The Scent of Death (41 page)

Morale was low. It is difficult to keep up one’s courage when one is cold and often hungry. To make matters worse, the authorities were completely unprepared for the severity of the winter. The stocks of timber had already been depleted in the previous winters of the war. What little remained was terribly expensive and it tended to be reserved for the army and for senior officials.

It was colder than ever in Warren Street. Major Marryot did his best to help for the sake of the
beaux yeux
of Mrs Arabella. To know that every cord of timber he managed to find for her would also provide warmth for me must have been wormwood to his jealous soul.

Even inside the house, we wore greatcoats or cloaks as well as hats and gloves. The chamberpots froze solid and the windows caked with opaque sheets of ice on the inner side of the glass. We spent long hours in our beds, burrowed beneath mounds of blankets, furs and quilts.

The Wintours did their best to keep three fires alight. We needed the one in the kitchen for the cooking; it also warmed the domestics, who found it more comfortable to sleep there, the two sexes jumbled together in defiance of decency. There was another fire in Mrs Wintour’s room; she was now permanently confined to her bed, which had been moved into a small closet that communicated directly with her daughter-in-law’s chamber. Mrs Arabella, the Judge and I spent our waking lives in the library, which was smaller than the other apartments and therefore easier to heat.

The cold weather threw the three of us into a curious intimacy. I confess I came to like it for I am not by nature a solitary animal. We huddled round the small fire, each with our feet on the fender, with a kettle always warming on the hob at the back of the grate. We often took our meals in this inelegant position. More than once, I suspect, the Judge did not bother to retire to his cold bedroom but spent the night in the library, dozing in his chair and wrapped in an old cloak that had once belonged to his son.

Sometimes Mr Noak would battle his way through the streets and join us, ostensibly to assist with the Judge’s labours on his history of New York. In practice this meant that the Judge would talk about the unwritten portions of the book, meandering through the decades and centuries; he would discuss the people he had known as a young man and describe long-past conversations he had had with them. He would send Mr Noak to fetch particular items from his research materials; but, by the time he had the item to hand, he would often have forgotten why he wanted it in the first place.

‘There is so much to do,’ he would say to us, wringing his hands at the immensity of the task. ‘So many documents to consult, so many men to write to, so many words to set down. I truly believe it will run to four volumes rather than three by the time I am done.’

For all his labours, and those of Mr Noak, the Judge had not yet reached the year 1664, when the Duke of York’s men had wrested control of the city from the Dutch West India Company.

Sometimes in the evening Mr Wintour would ask me to read from his manuscript. I read by the light of a candle made from spermaceti smuggled in from Rhode Island; it gave a better light than one made of wax, which I sorely needed to decipher the ever-increasing tangle of emendations, additions and footnotes.

On one occasion, the sound of his own words drove the Judge to slumber. When his breathing became stertorous and regular, I stopped reading. Mrs Arabella and I exchanged glances.

A few minutes later, Mr Wintour twitched violently and awoke in a rush. He stared about him as if uncertain where he was. Mrs Arabella took his hand and stroked it. Blinking, he looked
first at her and then at me. He rubbed his eyes with the unself
consciousness of a child.

‘I am become a refugee in my own city,’ he said in a clear, distinct voice. ‘I never thought it would come to this, my dears. It pierces my heart.’

There was little enough to celebrate at Christmas. In the first week of the new year, I received a letter from Mr Townley asking me to sup with him at Mrs Chawley’s on the following Monday. ‘These are sad times,’ he wrote, ‘and we must find ways to enliven them.’

In earlier days I would have been intrigued and even flattered. I knew the house only by reputation. It was both expensive and select. One did not go there except by invitation.

After Mr Townley’s coolness to me during the last few months, his offer of hospitality was unexpected. I wondered whether it had anything to do with my visit to Mr Ingham, his former clerk, and my suspicions concerning Mr Noak. I accepted the invitation, nevertheless.

A day or two later, Mrs Arabella and I were sitting in the Judge’s library. Josiah had taken away our supper trays. Only the two of us were there, for Mr Wintour was in his wife’s chamber, encouraging her to eat a bowl of soup and take a sip of sherry.

