Turning the Stones (15 page)

It is very difficult to accept that Johnny is not alive. It was he who led Eliza and me to the assembly rooms.

I had never been to such a gathering. Dandies surrounded us, their faces powdered as thick as frosting and rouged in a swathe from cheek to jawline as if a bear had raked them.
There were women who wore their robes cut so low they exposed bright nipples. Others had traced the veins beneath their pale décolletages with blue paint. It looked as though the branches of mouldering trees were growing out of their black hearts.

Blackamoors dressed antithetically in white satin rushed about extinguishing the lights and the show began with an ear-splitting clap of thunder made by Mr Paine’s machine. The noise was tremendous and the ladies in the hall screamed at every roll of thunder and flash of lightning. As the artificial storm raged, a naked girl sitting on a rock rose out of the floor of the stage and a master of ceremonies announced that any gentleman who was able to win the nymph with a kiss should be permitted to do what he liked with her. Save that the audience must be allowed to watch.

Why did Johnny bring his sister and me to such an indecent show? And where were the Waterland parents, you might ask? They had remained in Cheshire, I know that. They were supposed to accompany us to London, but the day before our departure half of the master’s guts fell out of his arse, as Abby put it. The mistress said she was obliged to tend to him. Yet now that I think on it, the cataclysms of Mr Waterland’s innards had become commonplace at Sedge Court and it was out of character for Mrs Waterland to stay by his side. Her usual style is to eschew the sickroom and, frankly, to eschew Mr Waterland altogether. Yet she insisted that Eliza and I must not delay and sent us off alone to London.

Eliza’s mission was to cultivate Mr Paine, or his money, rather. That is what Mrs Waterland told me. This was at a point when desperation was in the air at Sedge Court, but
still, the assignment was flawed at the outset. Eliza’s parents had never gone to the trouble of sending her to London before, not even for a season in the marriage market. I could not understand why they thought it worth the expense at this late stage. It seemed futile to task Eliza of all people with soliciting funds from Arthur Paine. He is as tight as an oyster and her powers of persuasion are flimsy at the best of times. If cash was to be extracted from Mr Paine, why couldn’t Johnny have performed the operation, since Mr Paine was of the opinion that the sun shone out of him. I wondered if there might be another plan hiding behind the ostensible one.

*

The wind is swinging around wildly at the water’s level and the buffeting alarms me. I press against the binnacle like a calf against its mother, suddenly conscious of the
Seal
’s frailty. How can such a slender boat possibly meet the demands of open seas? What if we should encounter a storm? It won’t be Arthur Paine’s false thunder and lightning. I think of the blue sparks that flew from the mouth of the nymph on the stage at the Soho assembly rooms. There was no shortage of volunteers bent on kissing her, but each time a man lowered his face to her, lightning crackled from her lips and defeated him. That was the ruse. No matter how determined was the swain, he could not grapple with the electric nymph.

The audience went mad for it and Mr Paine came to our table at the conclusion – I was sitting with Eliza and Johnny – looking pleased with himself. I can see him dabbing at his shiny face with a handkerchief as big as a flag.

Eliza shrieked, ‘Upon my soul, I was terrified by the lights and the noise!’ and Mr Paine said that it was all accomplished
by friction and the cooperation of vapours and electricity. He said the subject needed to be a woman. Apparently we are more atmospheric than men.

I asked him how he had manifested the sparks and he explained that the nymph’s rocky seat was insulated in such a way that an operator beneath the stage could charge her body with an electrical machine. Some other people arrived then to congratulate Mr Paine and Johnny on the show.

I turned away and, without thinking about it, picked up the jealousy glass that was sitting on the table in front of Eliza and raised it to my eye. I had forgotten about its trick angle. Instead of fixing on the orchestra as I intended, my gaze veered away and swam into a glittering haze that was the reflection of hundreds of candle flames, I realised, in the wall mirrors. All of a sudden, against this brazen background, a face shot up huge and unexpected. My fright was intense. I knew the horrible features captured in the lens. My blood ran cold at the sight.

*

In the gloom beyond our rucked-up wake, something has caught the captain’s attention and he has ordered the mast lamp to be extinguished. And now a vast shadow falls over the
Seal
. It is cast by a high cliff that makes a miniature of us. We have entered a sublime gorge, whose walls rise to misty heights and provide a funnel for the wind. Its eerie moan makes the hair stand up on the nape of my neck.

