Feral Park (48 page)

Mr. Peppercorn’s self-imposed confinement was a concern to Anna and Dr. Bosworthy and Mr. Maxwell and to everyone else in varying degrees. Miss Drone counseled that he required time by himself to arrive at what must be done about his imperiled attachment to Miss Younge, and Anna asked what would happen if he emerged from his apartments with the desire to banish her from his life altogether?

“You cannot make him do any thing that he does not within his own heart wish to do. As things now stand, Anna, there was much stupidity on her side. The girl should never have done what she did. It was foolish if nothing else and did not shew the sort of good sense that goes with being a good wife.”

At this moment, as if bid by mention of her name, Georgiana Younge appeared at the door to the sitting room in which Anna and her aunt were discussing her fate. She carried her portmanteau and was dresst in her traveling habiliments. “She is right,” said Miss Younge, “I am beyond foolish. I should be locked away, but for the time being I should simply go. Your father does not wish me here. Twice I have sent up notes of apology and twice he has returned them to me unopened.”

“But you cannot leave, Miss Younge,” said Anna, “until I am able clearly to discern how my father feels about you deep within his marrow and not in this transient moment of hurt and anger. Surely he will not banish you for ever because you have performed a service that has nothing to do with the heart and only involves the buttocks.” Anna regretted those words as soon as they left her mouth, for they indeed made her sound fatuous and disrespectful of the gravity of the situation. “What I am attempting to say—”

Anna’s struggle was abbreviated by her Aunt Drone. “What you are trying to say, my love, is, ‘Please, Miss Younge, would you give Anna’s father a day or two longer to commune with his conscience and to think through without sway or direction just how he feels about you, and whether the attachment should be mended or fully severed?’”

“But would it not help, Aunt, for me or even for Miss Younge to speak to him, to plead her case?”

“Nay. It is time alone which heals wounds or casts an ill situation in a more favourable light. An interview at this point would not be efficacious in the least. You should go somewhere else for now, Miss Younge, where he will not see you and thus be reminded what it is that you do—as I have now been informed by my niece—for a fee. But you must not venture too far, for you should be close enough to return to his arms if he is to open them to embrace you again.”

Anna and Miss Younge were suddenly all smiles. “Do you think, Aunt,” said Anna, “that he will come to see folly in his own hardened heart?”

“It is my supreme wish that it unfold thusly, and I have previously been most lucky with my wishes. Did I not wish to have Miss Pints delivered from that hellish asylum? Did I not wish to create a loving and lasting friendship with my legal niece? So I suggest, Anna, that you take Miss Younge to the Super House where she will be out of sight but not out of mind and we will all wait for your father to come to his senses.”

“Even though there is so little room at that house? I have been told, Aunt, that all are sleeping in turns as it is.”

“I would not mind it in the least,” said Miss Younge, with renewed animation. “To remain here at Feral Park—even if it be at the Super House— and to be able to pray that Henry will come to see how inconsequential it is to spank a man—that should make me a very happy and lucky woman indeed. I will not sleep, as it is, until he has decided whether or not he will have me.”

“Very well, and do you not agree, Anna?” asked Miss Drone.

Anna nodded.“Besides, Papa is being childish by going off and nursing his hurt feelings in such a way. We will let him play the petulant tot for a day or so longer, and then we will see what is what.”

Miss Younge skipped merrily out of the room. There was much childishness to go round.

The next morning was noteworthy for a number of things that happened which disturbed the usual peace and quiet of the parish and engendered whispers and gasps on nearly every lane and upon every stair and within each and every carriage. There was news to be told in secret to a select few, but there was also that sort of news which is bruited all about, without check or restriction. Amongst those events having the honour of being made public within a very few moments of their occurrence was the collapse early in the forenoon of the ceiling of the Mallard Shop in Berryknell village and the crunching and crushing of a great deal of inventory beneath the plummet of the joist beams and the subfloor and the floorboards of the Mallard lodgings above—specifically the bedroom which Mr. and Mrs. Mallard shared, the Mallards themselves and their bed also crashing through the breeched floor. Down came every thing which had rested upon that floor, furniture and carpet and husband and wife, all landing in a jumbled, jostled, jagged heap upon the flattened counters and flattened, splintered display tables of the ground floor shop. The resultant injuries to the married proprietors, though they did not threaten the lives of the battered couple, nonetheless required a visit from the apothecary (for the pain of contusion) and from the surgeon (to mend some cuts and set a bone on each).

