Fair Fight (28 page)

‘My wife does not gamble, Mr Bowden,’ Granville said. ‘I thank you not to entice her to begin.’

‘I speak only in jest, my good sir,’ Mr Bowden said.

I watched my hands, clasping each other below the line of the tablecloth. Where I gripped them the skin grew white and the scars seemed almost to disappear.

I knew by the settled manner in which they called for their pipes, even as I rose from the table, that the gentlemen would not be joining me in the drawing room before I wished for my bed. Still I went there, not to wait for them, but because I could not stand to be in my dressing room at that moment. As pretty as I had made it, it was filled with my own loneliness. I preferred the dark and cavernous space of the drawing room at night. The fire was a low and glowering red. Beyond the hearth, the room stretched off into lumpen shadows. I did not call for a lamp, and Mrs Bell, when she brought me my glass of ratafia, did not offer to bring one. Perhaps she knew I preferred the darkness at that moment. Perhaps she did not think me worth the oil. I sat and stared into the embers. The ratafia spread its warmth like a hot poultice inside my chest. The bleakness I felt then was so familiar as to be almost comforting.
The only thing in the world that could shed any light upon my life would be this child
, I thought.

The door opened behind me with a creak and a swish as it brushed the carpet. I straightened and turned as quickly as if I expected an intruder and was only marginally less shocked to see George Bowden silhouetted there.

‘I thought you might be here still,’ he said. ‘I came to find some sweeter company than that in the dining room.’

He was in his cups, I could see. He leant against the doorframe and puffed upon his pipe as though it were quite common for a man to seek out a lady not his wife and smoke at her.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘will you not speak? Do you not invite me to sit?’

‘Please, sit,’ I said.

‘I will take that whisper as an invitation, madam, though I heard not a word of it.’

‘Please do sit,’ I said, though he was already crossing the carpet. He seated himself on the chair closest to the end of the sofa where I sat, the nearest he could put himself without sitting directly next to me. His closeness and the darkness combined to make me feel a little drunk myself. The fire threw black shapes across his face, sinking his eyes into dark holes.

‘Why do you sit in darkness, Mrs Dryer?’ Mr Bowden’s pipe was a floating orb of red that waxed and waned with each puff upon it.

‘I must say I am not sure. I had the inclination, tonight.’

‘I cannot blame you. Darkness is soft and forgiving. Like a lady.’

My face grew hot. He meant that he could not see my scars.

‘Is it not, Mrs Dryer? As forgiving as a lady?’

‘I am not sure.’

‘You are not sure? Perhaps it is my fancy, only. I have always thought forgiveness a most ladylike quality. You, of course, will know better than I.’

‘I know very little about darkness, Mr Bowden, except that we cannot stop its coming.’

‘Oh, my dear lady, how similar must be our hearts. I do believe the season is changing, however. I do believe we shall feel the sun warm us soon, Mrs Dryer.’

‘That would be lovely, of course,’ I said. He was drunker than I had thought him. ‘Although I cannot expect it. Surely only God himself could prevent winter coming as it always does.’

‘You are right, of course. You are always right. Only, I wish I could ask you to trust in me, Mrs Dryer. May I ask you to do that? Is it devilish presumptuous?’

‘Goodness,’ I said. I did not know what reply to make.

‘If your husband’s man should win his fight . . .’

‘Do you think he will succeed?’

‘By God, I hope so. I will make my fortune upon him if he does. Your brother’s stubbornness will set me free, Mrs Dryer. I will be a man of standing.’

‘I don’t understand you,’ I said.

‘A man of standing,’ he said again. ‘It will be a greater win even than the house at Queen Square.’

‘We always wintered at Queen Square,’ I said. I knew it was a senseless thing to say but somehow I could not help it. It was as though we were having two different conversations at once.

‘I remember it well. You shall again, if Granville’s man wins. Although, no, more likely he will sell it, I should think.’

‘Whatever can you mean?’

‘Those houses are not worth what they were, you see.’

‘But why should my husband have one to sell?’

‘If he wins it,’ Mr Bowden said, ‘from your brother. That is the wager that they have made. If Mr Dryer wins, he takes the house. If Perry wins, it is Granville’s plantation.’

