Abigail (13 page)

Abigail cut short the laconic recital with a laugh. “Very well, Annie, I believe you.”

“And clergy.”

“But I’d love to hear the justification.”

Annie made the necessary effort—and let Abigail see clearly what an effort it was. “Well, he went on about health a lot. And some kind of energy. I don’t know—
settoral
energy, he said.”

“Would that be
sexual
energy?” Abigail asked after looking carefully around.

“Maybe. I don’t listen to dirty talk from men. Just let them rattle on and smile every now and then. But, of course, I did listen to him, what with it all being so new to me. And he said God had made all the extra women so that men with lots of that what-you-said energy could, like, use it up. But without defiling the pure ones.” She laughed. “He’s a funny one. He’s nicer to think of than be with. Here! He writes it all down, you know, everything what happens with him and the women he has. Soon as he’s dressed—dip, dip in the inkwell and he’s away. ‘What did you think when we did so-and-so?’ he asks. And ‘How did you like it when such and such?’ I try not to laugh, and of course I don’t tell him I was thinking about the public house I’m going to buy one day, and what sort of colour I’m going to paint the walls.” She giggled like a naughty girl.

“Isn’t it fun then, Annie?”

“It is for them. Times you’d think they was breaking down the pearly gates.”

“But only for them? Not for us?”

Annie tilted her head reluctantly. “I agreed with the Countess,” she said. “I done wrong to tell you. It’s not—you shouldn’t—you needn’t know. While there’s gels like us, men’ll leave you be. And it’s best that way.”

“You said it was the best fun ever.”

“Did I? I’ve said a lot of things. Well, I’ve just had four years of the best fun ever, and here I am, this very day, saying goodbye to it all. And what is it? It’s the happiest day of my life. So—there’s your answer. Now!”

“So!” Abigail challenged. “You agree with…” She gulped. She had almost said “Uncle Walter”! “With this Mr. Carew…”

“Carey.”

“Mr. Carey. You get the surfeit of their energy so that we may be spared any of it? What a mess we all seem to have made of things. If it really is such fun, you’d think we could arrange it all better.”

“Oh yes? Better for who? How would gels like us make our living? I’d like to know.”

“We’d have to arrange that better, too.”

“Who’s all this ‘we’ then?”

Abigail smiled ruefully. “I don’t know, Annie, I’m talking nonsense. I’m talking about things I know nothing of. Anyway, I’m glad you’re happy.”

“Oh, I wasn’t miserable before, my lady…”

“Don’t call me that. You don’t work for us now. It’s absurd. Call me Abbie.”

“Lummie! I couldn’t do that!”

“Please. Annie and Abbie. It’s better, isn’t it?”

“Lummie!”

“Anyway, you were saying—you weren’t miserable before.”

“No. Not always. Not often even. But I mean, when a man’s grateful and says you made him very happy, even if you felt nothing at the time, you can still feel good when he says that. And a lot of times, too, I’ve had men go upstairs with me and kick off their boots and just lie there on the bed and talk. Talk for two hours—don’t
do
nothing, though I’m right by them. Only talk. And then pay me just the same. And say I made them happy.”

“It must be a gift you have, Annie.”

“Oh, I don’t mean dirty talk. But just gassing on about ordinary things. Anything. You know—family…business…buying houses…rows with their wives. Sometimes I reckon we’re the only people they
can
talk to. Really talk, you know.”

Abigail did know. It was how she and Pepe were. He was the only person she could really talk to, as Annie meant it. They could pass hours just talking in exactly that way. But she felt the quick stab of jealousy, for their talking was always in carefully guarded situations; the thought of lying on a bed beside Pepe with their shoes kicked off, talking of all the things that interested and engaged them, was such a picture of bliss that she envied Annie the so-casual achievement of it and, she was certain, the equally casual waste of it.

In the carriage, on their way home, Annie said: “I’ve not yet told you the best of it. Can you keep a secret?”

Abigail laughed. “I didn’t keep your last one very well, did I! And I didn’t even know I was giving it away.”

“I’m to be wed,” Annie said. She spoke rapidly, thrusting the words out as if they were a challenge; then she bit her lips into her mouth and stared at Abigail with bated breath.

“Annie! How marvellous! Who is he?”

