Fair Fight (31 page)

‘Why d’you say that?’

‘Because it is true. If you like it so much I will order white cullis every day, until you are strong again.’

‘You’re different to your husband, Mrs Dryer.’ She closed her eyes again.

I did not know what reply to make. I wondered how much she knew of Granville that she would say so. Before long her breathing slowed and I knew that this time sleep had come upon her. I stood and came quietly toward her. Her face was softened in slumber. I thought of taking the tray from her but I thought she might wake when she felt the weight of it leave her and in the end I just stole from the room and instructed that she not be disturbed.

I went again the next morning, accompanied by Henry and the tray. I should have been far more nervous without him there.

She did not seem surprised to see me, but neither did she seem glad. She was glad to have the tray, however; she closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of the cullis, and then seemed almost ashamed to have done so. She ate quickly, turning her shoulder to hide the food as though she did not like us to look at it. That morning she cleaned the bowl without any of the terrible effort it had seemed to cost her the day before. Her face was already pinker about the cheeks. I sat again on the little stool and watched her.

‘I am glad to see your appetite returned, Mrs Webber,’ I said.

Her lip curled as though she might snarl. Even thin as she was and lying abed in my own house, her pride was so solid a thing that it seemed to rise up and wave its fists at me.

‘Returned?’ she said. ‘It’s only now I’m hushing it. You’d know nothing of that, though, would you? Being a lady.’

I did not know how to take her; she cared nothing for propriety, or my sensibilities.

Henry stepped forward from his post beside the door. ‘For shame, Mrs Webber! You speak properly to Mrs Dryer, or she’d be right to turn you out.’

I did not look at him when he spoke; I was watching Mrs Webber. She barely blinked – she cared nothing for Henry, either.

‘You say I know nothing,’ I said, at last. ‘I’ve certainly felt too anxious to eat, before now.’

‘That ain’t quite the same now, is it?’ She sat up very straight upon the bed but I thought it cost her to do it. She was as rigid as a wax doll, the cords standing out upon her neck, her hands gripping the blanket.

I shied away from her gaze.

‘The doctor told me you had suffered an attack of nerves and had been unwilling to eat,’ I said, my gaze upon my lap.

‘Unwilling? Unable!’

‘What can you mean?’

I looked at her then. She swung her legs so that she sat upon the edge of the bed, as though making to stand. For a moment I thought she meant to charge at me.

‘Can you not know?’ she leant forward and hissed the words. ‘It was low, very low, to leave me so. I won’t say it wasn’t, no matter if you do bring me this white cully.’ She nodded to the empty bowl, on the floor beside the bed.

My face set up its queer tingling. ‘Henry, what’s this? Do you understand?’

Henry looked as though he should like to run away. His cheeks, usually so rosy, were pale as plaster. ‘We thought she was in London, madam.’

‘I’ve never been to London a day in my life,’ she said. She looked, for a moment, as though she meant to spit upon the floor, but checked herself. Instead she gave a snort quite as scornful as spitting would have been.

Henry bit his lip like a child. ‘We’d no idea she was there, madam, or we’d have sent food.’

I looked from one to the other and I am ashamed to admit that my clearest thought was,
Now she will never like me
.

‘I had not thought . . . I did not realise. I was told you had starved yourself, Mrs Webber, quite wilfully.’

‘That bracket-faced bitch,’ Mrs Webber said, softly.

Henry and I both jumped with the surprise of it. Neither of us knew what to do, except to pretend that she had not said it.

‘I expect Mrs Bell was afraid you’d lay the blame on her shoulders, madam,’ Henry said, to me.

The fury, which had been hanging about me in a cloud, now gathered in my breast and quivered like the needle of a compass.

‘Not Mrs Bell,’ I said, as the needle swung. ‘No, the blame for this must be laid entirely at my husband’s door.’

My head, my very eyes, ached with rage. I could not even be glad that Mrs Webber gave me her first, faint smile.

I went to find Mrs Bell. I could not sit still to ring for her. I walked about the corridors as fast as if there were a hand in the small of my back, pushing. At last, when I had looked into almost every room in the main of the house, I came upon her standing at the open door of the downstairs linen cupboard, checking over the tablecloths and napkins.

