A Taste for Nightshade (6 page)

 

 

It was a dream that heralded the day my life changed: a dream of John Francis aged seventeen again, a long-limbed, smooth-faced youth. He had been invited to dine at Palatine House. My mother, bless her soul, was alive again and smiling, and even Father was agreeable. I too was young again, sixteen years old, overflowing with feelings since quite lost to me.

We sat about the table and picked at Mother's genteel sweetmeats: apricot biscuits, quince paste, and sugared walnuts. John caught my eye whenever he could; there was a teasing mischief to his looks that banished my usual awkwardness. When my parents left us alone, John's large hand, very warm, slipped under the table and took hold of mine. Then he kissed me, very tenderly and moist, on the lips. He held my face in his big-knuckled hands and something passed between us; something so powerful that my girlish hopes burst into life. I was like a scrawny chick comprehending its marvellous change into a dove. I was young and giddy with pleasure, struck with wonder that this was how my life would be.

Instead I woke to a muzzy July dawn. My feet poked out from the end of my childhood bed. I idled for a while, picking those strips around my nails that they call ‘mother's blessings', rehearsing my dream to extend its pitiful life. Then, as the Brabantists do, I asked myself what portents it contained. Food was generally deemed to be God's bounty, unless it was a monarch's banquet, when it signified the sin of gluttony. Was that slow kiss the Devil's work? I could not believe wickedness could feel so thrilling.

I got up, for my nail began to bleed from an ugly wound. Perhaps the dream was only a cruel figment sent to torture me? Above me hung John's portrait; all I had left of him since he'd sailed away. And I remembered events as they truly had been, my father lying drunken on the ground, and John Francis looking at me in a sort of agony. After that, any lad who even smiled at me got short shrift from my father. Then Father made his decision. ‘You must bide with me now, Grace,' he said. ‘I'll not take a servant, for no free soul should slave for another. But as my daughter it's your duty to keep house for me, now your mother has gone.'

And it had not escaped my notice that I did not even cost a servant's wages.

The thump made my bedroom door shake. ‘Grace! Fetch my breakfast, you lazybones.'

‘Father, please! A moment.' I scrabbled about, bundling on my clothes as he hammered again. I feared the lock might break from its housing – I worried, too, that anyone passing might hear him. But when I finally unlocked my door and swung it open, the landing was empty. I found him downstairs in the parlour, lying twisted on the ground, drunk and helpless. I held my hand out to him, but he stared at it suspiciously, as if he didn't know me, his only daughter.

‘Away, you useless creature. Look at yourself, you scarecrow!' It shamed me to see him like that, with the spittle on his lips and his breath foul from liquor. At some time in the night, after staggering home drunk, he had thrown last night's supper against the wall. The remnants of my pease pudding had grown a brown crust and the bacon looked like rusty leather. It was no feast, but still, a morning's labour had been spent to turn a few pennyworth of stony peas into a palatable dish. That's how much you care for me, I thought.

‘Come along, Father,' I said gently. ‘Let me help you up.'

He let me hoist him upright, his bulk pressing heavy on my shoulders, till he staggered on his own two feet. Then, with no warning, he swung out with his fist and hit me hard on the side of my head. I cried out and recoiled, dizzy from the blow. With lips pressed tightly, so he might not hear me whimper, I stumbled back upstairs to my chamber. There, a wet cloth against my thumping head, I surrendered to self-pity. I turned to my dear mother's portrait, recollecting that happy season when she had sat for me each afternoon.

No sooner had I wiped my face dry than a smart knock rapped at the front door. Passing downstairs to the parlour, I was grateful that Father had at least hauled himself up into a chair, from which he eyed me fiercely, as if I were to blame for all his troubles.

‘Mr Croxon,' I said, dismayed to see our landlord on the doorstep. ‘I hope all is in order?'

Mr Croxon hesitated, then gave me a tight nod. He too had high-coloured cheeks; I wondered if he had come directly from the Quince and Salver.

‘All could be put in order, yes, Miss Moore. With a little plain dealing.'

Our landlord had once been a carpenter, before shrewd use of his small capital had allowed him to buy and put to rent a number of properties in the town. Once he had been Father's customer too, and it was a credit to the man that he still tipped his hat in greeting, where many now cut him dead. I had not forgotten that it was thanks to Mr Croxon that we stayed on at Palatine House, for without his having made an arrangement with Father, we might have been turned out by bailiffs.

