The Silversmith's Wife _ Sophia Tobin (15 page)

Eleven years later, she remembered the scent of his hair as she held him tight; the warmth and life of him in her arms.

There was the sound of a carriage beyond the parlour window, her father’s voice as he spoke to someone.

‘They will take us to Charing Cross,’ her mother said. ‘And we will go from there.’ And her mother, who Mary was used to seeing so stoical, broke into sobs.

A little noise issued from Eli, and Mary held him back to look at his face. At the sight of his mother crying, his expression had faded from happiness to fear. He began to cry, then to shriek. When her father entered the room with Mallory, he had to hold Eli as her mother forced his fingers free, each small hand clamped tightly around his sister’s arms. When one hand had been moved, he held tighter with the other, so that the next morning, there were bruises where his fingertips had dug into her skin.

In the workshop, there was a noise behind her. Mary turned sharply, her sight blurred by tears. But the only noises were in her mind; the voices of those long gone. She remembered the tightness of Mallory’s arms as she held Mary back from running after the carriage. Mallory, she thought, always protecting me.

In this moment there was just the darkness, barely ameliorated by the light from her single candle.

She put it down. She leaned against the bench, battling the grief and fury that rose in her. Her one urge was to destroy the room, to throw things, to set light to it and watch it burn. She breathed slowly, hoping that it would recede. Images from the last eleven years came to her mind, once colourless, now too intense. She longed to empty the contents of her mind to begin again tomorrow. But there was no going back.

You have tainted everything, she thought, remembering the moment Pierre had pushed the wedding ring on to her finger. Like a drop of ink in water, it is impossible to rid my life of the colour of you.

15th June, 1792

My wife had barely settled here in Bond Street before she asked for the idiot child to be returned to the family. I smiled at her, but the anger I felt made my mind turn black. I had given her everything, and I was her husband, and yet still she harked after this small, broken child. It all ended badly, as I knew it would, and I persuaded her father that the boy should be removed from London, and for good. Yet still, Mary would not forget. The last night she asked me, I denied her. That night, I held her down. I feel some shame at that. Her wrists felt so thin and fragile beneath my hands I thought I could crush them to powder if I willed it. It pains me to think of it: trial as she has been, I am sorry for having hurt her. But I will not torture myself over it. In her eyes I saw a will that needed to be broken, lest she become a scold, like her sister. It was my right.

I had hoped she might temper my disquiet through goodly obedience, but I was sorely mistaken. I had the means to always procure transport for her, but she would insist on walking everywhere. She also insisted on maintaining at least some relations with a sister whose reputation is questionable. These days, she tries to soothe me, but I see her lies everywhere.

Harriet, dressed in a pale pink quilted nightgown with a hood to protect her against draughts, sat at her secretaire like an obedient child. She was slowly writing a letter to her mother, her novels piled neatly on a chair nearby as an inducement to be good. The scratching sound of her quill on the parchment set Joanna’s teeth on edge. She was further irritated by the fact that when Harriet finished a sentence, she would mouth it silently to herself.

Their chief conversation that morning had been about what colour ribbon would go with Harriet’s newly ordered gown. It was Joanna’s policy to produce a definite opinion early on in such a conversation. Certainty was usually enough to bring Harriet’s gabblings to an early and satisfactory conclusion. It created the impression that Joanna was, indeed, an authority on the subject of ribbon, and that Mrs Chichester had, within her employ, a ribbon connoisseur. But she had not been sharp enough today, not nearly firm enough in her pronouncements, even though she knew from long experience that vagueness was death. The conversation had meandered on for so long, she thought if she had not managed to direct Harriet’s energies towards writing the long overdue letter to her mama, she might well have smashed one of the silver boxes against the wall.

Now, there would be no Monsieur Renard to fix it. No Monsieur Renard to bow, one leg stretched out before him, as though he was at the court of Versailles rather than a London town house. Joanna had not mentioned his death to Harriet. She had known of a house where a servant had been turned away for bringing news of a death.

Joanna excused herself to go and give instructions to the new cook. Mr Chichester’s fashionable French chef had departed the week before, and Harriet had not taken to the new man, who mangled his vowels tortuously in a vicious approximation of a French accent. As a result Harriet had decided to start giving her instructions through Joanna, initially writing them in laboured characters, then giving them verbally, so it gave Joanna a few minutes’ respite at the kitchen table every morning, questioning whether quite so many sauces were needed on that evening’s dinner.

Downstairs, Joanna sat and instructed the inattentive cook. She was just resting for a moment when Oliver ran down into the kitchen. In the distance she could hear the faint tinkling of the silver table bell used by Mr Chichester to call for attention. ‘You’d better get up here, Miss Dunning,’ said Oliver. ‘She’s screaming the place down.’ The fearful expression on his face had Joanna on her feet in a moment.