‘Mrs Bell, I would speak with you.’

She turned immediately, closing the cupboard and smoothing her apron. Henry was right; she was anxious, indeed. Well might she be.

‘Mrs Bell, you are to see that white cullis is sent to Mrs Webber every day. Every meal, if she wishes it. She may order any little thing she likes, and it must be brought.’

‘Yes, madam,’ she said, as meek as a wet kitten.

I felt my vexation curdle and sour; I should have preferred her to be defiant.

‘I am quite serious, Mrs Bell. If Mrs Webber has a fancy for a roasted goose, you will find one and have it plucked. She is not to be denied a single thing.’

‘Madam, I hardly think –’

‘You need not think, Mrs Bell. You have shown an aptitude, thus far, for an absence of thought.’

Mrs Webber never did ask for any such thing as a roasted goose, so far as I could tell. She asked only for very ordinary things: soups, porridges, bread and bacon. I went to see her every morning. Slowly she grew used to me, though she never said much. I would sit and ask her how she did. She would say that she did a little better. Then I would ask her if there was any little thing she might need. She always said no, thank you. After that I would not know what to say and she would seem to be waiting for me to leave her. I did not know what I wanted from her, but it was not this. Perhaps I wanted for her to like me, nothing more than that. I wanted her to tell me again how different I was to my husband, but she did not.

She left, as I should have guessed she might, the moment she was strong enough. By Lucy’s account she had risen and packed her few things and was preparing to ‘run off without a by-your-leave’. When I heard this I ordered that she be taken by cart back to the gatehouse, if she would consent to it, and that she be given everything she might require to be comfortable. I sent this message by Henry. I could not trust anyone else to deliver it kindly.

‘She looked black about it,’ he reported back to me, ‘and said she’d prefer to go to Bristol. I said, the mistress said you were to go to the gatehouse, not Bristol, and she did let me take her down there at last, madam. She cursed a bit, though. She said she didn’t go for you, but so that her husband might find her. I said he could have her and welcome.’ He blushed but I could see that he felt pleased with himself.

‘Thank you, Henry,’ I said, ‘I will pay her a visit soon.’

‘Madam, I know it ain’t my place to say, but if I was you I’d make it very soon. She’s like to bolt off at any time, that’s what I think. If you want to catch her you’d best not wait too long.’

‘Then I shall not. Thank you for your advice, Henry.’

‘You’re most welcome, madam.’ He coloured again. He was a sweet boy.

I went that very day. I had Henry carry a basket of good things: eggs and ham, seed cake, bread and a jar of white cullis sauce. Mrs Webber need only heat it through and soak her bread in it. In the other hand he carried a jug of fresh milk. He walked a little way behind me and whistled as we went.

I had not realised how much I had missed walking to the gatehouse. My spirits lifted with each turn of the drive. My legs seemed to wake and shake themselves after too long a spell of stillness. In my own hands I carried the book of sermons with one of Granville’s card-mounted sporting papers hidden inside and, wrapped in a shawl, the piece of muslin on which I had begun embroidering the image of Mrs Webber so many weeks ago. It was a heavy load for me but I would not give it up and I was weary by the time we reached the gatehouse; I had grown unused to walking so far.

‘Well, Henry,’ I said, ‘we are arrived.’

‘Am I to knock, madam?’

‘Yes, carry on.’ I could not have said why I felt so nervous.

Henry smiled and stepped up to the door. He put his burdens down and raised his fist. As soon as he had knocked he stepped back, as quickly as though he expected the door to fly open and Mrs Webber to strike him from within. The door remained shut.

‘Knock again,’ I bid him.

Still nothing happened.

‘Likely she’s gone out, madam.’

I felt exhausted. I should have to turn and walk straight back. I would not be able to show her my sewing or the pictures in the sporting paper.

‘Shall I leave the basket on the step, madam?’

‘Yes,’ I said, my voice dull. ‘Yes, let us leave it there.’

I turned and began to walk back up the drive. Now I could feel the ache in my legs. My ears were burning painfully with cold. My fingers were growing numb inside my muff.

Behind me I heard Henry leave the step and his footsteps follow me. I felt as grey as the bare fields. I should have to trudge all the way back up the hill and spend the day alone, again. The only occurrences in my life seemed to be the expectation of events that never happened, which were not occurrences at all. I stopped walking.

