Ace, King, Knave (46 page)

‘I’m not accustomed to prowling about, peeping through windows.’

‘Who said anything about prowling? Lord, you don’t think it’s a secret, do you?’

Sophia stares.

‘It’s a gaming club, Mrs Zedland, open day and night. The shutters are left open on purpose.’

‘I shouldn’t care to enter such a place.’

‘They wouldn’t let you in. But they like people to look on, and admire.’ The woman holds out her cup to be refilled. ‘What’ll you do, then? You’ll have to shape yourself.’

The meaning of this last piece of Greek is clear enough. ‘I hardly think that’s your business,’ Sophia says.

‘You don’t know your own business yet. That’s what I’ve come to tell you, if you’ll hear. There’s not another woman in Ro― . . . in London, can tell you what I can.’

‘The question is, whether there’s any truth in it.’

‘That’s for you to find out. Your papa’ll help you, and your Mr Scrope. All I can do is lay information.’

‘Since you are so very –
informative
– I can only conclude you had a hand in it.’

‘No hand in anything to do with you. That was all in the country.’

‘But a part of the country that you know,’ Sophia insists. ‘You
are
from Somersetshire, are you not?’

‘I’m not from anywhere. Though we lived some time in Zed ―’

She breaks off. Sophia pounces: ‘On Mr Zedland’s property, you were about to say?’ For the first time the woman appears confused. ‘Did you, or did you not, live with my husband in the country?’

‘
Zedland
is the St Giles, Madam. The lingo, the cant. What you might call a slang term ―’

‘I should certainly call it a slang term.’

‘― for Somersetshire.’

Sophia is conscious of a superior power of analysis. ‘My husband’s name is Mr Somersetshire? Come, you can do better than that. You began to say that you lived with him in the country. Don’t deny it, I distinctly heard you.’

Betsy-Ann Blore bites her lip. ‘I’ll have to go back a long way. I want that agreed before I begin,’ she says, raising her hand, ‘agreed that you’ll hear me out and let me speak free.’

‘Very well. And
I
want it agreed that I don’t undertake to believe a word.’

‘I’ll need a flash of lightning, to bear me up.’ She sees Sophia once more at a loss. ‘A glass of gin, Madam. Just one will do my business.’

‘We haven’t ―’

‘There’s a stall at the end of the street, by the horse-trough.’

Sophia can no longer hold out against curiosity. She goes to the door and gives the necessary instructions to Fan.

‘Much appreciated,’ Miss Blore says. ‘And since you’ve been so handsome about it, I’ll tell you first the most important thing, and show how all this came about. Your husband’s name isn’t Zedland.’

‘I beg your pardon, but it is. I was married to Mr Edmund Zedland.’

The woman holds up a finger. ‘You agreed to let me speak. He went under the name of Zedland while travelling ― in Zedland.’

‘This is perfect gibberish.’

‘It is to you, Mrs Zedland, because you’re a daisy. You know what cant is, I suppose?’

‘I’ve read of it in the newspapers. A kind of secret language between felons, is it not?’

‘Well, in the cant, Somersetshire goes under the name of Zedland. Now, when a sharp moves off his own ward and goes where he isn’t known, he takes a name so that his brother sharps may avoid him, d’you see? Sharps playing sharps, that’s a poor show. You follow me?’

‘So far, yes.’

‘Well, his was Zedland. He said it was suited to sheep-shearing.’

Sophia always thought it an unusual name. More, she found it charmingly romantic and
Sophia Zedland
full of music, so much sweeter to the ear than
Hetty Letcher
. But even that sweetness, it seems, was illusory. With a pang she recalls the drunken young fool bubbled at Bath. It hangs together . . . she can no longer keep up her pretence of coolness, she must know all. ‘What’s his true name? Can you tell me?’

‘That I can swear to. I know his ma.’

Sophia trembles. ‘Not his father? He’s a natural son?’

‘Of a lord, it’s said. He’s Ned Hartry, son of Kitty Hartry, of the Cun ― of a house near Covent Garden.’

‘Hartry! I’ve heard that name.’

Betsy-Ann Blore looks doubtful. ‘He’d take good care you shouldn’t.’

‘Or seen it.
Hartry
. . .’ One of his papers, she is sure. But which? Had this person only called yesterday, before everything was reduced to ashes! She groans and puts her hands over her eyes, overwhelmed by the repeated shocks she has sustained: not only this crowning detail of Edmund’s duplicity but his flight, the destruction of the documents, the loss of the servants and the realisation that she is liable to be turned out of the house.

