Another Heartbeat in the House (38 page)

‘That's for sure.' Playfully, I lobbed an apple at him.

‘Do you like it here, Eliza?' he asked, catching it adroitly and taking a bite.

‘Here, in Rutland Square? Yes, I think I do.'

‘So next time business brings me to Dublin, shall I request the pleasure of your company?'

‘Kind sir! Now that my baba is weaned and is in the charge of two doting nursemaids, that is hardly an offer I could refuse.' I dropped a mock-curtsey, smiling at him from under my eyelashes. ‘How sweet that would be! We'd be like a pair of proper lovebirds, returning to the same cosy nest.'

St Leger set his paper aside. ‘Come here, you minx, and let me tousle you.'

‘Not until I've finished what I'm doing.'

‘What
are
you doing?'

‘Watch.'

I dolloped another spoonful of raspberry jam onto one of the rolls I had split, and sandwiched the halves together. ‘There! Ring down for some more, will you?'

‘More breakfast rolls?'

‘Yes.'

Taking up the silver toast rack, I relieved it of its dainty triangles, dropping them into the bread basket alongside the buttered rolls.

‘Why do you want more? You can't possibly still be hungry. You guzzled an entire chafing dish of scrambled eggs.'

‘You'll see.' I gave St Leger my best mischievous look.

‘Good God, Eliza. You're not expecting again, are you? Didn't you have a craving for bread rolls last time?'

‘I should hope I'm
not
expecting,' I said, ‘after the sacrifices you have made to ensure against that happening.'

We shared another smile. As well as my dandy little
eau de vie
sponge, St Leger and I relied on
coitus interruptus
as a means of contraception. It worked well for us because – aside from possessing enormous powers of self-control – St Leger was an experienced lover, who knew exactly what to do and when to do it.

Scooping the contents of the fruit bowl into a napkin, I carried it and the bread basket over to the window. The opportunistic seagull must have spied my robe fluttering in the wind, for he appeared from out of nowhere, looking for his breakfast.

‘Begone!' I told him. ‘If you're not careful, I shall dispatch you, as the mariner did the albatross.'

‘Eliza,' said St Leger, casting his newspaper aside and rising to his feet, ‘what the deuce are you up to?'

‘Did you ring for the maid, as I asked?'

‘What? No.'

‘Well, do,' I said, ‘because I shall want more provender than this.'

Raising my fingers to my mouth, I blew, producing a whistle so shrill that the seagull backed off on a down-draught. Below me, two dozen or more corner boys lifted their grubby faces.

‘What ails you, Missus?' one of them called up.

‘Have you had any breakfast?' I asked.

‘Divil a bit.'

‘Here, then!' I called back, skimming a slice of toast in his direction.

He snatched it from the air, and saluted me with a grin.

‘Hey! Any more where that came from?' shouted one of his pals.

‘Yes! I've apples, too.' I fired one down, but misjudged the trajectory. It hit the hat of a passing dandy in a canary yellow waistcoat and sent it spinning into a horse trough.

‘Good shot!' said St Leger, applauding.

‘My apologies, Monsieur!' The gent shook his fist at me in mock reprimand, then blew me a kiss and sauntered off to retrieve his hat.

‘Here! Brat face!' I pitched another bread roll at a snot-nosed tatterdemalion, but an even snottier-nosed one intervened and snatched it. Away they went, one hot on the heels of the other, pell-mell towards Sackville Street.

By now a crowd of street urchins had congregated, harrooing and catcalling and cutting capers to attract my attention. One of them had produced a penny whistle, and another had got up upon the railings of the square and was singing over and over the same verse of a song (presumably because he knew no others):

At seven in the mornin' by most of the clocks

We rode to Kilruddery in search of a fox.

‘Here you are, Reynard!' I called. He looked like a Reynard, too, I saw, as he grabbed the bread and crammed it into his mouth: a little starveling red-haired foxy thing, with button-beady eyes, like so many Irish children. ‘And here's one for you, whistler! Fresh out of the oven!' The tin whistle went clattering to the ground as the boy lunged for his prize.

‘She has buns in the oven!' came a shout, and the crowd whooped with laughter.

‘More!'

‘More buns, Missus!'

I made to throw another, but St Leger caught me by the wrist.

‘You're a feeble shot,' he said, taking the bread basket from me and assessing what was left. ‘Anyway, that won't go far. Look – they're coming now from all directions. Word must have got out that a madwoman's started a bunfight on Rutland Square.'

‘It's like feeding the multitude,' I said, laughing up at him. ‘I warned you we were going to need more.'

St Leger took aim, and lobbed a plum at a pretty girl who was smiling up at him, holding out her apron to receive it.

‘They'll have stopped serving breakfast by now,' he said. ‘What if they have none left?'

I stepped off the balcony and reached for the velvet bell-pull. ‘If there is no bread,' I said, giving him a look of mock hauteur, ‘I shall simply ask them for cake.'

THEY SAY THAT
words come back to haunt you: I wish it was just words.

Some years after I uttered that facile remark I was reminded of it, as if some malicious revenant had whispered into my ear. I picture myself, smiling over my shoulder at St Leger as I pulled on the bell rope; hear the banter of the corner boys ascending from Rutland Square; smell the lilies that had started to droop in their copper and gilt vases.

It was Young Biddy who first brought news, breezing into the library after a visit to her mother. It was a fine day in August: my fourth in Lissaguirra. I was at my desk, responding to a letter from William. Clara Venus was sitting on the step down to the terrace beyond the library window, playing with a peg doll that Old Biddy had fashioned for her. She was singing a song we had invented as I abstractedly fed her the cues. My daughter was already proficient in her ABCs, and prattled to her dollies in a curious mixture of English, French and Irish.

‘A?'

‘A – apple!'