‘Madam?’ Henry said, behind me.

I turned. ‘Suppose,’ I said, ‘that she is collapsed again, as you found her? Are we not bound by duty to be sure?’

‘I’m sure we are, madam,’ Henry said, so quickly that I thought he might have been expecting it. ‘Shall I see if the door’s unlocked?’

‘Yes, Henry, check the door.’ My breast had set up fluttering again.

We retraced our steps. The basket was gone.

18

H
enry and I looked at each other.

‘This is exactly like feeding a hedgehog,’ I said, though I could see that Henry did not know what I meant. I was turned silly by the surprise of the basket’s disappearance.

‘Knock again,’ I said.

He did. Again, nothing at all.

‘Will you have me call out, madam?’ he asked.

‘Yes, do,’ I said.

Henry put both hands to the door and called through them, ‘Mrs Webber, your mistress is here. You must open the door or we’ll come in whether you bid us or no.’

There was no response at all. Could we really go inside? Was that not trespass, although my husband owned the gatehouse? At least I knew that she had been fed; perhaps that was all that I could do.

Before I had decided there came a shuffling from within. Henry and I looked at each other with wide eyes. In that moment she had become a mythical beast, a troll, perhaps. When the handle of the door began to turn I felt I might scream.

Of course, it was only Mrs Webber looking just as she had when last I saw her, except that she had a fierceness about her that I had not been expecting. She did not bid us enter, but stepped aside wordlessly, holding open the door. Henry and I took this as a welcome and walked in past her. She did not curtsey and I said nothing about it.

The gatehouse was filthy and cheerless, and smelt quite as badly as Mrs Webber had when first Henry brought her to us. There was a pile of soiled bedding in front of the hearth, which was out.

I turned and looked at her. She stood beside the door but as I watched she closed it and stood still, head bowed slightly but her eyes fixed upon me, quite as oppositional as before. She looked as though she expected me to chide her for untidiness. Perhaps I should have.

‘My days, haven’t you made a mess,’ Henry said.

‘I’ve been working at it,’ she said, twitching at her apron. I saw now that it was smudged with something black, coal dust perhaps. ‘I didn’t know you was coming so soon.’ She spoke to me, rather than Henry.

I did not know what to do, then. I did not like to embarrass her.

At last I said, ‘I should have sent word, of course. If I might rest a moment, we’ll leave you to keep house.’

She did not answer.

‘Ain’t you going to invite Mrs Dryer to sit, Mrs Webber?’ Henry said. ‘She’s come all this way to bring you charity, look.’

Mrs Webber looked at him as though she might leap at him and bite, or turn and run; she did not look usual. At last she seemed to compose her features.

‘Please sit,’ she said.

I sat upon a little chair. My eye fell upon a picture above the mantel, of a boy and girl holding hands beside a stream. It was one I had done myself, in needlework, when first we were married. I had given it to Granville, to hang in his dressing room. Evidently my husband had not admired it.

Henry took the food we had brought into the larder and came back soon enough. Mrs Webber and I were as awkward as if we had never been in company before. All my manners had left me and she had never had any to begin; we did not speak and neither of us knew where to look. Henry was the only easy person in the house.

‘Shall I bring you in some wood, Mrs Webber? Or draw you some water?’

‘Oh yes,’ I said, ‘do let Henry help you.’

Mrs Webber shrugged. ‘There’s water to be fetched, I won’t say there ain’t. The wood and coal ran out, though.’

‘I’ll fetch you in some water and I’ll get you some coal down from the big house before tonight,’ Henry said.

He went out of the back door and set himself to work. We could hear him whistling.

I could not bear to sit without speaking any longer.

‘Please carry on with whatever you were doing, Mrs Webber,’ I said.

‘What’s that?’ She pointed to the book and the shawl-wrapped picture.

I had used to have my fingers slapped by Miss Gale if I forgot my manners long enough to point.

‘Some things I thought might interest you.’

I opened the book and pulled out the sporting paper. She wiped her hands on her apron before she took it, although the apron was as black as her fingers. She looked at it for a long while, handling it as carefully as Granville would have.