There is a knock at the door; Sophia straightens. Fan brings in a tray with two glasses on it, two jugs, lemons and sugar. She sets them down on a table near the fire, glancing as she does so toward Betsy-Ann Blore, as if to check she has not yet stolen anything. Sophia nods to indicate the girl may go.

‘Now
I’ll
stand bitch,’ says Betsy-Ann when they are alone, ‘and show you how it’s done.’

‘I shan’t have any.’

‘She’s brought you a glass.’

‘I’m aware of that, but I won’t drink gin.’

‘Gammon! It’s the best drink in the world, if you just put enough sugar and lemon to it.’

‘To mask the taste? Of the best drink?’

‘Aye, well,’ and the woman laughs at herself so that Sophia almost likes her, ‘I meant the most stiffening, only you have to swallow it first.’ She pours some gin into each glass, adds sugar and lemon and a splash of hot water and nods encouragingly towards Sophia.

The mixture is unspeakable. Sophia adds as much water again and ventures another sip: it is dismal as ever.

‘Now,’ says Betsy-Ann Blore after a greedy swig at her own glass, ‘shall I tell you his history?’

‘I’m not sure I wish to hear it.’

‘That’s not the spirit. If I’m to do you good, you
must
hear. Your Mr Zedland is the only son of Kitty Hartry, and heir to a fortune.’

‘His father acknowledges him, then?’

‘He may do, but I meant his mother’s fortune. She keeps her own establishment.’

‘Gaming?’

‘It’s a bawdy-house, Mrs Zedland.’

Hearing this, Sophia is somehow not as surprised as she ought to be, even as certain puzzling incongruities present themselves.

‘You’re thinking he’s too genteel? Kitty wanted him genteel. She sent him to school, and to the university. He went abroad, even, to pick up the manner.’

A poor kind of gentility, thinks Sophia; yet Edmund fooled her well enough, as long as he continued the effort. If nothing else, she owes her self-respect one last attempt to refute the tale. ‘Why should a reputable school admit the child of such a woman?’

Betsy-Ann Blore looks pityingly at her. ‘Depends who his papa is. There’s many a fine lord’s “nephew” there, from what I heard.’

‘Is that the case with my husband?’

‘Who knows?’ Betsy-Ann gives a shrug. ‘Kitty’s a shocking liar.’

So that is the explanation. Sophia’s husband is a statue of inferior make, given a high finish to deceive the undiscerning. He passed with her parents – also with herself – though she cannot for the life of her see why he should take the trouble.

‘What took him to Bath?’ A hateful possibility suggests itself. ‘Was it his health?’

‘O, no. He and Kitty fell out, on account of him springing one of her whores from the House.’

Sophia considers this in astonishment. ‘Do you mean he effected a rescue? Enabled her to live a virtuous ―’

‘As I said, Mrs Zedland, you’re a daisy. He set her up for his private use.’

‘So his mother lost an asset,’ says Sophia, to show she is not quite a daisy. She begins to comprehend the mentality of such people. One need not be especially clever, and certainly not well educated. The essential thing is to conduct one’s life as war: everything is permitted except compassion. ‘Was this girl so difficult to replace?’

‘Bless you, Madam, there’s no shortage of flesh in Romeville. The thing is, Kitty can’t bear to be crossed. She offered him the pick of her stock if he’d only give me up.’

Sophia gasps.

‘Yes,
me,
and he defied her.’ Betsy-Ann Blore’s eyes gleam with a mixture of pride and gin, but Sophia’s gasp is not for her. K. Hartry!
Kitty
Hartry, the brothel-keeper: now it comes to her, that terrible letter bent upon debauching and enslaving a young man already far gone in indulgence. Never could she have imagined that the writer might prove to be a female and a mother, and the recipient her own husband. Had the woman before her announced that her legs were carved of marble, and pulled up her gown to demonstrate the fact, it could not have run more contrary to Sophia’s notions of the world.

‘Kitty wasn’t having any,’ Betsy-Ann continues. ‘She cut off the funds sharpish and after a bit we found ourselves in Queer Street. He’d no notion of economy, or hog-grubbing as he called it, since he’d lived out of his ma’s purse, and I was nearly as bad, so he sold me to a friend of his, a Mr Shiner.’

‘Sold! You can’t sell a woman in England!’