‘B?'

‘B – baked it!'

‘Yeuch! The smell from Páidi O'Keefe's field!' said Young Biddy, setting the tea tray on the side table. ‘You'd think a pack of monster dogs had laid down and died there.'

‘Which field is that? C?'

‘C – cored it!'

‘The one down by the crossroads.'

‘D?'

‘Dropped it!'

‘Páidi O'Keefe? Is he the big man – spiky hair, going grey?'

‘That's him. I'd to cover my face with my skirt, the stink was so powerful.'

‘The stink! The stink!' sang Clara Venus, skipping forward to the end of the song. ‘X! Y! Z! All had a big bite and went off to bed!'

I finished the paragraph to William that read:
Setting the novel at the time of the Napoleonic Wars is a good idea, but you must not include scenes of battle. Too much braggadocio over war and politics will not go down well with your lady reader. Another thing to keep in mind (I know it is difficult for you, dear William, for you feel so passionately): you must restrain your inclination to make overt social commentary. Allow your characters to do it for you. Think of Miss Austen's meticulous satire!

I set down my pen. ‘Did you ask about the smell, Biddy? Was it manure, perhaps?'

‘Sure, who can afford manure in these parts? And there was nobody round about to ask. I did not meet another soul on the way between here and the crossroads.'

I shrugged. ‘I dare say it'll pass when the weather changes.'

‘Please God it'll change soon. Old Biddy says it's been like living in a baker's oven these past weeks.'

Young Biddy rattled the tea things importantly; after four years at Lissaguirra she still loved playing at being a parlourmaid: I would have dispensed with the ritual altogether had it not afforded her so much pleasure. She set the muffin dish on the table and poured milk into the cup with a picture of a robin on it that was Clara Venus's favourite.

I stood up and eased into a stretch. The Biddies were right – the weather had been so hot and humid that for the past week I had scarcely bothered to dress: just reached for something muslin in the morning to throw on over my chemise. In the evening I cooled off by taking Clara Venus down to the lake where I was teaching her to swim, as St Leger had taught me. I thought of the time many years ago when my mother and I had holidayed at some seaside town – Deauville, I think – where the ladies had entered a bathing machine to disport themselves in flannel gowns and oilskin caps, concealed from the public gaze by canvas awnings. Here St Leger and I swam as nature intended, for there was no one to hide from, and Clara Venus too ran in and out of the water, naked as her namesake on the half-shell.

‘Goodness! Those look good, Biddy,' I said dutifully, as she removed the lid of the muffin dish. ‘Clara – come and have your milk and honey cakes.'

But Clara was too busy dancing her dolly along a crack in the pavement to bother with her milk and her honey cakes. ‘S – sliced it! T – tasted it! The stink! The stink! The stink!'

The next day I set off on the two-mile journey to the crossroads on Minerva, the little mare that St Leger had taught me to ride. He had bought me a side-saddle, and – when I pooh-poohed the necessity for decorum, saying that I would be just as happy riding astride – he had pointed out quite rightly that form, not style, was paramount, and that most equestrian etiquette was plain common sense. Riding astride was out of the question, because – as he put it – the ‘deliciously tender' skin on the inside of my thighs would get rubbed raw, unless I wore breeches. The notion of breeches appealed to me, but as I was considered more than a little eccentric in the neighbourhood and life was lonely enough already, I had no wish to be ostracized. Besides, St Leger assured me that side-saddle was an infinitely more comfortable way to travel.

We had taken to riding out together when he visited. As we cantered through the fields or along the lakeshore, St Leger on his beautiful bay hunter, his pointer racing beside him, I often laughed out loud with delight, for I felt as though it was as close as a being could ever come to flying without a broomstick. He spoke of buying a mount for Clara – a Connemara pony would suit her admirably, he said. Did George have a pony? I asked. Yes, a chestnut filly that he rode in the parkland at Roesworth and on Rotten Row when in London, accompanied by his groom.

When I pressed St Leger, he admitted that the child had been kitted out with miniature gilt spurs and a gold-headed whip. He would buy Clara a riding habit, to compensate. I told him that a riding habit would be wasted on her here in Boggetybeyondbackwards, and that we would rather have the money to spend on something useful. And then we had a row, which ended in my enraging him further by deliberately jumping a stile.

I took particular pains to provoke him while we were riding, because any rows conducted on horseback always finished amorously. I had found that one of the greatest substantiations of our erotic compatibility was through an out-and-out brawl. We would end up tumbled in a field somewhere, or racing each other home to bed, and once we were surprised in the wood by a poacher, who nonchalantly crossed our path with a brace of quail slung over his shoulder, knowing that in our scantily attired state we were scarcely in a position to accost him.

Nearly five years after we had first met, we were still taken with each other. In return for his support and protection, I worked hard to keep St Leger intrigued. In my formative years I had learned much through listening. The artists' models who had frequented my father's studio in Soho spoke highly of certain
techniques de la chambre
, and I was not afraid to practise them. I never waited upon St Leger, but I made sure he was comfortable. I took care not to carp or nag, but was not chary of engaging in lively debate and – most importantly – I made him laugh. The direction our affair took was unorthodox by any standards, but he seemed to enjoy its singular unpredictability. If I cared to scrutinize our partnership, I would attribute its success to mutual respect – which seemed then as now to be in scarce supply between the sexes.

Our only constraints were geographical. These might have proved insuperable, had not Clara Venus been part of the rubric. She had the power to draw St Leger to Ireland; she and the prime horseflesh he had kept on at Dromamore. His equine concerns justified the maintenance of his house and grounds, albeit with a much-reduced staff: in those days he employed fewer domestics than stablehands. But because the world knows that an Irishman's bloodstock is his passion, no one questioned his frequent trips to Cork.