Sir William (4 page)

“Let me keep it at least one more day.”

“Indeed, I shall not. I am paid by the day, and, selfish creature, would you starve me? You think of nobody but yourself.”

“But it’s my baby.”

“And it’s my livelihood you’re trying to rob me of, so you needn’t take that tone,” said the wet nurse, and waddled away with it toward the door.

“Poor child, condemned never to know a woman’s love,” shrieked Emily, in a last thespian lurch.

“Now there’s where you’re wrong,” said the wet nurse. “I should say it was the father it would never know.” The higher the fee the greater the immorality, as far as she could judge, and since in this case the fee had been minimal, she banged the door twice, for she had small patience with small sins. If one is going to sin at all, one may as well get it over with in a lump and devote one’s life to repentance; and Emily, she had seen at once, was a repeater.

Emily wept for days, but beginning to feel lonely and bored, and having somewhere to go, decided to be about her business, which was to search out a father; though Greville was not a father, he might perhaps make a suitable uncle, given the right niece. She wanted to be soothed. Why has life no temperate zone, when the world has one on the other side of the Channel, so they say, but farther south, or in America, among the Indians?

“I want,” cried Emily, “to be safe,” forgetting that, as Herr Goethe says, the dangers of life are infinite, and that safety is among them. But then, she had not read Herr Goethe yet and not had, so far, his splendid opportunities for no less splendid observation.

*

Though as much the victim as anybody else of the soul’s inflation, Mrs. Cadogan was cubically correct in her estimates, and so met Emily with exactly the right degree of
ballon.
Greville was shy (which for once stood to his advantage) as well as ruthless, and had gone out on a pretense errand to negotiate the sale of a Greek vase of ravishing shape and pornographic design, so that if the one excellence did not sell it, the other would, for art allows us to contemplate that which we would not countenance in life; it allows us to achieve heights of the spirit otherwise denied us, as he never tired of saying, and besides, he knew just the right buyer.

It was April, and therefore spring, the season of gratitude. In such weather chilblains cease to itch and begin to heal; it is by such signs that we know it is spring.
The snow was swept into thawing heaps, exposing here and there an area of green drugget, thinly worn, called grass. And though the fruit trees had come into bloom, the blossoms had the cloudy, frangible look of Murano glass, sedate but foreign. The air had the faintly puzzling but nostalgic odor of partially evaporated scent, too strong, too sweet, hoarded for too long, and dilute in a gust of wind. In Hyde Park, as Emily drove by, a single exploratory squirrel ran across the ground and spiraled up a tree; a white swan had warm breast feathers for the first time in months, and opened its heavy wings, like a pickpocket’s coat, to show how the trick was done. The road was muddy, despite some lingering frost, another harbinger.

Emily had spent enough of her life defenseless and on foot, greatly to appreciate the superior elevation and extensive mobility of a carriage. It did feel grand to move along that way, with no more effort than was required to watch the coachman’s back and to prevent one’s own back from being sprained by an unexpected lurch. She sat there with the equanimity of a parcel, misdirected, but now on its way to the right address; it need do nothing but wait to be unwrapped. For the moment, its time is its own.

The carriage reached Tyburn Hill and went on. To her right, at a distance, stood some houses, like a row of ivory dominoes, waiting to be added to; to her left, open countryside, inhabited by rooks, though while she watched, a cow sat down. The carriage was not moving rapidly. There was time for the cow to sit down. Then the coachman turned into Edgware Row and stopped.

“My goodness, is this mine?”

“If it’s not, it soon will be, I expect,” said the coachman, with a wink which clapped her back into the lower orders. It was her voice; though silent, she had felt a lady.

He handed her down quite respectful-like, as though perhaps this was her first time at this sort of thing, which required gentleness, and the rudeness could wait until later, when the thing was done.

The front door opened and Mrs. Cadogan came out onto the stoop, chunky and proper, so the coachman had to swallow his grin, hand the trunk down, and believe what he would have preferred to believe, given the chance. They were rich merchants, perhaps, in a small way.

“Emily,” cried Mrs. Cadogan, with a glance at her daughter’s figure and then relieved smiles.

