Benjamin Franklin's Bastard (31 page)

BUT EVENTUALLY TWO THINGS
together caused William to end his double life: his sense of a growing seriousness in Elizabeth, coupled with a growing seriousness in Maude. Elizabeth began to start more and more sentences referring to the future with the word
we.
She spoke often of her father’s belief that William would go far. Maude, on the other hand, took to lying next to William with her head propped in her hand, studying his face. She began to drop into awkward silences if William mentioned going out to another coffeehouse or tavern or party, as if she actually expected to be invited along. William had already been calling on Elizabeth more and Maude less, and now he simply stopped calling on Maude at all.

One day some weeks after William had stopped calling on Maude, he spied another kind of low woman, “the street whore” his father’s compatriots had once decided might have spawned him, and he thought of Maude. Conventional sensibility might rank Maude a cut above the street woman, but William found himself thinking of the street woman with greater respect; at least she demanded something for her time. Thinking so, a wave of compunction overtook William. He stopped at the goldsmith’s, selected a brooch that he could hardly afford on his father’s strict allowance, and sent it around with a note that said,
For Maude. A remembrance.
He’d poised his pen to add his name but thought better of it—if she knew who it was from it would mean what it was meant to mean—if she didn’t it would work just as well in easing William’s conscience.

COMING HOME ONE NIGHT,
several months after he’d stopped calling on her, William found Maude lurking outside his landlady’s door. For a moment he didn’t recognize her; the plump lips had been absorbed inside a bloated face, the eyes were hooded, the hair and bosom wrapped tight in an unbecoming brown shawl.

“What the devil! Maude!”

She collapsed into bawdy, convulsive tears. He swept her out of sight into the shrubbery, stroking her shoulders while holding her away from him at the same time. “What’s the trouble, Maudie?”

In almost the same instant her tears dried and her eyes flashed at him in fury. “What’s the
trouble
? Can you not guess? You come and come and then you don’t and now here I am! Here I
am
!”

“Yes, yes, I see that. I should have explained myself perhaps, but I hadn’t taken you for the sort of girl that might wonder about a fellow in that way. I see now how unkind it was and I apologize. I should have explained.”

“Explained
what
?”

William was still holding Maude by the shoulders, but more for defensive reasons than anything else; the steel in her arms—and, indeed, in her eye—surprised him. It was past time for half measures. Swift and sure and out. He gripped a little harder to ward off any possible blows. “The fact of it is, Maudie, I’ve met someone else, someone I plan to marry. You know we neither of us took our arrangement as a serious thing—”

Somehow Maude pulled free of him and took a step back. For a minute she appeared to have lost her footing, and William expected to see her next on the ground, in a swamp of more tears, but instead she simply restacked her spine and drew herself up. “Well, Billy,” she said, “ ’tis a serious thing now. We’ve got a child coming on.”

WILLIAM FOUND HIS FATHER,
as he so often found him these days, in his sitting room poring over a book with his landlady’s daughter, Polly, his landlady hovering near to refill his teacup whenever desired. His father sat barefooted, his wig absent, one hand circling his cup, the other tossed easily across the back of Polly’s chair. He looked . . . at home, William thought. As if this were his family now. Polly raised her head, saw William, and did something with her face that made it appear even more unfortunate. She blushed. Despite William’s best efforts at ignoring the girl, he’d for some time now suspected that she shared the elder Franklin’s dreams of an attachment with him, which only made William’s current predicament all the more awkward.

“Billy!” William’s father cried. “Come look what this nimble-minded young lady has discovered in Rousseau.”

The girl looked at William’s father and smiled, all that was wrong with her face almost righting itself.

“Father,” William said. “May I have a word?”

Give the nimble mind its due—the girl was up, collecting her mother and herding her from the room before either Franklin was required to ask her to do so.

“What, son? ’Tisn’t ill news from home?”

“Nothing of the sort. ’Tis trouble here. I come to you because—”

William hesitated.

“You come to me because ’tis where you should come. Out now, what is it?”

