London (133 page)

“And they make good money too,” Harry said.

By the age of seven, then, young Sep was in a position not granted to all boys his age. He knew where he belonged, in the bosom of the famous Dogget family; he knew his destiny, to be a fireman; he knew, already, almost all there was to know about the life of the London streets and his place in them.

Indeed, there was really only one thing about himself that he did not know. Though whether it mattered, who could say?

It had been quite early in the morning, seven years before, when Harry Dogget had taken his barrow out into the muddy street by Seven Dials. He had been in a contented mood. His new son, Sam, had been born the week before and this was a double blessing: not only had he hoped for a boy, but the new baby would occupy Mrs Dogget who had started drinking even more. He was whistling cheerfully, therefore, as he approached the pillar with its seven clock faces and noticed the little bundle.

It had been placed just inside the railings that ran round the pillar, and it was crying.

Henry had sighed. There was nothing surprising about a little bundle like this, but he always hated to see them. He didn’t even blame the mothers who abandoned them. Unwanted children were an occupational hazard in a place like Seven Dials, and what was an unmarried girl to do? A certain Captain Coram, he had heard, had recently started a hospital for orphans; but to get her child in, the mother had to turn up and explain herself. And even then, there were so many that the orphanage had had to choose the children by lottery. No chance for this child, anyway. It was going to die and there was nothing to be done. Yet even so, he could not quite bring himself to pass by. He had stepped over to examine it.

The baby was not a newborn, but less than a month old, he guessed. A baby boy. It seemed healthy enough. But then he frowned. It was odd – the baby’s hair seemed to have a tiny white streak in it, like Sam’s. He shrugged, stuck out his finger for the baby to take – and a second later started back in surprise. Another child with webbed hands? What kind of coincidence could that be?

Harry Dogget stood silently and considered his misdeeds.

There had been the shoemaker’s wife. When had that been? But he had seen her often since. She hadn’t been pregnant. There was the girl at the bakery. About the same time. When had he last seen her? A month ago. Not that one therefore. But then . . . . Ah yes. There was the young woman he had met in the fruit and flower market in Covent Garden. She was working on a stall when he had met her. Two or three times they had sneaked off together. That had been about ten months ago – the right time. And then she’d vanished. Could be her, then. Had she, or somebody left the child here by chance, or because they thought the father lived by Seven Dials? No knowing. People do strange things. He inspected the baby again closely. There was no question about the hair and the fingers. Surely this couldn’t be a coincidence. It seemed to him now that the child even had the same face and eyes as Sam.

“Ain’t you the lucky one, then?” he smiled. “Found your father straight away, didn’t you?” And he picked the baby up.

He was honest with his wife. Told her everything, very straight. She sighed, inspected the infant and agreed:

“He looks just like Sam.”

“I couldn’t leave him to die.”

“’Course not.” She shook her head, then grinned. “I must’ve had twins, Harry. Just never noticed.” And from that moment, with never another reference to the subject, Sam had a twin brother. The other children, if a bit puzzled, soon forgot. A few neighbours laughed about it, but then passed on to other gossip. Nobody could afford to enquire too closely about children in Seven Dials. When, a few days later, Harry took the baby to the vicar to be baptized, the clergyman, who knew his flock only too well, far from scolding the father thanked God in his providence that the child had a home. Upon learning that Harry had no particular name in mind, he suggested with a laugh:

“Why not call him Septimus? It’s Latin for ‘Seventh’ – and you found him by Seven Dials!”

Within a day, in the Dogget household, the name had contracted to Sep. And Sam and Sep grew up together. As for Harry and Mrs Dogget, the incident only sealed for ever the affection he had for her. So that now, even though she was red-faced, unkempt and minus the shilling he had entrusted to her, the costermonger looked down at her lovingly and said cheerfully:

“You’re a good old girl. That’s what you are.”

At a little before eight o’clock that evening, Captain Jack Meredith came out of the door of White’s Club in St James Street and started up towards Piccadilly.