She ran past the footman and up the stairs, into the staircase hall, where an eerie wailing sound could be heard, barely recognizable as Harriet’s voice. Two of the other menservants were already there, looking pale. Mr Chichester had emerged from the library, the table bell in his hand. ‘What is the matter with her?’ he said. He looked terrified. ‘For God’s sake, will you go to her?’

As she ran up the marble staircase, silence fell. She must be miscarrying, Joanna thought: I must prepare myself. There will be blood. She will have cramps. There must be brandy and hot water. Someone must call for Dr Taylor, due to make his first visit that afternoon. She opened the door.

Never had the bedroom, with its pale blue silk-covered walls and draped sash windows looking out over the square, looked so huge as when she opened the door, and never had Harriet looked so small to her. She was crumpled in a heap on the floor, next to the bed, moaning. She looked up at the sound of the door and saw Joanna; then she took a breath and started to scream, like a child who has seen her parent, and knows she can unleash hell at last. Joanna ran to her. She thought of the men downstairs, the footmen, and Mr Chichester, peering up, their hands over their ears.

‘What is it?’ she said, over the noise. There was no blood, no signs of the miscarriage she had expected. She got hold of Harriet by the shoulders. The girl sobbed convulsively.

‘Are you bleeding?’ she said, and Harriet shook her head.

On the bed, she saw a letter, and pulled it down with one hand while she held Harriet with the other.

It is with regret, madam, that we write to inform you of the untimely death of Pierre Renard.

‘You need to be quiet,’ Joanna said. ‘Be quiet.’ A movement caught her eye and she saw that Jane, one of the maids, had come in through the open door and was approaching them. Even with only a glance Joanna saw something in the girl’s expression that disturbed her. ‘I didn’t tell you to come in,’ she said. ‘Get out. Get out now!’ She raised her voice high enough to cut over Harriet’s sobs. The girl turned and walked out, briskly, her head held high.

Harriet was rocking herself, pulling Joanna with her. ‘I shouldn’t have said no. She’ll have killed him,’ she said between gasps. ‘He said she hated him. He said—’

‘I don’t care what he said,’ said Joanna. She felt the pressure bearing down on her head. Her mind, her imagination, only had room enough for her own secrets. ‘I do not want to know,’ she said. ‘You must quieten yourself, for the sake of the baby.’

The mention of the baby seemed to break into Harriet’s thoughts, and she began to breathe in a laboured rhythm, though there was a look of surprise on her face at the fact that she had been reprimanded. Joanna stroked her hair, wondering whether the maid was still standing just out of sight, against the wall next to the door. ‘Hush,’ she said. The word, meant to soothe, came out as a hiss, as a warning.

Joanna had expected Dr Taylor to be a small, sprightly man with a feminine face; her strong imagination had made him so real that the lumbering man who met her at the bottom of the stairs, with his large curved shoulders and his cheerful, blunt features, seemed an impostor. He moved slowly but with a grace that was surprising in a man so large, as though he thought carefully about every manoeuvre. He had greeted Joanna with bright-eyed kindness, but at the sight of Harriet his expression lost some of its warmth. When he rested one of his large hands on the silken arm of the pale blue daybed, Harriet shrank away. He smiled, his gaze distant, as though his eyes were fixed on some faraway horizon rather than his patient. ‘Mrs Chichester,’ he said. ‘You must not worry yourself. I will be as gentle as possible. Lady Whiteacre said she had never known gentler.’

Harriet smiled. ‘I am a little afraid,’ she said.

‘There is no need to be afraid. You will have the best care. Your husband told me you were in great distress,’ said Taylor, rising and beginning to lay his hands carefully on her stomach. ‘Is there some discomfort?’

‘No,’ said Harriet, her voice small and wavering.

‘If I may, Dr Taylor,’ said Joanna, trying to make her tone clipped and cheerful. ‘It is an excess of sensibility. Mrs Chichester has been reading novels. She is very susceptible to them. They provoke strong emotions in her.’

The doctor paused, as though he was trying to process what she was saying. Then he smiled, and spoke with a mock severity. ‘I would put them in the fire, if I were you,’ he said. Joanna forced out a laugh.

‘They are from Mr Holt’s,’ she said. ‘I will return them.’

‘Without delay,’ said Taylor, holding Harriet’s wrist. ‘If you could wait in the next room, Miss Dunning?’

As Joanna waited in the dressing room, her hand went to the small indent between her collarbones, the place where she had planned for the pendant to lie. Having initially despaired, she had begun to hope that it might be waiting for her in Renard’s shop. She had a ribbon ready for it: a small and simple glazed locket, containing what he had described as ‘artfully arranged’ hair, though the weeping willow shape he had suggested didn’t seem to fit with Stephen’s memory at all. Her fingertips pinched the spot where her neck met her décolletage, and the skin felt slacker than she remembered it. A storm was approaching: the rain slapped angry streaks on the windowpane, and she heard the distant threatening heave of thunder. She was glad of the noise; if Harriet cried out, she didn’t want to hear her.

