The Spoils of Sin (12 page)

The man reached out a hand to her, gripping her arm and lightly shaking it. ‘You are my angel,' he told her. ‘A woman of such infinite understanding that you ought to be made immortal in the annals.'

‘Tush!' she chided him. ‘It is of no consequence.' She glanced from Fanny to Carola and back. ‘I have no doubt you will be adequately serviced. There is nothing so stimulating as novelty.'

‘For your sake, Mattie, I hope our next caller will be a young buck who finds your charms beyond resisting.'

The couple laughed and Fanny felt the world spin madly around her head.

‘Sir,' she began. ‘Your intentions are unclear…' she faltered. ‘We have not anticipated any such business as this.'

‘We can pay for the bed with money,' said Carola. ‘As might be deemed more normal.'

Jeremy Hastings guffawed loudly at this. ‘Forget “normal”,' he told her. ‘In the land of liberty, normal is whatever a free man chooses it to be. Now, if you would kindly take out your hairpins and let your tresses fall free, I shall be obliged.'

‘Then let us retire for a moment to prepare,' said Fanny quickly. She seized Carola and urged her into the small room. ‘Just a few minutes,' she threw back over her shoulder.

In the room, the girls examined each other's alarmed faces. ‘The sponges,' said Carola in a whisper. ‘We left them behind.'

‘Never mind that. This is an outrage. He sees us as playthings for his sport. He has no concern for our wishes. I have no intention of paying with my body, as he assumes. I am due my courses any time, too. I am aching and disinclined.'

‘Sshh. He can hear you,' Carola warned.

‘I fancy he is in his own room, removing his clothes in preparation. This is an outrage,' Fanny said again. ‘It is uncivilised.'

Carola laughed and shook out her golden locks. ‘Tell that to the matrons of Chemeketa and Oregon City. Not one of them would defend us. And we have no defences of our own, Fan. We cannot leave and blunder off into the darkness. Take your hair down, as he asks.'

‘But what does he
want?
He has a woman living here. What more does he expect?'

‘You are not so innocent as that, I hope. Have you not been told in guilty whispers what it is that men dream of? Have they not suggested we both attend to them together? It is a common fantasy.'

Fanny felt weak. ‘That too is uncivilised,' she said coldly. The face of her prudish sister Charity swam before her eyes. Perhaps Fanny too had moral limits of her own. She would have valued the presence of her sister at that moment.

‘It will soon be over, at least. The woman is giving him an hour and no more. My anxiety is all for my sponge. I have no wish to return home with a big-headed brat inside me.'

‘They were so pleasant to begin with,' mourned Fanny. ‘So accepting and with such an interesting tale to tell. I wish they hadn't known who we are.'

‘I confess, I had no suspicion we were so well-known. Is it possible, think you, that your family might also have learned of your true calling?'

Fanny shivered. ‘My sister Charity would not be surprised. I actually shared my ambitions with her, on the Trail. I have always wondered whether she married so quickly as a kind of protection against my sinfulness.'

‘Ladies!' came a loud male voice. ‘I can afford you no more time.'

‘We should be thankful he gave us as much as he did,' muttered Carola. ‘Such a chance must seem like a gift from heaven to him. Two experienced girls with no cause to resist his advances – he will be feeling much the same as the lucky gold prospectors.' She squared her shoulders and opened the door.

Fanny remained sitting on the bed, regretting the wasted time, but slowly removing the clasps that held her hair in place. They might have devised a plan for escape instead of merely bemoaning their fate. She felt much less resigned than Carola appeared to. She was angry at the presumption, and strangely offended.

In the main room, all was quiet. Then Carola gave a cry. ‘Oh!' came a squeal, suggestive of amused amazement. ‘Fanny – come out,' she called.

Bewildered, Fanny obeyed. In the room, two chair had been drawn up to the table, side by side, and on the table sat a large human head, made of porcelain china. It was marked with lines and script and mirrored part of the chart pinned up on the wall. ‘You will have heard of the science of phrenology, I trust?' Jeremy asked them.

They both shook their heads doubtfully.

