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According to Queeney
By Beryl Bainbridge OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 2001 Beryl Bainbridge
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3997-0
CHAPTER 1
1765
Crisis n.f. ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII])
The point of time at which any affair comes to its height
This hour's the very crisis of your fate;
Your good or ill; your infamy or fame,
And all the colour of your life depends
On this important now.
Dryden's Spanish Friar
Solitary nights were to be feared, for when darkness fell, the mind, like the eye, saw things less clearly than by day and confusions and perversions of the brain manufactured black thoughts. Which is why he contrived to stay out into the small hours, to shrink the time left until the light came back.
He was fortunate in that he had acquaintances who were willing to sit up with him, some of whom considered it a privilege to do so. He knew this to be the truth, not vanity. His introduction to the Thrale household had been made a year before, in gloomy January, through the offices of his old friend, the Irishman Arthur Murphy. 'They keep high company,' Murphy had said, by way of inducement, 'and an excellent table.'
He had known nothing of his host beyond he was a prosperous owner of a brewery in Deadman's Place, Southwark, and but recently married. There was also a mansion in Streatham with hothouses and chickens.
Murphy thought he had caught him by mentioning the expected attendance of the poetical shoemaker, James Woodhouse, the literary sensation of the moment, but, truth to tell, it was the promise of a fine dinner that led him to accept.
On his return home he had found Mrs Williams waiting up for him, the kettle on the boil. She led, of necessity, a reclusive life and was eager to hear his impressions of the wider world.
'Was it engaging?' she had asked. 'Was it worth the effort?'
'At least we were spared musical entertainment,' he replied and then, in spite of himself, blurted out, 'Mrs Thrale is an unusual woman.'
'How so?' countered Mrs Williams. 'In looks or in intellect?'
Had he thrown aside caution and spoken the words in his head, he would have confided that Mrs Thrale had sparkling eyes, narrow shoulders, penetrating wit, scholarship of the female kind, a favourable interest in himself and a leakage of milk from her right breast.
Instead he said, 'James Woodhouse has an impediment of speech, which is all to the good, as what he has to say is of little importance. Though a poor versifier, it is probable he's a competent maker of shoes.'
'How many at table?' probed Mrs Williams. 'What order of placement?'
'From an upper window,' he said, 'Mrs Thrale pointed out the site of Shakespeare's theatre. She maintains there are several timbers still standing.'
'And you saw them?' cried Mrs Williams.
'I saw nothing,' he said. 'The night was too black.'
After no more than a quarter of an hour, fearful of betraying himself, he had feigned tiredness and announced he was for his bed. A disappointed droop to her mouth, Mrs Williams preceded him up the stairs; theirs was an example of the blind leading the half-blind.
Now, the new year well advanced, his visits to the Thrales' house in the Borough had become regular, namely every Thursday in the month. Since last September a coach had been sent to fetch him, and as the light waned and the weather worsened he had half a dozen times been persuaded to stop the night. Mrs Thrale had even marked for his particular use a room above the counting house, and had shelves built to accommodate his books, should he wish to bring them.
He was not a fool. He knew full well his presence drew others to Southwark, and if the circumstances had proved different he might have absented himself, in spite of the fine dinners. The satisfaction, however, was not all on one side, for the Thrales had a child, a daughter not much above twelve months old. One afternoon, coming face to face with his boots on the bend of the stairs, she had neither screamed nor scrambled past, simply stared gravely up at him. She wore a bonnet, askew, from which a tuft of hair, the colour of damp sand, stuck out above her ear.
'Sweeting,' he had said, and bowed.
'Da-da,' she had crowed and crawled onwards on hands and knees.
Until that auspicious moment he had always thought of himself as a member of clubs; now he was inclined to believe he was part of a family.
And then, on the Wednesday evening of the third week in April, climbing to his bed in Johnson's Court, he became aware of the Black Dog crouching on the landing, the shadow of its lolling tongue lapping the staircase wall. The stench of its hateful breath seeped into his chamber. He wrenched up the window to let in the night air, but still the rank odour swilled about the room; he propped himself upright and dozed with his hand clamped over his nostrils.
The following morning he woke out of sorts. He would have stayed where he was and distracted himself with arithmetic if Mrs Desmoulins hadn't clamoured for his attention; yet again she had fallen out with Mrs Williams. His head ached and he had difficulty in breathing, but he calmed himself and spoke rationally.
That afternoon Thrale's coach waited for him in the alleyway. Twice he went out of his front door and came back. The third time, Frank Barber, spying him hovering on the top step, his books spilled from under his arm, took him by the elbow and forcibly thrust him into his seat. Dog-tired, he would have clambered out again, but already the carriage was bowling into Fleet Street; besides, his belly was growling.
