The Silversmith's Wife _ Sophia Tobin (2 page)

‘I am sure,’ she said. ‘Please go. If you would come again in the morning?’

He bowed, and withdrew. ‘Ho, there!’ he called in the passage. Mary heard Benjamin descend the stairs and let him out; then the locking began again, concluded by the apprentice grunting slightly as he heaved the bar across the door, the bar she had left unhooked.

She heard the voices of her servants and lodgers in the passageway. But Mary stayed still. She realized she had not asked Dr Taylor where her husband was now. He must be somewhere; they would not have left him out there, lying on the cold ground. She felt the weight of her incapability descend upon her. Her sister Mallory would have asked, and made sure things were dealt with properly.

Her housemaid came in, dressed in her outside cloak over her nightgown. She crouched down beside Mary, and took her hands.

‘You are icy cold, ma’am,’ she said. ‘I thought you were walking again, when I heard the footsteps; but I was locked in, and could not come to you. I was afraid you would go out into the night, and have no one to bring you back.’

Mary looked down, feeling the familiar shame. She had sleepwalked for years, and only once had her husband shaken her awake. At the memory of it she could feel the primal horror it had awakened in her: a seam of terror running from her throat to her breastbone. Her scream, like an animal, he said, had woken every inhabitant of the house. He had cursed her for it, and never woken her again, always rousing Ellen from her bed to talk Mary soothingly back to her room or to a chair in the parlour.

‘I am cold,’ said Mary. ‘My feet are damp, from standing on the doorstep. I wish my sister was here.’

‘But it’s too late to go out,’ said Ellen, and Mary saw the fear in her eyes. ‘Who did it, Mrs Renard?’

Mary shook her head. ‘I do not know,’ she said, and covered her face with her hands.

The girl slipped out and returned with a glass of red wine. Her hand trembled as she put it down on the table next to Mary. She banked the fire, then brought a shawl in, and wrapped it around her still mistress, gently pulling Mary’s reddish-brown hair free from it and smoothing it over her shoulders as one would to a child.

The other inhabitants of the house did not go back to bed. Roused by the news of a sudden death they stood around, conferring, in low voices. Who could have done it? He was, they all agreed, a difficult man – but this?

Mary watched the flames rise and fall. She was hardly aware when Benjamin came into the room, and put the keys by her with a clunk, scratching the flawless surface of Pierre’s tea table.

She realized she was hunched tight, her arms folded around her body as though she sought to hold herself still. As her hand slid down she felt a dull pain, just above her wrist, and pulled back her sleeve. On the underside of her arm there were three bruises: three small perfect circles in a line. As she saw them, she heard her brother calling her, a voice from eleven years ago.

Mare-lee. Mare-lee.

A door slammed shut.

‘It’s a full moon,’ she heard the maid say in the passage. ‘It makes my flesh creep.’

Mary began to laugh; and once she started, she found she could not stop.

1st May, 1792

I must begin by saying that my blood is French. It is a century since my mother’s family came to this country, silk weavers driven here by cruel religious intolerance, and though I may pass for an Englishman, the name of France is engraved on my heart: for it is the source of taste, of true art and of craftsmanship fit for kings. My father was descended from a goldsmith’s family, creators of some of the finest silver and gold plate this country has ever seen; but he died before I was born and my mother, denied by his family, gave me her name. She died when I was barely walking, and I knew only of a cousin living in some distant part of the country, only lately reconciled to me.

From such sad beginnings, I have come, and my present circumstances, to some, would be enviable indeed. I own a fine shop on Bond Street, where I live with my wife, Mary, and our servants and lodgers. People of quality flock to my shop, for I know how to match each man with the piece of silver or gold plate that will appeal to him: for this man, beauty matters; for this man, utility. I am a master at it.

Yesterday, a newly married couple came calling to the shop when I was not there. It sounds as though they are prepared to spend a good portion on plate, but Grisa – my shop manager, an emotional fellow – was apparently all of a fluster with them, and instead of serving them well, took the gentleman’s card, and said I would call upon them. Their names are Mr and Mrs Chichester, and I go to Berkeley Square to see them, this morning.

In the morning light, Joanna Dunning laid out the pots on the satinwood veneer of her mistress’s dressing table, the silver cold beneath her hands. Here the powder pot; here the pin tray. Each piece had its place. After laying them out in their prescribed positions, she looked at them. Then she straightened them again: sometimes moving each box an inch or two, sometimes merely touching it, careful not to scratch the polished mirrored surface of the dressing table with the ornamented surfaces.

It passed the time, she supposed. Which was the business of life.

In such moments she would reflect on the journey she had taken, from the milliner’s shop where she had begun her working life to the coveted role of lady’s maid. Time in service had taught her that it was best not to look too closely at things. She saw evidence of life’s baseness everywhere; for all its grand furnishings, the air in the room was thick with the closeted fug of the bedroom, and for all her care the silver bore the traces of a hundred touches by her fingertips.

