Another Heartbeat in the House (11 page)

‘Might I be shown to my room?' I said. ‘I should like to rest before dinner.'

‘You'll find Katy somewhere below.' And young master Theodore turned back to the kittens without paying me the courtesy of a farewell.

When I finally found Katy in the kitchen, she was gossiping with Cook. They jumped to their feet when I entered, all smiles, and for the world I could not have pictured kindlier-looking servants, nor more efficient. Cook suggested a tray in my room instead of dinner (which offer I declined, being curious to meet the master of the house), while Katy assured me that the room had been aired and the bed warmed. My box had been taken upstairs by Pether, she told me, and she herself had taken the liberty of hanging my dresses and arranging my accoutrements. As we left the kitchen, I heard someone come through the back door.

‘I'll wager the precious chit will not last a week,' a voice said, ‘for she has such arrant airs –'

But before the loathsome Pether could continue there came a loud ‘Shhh!' and an ostentatious banging of pans from Cook.

Katy led me upstairs, prattling in a brogue into which she threw such expressions as ‘Lawks!' and ‘Sapristi!' which I think were intended to demonstrate how cosmopolitan she was. At the door of my chamber, she bobbed a curtsey and said that if I should like my hair dressed before dinner she would be glad to oblige, for she entertained ambitions to be a lady's maid. I thanked her and declined the offer, recalling the springy ringlets that had comprised Mrs O'Dowd's sheep-like coiffure.

From what Katy had said, I had expected the room to be furnished with at the very least a hanging wardrobe, a dressing table and a decent bed. The last item was a tester of the antique variety, hung with frowsty damask. A chest, a washstand and a hideous armoire comprised the rest of my furnishings. There was not even a stool to sit upon. However, I was in such desperate need of sleep after the punishing sea voyage that I vowed not to trouble myself over such concerns for the time being: instead I made myself as comfortable as I could upon the quilt and fell at once asleep.

I dreamed that Isabella was sailing out to sea on a raft with a sail made of tattered damask. She was pulling kittens from a sack one after another, examining each one carefully before either returning it to the bag or hurling it into the sea. I was travelling alongside her, propelled by some force of levitation, attempting to make out what she was saying. Her words were snatched sporadically by the wind and blown hither and yon, but one distinct phrase came to me: ‘
I
can't do it. It is rather a métier for
you
, Miss Drury.' And then she was sailing on down a river that turned into a gurgling torrent and I awoke to find Katy pouring water into the basin on the washstand.

‘I brought you some hot water, Miss,' she said. ‘And I would be glad to help you change.'

This put me at a disadvantage, for my wardrobe was modest. I was of course in a different category to a domestic servant, but it had not occurred to me that I would be obliged to dress for dinner of an evening.

‘I took the liberty of telling Mrs O'Dowd that you had but three dresses,' ran on Katy. ‘She's on her way now with some of her own she's picked out for you, that she says you may keep for yourself. They're no longer in the very pink of the mode, but the quality! She must have taken a quare liking to you.'

I was about to retort that I didn't accept charity, then checked myself for my want of sensibility. Were this little maid to be offered cast-offs by her mistress, she would think herself blessed by the Fairy Peribanou.

‘Mrs O'Dowd is too generous.'

‘Beautiful, lovely Madam!' beamed Katy, swishing the water around the basin with her fingertips. ‘Ah sure, she has so many dresses she can spare three or four of her old ones. Now, are you quite certain that you would not like me to fetch the tongs? I'm after re-curling Madam's coiffure.'

‘You're very kind, Katy, but I prefer to dress my hair myself.'

‘Well for you.' She looked at me critically. ‘Might I suggest a touch of bandoline – ah! Here is Madam.' Mrs O'Dowd came into the room, tottering under the weight of an assortment of gowns. ‘Madam! You should not be lugging the dresses yourself. Here – give them over to me.'

Katy took the dresses and laid them on the bed, smoothing out the folds with reverent hands. ‘The blue taffeta! How lucky you are, Miss Drury! You will look like an angel in that. Now, your water's poured, so will I come back to you after you've washed?'

‘There's no need, Katy. I'm used to dressing myself.'