He arrived and regretted it, for he did not acquit himself well. When Thrale's mother-in-law began her tiresome and habitual questioning, this time pestering him to give an opinion on the riots in Spitalfields occasioned by the imports of French silk, he'd lost his temper and answered harshly. Though in the right of it, he felt vexed at his lack of restraint; he'd brought himself down.
Midnight having passed, Mrs Thrale urged him to stop until morning. She mentioned the new hangings, green in colour, she had bought for his bed. 'Dark green rather than bright,' she elaborated, 'with an elegant display of tassels.'
He refused to stay with more vigour than was necessary.
'You do not look well,' she persisted.
'Madam,' he countered, 'I have not been well these last fifty years.' When he went out into the dark, he heard the child crying in an upper room above the courtyard.
In spite of the hour, his household was still at war when he let himself in. It appeared Mrs Williams had taken a tumble and hurt her knee, a mishap caused, so she said, by Mr Levet leaving his bag of medical instruments at the foot of the stairs. Frank Barber swore that Levet couldn't be the culprit, on account of his coming in by the cellar door past one o'clock and falling face down on the scullery table.
'I am not given to untruths,' huffed Mrs Williams, fierce as a bantam cock.
'He is there now,' Frank persisted. 'Bag at feet, head on arms.'
Then Mrs Desmoulins had put her oar in, crying out that such recriminations served no purpose, that it was beholden upon them all to be kind to one another ... in a general pursuit of happiness.
At which he had lost his composure still further and thundered, 'Enough, Madam,' and given them all a piece of his mind before stomping off to bed.
Alone in his room his rage subsided, to be replaced by an all too familiar lethargy of spirit in which his thoughts drifted like feathers caught in a draught. This near somnolent state – he was staring fixedly at the coarse hairs of his wig flung down in the window recess – was shortly followed by physical stirrings of an unmistakable nature.
By a supreme effort of will he fought off his torpor, striking his forehead repeatedly with his fist to beat away a loathsome descent into sensuality. Sufficiently recovered, he occupied himself in mending his coal box, which was split; in this he was not successful and succeeded only in splintering it further.
The following Thursday he sent a note to the Brewery by Frank Barber, pleading a prior engagement. It was a lie, but then, had the truth of his indisposition been spelt out, he might have been thought deserving of pity. He had been an object of that detestable sentiment throughout his childhood and shrank from the recollection.
It was unfortunate that Mrs Desmoulins let in Dr Adams that afternoon, for he was no longer able to control his agitation of mind. He was aware of Adams regarding him as he walked restlessly back and forth, but remembered nothing of their conversation beyond his own assertion that he would consent to an amputation of a limb if it would lead to a restoration of spirits. As from a distance, he heard himself groaning, weeping.
When Dr Adams had gone he placed half a grain of opium on a spoon and, holding it against the rim of a cup filled with cold tea, carried it down. He thought of dear, dead Tetty and how he had berated her for the same indulgent practice.
That night he dreamt an old dream, one in which he crouched beside his mother on her bed in the room above his father's shop. His infant brother lay sleeping in the crook of her arm. Mother was turning the leaves of a child's book on the doctrine of universal salvation. She said there were two places where people went after their death, a fine place called Heaven and a sad place called Hell. When she began to read, her finger under each word so as to keep pace, he knew the sense of the letters before she did, but pushed their meaning from his mind. On the opposite page was an engraving of devils toppling small figures into the eternal flames. 'The Lord hath made all things for Himself,' Mother read, 'yea, even the wicked for the day of evil, for the wicked shall know the wrath of God and be punished everlastingly.'
He cried out in terror and woke instantly, his big toe throbbing with heat. It was the gout, yet he shuddered. Then it was that the Black Dog, scenting fear, burst into his chamber and leapt upon his chest.
'I cannot bear it,' Mrs Williams said, slopping her breakfast dish of tea down the front of her gown. She was putting it about that she was the most affected by the atmosphere in the house. Both women had risen shortly after dawn, though in the circumstances neither had reason to leave her bed. Mrs Desmoulins, smarting from an earlier encounter, remained silent. The altercation had concerned a half-loaf of bread. 'You forgot to cover it against the mice,' Mrs Williams had scolded, sightlessly raking her fingers along the scullery shelf. Crumbs, pretty as snowflakes, sprayed the floor.
Mrs Desmoulins had denied all knowledge and blamed Frank Barber. 'It was him,' she blustered, pointing a finger, but he, motionless at the table, had stuck out his pink tongue and stayed mute.
Mrs Williams's shortness of temper, in evidence at the best of times, had increased tenfold. Even Mr Levet, with whom she often and perversely saw eye to eye, had fallen from favour. Three days ago, coming across him lying in his customary position at the bottom of the scullery stairs, she had kicked him awake. She hadn't caused him an injury, but it was an indication of her agitated state. He, ignorant soul, had crawled on his knees to the fire and, murmuring the word 'Mother', dozed off again with his arms about the coal scuttle. Some minutes later, contrite, Mrs Williams had asked where he was. 'Gone,' Mrs Desmoulins had lied, and embroidered, 'he was bleeding at the mouth.'
