Feral Park (42 page)
Authors: Mark Dunn
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #British & Irish, #Historical, #Dramas & Plays, #Genre Fiction, #Drama & Plays, #Historical Fiction, #Irish, #Scottish
“2285! Will mankind still reside upon this planet in that distant year, Dr. Bosworthy?”
“Perhaps not. It is hard to imagine if there should be footprints upon this globe even one hundred years hence, but thirty-two shy of five hundred! My word! But let us be optimistic. We
must
believe that it will be a greatly improved planet and humankind a far more civilized race, or else I should despair for the future of our species.”
“Perhaps there will be no more war,” said Anna.
“And hunger abolished,” added Dr. Bosworthy.
“And no impediments to the heart even if both the lovers be women,” offered Miss Godby in a mumble that was, nonetheless, clearly discerned by both auditors.
“What a strange thing to say!” noted Dr. Bosworthy.
“She is in a stupor,” explained Anna in a slightly nervous voice.
“
In vino veritas
, my dear. Is there something about our Miss Godby and this impending marriage that I should know?”
Anna shook her head. “It is the delirium.”
Dr. Bosworthy said “ah” in a way that was not easily deciphered.
A moment later Anna heard her father’s footfall upon the stairs. He was followed by Gemma, carrying a tea tray. Said the father to the daughter, “Gemma has told me every thing. And now we have no maid to attend Miss Godby. The remaining guests are anxious and think that something is amiss, for half of the dinner party has quitted the terrace. What must be done?”
“Perhaps,” said Anna, “Gemma will agree to be her future cousin’s maid until the end of the confinement.”
“
Me
?” The tea tray slipped from Gemma’s hands and made a loud clatter upon the hard floor.
“There is no one else and nothing else that can be done. If someone does not stay with her, she will drink up my father’s entire store, and her liver will shrivel to the size of a pea.”
Gemma raised a further objection or two and then consented, for there really was no one else to do it. All agreed that there should be a Feral Park servants’ mutiny if even one of the maids employed by Mr. Peppercorn be asked to take on the oppressive task of caring for the refractory Miss Godby.
Henry Peppercorn instructed James, who had just come down with Mr. Maxwell, to go to Thistlethorn and get Gemma’s things.
“And find me another cot,” ordered Gemma, “which is not dripping with sick. I note that she has left her own cot unsullied yet has emptied herself unmercifully upon her servant’s. If she were not in a nearly insensible state I would thrash her with my tongue for embarrassing my family in such an appalling manner. I sometimes do not think that my cousin John has the sense of a housefly.”
“Acquit him, Gemma,” said Anna in a soft tone, “for Miss Godby is quite up against it. It is a hard time for each of us with all that is happening in the parish. You may be consigned to this dungeon for a few days, but think of all whose lives are steeped in misery of much longer duration. Which reminds me that I should speak to Mr. Nevers as soon as possible.” Anna was about to climb the stair when she and the others heard a very loud crash above their heads and coming from a little distance. It, in fact, sounded as if it had emanated from the rear terrace.
Anna and her father and Dr. Bosworthy and Mr. Maxwell rushed up the stairs and outside to find that the two tables which made up the centre quarters of the four that had been put together had collapsed inwardly and taken every thing that was upon them down into the freshly-created crevasse.
There was a bustle of activity all about it except for Miss Pints, who stood nearby in a state of frightened rigidity. Shod feet projected from beneath the clothed table and there was an argument in full blow between Mr. Nevers and Mr. Waitwaithe as to whether the owner of the feet who was fully trapped below should be pulled out at that instant or whether all of the dining rubble be removed first.
“It is Mr. Groves who is under there,” Mrs. Taptoe calmly informed the newcomers, and by the easy tone of her voice, Anna assumed that this meant that either he was not dead, or that she was too relaxed from claret to find much to be alarmed about.
The decision was made by the master of the house to remove the rubble first, and once this was done, the tables were pulled away by two footmen, and Mr. Groves was revealed, lying upon his cheek and clutching his head.
He was helped to his feet with difficulty, for he was unsteady. “Where are you injured, Mr. Groves?” asked Anna most solicitously.
“My arm and my head,” he answered, holding his wounded arm with one hand and his forehead with the hand that was attached to the wounded arm. The picture was of a man deep in thought.
When it was decided that Mr. Groves’ injuries were not sufficient to require the offices of a surgeon, Mr. Peppercorn instructed Mr. Maxwell and a footman to take him into the drawing-room and let him lie down. Mrs. Lacey was asked to prepare a poultice. After they had all gone, Anna’s father enquired as to how it was that the table had come to break apart.
