Turning the Stones (44 page)

‘Johnny,’ I whispered, ‘help me.’

He came towards the divan at an oblique angle and said, ‘Now, my little wanton, I will certainly stir to assist you and nor will I say one word about it. We will go on as before with not a dicky bird the wiser.’

‘My head hurts very badly.’

‘That is because you were drunk. I took you from the assembly rooms to prevent you from making a spectacle of yourself and we had the good fortune to encounter our old chum here, who took us into his equipage. I must blush for you, Em. I always took you for an innocent, but your antics in the carriage were –’ Johnny laughed – ‘let us say that any whoremaster in Covent Garden would have delighted in your persistence. But then Cousin Arthur came to my mind, unlikely though that sounds. He’s quite a prude, you know, and I was concerned that in your heated state you might … you know what I am saying … when he came home, you
might
embarrass
him, and so it occurred to me to bring you here to sleep it off. I intended to have you sent back to Poland Street, and no harm done. Alas, I had not taken properly into account that Barfy too had been imbibing heavily. It was, I am afraid, a case of a fuse and a powder keg. You implored him and he could not refuse. Isn’t that right, Barfy?’

Barfield hauled himself to standing, walked to the vicinity of the bed and kicked at something. A chamber pot. I turned away as he fumbled in his breeches. There was the sound of urine hitting the porcelain. He whined, ‘Couldn’t get the fucker up her, Johnny. Couldn’t for the life of me, and I thought I would fit it in as easy as a glove.’

‘You will have another shot. Plenty of time for that.’

‘Do you know,’ Barfield said in a voice whose languidness sounded as though it meant to provoke, ‘I can’t be arsed now? Lost interest. You might get rid of her now, there’s a good fellow.’

Johnny said, ‘Of course you haven’t lost interest. Look, man, you’ve been after her for years.’

‘All in the chase, Johnny, all in the frolic, ain’t it? Now I’ve bagged her, I don’t want her.’ He wandered back in the direction of the divan and belched and yawned.

Barfield had not ravished me. He had tried and failed. Some life came back into me as I apprehended that. Johnny hunkered down next to me and spoke into my ear with a hot, alcoholic breath. Even in my foggy state I sensed his frustration and anxiety. He said, ‘You may be wondering, Em, why I intend to sweep this unfortunate incident under the carpet. Of course, a certain amount of gallantry is involved – I would hate to see your name soiled – but largely, it is because of my sister.’
He looked up at Barfield and then he stood up. ‘Barfield will marry Eliza. He intends to provide for her very handsomely. Isn’t that right, Barfy? He will present himself to her this evening. Tomorrow she will attend church with Barfield’s esteemed mother and walk with her in St James’s Park. Monday at noon a meeting is to take place in Temple Bar at the lawyer’s office to sign the marriage contract. We have already sent for the conveyancer to draw articles for the marriage and they are by my father’s order ready for signing.’

‘Steady on, Johnny,’ Barfield said.

‘The wedding will be celebrated within a fortnight. The countess is hardly cock-a-hoop, but she will not object for reasons that Barfield knows well. The Waterlands cannot expect to be received with cordiality, but the money we will receive from the marriage will make up for the humiliation, won’t it, Barfy?’

Barfield opened a box on a table next to the divan and made a prolonged business out of snorting snuff from his fist. I managed to sit up and pull down my shift to cover myself. My eye travelled to the door.

‘God’s bones,’ Barfield said, ‘I feel like shite. You might take this little jade home with you now, Waterland, and let a fellow get some sleep.’

Johnny took a step towards Barfield and I could hear the placating smile in his voice. ‘Nonsense, Toby,’ he said. ‘Do not disoblige me, friend. You are not a man to go back on your word.’

Barfield guffawed, ‘But I am, Waterland, you should know that, and I am not of a mood this afternoon to be hampered by a wife and her considerable number of hangers-on.’

Johnny tried to laugh. He said, ‘I am in rather a fix, Em. There have been opportunities that slipped away and I do not have time to wait for fortune to bring another advantage to me. If I do not pay my debts, I will go to jail or be sent out of England. Sedge Court will be lost.’

‘Dear me,’ Barfield laughed, ‘ain’t you bubbled? It is a problem of such a convoluted nature I wonder if you will escape it. I might put on a bet at my club that you will. You are the type to go very near in your dealing. Out of my way now, and let me call for my valet.’

