The Volcano Lover (51 page)

While we stayed in England I went back to the village and saw the relations that had not died, which my poor sister with scrofula had, and I gave them money and presents from my darling. She never forgot her family. She pined to see her daughter, who was a big girl now, and I was vexed she would not let me go with her. I went everywhere with her, she always wanted my company to talk things over when it was done. But she said she had to be alone for this. I could see she was in for a sore visit, I was sorry I couldn't protect her, as I always did.

When she came back to me she said, my heart is aching. We had not met since she was four years old, and now she found me again and grew to love me, and I have left her. And the fond mother wept, which was the first time since when we come to the uncle's house, who was now her husband, when she found Charles was not coming to fetch her, Charles had sold her to the uncle. It is not my destiny to be a mother, she said. I may be married to him now, but he still expects from me to be like a mistress. And she cried again. But imagine, I said as I dried her tears, imagine a woman has not shed a tear once for five whole years, how many women can say that, you should count your blessings.

Then we went back, and we saw a balloon go up in Paris with a man in it, and my darling met the French queen, but she was used to meeting royalty now. And now she was her ladyship, and I was madam her ladyship's mother, madam mother of the ambassador's wife. And men took their hats off to me, although many still took me for a servant or her chaperone. I never learned Italian. I don't have a mind like my daughter's. I was the woman in a black dress and white bonnet nobody took mind of, except when they was told who I was. I was her mother.

Now my darling had what she wanted, we could be easy and just enjoying ourselves when we ate and drank and laughed. I taught one of the cooks some dishes like we had in the village, and I would save them for her, and she would come to my room late at night after one of those grand evenings she and her husband had to go to or the opera. Guttling, we called it, it was our secret. And we could have a bit of good English gin, none of your outlandish wines.

Her husband said I was always welcome at the opera, for sometimes they went almost every night, but I had no aim to go after the first time. I told my darling, what was the use since I can't catch what they say, and she laughed, I like to make her laugh at me, and said I was very foolish, and didn't have to understand the words, it was like a play, only with music. And the music was so beautiful. So I did go some but didn't take much from it, but my darling and her husband would sit very quiet and listen. But then they could both speak the language, while all about us was eating and drinking and playing cards and from the noises I heard and the sound of a falling chair even you know what, and the King used to carry on very loud in his box, so what do you expect from the rest of them. I never could tell what was going to happen down on the stage, where not all of them was really in the play. My darling explained this to me. One of them there she said was to remind the singers in case they forgot their lines, so I guess they didn't understand what they was saying either. And the singers was free to behave on the stage as they pleased, just like the fine folk in the boxes. In one opera was a fat lady in a corner with two men dressed up very fine by her chair that my darling told me was the mother and two admirers of the prima donna, right there on the stage! The mother had a little table by her chair with vinegar and mirrors and sweets and gargles and combs which her daughter might suddenly have need, while somebody else was having an aria.

That's me, I told my darling. That's what I'll always be for you. And she hugged me, and I could see she had a little wetness in her eyes, she knew how much I loved her. How she was
THE LIGHT OF MY LIFE
, if I can speak like they do in plays. I would never leave her, never let her down. If she wasn't always so happy, she wanted so much to be happy, she loved to enjoy herself, and we had good times ourselves when we were alone or with her maids. They loved her so much too, laughing and singing and getting tipsy and telling naughty stories. What a beautiful life she had. How lucky I was to share it with her.

To be sure, nothing good lasts forever, although all this lasted a very long time. I never saw or heard a husband so in love with his wife as the ambassador with my daughter, he worshipped her. And I saw some guests winking and nodding at how he fussed on her, this being years after they begun together and been married. They took him for a fond old fool for loving her so much, but he could not never love her enough far as I was concerned. He wasn't worth half her, for all his Sir This and Knight of That. Any man could count himself blessed to be loved by her. My daughter was a treasure.

And he was so much older, so it was natural a man more her age should take her fancy. It was well done with him and he made her easy, but she was still a healthy young woman full of spirit, and who could resist the little admiral, everybody cheered him coming fresh from his great victory in Egypt against Boney's fleet, he sunk all the ships himself, but now he was all sick and weak. It gave me something to do. For what did I have to do except sit about and watch myself grow old, until the old man died, and then we would go back to England. But then it turned out we were living in stirring times, it made me proud to be English, which I never forgot I was, and the admiral came to live with us, and he could not stop staring at my darling. He looked so hard at her all the time I could swear he saw her with his poor blind eye too. The first days he was in bed, and I was helping my darling nurse him, and I could see clear as I saw that old volcano from the window that he was going to love her and she would love him, and we would have a whole new life before us with the admiral. So we would be going back to England sooner than I thought. Because even though the admiral was married, once he discovered he was in love with my daughter and had found the best woman in the world he certainly would never have anything more to do with his wife again. That's the way men are.

Also I guess as how I still had a bit of fire in me myself, for I liked to see my darling's heart woke again. And it would give me something to do, once they found out they were in love, though that took longer than I expected, he being different, whoever heard of a man being faithful to his wife. But he was, my darling told me he had only fallen once with some woman in another port in Italy a few years ago, but a gentlewoman and not a whore. I certainly never heard of a seagoing man like that who was a real man, but then I never heard my darling say fallen. She had her serious spells now, she even went to one of the churches sometimes and prayed in the Romish way. As I say, they took their time about it like two innocent young girls, just looking at each other and looking away, but I knew what was going on.

