The Skull and the Nightingale (13 page)

I remain, &c.

What right had I to thrust myself upon Sarah again, having failed to reply to this appeal—failed to send an answer of any kind? Why had I not written? At the time I had been caught up with a young Parisian lady, but it was an affair of no great consequence to either of us. The truth was that I had been unable to respond in kind to Sarah’s candor and intimacy. Her words drew me back toward a past I was trying to escape. Immersed in the present and in my possible future, I shrank from the passing reference to my aunt as a cat shrinks from water.

My father I scarcely remembered; my mother, and my aunt Mary, at whose house I had for several years passed my school holidays, I could recall indistinctly—but I rarely chose to do so. My aunt’s death, during my first year at university, had closed off that past conveniently and completely. In leaving Sarah’s letter unanswered, I was confirming my rejection of our shared experiences. Why, then, was I now so eager to see her, to claim her?

I could not say; but I knew that the emotions concerned lay too deep to be admitted to Mr. Gilbert. Once more I resolved that Sarah would not feature in my letters to him.

My dear Godfather,

I invite you to accompany me through the several stages of a carousal. The occasion was the twenty-fifth birthday of Robert Eckersley, a tall, blustering fellow I knew when at Oxford. The place was the Black Lion tavern in Holland Street. The organizers of the party were Nick Horn and a sportive gentleman named Talbot.

The building, an old one with blackened beams, is said to be haunted by the spirit of a merchant stabbed to death there in Shakespeare’s day. Owing to this circumstance, much of our early conversation was concerned with ghosts. One faction claimed that they believed in them; the other protested their skepticism—Nick Horn being one of their number.

“If ever I fancied I was seeing a ghost,” said he, “I would know that I was drunk.”

This dispute led our landlord to observe that he knew a gypsy woman who had supernatural powers and could read the future. By popular acclaim she was sent for, and a villainous old body she proved to be, stooped and furtive. She was nonetheless invited, for a fee of a crown, to exercise her arts on Eckersley, the subject of our celebrations.

She begged leave to look at his palm, which she scrutinized closely, tracing out the main lines upon it with a black fingernail. Despite her unprepossessing appearance there was a concentration in her demeanor that impressed us all, reducing us to near silence. She spoke at last in a monotone, with her eyes still closed.

“Your name,” she said, “begins with an E. It is Eglington—no: Eckersley. You have a sister, Alice. Your father’s name is—is Samuel. I think he may be in France.”

Knowing these claims to be true, we were astonished and uneasy. Eckersley, who had grinned at first, was now impressed. Horn, however, remained a skeptic.

“Ask her,” he said, “the name of your cat.”

We all knew the name, since we had been joking about the creature earlier in the evening. When Eckersley put the question the old woman hid her face in her hands. There was a silence. Horn grinned triumphantly. At length she sat upright and spoke out clearly.

“His name is Milton,” she said.

There was a gasp at this—even some applause. Eckersley wore a look of comical stupefaction. Horn was the first to speak.

“This old crone is uncanny,” he said. “Ask her to foretell your future.”

Talbot intervened at once: “No, no, Nick. This has gone far enough.”

There were expostulations on both sides of the case, but Eckersley overrode them:

“Why should I fear the future? Old woman: what will I be doing this day next year?”

The gypsy gazed into his face in a prolonged silence. Her verdict came in a hoarse whisper: “I can see nothing. This day next year you will not be here.”

“Why not? Why not?” asked Eckersley, much excited.

The old woman turned to him with great solemnity:

“Because—because on your twenty-fifth birthday you will die.”

Poor Eckersley looked thunderstruck. “But today—”

He got no further, for Horn and Talbot broke into howls of mirth. After a moment’s blankness Eckersley threw himself upon them in fury, punching and kicking with all his might. Fortunately there were enough of us sufficiently sober to pull the combatants apart. Eckersley, confused by being condemned to death and then reprieved within a quarter of a minute, was consoled by a fresh glass of wine and the damage he had inflicted on Horn before being dragged away. Horn laughed still, though blood was streaming from his nose.

