The Silversmith's Wife _ Sophia Tobin (16 page)

Perfect and rich, thought Joanna. Best not to treat the doctor like a fool, if you wish for his candour. The doctor knows all about the marriages of his betters. She imagined the round-shouldered Taylor reading the marriages section in
The Times,
noting the day on his pocketbook, counting the months and making another mark, waiting to bestow his patronage on another birth. In his own way, he was like her, she imagined: always keeping his eye on things; after all, it was good to be prepared. It was necessary for survival.

‘I speak to you with more candour than I should,’ Chichester said. ‘But only you can comprehend, living so close to her. She was trained for the marriage mart. And she is not what she seems. You know that.’ He groaned. ‘I have feared for you. It has vexed me to see the burden you have been under. And as for me.’ He seized his glass, and tossed back the contents. More for me too, if you please, she thought, but managed to look attentive.

‘I feel as though I am cursed,’ he said. ‘She seems to me to be unstable in her temperament. I am told things will change with time, but I am a logical man, and with the material I see before me,’ he waved his hand, and she feared he would send the glasses crashing to the floor, ‘I doubt it.’

They sat in silence, their glasses empty, the flames in the fireplace rising and falling.

‘But what are you to do about it?’ he said. ‘Forgive me. You need your rest.’

‘If I may be excused, sir,’ said Joanna. ‘I am rather tired.’

He stood and bowed. The motion was slight, yet it had the weight of a revelation for her, the gesture cutting dead her cynicism in a way that words never could; for in that moment it seemed he looked at her as though she was a lady, and not a lady’s maid.

16th June, 1792

This morning I delivered my designs to Mrs Chichester, so for an hour or two I was all delight. I came home, and wretchedness wrapped itself around me. Dinner. Then, to a rat pit, where Mr Rowan’s bitch did well. It does me good to see a little blood let. It releases some of the anger from me.

Afterwards I played some cards. Dr Taylor was always near me, a benevolent presence, but I got into a vicious contest with young Maynard. He is a fiery, headstrong creature, with something missing in his eyes. I was so in my cups, I told him so. He laughed at me: ‘They say the same about you, Frenchman,’ he said. I played him then – on, and on – it was like taking money from a child. Then I thought that half the money he was playing with was lent by me – and I could not help but laugh and laugh, and that got him into a temper. When he set a snuffbox on the table, I played him for that too, and took it. Even in the half-light, I would have recognized it anywhere, for it was of a type that I had looked over many times. The chased gold mounting was the work of Mary’s father.

‘If that child makes any more noise,’ said Digby, I’ll kick him down the stairs.’

His neighbour looked up at him, silently, from the lower stairs. In the morning light her pale hair, only partly covered by a cap, looked like a halo to his blurry eyes. He had meant to shout more, but the image made him pause, and slowed his tongue. ‘If you please, keep him quiet,’ he said. He rubbed his eyes. Sleep was departing from him: chased away by the child’s footsteps, it fled down the stairs like a mocking ghost.

She turned away without a word, or a smile. He went back to his room, feeling foolish for having softened towards her, and slammed the door.

Holy women, holy women: in the past they had all come to him, seeking for something, and now it seemed he saw them everywhere. He had come close to marrying one once – what had her name been? He was not so cynical that he did not feel ashamed at forgetting her name. He could still conjure up her face, the look she had often given him: as though he was the source of her joy, the object of her worship, a kind of alchemist who could transform the dirt and ashes of their lives into gold. It had not lasted; over the years of their long engagement that joy had faded, and she had found it more in response to the priest’s words than in Digby’s company. One day, there had been no more words to say, and they had both realized that whatever glue had held them together had melted away.

He did not remember the ending of it. Only that she had said, with a half-smile on her face so that he didn’t know whether it was an insult or a sign of affection: you have no soul, Edward. And if he could bring her back now, back to his door, and walk her up the shadowy stairway to this room, with its dirt in the corners even though he tried to keep it clean, he would say to her: Alice, or Jane, or Emma, whoever you are, you are wrong.

There was a gaping tear in him. Not in his body, but in some other part of him. He felt it. And thus he knew that, though he had never considered it before, he had an immortal soul. Before he had seen himself only as a physical entity, a collection of features and habits, ruled by the world: he could point to this or that and say, that is why. His mother had told him that he’d been born from a tumble with a nobleman. Much as he scorned her words out loud there was part of him that believed it. His features were fine: his aquiline nose and pale blue eyes seemed proof of it. He had kept the secret of his birth in his heart, occasionally uncovering it and looking at it. It had bred a sense of entitlement that had unseated him from the one real opportunity that had been given to him.