The captain says abruptly, ‘In fact we cannot stop to place you on to the wherry, madam, we are obliged to make haste. I will put you off as soon as I can.’

My heart leaps at this reprieve, although my gladness is compromised by the fear that we are being followed. My
straining eyes make out a blotch beyond our stern that might be another vessel, perhaps. In any case, I am relieved to feel the cutter surge.

The faster we go, the colder it becomes, and I cannot help the chatter of my teeth. That velvet scarf is gone. At the bottom of the harbour now, I suppose. It is the third covering I have lost. You see how my protection comes and goes. I doubt that this captain is moved by my plight – he is more likely to be irritated by my quaking and gasping – but he commands a canvas-covered hatch under the long sweep of the tiller to be opened. There is another larger hatch, I notice, cut into the foredeck, which is straddled by a heavy machine for handling cargo. The captain bellows at me to watch my head and he dispatches me below.

I climb down the steep companionway into a musty hold where space presses hard. The view forward discloses a figure poking at a cauldron on top of a stove. He looks up at my approach, his cropped hat nearly grazing a swaying clutch of game and cured haunches fastened to a beam overhead, and if he is surprised to see a sloven doused in seawater materialise in his domain, he gives no sign of it. He has a tufty beard like a goat’s whiskers and a stiff frock and his face is as creased as brown wrapping paper. With his wooden spoon he indicates a bunker. He is as close-mouthed as his master for he will not offer his name or any word at all. I take up a spot on the bunker, which is convenient for the warmth of the stove. I do not mind its film of coal dust. Under the restless light of lanterns that swing from the beams, I take in my surroundings. A strong smell of canvas, hemp and lard, with an undercurrent of night soil, carries from the cutter’s forward direction. I
glimpse swaying hammocks and bulky shapes which I take to be lockers. The remainder of the hold might be taken up by cargo if there were any.

The cook shuffles towards me. As he bends stiffly to lower on hinges a small table next to the bunker, I see, exposed by his tattered breeches, a shin and foot whose grotesque appearance tell of some ghastly mishap in the past. I dare say it is this impairment that has reduced him to a life below decks.

I ask what name the captain goes by, and he replies, ‘What need you care?’

He is right about that. The identity of the
Seal
’s master is peripheral to my principal concern, which is to stay on this cutter until it lands in France. I am beginning to think this objective might be accomplished if only the conditions continue to prevent the captain from offloading me. My gaze strays sternwards to a doorless after-cabin – the captain’s quarters, judging by papers, or charts, held fast in slats, and by some sort of instrument sitting in a gimbal on an economical table. A half-drawn curtain discloses the corner of a bed-place, and I turn away from the intimacy of that sight.

The tang of juniper cuts through the sweaty scent of stewing meat. The cook is grinding something in a tumbler.

Waves bang against the hull as loud as drumbeats. A faint vapour rises up from my drying petticoat.

The cook stirs sugar into the tumbler. As he passes me the toddy, the boat bucks violently. I cannot bring the drink to my lips. The lanterns squeak on their hooks and shadows swoop wildly around the hold. One of these shadows dives at me and I flinch and cry out. My hand flies to my mouth.

*

The squall has lost its force and my stomach has ceased its spasms, yet still I crouch at the rail. I am on deck in the lee of one of the
Seal
’s stolid little guns. Doubtless it has not escaped your attention that I do nothing but stoop and duck and cower. This probably says as much about my character as it does about my circumstances. I wish it were not so. I wish I were more admirable. I mean: I should like you to be proud of me and not because of my curly hair or my ability to dance a fetching minuet.

This is an uncomfortable sea, but the waves look beautiful. They prance under the moonlight like small white horses and every so often they join together in a long trail of spume. It reminds me of a stole of cream lace once favoured by Mrs Waterland. I see it surging around her like foam on the grey sea of her petticoat, while her hair billows from her forehead as though she were making her way dauntless against a headwind.

It is painful to think of Sedge Court and yet I cannot stop wandering its rooms in my mind. Every detail is still so present to me. But I know that the house is already beginning its process of retreat. With each day that passes, it will fade a little more until I can no longer claim it as my home even in my memory.

Mrs Waterland wore that cream stole on the evening that Eliza and I were summoned to entertain Barfield in the withdrawing room. When I was very young I thought it was called the
withdrawn
room, which seemed an apt description for an aloof space that was little used. The gelid colour scheme of garter-blue and chalk, the white marble fireplace, the lonesome islands of bandy-legged chairs and tables, the remote ceiling and its haughty chandelier, the acreage of parquet flooring on
which the heels of our footwear boomed emptily, these elements conspired to produce an effect of absolute froideur.