“A child. Due in six months’ time.”

William’s father studied him, as William studied his father. What did each read of history on the other’s face?

“ ’Tis yours, then?”

For a time, it was true, William had eagerly considered that point, casting back over his many unscheduled visits to Maude’s room, searching his memory unsuccessfully for the odd pipe lying around, the echo of fast-disappearing footsteps on the stair, even launching a delicate question here and there. But Maude’s answers had been so adamant, so
consistent,
that William had been forced to admit the lack of evidence against anyone but himself.

“I believe ’tis mine.”

“What sort of woman?”

“A . . . an agreeable sort.” Oh, how those overheard words continued to haunt him!

“The wife sort?”

William took a deep breath. “There’s talk of a political appointment. Were I to marry this woman, it would limit my prospects considerably. Besides—” Should he add here that he had another in mind? He’d yet to mention Elizabeth Downes to his father, but he hesitated. Bringing Elizabeth into the conversation at that particular point somehow seemed the greater crime.

But his father seemed to understand the dilemma as it stood. After all, weren’t William’s dreams for his future his father’s dreams for him too? “Very well,” he said at length. “Tell me the woman’s name and where she keeps herself.”

“Why?”

“Why! What the devil do you mean,
why
? Because you’ve come here, as I assume, for my help. The child must be taken care of, and as you’ve little means of your own, I’m willing to take on whatever expense is required until you’re able to assume such responsibility. Now the first decision that must be made is whether the child would be better served removed from the situation it will fall into at birth; if so, a fostering family must be found. As to the woman, if she keeps the child, or even if she doesn’t, it would be best to leave her better off than worse off, wouldn’t you say? Depending on her circumstance she might be satisfied in coin—” His eyes dropped to the floor. “Or she might be positioned to earn her own way.”

William stared at his father; when else in William’s life had his father failed to meet his eye head on? “Is that what you did with my mother?”

The elder Franklin’s head came up. He looked at William as blandly as if he’d just been asked if he’d scraped his boots before he came into the room. “The irony of this situation has not escaped me.”

A BOY WAS BORN.
The results were much as William anticipated: Maude had no means—or apparent wish—to keep the child; she would give it over—and keep quiet about its parentage—in exchange for a loan to set up in a milliner’s shop, which William’s father was able to arrange. In fact, William’s father arranged it all, as anxious as William to keep his name clear; how odd, then, when it came time to collect the boy, William’s father insisted that William go along. When they arrived at Maude’s room, her sister—a sharper, harder version of Maude—answered the door, and it was the sister who took charge of the money and the key to the shop. William had so anticipated and dreaded any kind of scene with Maude that he felt oddly off-kilter when she chose not to appear. Did she stay behind the scenes because she cared too much for the child or because she cared none at all?

Maude’s sister disappeared through a door at the side of the parlor and returned carrying the infant; she moved toward William, but William’s arms hung numb at his sides while his father’s reached out, his eyes starting with tears. “Dear God, he’s you all over again!”

And suddenly there was Maude, hovering briefly in the doorway in a state of undress, heavy breasts hanging loose under her shift, two damp circles marking the cloth with either the remnants of the infant’s last meal or the anticipation of a next one that would never get delivered. William took a step toward the door but the shadow flew off, and William pursued her no further; afterward—long afterward—that last image of Maude pursued
him
. Why had she appeared at the door in such a state? Had she wished a last word with William? A last look at her child? Had she perhaps changed her mind and then changed it back again? Had she wanted to send her boy away with some final words of instruction?
Don’t swaddle him too tight. Don’t feed him every time he cries. Tell him his mother loved him.

In the dark carriage William’s father handed the boy across, and for the first time William felt the terrible weight of that minute lump of flesh, about to be cast off into the world by his own hand. But to what fate? All William could say—indeed, perhaps all his father had managed to say—was that the boy was going to a better fate than the one he’d left behind. And at the least, this boy was not going where he was unwanted by anyone.