It was only in the last few years that some of the smarter coffee-houses had turned into gentlemen’s clubs with restricted membership, but already White’s had established itself as the one with the most dashing style. Too dashing for some. For gambling was the thing at most of these clubs, and at White’s they played high. Very high.

Captain Meredith was certainly dashing. As for gambling – he needed to win. He needed to win a great deal. His grandfather, a clergyman like old Edmund, had done very well and put by a tidy fortune. His father, having served under Marlborough, had married a well-endowed widow and left Jack a rich young man. Rich enough to lose five thousand pounds in a single evening at cards. Twice. But not three times, as he had finally done. Dashing Captain Jack Meredith kept a house in Jermyn Street, where the servants had not been paid for six weeks and he owed tradesmen a total of over a thousand pounds. And his regimental captaincy – for military commissions were bought and sold in the British army – had already been mortgaged to a moneylender who lived in an alley near Lombard Street.

Only one friend, a cynical fellow-member of the club, knew about the true state of Captain Jack’s affairs and his advice had been blunt.

“You play well enough if you drink nothing and keep your head. We need to find you a victim to fleece. Some young fellow just up from his country estate who wants to cut a dash with us men of fashion. Come to the club each day and I’ll keep my eyes open.” Had they found their sacrificial lamb that day, Meredith would even have been ready to miss his appointment with Lady St James.

“I wouldn’t take his estate off him,” Jack had sworn. “Half would do.”

As he walked calmly up St James Street however, on his way to the rendezvous with his mistress, no one would ever have guessed the state of his affairs. In the first place, Captain Meredith had a remarkable talent for putting aside distractions and concentrating his whole mind on the matter in hand. It made him a wonderful lover, and also one of the finest swordsmen in London. In the second place, he had simply too much style.

You could not say that Jack Meredith was vain. He was too manly for that. He was a good officer as well as being a fine sportsman. He looked after his men and could enjoy a broad joke with the best of them and out-box almost any man in the regiment. Splendid with men, tender with women, he was a successful and considerate lover, all the more devastating because, at all times, he knew exactly what he was doing. His relationship with Lady St James, however, went beyond the others. It had a special quality all its own. At times, in the last months, she had been an obsession. Her nakedness absorbed him. He would sit in White’s, thinking of her body and how he might possess her, in a dozen, perhaps even a hundred ways. But he had been through that with so many women before and always become satiated in the end. With Lady St James there was something more. With her it was as though, each time, he were finding a new woman all over again; and the key to this lay not in her flesh but in her person. Her resilience, her artifice – frankly her fashionableness – were enough to intrigue him for years, perhaps even for a lifetime.

Yet if he was not vain, it might be said that Captain Meredith belonged in St James Street. The knowledge that his ancestors came to England with the first Tudor court, his club, his clothes, his connections, the very fact, even though it was a secret, that his mistress was a countess – these things were his life. Take them away and, like some fine Georgian house gutted by fire, he could not be what he was.

To ensure his survival in this condition, therefore, he was prepared to do whatever it took. If necessary he would kill. He could even justify it. For were not these the ancient rules of the aristocratic, knightly class? The rules of the game. There were many men in the clubs of St James who would have agreed; and to this extent, it might have been said that his heart, though warm enough, contained a place that was cold.

He had just come to the corner of Piccadilly when the three men stepped out of the shadows and seized him. Two took his arms from behind; the other stood in front of him.

“Captain Meredith? You are arrested, sir. For debt.”

The door opened slowly. Lady St James felt a little tremble pass through her body. At last. He had come.

It was already half-past eight and once or twice in the last half-hour she had even feared that he might have changed his mind.

She had dressed with care. Her loose silk gown, exposing her shoulders, hinted that, at a touch, it would slip deliciously away. Her hair was now held by a single tortoiseshell comb. That too could fall, at the right touch. Her breasts felt taut against the silk. The door opened fully.

Lord St James entered the room.

Her face fell. She could not help it. “You?”

“This is my house.” His bland face contracted; the beginning of a frown. “You were expecting someone else?”

