Fair Fight (16 page)

So I had my first sight of my new home with my brother as well as my husband beside me. It was not far from Aubyn Hall – an hour’s ride would see me returned to my brother’s side, if ever I should wish such a thing. It was a rambling house that looked as though it had been added to and improved over the years by gentlemen with differing ideas about design; here was a gabled roof, here a set of Palladian windows, here a square turret. It was named ‘The Ridings’ and was newly acquired, though some parts of it were a good hundred years old. It had lately been the home of some country squire or other, who had fallen on hard times and had been forced to sell it all.

‘I got it for a handsome price,’ my new husband said, ‘the gentleman needing to make a fast sale. He sold me the entire estate; all that was left of it.’

I cringed a little at his vulgarity.

What was left of the estate was not much, it transpired. The first I saw of my new home was the gatehouse, a pretty little cottage, like a manor in miniature. It was empty and in need of some repair. After that, though I would have expected that we enter the park, the road wound on and on past fields full of crops.

‘The fellow sold all the gardens before he sold the house,’ Granville said.

‘Dunderhead that he was,’ Perry said, ‘for he must have taken a loss on the estate. A manor house is not worth half so much without grounds, surely.’

‘I told you I got a pretty price for it,’ Granville said.

I only thought,
But we are left without gardens. Where will I walk?

Perry and Granville disappeared together the moment we were arrived.

‘Mrs Bell will show you about, my dear,’ Granville said, and added, as he left, ‘Order us a good dinner. We must have a wedding feast, even if we are only three at table.’

‘Good man,’ Perry said, and they left me standing in the dark hall, with the forbidding boulder of my new housekeeper.

I had not expected the house to be so dark and old-fashioned. I followed Mrs Bell’s skirts about with a stone in my stomach. The bunch of keys at her waist chimed with each step. Mama had used to hold the keys to the household at Aubyn Hall. The housekeeper came to her each day to request use of them.

‘Which rooms would you like to be shown to first, madam?’

I did not know if anyone would pay me wedding visits, but if they were to, where could I seat them, in a house like that? I was already imagining my aunt walking into the gloomy, wood-panelled hall. There was a stuffed fish mounted upon the wall and beside it, a sword that looked as though it had been there since the house was built. She would pity me. Oh, dear Lord, she would come in and pity me.

‘I should like to see my parlour, or whichever room I shall use for receiving company,’ I said.

‘I’ve not yet had instructions from Mr Dryer as to that, but perhaps he’ll say, the drawing room.’

Oh, but it was a gloomy chamber. The windows were good, large and clean, but the light only served to show the dark wainscoting and the heavy furniture. There was barely a soft spot in the whole of the room and what there was, a pair of mahogany chairs done out in brocaded silk, were so lumbering and old-fashioned it was not to be borne. Dark oil paintings of bewigged and serious men looked down upon me. No lady would be pleased to visit me in such an apartment. My tea things would appear ridiculous and out of place, delicate as they were. I said as much to Mrs Bell.

‘This furniture came along with the house when it was bought, madam. You may come to like it, in time.’

‘But Mr Dryer cannot mean to keep it so,’ I said. ‘I am sure we should have our own things. We should have a pretty place to sit, at the very least.’

‘I hope he may say you’re right, madam.’ Mrs Bell looked at me with exactly the expression I was afraid of seeing on my aunt’s face. Already I was pitied, by a servant.

I waited only until we met at table to raise the question of the decoration. I had forgotten, in my dismay over the house, that Granville had instructed me to order the dinner. It did not signify, for the food arrived regardless, chosen by the cook or by Mrs Bell. Granville made no mention of it, but only ate his jugged hare with a serious face. I could not tell if he approved or not. He must have thought I had chosen it – which I never would, I should have preferred a bird – but he did not compliment or insult my choice. Perry only cared for the wine. I watched my brother waving for his glass to be refilled and my hands itched to do the same. I forced myself to sip at my own glass slowly.

Mrs Bell waited upon us. She proffered the dish of jugged hare to Granville and watched him as though she were still his nursemaid. When he took only a small portion she stayed beside him and shook the dish very slightly, as a prompt that he should take more. He obliged her.

‘What do you think of your new home, Charlotte?’ Perry said.

He asked only because he knew I would not like it. If it had been a pretty or elegant house he would not have said a word.

‘It is of good size,’ I said, ‘and the rooms are pleasantly proportioned. It will look very well, when once it is finished.’

Granville wiped his fingers and folded his hands before him on the table.