‘Extraordinary!' he smiled. ‘I should inform you that I am an experienced practitioner of the science, and would be deeply grateful if I might examine the both of you, as part of my researches.' He bent down and spoke low. ‘I have to tell you that I have never before had the opportunity to explore the cranial features of ladies such as yourselves.'

‘You – you wish to examine our heads?' Fanny stared at him. ‘Then why…? Why did Matilda remove herself? Why let us believe…?'

Carola nudged her sharply. ‘We are honoured, sir, to be of assistance,' she said, with an exaggerated Southern drawl.

‘Forgive Matilda her failure as a chaperone,' he said. ‘She finds the matter tiresome, I fear. The truth is, I made promises that I have been unable to honour, and she now regards the whole business as anathema.'

‘Promises?' Fanny could make little sense of his words.

‘I was to make us a good living by reading the heads of the population of Oregon. It was the basis of many plans, but we were greatly disappointed in the general response. Mockery, I fear, was the most common reaction to my offered services.'

There seemed to be nothing to say.
Reading heads?
Was the man insane? Had she been a complete fool, to make such a judgement of him as she had? If so, then Carola was equally at fault.

‘I believe I did hear tell of something of the sort, back in Charleston,' said Carola, finally. ‘A gentleman visited my mother one time and afterwards she often mentioned her bump of benevolence. If I recall aright, that is.'

Jeremy Hastings laid his hands on her skull as if unable to resist any longer. ‘Ah, yes,' he breathed. ‘You have it too.' His fingers pressed through her thick fair hair first a little way above her brow and then at the very crown of her head. ‘Firmness is prominent, also. And, I fear, acquisitiveness, just here.' His touch had strayed over her ear on the right side. ‘In abundance, we might say. Your most active faculty, in short.' His hands were moving, back and forth, up and down, until two fingers rested low down on the nape of her neck. He was murmuring a commentary as he went. ‘So we have acquisitiveness, firmness and benevolence as your primary faculties. That is less of a surprise than the underdeveloped faculty of amativeness.' He chuckled. ‘One would have expected…well, perhaps things are never so simple.'

Carola shrank under his touch. ‘Amativeness?' she repeated.

‘Sexual appetite, my dear, to call it plainly. The indicator is here.' Again he prodded her neck. ‘But, of course, it carries more logic than I first believed. For a person to conduct such a profession as yours, there can be little place for love. Attachment would be an impediment. How very interesting this is.'

‘Are you done?'

‘One is never entirely done – but I must be content with what I have. I shall make notes and read further in my Bible.'

‘Bible?' Carola frowned. The reference seemed incongruous.

He laughed. ‘I spoke in jest. I mean to say my George Combe. He has been my guide and teacher for many years.' He stepped over to the shelves of books and removed one that had a tattered and bespeckled cover. ‘
The Constitution of Man
is a work of great genius. Through it, we can understand the workings of our mind in all its vast complexity.'

Carola puffed up her flattened hair and fingered her own scalp. ‘It is a kind of fortune telling,' she accused. ‘What is the value of informing people of their primary faculties? Do they not already know them?'

‘We have freedom of will,' he told her. ‘Once we become aware of our weaker points, we might act to avoid giving them rein.'

‘You wish to read my head too?' asked Fanny, feeling excluded.

‘Of course.' He quickly let the book drop onto the table, and laid his hands on her head. ‘Oh my!'

‘What?'

‘We have here the most well-defined bump of self-esteem I have encountered for years.' His fingers were towards the back of her head. ‘A very confident young lady, I believe. And now, let's see…Friendship is well developed – and, oh my word! – amativeness enough for the two of you.' He tapped the base of her neck with a light forefinger. ‘My, oh my,' he repeated. Then he pressed and touched all the way up and around to her forehead, muttering, ‘Ideality, hmm, and Memory. Very good. Very interesting.'

