Feral Park (7 page)

Here Anna wondered whom it was who assisted Sophia in rigging herself as a monkey-dancer each fortnight. She wondered as well if a girl must be comely to dance the monkey dance, or whether or no the monkey guise might be placed with success even upon girls with unflattering physiognomies.

Keeping her thoughts to herself, Anna ejaculated, “Yet hope
does
live, Gemma! And with a very strong pulse. But before we must abandon Nancy, is there
no
possibility of
some
amendment to her look that could solicit interest from a man?”

Gemma tapped her fingers upon her lower lip and hummed, her brow knitted in gloomy consideration of the question. After somber reflection she said, “No, I do not see it. She is nine and twenty. Whatever could have been done—if indeed
any thing
could have been done for her—it is much too late now. And no doubt she has at this juncture thoroughly resigned herself to her fate—a fate no different from that of any woman of her age without looks to recommend her. She is, like so many other unfavourably-countenanced young women in our parish, destined to be an old-maid helpmate to her widowed mother. It is an all-too-familiar relegation, is it not? But perhaps the family tragedy may be mitigated somewhat by our finding husbands for the younger two, and most especially husbands with incomes sufficient to keep all of the sisters, as well as their mother, out of the almshouse. But do tell me, Anna—has not my cousin stated that the Henshawes may stay at Moseley Manor for as long as they wish? Why then the pressing need to play sedulous matchmaker for the sisters?”

“I am afraid, Gemma, that I am not at liberty to say. I
may
say, however, that my reason is in a way related to the character of Mr. Quarrels himself.”

“If I am to understand you, Anna, you feel my cousin Charles to be a man of questionable repute?”

“I do.”

“I see. Well, as it so happens, I do as well.”

“And how is it that we find ourselves in such easy agreement upon this point?”

“Because I know the man better than you may think. My family comprises a very strangely knitted human-counterpane both on my mother’s side
and
my father’s side and I have studied the various odd strands that run through it, the warp and the weft sometimes being woven from the same coloured yarn! My cousin John Dray, for example, is also cousin to Charles Quarrels, for both my mother and my Aunt Dray—two sisters—were married to two brothers: the Drays.”

“So you are cousin to John both through your father
and
your mother.”

“Aye. Warp
and
weft. And this is perhaps the reason that some will notice more the resemblance of brother and sister in our physiognomies, than merely cousin and cousin.”

“Who was it, then, who sailed upon the pleasure ship which sank off the Isle of Wight?”

“That family holiday terminated nearly a whole generation within my family, including Mr. Quarrels (Charles’ father), my own father; and both of John’s parents, who were my double aunt and uncle. The only ones to survive the sinking amongst the Quarrels and the Drays were Charles’ mother (my Aunt Lydia) and my own mother, each of whom clung to the same floating pickle barrel until they could be rescued.”

“How horrible! I have received very few details of the tragedy of your father’s death, so seldom does one find anyone in Payton Parish willing to speak of it. I did not know that the sinking took the lives of your two uncles and an aunt, as well as that of your father. It is truly unspeakable.”

“Yet I am speaking of it now and if courage does not desert me, I shall tell you even more.”

“Dear, dear Gemma, I cannot even imagine the anguish which attended your learning—once the report had reached Thistlethorn—of all whom were lost upon that ill-fated cruise.”

Gemma now bowed her head and spoke in a low and confiding tone: “In truth, I learnt of it much sooner than that. For I was actually on the ship myself.”

“You? A passenger on board the ship?”

With a nod: “As it foundered within sight of the chalk cliffs of Whitecliff Bay, I was imperiled as well.”

“But how can this be, Gemma? Your sister was left home, your cousin John, even your cousin Charles, I surmise—all the children left behind in the care of nursemaids and governesses. Yet somehow
you
were brought along as exception upon that death voyage?”