This remark is received with an indulgent smile. ‘For the pleasure of scratching a certain itch he had, Sam Shiner settled Ned’s debts – most of ’em – and they cooked up a lie, that I’d been staked at cards and lost, and it was a debt of honour, and I had to go. So like a halfwit I went. But Kitty smelt a rat, and still wasn’t satisfied. So Ned toddled up to Bath, where he wasn’t known, and there he met with you. The papers he showed your Mr Gingumbob ―’

‘Mr Scrope ―’

‘― were counterfeit.’

‘But why? Why me?’

‘He thought marrying a gentry-mort would win over his ma. You had a bit of blunt, of course, and you fell in his way.’

The casual sting of this last statement compels Sophia to retort, ‘I was never acquainted with Mr Zedland at Bath. He called upon my father at home, and it was there that he asked for my hand in marriage. Our courtship was conducted in quite the usual fashion.’

‘I daresay. I wouldn’t know, myself, how it’s done among the gentry, only he said your people wanted you married.’

So Betsy-Ann Blore has indeed been told about the
weakness.
There is no private matter concerning his wife that Edmund has not sacrificed to this woman – whom he has also sacrificed, so little does he ―

Sophia has read of the choke-pear, a device in vogue among extortionists who lie in wait, overpower a victim, force the instrument into his mouth and expand it by turning a key. She feels at this moment as if just such a pear has been jammed into her throat, and her flesh is closing round it.

‘O, now!’ says Betsy-Ann Blore. That shrivelling pity: Sophia steels herself, swallows down the choke-pear and wipes her eyes on the heel of her hand. Her voice is almost steady as she says, ‘And then he picked up with you again.’

‘I didn’t know I’d been sold, then. D’you think I’d go back to him after that?’

How should Sophia have an opinion? A woman who consents to be won at cards, then returns to the man who gambled her away, knowing him married: what might that woman not accept?

‘You’ll want to talk the business over with your friends,’ Miss Blore suggests. ‘A lady like you always has friends.’

‘I shall tell them what you’ve told me, but you’ve given me no proof. Can you prove any of it? In such a way that it would persuade a court?’

‘Papers, you mean?’ Betsy-Ann Blore shakes her head. ‘The canting crew don’t live as you do. If a record’s kept of us, it mostly means we’re in Queer Street. And his ma won’t oblige me, not for a thousand pounds.’

‘Could
I
go to her?’ The woman raises her eyes to Heaven. Sophia ignores the rudeness. ‘The counterfeiter, then! Would
he
help us?’ It occurs to her in speaking that the counterfeiter and the mysterious Mr Shiner may be one and the same individual. The name Shiner appeared among the burnt papers, surely? Some sort of bill, or chit, in an exquisite, delicate script. ‘Could you talk with him – ask him?’

‘I don’t know him,’ says Miss Blore with an emphasis that betrays the lie. ‘And besides, it’s hanging.’ She looks straight at Sophia, holding the look, as she says, ‘The shover hangs with him.’

‘Who’s the ―’

‘The one that passes it on. Ned Hartry.’

The choke-pear, cold and obstructive, is now doing untold damage down in Sophia’s stomach. ‘It wasn’t
coining
,’ she protests. ‘They were papers – documents.’

‘It’s hanging right enough – not about to faint, are you?’

‘No.’

‘You look it.’ Miss Blore crosses to her and picks up the barely touched cup of gin. ‘Here. It’s cold, but coldness don’t signify.’

Meekly Sophia takes the cup and sips.

‘That’s medicine for you,’ says Miss Blore, going to the table and helping herself to another dose. ‘You don’t want him scragged, that’s only natural. Nor more do I.’

What does she want, then, if not vengeance? Is it possible that Sophia guessed right at first, and the creature is in league with Edmund – that all this visit is mere play-acting, with the aim of – of
what?
Some of what she says must be true: it tallies with Sophia’s own discoveries, and since those discoveries show Edmund in such a damning light, surely no emissary of his would be so stupid as even to hint at them? And now Miss Blore sits coolly holding her gin and saying, ‘He needn’t come within spitting distance, if you only keep ahold of things.’

‘Keep ahold?’

‘Don’t let your Mr Gingumbob get carried away. He’ll want to, they always do with the likes of Ned, but the threat’ll be enough.’

‘What threat?’

‘Of swinging, what else? Your man writes to him at his ma’s, setting out your terms, only he writes to Ned Hartry, not Mr Zedland. Once Ned sees that, you’ve got a rope round his neck and a stick between his teeth. Manage him right, and you’ll saddle and ride him.’

She has the certainty of Radley himself. And suppose, Sophia thinks, we go further and hang him? But she knows I should hate that. O, she’s managed it nicely!