Fanny found the pressure and the probing strangely pleasant. His hands were warm and it was as if her hair had all been removed and he was touching her bare scalp. Never before had she been aware of the sensitivity of this part of her body. Once or twice it was as if he pressed a bruise and she flinched. She felt eager to replicate the action for herself, as a kind of massage, and could not resist locating the bump at the base of her skull where he had lingered and tapped.
Sexual Appetite
, he had said, was the ordinary meaning of ‘amativeness'. Since the day the migrating wagon train had arrived at Independence Rock in the summer of 1846, she could have told him that. Indeed, she remembered, her discovery of the pleasures of the body had taken place earlier than that. Her sister Charity had come across her and Abel Tennant in flagrant passionate congress that day – but it had not been the first.

‘You found amativeness?' she asked. ‘In me, but not in my friend?'

‘Your friend perhaps prefers to give pleasure to others. That would explain her bump of benevolence. Or one might less charitably suggest that she does it for the profit it brings. Acquisitiveness. And she has an unwavering intention – firmness, do you see?'

‘You sum me up admirably,' said Carola, with a small sniff. ‘My mother would applaud you to the skies.'

‘And for me is it a case of taking pleasure in my work?' Fanny said. ‘And what was the other word – idealism?'

‘Ideality. It suggests a love of show and splendour. Combined with acquisitiveness, it would imply a life of some luxury. It might also hint at a lack of realism in your nature. Flights of fancy and a dangerous degree of confidence in your ability to realise your dreams.'

‘We make a good pair, then,' said Carola. ‘It seems we have between us quite enough qualities to ensure success in life.'

‘Perhaps so,' he nodded. ‘Although one might wish for a tad more practicality and caution.'

Matilda reappeared a few minutes later, her expression a mixture of enquiry and amusement. ‘All done?' she asked. ‘Your characters thoroughly explained?'

‘They were excellent subjects,' Jeremy claimed. ‘A great boon for my studies.'

‘And all's well with the world,' said the woman with a gesture of swiping her hands together. ‘The chicken feathers will do nicely for filling the chairseats,' she told her man.

‘No substitute for horsehair, in my opinion,' he said seriously. ‘Feathers are strictly for bed mattresses.'

A final snack of cheese with dried plums ended the day, and the four of them went quietly into their rooms for the night. Outside, Fanny could hear Hugo giving sporadic mournful
woofs
. ‘He feels abandoned,' she sighed. ‘And he has had little to eat all day.'

‘That head-reading business is tosh,' said Carola in a low voice. ‘Little wonder it is received with mockery.'

‘Seductive, though, to be told one's own qualities with such assurance.' Fanny understood that she had enjoyed the process rather more than had her friend. ‘I should think there might be money to be made by it, approached in the right way.'

‘I fear not. There is no use in it, you see, for the ordinary man. Rather the contrary, in fact, if he is told his nature is full of greed and obstinacy. It is hardly a revelation worth paying for.'

‘Greed and obstinacy – you have transposed acquisitiveness and firmness into character flaws,' Fanny observed.

‘And you, my dear, are a lustful dreamer with a good memory.'

‘I am persuaded by your assessment after all – it is nothing but tosh,' laughed Fanny. ‘And to think we believed he wanted us for our bodies!'

‘That was his little jest. He knew full well what we expected. He is a disappointed man, who gets his thrills by teasing. I fancy he mourns the old country and its books more than he admits.'

‘We must take care to find other lodgings on our return. I could not abide a second night spent here.' Carola spoke feelingly, and Fanny wondered at the strength of her animosity. Then she recalled how enraged and offended she had been herself. She had been prepared to resist, or so she hoped. And yet, the man's exploring fingers on her skull had created an agreeable sensation, and the attention to her character not unwelcome.

‘It could have been very much worse,' she murmured. ‘And tomorrow we will be with my family.' The prospect sent her insides quivering with an anticipation that carried more than a thread of apprehension.

They left early and veered in the direction of the morning sun, following a roadway that led upwards towards distant mountains. The Collins family had settled in a spot on a plain between the Willamette river and the range of inhospitable peaks further inland. Fanny had no difficulty in recalling the route, although she was struck by the quantity of new buildings erected since she last passed that way.

‘Matilda spoke truly when she said it was like being at the dawn of a new world,' she remarked. ‘The transformation is little short of miraculous.'