled mirthlessly at the silent taunt, and then filled them both.

On the heels of drink, she had been suffering from a loss of senses for some months. That should have been a misgiving for pouring another, but it was not. It was a cure for her ills. She sought that blessed blackness again, took a glass in each fist and upended them both with precision. Then she repeated her sacrament. Eventually, one dropped from her hand. Empty, it hit with a clunk, but did not break before it made a lengthy, uneven roll across the length of the floor.

* * *

The room was dark when John Christie returned from mucking out the tavern’s stable. His mother’s body had not stirred from her seat. Her cheek rested against the table, both hands dangled. He did not reach out to shake her. He did not even go over to her. He simply sat on the side of the bed until dawn, staring at her lifeless eyes.

It was a sad business for one’s mother to die. Abigail Christie’s son knew that, if for no other reason than that the little congregation standing about gawking as her body was taken away looked upon him with a great deal of pity. His countenance, however, harboured no emotion at all. It was not that he was undespairing of his mother’s death; he simply refused to put on a display of bereavement just because there was an audience before him expecting it.

For all his mother’s bad judgement, limited initiative, and poor taste in men, he had still loved her. She had taught him there was no percentage in sentiment. That pragmatism kept any fright about his situation at bay just as certainly as grief. He knew weeping served no purpose whatsoever. That was a wisdom he would have liked to impart to Mrs. Turnpenny and various barmaids, for they all stood about shedding crocodile tears with considerable relish. It was Mrs. Turnpenny, however, who had hugged him to her substantial bosom (a difficult manoeuvre in that he was taller than she) and clucked about his newly acquired misfortune repeatedly.

“Oh you poor, dear, motherless boy!”

Her heartbroken lamentations upon the loss of his dear departed mother were mitigated, however, by the understanding that before his dear departed mother’s corpse had been carted from the room, Mrs. Turnpenny had already re-let it. The ale-wench intending to take the room did have the good taste to stand aside until the lodgings were vacated.

Nonetheless, she stood with her belongings at the ready once the deed was done. Moreover, it was done with much haste and little civility.

Knowing the burial was going to be on the parish and thus frippery-less, the undertaker went about his duties with a look of abused sufferance. He wrapped Abigail Christie’s remains in a tattered counterpane. Yet, still unable to outright abandon the niceties of his profession, he tied the corners in neat, if ragged, little bows.

As he and Phinehas Turnpenny (who was just happy to rid the body from his establishment) hauled her out, one foot escaped the shroud and trailed along the floor. It was not a pretty foot. It was bunioned and callused and her big toe added insult by protruding from a tear in her stocking. The entire party was distressed to witness this indecorous strait, but only John stepped forward to rectify it. Indeed, for a young man who refused to cry, it was with considerable tenderness that he tucked his mother’s toe back into her stocking and foot beneath the counterpane.

So it was that the passing bell still reverberated in John’s ears as he walked along the road leaving Kympton. Already his mother’s face had begun to fade for him. He suffered to reclaim it, for he truly did not want his only recollection of her to be that one bunioned toe.

He had set out expeditiously in spite of the lip-serviced condolences. Mrs. Turnpenny had let out their room, announcing a realignment of help. Truly, he did not fault the Turnpennys. They were a bit miserly with the broad-beans, but they had turned a blind eye to his sharing lodgings with his mother when rent paid was for but one. Although he had done what he could to earn his keep in the Turnpenny barn, he knew business at the inn was selling ale, not putting up orphans. He had not expected otherwise. He had learned the true definition of sympathy in the mean streets of London. The kindest gift his mother gave him was to teach him to see to himself.

She had once said, “Son, I can’t watch out for yer, yer’ve got to make yer own way. Nobody looks out for nobody else in this world.”

Undeniably.

Hence, self-reliance, not mother love, was her legacy. That is why he did not cry and that is why he would not allow himself to grieve. Moreover, convinced as he was of his own pragmatic nature, he did not allow himself the indulgence of thinking of his now motherless sisters in London. For a young man of such sense and practicality should have no affection for babies. Yet, he could in no way account for why he, a practising cynic, had carried Sally Frances about when she was far too big to be riding upon his hip. Or, why he had hummed to Baby Sue and hid them both whilst their mother plied her trade with sweaty men atop the creaking bed.

Or, why he missed their sweet faces even then. London was a fair distance. The thought that he might never see them again nagged at the pit of his stomach.

The economy of his situation had no room for such maudlin ruminations; hence, he shook it from his mind in order to ponder specifics. Where was he to go? At least his mother’s poor sense of timing had improved enough to have her die in the country instead of town. He knew he would be but a half-day from the workhouse in London. An orphan he was, but certainly too big a bundle for a foundling home.