Johnny seized Barfield’s arm, making no pretence now of his desperation. He called Barfield a graceless bollock and said, ‘I will not have you renege on me. I promised you this girl in exchange for an offer on Eliza.’

Barfield lost patience then. He said coldly, ‘Why, you fop, did your mother really think that I would marry her poxy, ugly daughter? Thank God I have given myself a reprieve, but please do thank her for sending this coy little cunt to me so expeditiously.’

*

At last I lug this heavy knowledge from disbelief’s dim recesses into the glare of public view: the Waterlands are a cabal and they conspired to have their servant raped for a favour. I will exclude Eliza from the plot. Treachery is not her style. But her mother …

It causes me pain and shame to think that I once adored and admired her. What a waste of love. If only it had occurred to me, while she was preening herself in her looking glass, to come around the back of the structure, where it was propped up among the cobwebs and the dust. I might have found the
unfeigned Henrietta Waterland there, on the other side of the glass, in her awful actuality, her creamy satin stomacher bulging and tearing, her necklace of brilliants shattering, her rosebud mouth ripping open as the monster, which had always dwelled within, burst free from its confinement. Look at her now: a blackened incubus with blood on her hands.

*

Johnny bowed his head and I thought at first that he was giggling or weeping. Suddenly he straightened up and walked away. I heard a door open – was he entering a closet? Barfield raised his fluting voice that Johnny might hear, and piped, ‘Come, Waterland, do not be in a huff. Let us only say that I have won this round.’

Johnny’s heels clattered on the floorboards as he returned. He made a movement with his hand and at first I thought that he had slapped Barfield’s face or had even opened a fan. But Barfield made a startled sound and I saw that blood was dripping from his cheek.

Johnny was startled, too, and that was his undoing. I think at the sight of the blood, at the reality of it, his intention drained out of him. He was a wastrel and a coward, but he did not possess Barfield’s lust for brutality.

Barfield kicked Johnny between the legs and Johnny fell on the floor with a howl. Barfield laughed and said, ‘A rout is only good when shared, eh, Johnny? Now give me that.’ He picked up the razor, and in a gesture that seemed almost casual he slashed Johnny’s face and a scarlet line opened up across Johnny’s eyebrow. It was as if Barfield had become suddenly animated like some terrible automaton.

Johnny was flailing with his arms, but Barfield went at him
like a frenzied gamecock, sinking the razor into his chest and arms, slashing back and forth as if he were scything wheat. Johnny tried to scramble away, but Barfield had the advantage of heft and Johnny could not counter him. He made the mistake of holding up a hand and Barfield nearly severed his wrist. The iron smell of blood was thick in the air.

I was at the door by this time in a terror. I did not make a sound. Something told me that other young women had screamed in this bedchamber, at this locked door, to no effect, and I was afraid of provoking Barfield to turn his attention on me.

Johnny whimpered and then began to cough. His violet coat was covered in scribbles of blood. Barfield came at him again – there was a sense of his making a thorough job of the attack. Johnny made an effort to stop the razor with his undamaged arm, but Barfield easily sliced it open. Johnny kicked at Barfield, but he did not have the strength to land a blow and he fell down again and tried to defend himself with his hands, but one of them was entirely useless and the other arm was pumping blood. Barfield stood over Johnny and watched him make a weak thrust. Then he knelt down again and – and I do not know why, but I thought he was about to help Johnny up or make a quip. Isn’t that what men do? They half kill each other and then slap one another on the back and quaff a pint of ale. But Barfield took the razor and very slowly drew it across Johnny’s throat.

I cannot imagine what depths of hate and fury it took to do that. Johnny’s feet in their high heels and fancy buckles began to spasm as he choked on his blood.

The walls of the chamber seemed to close in and I pressed
against the door to try to stay upright. I remember Barfield turned and ogled at me with surprise as though he had forgotten I was there. He began to walk towards me, wiping his hands on his breeches, and I backed away, along one of the walls, towards the door of the closet.

He piped, ‘Don’t look so put out, peach. You have had all your maintenance from the Waterlands, haven’t you? It was not too much to ask you to open your legs in return. You were their little ace in the hole, or so they thought.’ He feints at me with the razor and I retreat, so that the divan is between us. ‘Your shape is such an invitation. I am sorely vexed that my poor afflicted cock baulks at prosecuting a desire that has been dammed up these many years, but we will try again, won’t we, and this time I shall have you for nothing.’

