This invective had accompanied three journeys around the table, Jack preceding him on every one. At the beginning of the fourth, however, his father’s toe caught on the rucked-up rug; he pitched forward and, missing the table, crashed onto the floor.
‘Husband,’ cried Jane, moving forward.
‘Father!’ Jack bent down.
‘Sheep shit,’ declared Sir James. From his prone position by Jack’s feet, he sniffed again before his son could step away.
He looked down. Indeed, his shoes were stained a vivid and reddy brown.
‘Ah,’ said Jack.
Sir James rose to his knees. ‘Ode in the bedroom? When the Muse descends one must listen? Well, you can kiss my arse, ’cos you’ve just snuck in through Taylor’s garden.’
He was up now and steadier than he’d been and Jack knew what that steadiness foretold. Lying was the ultimate vice and there would be only one victor on this battlefield. As Sir James took another step forward, Jack made a bold brush of it … and fled.
– FIVE –
Ode
Jack awoke from a dream of love. Though the images vanished with the opening of his eyes, their lingering effect was clear before him. He’d thrown off the heavier coverlets in the night and only a sheet lay atop him, in the nature of a tent held up by a single pole.
Jack reached down and grasped the structure in both his hands. To be alone in his bedroom at Absolute House and not in the dormitory at Porten’s where he boarded, with the dozen beds shaking each morning under their occupants’ exertions, this was a rare joy and he immediately thought of taking advantage of it. Hidden in his armoire were some quite extraordinary prints that Sommers, a schoolfellow who had developed a talent for the purchase and purveying of such choice items, had supplied. It would be a matter of moments to fetch them, study and learn, lie back …
Then, an image from his dream did come back to him and it halted his motion out of the bed. A face appeared in his mind’s eye, sweet, pure, unblemished, framed with the palest of fair hair formed in corkscrew curls. Clothilde! He was to see her today. And he could not, would not sully his thoughts of her with any actions now.
And yet … There was another whom he also planned on visiting this day, one whose face – and body – had also haunted his sleep and helped cause his by now quite painful physical display. She would be more than delighted if he used her in such a way. So long as he recounted every detail of it. Fanny liked details.
He groaned, then levered himself out of the bed. No. He knew a piss would help ease the strain and indeed, all the milk he’d drunk in Nance’s scullery the night before – a fine way to prevent the morning headaches, he’d always found – was taxing him now. He’d hidden there from his raging father until he’d given up the hunt and retired. Pulling the chamber pot from its drawer, he set to. There was relief in one sense, little in the other but, having decided, he would hold firm … or rather, not.
What he needed was to divert his thoughts, not away from the two faces of his dream but towards them in a different way. To utilize these feelings. For was that not what a poet did with his Muses? Nothing to write about, Mother? he thought. Ha!
Pulling the sheet off the bed to cover himself, he sat at the small writing table. Both his inspirations would require verse from him … but in quite different styles.
It was the labour of an hour. When the knock came at the door, he jumped and the sheet fell off him. Since he’d written Fanny’s sonnet last, the purity of his sentiments in his ode to Clothilde had been displaced by somewhat grosser thoughts. He’d returned to his waking state. And that was the moment that Nancy chose to walk in with a cheery, ‘Mornin’, young Master.’
He snatched up the sheet just in time. ‘Ah, Nance! What … ah … what time is it?’
‘Straight up midday and a fine bright one it is.’ She set a basin of water on the side table and dragged open the drapes. Sunshine streamed in.
‘Midday?’ Jack groaned. He was already late for his French lesson. Again.
‘Aye. Your ma’s gone to the theatre and your da’s still asleep. So quietly now, my lad, up and out.’ She bustled about the room, straightened furniture, lifted the blankets from the floor, dumped them on the bed. Then she grabbed one end of the sheet still wrapped around him. He held onto it as she tugged.
‘Nance! Leave go, I’m—’
She looked down at his bare shoulders. ‘Nothing I haven’t seen before, young Jack.’ When he’d been brought to London and before Westminster, Nance had had the care and washing of him.