‘I never knew there were such things,’ she said at last.

‘I hoped you would enjoy it. Some of the descriptions are quite exciting. You may borrow it to read, if you are careful with it. It is my husband’s and I must put it back exactly as I found it.’

She looked at me with an expression that said that she knew I had taken it without permission, but she made no comment. What she said was, ‘I can’t read.’

‘Look at the pictures then,’ I said. ‘And if you will allow me to visit you when you are settled I will read you whichever parts of it you like.’

‘If my Tom wins his fight, perhaps he’ll be drawn in a paper.’

‘He certainly will! I should be surprised if he were not.’

She seemed suddenly shy and looked about for somewhere to lay the card. The table top was covered in crumbs and dust; she laid it at last on the seat of the other chair.

‘Here is another picture,’ I said. I could scarcely stop my hand from shaking as I handed it to her.

She took it and held it up, drawing the muslin out tight between her hands so that she could see the figure there. I could not read her expression.

‘This is like me,’ she said.

‘It is supposed to be you, indeed.’

‘Did you make this?’

‘Yes. It is not as like as I had hoped.’

Her eyes squinted like an art collector surveying a new piece.

‘My face ain’t so square and I’d be knocked out straight with a pose like that; my face is open.’

‘I thought the pose must be wrong, once I looked at the pictures in the paper.’

‘And my costume ain’t like that, it’s got less sleeve to it and a strip of blue about the skirt where it’s sewed up.’

‘I knew I had remembered it wrongly.’

She stopped and looked at me.

‘You seen me fight?’

‘At the fair,’ I said.

She only nodded as though ladies came to watch her box every day of the week. Perhaps they did.

‘Hark at this,’ she said, looking over her shoulder for Henry, ‘I got an idea for you. I’ll put my costume on and my mufflers and I’ll stand for you so you can draw me.’

‘Would you? That would be so kind of you.’

‘It ain’t kind,’ she said, ‘I’ll want paying. Shall we say, two shillings a time?’

I had never in my life been propositioned in such a way. I was too startled to do more than nod. I had a few pounds of my own.

I stopped bringing food to her after that. I sent it instead by Henry in the morning and walked down alone to call at the gatehouse in the afternoons. I took care over my face and dress, although Mrs Webber did not seem to think about such things.

She never mentioned it, nor offered me so much as a glass of water, but I could see by her face that she was eating. She lost the pinched look and her eyes grew brighter.

Once, when Henry passed by me as he went about his duties, I stopped him to ask how he thought she got on. Was she recovering well, did he think?

‘I’ll say she is, madam, with the care you’ve given her.’

I said I was glad and nodded for him to leave me.

He stopped, however, long enough to say, ‘She’s interesting, ain’t she? She’s not like anyone else you’re like to meet, madam.’

I could hardly have agreed more. The more I came to know her, the more fascinating I found her. She never behaved as though I was a guest in her home, but neither did she have the air of a guest in mine. Her head would come up and she would regard me with the air of a dog that has decided not to bite, but has not entirely discounted the idea either. She would usually put her occupation aside, her mending or sweeping, but it seemed she did so not for politeness, but because my visit was a greater diversion than keeping house. She never offered me a seat, nor did she stand to greet me. She had no manners about her at all; she never once called me madam. No matter how often I was in her company she never became forthcoming with conversation. She replied politely and sometimes even asked questions of me, but if a silence settled over us I must always be the one to break it.

For all this she was ready and obliging to pose for me. If she saw that I brought my drawing-things she would rise and go upstairs to change into her boxing costume without a word. If I came without charcoal and pad, she only sat and waited to see what I came for.

I laboured hard over those sketches. I wanted to translate her very spirit onto paper. I was trying, in one image, to bring to mind that tooth, flying through the air with its train of blood. I sat and fretted, adding strokes here and there, until often I would add too many and think the picture ruined. She stood very patiently and when at last I grew tired and thanked her she would reply, ‘You’re welcome; ’tis your coin to spend.’

She said this as though it were a very commonplace thing. She never seemed in the least to be mocking me.

Then I would fetch out my drawstring reticule and dig in it for my purse.