I think I started to babble pathetically then, begging him to let me go.

One of his hands circled my neck and the other hit hard the side of my head. He enjoyed inflicting the blow on me, I could tell that. He liked it so much he did it again, only much harder this time and knocked me unconscious. He would have gone out then to find help from his servants to move Johnny’s body or … or I do not know what. I don’t know what was in his mind. It was as black and fathomless as a sinkhole.

*

Captain McDonagh has been listening with his head raised. I sense that he maintains this slight distance out of consideration for me. It has been easier to pour this muck into his ear without bringing myself to his eye. Now, here I sit, feeling nauseous with disgust.

The captain says, ‘I can help you. I rent a vineyard near
Bordeaux and you may be sequestered there safe from harm. Or I can bring you to any shore, according to your wish. I am at your service.’ His calm tone soothes me deeply. He stands up and stretches his legs and looks out over the gunwale. ‘The fog is thinning, I believe. I think it is time I brought us out of this place, Molly, don’t you?’

I wish I could get Eliza to eat more of the mash, but when I proffer it to her she screws up her face like she did when she was a child. I see myself as her rescuer now, bringing her away from her gruesome family, leaving the muck of Sedge Court to sink into the cistern of the past.

I rest my fingers against the pulse at the side of her neck. It seems faint – and her skin continues burning hot. She is agitated, restless. She pushes Captain McDonagh’s coat to one side and mutters something unintelligible.

I moisten her lips with water and stroke her cheek with the crook of my fingers. Suddenly she opens wide her eyes. Her face is chalky white save for two blotches of hectic pink that stand out on her cheeks. She looks exactly as she did at the age of fourteen when she came into the grip of the ague that kept her home from school. I could almost believe that this is a return of the same affliction. Has it lain dormant all these years, biding its time, like some lingerling in the bottom of a slough?

I feel terribly afraid for her. I have the impression that her spirit is winding inwards.

All of a sudden she calls my name with unexpected force. ‘Em! I must tell you –’

‘What is it?’

‘Put down the glass!’

She is delirious. I try to settle her by assuring her that we
are sailing to a wonderful place. ‘You will find it very agreeable. It is warm and sunny and Captain McDonagh has a house at a vineyard where you will recover your health.’

As I speak I can feel our boat rushing through the lively waters and hear the sail snapping in the breeze and the creak of the busy rigging. It consoles me to know that Captain McDonagh stands at the helm.

Eliza cries again, ‘Em!’

‘Shhh,’ I soothe her.

‘Put down your glass! Don’t drink the champagne!’

I recoil from her as if I have been slapped.

Eliza’s eyes flutter open. Shock reverberates through every part of me.

I gasp, ‘The champagne!’

Eliza pants to catch her breath. The effort of bringing out this revelation has exhausted her.

‘Johnny put something in my glass at the assembly house in London.’

She offers me a barely discernible nod and closes her eyes again.

Eliza betrayed me. She was part of it. She was one of the plotters. She played her part in the Waterlands’ scheme to sell me to Barfield. She knew that Johnny had adulterated my glass. In fact, she urged me to drink the champagne.
Take a glass. It’s very uncivil of you not to, Em, when Johnny has gone to so much trouble to entertain us
.

A quiver passes across her white lips, but she cannot or will not look at me. I do not revile her. She could not help herself. She was always obliged to fulfil the demands of her insatiable mother and brother.

‘Eliza, did you know that Johnny had taken me to Barfield that night of the soirée?’

A nearly imperceptible nod.

‘The plan was decided at Sedge Court,’ I say.

She whispers, ‘You were right about the bank. The debts must be paid or we will lose our home. What would we do without it? What would Mama do? Barfield offered a bargain. He would marry me if he could have you first. As if you were a douceur.’

A tear drips down her cheek.

‘Johnny took you to Barfield. I was to come the following evening to Barfield’s house to meet the lawyer. There was a marriage contract. It was worth a lot of money to us. But I never met the lawyer. I came to the house, and Barfield was already in the street with his carriage and his footman. He told me you had run away with Johnny. I was hysterical about it. Screaming and screaming. It wasn’t fair. You would be with Johnny and I would be left with Barfield. He threw me into the carriage and told me to stop my noise and I suppose he did not know what to do with me at first, because he was eager to get to a posting house in Piccadilly. His footman had the information that you had gone to Piccadilly. And what would you possibly do there, except get a coach from the White Bear?’