As a boy, he had been apprenticed to a silversmith, and had gone to a rich man’s house to deliver a message. He was a child of fourteen, standing dwarfed in the entrance hall as a priest is dwarfed by St Paul’s dome. He had heard of how the rich lived, of course, but he had not seen until that moment: one had to see it. Paintings. Silk. Marble. Silver. In their presence, these things had moved through him, given his hitherto disparate resentments focus and force. His bitterness made him difficult; so he had lost his place.

Over the years he had cultivated that bitterness, stoking it by dwelling on the lives of those he watched. There were times when he walked around Berkeley Square and the streets nearby even by daylight, hardly knowing why, only feeling the compulsion to know and see everything. But now he knew he was more than just the sum of his resentment and bitterness.

He tried to pick out what had triggered it. When he had turned Renard’s body over with his foot, he had still been the same old Digby, rooted in the world. Perhaps it had been that moment at St James’s, when he saw Mary Renard glance at the sky, her eyes full of some emotion he somehow recognized; perhaps it was the feeling of Renard’s watch in his hand as he had walked home from the Red Lion after Maynard had threatened him. No, there was no one moment; it had all happened in degrees.

You and I are trapped, he thought, Mary’s face before his eyes. We are mourning what was, and what could have been. And he knew, in himself, in a place beyond bitterness, that there was a kind of holiness about her, something within her that had remained untouched by the world. She was not a woman he wanted to possess; he wanted to protect her.

He remembered the smell of meat and wine on Maynard’s breath, the driven look in his eyes, and wondered what really motivated him.

He wrapped the blanket tight around him, trying to gain some warmth from the rough material. If I watch her, he thought, if I try and put the puzzle together, perhaps I can save myself, and her too. Perhaps we can both be free.

‘I will have to Londonize myself,’ said Avery, smiling broadly as she sipped the dish of tea Mary had just handed her. ‘The moment I set my foot on London ground I realized I need a dozen new caps just to get me through the day. I have already been to the draper’s and used your name, my love. I am in jest. Of course I am in jest! I have come to be your respectable companion. I will wear only this dull rusty black dress and fade into the corners of rooms.’

She was trying to lighten the atmosphere, and she did it well. She won a smile from Mary: a sweet, effort-full smile. Both of them were pale, with shadows beneath their eyes.

The last few nights had been difficult. When Mary went to sleep, Avery would sit with her, watching her, stroking her hair and putting the candle out. Mary seemed to sleep peacefully enough for the first hour or so but then would wake screaming, beating at the locked door of the chamber with her fists. ‘You are fearsome strong,’ said Avery, the first time. ‘This great old door rattles in its frame.’

‘You should leave me,’ said Mary. ‘I will wake myself, and go back to sleep. I do not wish to be a burden to anyone: I wish to fend for myself.’

She did not say so, but now she imagined she saw Eli everywhere. Standing on the window seat of the parlour, watching the street below, his head golden in the sunlight. Swinging on the banister at the top of the stairs. Seeing him was a comfort, but with only one drawback. In her visions, he always had his back to her; she never glimpsed his face. As he watched Bond Street she could sense his absorption, see the little movements of him as he looked at things, but he never turned and smiled at her.

Below, the shop bell rang. Mary flinched. Avery watched her.

‘Do you not wish to venture out a little more?’ she said gently. ‘Mallory tells me you confine yourself to the house overmuch.’

‘She is probably right,’ said Mary. ‘Pierre preferred me to stay indoors, unless he could take me somewhere. And I was always a dormouse. I am a little like Eli, I think. He liked things to stay the same, would walk around the house touching this and that, as though by rote. It comforted him.’

‘I remember when he came to stay,’ said Avery. ‘Your mother said you and he were companions in everything.’

‘We were,’ said Mary. Tears came to her eyes. The grief welled up in her; one light scratch of the surface would release it. ‘When he died, and then my mother and father, I felt as though the very roots of my life had been pulled up. I have been in darkness, since then, I think. Except for those first few days after I heard of his death: when I woke in the mornings, before I remembered, I would hear Eli’s footsteps. They were as clear as the church bell. I would think he was there, just for a moment; and when I remembered, it seemed worse somehow.’

‘It is perfectly natural,’ said Avery, taking her hands, ‘to grieve in such a way.’

‘To talk about him is a joy,’ said Mary. ‘But I cannot forget. . .’ Her voice trailed off. ‘I chose Pierre. Eli would not have died so soon, if I had not made that choice. And having done so, I found that I could not honour it; every hour, it ate at me. My father told me, and so did Pierre, that it was my one duty to be a good wife. But I could not.’ The tears were drying on her cheeks; she looked at Avery, an unflinching gaze that reminded her cousin of Mallory ‘I did not have it in me.’