“Not ‘brought along,’ my dear Anna—it all comes out to you now—I
stowed
away, crept aboard that ship for the purpose of spying upon my mother and father and my aunt and uncle. I did not know that Mr. and Mrs. Quarrels were to come along as well. Indeed, this was never the plan. The original plot, you see, as devised by the brothers Dray and the sisters Quarrels Dray, was illicit to the very core of it: that sisters would share their husbands, and brothers, likewise, their wives in an iniquitous circle of incestuous fornication that spins my head like a child’s top to think on it!”

Gemma sat down upon a large stone at the apron of the road to catch her breath. Anna advantaged herself in the silence by cogitating on what she had been told, by permuting and figuring what went on within the passenger cabins of the
H.M.S. Adulterine
. “But it was not, I believe,
formally
incestuous, if it was each brother with the other brother’s wife.”

“Is that not a breed of incest almost as opprobrious as that which intermingles the anatomies of those who share the same blood? Even at the age of ten, I knew what the winks and the nods and the surreptitious pinches upon the bottoms could only mean, and so I put myself upon the boat to catch them all in the act of betraying their connubial vows in the most unseemly manner imaginable. But before I could wrest myself from the cargo hold and spring forth in ambush upon my mother and father and my aunt and uncle, the
other
aunt and uncle—Mr. and Mrs. Quarrels—preempted me. It was
they
who discovered their sisters in bed with the opposite brother. It was Mr. Quarrels, in fact, who—frothed up with the zeal of moral indignation— cornered the captain and demanded that the boat be taken directly to port, and each offender, regardless of his relationship to the Quarrels by blood or marriage, be brought to summary justice before the local constabulary. When the captain remonstrated, his hesitation affixed, no doubt, to the fact that it was the adulterous Dray brothers themselves who had financed the charter party, Mr. Quarrels seized the wheel to the turn the ship by his own hands. There ensued a struggle at the helm. The vessel was quickly deviated from the sailing lane and met almost instantly with an underwater obstruction, sinking thereafter within minutes.

“I was trapped belowdecks, Anna, there to be assaulted and piled upon by all manner of stores and cargo, my youthful body ripped and torn about and pelted and punctured such that I prayed for a quick demise as merciful release.”

“Gracious God! Oh, merciful Heaven!”

“As the waters filled the hold, my battered body rose with the flotsam and eventually floated itself off and away from the sinking ship. I was subsequently rescued by Island fishermen, who ministered to me as best they could before turning me over to a local surgeon, who was quick with the scalpel and the saw, and who immediately set himself to removing parts of my body to obviate necrosis and putrefaction which would have finished me prematurely and most assuredly. It was weeks later when still in recuperation that I was finally reunited with my mother, who informed me through her tears that my father was gone, and who related to me, as well, the names of the other passengers upon the
H.M.S. Adulterine
who perished, and the fact that she and my Aunt Lydia survived only by clinging by their splintered fingertips to a rolling pickle barrel, all the while the latter alternating between moans of despair and rancorous protests that to add insult to injury she must now be forced by fate to share the life-saving barrel with a ‘wanton hussy!’ and ‘openwombed bed-hopper!’ and other nasty appellations, some far worse than these. Neither widow has spoken to the other since. Nor have
I
seen my Aunt Lydia, Charles’ mother, due to my close attachment to my mother, whom I forgave many years ago for taking corporal delight in the body of my uncle, John’s father, the punishment for such moral reprobation having, in my estimation, far exceeded the crime. And so now you know it all.” Gemma concluded her story by fetching a very deep and steadying breath. She then appended, “And how I brought myself to this telling, I can scarcely recall.”

Anna, beholding her friend Gemma with great tenderness stemming from all that had been conveyed with great difficulty, said in a soft voice, “You were expounding upon your family connexion with Charles Quarrels.”

“Yes, and I was about to note an alarming similarity between the entail upon Moseley Manor and the near claim—this also involving my cousin Charles—upon Cowpens Acres in Somerset, inherited by my cousin John Dray from John’s father.”