What happened was plain to all who snickered to hear the outcome: activity upon the bed that morning of such thrust and bounce and force that the floor beneath the congregants could not bear the assault and finally gave way, and gravity took every thing to its natural and logical conclusion. It was the shopboy who first discovered his employers; he had arrived early to sweep the porch, and found the two sprawled amongst the strewn pillows and blankets, and naked except that Mr. Mallard wore the jacket of a hussar, and Mrs. Mallard the bonnet and tucker of a milkmaid.

In spite of their injuries and the embarrassing circumstances of their situation, both husband and wife carried smiles upon their faces and both were thought for a period undeniably mad.

That afternoon Luther and Guinevere Mallard, bandaged and bruised, joined their two daughters for an extended stay at Feral Park, whilst the shop and their apartments above were being repaired.

At very nearly the same time, Gemma had reached the end of her lengthy tether of patience and could no longer tolerate all that her cousin’s future wife was doing to make her miserable both with and without intention, including the hurling of unmotivated invective and the insulting of Gemma’s replacement parts, and wild jumping about without the coverage of clothing, and the opening and imbibing of magnums and rehoboams and one great big salmanazar of wine that could not even be lifted from the rack without assistance (this received from an unknowing footman whilst Gemma was attending the necessary) and the shewing of such wanton disregard overall for the hospitality of Henry Peppercorn and his daughter Anna through this behaviour that Gemma had no choice but to slap Miss Godby forcefully across her purple-stained cheek and then to warn her that if she did not begin to behave herself she would be killed. Miss Godby responded to this threat by laughing in a full-bellied way with akimbo arms. A moment later she changed her expression to one of insulted pride and flew into a sudden rage and struck Gemma in the arm with a jeroboam of something French, which thankfully did not break (neither the arm
nor
the bottle), and then the two began to punch at one another as if they were pugilists and also to kick and scratch as pugilists generally do not do.

All who were within earshot of the bout came tearing down the stairs into the cellar, this number including most of those who were in the mansionhouse at the time. Miss Godby was pulled off Gemma and then Gemma was pulled off the restrained Miss Godby, and the decision was made then and there that as alcohol had turned the young woman into a beastly, obstreperous shrew, it was now necessary that she be taken to Mrs. Pickler—whether she agreed to it or not—so that she could be freed from the pernicious hold of the grape.

The deed, however, was delayed by the fact that since such a large number had descended the wooden cellar steps at very nearly the same time, the weight had caused the staircase to give way, and though the only serious injury from the collapse was a sprained ankle received by one of the housemaids, it took above an hour for those now trapped within the cellar to extricate themselves. There was in the interval a good deal of loitering about and shuffling of feet and trying not to look at one another as servant and house mistress and guest were each put into a situation of not knowing how to react to one another in such close quarters and outside the boundaries of the usual class-directed parameters of social intercourse. Ultimately, however, the rules were relaxed and people began to speak to one another in a less prescribed manner, and the result was that Anna learnt that Mr. Maxwell had once saved a child from a burning cottage and that Mrs. Dorchester had always wished to sing in the opera and even to this day had a good voice that was kept under a bushel. In the last minutes of the entrapment Mrs. Dorchester was persuaded (without much difficulty) to sing “Una voce poca fa” from
The Barber of Seville
, and the aria was enjoyed by everyone, even though no one knew the meaning of the words or who Lindoro was.

