Havisham: A Novel (20 page)

He needed a manservant to take care of his appearance, and one was duly hired.

The roan was a fine pacer. I kept a closed carriage and also a curricle, for two horses apiece. But I thought it befitted him, and the dashing figure he cut, to be seen in a smarter sort of phaeton.

We discussed it. He demurred at first. However, as we talked more, I could tell that he was warming to the subject. He knew a good deal about the types available, the lightness of the bodywork by this or that coachbuilder, the speed you could expect.

‘With a decent pair of horses, I mean.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘of course.’

I dealt with the expenses as a practicality. It didn’t occur to me that I – or he – was being extravagant or profligate. It cost a certain amount to live well. He had the easy manner of someone born to such advantage, for whom it was no more than a right, his patrimony.

Once I’d bought the phaeton for him, I would listen from the street side of the house for the first trace in the air of the wheels. The response from the horses as he turned them first right, then left, and along the length of the brewhouse. The singing of the chassis springs. My heart would lift, soar. These were the most desirable sounds in the world now to me.

*   *   *

It was all money, impersonal and soulless. The more of it I gave him, the more I was trying to show him that it counted for so little against love. The value of money is the spirit in which we use it; otherwise it amounts to just the crackling of greasy paper, the piddle-clink of dulled coins.

*   *   *

Charles was too careful of my reputation, and of his own, to think of putting himself up overnight. It occurred to me that he could have one of the cottages at the back of the yard, but refurbished.

‘You need more space.’

This would deal with the awkwardness of his presence in the house. I knew that the staff talked, and it irked me that they should suppose they deserved to have an opinion on the matter.

*   *   *

Charles saw the merits of having his own detached accommodation, but the cottage’s occupant, Tice, was holding out.

‘I can smell trouble with that fellow.’

‘Oh, I’ve been having it for months,’ I told him.

‘There must be ways and means of satisfying all parties in this matter.’

‘Which matter is that?’

‘My home comforts, of course!’

A few days later Charles announced he’d found another cottage to let in Tap Street, suitable for the Tices, and he’d expertly beaten down the landlord on a price. He showed me the lease he’d had drawn up, awaiting my signature. I allowed him to persuade me that this was the best solution.

I was neglecting to include Tice in my calculations, however. I discovered that
he
felt he had been robbed not only of the cottage but also of status.

‘Leave it to me, Catherine. I’ll sugar him a bit. It’ll be all right.’

Because I didn’t hear any more about it, I presumed things were on a better footing. Tice habitually had a morose expression for me anyway, even though I would hear him laughing with his colleagues (
and
, apparently, with his new landlord in Tap Street): so wasn’t it an innocent misapprehension on my part, supposing that order if not quite harmony had been restored?

*   *   *

Charles used the cottage less than I had foreseen, but it was a gesture: mine to him. I was also advertising to the workers just what the new system was, how Havisham’s was being run now.

I was unaware of any complaints about my appointment of a new chief manager. That was either because there weren’t any or because Mr Ambrose, being the sensitive man I judged him to be, was filtering them off (almost like one of the brewhouse processes) before I had a chance to hear.

He’s on the other side of the yard from me, with his own housekeeper and a skivvy for that compact roosting box of his. He’s so near, but the distance of seventy or eighty yards is crucial. I’m feeling something more strongly than I’ve ever felt it before – an urgency between my legs. It’s like frozen heat.

An alarming, thrilling sensation.

When I clamp my thighs tightly together and concentrate hard on that hidden spot, the fear increases to terror. But my shameless pleasure increases too.

To exhilaration. Abandonment.

I roam beneath my shift. I lightly pass my hand over the fork, brushing the wiry hair there. I have a compulsion to dally. I press down with more force. I open my hand and let my fingers probe.

I part my thighs. My fingers reach their way in, not gently.

I move inside, towards my inner ache. My fingers explore deeper. Hot, wet, silky flesh. Untravelled, but knowing to yield.

I fight for breath.

From the crown of my head to my toes, I’m consumed by an unspeakable euphoria.

