Fair Fight (37 page)

Tom made a sound then, the most pitiful mew, pained and surprised. I broke away from Mrs Dryer and bent over him; the right eye was open a crack and looked at me blankly. The swelling about the left twitched as though he’d open it if he could. Blood had begun to clot about its lid. He mewed again.

‘Stay still my love,’ I said, very low.

‘Can we not put something on his eye,’ Mrs Dryer said, beside me. ‘A wet rag? The air is cold enough. It might help the swelling.’

Straight off someone put a wet rag into my hands. The crowd were keeping back now and a hush had fallen, which was worse than the noise. I laid the rag upon Tom’s eye.

‘There, my love.’ I felt better now that the horror of that blood was hidden. ‘You be still. You’ve had worse than this.’ I didn’t know if he had.

I could do nothing then but put my hands on his arm and shoulder – the unbruised parts of him – and try to love him so hard that I could lift his pain. So fixed was I on this that all the crowd seemed to fall back and when the doctor came, bustling through the crowd with cries of, ‘Make way, make way there,’ I started in surprise. Behind him came Mr Dryer and I felt hatred well up in me at the sight of him, more rage than I’d ever known a heart could hold. It came up into my face and drew my lips back from my teeth as though I were about to rip out his throat. I’d have done it in that moment and never wept a tear for him.

‘Ruth!’ Mrs Dryer said. ‘He is the doctor.’

She thought it was the doctor I snarled at. Now I looked at him and saw he was exactly as stern and self-important as every doctor who ever came to the convent to dose one miss and take pleasure on another. He paid me no heed but crouched beside me too close, so that I had to draw back or be pressed against him. It was Mrs Dryer’s hands that lifted mine from Tom’s arm. She did it gently enough that I let go my hold and stood up. I was unsteady on my pins and Mrs Dryer again put her arm about me.

The doctor busied himself touching my poor husband’s face; he lifted the cloth and put his fingers on my husband’s puffed-shut eye. Tom had grown very still. I thought he must be afraid.

Mr Dryer said, ‘Will he fight again?’

And the doctor only shook his head and said, ‘Hmmmm,’ sadly.

‘God be damned!’ Mr Dryer walked away from us.

I wasn’t fashed, I wanted him away. Mrs Dryer felt different – she took her arm from about my shoulders and went after him like the devil in a high wind. The doctor kept on with his poking.

I was so weak with the waiting of it that when Mrs Dryer came back I found myself reaching out for her of my own choice. The doctor had found a litter and a great number of folk were now involved in lifting my Tom onto it. They weren’t taking care enough; I couldn’t bear it.

‘Come,’ Mrs Dryer said, trying to lead me off. When I pulled away she added, ‘I am taking you to the doctor’s house, Ruth. Tom will be borne there. Come.’

I didn’t want to leave but by then I couldn’t see him, so close was the press of folk about him. I let Mrs Dryer take me to the carriage and sit me in it. The screams I never would let out were tangling my thoughts and blurring my eyes.

I remember hardly anything about that journey except that it took too long and that when we got there, the doctor had a manservant who’d not let us near the room where they had Tom lying. They’d called in a barber-surgeon. I tried not to think of it. The room we sat in was all brown walls with brown pictures upon them. Mrs Dryer found brandy from somewhere – the manservant, I suppose – and we sat and drank till I felt my nerves steady. My fear was coiled in my stomach; I wanted to be very still and I wanted to run and kick and find Belcher and swell his eye and then take Mr Dryer and do the same. I believe I did moan aloud then, and Mrs Dryer looked at me.

I said, ‘Your husband’s fit for the devil; I’d like to put him to bed with a spade.’

‘At this moment I should not blame you for it.’

‘He’s monstrous wicked. He’s the devil’s bastard.’ I’d risen and was pacing about the room, my fists tight. The pain from my ill-mended mauler was the only thing keeping me steady and I clenched it till I felt the knuckles shift in their sockets.

‘He is hell-bound,’ she said. ‘That is certain enough.’

After that I think we kept silent and I retook my seat.

At length Mr Dryer appeared and sat in the corner, as far from me and Mrs Dryer as he could place himself, sipping at a glass of his own. I tried not to look at him.