“What do you mean, Gemma, by ‘near’ claim?”

“Just the following: that if it were not for John, Cowpens Acres would fall into the hands of the disreputable Charles Quarrels, as well.”

“But how is it so?”

“Because the entail upon that estate, which was, no doubt, drawn up by an odious misogynist, would have Cowpens Acres, should there be an absence of a male heir in the Dray line, devolve to a son in the
wife’s
line! It is as infuriating as it is astonishing to think that had my cousin John not been born, or had been born a girl, Charles Quarrels would win Cowpens Acres for no other reason than the fortuity of his aunt’s having not given birth to a son. For, as it played out, you see, Charles himself had no brothers with which to compete, unless there are one or two buried somewhere about whom I have not been told, and if they are no longer extant, Charles has certainly won
that
hand on trumps anyway! At all events, it is a very queer situation to find one child in a single family line holding nearly all of the cards of inheritance of whatever estate passes his eye, and it makes my cousin ever the more revolting to behold, as he sits preening himself upon his odious catbird perch.”

Anna agreed to everything said with an animated nod.“So apparently luck
does
upon occasion devolve to bad men as well as good. And what evidence do
you
have, Gemma, for affixing to your cousin Charles the same label of disreputability that
I
have assigned to him on behalf of the Misses Henshawe?”

“For one thing, he treats John and all of his father’s other relations upon that side so abominably! One would think with such a history of tragedy and sadness in one family, that circumstances would have laced the stays of familial devotion even tighter. Yet Charles has said to me in a candid and private moment that he wished that John should have died of the small pox, for
he
would certainly have made a better master of Cowpens Acres than his cousin.”

“He said this?”

“Upon my honour, and I have never divulged the hateful admission to anyone before now. It would tear at the heart of my mother, who is quite fond of her nephew John, and be received with equal disfavour from my sister May and my cousins Marie and Rose Ellen. We all want only the best for John, and perhaps now I finally betray my reason for hoping so earnestly that he may find a way to
your
heart, Anna.”

“You have never mentioned to me before that your cousin John Dray had been stricken with small pox.”

“No. I have not. For I did not wish you to be even the slightest bit repelled by the thought of him.”

“Do you think me so low, Gemma, as to be put off by one whom cruel fate had selected for terrible illness? But now that you have said it, I must ask about his features. Are they marred by deep pitting? Is his face markedly variolous?”

“Not as much as you would find with some, but more so than others. Some may look at him with a slightly odd eye—both from the pitting and from the fact that he has a slightly feminine aspect, yet he is upon the whole a good man, Anna. He possesses tempered self-consequence and a kind and loving heart, and in the candlelight you may not even notice the physical defects. Or, more than likely, you should get quite used to them as have I. For when I see him after a year’s absence and after invariably first drawing back (whilst he invariably drops back from me, as well, for the false eye, as you are aware, stares out in an unnatural way), it is only a matter of a brief moment or two before there is relaxed intercourse between us and we are both laughing and jollying with one another as always, whilst the facial varioles have all but disappeared through the gaze of my functioning and affectionate eye.”

“I confess, Gemma, that I sometimes do not see what is beneath the surface or within the heart as quickly as I apprehend that which makes up the veneer of one’s outward presentation.”

“This admission of character deficiency on your part reminds me, of course, of your superficial interest in Mr. Waitwaithe.”

“Superficial? Pooh! We do not know, Gemma, just
what
resides within his heart! Is it not conceivable that a man of physical beauty might also possess a charm and grace and a most liberal and loving heart to match your cousin John’s? Is it too difficult to imagine that all these attributes might be found within the same tidy and solid package?”

“Of course it is altogether possible. But I know already the heart of John Dray, and I tell you with certainty that it should recommend him to you without a moment’s hesitation, if only you would but receive it.”