Miss Drone volunteered the explanation: “Two conies appeared on the terrace and then hippity-hopped under the table but then did not emerge, and Mr. Groves volunteered to go under there and flush them out. Subsequently they
did
come out and hopped away, but Mr. Groves did not. Here I believe
you
should pick up the story, Mr. Waitwaithe.”
Colouring a little, Mr. Waitwaithe said, “It was then that I felt that one of my stockings was being pulled down and I thought for a moment that there was a third cony beneath the table which had not been accounted for and that it had taken to nibbling at the stocking, and so I wriggled my leg to release it, and then I felt a wetness there and suddenly thought that the animal was weeing upon my calf and so I shook the foot, perhaps with more violence than was necessary, and I must have kicked off a table leg or two, for it all came quickly crashing down.”
Mr. Nevers was laughing.
“My dear Mr. Nevers!” Miss Drone chastised her fellow guest. “It is no laughing matter that the dinner party has now been ruined.”
“I am not laughing at the table having collapsed, Miss Drone. I am laughing because there was no additional rabbit beneath the table. It was Mr. Groves who was pulling down the stocking, and Mr. Groves who was licking Mr. Waitwaithe’s calf and who subsequently caused the destruction.”
“Why would he wish to lick my calf?” asked Mr. Waitwaithe with such a furrowed brow that there should be no doubt that he genuinely did not know the answer.
“Because Mr. Groves is fixed upon the male calf and especially one so well turned as your own,” owned Mr. Nevers. “It is quite a fine calf, if I may say so myself.”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Waitwaithe with increased colouration. “I walk up a good bit of stairs between the offices and my lodgings.”
“Well, I cannot believe it!” announced Anna, now finding a pretext for speaking to Mr. Groves alone. “I will go and ask Mr. Groves about the matter myself.” As she turned to go, Anna, in after thought, said to her father, “Papa, the conies have taken over Feral Park, and if we are not to kill them, then they must be trapped and taken away. James has spoken to a man who can come next week to do this.”
“Do it I suppose we must,” said Mr. Peppercorn. Then with a sigh: “Goodbye my little feral friends.”
“Mr. Groves, do you require quiet and rest to repair yourself, or may I speak with you if I do so in a soft voice?”
Mr. Groves, who was stretched upon the sofa with a poultice wrapt about his head, agreed to let Anna speak so long as she kept her voice low, and besides, as luck would have it, the throbbing was subsiding a bit.
“Is it true that you licked at Mr. Waitwaithe’s exposed calf with your tongue as if it were a piece of hard sweetmeat?”
“Aye. It was there for the taking and I could not help myself, and if you come by my shop on Monday I will let you pick out a hat to compensate you for the destruction that resulted.”
“I do not wish a hat, Mr. Groves, merely an explana—have you any from Paris?”
“The new Parisian models come next month. If you prefer a French one, you may have a French one. I do sincerely apologise for my behaviour, Miss Peppercorn. I cannot offer an acceptable explanation but only this humble apology and you must take it and we must try to forget the whole thing. The dinner party was quite nice and we had finished all but the dessert, so that there actually was very little of the meal left to be spoilt.”
“You may make amends to me, Mr. Groves, simply by telling me every thing that you know about the Pickler House and what goes on there.”
“The Pickler House?”
“Aye. Why, for example, does Mrs. Dorchester, our cook, recoil at the mention of your society with Mrs. Pickler?”
“Perhaps because your Mrs. Dorchester thinks the house is still maintained as a brothel.”
“And
is
it still a brothel?”
“Is it important, Miss Peppercorn, for you to know this? Have you need of going there?”
“
I
have no need. But I am in agreement that Mr. Perry Alford should go thither because I have heard, as have his brothers, that Mrs. Pickler is able to heal a man in the throes of a destructive addiction. I have heard further that the Pickler cottage serves as a way-house and is, even as we speak, offering temporary shelter and protection to each of the fugitives who have escaped Newgate. How much of this is true, Mr. Groves, I do not know, for it seems all too fantastic upon first hearing.”
“Some is true and some is not. What is true is this: the house
is
used to protect those who are condemned to execution under the Bloody Code—all but the murderers and rapists and those who delight in maiming children and who enjoy frightening the infirmed by pretending to be dead spirits. What is also true is that all twelve of the fugitives are there at this very moment, but will soon, one by one, be sent away into the night and off to the next way-house and to the next liberal-hearted Mrs. Pickler who will help them. It is true, as well, that Mrs. Pickler performs the valuable service of reconstructing those who are near death from narcotics and spirits. It is a service that she has been performing with great success but without public exposure for a good many years. Now I will tell you what is
not
true: it is
not
a fact that Mrs. Pickler runs a brothel. There was a time when she did, but a good many years have passed since then, and during this intervening period she has been paying Constable Whitaker a quiet fee each month to be allowed to stay open as if the house were
still
being used for this purpose. You see, it is important for the constable to continue to believe what he has always believed so that he keeps himself away—in exchange for the payment—and does not come to poke and pry and discover its present more dangerous purpose. Where once Mrs. Pickler bought herself a protective license to sell women for the carnal pleasure of men, she now pays to keep the constable uninformed about its current most
worthy
function!”
