Turning the Stones (24 page)

Mrs Waterland would not retrench. She carried on spending money, ordering goods and provisions and contracting workmen with a brittle nonchalance as if the distribution of her uncle’s fortune had been a huge mistake soon to be rectified. In the meantime, she averred, Johnny must cultivate Mr Paine and perhaps something would come our way. Mr Paine had no children and an absent wife. He was besotted with Johnny – that is the word the mistress used,
besotted
 – and that affection was the only advantage the Waterlands had. You see how desperate things had become at Sedge Court despite the pretending otherwise: the mistress at a tilt to reason; the master incapacitated.

Mr Waterland has become more withdrawn than before, if such a thing were possible. He was not disposed to do anything about the blackened skeleton of the storehouse. At first people were respectful of the ruin, which stood as a grim memorial to poor Sutton. But as the year turned and Mr Waterland made no effort to pull it down and build over the disaster, rumours began to arise. It was said he lacked the means to replace the building or to import goods to store in it. A coal mine opened near the village of Ness and we heard that the master had missed an opportunity to invest in it and again it was whispered that his enterprises had failed.

Winter pressed us hard that January. Gauzy shadows hung around the corners of the house and darkness prowled at the windows. One afternoon, I was playing a hand of loo with Eliza and Mrs Waterland in the parlour, when Hester came in with a bag that Croft had collected from the booking office at the beer-house. It had arrived on one of the Parkgate coaches. It was a freezing, grey day, and for the first time that I could recall, the parlour was a place of gloom and umbrage. The consumed candles in the chandelier had not been replaced and the want of light had forced us to abandon our needlework. Hester’s coming in and going out had let a gust of chilly air into the parlour. We shifted the card table closer to the hearth, where a dull little fire sputtered in the grate. The bag contained a set of mohair buttons ordered from Chester and half a pound of the alkanet roots that Mrs Waterland uses to influence the colour of her lip salve. She was surprised to find an additional packet. She unwrapped it and held up a luxurious-looking canister decorated with pink satin ribbon.

‘Chocolate from Greek Street in Soho,’ Mrs Waterland
announced in a tone that suggested she could take it or leave it. Slipped under the ribbon was a note.

‘From Johnny, I expect,’ Eliza said hopefully. Taking a cue from her mother’s deliberate indifference, she began shuffling the deck of cards as though the chocolate were of no moment. (Do you know, sometimes the tension that springs from pretence makes me want to hurl myself into – into, I don’t know – hurl myself out into the
open
so that I can breathe.) A disturbingly speculative expression stole across Mrs Waterland’s face as she read the note.

‘It is from Mr Barfield,’ she said.

At the mention of that name my heart flushed with hatred, cringing, at the same time, like a cuffed dog.

‘He says, “Please be so good as to accept from me this gift. It is by way of apology for detaining your son in London.”’

Eliza pouted, ‘So it is old tub-guts Toby who prevented Johnny from coming to us at Christmas.’

A ball of apprehension began to pulse inside me and I wished Eliza would leave off mashing the cards.

‘He also says, “I beg the indulgence of asking after the charming Miss Waterland. I am told that she has a sweet tooth, therefore let this confection show that I consider her interests –”’ and here Mrs Waterland paused, before continuing in a significant tone – ‘while I hope that in return she will consider mine.”’

The cards spurted from Eliza’s fingers and tumbled at the feet of the brooding Delft vases. ‘Confound it! Em, do pick those up, won’t you?’

With their pockets empty of blooms the vases looked glum and useless. I dropped to my knees before them and gathered
the scattered cards as though impelled to restore the integrity of something that had burst.

Mrs Waterland said, ‘Do you understand the meaning, Eliza? Mr Barfield intimates that you might consider him.’

Surely the man could not be serious about asking leave to court Eliza. What could possibly be in it for him? In any case, wasn’t his mother titled? She would never agree to an approach. Eliza’s pedigree is paltry and her want of a fortune an insurmountable obstacle.

‘Consider Mr Barfield?’ Eliza turned down the corners of her mouth. ‘Why should I, when I would not consider Baron von Boxhagen, who is at least half handsome?’