You’ve never seen this, he thought, and held the sheet tighter.
‘Why, Master Jack!’ she said, coyly, still tugging gently. ‘What have you got to hide there from your Nance?’
He stopped pulling but didn’t let go of the sheet. Then with a hoot, she whipped it off him, turning away as she did, her laughter accompanying her out of the room. ‘There’s a note from your ma there, boy. And I’ve some cold meat and tatties in the kitchen for ye – if you can get your breeches on!’
Her laughter disappeared with her down the stairs. Jack looked around then saw it. Nance had laid a piece of folded paper down on his desk. As he took it up he reflected that it was just as well that she couldn’t read because his morning’s efforts were proudly on display. She might not have disapproved of his ‘Ode to a Merman’ dedicated to Clothilde. But Fanny’s sonnet beside it, ‘On a Religious Conversion by Candlelight’, would have disturbed her.
His mother’s note was merely a reminder that he was expected that evening at eight sharp – the ‘sharp’ underlined three times – at the Assembly Rooms in Dean Street where her play, which they’d discussed the previous night, was to be premiered. Away from the Garden, she had more chance of her satires escaping the Lord Chamberlain’s notice.
Jack sat on the edge of the bed, note in hand. He had forgotten this rendezvous with his mother, was late for his French lessons. Wasn’t there something else the day held, aside from his two, poetry-inspiring assignations?
Then memory came in a rush. The Mohocks! Tonight was the night for the Initiation. Yet the clashing appointments did not perturb him longer than a moment; they’d agreed that most of the Rites were to take place in Soho anyway so he would have time to attend his mother’s play during them. The interlude might even help in his other plan – to be restrained in all things despite what the other aspirant Mohocks might do. For another memory came: Craster’s challenge to billiards at noon the next day.
Jack rose and splashed his face in the basin of warm water Nance had set on the side table. He was excited, for it was to be a day of adventures. Yet there was also this need for moderation.
Yes, he thought, nodding to himself in the mirror above the basin, I will be moderate in all things.
Due to the lateness of the hour, he’d had a choice: breakfast or dressing. Since the former rarely delighted him and the latter always did, he spent some of his precious time in selecting suitable attire for what would be a long day. In the end, he settled on something new yet robust – a coat so dark in its green it was nearly black but with shining buttons and gold embroidered holes; a waistcoat of a crimson that was almost military and whose studs fastened into openings that were wreathed in gilded oak leaves. He chose black breeches and stockings, since the London streets were unforgiving to white; a pair of plain and solid square-tipped shoes – Nance had returned his collection, polished, while he slept – albeit with a brace of fine silver buckles. He toyed with stocks but he had enough black on him and any other colour jangled with the waistcoat. Besides, as he had discovered on his last outing into Covent Garden, people could grab you by the stock.
His thick, dark hair was, as usual, untameable. There was little chance of visiting the switzer in Half Moon Passage, the restraint of a cerise tie would have to do. Snatching up his silver-topped stick and squeezing the tricorn on his head, he looked himself up and down. He was so glad he’d persuaded his mother to buy him this full-length mirror.
It reflected back a young man of the Town who would do. Who would do very well.