‘It would be my privilege, Miss.' Bobbing a curtsey, she retreated.

Mrs O'Dowd had taken a seat upon the bed and was toying with one of her ringlets, winding it round and round a forefinger.

‘How fond Katy is of fashion!' I remarked. ‘She tells me she would like to become a lady's maid.'

‘Yes. She was a housemaid at my father's house; I brought her here to be parlour maid. I brought Grady with me too – he is the butler – and Cook; and as for the rest, they come and go and squabble and steal and gossip as servants generally do.'

‘Katy is clearly very devoted,' I remarked.

‘She is,' she said, ‘and overly familiar too, you might say. But she has been with the family since I was a child, and she is my stalwart. I should be lost without my Katy.'

Mrs O'Dowd's blue eyes misted over, and sensing that an outbreak of sentiment was imminent, I diverted her attention to the mass of stuff upon the bed. ‘What a fine collection of gowns!' I said.

‘They are for you, if you will have them?'

‘I will accept them with pleasure, Mrs O'Dowd, if you are quite certain you can spare them? They are exquisite.'

‘Yes, yes – I have outgrown them, you see, and they will fit you to a nicety.' She traced with her fingernail an appliquéd vine that bordered a rose-pink sash. I could tell from that detail and divers others that the needlework was of top quality, and was glad no hoity-toity impulse had induced me to decline her gift. ‘The grey moiré is most becoming, and the green tabinet will go well with your colouring. I should not ever have thought to part with that sweet sprigged mousseline, but it is too small for me now.' She held the dress up by its lace-trimmed sleeves and looked at it with regret. ‘I have grown quite plump.'

‘Most women fill out, once they have children,' I assured her. Privately I thought macaroons and too much Madeira wine were the more probable cause of her embonpoint.

‘Well, there will be no more of
those
!' she said, with some spirit, and for a moment I thought she had read my mind and was referring to the macaroons. ‘My second child nearly killed me; the doctor says I will not survive a third.' As she tossed the silk moiré on the bed, a cascade of dust fell from the tester. She looked up at it, as if she had never seen it before. ‘This bed was mine, when I was a girl,' she said. ‘Oh! How I wish it were mine still!'

And she was gone.

I chose the grey moiré to wear to dinner, but before descending the stairs I embarked upon a private tour of the upper storey, employing the lightness of foot beaten into me by Monsieur Cabriole, my former dancing master. A long passage separated the front and back rooms. The floor was uncarpeted, the wainscot unpainted. Each room I tried at random – tapping gently first upon the door to make sure it was unoccupied – revealed furniture from a bygone era: heavy chests in oak and walnut, worn prayer chairs, and dank-looking court cupboards.

The O'Dowds' residence was all façade, I realized; the affluence on display downstairs did not extend beyond the first-floor landing. Here, hidden away behind closed doors, were the accumulated relics of Mrs O'Dowd's ancestral home. The folderols and fine clothes were for show in her reception rooms, while her private apartments were the repository of all that was ugly and antiquated. It was my guess that Mrs O'Dowd could not afford to finish decorating her house.

The dinner bell rang. I descended to find the mistress below, poking about in her work basket. ‘Those wretched kittens have tangled my embroidery silks,' she said. ‘You might help me wind them after dinner.'

‘With pleasure. Are the children to join us later?'

‘No. They are above in the nursery. We shan't see them again today.' I sighed and made a passably regretful moue at the prospect. ‘My husband and my father will be dining with us. Grady – some champagne cup for Miss Drury.'

The butler, standing by a sideboard, obliged.

‘Champagne cup? Is this a festive occasion?'

She pretended not to hear. ‘Tell me more of London, my dear Miss Drury! Have you been to the Beulah Spa? I have heard that the fireworks there are more spectacular than were ever seen at Vauxhall.'

‘Oh, they are delightful, Mrs O'Dowd, but Vauxhall boasts by far the finer refreshments.'

I spoke warmly and knowledgeably of the pleasure gardens and the entertainments on offer (I had held the paintbox for my father while he executed
aquarelles
of Beulah Spa, and the tightrope walker who performed at Vauxhall had been a friend of my mother), and Mrs O'Dowd drank a quantity of champagne cup – Grady refilling her glass discreetly on a signal from her pinky finger – until we were joined half an hour later by Mrs O'Dowd's decrepit, taciturn, grey-faced father and her husband.