‘My husband, win my mama’s house? But this is too . . . Mr Bowden, you cannot know how often I think of that house. I dream of just walking there and looking over it.’

‘Go, then, and look upon it all you like.’

‘Go? I have not a means of getting there.’

‘Have not the means? What can you be saying? You have a carriage, do not you?’

‘We have only two horses at present. Granville rides one and the carriage cannot be pulled by one horse alone.’

‘This is not to be borne. I shall lend you the use of my phaeton. It needs only one horse to pull it. It is far superior to the machine I was used to drive you about in.’

Did he refer to our kiss? I did not know what my response should be, but my face grew hot in the darkness. At the last I only thanked him.

‘Nonsense, it is my greatest pleasure. Perhaps one day, perhaps . . . but I cannot think you would like to drive with me again.’

I began to speak but Mr Bowden waved me quiet with a wagging finger. I could see his hand clearly; my eyes had grown used to the dark. His pipe looked to have gone out but he puffed upon it quite heedless.

‘But I! I, Mrs Dryer, I will be a man to be reckoned with. What will you say to me then?’

‘I am sure I don’t know,’ I said. I could not stop thinking,
My husband, win Mama’s house!
I wondered, suddenly, how many of her things were left in it.

‘You speak too low. But I cannot expect you to answer me now, in any case. I don’t suppose that you might . . . that is, perhaps, you might just allow me to kiss your hand?’

I could not refuse him. His lips brushed the rough surface of my bare hand. He held it too long, he seemed to breathe over it. I thought then of the paint I had put on my hand; it would mark his lips. I pulled away. For a moment he clung to my fingers even as I pulled and then he released them so suddenly that my hand was near flung back to me.

‘Just give me reason to hope,’ he said. ‘If your husband’s man should come out victorious, Mrs Dryer, tell me that then I might be allowed to hope?’

‘Mr Bowden –’

‘No, you are right. Of course. Forgive me.’

He raised himself with both hands on the arms of the chair and walked to the door. As he opened it the sounds from the dining room floated in to greet him, the murmur of male voices and my brother’s laughter. It was extinguished with the soft click of the door.

I did not expect Mr Bowden to remember, but in the morning I found he had left his phaeton in the yard, with a note expressing his wish that I should find pleasure in the use of it.

It being Stephens’ half day, Henry had to be entrusted with the phaeton. When first he understood he was to take the reins his eyes grew wide and he looked half excited and half fearful.

‘You must go slowly,’ I said. ‘I understand that a careless driver can turn a phaeton on its side before he knows it.’

‘Yes, Mrs Dryer. You needn’t fear.’

Indeed, once we set off and he had the feel of the thing Henry seemed perfectly at his ease, whistling as he drove. The air was chill but I had dressed warmly enough and I had remembered to wear a veil this time. I had Henry keep the top down so we might look about us. This was enjoyable while we travelled country lanes but when we entered the city I felt as though dust and grime were hanging about me in a fog, and the people upon the streets gazed too openly at my cloak, my bonnet and veil. Bristol seemed even rougher than I recalled it. Perhaps I was grown more sensitive through being so long in the countryside or perhaps the child I carried did not care for the scent of the docks; by the time we entered the leafy quiet of Queen Square I felt as tremulous as if we drove toward a terrifying unknown, rather than a house holding the happiest memories of my girlhood.

The square itself was just as tranquil as I remembered it, made more so by being surrounded by the bustle of the city. I had Henry drive around it so that I might calm myself before we stopped. I knew, of course, that all the fashionable people of quality had abandoned the square for the heights of Clifton and the King’s Down. The houses of the square were filled now with the wives and children of the better class of traders, yet I could not have told it from the outside. The railings were as highly glossed, the grass as neat. The curtains in the windows looked to be of good quality; more handsome indeed than anything Granville would allow me without trembling at the expense.

I could not stop the thought, rising like a bubble.
I
must live here again, I must. I cannot keep at The Ridings all year long
.
The houses slid past, stirringly familiar. At the corner beside The Hole in the Wall tavern, I bid Henry halt.