The wood on the fire was unseasoned apple, stripped from someone’s orchard. It crackled and spat as it burned. The kettle was on the hob, heating the water for tea. Apart from the flames from the fire, the only light came from a single candle at Mrs Arabella’s elbow, which made it difficult for me to see her face.

We had not exchanged a word for at least ten minutes. The silence did not feel unnatural and neither of us rushed to break it. In the intervals of wondering how on earth I should contrive to make a living when I returned to England, I was thinking of Mr Noak. When I had returned to the house earlier this evening, I had found him in the library, sharpening pens at the secretary with a file of letters open in front of him. There was nothing out of the way in this. The Judge now allowed him an entirely free hand among his papers.

Mrs Arabella stirred in her chair. Her head turned towards me. ‘May I ask you something, sir?’

‘Of course.’

‘I do not want to pry but what is your opinion of Mr Noak?’

I sat up sharply, dislodging the blanket which was draped over my knees. ‘How strange. I was turning over just the same question in my mind.’

‘And what were your conclusions?’

‘I haven’t reached them yet, madam.’

She laughed. ‘Nor have I.’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘He’s about the house a great deal. Why should he spare us so much time? Tell me – have you known him long?’

‘I met him by chance on the passage from England.’

‘You shared a cabin, I think?’

‘Yes – Mr Noak was travelling privately, not on public business. I was very seasick at the start of the voyage and he was kind to me.’

‘So you had no previous acquaintance with him?’

‘Not in the least.’

I leaned forward, lit a spill at the fire and used it to light a second candle. Her face leapt out of the darkness.

I sat back in my chair and said, ‘As it happened, I knew of Mr Noak’s previous employer by reputation. He is a Mr Yelland of the Temple – a lawyer who conducts a good deal of business for Loyalist gentlemen. Mr Noak was coming to New York because he had a position waiting for him here in a contractor’s house. But when we arrived he found the man had died and the business had been wound up.’ I hesitated. ‘At least that’s what he told me.’

‘And so he applied to you to use your influence on his behal
f
?’

‘Yes – he came to me at breakfast on my very first morning here and told me of his difficulty. Later that day I saw Mr Townley – you remember we were engaged in that sad business with Mr Pickett at the time? – and he let fall that he was in want of a clerk because his own had just died of fever.’

‘And so you proposed Mr Noak,’ Mrs Arabella said. ‘That was obliging of you.’

‘Very. It seemed an easy way to repay a kindness. But I thought nothing more of it until a few weeks ago. I chanced to meet Mrs Townley—’

‘Mrs Townley?’ she interrupted. ‘In flesh and blood? I had thought she was a figment of Mr Townley’s imagination.’

‘You are pleased to make fun of me, madam. Mrs Townley is a very agreeable lady, though retiring by nature and rather overwhelmed by her family cares. She happened to let fall that her husband’s previous clerk, a Mr Ingham, is alive and well – he now manages a warehouse they own near Brooklyn.’

‘Perhaps this is a different clerk. Mr Townley may well employ more than one.’

‘Very true but, when I pressed the point, Mrs Townley said that Mr Noak had filled the vacancy that Mr Ingham had left. Before Christmas I encountered Mr Ingham himself, who told me quite categorically that Mr Noak had filled the position he had vacated as confidential clerk. More than that, he added that Mr Townley wanted to oblige an American gentleman from England: who proved to be Mr Noak.’

‘So it would seem that they were acquainted already,’ Mrs Arabella said.

‘More than that, ma’am, I think. It suggests that Mr Townley and Mr Noak wanted me to believe – and the rest of the world, also – that their connection was through me. Indeed, that I had instigated it. In other words I was their puppet. I do not at all like that.’

We were silent for a few minutes. The kettle emitted a gentle puff of steam, tinted orange by the flames.

‘Then the question is why,’ Mrs Arabella said. ‘Do you propose to tell someone?’

‘Who would listen?’ I said. ‘Townley and Noak would deny it. It would be my word against theirs. And I do not think my word is worth very much in New York at present.’