And then everything happened at once, and the French was coming, and we had to pack up everything, and the old ambassador was all broken and quiet for quitting his house and his furniture, we left in the middle of the night in a dreadful storm. My darling's suitor rescued us and the King and Queen and everyone, but the crossing was terrible, with five and six in a cabin, all sleeping on cots and mattresses or on the floor. And we never went to sleep. I put the King to bed, what a big baby he was, he was holding a little holy bell and crossing himself. And my darling put the Queen to bed, the Queen and her was best of friends, for she went every day to the palace to see the Queen. And then we just went around the boat helping people vomit and cleaning up a little. I wasn't feared, and my darling wasn't feared at all. She was the bravest, a true heroine. Everybody admired her. And we did pass safely, though the Queen lost her little boy, that was the saddest sight to see, my darling holding that child to her breast and trying to keep it alive. I think I knew then she was meant to be a mother, and would have a child after all, that would really be hers by this little admiral who loved her so much. A mother knows this sort of thing.

I was so happy for her, to see her happy so, the way she was never happy before. And all those years being madam the mother of the ambassador's wife I didn't have much to do except hand her her combs and sweets and gargle like the prima donna's mother on the stage, but now I could help her, I could watch the old man, when he was coming and going, when the two lovers wanted to be together. The admiral was like a little boy with her. I could see he wanted me to like him, for he lost his mother when he was a lad, even before he went to sea, my darling told me. He wasn't like most men. He really liked to be with women and talk to them.

So we were closer than ever, and the only time apart was when they had to go back to Naples and stop the revolution after the French had left, they couldn't take me, they left me behind in Palermo for six weeks. That was the longest time I ever was separate from my darling after she was sixteen. We were always together, she knew she could count on me.

After they came back we went on his boat to see the sights, and had a party for her birthday on the boat, but she was not such a good sailor this time, being with child now, just as I knew she would. Her husband did take it very well, better than some might, never saying a word, but then he was old and where was he going to find another woman like my daughter. No such woman ever existed. Both of them knew that. So the old ambassador wasn't too sad, except that he could not be ambassador anymore, and everybody was glad to go back to England, we had a fine journey, though all those carriages tired out my old bones, and those cannons booming everywhere we went for the admiral was a little hard on my ears. And when we got home safe, he was greeted the same way but more, it took us three days to reach London. And then there was something of their own to go through, my darling had warned me, with the admiral's wife herself waiting in a hotel in King Street. So when we entered London they put Miss Knight and me first in Albemarle Street, where we was to stay. Miss Knight was with us for a long time, she truly admired my daughter. I was so weary I took straight to my room, but the next morning when I went to look for Miss Knight if she wanted breakfast, I found she had not ever spent the night there. She had left an hour after we arrived the hotel-keeper told me, and run to the house of a friend, for someone had come to the hotel and told wicked stories about my darling, as that she was not fit company for a respectable woman. And so, hard as it is to believe, this Miss Knight we had been so kind to, my daughter insisted on taking her in when her mother died, we had her with us one of the family for near two years, we never saw her again.

It seemed there was many in London jealous of my darling, how could they not be, because the most famous man of all was at her feet! But you can be sure we all paid them no mind and went ahead, and there was plenty of work for old Mary, with a new house in London, and soon the admiral came to live with us when his wife saw she would not rival with the charms of my darling. And then the child was born. And I was there, I held her hand, I suffered the pain with her, she was so brave she hardly cried out, but it was not a hard birth, it being her second child, but we never spoke of the first one, who would be a woman now. She did not want the admiral to know about it, because he was so proud she was with child for the first time by him. I was there, I was all she had, for he was called back to sea two weeks before. The poor man had lost his teeth and his eye and his arm and they still could not do without him, and made him go off and fight the Danes, because he was the bravest. He missed my darling so much, I don't think ever a man doted on a woman as him. The letters he wrote her! And in April his whole fleet had to celebrate her birthday and all his officers drink toasts to her, and he hung her picture round his neck. And in a port when one of his officers started to bring his own wife aboard, the admiral would not let him because he said he promised my daughter he would never let a woman on the boat, but I don't think she meant him to go as far as that. But he was so eager to prove how much he loved her. And then they still wouldn't let him come home, for that was the summer everybody heard that Boney would come and kill us all and plant the Tree of Liberty and take away our English freedoms. But I wasn't feared. And my daughter wasn't either, we knew who was guarding our shores, and we were looking that summer for a house in the country for when the nation's savior and my darling's beloved would come home and be allowed to rest his poor bones.

Now there was something for this Mary to do. A fancy life with servants, I don't detract it, but I was happier choosing ducks to stock in the admiral's canal and keeping watch over the grooms and gardeners. And my darling was having a gay time too, for she knew all about everything new, I don't know how but she did, she knew everything. It wasn't a large house after all we had known, only five bedrooms, but that's what he wanted. So she put in each a water closet and a washstand and bowl with a lead tank and tap, and a bath to be filled by servants. It was all very well in Italy with those big palaces with more rooms than a body can count, but we were back in England now, which may not have ruins and art but people know how to make themselves cozy and comfortable. And the admiral was overjoyed when he saw what we did, when they let him come home, to the home we made for him. And the ambassador had his place too, for I could see he felt a bit lost back in England. I didn't, it was as I had never left, all those years in Italy and hearing a foreign language faded away. But the man missed his glory, and money fretted him, even worse. He was always tight with a penny, and when he came to live with us in the country, because he couldn't let his wife live there without him and make a scandal, he offered to pay half the household expenses. But it made me smile to see the two great men, the admiral and he almost blind who won all those battles and this old knight who was brought up with our king, there at a table in one of the sitting rooms, leaning over the bills from the fishmonger, the brewer, the baker, the butcher, the milkman, the chandler, counting out pounds and shillings and pence, and then writing their famous names at the bottom of the book after they approved it. Men get so grand and make you never forget it, that it makes me laugh when they get just like women too.