“No.” She strove to recover herself. “You always knock.”

“My apologies.” He said it a little drily.

What did he know? Where was Meredith? Was her lover about to arrive as well? She must warn him, or somehow get rid of St James. At all costs she must keep calm
.

“I understood you were returning late this evening.”

“I changed my mind. Does that displease you?”

“No, no. Of course not.”

A knock at the door caused Lady St James to go pale; but a second later it was the ladiesmaid who discreetly entered. Did her ladyship require anything? She looked her mistress carefully in the eye.

Clever girl. She should have a present for this
.

“I think not.” Lady St James glanced at her husband. “You are not going out again?” He shook his head. She looked at her maid and smiled. “I shall not require anything further.” The maid nodded. If Captain Meredith appeared near the house, he would be warned off. Lady St James silently breathed a sigh of relief. The maid left.

“You were preparing to retire?”

“Yes.” She turned away. “I am very tired.”

It was true. Quite apart from the great wave of disappointment that broke over her as she realized that she had lost Jack for the evening, the very fact of her husband’s presence in her bedroom always had the same effect upon her. Everything in her body seemed to sink; a sense of tiredness, listlessness invaded her spirits. She would draw quickly away to create a distance between them.

Her husband was eyeing her thoughtfully.

“I am sorry you are tired,” he remarked. She said nothing; prayed he would go. But he stood his ground. “We spoke this morning,” he continued, “of my need for an heir.”

“We said this summer . . .” Her voice was weary.

“But I do not wish,” he said quietly, “to wait so long.”

He moved across the room to the chaise. Deliberately, he took off his embroidered coat and hung it over the chaise, then turned back to face her. Standing there in his white silk stockings and breeches, and his long waistcoat, he was quite a good-looking man. Could she have found that body attractive if it had belonged to another man? She hardly knew any more. His eyes were resting on her exposed shoulder; they moved to her breasts.

She had become adept at avoiding contact. Not only was her bedroom forbidden to him without permission; if they returned from an evening assembly or ball together, she either complained of feeling unwell or feigned sleep. But even so, there were inevitably times when it was impossible to escape her marriage bed without risking an open admission of her feelings. On these occasions, she had a dozen small ploys which would usually serve to dampen his ardour, keep his activity to a minimum, or even cause him to abandon the business altogether. A complaint that he was tickling her, followed quickly by an apology, a stifled yawn, a sudden turning away of the head as if his breath offended her, or even a little cry of discomfort. Had Lord St James been less polite or less sensitive, these tricks might have been useless, but as it was, she had usually been able to make him a stranger without exactly refusing him.

Sometimes however, in order to make him believe that he still had a marriage, and a wife to be pleased, she would suddenly reverse these tactics and appear before him in the most seductive manner imaginable. Once or twice in the last year, when she had judged this necessary, she had closed her eyes and tried to pretend that it was Jack Meredith who pressed into her; but she had not always been able to bring this off to her own satisfaction.

Tonight however, the case was different. He had caught her prepared to receive Jack. Her claim that she was tired had been ignored. Did he suspect? If so, her only safe course was to welcome him with open arms. Playing for time, she smiled, half closed her eyes and watched carefully.

Her doubts were set at rest a moment later.

“The fact is, Lady St James,” he blandly informed her, “that I have decided your conduct towards me is going to change.” She opened her eyes fully, wondering what was coming. “You will no longer require me to ask if I may enter this room. I shall enter when I like.”

“And when did you decide this, my lord?”

“This morning,” he replied. “You told me to wait for my heir. Why should I wait? I’ve already waited far too long.” His face creased into what was almost a little smirk. “Your marriage vows include the word ‘obey’. I think it’s time you did.”

Lady St James had her answer. But not the answer he thought he had given her. It was the smirk that told her. A man who suspects his wife, a man who is fighting to win back his woman, does not smirk like that, she thought. It was a little smile of self-satisfaction, nothing more. He was preening himself, damn him. She felt a flash of irritation, so intense that it actually made her shiver. She saw him look pleased, read his mind at once.