Mrs Arabella was far more in my thoughts than Mr Noak.

The worsening winter conditions forced the two of us closer and closer together. Augusta’s elopement and Jack Wintour’s death had removed two invisible barriers: these two events liberated my desires, though they did not license them.

I tried to persuade myself that I should have felt the same for any woman who lived in similar proximity to me, had she not been forbiddingly old or ugly. After all, it had now been a year and a half since I had lain with a woman, my wife. Some men find celibacy comes easily to them. I do not.

New York itself seemed to enflame the itch, to tease me, to play upon my weakness. During the war the city’s population of whores grew ever larger, for soldiers attract them as dogs attract fleas; and as one died of pox or poverty, two or three more would arrive to take her place. They came in many guises, from the drabs who worked the alleys of Canvas Town to the elegant Cyprians who clung to the arms of generals.

I was tempted sorely but I did not succumb. My body took what petty revenge it could with nocturnal
emissiones seminis
. These formed an uneasy and unsatisfactory compromise between the rule of the will and the lusts of the flesh.

Mrs Arabella did not play the coquette. She was distant and frequently sullen in my company. She smiled rarely and was never completely frank. I thought that she treated me with suspicion, that I was an unwelcome guest in her house.

But she interested me. She fascinated me. She intrigued me.

First I allowed myself to think that I liked the woman, despite her obvious faults. Then I found excuses for those faults. Next I admitted to myself that I wanted her as a man wants a woman; for the thought of her slipped into my mind, particularly at night when I was defenceless; and by day I found ways to seek out her company.

Finally, on Monday, 10 January, the day appointed for my supper with Mr Townley, I admitted the truth to myself: I was in love with Mrs Arabella Wintour.

Mrs Chawley was known for the elegant suppers she provided for gentlemen and for the concerts she held in her big drawing room on the second Tuesday of every month. She was also known for her whores.

Her house was not far from Trinity churchyard in one direction and from the outskirts of Canvas Town in the other. The establishment was, as it were, poised between the two, precariously balanced on the cusp.

I went there by sedan chair from my office in Broad Street. The bearers slipped and swore all the way, for the streets were still crowded at that hour as well as treacherous with ice and frozen snow.

Mrs Chawley’s porter, a huge black man, had been told to expect me. He ushered me into the hall. A pair of footmen converged to strip away my outer layers. Nothing was allowed to disturb the fiction that this was a lavishly appointed private house where I was a welcome guest.

As the servants were removing my greatcoat, Townley came bounding down the stairs like an overgrown schoolboy.

‘My dear sir,’ he cried. ‘What a pleasure this is! It’s been an age since we have had time for anything but business.’

I played my part and greeted him with every appearance of happiness. When the footmen had finished with me, he drew my arm through his and took me upstairs to the drawing room, where he introduced me to our hostess.

Mrs Chawley was a very handsome woman, particularly by candlelight, who owned to thirty but was probably nearer forty. She was the widow of a major in the Queen’s Rangers, whose death had left her without support for herself and her children.

A large fire burned in the grate, which was an unusual sight in any house in New York that winter. Also in the room were three younger ladies, newly arrived in the city, who were variously introduced as Mrs Chawley’s cousins and the friends of her cousins. They were American but perfectly well-bred in the colonial way. There was also an officer in the 17th Regiment of Dragoons, whom I knew by sight; he bowed distantly to me but at once retired to converse with one of the ladies, drawing her away to the shadows at the far end of the room.

A footman served champagne. Townley and I chatted for a few minutes with Mrs Chawley and her other two young friends. There was nothing untoward in the conversation, though one of the ladies, a graceful brunette, was a little free with her gestures with me, sometimes touching my arm and laughing very loudly at any pleasantries I ventured; and I could not help noticing that her gown was unusually low-cut.

The genteel illusion that this was a private house came to an end when a footman entered with the news that, if Mr Townley pleased, supper was on the table in a nearby room.

We left the ladies where they were with many polite regrets and promises to return. The footman showed us into a neat, warm dining parlour on the same floor. Townley told the servants we would serve ourselves.