The Penny Heart (14 page)

‘I suppose he takes care of my interests,’ I said gently.

‘To have to submit our plans to a glorified clerk – it is monstrous!’

I tried to quiet him, for his outburst was drawing attention from passers-by. ‘All will be well, Michael. And I, for one, am astonished at the value of the property.’

‘Yes,’ he said, taking my arm and leading me forward, ‘that was even better news than I expected. We shall live like royalty. And to make a start, my dear, where shall we dine?’

After a long sojourn at a tavern, I asked that by way of celebration, we might take a turn around the fair, telling Michael how Father had always railed against what he called ‘such heathen gatherings’. So off we battled through a hubbub of fair-goers, a young crowd, jostling and jesting. Mrs Croxon’s maid begged leave to go on an errand for lace, so soon we were alone, passing amongst cheapjacks crying up the sale of trashy goods, and stalls of ribbons and sweet-stuffs. I halted to watch a troop of children tumbling like monkeys, their faces painted and their jackets twinkling with glass-cut spangles. Above our heads a tightrope walker carried a wobbling cane across a rope strung from roof to roof. Twilight was gathering, and everywhere lamps were being lit, their crimson and green shades casting a lurid glow across eager faces. We entered a ramshackle hamlet of tents, the air thick with the scent of roasted chestnuts and hot sugar. For a price any wonder could be seen: a Tale of Blackbeard, the exhibition of a man-bear or a two-headed cow. I thought it marvellous, a resurrection of some older, harum-scarum age.

The largest crowd had gathered at a tent painted with symbols of stars and moons that advertised a Phantasm Show. I begged Michael we might see it, and so crept beneath a tent flap and blinked in the gloom, inhaling trampled grass and oil smoke. The show was being introduced by a haggard man in a black-ribboned hat, who promised monsters and phantoms that I did not for a moment believe he could conjure.

The tent was then made very dark, and the spectres of various great men and women raised: Charles I with his severed head, wicked Salome, and Anne Boleyn, to name a few. These were cleverly depicted, floating in the darkness above us, drawing gasps and screams from the crowd. Yet being as still as pictures I guessed they were only that, a series of paintings cunningly illuminated.

I was therefore unprepared for what came next. The most impregnable darkness fell, and a doleful clock tolled midnight. A red moon rose in the sky; a wind whistled mournfully. Before us stretched a forest of tangled grey trees, from which a flock of cruel-looking birds rose in flight and crossed the disc of the moon. From clouds of rolling mist a young woman appeared, pale and lovely, moving haltingly as she collected crimson apples and placed them in a basket on her arm. At the same time she sang a hauntingly slow song, made all the more unsettling by its being sung in the tantalising words of a foreign tongue.

With a collective gasp, the audience sighted a shape hiding by a distant tree; a grey figure crooked and monstrous, neither man nor woman. Slowly it scuttled closer and closer to the maiden. ‘Look out!’ called a fellow close by us. The woman sitting beside me whimpered and pulled her apron up to her face as the figure drew ever nearer. Still the pale young woman stood transfixed by the moon, an angelic glow around her. Step by step the horrid shape grew larger and closer. A sudden thunderclap crashed, and everyone in the place jumped in their seats.

‘It’s behind you!’ bellowed desperate voices in the dark. White lightning flashed, revealing the horrid pursuer at last falling upon its victim, enveloping her in its smothering horror. A shrill female scream rang out as if uttering a death cry. For a second the air flashed red like blood, then we were once again breathing hard in the blackness.

I found I was grasping Michael’s sleeve, and quickly withdrew my hand. The haggard mountebank returned in a pool of light, and in his closing speech declaimed the mysteries of phantasms, concluding that we all, believers in the supernatural or not, would one day witness one truly terrible spectacle – our final fate. At this he doffed his hat, and that self-same moment, a light beam shone above the showman, revealing a representation of skeletal Death hovering above him, aiming his scythe at the speaker’s bare head. Next moment the lights were dimmed as a gunshot sounded, again sending everyone starting in a paroxysm from their seats.

‘What a hideous spectacle. It was enough to put the fear of hell into a fellow,’ complained Michael as we moved outside.

‘I thought it quite remarkable,’ I said, still breathless from the delicious fear it had provoked. ‘Do you not like to be frightened?’ I laughed. ‘It was only done with lamps of course, shone through something like a
camera obscura
, I should imagine.’

‘A what? How would you know of such contrivances?’

‘You forget, my father was a printer and something of an artist. The best artists use light boxes to sketch their outlines.’

He looked quizzically at me. ‘I do hope you are not going to be tiresome, Grace, and get it in your head to know the answer to everything.’

I mumbled an apology and followed him, unsure why I had been chastised.

‘Do you wish to leave?’ I asked gently.

‘In a moment.’

I had just then spotted a gingerbread stall, and in hope of taking home a souvenir of our day, steered Michael towards it. A huddle of young people had gathered, laughing good-humouredly at the saucy mottoes on the fairings. I asked Michael if we might make a lovers’ exchange, but he had spied a nearby ale bench.

‘Choose something. I need a drink,’ he said, heading away. Alone, I chose from the wondrous array of gingerbread, cast into likenesses of carriages and ships, and satirical figures of admirals and kings. ‘I shall take a gilded husband,’ I said to the stallholder, and paid my own shilling. My fairing was a cavalier of a fellow, with long curling hair and a knee-length patterned coat.

‘Shall we go?’ Michael came up beside me, beer on his breath.

‘Yes,’ I said merrily. ‘Look. My gingerbread husband. Will you take a wife?’

He glanced morosely at the tray of gilded ladies. I suppose to his eyes they were grotesques, in their wide skirts and cross-laced stomachers.