‘What about this house is unfinished?’ he said. His tone was quietly injured.

‘It is so old. I should like to decorate.’

‘You have your dressing room,’ he said. ‘You may do with it just as you like, as long as you are not too free with my fortune.’

‘I just hoped,’ I said, my mouth dry with dismay, ‘to have a pretty chamber in which to receive visitors.’

‘You may use any chamber you like, Miss – Charlotte,’ Granville laid down his fork. He looked somewhat sad. ‘I wish you to be happy. But you must know I am not inclined to live like a fine gentleman.’

Perry was nodding approvingly. ‘You are become a merchant’s wife. You will grow used to it, in time.’

Granville looked at him sternly and then turned to me with a softer expression. ‘I do hope you will be happy, here. I cannot imagine that your lady friends will find my drawing room so very distasteful.’

‘Charlotte has no lady friends,’ Perry said.

Mrs Bell’s face was perfectly still. She stood just inside the door, her eyes upon her hands, folded neatly in front of her.

Granville smiled upon me. ‘It is very becoming to a lady to live quietly. And I am sure any acquaintance you may make locally will have humble enough expectations.’

This was his wedding speech to me.

Mrs Bell informed me that my husband had employed a larger staff than he had ever had before, though it only numbered eight: one maid, one maid-of-all-work, one scullery maid, one footboy, an elderly manservant, the groom, the cook and Mrs Bell herself.

I understood that my maid, Lucy, was a new addition for my particular comfort – Mrs Bell told me of the appointing of Lucy as though she suspected I would lead Granville into financial ruin by the hiring of a maid to help me with my dress. In fact, Lucy was not fit for more than sweeping grates and lighting candles – she was more chambermaid than hairdresser. It signified nothing; there was no one to see me. When, soon after my wedding, my aunt wrote to ask when a visit might be convenient, I replied saying only that my health being weak, the doctor had advised that I keep from company for a time. She did not write again to persuade me.

And so I grew used to my married life and found it as dull as the expectations of a spinster. I spent a long while on the decorating of my dressing room; sewing curtains, covering a pretty pair of chairs that Perry allowed me to take from Aubyn Hall, and doing my best to create some not displeasing pictures made from shells. For the walls Granville allowed me a paper in green and blue, and I had to be satisfied.

I found that my husband could not be riled in the same way that I had taunted Perry. Nothing seemed to disturb him but the wasting of money, and he would not give me a penny to waste, though he always spoke to me kindly. He seemed always anxious that I might be unhappy, but made no move toward increasing my happiness. Besides this, he seemed not to know what to do with me, once he had me. Whenever he was at home he would send a servant to say, ‘Mr Dryer hopes that you will condescend to join him in the drawing room,’ but when I went to him we would make conversation as stiff as strangers, or else be silent. When he came to bed at night it was hard to say which of us felt the queerer. Always, as he took his marital right, he would whisper, ‘Are you quite comfortable?’ as a means of asking permission. I never demurred, though I was not comfortable in the least, and I suspected that he was no better. After he had done and moved away from me I would lie, feeling his presence as clearly as if we were still touching. I might lie awake all night, until my body ached with stillness and my mind ached also, my thoughts swelling in the darkness, pushing at the edges of my skull. Sometimes he would surprise me by slipping from the bed and creeping from the room, taking great care to be silent. I would realise then that my husband had been as sleepless as I.

He asked me often, in the first months of our marriage, if I should like to go anywhere for diversion. He offered to take me for drives, or perhaps a picnic. I declined every invitation. I might have liked to be taken to a play, or to see the Assembly Rooms at Bath, but Granville did not offer that, and I did not ask. I felt as dull and bruised as I had when first I lost Mama and Papa. I kept to my dressing room and sewed.

Granville liked me to be with him at dinner, so I was many times in company with Mr Bowden, across Perry’s dining table or our own. I was careful to address Mr Bowden as though he had never kissed me beside the stream. I tried not to look at him over-long; his beauty had come to seem vexing.

Our union was not blessed with child, or else, none that I could safely deliver. Granville took the news of these losses quietly and afterward would avoid me for a day or two. I came to understand that my husband was not comfortable with the expression of feeling. He need not have worried, for I did not allow myself to weep over it. I worked upon my embroidery. I drank as much wine as I thought I could without being the subject of servants’ talk. I walked up and down the drive, sometimes with Granville quiet beside me. I went with him to church.