The Mortensens were waiting in their parlor, just inside the door, the pair standing stiffly side by side like matching chessmen, beaming like matching suns the minute they first glimpsed the boy. William’s father began to speak, first warm words of gratitude followed by cooler ones about terms: sums of money to be paid to an account, the address where reports were to be sent. These reports would go to a friend of William’s father and never refer to the child by his legal name—William Temple Franklin—but by the name of William Temple, the name under which he would be raised.

As the negotiations ran on, William stayed silent, looking around at the unpretentious table and chairs, the simple pewter filling the shelves, the well-stuffed wood box beside the fire, the waiting cradle that sat opposite. He looked down at the child in his arms and saw his infant self and a similar room and a similar couple standing by; the room began to shift, the people to blur; he handed the boy to Mrs. Mortensen and grabbed hold of a chair; when he looked again he saw that tears of instant love and joy had started up in Mrs. Mortensen’s eyes.

No, William thought, this was not how he had begun his second life—that much, at least, he could know of it; there had been no such tears in his stepmother’s eyes. He leaned down low to Mrs. Mortensen. “Thank you,” he whispered. He touched the boy and felt as if a rope drawn tight had just snapped and whipped back and lashed him. He turned abruptly and left the house.

William’s father lingered behind.

41
London, 1761

WILLIAM’S LIFE BLAZED ON,
the sheer brilliance of it, the sheer speed, making it easier and easier to mentally leave Maude and the child behind. He made barrister; he began to write anonymous political treatises for his father that were lauded far and wide; he grew closer and closer to Elizabeth Downes and her family and friends, as a result forming his first important political connections that weren’t his father’s. In fact, when one of those new connections spoke the right word in the right ear, William was invited to march in the king’s coronation procession while his father was left to watch amid the hordes that lined the streets on either side.

The coronation spectacle was grander than anything William had ever imagined on this earth—first came the herb women sweetening the streets before the tread of the hundreds of dignitaries who led the parade, then the magnificent display of glinting swords, orb, scepter, and jewels. Last came the king himself, glowing in gold, silver, and fur, followed by row upon row of trumpets, drums, and fifes. Walking in step beside London’s most famed barristers, directly behind the courtiers, dukes, and earls, William felt as if he’d found the place, the people, the culture where he belonged. Later he would toast again and again, as deep and as long as any true Londoner: “Long live the king!”

THE ELDER FRANKLIN DIDN’T
approve of William’s new social set or his growing political connections, or, indeed, the new slant to his political writings, more full of Crown and Parliament than America, but in his father’s disapproval William detected the whiff of spoiled grapes. The elder Franklin’s own mission in London had not gone well, his petitions to the Penns ignored, his petitions to the Crown outright denied. In fact, to anyone who paid attention, Benjamin Franklin’s official work in London had come to an effective end the year before, but even to those who paid attention he was not considered a failure. In between bouts of defending the increasingly unpopular America in the London press, Benjamin Franklin managed to invent a fireplace damper and a musical instrument called an “armonica,” based on the musical glasses with which William had played so often as a child; the elder Franklin also continued his electrical experiments, testing the effect of applied current on the paralyzed limbs of war veterans and perfecting the design of his “points,” as they were called. In scientific circles and beyond, Benjamin Franklin became
the
American to know, honored with a doctorate in philosophy from Oxford University for his work with electricity. William’s honorary master’s for assisting his father with his experiments went largely ignored.

Perhaps no wonder then that William’s father, settled in contentedly with his London “family,” was in no great rush to go home. What he did with his landlady, William could never prove or disprove, but neither did he really care; he found the close relationship between his father and the landlady’s daughter the more disturbing circumstance. The appearance of Elizabeth Downes hadn’t cooled his father’s schemes of William and Polly marrying, no matter how often William declined any invitation where Polly was likely to be present, but it didn’t stop his father from cultivating the girl as if Elizabeth Downes were but a figment of William’s imagination. No wonder, then, his apparent shock when William announced his official engagement.