'I cannot bear it,' Mrs Williams repeated, but now her voice broke in her throat and her hand shook.
'You are not the only one bent under a burden,' Mrs Desmoulins told her. All the same, she reached out to cover those fingers trembling upon the tablecloth. In doing so she was conscious it was Samuel's influence that guided her; left to herself she might have resorted to spitting.
'My hearing, at least, is unimpaired,' snapped Mrs Williams. 'Your constant wailing and sighing scarcely go unnoticed'; none the less, she allowed her hand to be stilled.
Presently Mrs Desmoulins went out into the little garden beside the house and sat on the bench beneath the sycamore tree. The air was cold, which suited her mood, for anger warmed her blood. From the dwelling next door she could hear Mr Phipps berating his wife. His was a house riven with discord ... but then, wasn't that a condition common to all?
Phipps kept a mistress in Clerkenwell. Once, when Mrs Phipps had been away in the country undergoing the lying in of her sixth infant, he had brought home his flighty woman in broad daylight and escorted her for all to see across the Court. There had been a boy child born between them who had died in his third year, one with the same beady eyes and cleft lip inherited from his father. Sometimes, the child, aided by his legitimate siblings, had been seen in the adjoining yard attempting to spin a top.
Samuel, hearing of the child's death, had called on Mr Phipps and offered his condolences. Returning, he shed tears. He said Phipps had cared for that lost boy more than all his other offspring put together. Mrs Desmoulins had adopted a serious look. 'The poor dear man,' she wailed. Inwardly, she felt exultant, seeing her dead husband had been just such a one as Phipps, and one she hoped still roasted in Hell.
Sitting there, her feet turning to ice, she fretted over how much longer Samuel would stay in his room. His self-imposed confinement had begun five weeks before, on his return from the Thrales'. In the morning he had seemed his usual self. She'd had occasion to speak to him at mid-day owing to Mrs Williams accusing her of extravagance in the matter of candles.
Samuel had urged her to be charitable. The pernicious effects of education, he explained, namely that the world had a great deal to offer, an expectation taken from fiction rather than fact, had left Mrs Williams under the delusion she could ride the rainbow. Mrs Desmoulins had protested she was talking of wax rather than the colours of the spectrum. In vain: he and Mrs Williams were two of a kind, both dazzled by words.
That night, returning from his customary visit to the Brewery, he'd raised a storm over some remark she herself had made. To the best of her recollection she had been trying to still a quarrel between Mrs Williams and Frank, and had simply observed that a desire for happiness was human. In this she had blundered.
'Happiness', he'd bawled, 'resides in self-reliance. A man should never depend with certainty on anyone but himself.' In an aside, for he was always scrupulous in regard to sources, he acknowledged he was paraphrasing Aristotle. Crushed, it had none the less occurred to her how curious it was that, in order to express themselves, great men constantly relied on the thoughts of those long dead. He'd said other things as well, wounding things, but she'd fancied they were directed at Frank and Mrs Williams rather than herself.
The next morning he'd risen early, which was a bad sign, he being awake and it not yet noon. None of them had slept well, for he had shattered the early hours with a persistent hammering. Frank, impudently entering his room, had found him engaged in carpentry. Though worn out, Mrs Williams agreed it was fortunate he hadn't started on one of his electrical experiments, for then they might have found him crackling in his bed.
They heard him striding backwards and forwards all day, but he didn't appear, not even for his rolls and butter. Mrs Williams said he hadn't yet recovered from his recent labours in putting Shakespeare to rights.
Then, later that afternoon, she'd remembered they were approaching an anniversary of Tetty's death, and indeed, that very evening, interrupted by groans, a recitation of prayers broke out in the room above the parlour. Mrs Williams winced at this audible show of suffering and stuffed her fingers in her ears. Mrs Desmoulins felt impatience, Tetty having been gone a good ten years, but held her tongue and endured. In her opinion, Tetty's demise had been a merciful release rather than a matter for regret; she had been tired of life and fuddled towards the end, and he who now groaned so loudly had been shockingly absent during her fading.
Since that display of grief, if such it was, he had kept to his room; nor would he see anyone, not even Mr Murphy or Mr Reynolds, whom he loved and in whose house he had always been welcome. Once, Mr Hawkins had called and, resolutely mounting the stairs, thumped on the door with his stick and demanded to be let in, at which Samuel, overheard by Mrs Williams, had cried out, 'Etiam oblivisci quid sis, interdum expedit.' Mrs Desmoulins had no idea of what this might mean, but had observed Hawkins come down quite pale and depart without a word.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from According to Queeney by Beryl Bainbridge. Copyright © 2001 Beryl Bainbridge. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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