If I thought I was safely alone for the evening I would order brandy to be brought, though I never could ask for as much of it as I should have liked. Sometimes, once I had the taste for it, I would pace about in quivering frustration. I could not bear to be always alert and feeling. I envied my brother his freedom to make himself gross. I envied him, and I feared it on my own account, for no one sensible would truly wish to be like Perry. Sometimes, even after scolding myself, I would give in and call for more. I kept waiting for Granville to query the wine bill, but he never spoke a word to me. I supposed that Perry was so often at our table that a little more could make no difference.

I did not any longer scratch at myself. I spent many hours painting Pear’s Almond Bloom onto my cheeks, my neck, my breast, even when only the servants were there to see me. Granville never quarrelled with this expense either; it was my one true extravagance.

There was nowhere much to walk. Although we had the furniture and stuffed fish of the previous occupant, we had not his land. All the house could call its own was a kitchen garden, a paddock and stable and the long driveway, leading down to the gatekeeper’s gatehouse. I often walked down the driveway to the vacant gatehouse, where I peeped through the dusty glass and imagined the rooms filled with firelight and life. It had six windows and, I thought, looking in as best I could, two rooms downstairs.

Granville spoke once of having the gatehouse made habitable and of buying back the fields, to make them gardens once again. He never did and never again mentioned the subject, though I often hoped he would. It was a mark of how apathetic I had grown that I never once brought the subject up.

In September of 1799, two years after we were married, I finally asked for something once more; I begged Granville to take me to the fair at Bristol.

10

T
he day had begun strangely; the weather was close and uncomfortable. Once again I believed myself in a delicate condition, though I had told no one, not even Granville. If I were to lose this child as I had the others I thought I should bear it better if I bore it alone.

I hated to be so warm. The long sleeves that I would not put aside held my arms in a sweltering grip, the paint applied to my brow instantly became paste and every escaped hair from my cap stuck in it like flies.

I came downstairs and found my husband and brother already seated at the breakfast table. I was too leaden with the closeness of the day to feel surprise. Only the immense amount of food laid out made my head swim.

I had grown used, in those days, to taking my breakfast alone. Granville rose before dawn and was gone before I woke. I did not know what arrangements he made to break his fast, or whether he took anything at all. For myself I was in the habit of ordering only a warm roll or muffin and a cup of chocolate. The breakfast room faced the little bit of lawn we had left and was not so dreary as most of the house.

My husband and brother stopped speaking as I entered, turned to face me, inclined their heads in greeting and turned back to begin again where they had left off. Neither spoke to me, nor offered an explanation for their presence.

Perry was drinking ale, having no care for the gentleman’s fashion for coffee. He was eating potted beef, and before he had done with it was already reaching out for the plate of tongue. Between mouthfuls he took up a crumpled handkerchief from beside his plate and mopped his brow. His hair looked even fairer than usual, atop his flushed face.

Granville’s own face was quite composed, not a drop of moisture upon it. His hair was as neat as ever it was, though he had recently left off from hair powder. He still wore his hair curled above the ears and secured at the nape of his neck with a velvet bow. Papa had worn his hair in the same style. Granville was eating kippers, pulling them apart methodically and looking gravely at them as he did so, as though performing an anatomical experiment.

Mrs Bell poured me a cup of chocolate, which that morning was made too bitter. I did not ask for sugar.

The gentlemen were talking of boxing, as was their wont. I understood almost nothing of it and often found that those pieces of conversation I did follow, I wished I had not. That morning I only attended when Perry, whose habit was to address a person seated next to him as though they were on the other side of a large room, called across to Granville,

‘We must leave in plenty of time, you know. We shall have a deuce of a time getting to the fairground. Half the county turns out for it. There will be coaches at a standstill half the way to Bristol.’

My heart had risen into my throat and I did not hear Granville’s reply. It was September already, then. Perhaps, that day, in Bristol, two little girls would hold hands and beg their nurse to take them to see the conjurer.

I must have made a sound without my meaning to, for suddenly both Granville and Perry turned to look at me.

‘What is it, Charlotte?’ Perry said.

‘I should like to go to the fair,’ I said, and although I had not meant to say it, I knew that it was true.

‘Piffle,’ Perry said. ‘It is too rough for you. We are going there to see the pugilists. You would be scandalised.’

This only made me the more determined.

Granville laid down his knife neatly and waved him quiet. Perry looked affronted.

‘Why do you want to go, Lottie? I cannot recall the last time you asked to be taken anywhere,’ Granville said.

‘I cannot say why, but I wish it very much. I used to go as a child. I should like to go.’