Then he was out onto the street. Since it was near one o’clock, it was crammed with people – though the hour made scant difference; it seemed to Jack that Mayfair was now always crowded, day or night. It had changed even in the few years that Absolute House was bought and built. Formerly, his route to Berkeley Square would have encompassed many more gardens like Taylor’s but now every paddock sprouted a house or was in the throes of doing so. Builders scrambled up the wooden scaffolding, hammers beat in nails, bricks were slathered and slammed down, plaster slapped onto walls. Prosperous men stood about studying plans, gesticulating at the rising edifices, scarcely seeming to notice the thick dust that settled everywhere and gave them the appearance of ghosts. Jack coughed, cursing this dulling of his finery, glad every house and hostelry had a brush in the hallway. Yet, as always, it was the noise that struck him most forcefully. At Westminster, in the environs of St Peter’s Abbey and the cloisters of the school, all was calmness, in the twinned dedications to religion and study. Here, aside from the construction, there was that dull roar that was the very sound of the Town, made up of the thousands – hundreds of thousands – of voices, competing to be heard. In his first hundred paces’ stride down Curzon Street, a dozen different street sellers noisily hawked their offerings. It mattered not that this was an area rising in gentility, for the offal seller pushed his barrow of neats and lights past a blind stationer and his penny-priced memorandums; a ballad singer’s fair soprano clashed with the harsh cries of the Oyster-and-Eel wench; while a pudding vendor warred with a pieman in the extolling of their wares. Any who travelled in pairs – and several who walked alone – declared their business or opinions in bullhorn voices aimed at convincing not just the person beside them but anyone standing in Hyde Park as well! The scent was as assailing as the sound with the smoke gushing from the various building plots, the clashing of cooked and raw fishes and stewed meats, the horses leaving their deposits on cobbles already besmirched and steaming; while the miasma rising from hundreds of people, perfumed and unwashed and moving rapidly about their so-important errands under the warm spring sun, was the strongest odour of all.
It was farmyard, factory and food shop. It was the main hall at Bedlam with the inmates unrestrained. It was London … and Jack loved it.
Late as he was, he had two obligatory stops. In Berkeley Square, the Pot and Pineapple was the best confectioner’s in the town and here he purchased half a pound of crystallized fruits and four peaches in brandy. It left him little change from ten shillings but he had shared in the winnings of Westminster at the cricket and, anyway, it was money well spent. Clothilde’s outrage at his tardiness would be swept away in her delight at her especial favourite sweetmeat. And Fanny … well, Fanny loved laced peaches.
His second stop was down an alley, just where Brewer Street turned into Knaves Acre – an apt name for an ill place. So dark and dank it was that spring’s heat and light barely penetrated. Jack had found the little shop on some ramble. Part apothecary, the extent of strange potions, liquors and philtres was extraordinary, but it was the Curiosities that had drawn Jack into the gloom. Skulls hung from the ceilings, reputedly of well-known heroes, highwaymen and traitors to the realm, the proprietor, a wizened Portuguese, claiming that half the Jacobite Lords from the ’45 dangled there. Artificial eyes rolled in bowls, teeth, both human and animal, were threaded like rosaries to hang from the beams. False limbs were stacked around the walls, piled up like the endeavours of a particularly drunken surgeon after a battle while the taxidermist’s pride was displayed with native animals like lynx and fox mouldering beside more exotic beasts from Africa and the East. It was among these that Jack had discovered the most curious of all. A half-crown had secured it for a week, his purse light before his prowess at sport could fill it. Now he had returned with the guinea he required to make it his and delight the heart of his own true love.
From Knaves Acre, it was but a short walk to her door. He took Compton Street, as he had had enough of alleys for the while. Turning left onto Thrift Street, in a dozen strides, he stood before his destination – the House of Guen, the goldsmith’s trade proclaimed in the gilt scales and model furnace that swung above the entrance.
Four years I have been coming here, Jack thought. Four, since his father decided his inevitable military career required French. But only in the last year did he enter this house with anything other than a schoolboy’s reluctance. Only in the last year did he bound through the door. And the stimulus was not a language at which, admittedly, he was showing much improvement. Unless it was a different kind of language … la langue d’amour!
The bell rang as he pushed into the shop. It was empty. ‘Bonjour,’ he called and was answered from the room beyond.
‘Monsieur?’ It was not Clothilde’s father who emerged, but his apprentice, Claude. He came out wiping his hands on a polishing cloth. On seeing Jack, he threw it down. ‘Ah, c’est toi, Jacques. Mon brave, comment vas-tu aujourd ’hui?’
‘Très bien, merci, Claude. Et vous?’
‘Bien. Il fait beau, non?’