He strolled past me and pulled up a chair beside my father. I listened at the door as they talked of news from France. Some dreadful machine had been invented to decapitate the French nobility, Mr Croxon recalled with some glee. ‘Had enough of French Liberty yet, eh, Moore?' My father mumbled in reply; the fire for reform was dying within him. Like many Britons we had rejoiced at the Bastille's fall, but now read each news despatch with horror.

There could not have been a greater contrast between the two men: Mr Croxon smooth-faced and lively in his brass-buttoned coat and boots polished like glass, while Father looked a slovenly wreck, and no credit to my hours of laundering. As to the house – I did my best to keep up the old grandeur, but the tell-tale signs of a drunkard abounded, in stains on the carpet and a high smell of spirits.

‘Right, to business. You back to your full senses yet, Moore?'

‘Fetch some ale,' Father barked. I brought it in, muttering an apology to Mr Croxon, and retreated. The two men grimaced as they supped. Well, I could not brew a miracle from stale alewort, which was all Father would pay for. But soon curiosity drew me back to the kitchen door.

‘What her grandmother were thinking, to settle it on our Grace, the Lord only knows,' Father grumbled. ‘I should have taken that will to law, I should. The old woman must have been crazed to leave it to her and not me, her own son-in-law. As for the terms of her damned will, what's the use of land you cannot sell? She be laughing from her grave, I reckon.'

‘Aye, she be that.' Mr Croxon's wry amusement was lost on my father.

I recollected that a letter, bearing a beautiful black seal, had arrived some days earlier; but my father had hidden it from me. So here was news – my grandmother was dead. She and my father had been at loggerheads all my life, forcing an estrangement from my mother and me.

‘The tight-fisted bitch must have been crack-headed.'

‘Maybe, maybe not.' Mr Croxon paused, collecting his thoughts. ‘I could barely make sense of your jabbering last night. So what do the terms say precisely?'

‘It's Grace's land to keep. I cannot even build on it. I could have got a thousand pound—'

I held my breath. The truth was, I knew nothing of the details of my mysterious prospects. Though sneering hints of it had haunted my youth, until that day I had only the haziest notion of what it comprised. I listened hard and understood it was a thousand acres beside a river in Whitelow, in Yorkshire's West Riding. It had been my grandmother's from when she was widowed, since which time she had only collected rents from the farmers who lived on it and loosed their cattle on its pastures.

‘Aye, but what can Grace do with it? Can she build on it?'

‘Grace can. But I'm forbid from being a partner. It's a pig in a poke.'

‘So who can Grace be partner to?'

‘I cannot partner her. Nor any person “of my association”,' Father said in a mocking, gentrified tone. ‘Tully, her pettifogging lawyer, threatened me. Said if I tried to fangle it he'd find me out soon enough. Damn his lawyer's tongue!'

‘Grace's husband, perhaps?'

‘Well, you can't marry her. Your missus wouldn't let you.'

‘Not me, you daft lummocks. But I've got sons – a son. Michael. My elder lad.'

As I listened, the room seemed to move like water around me. A son? A Croxon son? I racked my brain to recall him. He did not frequent the High Street where I shopped, nor drink with my father at the Bush tavern. Michael Croxon. I had a slight recollection of a well-looking, fashionable man, riding an elegant hunter on the lane that led to the Croxon's new villa. My impressions were favourable; but that in itself filled me with misgivings. As I sat in my threadbare gown with a bruise throbbing at my hairline, Michael Croxon seemed an altogether different manner of person from me. Yet he is a chance, I thought. A chance to escape from Father.

‘Eh, but what about me? Who'll look after me?' At the sound of Father's voice my fingernails dug painfully into my palms. I knew it – he was going to destroy my chance of freedom. Scarcely knowing what I did, I walked into the parlour.

‘Mr Croxon,' I nodded, praying he would not send me away. ‘Father,' I added, quailing to see his livid face. ‘I believe I should be present.'

‘Yes – yes, Grace.' Mr Croxon was quicker-witted than my father. ‘This concerns you very much. Come, sit with us.'

