Fair Fight (18 page)

The crowd about us was thinning a little. I had ceased to notice how close we were until they began to move away. Now I felt how stifling was the air in that place.

The man by the side of the girl placed her hand carefully back in her lap. It lay there as though the padded glove was empty. He said something to the old woman and she replied, nodding. Then he rose and strode toward the old man in the ill-fitting wig, standing by the ropes. The younger man’s face was quite frightening to see.

The ogre, perhaps murderer, was on the other side of the ring, shaking the hands that were held up to him from the crowd, though what there was to admire in a great beast beating a young girl, I could not have said. He seemed pleased enough with his work and shook their hands.

At last the old woman roused the girl enough to help her to stand. She was unsteady upon her feet but was alive, at least. She took the old woman’s arm and allowed herself to be helped away a few paces but then, against all sense, shook the old woman’s hand from her and staggered back toward the centre of the ring, fists raised.

The ogre, seeing this, left off his handshaking and moved toward her.

‘What’s this,’ cried Perry, ‘will you go another round?’

‘Narrow will suffer for this,’ Granville said. I did not know what he meant.

The girl stood, swaying at the line. Her hands were bare and held before her chest. Blood ran steadily from her elbow in such a constant trickle that it formed a string like a piece of crimson wool. The ogre progressed toward her and to my dismay, I saw him raise his own hands.

‘For shame,’ someone cried.

The next moment the man who had given the poor girl his knee had moved across the stage with a speed one would not usually credit to such a big fellow. He took us all by surprise, including the murderous brute, now knocked upon his seat so smartly that the crowd was silent for a moment. The heavy sound as he hit the boards boomed out through the tent. I seemed to feel it. Blood began immediately to gush from his nose and with it the sound returned, as the remaining crowd shrieked and called and cheered. The surprise of it made me scream, not in exhilaration this time, but shock. It was terrible that it should happen so, outside of the rules in this way. It seemed real. The murderer – I could not help but think of him as such, although he had not killed her – got to his feet and the two men began to grapple in a manner that was more fearful than if they had come to blows.

Every man present seemed to run toward the stage. Granville’s hand closed upon my elbow and we joined the rush, he holding me up so that I should not fall. I stumbled with every step. If I had not been moving forward I should have fallen.

Upon the stage a great many men had jumped over the ropes and now pulled the two men apart. The murderer’s face was purple. Blood trickled from his mouth and nose. I was savagely glad to see it.

Granville kept pulling me forward. He was relentless, not at all the polite gentleman I was used to. He pushed men aside with his shoulder, only calling out, ‘Excuse me’, when once we had passed.

At last we reached the stage, where Perry and Mr Bowden stood. Granville pushed me toward them, said, ‘Bowden, take care of my wife,’ and climbed up onto the stage.

‘Gladly,’ Mr Bowden said. ‘Would that more such tasks were given me.’

He took my hand and pulled it into the crook of his arm. He drew me close, so that I was between himself and Perry, and put his hand on top of mine to keep it there. We were pressed so tight by the crowd that I could feel the heat of him all down my left side. Perry glanced once at me and then turned back to the stage. Henry appeared beside us, his eyes wide.

I did not protest. I allowed Mr Bowden to keep me there and I watched as my staid husband’s breeches scrambled under the ropes like a boy. Granville stood and brushed himself off, then walked purposefully toward the gallant young man and began to talk into his ear. The young man breathed heavily and seemed to be arguing with my husband. Soon enough he shook Granville’s hand from his shoulder and strode away to where the old woman, I now saw, stood with the dazed girl leaning heavily upon her. He gathered the bruised and shaken girl into his arms as gentle as any nurse would cradle her babe and was gone, only shooting one black glance at the purple-faced murderer. Granville stood somewhat awkwardly and watched him leave. The rageful expression had left him and he looked only sober and dishevelled. Even as I watched he came back to himself and began dusting off his coat.

My heart was pounding. I put my free hand to my face and my glove came away white with paint and powder but I could do nothing to help it. My face was level with the feet of men upon the stage. I could see blood, soaking its way into the sawdust. I wondered where the tooth had fallen.

The murderer was being led away by many pairs of hands, clapping him on the back and calling out rough things I did not understand.

Mr Bowden’s friend, the plump lady in the gown of violently pink silk, now climbed into the ring. Her bosom was about to fall from her bodice. She put her hand on my husband’s arm and said something I could not hear but he shook her from him and came back to the ropes beside us. She tossed her head and glared at his back.