Granville was silent for a moment, looking at me gravely, as though we discussed a terribly serious matter. At last he nodded.

‘If you wish it, I will take you.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, very low.

I glanced sideways at Perry to see how he would respond.

‘By God, Granville, what the deuce are you thinking of?’ he said.

I was very careful not to smile.

My husband ignored him and turned to me. ‘Go quickly, then, and change your gown.’

If I had been given more time to think and grow anxious, if I had not been so set on vexing my brother, perhaps I would have changed my mind. Besides church, occasional dinners at Aubyn Hall and walking about the fields and lanes of the neighbourhood, I had not been anywhere for almost two years.

My dressing room was waiting for me, with my tambour hoop pulled out in readiness for a morning’s needlework. I was part way through a cushion-cover, upon which I was stitching a maid riding upon a donkey. I had meant that day to fill in the shades of her gown in blue, and the gold of her straw bonnet. I had taken out the correct silks; they lay neatly beside the hoop. The novel I was reading,
Paul and Virginia
, lay upon the writing desk, marked where I had left it with a piece of ribbon. Here was the shape of my day as I had expected to spend it, dull but comfortable, and now I was to abandon it and go out into the world.

I had Lucy fetch out my promenade gown of grey twill and my black half-boots. As I ordered this I could hear Mama’s voice in my ear, chiding me for making myself so dull.

When Lucy had done I bid her send Mrs Bell to me to dress my hair. Her face brightened and her mouth opened a little when I said this – I only called for Mrs Bell to dress my hair on Sundays, for church – but her curiosity came too late and she was obliged to curtsey and go out.

Mrs Bell, having served at table, knew perfectly well where I was to go. Her face was harried; she thought herself above hairdressing.

I had my hair dressed in an Indian knot – Mrs Bell’s swollen fingers could not manage more complicated hairdressing – and my face framed with hot-tong curls. When once her fingers came close to my mouth to catch up a stray lock, I saw it in the glass and their proximity to my lip provoked a sudden urge to bite her. I did not, of course. I let her draw her sausage fingers away to safety and pinched myself upon the leg, instead.

While Mrs Bell pinned and tonged I worked at the paint upon my face. I did this partly because the movement of my head as I did so caused her to sigh and tut. There was not much use in it; I could do nothing to make my face any more pleasing to look at. I could only try to fix the paint against the heat with rice powder. When once I had done, I was careful not to look at my face again. The paint acted as a shield; when once it was applied, I might never have had a face at all.

Mrs Bell seemed to scrutinise me, which I disliked intensely. Then she said,

‘You look very respectable, madam,’ and dropped one of her bobbing half-curtseys.

‘You may go, Mrs Bell.’

I took care not to let my feelings cross my face. She called me respectable because no one could truthfully call me handsome; she offered this opinion unsolicited on purpose to vex me. She knew very well that I hated to have my appearance remarked upon. I should indeed have bitten her.

Granville and Perry were waiting in the yard. I could hear the chink-chink of the horses moving in the traces and voices, Perry’s loud and impatient, Granville’s calm and somehow toneless, drifting through the side-door, which was left open. I had Henry, the footboy, put iron pattens over my boots against the mud. I had not worn pattens for a long while and it felt strange to be raised off the ground so. If the weather was inclement, I usually chose to stay indoors. I stood wobbling while Henry secured the straps about my half-boots. I kept one hand upon the wall for balance and stared at the tiled floor, worn grey stone, a smearing of dirt about the door, where booted feet had come in and out.

Beside the door, the barometer’s needle hovered between
variable
and
rain
. I ordered that Henry fetch me a cloak. It was foolishness to be stepping out so, into uncertain weather.

At last I stepped outside, a little unsteady on the hoops of the pattens, and clinked my way across the cobbles. Perry and Granville were standing beside the carriage, Perry in a coat of deepest blue, which, to give him his due, suited him perfectly. Granville was quite the match of me for dullness, with his coat and breeches of brown upon brown. He turned and smiled at me as I came into the yard and it was this, more than anything, that broke the seal around my feelings. My husband smiled upon me so infrequently, I began to be nervous.

‘Come, Lottie,’ he called to me, as if I were a skittish dog, and I tottered toward him as though I were one. I took his arm as being something solid to cling to. He patted my gloved hand and the smile grew tired and fell from his face.

‘Henry, step up on the box. You are to accompany us; we may need you,’ Granville said.

Henry looked surprised but only bowed and stepped up to sit beside Stephens, at the reins.