I looked upon it all and it seemed very simple, suddenly. I wished to live there, and Granville must be persuaded of it. There was no disguising the pleasing elegance of the houses. It was not just the pleasant associations; the square was very nicely made. Even without the best people living in it, I should be happy there. I myself was become the wife of a trader. It was better thus, to accept my new place and make a home of it. I gazed upon the closed door of Mama’s old house. I thought my husband might be pleased, to hear me ask to live humbly.

The house looked entirely unchanged. We had spent so many winters there; it was fitting that I should be seeing it now, with a chill in the air and the leaves drifting from the trees. The curtains at the drawing room window were the same ones Mama had chosen so carefully, of yellow damask with a white silk trim. Of course no one would have changed them, for who was there to do it? Perry had shut up the house almost as soon as Mama and Papa were buried. Still, the sight brought a strange sensation to my chest, as though my child had reached up and pulled painfully upon my heart with his tiny hands.

Caught as I was by the curtains, it was only then that I realised that the reason I could see them at all was that the shutters were drawn back. The house was not blank-faced and closed, as it should have been. The windows were dark but surely Perry had not left the house unprotected? Could it be that he was airing it out in the event that he must turn it over to Granville?

As though called by my thoughts I saw the front door of the house open and the familiar figure of Bede, the retainer. I felt a rush of pleasure at the sight of him. He had been our butler when I was a girl; his presence drew the past closer. A second figure came out past Bede, inclining her head to him as he held open the door. In that moment the world seemed to sharpen and swoop, for there was my mama, absolutely my own mama, in a gown of teal silk that I remembered perfectly. She looked to be with child, just as she had been when she died. I can say with confidence that in that moment I came to understand how it is that people die of fright. The breath in my lungs seemed to freeze.

In the next moment she turned, and was not my mama after all. Her face was too rounded, too young. Before I could begin to wonder who she was a third form appeared beside her upon the step and offered her his arm.

It could be nobody but my husband. Even from so far away as that, there was no mistaking his particular, neat way of holding himself or the brown upon brown of his coat and breeches.

Henry, too, had noticed Granville and had turned to look at me enquiringly. I opened my lips but I had no words at all. Then came the worst thing; standing on the step of my childhood home, right in front of Bede, a woman wearing my lost mama’s gown kissed my husband. He took her by the shoulders and moved his face from her lips, shaking his head – Granville was never a man to kiss in public – but it did not look like a first kiss, not at all. My mind was wiped blank with the shock of it; the knowledge that I recognised her came as though it were something I had always known. It was the lady from the fair, though lady was too nice a word for her. It was the strumpet in the bright pink gown, who had touched my husband’s arm and spoken to him as he stood upon the stage. The trollop whose bosoms had looked ready to fall from her bodice now turned to let my husband help her on with her cloak. Bede looked past her, directly at me, but I could not tell if he marked me, veiled as I was. At last he simply closed the door.

All the journey back I felt nothing at all. I went quietly home and sat in my chair. I called for brandy, and when Lucy brought me a modest amount I chided her for presumptuousness and sent her for the decanter. I drank. I sat very still; the only movement my hand, bringing the glass to my mouth.

I could not begin to examine the day’s events; my heart had tucked itself up and gone quietly to sleep. When Lucy arrived to dress me for dinner I allowed her to push me into a gown and went down the stairs like a somnambulist. I did not even insist that I dine in my room.

Granville had returned in time for dinner, bringing Perry and Mr Bowden with him. The gentlemen were all in high spirits and even Perry greeted me with smiles and courtesy. I felt the smile on my own face a falsified thing, painted on along with the Pear’s Almond Bloom. Granville did not look changed; he was not changed, indeed. My knowledge of him was changed. I had always thought him gentle, for all that he was dull and tight-fisted – I did not know what he was, now.

We sat and I drank a glass of wine rather too quickly; all the edges of the world were blurred.

The rabbit was brought out. I was toying with the meat, which was very soft, separating the flesh into clumps of damp threads, when I felt the warm rush of blood. There was no pain, just a release of some secret dam inside myself and all at once my petticoats were sodden; I was sitting in a puddle. Despite how numb I had grown, I heard myself gasp aloud.