She glanced over her shoulder at her mistress. Harriet Chichester lay propped up on a mound of pillows, her golden curls spread around her, sipping her chocolate lethargically. Joanna had hoped a young bride would be easy to work for – she had been engaged by Harriet’s mother only days before her wedding – but the new Mrs Chichester had rapidly disproved this notion by displaying a fierce temper. Just this morning she had lashed out at Joanna on waking. Luckily, Joanna had stepped back, so the pretty little claw met nothing but air; in servitude, as in life, anticipation was all.

You have known nothing of suffering, Joanna thought, and thus nothing of life. To her, the girl’s face seemed unfinished; unlined skin set with moist, china-blue eyes across which thoughts moved as clearly as clouds across the sky. It was a countenance unmarked by experience. Joanna supposed it was this very blankness that had meant Harriet was referred to as a beauty. For the last seven months, she had searched that face with her gaze as she tended to it; but try as she might, she could not see anything beautiful there, and could see no trace of a soul behind the eyes. Mrs Chichester seemed to be merely the sum of her wants and desires, and a voracious seeker of novelty.

I must have been muddle-headed to pursue this situation, she thought; I must have taken a thimble too much of gin with Mallory She moved the pin tray again and tilted her head to gauge whether she liked its new position.

‘Joanna?’ came the small, fretful voice from the bed.

‘Yes, madam?’

‘I want to wear the white muslin today.’

‘It’s rather cold for that, madam.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘Very good, madam.’

The white, always the white. And in the midst of winter. Out she’d go, stepping out of the carriage and on to the filthy London streets, wandering around just long enough to cover the hem in mud. How in Christ’s name was she supposed to get it clean? How would the weak winter sun bleach that out?

I am not the only one, she thought, who finds you hard to bear. For it was evident that Harriet’s husband, Nicholas Chichester, was growing more despairing by the day. He was only a year older than Harriet’s twenty years, and it was the opinion of the servants’ hall that he had married his wife for her father’s coal pits, and the money they brought him, under command from his own father. Joanna felt sorry for him; he seemed too young, and clever, to have been saddled with such a torment as Harriet. But there was something discomforting about him, too: he had the air of a person who preferred his books to people; and he had some odd notions. Like the silver-gilt toilet service she stood over now.

Joanna had been there the day Mr Chichester had explained all to Harriet. His mother had had such a set, handed down from her mother, and they had been forced to be rid of it at some time (he had hinted at a mystery – but Joanna suspected it had been sold, for she had heard the family’s fortunes rose and fell like mercury). Never one to eschew a new purchase, Harriet had agreed to the commission with enthusiasm. Mr Renard of Bond Street had been called in to design and execute it.

So far, all had been sweet between the newlyweds; or as sweet as could be, thought Joanna, for two strangers pushed together.

But over the silver, their innate incompatibility had emerged. Harriet had insisted on choosing her own designs, on veering away from the restrained, classical direction her husband had favoured. No, smooth lines and elegant, plain surfaces were tedious to her; there were to be flowers, and perhaps a cherub or two? Mr Renard had been called to the house repeatedly. Designs had been drawn up, rejected, and drawn up again. He had trudged up and down the grand staircase, a self-approving, amused smile playing over his mouth, for he found her pettishness engaging, it seemed. Barely a week after agreement had been reached, Harriet had complained that it was not ready.

Finally it had arrived. A set of sixteen pieces: boxes, trays, snuffers. Each box’s silver lid finely chased with flowers. The silver covered with a wash of gold, by her insistence, each surface glowing, so it seemed to light up the room, especially in the evening when the candles were burning. The mirror, set in an elaborate frame, was so large and heavy it had taken two men to carry it up the winding marble staircase. How they had grunted and sweated, rolling their eyes at the voluble directions of Mr Renard. And everywhere, Harriet’s initials. As Renard told Mr and Mrs Chichester, it was a toilet service fit for a duchess.

Some bloody duchess, thought Joanna. Harriet had barely had it a month and already she was careless of it; dropping things, banging the boxes against each other. In the last day or so it had seemed as though she intentionally wanted to damage it. Joanna wanted to tell her to be careful of it; that she wouldn’t get another. This would be hers for her lifetime now, just like the husband that she treated as an amusing toy.

You could tell Mr Chichester hadn’t wanted to have the initials engraved upon it. She had watched him when it was unveiled, he and Harriet standing awkwardly side by side like two children pushed together against their inclinations, his eyes veering away from the HCs everywhere. Joanna understood. He wanted the service to be passed down through his family, an heirloom unsullied by Harriet’s name. He had suggested that the initials be left off. But when he had said it, holding the designs in his pale, long-fingered hands, Harriet had made a fuss, her eyes brimming with tears. Mr Renard had looked askance at him: come on, indulge the lady, his expression had said, his fingers running over his elaborately embroidered waistcoat; gold thread, as gold as the dressing set. And Mr Chichester, so nearly a man, but still with something of the student about him, had allowed himself to be bowed down, and submitted. In a moment Harriet’s tears had been transformed to smiles, and Renard was laughing, looking at her face as though she enchanted him.