Granville looked upon us for a moment and then climbed down to us.

‘Ah, well, Webber’s manners are coarse,’ he said to Perry, ‘but I can excuse him.’

‘What, are you so inconstant?’ Mr Bowden said. He still held my hand in his arm. ‘Is your head turned by one well-placed fib?’

‘After all this time, I do believe he is the man I have been looking for,’ Granville said, ‘and consider: his wife being beaten before a crowd, we should make allowance for a little discourtesy.’

‘Discourtesy cannot explain his choice,’ Perry began to laugh, ‘imagine being her husband. She is more ruffian than half the fellows in the city. Imagine waking to that bruised countenance!’

Granville did not laugh.

I wished very much then to interrupt the gentlemen but they gave me no opportunity. All the time they talked I thought,
That lady boxer is the gallant man’s wife
. And of course, for what man would a lady boxer marry but another boxer? But still, it seemed very strange. I somehow would not have expected her to marry at all. I imagined them together, how rough and queer would be their home.

Granville turned to me. His eyes moved over my face and I immediately felt how damp were my cheeks.

‘I am going to speak with some rude characters now. You must go with Henry, Lottie. It is your choice entire whether you wish to see the sights of the fair. If you would rather go home, Henry will take you to the coach. Stephens can return for us.’

I dropped my eyes. I knew I must look a scarecrow indeed. I pulled my hand from the crook of Mr Bowden’s arm. He tried for a moment to keep hold of it but I would not have it, even if my glove were pulled off. I was miserable indeed. What man would want a wife with paint running from her ruined face to follow him about, as introductions were made? I said I should go home and knew, by the way that Granville agreed so thankfully, that I should not have come at all. It was all I could do to make a polite response to the gentlemen’s bows.

I allowed Henry to lead me back through the crowd, out into the mizzle. The air was cooler and the sky a blank grey. The crowds were thick as ever. I found I could keep myself steady by watching my half-boots in their pattens and Henry’s boots beside them. At last we reached the waiting carriage and I allowed Henry to hand me back inside.

‘Are you sorry you ain’t seen more of the fair, madam?’ he asked me. ‘The weather’s been sorely against us.’

I shook my head and closed the carriage door. He meant he wished he had seen more of the fair himself, as any boy of his age would. I could not remember now what it was I had wanted to see. What was there to compare to the near death of a girl on a stage?

All the journey homeward I felt strange, bubbling with something that was not quite fear, nor yet excitement. I kept feeling that she must soon enough die and then deciding that no, it was impossible. But how many blows can one female skull absorb? I determined that when Granville came home I would be bold enough to ask if he knew how the lady boxer fared. How came it that my husband should be acquainted with such a man as a boxer, even a gallant one? The air grew cold, quite uncomfortably so. I did not close the window but only sat, feeling my cheeks grow numb and the rain collecting in my hair. I knew what a mess I was making of myself.

I had confirmation, by the expression of Mrs Bell when she helped me off with my cloak, that I looked quite as dishevelled as I imagined. I was struggling to keep from weeping by then; my belly felt restless and unhappy. I was sure that my baby was weeping inside me. I had a sharp and gnawing pain. I begged to be led to a sofa, and there I collapsed for a good while. It was only after Mrs Bell had chided me into drinking a bowl of broth that my stomach calmed and I realised that the baby and I were both ravenously hungry.

When once I got upstairs to the looking-glass I saw it all. The white paint had indeed run and collected in the pits of my scars. It had dripped down my neck and spoilt the collar of my grey gown. The heat of the room after the chill air brought a flush to my face and made the queer texture of my skin plainer than ever. I washed myself clean without looking at myself again.

My embroidery and my novel were still just as I had left them and this seemed surprising, as though they should have been changed by the sights I had seen. I did not pick them up but went to the window seat and sought peace there, just as I had at a different window, in the winter of my mourning. I did not feel as I had then, numb and still; now I seemed churning with every conceivable emotion. So tangled were my thoughts and feelings that I could not discern where each began, like a badly kept basket of embroidery silks. The very neatness of my own silks laid out beside my chair seemed unbearable. I stood up and pushed them together into a pile, as I had been taught I must not, blue blending with gold.