As I sat, my legs were as weak as a lamb's. Mr Croxon continued speaking, and I tried to follow, but some of it was legal talk, too complex for me. However, the import was quite comprehensible. The Croxon family wished to found a business. The elder son, Michael, was especially enthusiastic, having long held the ambition to make his fortune using the modern means of manufacturing cotton. An arrangement between our two families would bring profit to us all.

‘Michael has had his troubles and now needs a steady wife,' he said. It was not said in jest, that was clear from his manner. ‘I speak plain, for that's the best way.'

‘But who will tend to me?' whined my father.

Mr Croxon turned back to him. ‘Any kin of mine will live decently; do you understand that, Moore? We will hire you a servant.'

‘I'll not have that,' my father began. ‘Grace is no expense, like some hoity servant. I'll not keep a slave—'

‘Listen, Moore. I'll settle ten pound a year beer-money on you. Well?'

‘You sure he'll take my daughter?' my father said, pursing his loose lips as if he tasted bitter aloes. ‘She'd be summat of a gawk beside your fine lad.'

I stared into my lap, mortified.

‘He'll have Grace – aye, he will,' replied Mr Croxon, eyeing me somewhat like a dealer at a market. ‘She hides her light beneath a bushel, but a quiet girl will suit our Michael. I'll get my lawyer to look into it. Shake on it, Moore?'

I heard Father spit in his palm, and saw Mr Croxon's distaste. I rose and retired to the kitchen, but my hands could not lift a plate for trembling. I slumped on the stool by the fire and raised a glass of ale to my lips. But for the first time I tasted its cheapness, and spat it back into the glass. Everything about me was displeasing – the halfpenny twists of tea on the broken shelves, the smoke-stained hearth, the drab and damp-patched kitchen itself. I scraped the congealed pease and bacon into the fire, where it smoked and spat.

To my astonishment, I understood my morning's dream foretold a blissful future. I allowed myself to sink into a daydream; of another life opening before me, of respectability and riches, at my shoulder a vague silhouette of a man, as yet featureless, but fashionably clad. Someone kind, civil and – dared I hope? – eager to cherish and love even me.

 

 

It was drizzling when they reached the Thames. Mary stood at the rail, letting the sooty rain patter across her face, blessing the grey sky and the shiny quay. Though it was afternoon, it felt to her as though she viewed the world through the bottom of a brandy bottle, she had grown so used to the sun, a golden ball in a hot blue sky. Yet even under cloud the port was a lively scene; sailors scurried about their ships, beggars worked the crowd, a gaggle of mudlarks scavenged along the shoreline. It was all quite astonishing after months of flat sea and sky.

As for the parson, he was still laid low, waiting in his cabin to be carried to a hospital.

She fingered the coins in her pocket. The crew had made a collection for the orphaned missionary's daughter. She would have liked more than fifteen bob for that spanking tale of a native kidnap, so maybe some of the crew hadn't been taken in after all. But none of that mattered now. She had the means to find Charlie and plan the next throw in the game.

Once off the ship, she felt like a spinning top, rocking on the hard ground. Alone, she made her way up a promising alley, past smoking fires and whining dogs. Hawkers crying their wares clashed with ballad singers and the thumping hammers and creak of heavy wheels. It came back to her, that this was how it was in a noisy crowd, with all the folk distracted you could become anyone you fancied. Patting her pocket, she remembered Flora's brooch and, after poking free the reverend's picture, she cajoled another ten bob from a pawnbroker. Pausing to warm her hands at a brazier, she looked quickly over her shoulder, then dropped the tiny portrait into the fire. It burned blue for a moment and then shrivelled blackly into smoke. Fare thee well, Reverend Pilling. And Flora Jean Pilling, and the whole preachifying lot of you.

On reaching the main street, the crowded mass of it all – people, animals, carriages – was like a hard slap in the face. London was not her territory, and to her eyes it had grown tenfold since she'd last seen it from a prison cart. Exhausted, she stumbled onto the cheapest stage coach just before nightfall, huddling into a corner and settling behind a mask of sleep to avoid her fellow travellers, stinking of wet wool. She dozed there for a night and a day, stirring as the horses were changed, blinking at sudden blazes of light, tossed by jolts, and startled by disembodied yells. There was little conversation, for everyone stood on their rank. England again, she thought sourly, she had forgotten all that codswallop of bowing and curtseying, and kiss my arse.

