Coromandel! (13 page)

Her hand crept across the table and covered his. She said, ‘I’m forty-four.’

Jason said, ‘I’ve never thought of it.’ That was not quite true, because when he first saw her he had wondered why a woman past her youth should sit alone in the Cockpit Tavern. But since then he had not thought of her age.

She said, ‘How old are you?’

He said, ‘Twenty.’

Her hand closed convulsively over his. He thought she had drunk too much mulled wine--perhaps to bring herself to the point of saying this that he was hearing--’I love you, Jason. The others wanted my money, and you’ll laugh at me, but I must tell you I love you.’ Her big mouth quivered, and her big blue eyes looked fearfully into his.

He turned quickly, feeling torn and affectionate inside at her fear that he would laugh at her. He said, ‘I think you’re the kindest person in the world.’

She sat for a while, looking down at the table; then she said heavily, ‘I’m not a young girl any more. I must go home.’

Jason said, ‘I’ll come with you.’

She looked up at him with a sudden, almost fearful movement. She said, ‘Do you want to--really?’

He said, ‘Of course. Where did you leave your cloak?’

She shivered a little as he wrapped the cloak round her, and then they went out together. He walked slowly along the street in the pitch dark at her side. He knew where she lived, but he had never been to the house. She held his hand tightly, and neither spoke. She stopped at last, whispered, ‘This is my house. The servants sleep at the top. They won’t come down.’ She opened the door with a big key from her purse, and he saw a long, low room, lit by a night light on a table, and silver glowing on a shelf against the far wall. The light gleamed dimly in her face.

Jason said, ‘Well, you’re home safe now. Good night.’

She stood on the step of her house, staring at him, her mouth working. Suddenly she dropped the key and put her arms round his neck and her wet face into his shoulder. He heard her mumbling, ‘Jason, Jason,’ and patted her shoulders and did not know whether to go now, or stay.

She recovered herself in a moment and took his hand. She said, laughing through the end of tears, ‘Come in for a moment, Jason, and let me show you my house. I’m very proud of it.’

Jason said, ‘Thank you. I’d like to.’ And he went with her into the house. Now she was hugging his arm so tightly that he had to keep close beside her.

She said, ‘There!’ She lit an oil lamp, and then the room seemed smaller again, and the two of them were in it, and --there was a clean stone floor and an arras of light-green cloth to one side.

He saw four books lying alone, one above another, on their sides, among the silver on the shelf, and went towards them.

Mabel said, ‘That’s a set of plate the Fishmongers’ Company gave my first husband. He was quite an old man.’

Jason picked up the first book and opened it. The printing did not cover all of each page, but ended irregularly on the right--some lines short, some long. He wanted to ask what book it was but felt ashamed because he could not read, so said negligently, ‘This is supposed to be good, isn’t it?’

Mabel said, ‘Oh, yes. That is one of Will Shakespeare’s plays. My second husband bought it. All those books are his.’

Jason said, ‘Shakespeare? Is it
A Winter’s Tale
?’

Mabel said, ‘Oh, yes. It’s beautiful. I’ve read it a score of times. So sad. Would you like a glass of canary wine, dear?’ Jason said, ‘No thank you. Please read to me a little out of
A Winter’s Tale
. I like your voice.’ He did like to hear her speaking. Her voice was pleasant and comfortable, like the rest of her.

She said, ‘No, Jason, you read to me. I’ll get the wine.’

‘I don’t want any wine, please, Mabel. I’ve had enough.’ He pushed the book into her hands and smiled at her.

Slowly she went scarlet and at last muttered, ‘Jason, I--I’ve always wanted to read, but I can’t.’

His jaw dropped. He said, ‘Nor can I!’

They looked at each other for a moment. Jason thought he could never have seen her properly before. She was a handsome woman with fine eyes and thick brown hair. The house smelled clean but lived-in.

He said, ‘I am a farmer’s son. I had no time for schooling.’

She said, ‘My father would not have me taught, because I was a girl. Then I asked both my husbands, and they forbade me. They said, “What does a woman want with reading?” And when I was free there seemed so many other things I wanted to do.’

‘Do you really want to learn to read?’ Jason asked. They had sat down together on the padded seat of a high-backed bench in front of the empty fireplace. They were holding hands.

