Havisham: A Novel (10 page)

T
HIRTEEN

Thereafter, we proceeded – advanced – to the Discourses.

W’m expressed his purpose: to unify Grecian grace and Etruscan simplicity.

Sheba stood on steps, right arm on her hip, to resemble a statue we knew from engravings, the Mattei Ceres in Rome; she wore a sea-green mantle, and in her left hand she held a blood-red rose.

I was Hebe, and a different challenge. I wasn’t called upon to dance, but to stand – my torso slightly twisted – beside a plinth, one arm wrapped round a jar. A gold strophion plaited about my pink dress held my breasts high, in the antique way. My hair was piled and knotted, as the ancients would have appreciated.

I was the handmaiden of the gods, a creature of heavenly favour. I was about to pour out nectar from the vessel. I represented perpetual youth.

I tried to convey, as Milton had described, ‘the Nods and Becks and wreath’d Smiles, such as hang on Hebe’s cheek’.

Above me, supported from the side of the stage, was one vast, cleverly painted, outstretched wing of golden feathers: the wing of the mighty eagle which Jupiter had taken as his disguise. It overarched me, threatening to overwhelm and devour me – a menace every bit as much as a guard. But I continued to smile, not too broadly, to convey (so W’m had directed me) something of the unsuspecting, trustful joy of youth.

*   *   *

The others were with various of their friends, who had descended on them at the same juncture, which meant he could find me quite straightforwardly. I was aware of his approach. I busied myself with a pot of black and yellow tulips.

‘Miss Havisham –’

‘Mr Compeyson –’

He drew me into conversation. He was unsure about the legends; he confused them – or pretended to – and told me he’d had a misspent youth. But he spoke so well, so eloquently, and was so much the picture of a gentleman, and wouldn’t say how he’d misspent his time, that I happily gave
that
admission – his purported admission – no credence at all.

*   *   *

He was good-looking, if in a more predictable way than W’m. Summer-blue eyes. A straight but short nose. Brown hair that curled. Top lip a little thinner than the lower one, which had a sensual amplitude, as if, I fancied whenever I took advantage of his distracted eyes to look at his mouth, head had been set against heart.

He set out to persuade me I should tell him about myself. He wanted to hear.

‘What about?’

‘Anything you like.’

‘You’re so eager to hear for some reason – I could tell you anything, and you’d believe me?’

‘I’d believe Catherine Havisham.’

I fussed with the petals of some of the black tulips in the jardiniere. He stroked the stem of a yellow.

‘You wouldn’t
know
if it was about me or not.’

‘Who else
could
it be about?’

‘Sally,’ I said, and laughed.

‘Who on earth’s Sally?’

‘She might be more interesting to hear about than me.’

‘I think not.’

‘You can’t say most definitely. You’d need to contrast and compare.’

‘Well, about this Sally first. And then, please, all about
you
.’

*   *   *

Sally. In my old loose chintz sack. In my blue satin pumps with the yellow bows. With my copy of
The Sorrows of Young Werther
, and a list of quotations from the text which she has copied out in the neat script which I taught her.

*   *   *

‘I tell him about you, Sally.’

‘About
me
? Gracious, what for?’

‘He likes to hear.’

‘But what d’you say to him? There’s nothing
to
tell.’

It was an innocent enough pastime. I tried to draw him out, on the sort of looks he preferred.

‘Sally has green eyes.’

‘Nothing so nice as tawny.’

‘Thick hair.’

‘What colour?’

‘Copper.’

‘Fair for
me
. Like yours.’

‘A long neck.’

‘That’s fine for swans.’

‘Quite dainty feet, considering.’

‘Tire too easily.’

‘Well, you won’t believe me. But she’s a very attractive girl, I assure you.’

‘Good for her, then.’

‘She’s wasted. She should be set up as – some merchandiser’s wife. At least.’

‘Maybe she will be.’

‘She doesn’t rate herself highly enough for that. She needs someone to tell her.’

‘And do
you
?’

‘Oh no! I don’t want her to go and desert me, do I now?’

*   *   *

I was avoiding Arthur, but he followed me into the garden one evening. I didn’t look at him.

‘He used to play with me. Gave me things.’

‘Who did?’

‘My father. He told me I’d be rich one day. And my mother would be proud of me.’