I took my dinner on a tray that night and did not, after all, come down when I heard the gentlemen return. My brother’s voice came through the floorboards quite as clearly as if I had never left home. There was a city full of people not so very far away, all of them living different lives, and all of them as real as I. I had never before understood how many different paths there were to take in this life. It was as if at that moment I looked up and realised that for years I had had my eyes on my lap.

I was not entirely comfortable with this new view of things. Have you ever half frozen your feet and then held them before a fire, to watch the blue skin blush and grow pink? The flesh screams as it wakes; it is painful to go so quick from death to life.

I sat before my tambour hoop but I did not sew. I only sipped at a glass of wine. I thought of crowds and mud, maidens and monsters. I thought of split lips, flying teeth and red blood on white linen.

PART FOUR

George

11

A
fter Miss Sinclair accepted Granville’s stiffly gloved hand in marriage I avoided Aubyn Hall and fell into a low mood. I could not be sure that Perry would welcome me back, even with the sacrifice I had made. He had accepted my proposal that I absent myself while the wedding preparations went on with a vehemence painful to hear. I had lost Miss Sinclair entirely, her company at breakfast and her readiness to hear any little thing it might please me to say. I had ensured that visits to Granville’s house – one of the few places I felt at home – would now become far less comfortable. I took myself to Bristol and found cheap and dreary lodgings above a print shop, where I could be as miserable as I chose. I avoided Granville’s haunts, The Hatchet and The Assize Court Inn, but still I came everywhere upon his acquaintance and was obliged to give out the happy news of my friend’s impending union to a lady of good family.

If I shunned Granville’s preferred retreats, I turned ever more often to my own, and spent most evenings in the gaming houses. The hells of Bristol were not as grand as those of Bath, but my depressed spirits found succour in the vulgar, shabby atmosphere of those Thomas Street back-parlours. As if God favoured a sinner, I found myself winning more often than I had been used to doing. In those places of questionable reputation it was not wise to win too heavily, lest one become a target for enterprising rogues. It was this fear that stayed my hand where common sense never could, and drove me up from the tables before I sent my finances too dramatically in either direction. One night, with my purse moderately full, it dawned on me that I had before me an opportunity long wished for and the funds available to procure it; I took myself to visit Granville’s sweet, kept creature. Here was one of my friend’s pleasures I did not recoil from. I knew well enough that he covered all of her expenses and did so in the expectation that she should be his alone. I knew that he would be incensed to think of me wending my way there, with traitorous intentions. But Granville now had Charlotte – whom I must learn to call ‘Mrs Dryer’. I did not feel more than the faintest stirrings of guilt. I bought a jug of wine to take to her, in case it should make me more welcome.

I had been to that house often enough over the years that the cove on the door knew me, and only dealt me the laziest glare as I went by. The mollies sitting about the hallway all straightened up as I entered and tried to arrange themselves becomingly, but I had no eyes for any of them. I strode in as though I were master of the place; my instinct said that surety was the key to success.

‘Tell your mistress that I am arrived,’ I said. By then the old bawd was grown too old to act as mistress of the house and Granville’s young lady had the running of the place.

‘Will she be glad to hear it, then?’ one of them asked, brazen-faced.

‘I will wait,’ I said.

The girl went up the stairs and knocked upon a door. She was bid enter and disappeared for a moment, then came back out and descended again, smirking at me.

‘You ain’t expected,’ she said.

I did not have to decide what course to take, for just then the door she had knocked at opened and Dora herself stood there, looking down at us all in the hall. She was wearing a gown the exact yellow of new butter. It was cut very low, and her plump and creamy skin seemed ready to spill over at any moment.

‘My stars,’ she said, ‘I’d not have expected you, come all alone. Do you bring a message from Mr Dryer, or do you come on your own account?’

‘Whatever I come for, it is not to shout from the bottom of the stairs,’ I said.

She laughed, ‘Then you’d best climb them,’ and disappeared back into her chamber.

I climbed the stairs with all the dignity I had at my disposal. My heart was beating very hard. She had left the door open. I stood in the doorway and looked into her chamber, where I had never been and where Granville had so many times closed the door upon me.

She had seated herself upon a velvet settee, her skirts spread out about her. The room was arranged curiously; half done out with a glass-fronted bookcase and gentleman’s writing desk, the remainder filled with all manner of delicate tables and lamps. The walls were hung with draperies in shades of blue and green. The air was perfumed, floral and hot.