‘Oh, yes!’ she said. ‘More than anything! Why, if you can read you can travel without ever leaving your chair. You are as wise as the wisest man who writes the books.’

Jason said, ‘And you have a thousand eyes and a thousand ears. You’re everywhere. You’re all the people you want to be but aren’t. If I could read, perhaps I would not want to go to Coromandel.’ He said it almost from force of habit. He had not thought of Coromandel for over a week now. The dancing was so important, the applause so fiery in his veins.

She said, ‘Coromandel? Where’s that? There’s no need to leave home if you can read, that’s what I think. I don’t want to go anywhere. I’ve got a big house here, and all the servants I need. I eat what I like and drink what I like. Jason, I’ll get a clerk to teach us to read!’

Jason said, ‘Are there such people?’

‘Plenty,’ she said. ‘We could have a lesson every morning, at noon, before dinner, and another in the afternoon. The clerk can have dinner with us.’

Jason turned and took her in his arms. He kissed her cheek and said, ‘I can’t thank you enough, Mabel. I’m too excited. Can we begin tomorrow?’

She said, ‘You must not try to thank me. Oh, Jason, I thought you wanted my money, but you don’t. Then I thought just now that you only wanted to lie in the bed with me--that was better, because you could have any girl you wanted, couldn’t you? But still it wasn’t right. Now I really believe you like me. I feel as if I were sixteen again--I feel so foolish, I love you so much. Can you really forget I’m so old?’

Jason thought, and answered, ‘Yes. But--‘ Now he ought to tell her that he was not in love with her. This strangely comfortable feeling he had for her couldn’t be love. It wasn’t at all like what Jane Pennel had done to him. It was more like Mary Bowcher--and it had turned out that he did not love Mary. He might be in love with Emily--only she was a strumpet.

So he ought to tell her, because she was lonely. But, looking into her eyes now, he saw that she was happy. She was not like Mary, after all. She wanted to learn to read. She looked like a merchant’s plump and sedate hen, but she lived hungrily at the corner of the table where the actors and the dancers and the wild singers fed. She had dreams, like him, and yet--she was comfortable, and kind, and enfolding.

He said, ‘But I must go home.’ He kissed her gently on the lips.

Dick and Emily were talking at the far end of Emily’s room. Jason leaned out of the low window. It was late January, and there was a hard frost. The ice on the Thames would be thicker today. Yesterday he had been walking along the bank with Mabel, and they’d seen two children drowned while trying to slide on the ice. He had wanted to run out to them, but they just disappeared while Mabel held him, crying that he mustn’t go.

He’d felt miserable after that. But all the same London was a good town when you got to know it. He understood better now what Emily had been trying to tell him about how no one needed to leave London. He looked down at himself. His clothes were not yet luxurious, but they were very different from anything he had owned or worn before. He had talked about buying a long silk coat once, but Dick wouldn’t let him. Dick said it was all right to dress well--in fact it was necessary, or people would give you the kind of small money they thought should satisfy a beggar--but it did not do to dress too richly, or people would give you nothing. They’d say to themselves, Why, that dancer’s got better clothes than I have; and if they were lords or noblemen they’d resent it; and if they were not, they’d still resent it, because perhaps they’d worked a lifetime in a merchant’s business and had never afforded or dared to wear such clothes.

Jason said, ‘I had dinner with Thomas Overpride yesterday. He asked me if we had thought of moving to Vauxhall Gardens in the spring.’

Dick sneered. ‘Where would you dance there, my lord?’

Jason said coldly, ‘Overpride will build a hut there for selling cakes and ale and whatever people want, and he will build a stage with a shelter over it. Two or three times as many people will be able to watch us as can in the tavern, and we would have more room to dance.’

‘And how are we going to make them pay to see when they can see without paying?’ Dick said.

‘Overpride will build a wooden fence round the stage, and--‘

‘Oh, hold your mouth! Run along to your old bag. It won’t pay.’

‘It will! After a year or two it will pay twice as well as the Cockpit!’ Jason noticed that Emily was looking at him with a curious, almost scornful, smile.

She said now, ‘Mabel Popeyes doesn’t care where you dance, does she, as long as she can watch you? Have you told her I’m not your sister?’

Jason said shortly, ‘Yes. This has nothing to do with her.’