*   *   *

In the evenings we played cards. I learned the alphabet of Misère terms.

Alliance. Blaze. Cut-throat. Finesse. Ouvert. Pip. Renege. Ruff. Sans prendre. Skat/Widow.

Charles told me again, you have to play
against
the rules. Innocents to the game would think the cards were – literally – stacked against them, and that the outcome of a game was inevitable. He repeated, you needed courage, principally that: and the quality of clever, inspired bluff.

*   *   *

I wasn’t expecting it. His first question came from nowhere.

‘Are we going to continue like this?’

I was sitting at my father’s desk. He was standing at the window. Above his right shoulder, across the yard, a signboard for strangers who still didn’t know whose yard they were in, HAVISHAM.

‘“Continue like” – what?’

‘This arrangement.’

‘I thought you wanted to know about –’

‘No, not about the business. About ourselves.’

I frowned, quite caught out.

‘I’m sorry, I –’

‘The two of us.’

‘Me in Satis House, you mean?’ I tried again. ‘And you over in…?’

He shook his head slowly.

‘No. No, not that.’

I saw him swallowing hard, so that the Adam’s apple in his throat jumped.

‘Shouldn’t we be thinking of getting married, Catherine?’

It was as if I was in one of the Chadwycks’
tableaux vivants
, immobilised. At last, after a hiatus, I returned to my senses, in an approximate fashion.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have –’

I stared at him.

‘What I said –’ He began again. ‘I ought to have asked someone –’

‘Asked whom?’

‘One of your relatives. Please – you mustn’t –’

And then, did I panic? Because I thought he might be going to withdraw the question, undo the past moments, erase them –

‘No. No, no.’

‘Catherine –’

‘I shall. I
shall
marry you.’

He didn’t spring forward, didn’t throw his arms around me. He wasn’t even smiling. At first he just stood nodding his head, as if he had known I would consent.

‘Charles –?’

I felt that now I was having to pull
him
back from somewhere.

‘Good! Good!’ A smile broke out on his face at last. ‘I’m so glad.’

‘You’ve made me the happiest woman in the world. “Joy, joy shall overtake us –”’

‘What’s that?’

‘“– as a flood”.’

*   *   *

I told him how many times after that. On each occasion he would grow more thoughtful.

Self-deprecation, I felt, I couldn’t allow in my fiancé.

‘You should be proud of yourself,’ I said.

‘To be able to make a proud woman happy?’

‘The most difficult sort to
make
happy,’ I told him.

‘All those beaks at school who thought I was a dunce.’

‘Never!’

‘Who was I to say they weren’t right?’

‘The more fool you.’

‘Their point precisely.’

And somehow I would win him from his thoughts in the end, back to quiet laughter.

*   *   *

He would have kissed me. But I was terribly afraid of what I might have been allowing to happen next.

‘Please,’ I said. ‘Not now.’

‘Some time?’

‘I want to wait.’

‘D’you mean that?’

No. Of course I didn’t.

‘Yes,’ I lied.

‘It’s important to you?’

‘Oh yes.’

He didn’t try to argue the point.

‘I only thought –’

‘It’s all right,’ I said.

‘I know it’s serious to you. If that’s how you feel.’

Important, serious: yes, but not for the reasons he might be thinking.

I was melting between my legs, I could feel dampness on my underclothes, I was afraid the stains would show through.

‘Later,’ I said, forcing the word out. Nothing had ever been more difficult for me to say. ‘Later.’

And he did the decent thing and concurred, nodding his head, oh quite agreeably enough, while I wept and wailed inside myself for want of him.

*   *   *

‘When we’re married…’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘“When we’re married…”?’

‘Then I can allow you to lead the life of a lady.’

‘Meaning –?’

‘Meaning, I shall be able to take over the running of the whole brewery.’

‘You’ll run it on your own?’

‘Why not?’

‘Single-handed?’

‘You trust me, don’t you?’

‘Of course I trust you.’