‘What do you have in the jug?’ she asked me. Her voice was blurred about the edges with the accent of Bristol.

‘Wine.’

‘Then bring yourself inside, Mr Dryer’s friend, and fetch us two of the glasses you see in the cabinet, there.’

I came inside and closed the door behind me. I could have objected to being ordered about in this manner, but instead I fetched out the glasses and poured the wine like a footman. It occurred to me as I did so to bow to her, to complete the picture. She rewarded me with a delighted laugh.

I had noticed, by then, the closed door to the left of her. The closed door, with the soft bed I imagined lay beyond it. She saw me looking, and laughed again.

‘Sit beside me, hasty sir. Tell me your name. I’ve seen you so many times and never yet learned it.’

I did not know how close I should sit. I thought,
Better to err on the side of caution
, and sat beside her at a modest distance, as I would if she had been a lady.

‘My name is Bowden,’ I said. ‘George Bowden.’

‘And shall I call you George?’

‘If you wish it, you may.’

‘Well, now, I’d certainly wish it, if we’re to be familiar with one another – so tell me, Mr George Bowden, do you come on Mr Dryer’s business, or your own?’

‘I come with entirely selfish motives, I must confess.’

Her face grew stern.

‘And would Mr Dryer be glad to know you’re here, on selfish business, and with wine?’

‘I should think he would not,’ I said.

‘Would he call you a sneaking sly-boots and throw you off?’

‘He might,’ I admitted.

‘Yet, here you are. Do you care for me so much, then?’ Her voice grew soft once more.

‘I do.’

‘Yes?’

‘For years, I have thought of it. Ever since I saw you, I have thought of it. I have always regretted that he, that Mr Dryer –’

‘That he laid claim first?’

‘Yes.’

‘And would you have laid claim, as grand as he’s done? Would you have cared for me, these years past? Watched over me, paid my expenses?’

‘I like to think I would have.’ I knew that I would not.

Perhaps she knew I did not mean it, for she turned hard again, as fast as a flea-jump.

‘Then answer me this, Mr George Bowden, false friend; would Mr Dryer throw me off with you? Has your passion for me allowed you to think on that?’

‘I had not thought.’

‘You’d not, indeed. Why should I risk all I have, all my security, for your passion?’

‘I must apologise.’

‘What do you apologise for, Mr George Bowden?’

‘I suppose, for my presumption.’

‘In coming here?’

‘Yes, I suppose I must.’

‘Do you not offer me what you said you would’ve, had you been before Mr Dryer, all those years ago? If you’re that hot to lift me off him, you’ll be needing to better what he gives me.’

‘What does he give you?’

She leant in and whispered, her breath warm and wet against my ear. The sum was great enough that I would have laid down with Granville myself for it.

‘I cannot match it,’ I said. I had always known that Granville was wealthy but had never seen him willing to spend it – here was a place he had poured his coin.

‘Then, you’ll come back to visit with me when you’ve made your fortune. A young, handsome gentleman like yourself must have expectations.’

‘Why should you wish me to? You are cared for handsomely, as you say yourself.’

She put a hand upon my knee. ‘Perhaps, Mr George Bowden, you ain’t the only one thought of it.’

‘You flatter me.’

‘Do I need to? Have you seen your own face? You’re a beauty,’ and she laughed again.

I grew bold and pulled out my purse.

‘I have this.’

She took it and weighed it in her hand. I was not sure at that moment what it held, perhaps twenty guineas.

‘What’s this to get you?’

‘Perhaps nothing.’

‘Do you swear to silence?’

‘I will give you my word.’

‘Then give me your hand with it.’ She stood and offered her hand to me. I took it – it was as soft as any lady’s.

Perry paid his footmen less than twenty guineas a year. I could have bought any of the girls in the hallway for four shillings and kept her an hour for six. I did not think any of that then, and nor, when I did think of it later, did I feel cheated. I only wished to be a rich man.

The bed was as soft as I had imagined it.

I might have thought, before I went there, that one visit would be sufficient to avenge the bitterness growing in my heart and satiate my youth’s ambition. It was not – my hunger for Dora was awoken as my affection for Charlotte Sinclair went quietly to sleep. I walked the streets burning for her. I was empty without her in my arms. She told me, when I left her the next morning, that I must not return to her unless I could match what Granville provided.

‘For I’d be lost then,’ she said, ‘and I’ll not lose for you, however pretty your eyes.’