As the coach slowed at Rugby she touched the coins in her skirt, but could not bear to part with what was left of the lovely chink. Catching the eye of a pock-faced man with a gold watch, she made a performance of stretching herself awake so as best to show her bosom. Dismounting, she pretended to stumble and grasped his arm, leaning against him as he fussed over her. Inside the inn, she spun him a yarn of a dying sister and a wicked mistress who owed her a year's wages. Her reward was a supper of hot tea and salty, slippery butter on white bread. At supper time, he insisted on treating her to hot bacon collops. The smoky, sweet pork was so good she found it hard to listen to Mr Reuben Weetch's ramblings – he had a dull wife and some unfathomable trade up Preston way. Dreamily, she let him stroke her hand in a corner of the parlour, wondering if he would stretch to currant buns.

Weetch at least reassured her of her power to pull in a gentleman, for the only mirror aboard the ship had reflected back a sun-blistered stranger, her hair a mixture of copper and straw. How had her bonny flame-haired self turned into that?

Alighting at Manchester, she allowed Weetch a short farewell in an alley by the stables. She let him maul her until the coachman called for all to board. Then she speedily sent her hand on an investigation of his breeches.

‘You must go,' she sighed, hearing the final call for all passengers.

‘I must see you again,' he groaned, his head lolling back against the wall. ‘I know it is only two days, but I have developed such a strong affection—' What a dossuck! She bit back a laugh as she rapidly fabricated a false address. ‘Don't forget to call, my dear,' she cried as he hurried to board, blowing her a kiss.

After watching the coach disappear, she emptied his purse of a grand haul of 17s 9d. Not wanting ever again to risk being nabbed by the Justices, she cast his purse away into the canal.

Manchester was larger and taller than she remembered it, five-storey brick warehouses and manufactories rising high into the sooty sky. Bustling past the streams of workers rushing hither and thither to the clamour of ringing bells, she wondered at their stupidity. Whey-faced and poor, they were of no more interest to her than the rats scurrying about the heaps of cinders. Instead, she watched herself in a new glass window, mortified by the outmoded appearance of Flora Pilling's tartan gown. Charlie was always a flash fellow, and he had revelled in her firecracker looks.

At the Theatre Royal she searched out a certain Mrs Quin. The woman had long had a reputation for restoring the appearance of theatrical persons ravaged by gin and fast living. In the dusty chambers beneath the stage she found the watery-eyed Irishwoman, an array of pins in her cap, and scissors swinging at her waist.

All the way to Spring Gardens Mary rehearsed the patter under her breath. Now it came out almost as good as ever.

‘Mrs Quin, is it?' she asked in a low, honeyed tone. She bobbed demurely. ‘As you can see, I've been a time out in the Indies and find myself rather afflicted by the climate. And next week the man I'm to marry will call upon me.' She bit her lip and affected a poignant expression. ‘Mrs Quin, I hear you are the best there ever was with hair and paint. I wonder, could you help me back to the fair-skinned, red-headed girl he remembers?'

Mrs Quin led Mary to a dirty pane of glass and considered her crimsoned skin. ‘Holy Mary,' she said in a husky rasp. ‘It's a box of powders I have, not a box of miracles. But perhaps I can sort you out – for a man's eye, at least.'

‘And my hair? Back to a flaming red?' Mary pulled off her cap.

‘That's the easy part, dearie. But I'd be wanting half a crown for the sorting of yous.'

‘As much as that? There's one thing more.' She had glimpsed a room filled floor to ceiling with clothes, as well as promising baskets and boxes. ‘I've grown rather behind times with the fashions – would you be kind enough to sell me some of those clothes you keep for the plays?'

‘You're in a right fix, ain't you? But if you be having the price, I'll be selling you the rig-outs.'

In a comfortable chamber arranged with large mirrors, Mrs Quin began her work. Inside her famous box of tricks were dozens of compartments, containing pots and tins and brushes. First, she applied a chalky liquid to Mary's skin, cool at the start, but rapidly tingling warmly.

‘I'll leave the Virgin's Milk to get to work. Now let's get your hair on its way,' she said, slathering it with a high-smelling purplish dye.

Mary sat back sleepily, willing the lotion to bleach her complexion. On the walls above her were portraits of actors – cheap prints pasted on the lumpy walls. She fixed upon the image of a large-eyed beauty with waist-length black tresses and a flowing gown like a priestess. The actress stared out from the print, holding aloft a grinning mask.