‘Mary,’ said Avery. ‘You have not done anything.’

‘But I think I have,’ said Mary.

She saw then that she had her cousin’s attention; for Avery paused, and in her blue eyes Mary saw, for the first time, a trace of uncertainty.

‘In my early days as a wife,’ said Mary, ‘I kept my old character, I believe. When my parents were forced to take Eli away, I spoke to Pierre, I made my anger clear. But he had his methods for quietening me; I will not speak of them. Before long, I cared only to protect myself – not to anger him more than was necessary. I looked only to soften his temper, and his sense that I had been unfair to him. One day, a letter came from my mother. Pierre was not at home when the maid brought it, so I took it and opened it, before he could see it. The moment I saw her hand, I could not help myself.

‘She wrote that Eli was unwell. That she would never have written, but that he was near death, and that his searching gaze bore such power that even her prayers could not overcome it. That she wished only that he and I could see each other again. Foolish wretch that I was, I took it to Pierre. I thought her words would move him.’

She sat still. It had been in the parlour; Pierre’s face twisted with disgust. She had waited until the evening, hoping that he would have made many sales that day, putting him in a good mood. But when she handed him the letter, she saw his expression change.

‘Am I always to be haunted by that idiot child?’ he said. ‘By God, you will never learn. You will never know your duty to me.’

‘He is my brother,’ she said.

His movement was swift, silent, slicing through the air. She felt the breath of it before she felt his hand around her wrist, twisting her arm behind her, pushing her towards the fire. ‘You will not yield in any other way but through pain,’ he said. For a moment she thought he intended to burn her to death, and it surprised her that she did not feel afraid. Tiny drops of sweat broke out on her face as she gazed into the flames, her eyes stinging. She was silent; in that moment, she thought – or was it only now she thought this? – she longed for death. Below, the shop bell rang. Grisa was still serving customers, customers gazing in admiration at the smooth, cold silver, lined up on the shelves.

‘You are mine,’ Pierre said. His voice was thin, high, wheedling; the voice of a teenage boy. ‘You will always be mine, in life and in death.’ His hand tightened on her wrist. ‘You will honour at least one of the promises you made me,’ he said. ‘To obey me.’

Mary had to remind herself that she was not there, in that distant time. She held the arms of her chair, the smooth wood, and looked at her cousin’s face.

‘And I did,’ she said. ‘I made no effort to escape. He burnt the letter. He put a poker through it; I watched until every last fragment of it had turned into ashes. He held me there, as I wept. And now, what a coward I seem, looking on at this distance. At the time, I felt tied to him; bonds that no one on earth could untie. But now, I think, why did I not leave? Find some way to reach my brother, my family? Do you understand? I could have changed everything.’

‘It is easy to say that now,’ said Avery. ‘But you do not consider the obstacles that lay in your way. Your parents would not have thanked you; you would have disgraced them.’

‘Better that, than to become what I am now. Weak, weighed down with bitterness and sorrow. I have no Christian heart. Bound up in my own guilt, in my hatred. There were days, weeks, when I lived more in my own mind than in this world. And my imaginings, so dark. Waking, screaming with all the fury I should have shown him in life. Knowing nothing about the preceding hours. What have I done? What am I capable of?’

‘Do not say it,’ said Avery. ‘Do not.’

Mary leaned forwards. ‘I see Pierre’s death,’ she said. ‘Too vividly.’

‘Hush,’ said Avery, and she looked serious, glancing over her shoulder before she continued. ‘You may say it to me. But do not say it aloud, any more.’

‘But it is the truth,’ said Mary.

‘There is no need for the truth now, when it can harm,’ said Avery. ‘You have done nothing, Mary. You are incapable of harming anyone.’ She leaned close again, so that she could whisper. ‘I wish you could have done it,’ she said. ‘For Eli. For him alone. But you did not. That is all I know, and that is all I need to know.’ She sat back, drummed her hands on her knees with nervous intensity. ‘We will not speak of it again. You need some fresh air; we will go to the park today. I have decided it.’

When they returned from their walk, the door connecting the shop to the house was open. Beyond it, Grisa was carefully arranging rings, and Benjamin was leaning against the doorway of the back room, staring at Mary, a cloth in his hands. He no longer shied away from looking at her directly, although his glance had a strange quality to it, as though she was insubstantial and he looked through her. He was standing taller too, not bowing forwards, and not responding with a jump to Grisa’s every command.

‘I saw Mr Renard last night, madam,’ he said.

Grisa stopped his work and glared at Benjamin.

‘What do you mean?’ said Mary.