‘And you can be wife, mother, grande dame, patroness, whatever you want to be.’

‘And you’ll have the grind of Havisham’s every day?’

‘Most days, let’s say. It will be my job of work. You told me labour was honest and true.’

‘Yes, but –’

‘You don’t think it’s beyond my capacities?’

‘No, no.’

‘You don’t think it’s beneath me, either?’

‘Not at all. But I
shall
get to see enough of you, won’t I?’

‘As much as you saw of your father.’

‘My father wasn’t always here.’

‘Off on business? I should have to go too.’

‘Yes, I’ve neglected that side of things.’

‘Your father wouldn’t have been disappointed?’

‘About what?’

‘About us.’

‘Why on earth –? No, I’m sure it’s a great solace to him. If he’s able to hear us. To know the brewery will be in reliable hands.’

‘Then, that’s settled?’

I nodded.

‘Yes, that’s settled. For when the time comes. Once we’re man and wife.’

*   *   *

The engagement banns were read.

I surrendered myself to everything, and became –

that cherry tree throwing its branches

the flame leaping on the new wick

the water tumbling joyfully over the weir

the fragrant spring wind seeping through the window cracks

the yellow cart rolling down the street

the vigorous hyacinths sprouting from their bulbs, after a dark cupboard-growing

the old Roman bricks stuck into the flint wall at the bottom of the garden, when I would sit in the mild sun staring and staring in front of me.

I was still trying to believe my luck.

*   *   *

My only regret was that Sally couldn’t be here to share my joy and to play
her
part.

I hadn’t known where to write to her, to pass on my news, to tell her about the preparations. At one time she had been the person closest to me. It had seemed so curious to lose her, an inexplicable thing, but never more so than now.

Letters of congratulation arrived from the town. My Havisham cousins and second cousins queued up in the hall on a certain Wednesday afternoon to offer me, one by one, their compliments and felicitations. (Implicit was their presumption that now my spirit must be a more generous one.)

I woke in the mornings with an immodest delight at life, raptured back
into
life, realising what a deliverance from my past this was, to feel every surge of joy that I was feeling. I floated through the day, never so light or carefree, hopeful to the very tips of my fingers and toes.

*   *   *

We were to be married at St Barnabas’s.

‘You don’t mind if it’s nowhere grander?’ I asked him.

‘Whatever pleases
you
.’ (He would have agreed to anything.)

‘The cathedral, you see … I used to go there under duress. And when my father died –’

‘No. No, that’s fine. Really. Truly.’

‘It’ll be my birthday too,’ I added.

He was about to look away, but turned back, did a double-take. He must have forgotten; he had known so much about me, the minutiae, but this greater event ahead of us had thrown a mantle over all the lesser.

‘Now it will be a special day for a much better reason. Because every year on my birthday I shall share our wedding anniversary with you.’

*   *   *

I asked him another time – other times, plural – what about our honeymoon?

Would it be France, or Switzerland, or Italy?

‘The choice is yours,’ he said.

The sun, I told him. Please. But not too much sun. And antiquity. Beautiful antiquity.

It must have come into both our heads at the very same instant.

‘Venice?’ he was saying.

‘Venice!’ I spoke over him.

Where else?

We didn’t discuss the expenses, because I didn’t want to embarrass him. The bills perforce would be
my
responsibility. (This was the whole point of having money: recognising what it was destined for.)

And my trousseau? I asked.

That’s
your
prerogative, he said. Surprise me.

(Sheba would have been the one to ask. But …

I’d manage by myself, though.

Mine would be the trousseau of trousseaux. My initials would be sewn into every article as finely, as meticulously as if enchanted fairy needles had worked the stitches.)

T
WENTY
-
NINE

Charles was talking about the trade there might be in setting up friendly societies at our tied houses. Those would hold the funds of whoever might want to place them with us, Havisham’s being a fully reputable local firm always running a healthy profit. Government stock was unreliable; we could offer five per cent, and do very nicely out of it – expand our own interests, bind our customers tighter to us, encourage others to come in.