* * *

John had been born in London, somewhere betwixt Whitechapel and Wapping. He did not know the street or the house. His mother did not tarry long anywhere, usually taking leave one step ahead of the collector. Initially, she was a barmaid. Quite quickly, that career evolved into another. London taverns had back rooms. There, with a little initiative, a fresh-faced lass could earn a half-crown a night. Regrettably, the office of doxy had several disadvantages, the foremost of which was that one did not stay fresh-faced for long. Fees dwindled with the exact rapidity of one’s looks.

Abigail was no exception. Eventually, she walked the streets.

John spent his days with his own manner of scavenging. In the mean rookeries of London, scavenging, more often than not, overlapped into outright thievery. John held no pride in his cunning, nor was he ashamed. The only shame he felt was that he was reduced to thieving to eat. (Caught red-handed with a couple of rabbit skins, he was sent to the House of Correction for a fortnight. It was cruel place, but he was fed twice a day, that more often than he got upon his own.) His secondary employment was actually an extension of his first. For when his mother managed to snare a man to join her in illicit commerce, John was instructed to await. At the height of carnality he was to surreptitiously investigate the visitor’s divested purse and gaskins for any farthings left unspent upon beer or her. As the nicety of disrobing was not often observed and his mother was just as often as cupshotten as her intended paramour, it was a true find when money turned up.

This was not a happy existence. However, not having known a better one, John thought not meanly of it. As to why his mother decided to make a home for that bandy-legged seaman was a compleat mystery to him. When John bewailed the more caitiff strains of that man’s nature (brutal, demented, and flatulent), Abigail had laughed that strange little mirthless laugh she had and embarked upon one of her lessons in survival.

She told her son he lacked objectivity (“Yer blind, boy!”). For the very reason she stayed with Archie was precisely because of his profession. The man provided a roof over their heads (even if it did shelter beatings, which were fierce and prolific). Gone so long at sea simply meant less time she would have to spend with him.

Though of no true religious faith, every time the man sailed, John still managed to compose a little prayer to recite, the gist of which was that Archie’s ninety-gun dreadnought be blown clean out of the water. However, at least so far as Seaman Arbuthnot was concerned, the British navy was omnipotent. Archie always came back, regular as rain. Moreover, upon his return, he would find a cudgel or draw off that strop of a belt and commence a bastinado. John was agile and thus adept at eluding the clumsy Archie (for spirits stole his sea legs). Others in the household, however, were not as swift, and this led to an appalling conundrum for young John Christie.

John could forgive his mother for many things. For prostituting herself, for finding comfort in gin, even for neglecting his sisters. However, the single thing for which he could not find forgiveness was that of which she had the least charge. She continued to beget children of Archibald Arbuthnot. Those children demanded John weather demons that no child should have to endure. He had to decide which of his loved ones’ heads he would try to protect from Archie’s blows. If he tried to shield them all, no one would escape punishment.

When Abigail was with child once again, John had known without being told it was not fathered by Archie Arbuthnot. He understood that was an aggravation to the basic evil of the situation. For although Archie was a vicious cur of a man, he had one quality worthy of regard: he would away. Thomas Reed was a continual sore.

Hardly the first grass widow of a sailor, it was understood with certainty that when this particular sailor found out that he was so public a cuckold, the insult to his manhood would be consequential. The means to exact his revenge would be harsh, possibly fatal. There was but one answer. Because the past year of growth had bestowed him six inches in height (even though but a half stone in weight), John came to believe that if he had not age upon his side, he was man enough to defend his mother’s life.

He knew that should he survive the fight to the death that he intended to engage in with Archie, the constables would be upon him in an instant. (Authorities were not much inclined to intervene in family discord unless that disharmony resulted in bodily harm to a taxpaying breadwinner.) John had been jailed once. Even if Archie’s life weathered John’s substantial rancour, two offences meant Newgate.

Hence, when Abigail abruptly decided to decamp London, she thought it was her own neck she was saving. She had no idea she was rescuing her son’s also.

The truncated Family Christie departed for Derbyshire under the cloak of night and fear of pursuit. Upon neither their journey nor their arrival did John query Abigail about her expanding waistline or her decision to take leave of London. She had not expected otherwise. It had been her tease that his most identifiable trait was his compleat want of curiosity. Although he had not corrected her misconception, he knew it was less a trait than a lesson committed to memory.

John knew how his mother got in the family way and by whom. He had learnt far more about basic urges of mankind from a cot in the corner of her room than had he sat centre seat in a professorial lecture. John never questioned why Kympton was the town they chose to light upon, for his mother’s drunken loquacity had revealed where he was sired.

* * *

The road was dusty, crust having been reclaimed from the recent rain. John decided whither he had to go. Once that was done, he made no hesitation. He had not heard his mother’s boasts in the inn the previous night. Yet she had told him the man who lay with her at Pemberley was his father. Was he of station? Was he still there? John had not a clue. But his mother had been superstitious, and in want of any other bias or religious persuasion, he trusted in it, too. Perhaps the place of his conception might somehow offer him refuge.

For even John knew it was a rich man’s world and he took the most direct route there. On he trod in the dust.