When the doctor left he told Harriet that he believed it was true: she was to have a child. He recommended rest, plain food and quiet occupations to calm her spirits. Joanna sat with Harriet and they ate oat biscuits, warm from Mrs Holland’s oven, and drank milk together, fresh from the cows in St James’s Park. Later Joanna tucked Harriet into bed and she promptly fell asleep, exhausted by her exertions. Warily, Joanna sat beside her for some time, watching her sleep.

It was long past the dinner hour when Joanna went downstairs. When she opened Harriet’s door the staircase hall was dark, chill and empty, and from the upper floor she could just make out the black and white tiles below, and the glistening streaks of water on them where someone had come in out of the rain. There were no footmen in attendance; she warranted they were off drinking and dancing somewhere, playing cards with the valet and losing their money. And crooked Mrs Holland would be melting candle ends into the fat pan, before she sold it on tomorrow.

She was tired, and her flux had started, the pain tweaking at her, beginning its monthly test of her endurance. She looked forward to lying down in her room. But as she walked towards the hidden door to enter the back-stairs section of the house, the library door opened, revealing a vertical rectangle of dim flickering ochre, and a figure silhouetted there.

‘It’s you,’ said Nicholas Chichester. The way he spoke was not as precise as usual, she thought, though she could be mistaken for his voice was echoing in the hall, and she was tired. She curtseyed unsteadily on the stair she had halted on. ‘Will you come down?’ he said, and turned away to walk back into the room.

As she entered the library, she saw he was more than usually dishevelled, dressed in a dark nightgown over his breeches, shirt and cream waistcoat, his neckcloth undone. His dark hair had shed its powder and it stood upright, as though he had passed his hands through it many times. He was wandering aimlessly up and down in front of the far fireplace, as though lost in thought. The fire blazed happily, and its light jumped and flared, casting shadows on the wall. ‘Sir?’ she said, wanting to alert him to her presence.

He stopped pacing, and looked at her. ‘You look done in,’ he said, concern in his voice. ‘Sit down.’ His voice slurred slightly; the decanter on his desk was nearly empty. There were piles of books there too. As she sat down on one of the fauteuils covered in fine French tapestry, she noticed
The Gentleman’s Magazine,
carelessly thrown aside.

‘You must be exhausted,’ he said. ‘Would you like a glass of wine?’

She said nothing, startled by the question, but his eyes followed hers to the decanter, and he smiled.

He poured the liquid out unsteadily, slopping some on to the surface of the desk. The fancy silver wine label chimed against the side of the glass as he put it down. Joanna thought of Renard when she saw it. She took the glass and drank the wine back in two gulps: ruby red, iron rich.

‘Dr Taylor said my wife is well and healthy,’ said Nicholas, standing before the fireplace. ‘That her screaming and yowling like a dying fox was due to a temporary derangement. That ladies sometimes have strange fancies when they are increasing. What is your experience in the matter, if you will excuse the indelicacy of the question?’

Joanna was still savouring the taste of the wine. ‘Every lady is different,’ she said.

Nicholas was nodding, as though he had expected her reply. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yet it was unusual, was it not? All Taylor would advise me to do was let her eat what she has a fancy for, though not in excess. I believe she mentioned sweetmeats from Gunter’s.’

He laughed, and as the firelight flared she noticed a slight tic, that shivered his skin in the side of his face. She fought off a wince as the squeeze of cramp claimed her. She longed for another glass of wine, but knew she couldn’t ask.

‘I don’t think of you as a servant,’ said Nicholas suddenly, and, surprised, she brought her eyes to his face. ‘Harriet’s mother said you are a woman of gentle breeding, who has been brought low in the world. But I hope you will always feel more than a servant in this house.’

Ah, she thought. My false character. Perhaps I went a little too far. She had wanted to leave her past employer so much that she had written herself a lavish character and faked the signature. She said nothing.

‘Why do you always wear black?’ he said. ‘Grey, or black? Are you in permanent mourning?’

She said nothing, trying to think of some answer that would satisfy him. Seemingly aware that his sally had failed, Chichester sat down opposite her.

‘I feel I can talk to you,’ he said. ‘You seem calm – always the same.’ He was drunker than she had first thought. His neck, close to, was mottled with red. Four bottles at least, she thought. He leaned back in his chair.

‘I first saw my wife,’ he said, ‘in the ballroom of some house, not far from here. I told the doctor, she seemed so perfect, if it were forty years ago I would have transacted a Fleet marriage that night.’