‘That's Liza Farrell what was, Lady Bedford as she is now,' Mrs Quin confided. ‘I had the honour to dress her hair one season. When she played Lady Macbeth she was the horriblest murdering heathen you ever set your eyes on. By Jesus, she was a marvel on the stage.'

To be an actress, Mary marvelled silently. What a life that would be.

Mrs Quin set her head on one side. ‘You know what, dearie? The ways I seen her – weary to her boots and washed of her paint – you might have walked past her and never cast a second glance. But she had what the great ones have – whatever she set her will to do, she done it. Dragged herself up, mind, she used to jig in the streets of Cork City for pennies. Would you look at her now? Married to Lord Bedford. The way she done it, she sweet-talked herself to becoming the first Lady Bedford's favourite friend, forever whispering in her ear what grand improvements to make to her grand estates, and all the while tumbling his lordship on the sly. Clever as a cuckoo she was, feathered her own nest before she pushed the old bird out. And near every week, they write her name in the newspapers.'

There was a great deal of sharpery in it all, Mary concluded; not only on the stage, but off it, too.

‘Now I'll be off to fetch the mending,' the dresser said, ‘so I'll just be leaving this lot to do its work.'

She must have nodded off, for her head jerked suddenly as she sprang awake. In the mirror she saw a bleached skull, its hair a mass of ruby tendrils hanging almost to the floor. A bead of dye like a crimson tear trickled slowly down the brow. It was a vision of terror: a death's head peering out from tangles of bloody gore. A memory seized her, a memory of so much blood that the shock had almost killed her. Even in that stuffy room, goose pimples rose all over her skin.

In a moment she had wiped the crimson drip away, and she was once again a woman painted with dye and lotions. She must banish those bothersome memories far away, across the ocean in that other world. Still, there was a bony look to her face, in her sunken eyes and sharp cheekbones. It was that starveling look she knew too well.

She sent a serving girl out to fetch some food. A beef pie, bread and butter and plenty of the sweet stuff that she loved. She devoured a treacle pudding, closing her eyes to savour every sticky crumb. Sugar. How she had craved the stuff. Though her belly was full, still she helped herself from a paper bag of sugarplums, globes of candied fruits that made her cheeks bulge. Was this happiness, she wondered? She was full of food again, and as sleepy as a suckled child. She pictured a well-stocked larder, and the chance to make all the delights in
Mother Eve's Secrets
. She would help herself to the best, of course, for she who stirs the pot never starves. A comfortable future lay before her, all for the taking.

Mrs Quin bustled back into the room and began to dress her face. Gone were the worst of the bran-specks and flaking red sores. Instead, she had the prettiness of a portrait on an enamelled tin; a smudgy confection of pink and cream. ‘A rosy blush,' Mrs Quin said benignly, ‘is the fashion nowadays.'

While Mrs Quin deposited her half a crown in a locked trunk, Mary slipped a bottle of Pear's Almond Bloom and a tin of White Imperial Powder into her skirts. The pilfering gave her a jolt of pleasure, a secret thrill; to possess those lovely, lovely things for free.

She went alone to the vast room where the second-hand clothes were kept. Later, she thought it the happiest hour of her life. There were silks and brocades by the yard, and pile upon pile of hats, wigs, cloaks, and masks. After two years in wretched rags, even the linen shifts felt as soft as thistledown. She whirled from one delight to another – clutching lace, burying her nose in furs, holding flashy paste jewels next to her new-bleached skin.

Catching her reflected eye in the mirror she laughed out loud, her red mouth wide and knowing. She put aside a few carefully-chosen costumes and elbow-length mittens. Then, finally, she chose a few costumes of a particular nature: shiny satin, ebony black.

Lastly, she gathered the garments she would wear for her journey: a grass-green woollen gown and a lace cap and apron. The effect was somewhat grand for a domestic servant. Her auburn locks were pinned tightly, her figure flattered by a frilled muslin kerchief, crisscrossed in an ‘X' over her breast. Pulling out a few auburn tendrils from her cap, she adjusted her bodice to show a little more flesh. Then she grew very still, and smiled slowly into the empty space before her.

‘How do you do, sir,' she said with a graceful curtsey. ‘Now, what pretty dish might you care for tonight?'