I felt even more bereft than I had before I went to her, as if in giving myself something, I had only found one more thing to lose.

I went home to Aubyn Hall the moment that Granville and Miss Sinclair were wed.

Perry received me quietly, and as though I had been gone no more than a day. My old friend did not look well; his eyes were bloodshot and exhausted.

I had hoped that with his sister gone from the Hall, Perry would return to more tranquil spirits. Instead he grew ever more peevish and took to the sauce at an hour ever earlier than the last. He began to sleep in his chair before the library fire. His appetite declined for anything but liquor. He would not eat, and developed a propensity for cursing at me when he was in his cups and calling me every kind of devil. Invitations to respectable social occasions had dried up – Perry and I were alone. My evenings were spent with a companion often too sozzled to speak and who, when he was coherent, was one moment calling me his beloved or his brother and the next wishing loudly that I might fry, or hang, or be otherwise damned. I was as low as I had been in Bristol; lower, because I had no hopes of there being anywhere else I might turn. Aubyn Hall was become something big and empty, full of shadows, echoes and ghosts. Miss Sinclair’s quiet presence had done more to warm the place than I had ever understood. I was too low to reply to my mother’s letters. I almost wondered if I should not have preferred poverty with a wife, to the half-life I was left with.

When I could persuade Perry to return with me to our old haunts, as often as not I would regret his company, when he became too sauced to walk or showed himself ungentlemanly in one way or another. The worst of it occurred in the card room of the Sydney Hotel, when Perry refused to trouble himself to fetch a pot, but wet his seat and sat in it, still calling for more rum. When the footman there fetched the proprietor, Perry called him a damnable hog-grubber and said that he was entitled to a little puddle, when he came by the side of such a player as I, ‘rash with the coin and unskilled besides’. I was a little worse for drink myself, and took umbrage at this insult, at which Perry tried to strike me. Leaning forward in his chair, his swing unbalanced him and he fell from his seat. Perry, upon the floor, made to spit upon my boots but sadly soiled those of the proprietor instead. This, combined with the full extent of his accident being revealed, resulted in our being asked to leave and not return until we had learnt temperance. Two beefy coves came to assist Perry on his way out – he had refused to leave gracefully, I am sorry to report – and he, wresting his arms from their grip, promptly fell again, and hurt his brow against the corner of an occasional table which stood in the hall. The two roughs hefted him to his feet again, and this time Perry clung to them. By the time they gained the street he was declaring them both fine fellows, and attempting to persuade them to accompany us elsewhere for a drink.

One night I was out alone and thought to pay a visit to the same establishment. The place was open all night and would serve any kind of food or drink a gentleman cared to call for, as long as his coin held out upon the table. Thus, I reasoned, I might remove the necessity of finding myself lodgings and return to Aubyn in the morning, refreshed a little by a holiday from Perry’s company.

The bewigged cove posted at the door knew me well enough, so I inclined my head to him. He, however, instead of bowing in return, gave a dry butler’s cough.

‘I do apologise, sir, but the premises are closed to the public this evening.’

‘Don’t be absurd, man,’ I replied. ‘I have this minute seen Sir Edwin walk inside.’

‘I must apologise, sir, but the rooms are closed. I cannot admit you.’

‘This is absurd,’ I said, again.

‘I can only apologise,’ the dastard repeated.

I chose then not to make a public scene, but went instead to Brown’s, a dim and vault-like cellar where the doorman was less particular and, more importantly, where Perry had not yet disgraced himself too badly. I was very depressed in my spirits; Perry’s presence hung about me even when he himself was safely snoring at home. We were bound, yet again – his reputation was fated to become mine.

As far as I could see, Granville did not know what prize he had in the new Mrs Dryer. He was more interested in his ragged lady boxer and his whore-mistress than in his wife, and fixated on the London fancy. He had lately visited London to see some display of pugilism or other, and thought himself slighted by the treatment he found there.

‘They call Bristol a city without nobility,’ he complained, ‘though they will all flock here to find a champion prize-fighter. I have married a Sinclair. I am joined in marriage to a family of the first rank.’

‘Were you not made welcome, then?’ I asked.

‘Welcome is not the question,’ he replied. ‘At a prize-ring social standing counts for less than in other spheres of society, you know. And yet – the London gentry have not the same respect for the self-made man as you find elsewhere.’