‘I know nothing about that.’

‘He’s setting
you
up very nicely, isn’t he?’

‘And he’s sent
you
to school. You don’t look poor to me. Those clothes and boots –’

‘What are you saying to him?’

‘It’s none of your business what happens at Satis House.’

‘I should have an equal share of it with you. When he croaks.’

‘I’ll tell him
that
, shall I?’

‘Go rot in hell.’

I couldn’t forget the strain of work on my father’s heart, and I longed to ease the burden, however I could. Enlightening him as to the truth of Arthur’s character wasn’t the way.

*   *   *

I showed Sally what had been delivered to the house. A small pot containing miniature black and yellow tulips.

‘Don’t you wish you were me, Sally? But you’ll share the pleasure of looking at them with me.’

She admired them, but guardedly.

‘Can you guess who they’re from? Of course you can.’ Of course she could.

Mrs Venn informed me later that it was Sally who had brought them to the house.

‘
You
did, Sally?’

‘Well, I was walking by. A horse with a pannier drew up and the rider asked me where I might find Satis House.’

‘Was it him?’

‘I hardly saw.’

I had her describe him to me.

‘Brown hair? And curly?’

‘Yes.’

‘His face?’

‘The details have gone.’

‘Why didn’t you say?’

‘All I had to do was take the pot from him.’

‘So, it wasn’t a surprise? When I showed you?’

‘I’d only glanced at them.’

‘You sly-boots!’

Not that I minded at all. It brought Sally closer in to the delightful confusion of my afternoon.

‘How shall I acknowledge it?’

‘He’ll know you’ve received it.’

‘But I must thank him,’ I said.

‘D’you have an address for him?’

‘No.’

‘Then he can’t mean you to thank him.’

‘Until I see him again. Oh, what if I
don’t
see him again?’

‘I don’t doubt you will.’

‘Here, in the town. Whatever was he doing here? Did he come especially?’

‘He meant you to have a souvenir. The tulips.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He must have.’

A few moments later it occurred to me: I hadn’t supplied that particular – the arrangement of tulips – when I’d described the evening of the Discourses to her.

She had divined it somehow, that the choice of flower and colours wasn’t accidental. I put my arm round Sally’s waist.

‘How lucky I am,’ I said.

‘To have met your Mr Compeyson?’

‘No!’ I laughed. ‘To have met you first.’

F
OURTEEN

I wrote to my father from Durley Chase. And then, when he’d granted his permission, I wrote to Sally. I had been invited to a Carnaval Masque (spelling thus). It promised to be one of the highlights of the season. Would she like to see it for herself? She wouldn’t, needless to say, be my
maid
, not as such, but for purposes of form and protocol, we would have to agree she be called that for the evening.

Sally didn’t reply immediately, and I thought I might have to write again. When I did hear from her, she sounded less effusive than I’d been expecting. Nevertheless, ‘if my situation permits’, she was willing to accept my proposal. She didn’t mention anything about her duties, having to attend on me, and I was grateful that she spared us both that embarrassment.

*   *   *

At Durley Mouse explained to Lady Chadwyck, and the housekeeper was instructed to treat Sally more favourably than was usual for the two nights she would be under their roof.

Sally carried herself with a suitable dignity, and the housekeeper was impressed, supposing this was the calibre of staff we insisted on in Kent. To me, though, she seemed to be abstracted about something.

‘You’re not going to be in any trouble with the archdeacon, are you, coming away like this?’

She said, no, it had all been attended to quite amicably.

I asked after her widowed mother, was she well?

‘Oh yes. She’ll live to be a hundred.’

‘Nothing else is bothering you?’

‘No.’

‘Nothing about the Carnaval? What you have to –’

‘No.’

She smiled and put some cheer back into her face, but I wished I could feel more convinced. I hoped
I
wasn’t responsible, guilty – inadvertently, through decent intentions gone awry – of compromising her good nature.

*   *   *

Even the Chadwycks, I sensed, were taken aback by the extravagance of the occasion.

The rooms had been hung with panels painted with scenes of Venice. Even though I had never been, I recognised the locations at once, the palazzi and bridges and receding canals, the grand salons – even grander than ours this evening – glimpsed through arched windows.

