Ace, King, Knave (25 page)

‘Don’t do that, Betsy. Let me see you.’

She reaches across to frig him and he pushes away the linen.

‘Up – all fours.’

He throws himself onto her so hard that the bed shakes. They are dog and bitch, furious. It takes all her strength not to be pressed into the mattress.

*

‘When did you last see him?’ he enquires later, sitting up in bed over a dish of chicken in white sauce.

‘A good while since. You wouldn’t know him, Ned.’

‘Is he so changed?’

‘Not to look at. But he’s not the man you remember.’

‘I should damn well think not. A resurrectionist!’ He makes a disgusted face. ‘Tell me, Betsy, does he ever ask about me?’

She laughs. ‘Why should he?

‘O, I don’t know – old companions.’

‘He hardly talks about anything, hardly comes home even ―’

‘All the better for us ―’

‘And when he does, he’s reeking.’

Ned feels for a chicken bone between his teeth. ‘How does he stand it, Betsy?’ he says in a voice of unfeigned wonder. ‘How
does
he stand it?’

Betsy-Ann holds out a spoonful to him. ‘You should ask how I stand it.’

‘That I already know.’ Ignoring the proffered spoon, he kisses down her neck to her left breast, little feathery kisses. ‘Under here beats the heart of a lion. And here,’ he tickles between her legs, ‘the cunt of a lioness. A biter.’

She wriggles at the feel of his hand. ‘For Sammy, I can tell you in a word – nantz.’

‘Was it nantz that lost him his finger?’

‘O, no! He hired a bully to squeeze the flats ―’

‘And did he?’

‘Like oranges.’

‘There you are, ‘ says Ned. ‘Exemplary. O my dear brethren in Christ, only see what a man may become by diligent labour. Would that we were all like this admirable fellow, able to wring gold from a bankrupt. But what of the finger, the moral of our sermon? Pray point out the finger.’

‘Morson – that was the bully – got fuddled and let a man go.’

‘Tsk, tsk! And what said the Honourable Samuel to this?’

‘Threw drink in his eyes.’

‘And got himself docked.’ Ned looks thoughtful. ‘Well. Could’ve been worse.’

‘For a gamester? For Christ’s sake, Ned!’

‘True, my dove. What became of Mister Morson?’

‘Took the King’s Shilling.’

‘But naturally. A butcher born.’

‘And dead and buried, I hope! Though it’s no good to Sam. Sometimes I think – I think I brought him bad luck.’ She flushes. Up to now she has never put such thoughts into words, even to herself; if ever her mind began wandering that way, she hauled on the reins and turned it aside.

Ned gives an incredulous laugh. ‘Nonsense, Mrs Betsy! You’re his
good
fortune.’

‘I once thought so.’

‘But not now? Isn’t he kind to you?’

‘Not like at first.’

‘Kind enough, though, hey?’ When she doesn’t answer, he takes her by the chin and tilts her face until she’s looking into his eyes. ‘He doesn’t beat you?’

‘He couldn’t if he tried. He’s sodden.’

‘With such an intolerable trade, he’d need to be. If a man may be so impertinent as to ask, why did he take it up? Even without a finger, I’d have thought Sammy could do better for himself.’

She sighs. ‘Harry lost one of the crew. He thought Sam’d be more trusty, see, on account of being with me.’

‘Any man of sense would.’

Ned strokes her cheek. She loves it when he talks like this: as if it matters what happens to Betsy-Ann Blore when Ned Hartry isn’t with her. Such sweetness never lasts. Soon he’ll be singing the old tune and Betsy-Ann left to get by, as usual.

‘Better Harry than a stranger,’ he’s saying now. ‘He’ll look out for Sam.’

‘Same way he looked out for me and Keshlie?’ Betsy-Ann flashes back. ‘I believe you know where we ended up.’

Ned frowns and stops stroking: a warning sign. Like others she’s known, he prefers to think of whores as ‘given up to love’, as
Harris’s
puts it, slaves to their passions, rather than to despair and Kitty Hartry.

In her early months in the seraglio she marvelled at this blindness: how could a fellow who paid for every caress fancy himself desirable and desired? Later, she came to understand that fancy was in the very air of the place, was its bricks and mortar. More happens inside the skull than between the legs: a man would favour an ugly whore over Venus herself if she had but the face or voice to fit her for some private play inside his head. If you only had that, imagination did the rest.

