Ace, King, Knave (44 page)

Sophia’s flowers are overdue, and now she has fainted.

Anything more precise than ‘overdue’ is beyond her unless she first consults her diary. Since the first faint stainings at the age of fifteen, her visitations have been irregular. She lives resigned to this inconvenience, believing it connected in some way with her weakness, a deficiency of one kind balanced by a superfluity of another: in her bodily make-up, anything to do with vessels and liquids can be relied upon to go wrong. As Dr Brunt told Mama so long ago, such difficulties are exacerbated by anxiety and of late Sophia has been nothing if not anxious.

She runs her hands down the swell of flesh at the base of her stays. She will leave off tight lacing, if it is so. Surely it is
not
so? Yet as she sits, folded in upon herself, it seems that minute by minute an indefinable change comes upon her, a change so subtle that no figure of speech could convey its nature. There are no words for this consciousness, which cannot even be located; all she knows is that, until very recently, her bodily sensations were otherwise.

Perhaps, then, it
is
so.

At once her mind swarms. Edmund, a father: how she would once have welcomed this! How she might have blushed, informing him ―!

There they are, all three of them, afloat upon the flaming surface of the Statue Lake. The little boy, clapping and crowing, is tenderly supported upon his mama’s knee. Mama holds up her head and looks about her with zest, blithe as a milkmaid in this fresh access of married happiness. Papa, bound to wife and child by the silken ropes of affection, rows with practised control towards the jetty and every so often fixes his black eyes, full of longing, gratitude,
desire
, upon the woman who has given him this precious jewel: a son.

Perhaps he has other sons.

The child’s busy hands, the seething glitter of sun upon waves and Edmund’s languishing, subjugated gaze vanish like a soap-bubble that, wavering prettily here and there, is drawn into a candle flame and so comes to grief.

*

It is dusk. Sophia stands at her chamber window, watching the inhabitants of that other world which is so strange to her, so familiar to
him.
This street is not reliably lit: flickers of torchlight show where an occasional passer-by has hired a link-boy, but most of those below either have no need of light or prefer not to be seen too clearly.

Across the way another woman stands in a window much like hers, but where Sophia is concealed by darkness, the window opposite is illuminated by a well-trimmed lamp. Its occupant continually lets down her curls, brushes them and fastens them up again. She is a slovenly
coiffeuse
, but Sophia understands the artifice: as a means of displaying her hair, and suggesting the intimacies of the bedchamber, it could scarcely be bettered. When bored with this occupation, the woman heaves up the sash, leans out and scouts the pavement, occasionally greeting some person she recognises below. Withdrawing, she seems to lose interest in her hair and grows almost as motionless as Sophia herself, a still life whose frame is the window. Sophia has never before seen this woman, who appears to exist only by night.

How different from her imaginings of married life in the capital, and how strange to think that Hetty was in Town only a few months earlier, staying with wealthy friends. What a delightful picture she painted! Even in May the city was abuzz, she wrote, with everything that could amuse and edify. Mr Garrick, returned from his travels, was once more in command at Drury Lane and Londoners looked forward eagerly to new productions. Hetty danced at balls, splendid in French silk; wearing her warmest pelisse, she attended a musical service at the Foundling Hospital. When not visiting or engaged in some party of pleasure (which pastimes seemed, to the dazzled Sophia, to fill up Hetty’s every hour) she found entertainment in reading those same memoirs of Mr Psalmanazar which her husband condemns as meretricious.
Imagine
, Sophia remembers her writing,
the intellectual labour required to invent an entire language, alphabet and all! Had he been honest, what might he not have achieved?
Sophia agreed: it was astounding that one so capable should have thrown away his brilliance upon the construction of a sham, which, directly it was known, must bring him into contempt.

Her opinion has altered since then. She believes there are men whose souls compel them to deceit, whose genius finds its fullest flowering in the elaborate workings of betrayal.

Instead of watching a slut comb her hair, Sophia should be exploring the waxworks and the Tower, dancing at Mrs Cornelys’s house and perhaps hearing the Mozart boy and his sister. She should be patronising public lectures, attending plays and operas, reading fashionable memoirs, visiting respectable families. In short, moving in good society.