Actually Mabel had said that of course he must go on with his dancing. He liked to dance, and she was happy only in helping him do what he liked. Emily was jealous, that was the trouble. What right had she to be jealous? Why did she think she could be nice to him and kiss him, and then go off with Lord Nailsworth and expect him to love her just the same?

He and Mabel had never mentioned marriage, but she had made it plain that anything he liked she would like. Would he want to have younger girls as well? She would expect that, as long as he did not leave her or lose his affection for her.

Emily said, ‘And when is Popeyes going to put the halter on you?’

Jason said nothing. Dick o’ the Ruff laughed.

How would a murderer and pimp like Dick understand what was between him and Mabel? Let him laugh his evil head off, but, when they decided to get married, they would.

‘You!’ Emily said. ‘Twenty, and a dancer? Wandering about with cow eyes after a woman old enough to be your grandmother.’

‘She’s only forty,’ Jason snapped.

‘She’s paying for you to learn to read. That’s the only reason, isn’t it? When you can read, you’ll leave her crying, and she’ll go back to her fiddlers and tapsters.’

Jason slapped her face hard. Dick o’ the Ruff drawled, ‘Popeyes must bake gunpowder into her cakes. They’ve turned our capon into a hero. You wouldn’t like to do that to me, would you?’

‘Don’t you dare, Jason!’ Emily said quickly and caught Jason’s arm as he stepped forward. Her cheek was blazing red where he had hit her. Dick began to laugh, a high whinnying cackle, and, still laughing, went out and down the long stairs.

Jason went to the looking-glass and examined his face and collar. Let the whole lot of them stew in hell. The power to read, that was what mattered. He had learned a little, but not much so far. He could spell cat and rat, but the words in Mabel’s Shakespeare play--it had turned out to be
The Tragedy of King Richard II
--were too long. He could remember them better than he could read them. He had made the clerk read some of it aloud:

O, who can hold a fire in his hand
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?

Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite
By bare imagination of a feast?

Or wallow naked in December snow
By thinking on fantastic summer’s heat?

Well, he could. Master Shakespeare must have been thinking of other people, people who could walk past Stonehenge at dawn without a tremor.

‘Jason.’ Emily’s voice was low and trembly. He did not answer her. She was a sullen strumpet and nothing more.

‘Jason--did you ask the clerk to read the map of Coromandel for you?’

God’s blood, he had been a fool to mention the map to Emily. As a matter of fact he had, as a joke, asked the clerk to read some of the words on it. The clerk had peered at the writing and said, ‘This here is Latin.
Quae visa, vera; quae non, veriora
. That means--’ Then Mabel had broken in laughingly, ‘It’s just a silly old map! You know it’s not even true, Jason, don’t you? You told me about that wonderful old rogue--Voy, you called him.’ Jason had kept his finger down on the map and asked the clerk, ‘What does it say here?’ The clerk read:--
’Ye City of Pearl
. That is most interesting.’ But Mabel snatched the map away and said, ‘I won’t have you dreaming of these horrible places. Aren’t you comfortable here?’ It was a very comfortable house, Mabel’s; and the cook was good too.
Ye City of Pearl
. You might call London a City of Gold. . . .

Emily said, ‘Jason, are you really going to Coromandel some day?’

He said, ‘Yes.’ He thought: Someday, yes, I’m going.

He thought again, with sudden harshness: You whoreson liar, you’re not going anywhere. You’re going to eat Mabel’s cakes, and they haven’t got any gunpowder in them.

Emily said, ‘I’ll never have pigs or chickens or a horse.’

He said, ‘No, you won’t.’

She said, ‘I have always pretended to myself that I wanted a farm with pigs and chickens and a horse, but I don’t really. I don’t dream about them. I can’t see myself there in the country with them. Jason--couldn’t, can you take me to Coromandel with you?’

Jason started violently. Coromandel again! With Emily! He blurted, ‘What do you know of Coromandel? You’re a whore!’

She leaned back as if he had hit her, and for a moment he thought he was going to have the barbaric satisfaction of seeing her wailing and crying in anguish. But she recovered herself. Her mouth hardened and, with the old tears still streaking her face, she said, ‘I wouldn’t come with you, anyway, you dirty, selfish--pimp!’

Jason began to say, ‘I’m sorry.’ He began to go towards her, to tell her he loved her, or could love her; that if she dreamed of Coromandel she was already his lover; but she turned her back and said coldly, ‘Run along to Popeyes.’