There were others, stony-hearted culls who knew themselves unwanted and took delight in it. Kitty kept a list of such, supplied them with innocents – real or fake – and charged extra. She had rules to protect her property: these men were only to be catered for in certain rooms, with concealed doors that could be pushed aside and a member of the household on spyhole duty. The spies – said Lina Burch, an old hand at virginity – were sometimes slow in opening the door. It was even whispered a man could pay to have them dismissed entirely.

Yet here is Ned, knowing all this and utterly out of tune with his mother, still so much her son as to talk, on occasion, of ‘love’ between a sixteen-year-old rose and a pox-ridden gargoyle of sixty.

She’d better watch out. Mustn’t cross him just now. She smiles and says, ‘Well, I met you there, so I can’t ever regret it, can I? For myself, I mean.’ She has to add those last words because of Keshlie: a regret if ever there was one.

‘A blessed chance for both of us,’ Ned says, lowering the tray of food to the carpet and lying back in bed. ‘Ride St George, there’s a dear girl.’

She does so, squeezing him inside her, holding him tight and snug. He loves the woman on top, says he can get in deeper that way.

He gives a curious sigh, half pleasure, half regret. ‘I wish I could do you good.’

‘But you do, Ned.’

‘Should you be in need – real need, but you understand that Betsy, you’re a woman of sense – send word by the blackbird. He’s mine entirely, can’t stomach
her.
’

‘And if I asked you to visit Sam?’

Ned cocks an eyebrow. It seems he’s not willing to descend quite so low as a resurrectionist’s ken.

Very well, let us enjoy what we have. She pulls away, slides against him, belly to belly, tongue in his mouth, in his ear, kissing his neck, stroking his chest, running her nails across his back. He’s smooth and slippery as satin and oh, the smell of him. Knave of Hearts. She moves more slowly, more deeply, then faster.
Chink, chink
, from a dish tangled in the bedclothes. Ned stares at her body, arched and thrust towards him. He reaches forward and takes her titties between finger and thumb, pinching, teasing. She rides harder, nearly there, there. Pleasure breaks over her and she clenches and bucks under the force of it. Ned’s hands tighten, expertly cruel.

*

During the hours of darkness they continue to talk, weaving in and out of sleep, touching, lying tumbled together and apart. Betsy-Ann is exhausted, hollowed out. She’d like to drop off entirely, the way she used to when in her own rooms – curl up, Ned curled round her, and wake with the two of them still folded together – but she’s reluctant to waste these last few precious hours.

‘You’re thrown away on that sot,’ says Ned towards morning. ‘You should get yourself another keeper.’

Is it an opening? She hesitates before she ventures, ‘Do you know a man who’d suit me?’

‘I know one who’d love the position but he’s no good to you, Betsy. There’s still a creditor or two. Until all that’s settled ―’ He presses a finger against her lips. After a moment he adds, as if to himself, ‘And what a figure he cut, tied to his ma’s purse-strings!’

She brushes his finger aside. ‘Is he better off tied to a wife?’

‘Of all ties that’s the most damnably . . . damnable. It’s a species of . . . of . . .’

He trails off. Betsy-Ann waits and waits but he seems to have fallen asleep. At last he mumbles, ‘It can be done.’

At least, that’s what she thinks he said, since her ears at once start up a stupid buzzing that means she can’t trust them. Or was it,
can’t be done
?

Perhaps she’s dreaming.

*

Daylight. She’s revelling in the luxuries of the toilet table – cold cream, toothpowder, rose cologne, comfits to freshen the breath, an ivory brush and comb – when he slaps down a sealed pack on its marble surface.

‘What’s this?’ she says, turning. ‘You’re going out?’

‘It’s eleven, my sweet. At the private tables your industrious sharp is already up and tearing at the prey while Ned, like an idle ’prentice, puts pleasure before duty.’ He laughs. ‘As would any rational man. No, I’m not going out.’

‘Are
we
playing, then?’

He bends to kiss the nape of her neck. ‘For love, for love.’

Just as well: her stash, even had she brought it, would hardly suffice.

‘Very well, but first help me lace my stays.’

‘We’d only have to unlace them again. You can play in
déshabille
, surely? All the better to distract me with – you know the rig.’

Betsy-Ann brushes her hair and sprinkles it with cologne while Ned fetches the little card table from the far side of the room, setting it at a comfortable distance from the fire.

‘Now,’ he says, unsealing the cards. ‘What shall it be?’

‘A queer thing,’ she observes, ‘a sharp playing a sharp.’