Is that the front door? Mrs Launey, returned home to explain herself at last? But no, the noise must have come from a neighbouring house, for a silhouette now detaches itself from the pavement on Sophia’s side and crosses towards the building opposite. The woman at once bends to throw up the sash, but Sophia, straining her eyes, can distinguish nothing more than a patch of shade. It flits a few more yards and dissolves, swallowed up into the gloom.

*

‘Am I to understand that Mrs Launey and Titus have run off together?’

Her own lamps are now lit, so that Fan and Eliza throw goblin shadows on the chamber walls. Predictably, Eliza fails to conceal a smirk at the notion of Mrs Launey’s absconding with the boy. The maids, thinks Sophia, are a study in contrasts. When she first came here, she thought them much the same, a misapprehension which it pains her to remember. She adds, ‘I was not aware that I had implied any indecency,’ but Eliza’s expression does not change. The girl is an imbecile.

‘What do you think, Fan?’ she demands, despairing of rational discourse with Eliza. ‘Could they be in league?’

The maid looks doubtful. ‘They were never thick with one another.’

‘Then why should both of them leave? Is anything missing downstairs?’

‘Not as we can see, Madam.’

‘Can see? You mean you haven’t searched?’

‘For what, Madam? And it’s poor work searching at night.’

She has a point. Sophia rubs her eyes, wishing she had gone to bed when Fan first suggested it: she would dearly like to sink down onto the closet table, pillow her head on her arms and sleep. ‘Did Titus ever talk of running away?’

‘Never.’

‘What about the man who came here? Could Titus be in league with him?’

‘Oh, no, Madam.’ Fan is more emphatic on this head than any other. ‘He was frightened of him. I noticed it particularly.’

Yet fear means nothing, Sophia realises: one scarcely imagines criminal association to be motivated purely by affection. Still, Titus seldom leaves the house. There seems no reason to think him connected with that brute: her mind clutched at an idea, that was all.

‘He’s cut up with the master leaving,’ Eliza says.

‘We do not know that the master has left.’

To this both maids return a perfect silence. It is a disagreeable moment, broken by Fan’s saying, ‘Perhaps, Madam, I might bring you Mrs Launey’s book.’

‘Help her find it, Eliza.’ Not that there should be much finding involved, but it is imperative to get Eliza out of the way, Sophia realises, before she succumbs to overwhelming temptation and administers to that face, glistening with prurient excitement, a good sharp slap.

Alone, Sophia gives herself over to wild imaginings. Perhaps Fan and Eliza are even now packing their boxes and at a signal from the street, a soft whistle, a pebble on the attic window, they will slip out of the house and rejoin their master, leaving only the deserted wife to drift about the place, a living ghost.

Some time later Fan returns alone to announce that the book is gone from its usual place.

‘Did you look in her chamber?’

‘Yes, Madam. She’s taken her things.’

So they have seen the last of Mrs Launey. Evidently Edmund was not the only one with something to hide, Sophia muses with growing bitterness: since the creature has taken pains to cover her tracks, doubtless she levied duties on their every joint of mutton, on their candles, flour, butter, coals. Now she has sniffed the air and found a taint. The household is going off and the stink will be unmerciful, so away scuttles Mrs Launey, intent on finding another pantry to pillage.

‘She’s a wicked, disloyal, dishonest woman,’ Sophia complains. The words seem inadequate even to her; she wonders what they call Mrs Launey downstairs, where language is freer. ‘Didn’t you notice she was lining her pocket?’

‘Maids can’t question the cook’s doings.’ Fan’s mouth has taken an obstinate little turn. Of course, Sophia thinks, servants detest tale-bearing. Had Launey not deserted, then Fan, decent as she is, would scarcely have said so much. ‘But it’s my opinion, Madam – if you won’t think it impertinent in me ―’

Sophia braces herself. ‘Yes?’

Fan lowers her eyes. ‘The thing is – if you will permit – it’s my belief that Mrs Launey couldn’t have known the master would be away.’ She clears her throat: a tiny, discreet sound.