“But Mr. Groves, what have you to do with the place or with Mrs. Pickler, and why did Mrs. Dorchester speak so ill of you?”
“I will tell you and you must acquit me.”
Anna nodded her consent to the request.
“I was once a regular visitor to the Pickler House during its former employment. Mrs. Dorchester does not know what I did there but it was nonetheless equal in self-defilement to what she imagines. I went not as participant but as observer of the proceedings through conveniently placed holes in its walls. For this privilege I paid Mrs. Pickler just as a man paid for congress with one of the prostitutes whom she employed there. I cannot explain it, just as I cannot explain my dangerous interest in Mr. Waitwaithe’s commendably muscular calf. But the former activity is all behind me now. I have spent my last session in the secret peeping rooms, and now I go to the Pickler House simply to bring hats and cast-off clothing and other necessary raiments for the fugitives. I do not understand why one of this new band found it necessary to break into Mr. Waitwaithe’s rooms to steal his clothes, but then I have been told that there is a man amongst them who is a thief of men’s habiliments, and was, in fact, convicted and condemned for stealing an embroidered handkerchief from an earl, and perhaps would have gotten away with the crime had he not been seized by a sneeze at an inconvenient moment. I hope that this clears things up for you, Miss Peppercorn, and that Mr. Alford will leave the Pickler House in good health and fully restored. I hope, as well, that this new dozen, will remain safe during their stay and will make their way in stealth from Payton Parish without capture, for it is a much larger group than ever has been secretly lodged at the house before.”
“I hope so too,” said Anna, feeling not even the most minute pulse of allegiance to the devisers of the Bloody Code and then shortly thereafter fancying herself a fully-fledged revolutionist!
In the Feral Park painting gallery Anna found Mr. Nevers studying a religious picture of Jesus delivering his Sermon on the Mount to a large crowd, which included prominently in the foreground a man without arms and legs.
Anna had never been successful in pinning down her feelings about the vicar. In some ways she found him most helpful to her subversive causes and she hoped that he might be enlisted fully in the new one, which she would erelong present to him. But in other ways she held him to be a furry little squirrel, self-serving and illiberal and always about the business of procuring his nuts. She wondered if he would ever do such a thing as go to the Pickler House as Mr. Groves was now wont to do in a like manifestation of Christian charity and compassion, and without gaining any thing by dividend to aggrandize himself except that his heart be rewarded with gratitude from those he succoured. Still, Mr. Nevers was not an
evil
man, nor even an unchristian man—no, far from it—but seemed merely to be one who had never been made to minister to others except in the specific ways required by his church office and only occasionally in the independent application of Jesus’ teachings under his own initiative.
Seeing Mr. Nevers in the gallery, Anna thought to herself that it was indeed a strange sort of winding down of the dinner party. Rather than the women drinking their tea in the drawing-room in customary postprandial sequestration from the men, and awaiting re-union with their male counterparts after the latter had taken their port and puffed their cigars, it was Mr. Groves who occupied the drawing-room all alone and with a poultice.
Through the window in the gallery, Anna noted the moonlit figures of Mr. Waitwaithe and Mr. Maxwell and Tripp the groom chasing conies upon the lawn to disperse them in merriment and Miss Pints applauding their efforts. Gemma was apparently still down in the wine cellar and—Anna had no doubt—regretting her decision to facilitate her cousin’s marriage to this troublingly recalcitrant woman of money and privilege and love of the grape to the point of hair-pulling vexation. Anna knew not where her father was, but suspected him to be somewhere in the vicinity of Georgiana Younge, who had been most quiet throughout dinner and hardly fixed her gaze on anyone but Anna’s father to such an extent that once Anna saw her force her soup spoon with thoughtless absence of mind directly into her cheek. Mrs. Taptoe and Miss Drone and Dr. Bosworthy were playing a card game of the doctor’s invention at one of the card tables that remained upright upon the terrace. The game involved two decks of cards and seemed very complicated, as far as Anna could discern from the window, requiring a lengthy recitation of the rules, which held Miss Drone fully captivated and left Mrs. Taptoe largely bored.
“I know this artist,” said Mr. Nevers, pointing to the painting of Jesus and his attentive flock. “When did the work come into your house?”