‘Novelty pleases. Come, your game.’

‘If we was in company, I’d say Loo.’

‘Loo? Where
have
you been, my dove?’

She blushes to think how near she was to wearing the little fawney with its inscription. ‘Don’t you remember we used to play sometimes? Catharine was fond of it, and Lina.’

‘And I rode a hobby-horse – during the last Age. I beg to inform you that no person of fashion sits down to Loo, these days. It is most extremely decayed.’

‘What, nobody at all?’

‘Perhaps an old squaretoes, here and there – your booby squire, dining off a boiled ox, bones and all, with a dried pippin.’ He begins to shuffle. ‘And as you observed, we are not enough for Loo. Here, ask any card.’

‘Pam.’

‘Always your darling.’

So he hasn’t quite forgotten. He is, indeed, always her darling.

No doubt about it, Ned does her credit. She watches him drop the cards like any cack-handed fool, then sweep them up, seemingly flustered.

‘Bravo,’ says Betsy-Ann, knowing not a picture will be out of place.

When she examines her hand, she laughs out loud: there is Pam’s melancholy face gazing off into the distance, surrounded by a gallery of kings and queens. When Ned sets himself to please, he excels. It is like their best times together: the joys gathered beneath Kitty’s nose, the more defiant days of Covent Garden.

He winks. ‘I wager a pretty fellow has come to see you.’

‘Pretty, aye, but he looks sulky.’

‘That’s because I’ve trained him to
my
hand,’ he says, with a lewd grin. ‘He’s accustomed to find his pleasure there and nowhere else.’

He holds up his own cards. For each of her queens he holds in reserve a king, and for each king, an ace. It is, she sees, calculated to a hair’s breadth. They abandon the game while Ned demonstrates the rig.

‘Naturally a man can’t beat Pam,’ he observes with a wink, ‘but once he’s gone ―’

‘Here, give them to me.’

She lays aside the important cards, inserts them and tries the shuffle, Ned instructing her: take a grip with your thumb, it’s this way not that way, hold the cards
so
and count off, one, two. She deals, asking Ned to hold up his cards. There he is: Pam, flanked by nobility and royalty. She checks her own, laying them on the table beside his. How could a flat, dealt these, understand that he held a losing hand? Not only would he be done to a turn, but he would surely blame himself.

‘My own work, you know,’ Ned says. ‘An entirely new thing.’

‘I never made up a rig in my life,’ says Betsy-Ann, delighted.

‘Am I good to you, my doe?’

She replies with a kiss.

‘You know, I suppose, that a man can bring anyone he wishes to this place?’

She shrugs.

‘But I don’t wish,’ Ned says. ‘I don’t frequent it. I came only for you.’

Betsy-Ann holds back the words, ‘That’s my eye,’ but it seems he reads them in her expression, for he adds, ‘Not a word of a lie, Mrs Betsy. I miss our old times.’

‘Then it’s a pity you ―’

Ned holds up a hand. ‘No need to remind me, I assure you.’ He looks melancholy, and all the handsomer for it: a little goose would kneel before him, embrace his thighs and plead,
take me back, take me back.
He would recognise his cue, would raise her, take her in an embrace and promise never to part – what bliss! And what a blunder, since he’s already warned her off, and since Ned pays court just as long as some part of the woman remains unconquered.

‘I’m kept on short measure, these days,’ he says. ‘She thinks to raise her value by rationing.’

So she knows him that well already. Betsy-Ann supposes he wants to go back to bed and wonders if she has time to chew one of the sweet comfits when she realises that’s not his game. ‘Do you know, Betsy, I’m still in hock to Ma?’

Is he asking her to settle the score with Haddock’s? She feels a twist of panic: she hasn’t the readies for that sort of kindness and besides, it’d make her a fool.

‘I thought your autem mort was a fortune?’

‘Up to a point.’

‘So you’re not ―’

‘The truth, Betsy, is that from being saddled with one female, I’ve gone to being saddled with two. At least Ma is a beauty, or was before she sported so much blubber. That’s more than you can say for Mrs Zed.’ He’s working up to something. Moving closer, he takes her hand between his. ‘I can get free of the pair of them, if you . . .’ He gives her the benefit of his most imploring expression. She guesses now what’s coming and pulls her hand free, clenches her fists to keep him off ―

‘I can get away, my darling, if only you’ll teach me the Spanish trick.’

Betsy-Ann looks down. He’s too fly to snatch at her again, but his hands are clenched.