‘That must be obvious, surely,’ Sophia replies. ‘When Mrs Launey left, Edmund was still here. I don’t understand the application of your remark ―’ and then she does understand, and stops dead. Fan means there will be gossip: it will be whispered that a tender understanding existed between Edmund and a woman with the shape, complexion and perspiring wetness of a boiled beetroot. Her husband and Peg Launey! And Fan, if you please, talks not of knowledge to the contrary but of
belief
! Evidently some shred of wifely pride remains in Sophia despite the humiliations piled upon her by Edmund, for Fan’s hint, though kindly meant, stings like vinegar.

Sophia’s head bows in misery as she blames herself: I should have gone into everything, no matter what he said. It was my business to go into it.

But Edmund had insisted that things were already upon a well-established footing, an arrangement set up during those years when there was no such person as Mrs Zedland. Looking back, she realises that each time she attempted to investigate the servants’ doings, he at once moved to thwart her: you have not the experience, they know their duties very well without you. ‘But they must at least answer to me,’ she protested, to which he replied, ‘And so they do! What more could you wish?’

‘The house has never suited me,’ she says aloud. ‘I should prefer another.’

‘I’m sure he’ll release you, Madam, if you don’t dispute the remainder.’

Sophia can make nothing of this information, delivered in a manner so respectful as to rule out any sly reference to Edmund. Before she can request clarification, Fan cries out, ‘Beg pardon, Madam. I forgot my instructions.’

‘Instructions?’

‘Mr Zedland’s. Your sentiments, you know, on the subject of,’ Fan’s voice lowers as if to utter some unavoidable indecency, ‘renting.’

‘What
can
you mean?’ Sophia exclaims. ‘What sentiments?’

‘The master said,’ the maid falters, ‘we were never to speak of it. That you considered it – vulgar.’

‘But some of the best families rent for the Season.’

Fan casts down her eyes like a saint in a painting. Hers is a very speaking sort of silence: to misinterpret it, one would have to be blind as well as deaf.

‘Let us understand one another,’ Sophia says at last. ‘You, and the other servants, were told by Mr Zedland that on no account was the tenancy to be mentioned in my presence, and that he wished the house always to be spoken of as belonging to him.’

‘Yes, Madam.’

‘But it does not.’

This time the answer is longer in coming. ‘No–o,’ Fan says, as if only now realising the significance of her own words. Raising her head, she gazes, helpless, at Sophia. ‘It belongs to Mr Moore.’

Sophia gazes back, watching Fan’s pretty mouth compress to a bloodless incision. She forces herself to take deep and regular breaths, imposing a control she does not feel. This must be how soldiers face fire and shot, she thinks: one keeps putting one leg in front of the other, though suffering unspeakably from anticipation, until the last unlucky step.
Then
one fathoms the depths in an instant.

‘So we’re the tenants of this – Mr Moore. And who may he be?’

‘He owns all these houses, Madam. He built the street.’

‘A builder and speculator, then.’

‘Madam, we believed you knew, we did indeed ―’

The girl shakes and weeps. Sophia pictures the scene: the candour and good humour with which the master of the house explained his wife’s little whims. O, the tenderness of his regard for her! The pain he suffered if her wishes were crossed in the slightest! His earnest desire that the servants should do everything necessary to her happiness, and of course the eyes, the eyes speaking more than all of this together. What woman could fail to envy his wife?

She wonders that he did not, after all, ruin Fan. Had he given himself over to the work of seduction he must surely have met with success but perhaps, thinks Sophia, it suited him not to foul his nest at home. He had, in any case, interests elsewhere.

‘
You
are not to blame,’ she says now, pitying the girl’s mottled cheeks – for Fan is like herself, an ugly weeper. ‘When you said someone would release me, I take it you meant Mr Moore. Are you acquainted with him?’

‘He put us in here. First me, then Eliza and Mrs Launey.’

‘Am I to understand that you came with the house, like the chairs?’

‘Mr Moore’s business is with people coming to town at short notice. He prefers to have his own servants in place, says things are better looked to. Though Launey’s wiped his eye this time.’

‘Have your wages been paid?’

‘His man brings them last day of the month.’ Fan dabs at her eyes. ‘It’s not often you find a master so open-handed.’

‘Indeed.’ Mama’s servants are paid after half a year, which at least discourages them from vanishing into the night. ‘So, if I should leave this house, you’ll be turned off?’