“Papa purchased it on our last trip to London when we went to see the Elgin Marbles at the British Museum. The visit inspired him to think that our own gallery should be expanded to display more than the customary family portraits. I am not one for religious paintings as a rule, although many of the Renaissance Madonna-and-Childs are striking, but I think what Papa and I love about this contemporary imagining of Jesus and his address is the vibrant use of colour and light. Attend how the shaft comes down from a break in the clouds not only to illuminate Christ’s head but to spill the light from Him onto all of those who have gathered to hear His sermon—including the man without arms and legs, whom one assumes is very soon to have himself restored to full limbs by a mere placement by Christ of holy hands upon him.”
“Your observation is perceptive, Miss Peppercorn, for the picture, no doubt, embodies the very wish of the artist himself. You see, the rendering of the man without limbs is a sort of self-portrait! Do you not know the man who painted it?”
“I am afraid that I do not. It is not signed? It puts me to mind of another painter without arms and legs who was raised with the Alford brothers. Could this be the very same?”
“I believe that it must be. Does the Alfords’ step-brother now go by the brush-name of Rolly?”
Anna nodded.
“Then you have a ‘Rolly’ upon your walls. What is more: you may soon have a Rolly in the flesh to meet. I have always been fond of the young man’s work on religious themes and so I have written to him to ask if he might stop in Payton Parish when he makes his next trip to take some of his paintings to a gallery where he shews in Weymouth. He has agreed to come hither within a fortnight so that I may buy something from his ‘Life of the Christ’ series for the vicarage.”
“Oh, I should like very much to meet him when he comes, for I have nothing but admiration for a man who paints so beautifully with only his mouth. It is astonishing, is it not, Mr. Nevers, all the blessings that are bestowed by our Maker upon us, which we may nurture and improve upon for the purpose of assisting and enriching the lives of others? Let us take, for an example, your talent in the pulpit. How often I have marveled at your turn of phrase, at your anecdotal condiments that so delectably season the meat of your sermons. Now here is Jesus, the nonpareil amongst those who preach the word of God, for is He not—for those who embrace the Trinity—God himself? But notice something important about the painting, Mr. Nevers: is He standing behind a dusty, cobwebbed pulpit? Is He squeezed into a tiny darkened parish church with parishioners equally wedged into crowded, darkened pews? No, Mr. Nevers, He is not! He is, in fact, standing on a grassy mount in the fresh, clear, bright, open air as He enumerates in full voice the blessed Beatitudes whilst the clouds part to illuminate Him with the light of Heavenly favour.”
“You may stop there, Miss Peppercorn,” said Mr. Nevers with a chuckle. “I am well aware of your present purpose.” (And now with a sigh.) “And so I will once again attempt an open-air service, and perhaps this time there will be no rain.”
“How did you know that it was my goal to ask you to take this Sunday’s service out-of-doors?”
“Because, Miss Peppercorn, several of your servants have already come up to me with the presumption that the thing was already decided. Therefore, I will do it so as not to disappoint them and so that they may have their picnics afterwards within the church garden. I ask only that next time you are seized with a new idea as to how I am to preach to my congregation, you will discuss it with me first and
then
tell all of your servants.”
“And I definitely shall, Mr. Nevers.”
“May I ask why it was so important that I should hold a service out-ofdoors on this of all possible warm-season Sunday mornings?”
“Because it was necessary for me to devise a way to bring Lieutenant Alford and Miss Henshawe together to afford him avenue to confess his undying devotion to her, and she to be permitted the opportunity of requiting. There really was no other way, since the odious Mrs. Quarrels and her equally odious son will not loosen the tether on any of the three miserable Misses Henshawe. By-the-bye, Mr. Nevers, are you aware that Easter Sunday falls on March 22 next year, which is the earliest possible date on the ecclesiastical calendar, and that it will not again occur on this calendrical day until the year 2285?”
“I am. And I am planning a Parish Paschal Pageant so that we may attend the day with even more than the usual adherence to the salvational significance of Christ’s resurrection.” Mr. Nevers seemed prepared to say something else when Gemma flew into the gallery, breathless and stained with wine, and begged assistance in tucking the intractable Miss Godby into bed.
“She threw the corkscrew at me. It well-nigh put out my eye. My good eye. She nearly made me completely blind.”
Down stairs in the cellar, Miss Godby was brought to a state of quietude and sedation by Anna and Gemma and Mr. Nevers, who sang her a hymn and then later warned Anna and Gemma that there would be no wedding if the daughter of Lord Godby did not improve her behaviour, for he was not going to abide her throwing things at him as she walked down the nuptial aisle.