“Oh, Ma,” said Emily, who really was most glad to see her, and ran to her, but was the taller of the two, so she did not snuggle well. It was an affecting scene.

Properly affected, and moreover adequately tipped, the coachman tilted his cap and drove away. There being no neighbors with a curiosity to satisfy, the women went indoors.

Emily was fond of her mother, for the two women had seen little of each other in their lifetimes, and so had not gotten stuck by that emotional taffy-pull between the generations which leaves each side with sticky fingers always—the solicitude of a mother seldom, if ever, being accompanied by anything but a total obliviousness to her children’s feelings. However, a discreet system of delegated authority (Emily had been reared by her Grandmother Kidd) had left Emily and Mrs. Cadogan free from bitterness. Indeed, so essential were they the one to the other, that they might have been, if not fellow conspirators, then animal and trainer.

Mrs. Cadogan began training at once, by example, and showed her the house.

Born to the lower classes, and her experience so far limited exclusively to the upper, Emily had never before been in one of those middle-class establishments where everything is new—like the world before the Fall—but God, Eve and Adam. It was like being in a shop in which everything has been bought for one already, so that there is no agony of choice. Not only was the house fresh as paint, but the paint was fresh as well, in colors of clotted cream, with a French scenic wallpaper in the dining room, the carpets untrod, the furniture polished to a sample sheen. In the library, however, the
books looked used, though at least the bindings appeared to have been oiled recently.

“Who’s Demosthenes?” asked Emily, staring at a set of the
Orations
in tooled calf.

“Somebody valuable I expect,” said Mrs. Cadogan proudly. “Mr. Greville is particular.”

“Oh dear,” said Emily, who had forgotten him for the moment, but felt some reverence for his possessions. “Is he like this, do you suppose?”

“Well, I moved the furniture about a bit and added flowers. He’s been fussing. I suspect he’s as nervous as you are.”

“I’m not nervous.”

“Then pretend to be,” snapped Mrs. Cadogan. “These worldly gentlemen are always shy, you know. Soft words may butter no parsnips, but they do very well for a gentleman, so unless you want to eat parsnips again, use butter. That’s my advice to you. And never show your temper. Mr. Greville does not care for temper. Did you get any jewelry?”

“Granny had to sell it.”

“And good riddance. Jewelry is vulgar. He says so, so don’t ask for it. He is not rich, therefore he is apt to be fastidious. Drinking is frowned on, and so is cards. Cosmetics is fast, so don’t use ’em. And now you’d better see the arrangements upstairs.”

There were four rooms upstairs, four rooms down. The four down were library, drawing room, sitting room, dining room. The four up were, on the left of the stairs, Greville’s bedroom, and behind it Mrs. Cadogan’s bedsitter, containing her few cherished possessions—a cracked Lowestoft plate bearing the arms of the Dukes of Bristol, her marriage lines to Mr. Cadogan (she had found them on a peddler’s barrow and taken a fancy to the name), a small trunk, much traveled and always locked, a china statuette of George II—and on the right of the stairs, Emily’s sitting room and bedroom. There being no attics, the cook and the parlormaid lived in the basement, behind the kitchen.

The sitting room contained everything necessary to repose
and leisure, namely a spinet, or inferior sort of harpsichord with an insufficiency of keys, a music rack, a chair for the as yet unhired music teacher, a chaise longue, a table for sirop glasses and bowls of sweets, a glassed bookcase containing the works of Madame de La Fayette in the original and of Mrs. Barbauld in English, a grammar, an embroidery frame, a box for silks, a large mirror in a severe gold frame, a table for playing patience on, and two chairs on either side of the fireplace, one for him and one for her.

The bedroom, on the other hand, was a cheerful room containing a bed, a chair for breeches and dressing gowns, a small wardrobe (Greville thought of everything, or at any rate, planned to limit expenditure), and on the dressing table a mint copy of Hayley’s
Triumphs
of
Tem
per,
a work of educative merit superior to all those of Hannah More combined. It was to be her Book of Hours. It taught temper, and at the worst, at least its noble numbers were conducive to sleep.