When Eliza and I arrived we found Mr Waterland deposed upon the pale sofa. He was sheathed in a drab waistcoat unfashionably long, an earthy velvet coat and an ancient brunette wig – the overall effect was rather like a broken bough in a winter landscape. He acknowledged Eliza’s curtsy with a cryptic clearing of the throat, while I kept my gaze low, which enabled him to overlook me.

Barfield was surmounted by a dingy wig with curls as fat as sausages stacked above each ear. The combination of his yellow suit, black facial patches and stockings of a weary green brought to mind a vegetable left overly long in the larder. He seemed determined to be a living lampoon of his class, all roaring opinion and pink-cheeked certitude. As soon as I was introduced as Eliza’s attendant, Barfield expounded on his view that waiting girls ought to be got up in livery like footmen, else we could hardly be told apart from the quality. He spread open his arms, his limp hands hanging at their ends like gloves drying on a line, and grouched, ‘I was at Shugborough this Christmas last and there was a minx of a lady’s maid decked out finer than her mistress. I came perilous close to kissing her and handing her in to supper!’ Then he cackled long and hard, giving us all an unimpeded view of the wet workings of his mouth. Johnny Waterland was lounging at the card table with an amused-at-a-distance mien. As usual, he wore his own hair, which he shook out of his eyes and smoothed a great deal as if he enjoyed demonstrating the freedom of it. I cannot remember what he was wearing. Something precious no doubt, and I am sure those
buckles that had impressed Eliza so would have been scintillating expensively on his fine shoes.

Mrs Waterland rose to the spinet and played a brisk, introductory arpeggio that was the signal for me to seize Eliza’s hand and lead her into a minuet. Imagine us, if you can, in the open ground between a card table and the sofa, with heads a-droop like a couple of cabbage roses buckling under the weight of their beauty, as we set off on our serpentine course. Our display was designed to impress Eliza upon Tobias Barfield and I was as tense as the high-pitched strings, excruciatingly attuned to the potential for a misstep. I thought it likely that Barfield’s family would boil itself in oil before it lowered to a girl sullied by mercantile connections, but Mrs Waterland was determined to contract her daughter with an estate, and no avenue should be left untried.

The brittle music hammered on and Eliza and I stepped and bowed and exchanged wistful over-the-shoulder glances, as a girl dancing a minuet should, as if to intimate that we were slightly sorry about the recent death by duel of our twin admirers – and it seemed that we might come through the thing unscathed. But inevitably, the effort of keeping time got the better of Eliza. She stumbled and dropped my hand, so that the shape of the dance was broken. She said, ‘Oh dear,’ in response to my glare and began to giggle. It was absurd to allow her clumsiness to annoy me so, since I could not care less if Barfield were impressed. Perhaps what upset me was that she was at liberty to make a hash of things, whereas I must be responsible for the success of our performance.

*

At last I feel able to come shakily to my feet – and narrowly miss being brained by the swinging boom. It is the captain who has hauled me by the arm out of its way. He is not interested in my gratitude. He roars instead at the second mate, Mr Robinson, who is at the tiller – ‘By almighty God, what kind of shoddy gybe was that, Robinson? The sail was not pulled in!’ – and at another hand, small, dark and cat-like – I think his name is Dubois – ‘You did not slacken the stays, you dolt! You might have cracked the topmast or the boom.’

The captain’s appearance is very stark, a black shape imprinted on the softer dark of the sky. Bareheaded, he stands like a pylon on legs wide apart, braced against the rise and fall of the boat. His hair dives around and about like a collection of innumerable sail ties, his coat swells as he takes a couple of strides towards Dubois, who is fumbling at the boom. The captain seizes Dubois by the front of his shirt and almost lifts him off his feet. ‘Drunk are you, by God?’ I hear him snarl. In a few brief hours I have already learned that the captain is partial to sarcasm, and so I suppose I expect him to wound the blundering hand with a cutting remark. But he does not. He has walked Dubois back towards the rail and then in one fluid movement he hoists him up and throws him overboard. There is a flat, dead sound of a splash. I cannot believe what I have just seen. ‘Break the mast,’ the captain shouts, ‘and this is what will happen to us all.’ He turns on his heel – and catches sight of me with mouth hanging open, appalled.