The footmen were dressed as they might have been in the Doge’s Palace, while the waiters were imitation gondoliers. The food was prepared as spectacularly as if for a Venetian feast-day, piled high on stepped salvers. The goblets were of blue Venetian glass.

The company moved about in their masks – gold, silver, scarlet, multi-coloured, or stark black or white – and sweeping their trains and long cloaks. I could recognise almost no one.

Our hosts were in elaborate disguise. Lord Villiers carried a long staff surmounted by a large circular medallion trailing gold tassels. Lady Villiers’s dress was in several sculpted sections, like the queen on a suit of playing cards.

We glided about the rooms obscured by our masks, the ladies further protected by our spread fans. We were serenaded with the music of Vivaldi and Uccellini, played on flutes, theorbos, violas da gamba. The musicians wore lace jabots and two-foot-high white wigs.

Red and silver roses were growing from Sheba’s head. Her face was striped like a cheetah’s. Her mouth was barely open at all, and she seemed to be taking her last earthly breaths of air. The mask-maker had provided me with a harlequin style, with lozenges of blue and yellow. The high, exaggerated lines of the cheekbones and the sharpness of the nose allowed a little vital air to circulate under the close-fitting shell.

*   *   *

Moses had excused himself from the evening, denying it was because he disapproved of the theme. Mouse might have taken him at his word, but W’m told her that Moses wouldn’t have said it if he hadn’t been feeling morally superior. Anyway, W’m added, Moses had another, very good reason for not joining in: leaving his preparations too late, in the little time left he’d failed to find a costume that would fit him. (Prosaic, I thought, but quite probable.)

*   *   *

At either end of one of the reception rooms two figures were suspended from the ceiling on platforms. On one, surrounded by aureate rays, the sun – androgynously dressed in gold-coloured material and skin painted in gold. On the other, a silver figure – similarly sexless, astride a crescent moon.

*   *   *

A plague doctor. Black-faced, with a fall of scarlet ribbons on his chest; a long beaked nose, cruel and pointed like a razorbill. A three-cornered hat, as black as the cape, with a plumage of black ostrich feathers. A white cane, tap-tapping on the polished floors.

*   *   *

But who was this?

A silver mask floating past mine. Or, when I turned my head, it would be only a couple of feet away over my shoulder.

‘You really don’t recognise me?’

I stared into the almond-shaped eyeholes. I couldn’t tell the colour of those irises, even by the shine from the chandeliers in the atrium. His voice, it was only affecting the aristocratic drawl –

His hand reached out and lifted mine by the fingers, gently holding it in mid-air.

‘Signorina –’

It was the rush of heat to my neck which told me. I pulled back my hand, even though it wasn’t my true choice.

‘Mr Compeyson?
You
were invited?’

‘No, no. Certainly not.’

‘What did you do –?’

‘Filched an invitation.’

‘How?’

‘There are ways.’

‘But the Villierses…’

‘… wouldn’t be bothered with the likes of me?’

‘No. I didn’t mean … Why – why have you come?’

‘Can’t you guess?’

At least he couldn’t see my full discomposure.

‘What if they ask you to leave?’

‘They won’t.’

I noticed Mouse watching me through her eyeholes. From another direction I saw Sheba’s rose garden moving towards us.

‘We’ll meet here again,’ I said, ‘in half an hour’s time.’

He didn’t ask, where’s ‘here’; like me, his instincts would lead him back to the spot.

*   *   *

There was always someone to interrupt us. I felt that the lagoon tides themselves were at work, allowing us to approach and collide and then, just as inevitably, sweeping each of us away again, on the night’s irresistible flow. Because we had to speak in snatches, we let ourselves be more outspoken about our surroundings and the company, and I didn’t interrupt, and by not stopping him I felt I was colluding with him, right at the hub, and I didn’t care; it was a release to me, a brewer’s daughter who found herself here by some nonsensical but (so far) undetected accident.

Some costumes were fabulously coloured, trimmed with stones and pearls that might be precious or not, they glittered in front of your eyes for an instant and then they were gone. All the unknown colours of Africa and India. Voluptuous silks, the softest furs. Immaculately impassive faces, perhaps studded with jewels, or glass. A movement of an eye inside a hollow socket, a glimpse of teeth in the shadow behind the parted lips, and that was all to serve as a clue to identity.