Joanna pushed away the memory; it annoyed her, and what good did that do? In the past she had been able to dismiss her envy of those she served. But there was something about Harriet, and about the relationship between the Chichesters, which was creeping in under her defences. Some nerve had been found and pressed; and she did not know how to dissolve the irritation that welled up in her every day.

‘Joanna?’ Harriet had taken her place at the dressing table.

Joanna started to tease out her hair. She did it carefully, as precisely as she arranged the pots and boxes on the tabletop, and as she did so she could not stop her thoughts from returning to her master.

Mr Chichester had, at first, made nightly visits to his wife’s bedroom. As a paid confidante to a green young woman, Joanna was spared no detail. It was only in the last month or so that his visits had tailed off, and now ceased. Less laundry, she thought, which was good; then she realized that Harriet had not bled for some weeks, and the thought of a child halted her hands for a moment.

She wished she didn’t know half the things she did. She wished she was still the innocent girl she had once been, before service forced her to know too much of others’ lives. Coming to this house on Berkeley Square had been a step too far on a long road. These days the experience weighed her down, hardening not just her heart but her face too: setting valleys and ravines into skin that had once been fresh and soft. Had he lived, she thought, Stephen would hardly recognize her now.

Her hands moved; a little involuntary tug on Harriet’s hair. But, unusually, her mistress did not cry out.

‘What are you thinking of?’ said Harriet.

‘Only how I should do your hair,’ said Joanna.

‘You looked so thoughtful,’ said Harriet. Joanna opened the silver box that contained black pins.

‘I will tell you what I was thinking of,’ said Harriet. ‘I was thinking of how my servants lie to me.’

Joanna looked up at their joint reflection in the huge mirror. Harriet’s blue eyes watched her, her lips compressed. Joanna saw her own face, and it looked strange to her: the dark hair drawn tightly back, her brown eyes, her features oddly passive and immobile. She thanked God for the lack of expression on her face: a cultivated inscrutability, worth the years of practice.

‘For example,’ said Harriet, ‘I know that my husband was not alone last night. That he was in the library with someone. And yet, you told me he had gone to his club.’

Joanna’s mouth was dry. She continued to dress her mistress’s hair, turning her eyes to the task in hand. Let her talk, she thought, let her run the stream of her thoughts dry, and I will see what I am dealing with. It had not been a malicious falsehood; it had been a way of freeing herself from Harriet’s company. The master had dismissed his staff yesterday evening, for it suited him to have privacy. It was rare that the servants were all together, but they had played cards in the basement room known as the servants’ hall. Unusually, Joanna had enjoyed herself, even breaking through her brusque shyness to risk a remark or two. Now and then the butler had run upstairs and checked the silent staircase hall and the dim seam of light under the library door.

‘I heard something,’ said Harriet. ‘I suspected you had lied to me. I went to my window; and I saw a figure on the steps, all wrapped up in a cloak, so I went down. There was no one there. I could barely spend a moment on the steps. It was so cold.’

Joanna imagined Harriet tiptoeing down the stairs; opening the front door, and stepping tentatively out on to the front steps, arms bare, her breath misting in the winter night. ‘Forgive me, but you should not go outside, madam,’ she said. ‘It is not right. What if someone had seen you? It would ruin your reputation.’

They would know you are not a lady, she thought. That you are counterfeit, with the blood of a pit-owner flowing in your veins. She did not say it; for all her bitterness, she did not have the bent for deliberate malice.

‘no one saw me,’ said Harriet. The pettish tone had returned to her voice; her normal tone of a child, thwarted in her will.

Joanna felt on safer ground. ‘It is for your health I worry the most,’ she said. ‘The cold is dangerous; what if you had caught a chill? I sought only to soothe you, madam. I believed Mr Chichester had gone to his club.’

‘Help me dress,’ said Harriet.

Joanna laced her, and the knowledge that Harriet had not had her flux made her do it looser; there was no need for tight lacing with the current fashions, and she thought her mistress would not notice.

‘You lace as quickly as you sew,’ said Harriet, a little smile darting across her face. Joanna said nothing, but as she began to fasten up Harriet put her hand out, and took one of her wrists. ‘Tighter,’ she said. ‘I do not wish to be one of those fat old wives, neglected by her husband. I wish always to be a girl.’

Joanna stared at her.

‘Go on,’ said Harriet.

Joanna took a breath, and pulled. It was good the mistress couldn’t see it, she thought, her one chink of weakness. Because when she did it, she had to close her eyes.