A quiver seemed to pass through the parlour and the candle flames quailed. I noticed that the fringes on Mrs Waterland’s gown were trembling slightly. She raised her hand and I blinked at the flash of the brilliants in her rings. It was only as she pointed a finger of accusation at Eliza that I realised the throb in the room was caused by her fury. She fixed Eliza with an awful blue glare and spat, ‘You don’t consider the baron, do you? You illusionist! You stupid fool! The baron does not consider
you
!’

Eliza blanched and her mouth fell open.

‘
You
did not catch his eye!’ Mrs Waterland cried. ‘He rejects
you
!’ She pressed a hand against her gem-encrusted bosom and her mouth twisted as if in pain. Eliza added a glazed stare to her hanging jaw, which made her look doltish and supplied her mother with fresh ammunition. ‘It defies belief,’ Mrs Waterland hissed, ‘that you could turn out to be as addled as you are ill-favoured. My God, what have I done to deserve such an unprofitable child?’

Eliza rose to her feet. I stood up as well, the cards clutched in my hands. The clock chimed the half-hour. Its conceited bells sounded absurd in the violent atmosphere of the room, but Eliza seemed to take heart from the interruption. She thrust out her bottom lip and declared with defiance, ‘But I do not care to entertain Mr Barfield.’

Mrs Waterland smacked Eliza’s face hard. Eliza gasped and put her hand to her cheek.

Mrs Waterland’s voice was low but it trembled with anger, ‘Do you never think how the bread comes to your mouth or the gown to your closet? If you wish to live life as you please, you must make a match that gives you the means to do so. And you must do it soon. Let me inform you, Miss Waterland, since it seems you are too dull to see the truth in your looking glass: you have worn off your bloom, such as it was, and you are not in a position to discriminate.’

Eliza’s eyes began to brim, but her mother was relentless. She went on, ‘If Em were in your place, she could have her pick of swells. We should be celebrating a contract with the baron now … yes, I saw how he riveted his eye fast on you, Miss Smith.’ She directed at me a smile that had something sly in it and I felt a flash of unambiguous dislike that made me recoil. She turned back to Eliza and commanded her to retire to her apartment and write a letter of thanks to Mr Barfield.

‘Why doesn’t Em write it? After all, Barfield is another one who slavers over her.’ Eliza’s taunt shocked me. It made me feel that tawdry doings of mine had been exposed – and worse, Eliza looked at me with an accusing eye as though a shameful deed stood between us.

Mrs Waterland was very crisp then. She said, ‘In that case, perhaps Miss Smith will advise you how to detain Mr Barfield’s fancy.’

It was this remark that forced my hand. Many times I had wound myself up to the task of telling Mrs Waterland about Barfield, but I felt such a magnitude of shame I could not go through with it. However, I was filled with anger and revulsion at her view of me, even it were only a flippant one, as someone who might lure Barfield like a goat staked out in a clearing. When Eliza stomped out of the parlour with her cheek still glowing red from her mother’s slap, I did not follow at once.

Mrs Waterland sat down at her little secretary-desk and began flipping noisily through a catalogue as if she needed to absorb the energy released by the scene with Eliza. I took several steps nearer until I was quite close to her and waited in silence while she briskly turned the pages. She was still compensating at that time for the lack of a legacy from Sir Joseph Felling by ordering streams of goods from establishments all over the land.

‘Madam,’ I said, my voice tight with anxiety, ‘I have something to tell you about Tobias Barfield.’

She took her time turning to face me, and her expression was sceptical.

‘I beg you, do not permit him by any means to pay court to Eliza.’

Mrs Waterland said shortly, ‘I do not follow you.’

‘The man is a beast and she will not be safe with him.’

‘Those are strong words. What on earth are you talking about?’

Her impatient expression made me feel even more overwrought. I cried, ‘I can hardly bring myself to disclose what has happened!’ I remember I almost said
confess
instead of
disclose
, as though it were I who was at fault and in need of forgiveness. Mrs Waterland closed the catalogue and stared at me.

‘Well?’ she said coldly.

It came out then in a torrent – an account of the assaults in the orchard and at Weever Hall. The effort of the description taxed me dreadfully. I stammered through it in a bitter passion, swept by emotions of humiliation and inexplicable guilt. As I came to the end of my statement, Mrs Waterland pressed a hand to her temple and cried, ‘My God, you might have murdered him!’

I had expected that she would leap to a position of moral indignation on my behalf; instead, it was the vigour of my defence that appalled her.

‘You little idiot,’ she groaned. ‘Don’t you see how close you came to being arrested for assault yourself? You might have been hanged for that blow.’