Across the bed lay, freshly starched, a somewhat peculiar garment, half village milkmaid out of Rousseau, half negligee out of Crèbillon
fils.

“He would like you to wear that. It is a morning costume,” explained Mrs. Cadogan, unpacking the remains of Emily’s finery. “And as I suspected, he would not like you to wear these. So off to the barrowboy they go.”

“But those are my clothes!”

“It is a new life, and therefore there will be new clothes,” said Mrs. Cadogan, herself wearing a striped dress, a crisp apron, and a mobcap in which she resembled nothing so much as an amiable toad. “If I can dress the part, you can. So off with your things, and then we’ll go downstairs to wait.”

The only reassuring thing so far was that in the back garden there was a white lilac tree in early bloom, drowsy with bees, and heavy on the branch. It was an omen. But all the same, the wait seemed very long.

*

Greville had been detained. He had had no trouble with the vase. “It is a great art in life to know how to
sell air,” says Gracián, subsection 267, or, since Greville could read Spanish,
“Gran
sutileza
del
vivar
saber
vender
el
aire.”
But Greville did not know how to sell air. He merely knew how to displace it; in his case an inherited skill for which, nonetheless, he took great credit. The vase had sold itself, rather winningly.

The trouble was Emily. Seduction is an art. The ability is given at birth. We can polish the skill, but we cannot polish what we do not have. And though it was essential to appear the seducer and to chuckle about the little lady tucked away somewhere, and possible to do the tucking, given one had the deposit money, the actual process of performing the rite had left Greville weary and wary to the point where he sometimes wondered if other gentlemen of his acquaintance did not also exaggerate their trophies the better to conceal their wounds. However, go home he must, and so home at last he went, though with his mask on. He was kindly but above these things. That was his mask.

He hoped Emily was comfortable and had recovered from her untimely experience. He had no doubt but that Emily was tired this evening and would require rest. In short, what the devil was he to do with her?

On the second day, Emily and Mrs. Cadogan refrained from discussing what had not happened the first night, which was also what did not happen on the second; on the third evening, Greville was out; on the fourth morning Emily had hysterics; and on the fourth evening Mrs. Cadogan, though gingerly, took the matter into her own hands.

“Em’ly is here only to do your bidding. You have but to say, and she will do what you wish. Em’ly has retired only to await you, sir.”

“Has no one ever told you the word is in three syllables?” demanded Greville, irritated both with himself and her.

“What word is that, sir?”

“Em’ly,” snapped Greville.

“How else would I address her? She is my daughter.”

“Then we must change the name,” said Greville firmly.
“I shall think about it and advise you.” When she had gone, he sat glumly to the contemplation of his port, alone, for he could not very well show her off to his male acquaintance until he had something to show.

Today is Thursday, he said to himself. I shall approach her on Friday and every Friday thereafter. That will be suitable; and he began to devise lists of names. The Fair Teamaker of Edgware Row was the epithet he had chosen, but what the devil was he to call her?

Port is a heavy drink. Three bottles of it are even heavier. It was all he could do to stumble up to bed.

“Oh dear,” said Mrs. Cadogan, who had been hoping for developments, and philosophically blew her candle out. “What is to become of us?”

Emily was asleep and vastly enjoying herself. She infinitely preferred to sleep alone, though such luxuries are seldom possible, short of widowhood. Men are so messy.

Summoned from sleep in some dark part of the night, she felt a body in the bed beside her. It was a smooth, hairless, slim body, adolescent in quality, and breathing liquorous fumes. It was an apologetic body, she decided, as well it might be for disturbing her, so she was not alarmed.

“Feel no fear,” said the body. “It is only Greville.”

Which was true enough. “Oh, dear, dear Greville,” she said, and stroked his hair which, since he did not shave for a wig but had it cut to a stubble, was no more alarming to touch than it would have been to rub a hedgehog the right way.

To her surprise, though naturally revolted (men are beasts), she was not displeased. The sensation was localized, transitory and brief. He did not derange her hair. He did not make ugly noises. There was the added advantage that she could not see him. It could not be denied that the sensation, so long as one was careful not to become aroused, was conducive to repose; and when he was adequately relieved he had the good taste to go away and not to clutter up the bed.