The next stage of our party was heralded by a bawled announcement from Talbot:

“Gentlemen: it is my pleasure to introduce the famous Belinda Cartwright.”

I had heard of this personage and her performance, but never previously seen her. She entered to applause, dressed like a lady of fashion, and stepping to the music of an old fiddler. So elegantly and completely was she accoutred, from high wig to satin shoes, that there was scarcely an inch of her person not concealed by paint or fabric. It soon became apparent that the very object and essence of her performance would be gradually to lay bare the female form thus concealed. To do her justice she was an accomplished artist in her way: she moved with easy grace. Her garments had been so fashioned that most came away at a touch or a twist—to cries of approval from her rapt audience. Even her white stockings she seemed somehow to peel away with a mere gesture. At the last, doffing a light slip, she displayed that strangely erotic incongruity: the painted and coiffured head of a young lady at a formal gathering above a voluptuous naked form. She curtsied deep as we young bucks, stirred alike in imagination and in blood, rose in riotous applause.

By way of encore she took up a series of extravagant postures and poses that frankly disclosed the few intimate areas which she had not already had occasion to reveal. All this time the old fiddler, who must know the lady’s body in rather more detail than that of his own wife, sawed out a witty accompaniment.

Later Miss Cartwright, now loosely clad, joined the company for conversation and a glass of wine. While she could by no means be bribed to give the last favor, she was willing to use her deft fingers to snuff out some of the flames she had ignited. I observed that she several times complacently received the tribute of a guinea slipped, not into her hand, but into the dainty monosyllable itself.

These pleasures had taken us to what might have been the dispersal of our party. All had drunk too much; one or two had been obliged to relieve the pressures within by a hearty cascade. In truth the room was now in a disgusting condition. The landlord, although he had profited well from the evening, was eager to see the back of us. Several gentlemen had already slipped away when it was proposed by Horn and Talbot that we should conclude our revel by escorting our guest of honor, Mr. Eckersley, who was in no very promising condition for walking, back to his lodgings in Bank Street. This suggestion being warmly received, the survivors of the party stumbled downstairs and out into blank darkness.

Even in our sorry state it seemed likely that we could deliver Mr. Eckersley and disband without further complication. The landlord procured a link-boy to light our way. It happened, however, that the night breeze and the effort to walk revived our raucousness, so that we blundered along making the devil of a din, laughing, singing, shouting, and cursing. Our diminutive torchbearer had not led us far before a window was flung open above and we heard a furious householder bawling abuse at us. Many voices threw instant defiance at the poor devil we had awakened, but it was little Horn, who has a stentorian shout and a bottomless reserve of invective, who led the attack, yelling into the darkness:

“You pox-rotten, louse-ridden, bastard son of a Hockley whore! Clamp your stinking chops before I kick your door in and stuff your tongue down your windpipe—”

As the link-boy flourished his torch we could see other windows opening, and heads poking out to add fresh shouts of protest. The decisive intervention, however, came from the original complainant. He leaned from his casement and, with some dexterity, discharged the contents of a jordan souse over Nick Horn, who was still in full cry. In a moment Nick had grubbed up a loose cobblestone and hurled it up at his foe. When it struck the wall and fell back, he snatched it again and in a mad fit of fury flung it through a lower window.

We were at once under siege, amid cries of outrage, with substances of all kinds raining upon us. Crockery, eggs, and urine were the least disagreeable of them. A couple of broken chairs came down, and I glimpsed a cat hitting the cobbles with a squeal and limping away. It was the last thing I saw before the link-boy wisely doused his torch and took to his heels. Our disorderly band had scattered under this aerial assault, and I had just enough self-possession to retire and make my way back to Cathcart Street.

