The Penny Heart (20 page)

I nodded, though to me it tasted like sawdust. All evening the inn’s comforts were paraded before me until I felt stung with reproach. I longed for privacy, but Michael plunged into boisterous company: men whose glassy eyes slid instantly over my shoulder to something more interesting. Skirving, the architect, I disliked at once, and Dicey the engineer too, both of whom I feared might dupe us, so evasive were their answers to straightforward questions. When I asked them what crisis had occurred the previous evening, they of course looked at me like an idiot. As the evening progressed Michael went to drink beside them and I sat alone and resentful. At ten o’clock I tapped Michael’s shoulder and told him I wished to retire. He bade me a hearty goodnight, barely sparing me a glance from a hectic card game. So flushed and happy did he look that I wondered if he were performing an act to discomfit me. But no – he was merely being Michael, seeking respite from himself in drink and company. I wondered how I could endure the life that stretched before me. And I had paid – for that was how I perceived it – one thousand pounds to be treated like this.

Upstairs, in the inn’s chamber, I waited in a new chemise, my hair brushed loose to my waist and my person scented with cologne. Hour after hour, the noise of drunken toasts and laughter tormented my nerves. Finally, as an owl lamented from the rooftop, I faced the prospect that Michael would never, ever want me.

In the pallor before dawn our parlour door rattled; unsteady footsteps clumped about, and a chair tumbled to the floor. I rose and opened the middle door.

‘Michael?’ My anger was queasily mixed with relief. He had at least come back to our room. He tumbled onto the couch, falling instantly into drunken sleep. I returned to my bed, and for the first time, allowed myself to wail into my pillow. What in God’s name had I done?

So the pattern of our days began: when Michael was not sleeping late he went out, to the site at Whitelow, to ride with local hounds, to meet his companions at inns and assemblies. His manner of living, it seemed, was not to change a jot from his bachelor days. I, on the other hand, was not invited to the George again. I received no cards or invitations. I had braced myself for a visit from the Croxons, but even they did not come. ‘I have told them they owe me a bout of freedom,’ Michael said bitterly.

Earlby itself proved merely a few streets of stone cottages where the rough-hewn folk eyed my new costumes with disdain. There were a couple of mean shops and the weekly market, and the George, of course, but not even a Circulating Library, or Dissenters’ chapel.

I decided I must speak to my God alone, amongst the trees and birds of the estate, like a hermitess of old. Meanwhile, Michael congratulated himself, on being free from church and family and all such bothersome constraints. He ordered fashionable coats and hats from tailors in York. ‘I can tell a great deal from the cut of a man’s coat,’ he lectured me. ‘One day I’ll teach you about style, Grace.’ He found a barber who clipped his hair in the fashionable styles of Titus and then of Brutus. He claimed expertise in horseflesh too, purchasing a fine black hunter named Dancer, and talking much of the carriage we must buy, judging our old one too shabby. The pity of it was, that still I was drawn to him and longed for the physical love that I understood crowned a true marriage. In a good temper, he was light-hearted and bestowed precious smiles on me. I discovered that love is not always benign; but humiliating and cruel.

I slept alone in the chamber I had hoped would be a shrine to our marriage vows. On the nights when Michael slept at home, when he was not at the inn or with his companions, he chose a room not even close to mine; a plain closet like a manservant’s room near the long gallery, with bare walls and a narrow bed.

I began to dread retiring to that room. A series of uneasy nights led to one much worse than the rest. I lay sleepless with my bed curtains open, my candle extinguished; unhappy visions appearing from my fancy in the darkness. Each time my eyes grew heavy I was tugged back awake by the Hall’s untimely groans and creaks. Sometime after the church bell rang three o’clock I heard distant footsteps, a door pulled to, and a movement on the stairs. I knew those footfalls were not imaginary. The wandering old woman of Nan’s tale sprang to mind. Could a spirit haunt the spot where its misery kept it chained? My imagination unleashed, I pictured a claw of a hand outside my door, pawing for the latch. Was that a moonlit chair by my window or a motionless watcher with a pale oval of a face?