“A follower.” The glint in her eye was truculent now. She watched Abigail trying not to ask the obvious, hurtful question, then she answered it unspoken: “You’d be surprised at the number of gels who get out through marrying their own reg’lars. I know I’d like a pound for every proposal I’ve said no to. I’d be rich and all.”

Abigail shook her head, as much as to say that the ways of people were beyond her understanding. “Tell me about him,” she said.

“Well…” Annie settled herself with relish. “He’s a gentleman. Oldale’s his name, Roger Oldale. Just turned forty. Not much of an income, but this pub will take care of that. And he’s ever so nice and jolly. Fond of a good laugh and I like a good laugh myself.”

“And what does he do?”

“What doesn’t he do! He’s dug for gold in Bolivia, that’s where he got his money. He was a surgeon in one of their armies.”

“Qualified, you mean?”

“No—of course not. What else? Oh, yes—he was a photographer down in Brighton. He was town agent to Lord Lucas. And—I don’t know—lots of other things. Just now he’s a gentleman of leisure. Well…almost. I mean, just to have something to do he canvasses advertising for the
Graphic.
But he doesn’t…need to…” Her recitation petered out. “He doesn’t sound very good, does he?” she added. “But if you knew him, you’d see.”

“I’m sure I would, Annie. Though I must admit your description isn’t…”

Annie cut in with a defiant laugh. “Funny, when you was talking about your Mr. Laon, I was thinking just the same. ‘You’d better watch out for that one, gel,’ I said to myself. I suppose we’re all afraid of unknown men, I suppose that’s something that’s in us. But it’s different when we know them.”

“And when you say he’s a ‘follower,’ d’you mean…still?”

Annie looked out of the window. “I told him no. I told him we ought to stop. The minute it was on like, between him and me. But it only made him…” She shrugged. Then she chuckled. “He still pays me and all for it. We both have a good laugh but he won’t stop.” Briefly she looked at Abigail. “You be glad you’ll only have one man to please. The different ways they can take their pleasure! You be glad.”

“Do you love him, Annie?”

“I need him. I can’t run a public house without a man.”

“But…love?”

Annie’s gaze had returned to the outside; this time she did not turn back as she spoke. “I dunno, Abbie,” she said flatly. “I don’t seem fit to love nobody very much no more.”

Pepe was angry the next time they met; she could see it even before she spoke. And when she did speak, she unthinkingly told him the truth: She had met a former servant who had been dismissed and—out of sheer charity—had spent some time with the girl. (Well…it was close enough to pass as truth.)

Even as she spoke she realized what a thin—not to say outright insulting—excuse it was. Yet, curiously enough, Pepe not only accepted it as natural, he even became quite jovial about it. This struck her as such an odd response (it was almost as if Pepe said “Oh—
that
girl!”) that she began to wonder if he and Winifred had ever discussed the affair of Annie. If so, what gloss had Winnie put upon it? The implications of such a conversation were rich. She decided to press a little.

“Yes. Poor Annie,” she said. “I don’t know what Literature would have made of her, but Life has made rather a mess.”

It would be wrong to say that Laon grew excited. Indeed, only someone who knew him as well as Abigail would have noticed any change; but a definite undercurrent of interest was there…a tension that she could not help feeling.

“Poor soul,” he said, straightening all the papers and fiddling with his pencils.

“Yet I
do
know what Literature would have made of her. Nothing! It would have passed over Annie in discreet silence.”

“You mean…” He could not continue.

“I mean she is, or until that day was,
une fille de joie.
Though I doubt she would concur in the description.”

Pepe was trembling. It was the first time Abigail had seen a specifically sexual emotion at work in a man. (She still could not think of snatched kisses behind potted palms between dances as having any such connotation.) She found it just a little frightening—but, like a safely caged beast, a little exhilarating, too. If the mere mention of what Annie had been could produce this degree of disturbance in someone usually so possessed of himself as Pepe, then what a very powerful emotion it must be. And, in that case, why did she feel none of it?

He cleared his throat. “I trust that…ah…as soon as you…er…discovered…um…you broke off all connection with…er…”

“Why do you ‘trust’ any such thing, Pepe?”