My husband turned to me. ‘We are ready to set off; we wait only for Mr Bowden. Should you like to sit in the carriage? He will not be long, but I should not like you to grow weary before we are begun.’

I nodded and allowed him to hand me inside but as soon as I was settled on the brocade seats I wished myself out of them. I was too confined within the carriage, with Granville and Perry standing so before the open door and the air so close about my face. I had not realised that we would be in the company of Mr Bowden. The day seemed heavier than ever.

Mr Bowden rode into the yard, his horse a-sweat from the cruel pace, and the dust, meeting the moist air, puffing half-heartedly about his hooves. I saw this through the glass, over the backs and the quiet heads of our own horses harnessed to the traces. I saw Mr Bowden dismount and Henry jump down to take his exhausted horse.

The gentlemen, who had moved forward to halloo and bow at Mr Bowden, now returned to the open carriage door. Mr Bowden, seeing me, stopped and offered me a full view of his good teeth.

‘Mrs Dryer,’ he said, and stepped up inside, bending almost double so that he could remain standing as he took my hands in his own. The enclosed space meant that he leant over me and brought his face close to mine.

‘What an unexpected pleasure,’ he said. ‘The fair will be the gayer for your company.’

‘How do you do, Mr Bowden,’ I said, and then, because he seemed to be waiting for more, ‘I do hope the rain will hold off.’

Mr Bowden held my hands still. One of his fingers twitched against my gloved palm; I could not tell if he were trying to stroke it or if he twitched in revulsion at feeling the ridges of scars there. My husband and brother climbed into the carriage behind him.

‘The rain may do as it pleases,’ he said. ‘I am determined to be happy today.’

‘I’m so glad,’ I said. I could not think what other reply to make.

Bristol was not more than seven miles from The Ridings, but the journey seemed the longer, for my having kept so close to the house for so long. I looked out of the carriage window and remembered what it was, to look upon sights I had not seen a hundred times. Even the ordinary fields and farms seemed fascinating, and were gone too quick from view.

We could smell the city before we reached it. The city of Bristol has a particular scent – a stink, I suppose you could call it – of the docks and the slow brown river. It travelled right through me, to the back of my throat, so that I felt I could taste the very cobbles, the congested water of the industrial quays. It was not a pretty smell but it was the smell of my childhood. Queen Square was very grand and clean, with a tree-lined park in its centre, but it had the quays at its back. Though one could take a turn about the lawns with a parasol and talk to pleasant ladies in pretty hats, the scent of the river was everywhere. Now it seemed the essence of home, though Mama would have been appalled to hear me say that. She spent her life bringing in flowers and burning scented oils to rid the house of the creeping odour of the river Avon.

I had forgotten what a crowd the fair drew. The city seemed filled with it, the streets crowded with holiday-makers and a great many grand carriages. We drove along Thomas Street and across the bridge, the quayside dense with the masts of ships and all made gay with bunting and flags.

Every type of person had turned out, gentry, soldiers and paupers alike. I had forgotten, too, how many black faces were to be found at the quay; I had been so much shut up in the country I had begun to forget that there were any faces other than white and people other than country gentlemen, servants and farmers. I could not stop looking at all the people; they seemed both terrible and wonderful, like an animal show at which the fences were too thin.

As soon as we stepped down from the carriage the heavy air turned into mizzle. Immediately I feared for the paint upon my face; why had I not thought to wear a veil? I put up the hood of my cloak, but this was little help, unless I kept my head bowed.

Granville bid Stephens wait for us. Henry, he had step down and follow us. Henry jigged up and down in excitement; he was still only a boy, not much older than fourteen. Stephens, seated upon the box, looked hard at him and he brought himself under control, though his rain-speckled face was flushed.

‘Remember you’re in livery,’ I heard Stephens tell him, quietly. ‘Conduct yourself properly.’

Perry and Mr Bowden walked ahead, and Granville and I followed. Henry trailed in the rear, no doubt looking about him wildly now that the groom’s eyes were not upon him.

The fairground was more closely packed than the roads and built like a village of wooden booths and huts. I held onto Granville’s arm and let him guide me, watching my feet in their pattens, my skirt swinging with my steps. Shoulders I did not know touched mine as people went by us. One woman passed before me so close that her unwashed hair brushed my mouth and I could not move back, so close was I to my husband on my other side. I could hear music playing in three or four places at once and smell roasting meat. When I did look up, bunching the hood around my face with my free hand, all I could see was the crowd, and above them, the peaked roofs of the huts and the bunting against the darkening sky.