At last, annoyed by my own credulousness, I lit a candle and took a turn about the room, prodding the furniture and checking the bolt on the door. All was as it should be. Then, lifting my curtain from the casement, I wiped away the beaded moisture and looked outside. The tiny glow of a lamp twinkled near the ground at the western corner of the Hall. I fancied it was a lone person carrying it, and as they walked between tree trunks and shrubs, it periodically blinked in and out of sight. Finally it disappeared entirely, and though I waited, did not reappear.

Shivering, I clambered back into bed, trying to calculate what would attract a person to walk the grounds at night. Had I perhaps seen a poacher, or a servant, off on a nocturnal tryst?

In the crisp light of day I set off to find out, but retracing the walker’s steps only took me onto the usual soggy paths. I returned to the Hall convinced that someone, a stranger, was roaming our property at night. I told Michael my worries and he scoffed that I must have been dreaming. Peg took me more seriously and took a walk with me in the area, so we might look for footsteps. But by then it had rained, and the ancient wood offered up no secrets, so we abandoned our search.

More concerning was something I found that I could grasp in my hand. For I say I slept alone – but the taint of Mrs Harper lingered in my bedchamber. When I first drew back the tulip-covered bedcover, I found ugly proof of the liberties she had taken. A hair lay twisted on the inner sheet, very thick, and perhaps thirty inches long. Hair, as I know from my picture-work, has a powerful quality.

This hair was not mouse-soft like my mother’s. It was ink-black, and coarse, with kinks from tightly-fixed hairpins along its luxuriant length. Though it revolted me to touch it, I lifted it between my finger and thumb and walked to the fire. Then, anticipating the vile stink burning would make, I instead pushed it into an old silk purse, though its springiness gave it a grotesque half-living quality. After washing my hands, I changed all the bed linen. Nevertheless, whenever I lay down on those cold sheets, I swear I caught Mrs Harper’s salty scent rising from the mattress.

My only solace was Peg. I congratulated myself that employing her was my one surefooted act since my marriage. I at once wrote to Miss Sybilla Claybourn in a civil but firm tone. A few days later she replied, and one phrase jumped at me like a well-aimed cat-scratch:

. . . you have lost me the service of an excellent housekeeper, upon whom I was entirely dependent. I believe this to be a deliberate, unneighbourly act, and must inform you we do not generally poach staff here . . .

Michael and I were for once at breakfast together, as reserved as two strangers sharing a table at an inn. I read the letter out loud to him.

‘Do you know her?’ I asked, for I had not much cared for Peg’s description of Miss Claybourn. Michael only knew her land at Riverslea, he said, for it had a wonderful prospect he had admired when out riding.

‘A better prospect than ours?’

He spoke from behind his newspaper. ‘Not so large as ours. In fact I’m scarcely certain where her land ends and ours begins.’

‘So we share a boundary?’ For some reason, this displeased me.

‘I will ensure the fences are maintained; then she cannot poach our staff in turn,’ he quipped.

I thanked him. As for sacrificing the chance of her acquaintance, I was pleased that her rudeness removed any obligation to call on her. I had already formed an opinion of Miss Sybilla Claybourn as a highborn man-chaser.

From the first, Peg fitted her place like a key in a well-oiled lock. The meals she served were domestic miracles: fresh bread, savoury pies, and joints of meat were laid steaming on our dining table. She also concocted the best of English sweet-stuffs: flummeries, suet duffs, and the best trifle I ever ate. Even Michael admired the comfit-scattered froth of cream laid over macaroons and fizzing cherries.