Miss Godby was put into the carriage seat and held down on either side by the locked arms of Anna and Gemma whilst James drove, and then a mile or so from Feral Park Miss Godby bit Gemma on the arm and tore at Anna’s hair as if it were a wig and removed a lock or two, and so the carriage was turned round and the wild woman was put into the back of a hay waggon and held down by Tripp and Umbrous Elizabeth, who wanted something better to do in their new circumstances than chase rabbits from the garden. Along with Anna and Gemma, all set off for Smithcoat with Miss Godby concealed beneath the hay (although her legs would fly up now and then and look funny).

Whilst Anna was gone from the house, Bella came from Moseley Manor to report to Miss Drone that the day before, Mr. Quarrels and his mother had sent their hounds all over the downs looking for Miss Henshawe, who had not returned home from church by late afternoon, but upon reaching Feral Park, the animals had become so diverted from their task by the presence of hundreds of fluffy conies within the Park and all about it that the search had to be abandoned. Later, when Miss Henshawe returned on foot (for she could not be driven by Lieutenant Alford directly to the door), Mrs. Quarrels, in a fit of anger, took her roughly by the arm into the library (which had been Miss Henshawe’s father’s) and beat her with a book—a rather large book (it was, in fact, one of the volumes of Edward Gibbon’s
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
). Mrs. Henshawe, who refused to stand still for the whipping of one of her daughters, and especially with such a heavy tome, clouted Mrs. Quarrels in the head with the press-iron that had been in her hand, and she and Nancy and Sophia and Eliza were that night driven from the house and left to sleep outside in the pasture on a single bedspread.

The following morning, as Bella reported, Mrs. Quarrels came to the pasture with a large heart to say that she would return each of the four to their previous circumstances within the house but only if there was a sincere apology on the part of Miss Henshawe for perturbing her aunt so, and an apology from Mrs. Henshawe for striking her sister-in-law in the head with a hot iron (which left an imprint that had yet to fade). Moreover, the Henshawes would be given this one last chance to mind themselves, and to be more appreciative of Mrs. Quarrels’ and her son’s liberality by doing whatever was wished by Mr. Quarrels with regard to the new Payton Parish monkey parlour, which would soon open at what was once the Three Horse Tavern and Inn but which now would be known as the Three Whores Monkey Parlour, for it was to be named after the three Henshawe sisters who, though each a virgin, had, no doubt, dirty whore blood coursing through their veins.

Bella reported further that the Henshawes had no choice but to acquiesce to their aunt and cousin’s wishes, and in very low spirits they had gathered up the dewy bedspread and returned with bowed heads to a situation now even more odious and denigrating than before.

When Bella was finished with her retail, Miss Pints burst into tears and Miss Drone wept less vocally and Dr. Bosworthy asked without attendance to the subject at hand if Bella had had her wee that morning.

Following instructions from Mrs. Pickler that any future visits to the Pickler House were to be made from round the back, the Feral Park waggon was unloaded of its wine-addled cargo and its exhausted attendants in the rear area. Mrs. Pickler greeted all at the back door, and two helpful fugitives with large muscular frames took Miss Godby with her kicking legs and biting mouth directly into the house. Inside too went Tripp and Umbrous Elizabeth, so that the latter could meet Trapp. James went to eat an egg on the bench and hum “Una voce poca fa,” which he could not drive from his head, and Gemma and Anna were left for a few moments to pace and fret until a fugitive they had not yet met sauntered from the privy to introduce himself.

“Good morning,” said he.“I am Owen. I will not shake because both of my hands were required to complete my morning expel.” Owen’s broad smile was infectious, and Gemma could not help returning the friendly look. “Perhaps you are wondering why I am so happy this morning,” he continued.

“We were not,” said Gemma, “but we would not object were you to tell us.” “It is because accommodations for my confederates and myself at the next way-house—
several
way-houses, in point of fact, since we are now to divide ourselves up—have been fully arranged, and we may start to leave this lovely village as of this very night. Would you care to guess who is to go first?”