Back in my dressing room I pored over the pictures. None of them captured her quite as I wished. If I could only find one that suited me I could begin to render her image in needlework; I was always most comfortable sewing. I cursed myself for a poor artist. Sometimes I would feel the old urge to claw at my skin come creeping upon me, but I stayed my hand.

I was still nightly beating the bolster. Sometimes I grabbed it near to the top – where I imagined its collar to be – and holding it there, struck it until I could see teeth fly, with their tails of blood.

The servants had begun to look at me queerly. They had always thought me odd, I knew that much, since I did not pay visits or go to plays, and drank more than a lady should. Now I thought Lucy handed me my powder box or glass of wine as though I might at any moment fall down raving. Horton, too, looked at me as though I had turned out not as dull as he had thought me.

I wrote to Granville, telling him that Mrs Webber had been anxious, and that the doctor had recommended that I visit her. I could not help but be nervous, for if I did not tell him, he could not object.
It is all for you, of course, that I do it
, I wrote.
I should hate Mrs Webber to make herself ill and disrupt Mr Webber’s training, through his concern for her.

Mrs Bell brought his reply a few days later, along with the sweet course. I read it with a growing sense of relief.

‘Listen here, Mrs Bell,’ I said, when once she returned with my Madeira, ‘I have had word from Mr Dryer:

‘Keep visiting Mrs Webber as often as you can
, this part is to me, you see –
and speak to her of wifely obedience. As for the servants
– here he speaks to you, Mrs Bell, take note –
bid Mrs Bell to send her wholesome but modest dishes, to keep her in best health and humble spirits. Charge her to look after the needs of Mrs Webber as carefully as she would my own, for my happiness is tied as firmly to Mr Webber’s serenity as if we were one person. He swears he must have his wife by him at his Championship fight, and if she is to come to London she must be fit to be seen in company. You do great work toward a great cause, my dear. You have pleased me greatly this day.
Is not that marvellous? I have been wondering all this time if I was right to scheme to improve Mrs Webber.’

Mrs Bell’s lips twitched in a way that warmed my heart.
There
, I thought,
now whisper against me. I have my husband’s express wish that I should continue as I am.

I was still sneaking into Granville’s library. Sometimes, although not often enough, I came across a line in the sporting papers I thought like poetry:

He stops as regularly as the swordsman and carries his blows truly in the line. He steps not back, distrusting of himself, to stop a blow and puddle in the return with an arm unaided by his body, producing fly-trap blows such as pastry-cooks use to beat those insects from their tarts and cheese-cakes.

I read those papers as I had used to read novels, with my heart rising up in my breast, and with every sketch or engraving of a fighter I stopped and looked hard at the face, the position of the arms, the tilt of the head. I was coming to understand why it was called ‘the noble sport
’.
I wished they would write about lady pugilists, but they did not. It was curious to think that Granville and I now had a shared interest and he did not know it. I practised standing as the pugilists in the sporting papers did, one foot behind the other and both fists raised, and I had Mrs Webber stand in the same way.

I had been so absorbed in my drawing – I was gazing at it very hard, for it seemed so nearly right, and yet, in some indecipherable way, all wrong – that I had not noticed Mrs Webber move from her pose and come around behind me. When her shadow fell across the page I looked up, but by then she had already marked how my knuckles were cross-hatched with grazes. She looked at my hand and her eyes grew knowing.

I expected her to laugh but she did not. She regarded me frankly, and then furrowed her brow. I sat silently, as if waiting for judgement.

‘You ain’t fibbing right,’ she said at last. ‘You’ll hurt yourself, going on like that.’

She took my hand from me. I was excruciatingly conscious of the scars that dappled them, back and palm.

‘What’ve you been hitting at? You want to practise on something soft and smooth. What was it, a f
lour-sack?’

‘A bolster.’

‘A rough one, then. You’d do better to keep your gloves on.’

‘I cannot make a good fist in my gloves; they are too tight.’ This was one of the queerest conversations I had ever had.

‘You can’t make a good fist anyhow. Here, it should be done like this.’ She pushed my fingers with her own to curl them. Her fingertips were rough as sand. ‘The thumb outside, tucked here, and not so tight. There, now if your hand twists you won’t be so like to break it. Squeeze the knuckles together, not the fingertips. There, now.’