“Because, Lady Abigail, I mean, because…”

“If I told you I had met a slothful girl, instead, would you equally ‘trust’ I snubbed her on the spot? Or a gluttonous one? Or one puffed up with pride? Or one who told lies? Indeed, I could name you a dozen girls in each category; but I’m sure you would not tremble at the mention of it as you tremble to hear of poor Annie’s trade.”

He looked at her speechless. His eyes begged for strength. “It is not a fit topic of conversation.” His laughter was an apology for having to state something so obvious.

“Why?” she asked. “I spent two hours talking about it with Annie. It seemed to me a most fitting and serious topic of conversation. It is a problem, you know.”

“You…?” His face was a mask of suffering. “Oh, no!”

It was as if she had confessed to cutting off all her hair or mutilating herself.

“What’s it to you, Pepe? You don’t—as Annie would say—‘fancy’ me, do you?”

Of course, she had no idea of the emotions she was playing with. She had intended this rhetorical question to be the ridiculous exaggeration that would close the conversation and bring them back to their proper business, just as when she had once said to him, about her story, ‘Let’s sell it to everyone in the world and make a million pounds and buy the Isle of Wight from the Queen and live happily ever after!’ She expected him to give that familiar, tolerant laugh of his and say ‘Dear scatterwits!’ or something of that kind.

But he did no such thing. He stared like a man frozen, a man transfixed, a man mocked.

At once the truth hit her, and with a visceral might: he
did
“fancy” her. He loved her! A frantic terror took root and grew as swift as thought. She was close to destroying something in him. The mockery in her taunt would, if allowed to fester, soon cauterize that feeling and leave him, in some way, a lesser man.

Instantly she stood up and went round the table to him. “Get up,” she commanded.

Still shocked, he obeyed her.

“Kiss me,” she begged, lifting her face.

For a moment it seemed he had not heard. Then…oh then! The wonder that flooded his face! The glory that filled his eyes!

Tenderly he took her head between his hands, as if it and the moment were too fragile for any sort of grip, however light. Slowly he lowered his lips to hers. Until then it was like any one of a hundred kisses she had stolen: experimental…a toe-in-the-water affair. But the moment their lips met, a new and unexpected drowsiness invaded her. She could not breathe. Her stomach seemed to be falling. Something was burrowing and squirming at the pit of her lungs. It was the sweetest, most poignant sensation she had ever felt. It was…marvellous…stupendous. It must endure forever.

She put her arms around him and hugged as if she would squeeze their two bodies into one. He struggled and broke free—no more than an inch.

“Such strength!” he said.

She hugged herself back into his embrace. Next time they broke he took her face once more in his large, gentle hands and gazed deep into her eyes, filling his own with wonder.

“Oh, Abbie,” he whispered. It was a new form of music. “Abbie, Abbie. Oh, my dear!”

“What is this?” she asked. His gaze was a physical pressure on her skin, weighting her eyelids, making her tingle.

“I never dreamed it,” he told her. “I never dared to dream it. Or is that all it is? A dream.”

The softness of his sentiment disappointed her. She wanted…she did not know. Something different. “I wonder,” she said, and stood on his foot.

“Ouch!”

“No dream,” she told him. “So what are you going to do about it now?”

Laughing, he took her in his arms again and hugged her. “Oh, Abbie! You are the most startling, wonderful…stunning girl. I have no right to do this. It is madness.”

“You don’t really think that,” she said. “You’re only saying it because you think it’s what I expect you to say. You should know me better.”

“It’s not you, love. It’s your people. The Earl and Countess will never agree to anything between us.

She broke from him, took his hand, and began to walk him around the room, round and round the table. “The Earl and Countess,” she told him, “are those two people who wanted Boy to take his share of the business. Boy, however, wanted nothing so much as the Army. And where is Boy now? The Earl and Countess wanted Steamer to join the colours. But Steamer never desired anything but the industrial side of our firm. And where is Steamer now? The Earl and Countess wanted Winnie to marry a frightful, frightful man called Blenkinsop. A real
pederast
,
Steamer called him. But Winnie always wanted to manage her own school. And where is Winnie now? I hope, by the way, you noticed the nice rhetorical balance of that paragraph.”

Winnie, at the door, cleared her throat. “A pity,” she said, “that they won’t forbid you to do this book. Their permission is almost an omen of failure.”

Abigail turned to him in delight. “You hear, Pepe? Success is guaranteed!”