I am disinclined to furnish you, the reader, with even a thumbnail description of that man. But if Wordsworth claims that powerful feelings are best recollected in tranquillity, then I must try.

Mr O'Dowd was a man of some thirty-five years; perhaps younger – it was hard to tell. He had been handsome once, I dare say, but now was grown to fat. He had a dissipated expression about the eyes, and a brutal set to his mouth. His forehead was low, made lower by a horizontal sweep of black hair; his nose might have been patrician had it not been realigned by some blow to the face, and his jaw and chin sagged beneath an excess of flesh. He wore a green-striped waistcoat which strained against gilt buttons, and a coat of plum-coloured drap-de-Berry.

At regular intervals he withdrew from his pocket an embossed gold watch-and-chain, from which hung many decorative fobs and seals. This he consulted with much frowning and squinting, as though it were advising him of matters of great import.

We dined, the four of us, on vermicelli soup, roast loin of veal and cabinet pudding. After some preliminary
politesse
for my benefit, Mr O'Dowd discoursed to his father-in-law on the steeplechase and the local stag hunt, then of a disputed case of trespass in petty sessions which led on to a far graver case of criminal conversation in the High Court, which in turn branched out into a heated monologue about political iniquity and the state of the nation in general. During this one-sided debate the hock goblets were taken away and replaced with burgundy glasses, and the burgundy was succeeded by a decanter of port. Mrs O'Dowd treated herself to a ‘thimbleful' of cherry brandy to wash down the last crumb of cabinet pudding, then took curaçao with her coffee in the drawing room when we left the gentlemen to their cigars.

As I passed Mr O'Dowd's carver he caught hold of the end of my sash.

‘Is not that Maud's gown?' he asked, in a low voice.

‘Mrs O'Dowd was kind enough to make me a present of it,' I told him.

He gave the sash a tug. ‘I know what devils hide beneath,' he said.

Mrs O'Dowd invited me to play the piano, or at least to join her in a game of
vingt-et-un
: I declined, pleaded tiredness and retired, calling first for Katy to see her mistress to bed.

That was the last time I slept without a knife under my pillow.

I awakened to find a carcass stretched upon me. The bed sheet was over my face but still I got his smell, of Munster cheese and unwashed body linen. He struck me once, upon the mouth, which then he forced open and proceeded to stuff with his neckcloth, pressing all the while upon my throat with his hand.

My mother had warned me it was bound to happen some time – it was one of the penalties of having a pretty figure – and had told me what to expect. From a young age I knew that all a girl could do was protect her face as best she could and not move a muscle, for with resistance comes the risk of injury. ‘Practise being dead,' my mother had said.

But for the blow, which caused my teeth to scrape the inside of my cheek, he did not hurt me enough to draw blood; he scarcely moved – just grunted twice and spasmed. Then he slid off me and rolled onto the floor.

I breathed in the smell of him over and over; over and over I inhaled air that he had exhaled. I heard him mutter imprecations against his father-in-law: over and over I heard how he might have married a brewer's daughter with a quarter of a million, how he had been swindled and tricked into marrying his damned wife, how he wished the old man might die so that he could get his hands on the portion of her dowry that was his due. Over and over I heard the incoherent boasts of what he would do to the brewer's buxom daughter if he had her, how he would subject her to the same indignities to which I had been subjected. The salacious words that spewed from his mouth filled me with such revulsion that I drew the quilt over my head and tried not to listen. Finally, after half an hour or so of this disjointed monologue, I heard him stumble to his feet and leave the room.

I waited until first light came through the window. Then I dressed and packed my things. There was room in my old cowskin trunk for all but two of Mrs O'Dowd's dresses; these I bundled into my pelisse, which I hefted onto my hip. Negotiating the stairs was not easy. The box that Pether had thrown so easily over his shoulder on the quayside bumped heavily against the treads, and I had to pause at every other step to catch my breath.

It was on the landing that I happened upon Mr O'Dowd's gold fob watch. It had parted company with its chain, and it had a satisfying heft to it.