‘Très beau.’
Jack eyed the apprentice, hoping this exchange of formalities would be an end to conversation. He was late and had little enough time as it was. He wished to spend all that little with his beloved. And this Claude … what was it about him? Only a few years older than Jack, he had recently joined his uncle in London and for the same reasons that had brought the family there ten years before: the persecution that had been driving the Huguenots from their homeland for decades now. While he had every sympathy with a man fleeing the foul despotism of the Bourbon to breathe freedom’s pure air in England, the fellow was still … well, French. Jack was not prejudiced in the least, of course, his closest friend was Marks the Jew, and he had lessons in pugilism from a Negro at Angelo’s school and never grumbled at the pummelling he took. But the French were different, his country at war with them again … yet this Claude showed not the slightest gratitude for the sanctuary provided him while maintaining an air of familiarity –‘tu’ indeed! – that was not quite decent. Jack would mix with any man, peasant or poet, that was the English way. By God, he considered the King to be not much more than one of his elected representatives! But he expected a man who was, essentially, a servant in his tutor’s house, to have a little more respect. Not only to him; he had also observed his attentions to Clothilde. They were familiar to the brink of flirtation. And his face, even in the context of Frenchiness, being thus rather prettified, annoyed Jack.
Fortunately, he was spared any more of the man’s insolence. ‘C’est Monsieur Absolute?’ a voice trilled from above and Jack’s knees gave at the sound.
‘Oui, cousine. Il est arrivé.’
‘Dis-lui à monter.’
That was unusual! They always had their class on this lower floor in a little room at the back, close to where Monsieur Guen and Claude laboured. Delighted, Jack made for the stairs, Claude giving way a little reluctantly. He paused by him.
‘Monsieur Guen, il est … he is out on business?’
‘Oui.’
Better and better. ‘Gone for how long?’
The other man’s reply was a shrug.
‘Then …’ Jack dug into a waistcoat pocket, pulled out a silver sixpence. ‘See we are not disturbed. Tricky conjugations to learn today, eh? Vous comprenez?’
The man did not take the coin immediately and when he did he seemed reluctant. ‘Oui, monsieur, je comprends … très bien,’ he said at last, nodded his head – it was not a bow – and stepped from the path. Jack took the three flights at a clip.
She was by the window, silhouetted against the sun, but were the day stormy Jack could not have been more dazzled. It was only two weeks since he had last seen her yet she seemed to have aged, in the most delightful way, continuing in that steady progression from the day the year before that Jack remembered so well. He’d arrived then in an ill h
umour, dragged from a game of tennis at his mother’s insistence. He’d been told that the daughter of the house would conduct his lesson that day and not the father, information that had deepened his temper, for his dealings with her had been that of any boy of near sixteen to a girl two years younger – brief and rather rude. But any temper had died when she’d walked in – for Clothilde Guen had started to become a woman. He was hers from that moment on.
And yet if it was her beauty that caught him, it was the rest of her that held him, kept him coming back ever more enthusiastically to her side. The girl who could still take a childish pleasure in such simple presents as Jack could afford to bring her was also the woman who was learning, as Jack was learning, more adult delights: the pleasure of lips pressed to a palm, the colours that came to a face with a whispered compliment; while behind that face was a mind alive with ideas. Clothilde was as well read as Jack, better in many ways, for his schooling dwelt only on writers long dead. It was Clothilde who introduced him to the contemporaries whose ranks he aspired to join; half their lessons were spent translating Thomas Gray or William Collins into French, study and sentiment combining to make hours pass in moments.
And her transformation had continued. She stood now, golden hair up and held with tortoiseshell combs. Her dress was waves of ivory cloth, sweeping down to pink and delicate shoes, a glimpse of whitest stocking. Her almost almond-shaped face now held hints of colour that came not only from her youth, but from some external means, delicately applied, while her thick eyebrows had been tamed, teased and darkened. These were raised against him now; together with the hand that lifted as he advanced, they prevented any contact.