This was a sorry end to what had been a lively evening. It is a pity that high spirits can so easily decline into doltishness.

I remain, &c.

Chapter 8

I
t occurred to me to wonder whether my godfather had dropped a hint to Mr. Ward concerning my new responsibilities—or irresponsibilities—in London. I found the thought a disagreeable one. How close these two gentlemen were I had never known, but it was clear that there was regular communication between them, and that Ward was more than a mere agent and adviser. I had always hoped to look well in his eyes.

To test the situation I walked to Fetter Lane one morning to visit him. He was correct as ever in his demeanor: if he had been given reasons to view me in a new light, he disguised the fact. I noticed, however, that this normally imperturbable gentleman seemed a little distressed. His long face was pale, and his eyes wandered.

“Pardon me, Mr. Ward,” said I. “Is there something amiss?”

He hesitated for a moment, disconcerted by my directness, but then muttered that his wife had been ill with a fever. I expressed my condolences, although surprised to learn that this cautious fellow had ever risked matrimony. His suppressed misery remaining vivid in my mind, I returned to the office later in the day, bringing some fruit, honey, and other things which I thought might be of benefit to the invalid. As Mr. Ward received this trifling gift I saw him, for a second time, distinctly discomposed.

“I thank you, Mr. Fenwick,” said he. “This shows a good nature in you.”

It was pleasing to find myself considered good-natured, even if the compliment had cost little in the way of exertion. Perhaps I had more virtue in my disposition than I had given myself credit for. Touched by the glimmer of warmth, I made further inquiries a day or two later, and was pleased to learn that Mrs. Ward was much recovered.

My dear Godfather,

On Friday last Miss Brindley and I took a hackney coach to the Full Moon in Gowling Street, an inn recommended to me by Latimer as ideally suited to the kind of transaction in view. It lived up to his description in that all guests would seem to be granted both the courtesy due to respectable married couples and the privacy required by the unmarried. Miss Brindley responded to the minor luxuries of the place as though she had never seen such wonders.

“How genteelly they treat us,” she said. “I feel I must be at my best.”

“I’m sure my Kitty will be equal to the occasion,” said I.

“I shall try to perform like a lady,” she replied, “but I hope you will make allowance for my lack of experience.”

We indulged in such mildly indelicate exchanges over the supper provided in our room. Even here Miss Brindley managed to reprise her pastoral role. She ate and drank with a charming exhibition of simple enjoyment and a bashful lowering of her eyelids. Thickly heated in my nether parts, I yet found it civilized that such hints and blandishments should preface the physical act.

Afterward I proceeded with decorum, sitting beside her on the edge of the bed and taking her hand. She broke away from our first kiss as though overcome by timidity, but permitted the second to be more prolonged. At the third her passion broke its bounds, and she clung to me tightly when I gently pushed her across the bed and unlaced her garments to release her breasts to my hands and lips. As I grew more demanding she twisted beneath me, with sounds of protest and pleasure.

Some little time later she broke from me again and sat up panting, her hair and her clothing greatly disarranged. At her request I extinguished all the lights but one while she went away to undress in a small anteroom. When she returned there was still but a single candle burning, and its soft glow set off her unclad form to great advantage. I had myself remained dressed, relishing the notion that she should be nakedly exposed to the gaze of a fully clad man, as though she were a captured slave to be appraised by a fastidious despot. Placing my hands upon her shoulders, I turned her slowly around to survey her at leisure, enjoying the play of light and shadow on her smooth skin. Current fashions are such that we men can infer very little about a woman’s body until we undress her, or she undresses herself. Kitty was as plumply well formed as I could have hoped; the one surprise, to me a pleasing one, being the uncommonly thick thatch of black hair below her white belly, made yet darker by the candle shadow. Pressing close behind her, I ran my hand down over her breasts, and down again among those dense curls and through them, thrusting my fingers into her. She cried aloud, already hot and wet.