‘But he treated me with such savagery! And he would try me again if he could seize his chance, I know he would – he has said so. I beg you to keep him away from us.’

The look on Mrs Waterland’s face was one of exasperation. She said, ‘Have you told anyone else of these events? Does Eliza know? Is that why she made such a fuss just now?’

‘No – no, I have told no one.’

She heaved a sigh of relief. ‘Thank heavens for that. I implore you not to say a word about this to another soul, especially not to Eliza.’ She went on, ‘You will only damage
her chances if this is brought into the open. Perhaps you think me unsympathetic, but in any whiff of a scandal of this nature, it is you and, by extension, Eliza who will suffer. It is unjust, of course, but that is how it is.’

I bit my lip, wondering how I had come to be so defeated by a situation in which I hoped to find encouragement and concern. I was enormously crushed by Mrs Waterland’s failure to see my side. I tried another tack. ‘Do you not wonder, madam, why Barfield has never entertained Eliza before? I believe he may have done something so hateful that his people are unable to … to—’

‘To palm him off on anyone else?’ Mrs Waterland said evenly. ‘Well, I dare say you and I are agreed that Eliza is a poor catch. That makes it even more imperative to keep her opportunities open, few and far between as they are.’

My interview with Mrs Waterland seemed to me like a runaway horse, which I could not bring under control. How had the lumpen but innocent Eliza come to be a subject of slur, while Barfield escaped condemnation?

‘Madam,’ I pressed, ‘the devil is in this fellow. It truly is!’ My voice cracked with emotion.

‘Of course I take your feelings seriously,’ Mrs Waterland said with a distracted air. Silence fell and she seemed to drift into thought. I was reminded all at once of that milk crock and the jagged sound of its crash on the flagstones. Then Mrs Waterland said, with a gaze that looked past my shoulder, ‘Everyone has something odious in his past. But time passes on and one recovers.’

She stood up. ‘What a wretched cold day it is. Mrs Edmunds might make a hot toddy, I think.’

I said in a low voice, ‘I will tell her.’

‘No need.’ Mrs Waterland bestowed a bright smile on me. ‘I will do it.’

As she went to the bell-pull, I noticed a letter that had been exposed by the closing of the catalogue. It bore the flashy mark of Hill & Vezey. I turned my head away, feeling that it was improper to stare at Mrs Waterland’s private papers. Perhaps I suspected that they held secrets, things that would shatter my faith in her. I was shocked by our exchange on the subject of Barfield, but I could not yet admit to myself that that faith had already been shattered. More terrifying still, I could not begin to look at a future where Barfield and Eliza would be married and I would be at his disposal by day and by night.

The Day Coach from Chester to London
April, 1766

Three months after that scene in Mrs Waterland’s parlour, Eliza and I were put into a fast day coach bound for London. The coach was called the
Sprinter
and it managed the journey in only four days, but it seemed never-ending to me. We had hardly got out of Chester before Eliza was taken by the gripes. I was obliged to hang out of the door window and beg the driver to throw on the drag. We slithered to a stop, the undergear groaning and Eliza purged the morning’s eggs and toast in a ditch. It was a beautiful day with rosebuds swelling in the hedgerows and fields of yellow rape that flowed towards the horizon and lapped against a bank of bunchy clouds. I recall a solitary labourer at a hedgerow gazing at the skid marks of the coach before he bent again to his badging-hook.

I came to Eliza’s side, handkerchief deployed, and swabbed at her riding habit, while the coach panted at our backs like a waiting mastiff. At length the coachman grew impatient and shouted, ‘Hie now, ladies! In with you and let us step on!’

I felt nauseated too, but it was not the fault of the pitching machine or the outrageous reek of our fellow travellers’ pomades. It was the fear of what I would find when we reached our destination. During the month in which arrangements
were made for our journey south, I felt as though I were standing in a room divided by a curtain. I was aware by dint of muffled noises, a door opening and closing, that something was going on behind the hanging, but I could not make out what it was. I strained to put it all together. I even hazarded the possibility that a contract had been contrived backstage, as it were, between Eliza and Barfield, in spite of everything I had told Mrs Waterland. But I could not make that postulation stick. It was too outlandish. Even if her parents did not hold Eliza in very high regard, I could not imagine that they would throw her to that wolf.