‘I’ve already purchased some refreshment for the journey home,’ he announced. ‘And that hoyden at the ale tent tricked me out of two shillings. This place is a den of thieves.’

Back in the carriage I removed my gloves to inspect the gilded figure. It was a piece of gimcrackery of course, but it had a country charm to it. As I did so, a quaint saying echoed in my mind, that ‘the gilding is soon rubbed off the gingerbread’. It seemed that exactly such disillusionment had begun for me that day. I had noticed certain proofs of Michael’s character that I did not much care for. Naturally, I was already acquainted with the Croxons’ enthusiasm for what the Brabantists would have called Mammon, so his enthusiasm for my inheritance was not unexpected. But his flare of temper when I made an intelligent observation on the magic lantern was plainly unjust. And finally, there was another matter, one that I decided to test at once.

I rested my bare hand on my lap, remembering how John Francis and I had used to steal secret caresses. Yet for long moments my hand lay unsought, even though our chaperone had chosen to ride outside with the driver.

‘Michael. Are you happy?’ I asked at last, knowing I might again be called tiresome, but willing to take the risk.

‘How could I not be?’ He took a long swig of ale, his gaze fixed on the window.

My hand continued stiff and empty on my lap.

‘I should say, are you happy with me?’ I asked steadily. That at least sent a shadow of alarm across his features. Seizing my hand he raised it and kissed it, in a smart, dry manner. ‘Grace, you are all I could ever want in a wife.’ His voice was charmingly smooth but undoubtedly strained.

‘Am I? Truly what you – want?’

He pulled a mocking sort of face as if I must be joking. Then my husband-to-be squeezed my hand and made a confession of sorts. It was gloomy in the carriage, but I could see him watching me intently. ‘You doubt me, Grace. I hear it in your voice. I am not surprised. It is best you know the worst. The fact is I suffer from a species of melancholy.’ He sighed heavily. ‘My moods can be horribly capricious. Just then at the fair, that low creature disgusted me with her wretched trick.’ His hand in mine felt suddenly heated. ‘No, it is more than that. For some years now, I have existed in a kind of low and desponding situation, an indifference to my own life or death. I cannot expect you to understand, but perhaps, as a woman of sentiment, you might sympathise? My parents believe I need a change of circumstances, a project, and most of all, a good wife.’

I considered this, then asked, ‘And you? Do you want those things?’

He lifted his head and addressed me directly, his fine soulful eyes shining fixedly into mine.

‘I do, Grace. I need you. Don’t disappoint me, please. I have been so – miserable. And now— I see hope.’

At last he leaned forward and kissed me on the lips. So this was the answer, I told myself. I had wondered at his father’s hints of past troubles, and now he had told me, frankly and openly, that he suffered. I embraced him in return. I needed him, too. And I was flattered too, for which good woman would not wish to rescue a handsome and sensitive man?

10

Greaves to Delafosse Hall

September 1792

~ To Make A Bride Cake ~

Take four pounds of fine flour, four pounds of butter, two pounds of loaf sugar; add a quarter ounce of mace and the same of nutmegs. To every pound add eight eggs. Pick and dry four pounds of currants, blanch a pound of sweet almonds, a pound of citron, a pound of candied orange, the same of candied lemon, half a pint of brandy. Work the butter to a cream with your hand, then beat in your sugar a quarter of an hour. Beat the egg whites to a strong froth and mix in, then your flour and mace and nutmeg, keeping beating it well till your oven is ready, put in your brandy and currants and almonds. Tie three sheets of paper around the bottom of your hoop, rub well with butter and put your cake in. Lay your sweetmeats in three lays with cake betwixt every lay. It will take three hours baking.

The Experienced English Housekeeper, Mrs Raffald, 1772

My wedding plans took on a vital life of their own: money was laid out, our new home secured, and the ceremony arranged by the Croxons. I knew I should have felt unalloyed joy, but instead a sick apprehension struck me in my moments of leisure. Why are you not happy, you fool, I chided myself, when you are leaving Wood Street at last? You must remember that no one on earth could make you more wretched than Father.

The day arrived, and with it the most irrevocable step of my life. As Michael and I walked arm-in-arm to the carriage, I caught a glimpse of the two of us in a pier glass in the Croxons’ hallway. Michael, absorbed in inward thoughts, appeared as pallid and nervous as any groom of tradition, though infinitely more fashionable in his ivory coat, his hair artfully tousled. I stooped beside him in my over-frilled gown and ridiculous feathers. Instead of wearing my beloved crucifix, I wore a cameo lent to me by Mrs Croxon, who thought my lengthy mourning unhealthy. In secret however, I wore the crucifix sewn into my stays, a comfort against my heart.

The old saying that every lass is a beauty on her wedding day had not come true for me. My nervous rash had cruelly spread, erupting in a scattering of tiny pimples. And my wavy brown hair did not, as Mrs Croxon’s maid had promised, look as lovely as a goddess’s; only rather silly, in a high mass of hot-ironed curls. From the midst of all my fine lace and feathers, I saw the tautness of great strain reflected back at me.

As for the ceremony, I made the responses in a whisper, glad to have my back towards the eyes of the congregation. There had been rumours of objections to my Dissenting creed, so I held my breath as the parson asked if anyone knew of an impediment to our marriage and was met with silence. When he spoke of how a man must cleave unto his wife as one flesh, I blushed at the thought of our wedding night. I will make him love me, I swore to myself, flexing my hand to admire the gold ring that glowed hopefully on my finger.

After the service, we crowded into the vestry and signed our names in the Parish Book: mine for the last time, Miss Grace Moore. Michael signed his name swiftly, almost scribbling it, then lifted his head and cast a sober glance towards his father, who smiled benevolently in return.