Even more surprisingly, she had early success in clearing the Hall. As if by magic, the rooms I had chosen as habitable were scrubbed and polished by her band of charwomen. I paid a visit to inspect her ragtag troops, ten or so women and girls, who Peg told me always slept in their own hovels at night, for fear of tales of ghosts. Some were bent old crones and others giggling minxes, but a few looked steady enough: a stout-armed silver-haired matron, and a respectable-looking widow-woman, who I fancied must be forced to such work by unfortunate circumstances. Cloth-headed creatures, Peg called them, but soon they had the parlour and small dining room in satisfactory order. The furnishings were neither modern nor especially comfortable, but the rooms were a haven in the midst of chaos. Burrowing into the ancient mass was how I thought of it then: excavating rooms, as antiquarians unearthed those unfortunate cities destroyed by Vesuvius.

Being much thrown together, I took time to observe my new housekeeper. She was an interesting type from a painter’s point of view. Her sharply arched brows gave her a quick and alert expression, and her wide mouth naturally lifted in an amused smile. I fancied her liveliness would challenge a painter, for she was like an animal with a rapid heartbeat, seeming twice as alive as the slow-witted villagers. Her eyes, too, were extraordinary: cat-like in their flat aspect and expressiveness. She had a habit of probing my gaze, boldly, as I instructed her; as if she were seeking a connection not quite appropriate between a servant and mistress.

‘Why do you stare, Peg?’ I asked one day. ‘Have I got a mark on my face?’

‘I am near-sighted, Mrs Croxon. I cannot help it.’

I thought that odd, for she could read the stable clock from the kitchen window. She was certainly attractive – but somehow over-bright. She wore pink emulsion on her delicate redhead’s complexion that by evening wore thin, showing what I supposed to be scars from an illness. She laboured ceaselessly to please me, but behind all her eagerness I did detect a certain strangeness to Peg Blissett. Perhaps I was unused to anyone striving so hard to gratify me. After all, there is something peculiarly intimate about having one’s every wish anticipated, as if one’s thoughts are not entirely private.

One morning I told Peg to be sure the cleaning women swept any hair about the place.

‘Hair?’

‘Yes, hair. I found a ghastly black hair in my bed. Mrs Harper’s no doubt.’

A peculiar expression passed over her face: an emotion I couldn’t interpret. When she spoke her voice was flat. ‘Who is Mrs Harper?’

‘Your predecessor. I thought I told you we were defrauded by our housekeeper.’

She shook her head, frowning mutely.

‘Goodness, Peg. You are rarely lost for words. She took her guinea wages and left,’ I added. ‘Tell me, are the housekeeper’s quarters comfortable?’

‘They are most comfortable,’ she answered, her usual manner restored. ‘Thank you, Mrs Croxon. And you can rest easy; you won’t see any more – ghastly black hair about the place.’

While Peg and her workers banged about the house, I escaped to the light-filled sanctuary of my studio. There I began a miniature of Michael copied from the sketch I had made on our journey to Delafosse Hall. Somehow, amidst the distress of our wedding day, I had captured his image as never before. He was sleeping with his head thrown back, the tendons of his throat very pronounced and vulnerable, his curls falling artfully backwards, his eyelids defined by lashes as long as a child’s.

Now I began the slow work of copying my pencil sketch onto a thin sliver of ivory, using tiny brushes to articulate strokes no larger than pin-pricks. It is a curious art, to paint on ivory, for the material itself gives life to the skin. I began with a pink wash that had all the natural bloom of flesh. Every speck of an eyelash was a risk, for such work is unforgiving of errors. Yet the application of tiny strokes transported me to a place of sublime peace.

Even then I was bothered by sounds invading my concentration. Footsteps, slow and steady, grew louder on the stair, as irritating as hammer blows. They proceeded with annoying steadiness to just outside my door. Then they stopped. I cocked my head and called out, ‘Peg? Is that you?’

Someone was standing on the landing. It was surely not Old Dorcas, I sighed, roaming the house in her lunatic state. I shoved back my chair with a squeak and noisily crossed the room to swing my door open.