At last the doctor entered, smelling of something bitter and pungent. He held his hands out to us as though in pity but his face was as empty as a statue. He’d got flecks of blood on his cuffs but he’d changed his gloves; they were of clean buff kid. I was sure that my husband was dead.

‘I am sorry,’ he said.

His words cramped my bowels. I bent over in my seat and once again thought I’d lose my breakfast in one way or another. I’d not have given a fig. I was sweating cold.

‘I could not save the eye,’ the doctor said, then, ‘but if he does not take infection I believe he will live.’

‘You could not save the eye,’ Mr Dryer said.

At the same moment that his wife cried out, ‘He will live!’

‘He will never fight again with one eye,’ Mr Dryer said.

‘Ruth,’ Mrs Dryer had her hand upon my shoulder and bent down to speak into my ear, ‘he will live. He shall not take infection. We will nurse him together, if you wish it.’

I kept my eyes closed for a moment. Hot tears spilled from under the lids and I couldn’t halt them. Mrs Dryer’s hand was patting my back. She took me into her arms and I let her hold me, rocking me like no one ever had, not even as a babber, not like that. Her cheek pressed against the top of my head, her breath stirred my hair. She smelled nice; flowery, but dry. Powdered flowers.

I heard Mr Dryer and the doctor leave the room together. Mrs Dryer only held me the tighter.

After a long while I felt words burning in my throat with the tears and I let them spill and didn’t care.

‘Your husband’s mistress is my sister,’ I said, very low and choked. I was likely wrong to tell her, and yet, perhaps I’d meant to all day. At any rate, I couldn’t have stopped it then, for anything.

Mrs Dryer’s hand stilled itself for a moment and then, very gently, the patting resumed.

‘Tom will live,’ she whispered. ‘He will have white cullis.’

PART EIGHT

Charlotte

21

W
hen poor Mr Webber was defeated so badly, Granville stood by and watched without a thought for the man’s injuries, so disappointed was he for himself. When the doctor looked up and showed by his face that Mr Webber’s outlook was bleak, my husband walked away as though he were a dog that he was obliged to have shot. I chased after him, pushing through the crowd; I did not care who saw me do it. In that moment I thought my husband capable of leaving us on the common to find our own way, distraught and blood-bespattered, and even now I cannot think I was far mistaken. I caught his arm and he turned with eyes that did not see me.

‘You cannot leave us,’ I said.

Now he saw me and clearly thought me irksome.

‘I will leave the carriage for you if you must stay,’ he said. ‘I will take a chair, or walk. I do not care.’

‘You will not come to the doctor’s house?’

‘I have lost grievously, Lottie.’

‘You have lost money, nothing more. Mr Webber is left injured! You cannot abandon him.’

‘Whatever I lost, he lost it for me. I will leave you the carriage.’

‘Will you pay the doctor? Granville, at least tell me that you will pay for that.’

My husband waved a dismissive hand as he walked away. I did not know what it meant. I was left to stumble back through the crowd to Mrs Webber’s side.

It was only later that I realised that carriage or no, Granville had indeed left me without any escort besides an unconscious man and a wife too distressed to look about her. Anything could have happened to me at that moment, in a crowd of strangers and with the carriage a good walk across the common. I had not even any money about my person. I did not think of danger at the time – the lack of money was the only concern I had, besides the safety of Mr Webber. I still did not know if Granville had agreed to pay the doctor’s fee. Privately I decided to assure the doctor that he might send my husband the bill with all confidence.
Let us concern ourselves with it later
, I thought,
when Mr Webber is made safe
.

When Granville at last crept into the doctor’s waiting room, looking as miserable as if he were the one who had lost an eye, I found that my heart had shut him out entirely and made him a stranger – and not a pleasant one.

I would not look at Granville throughout the time we travelled back with poor Mr and Mrs Webber, feeling each bump of the carriage. Perhaps he thought me ashamed, I was not sure. I was not ashamed, but disgusted with him. It coursed through my veins and set my hands and feet to tingling. On top of the anxiety and dismay of Mr Webber’s injury, there was Mrs Webber’s revelation; it sat in my throat like bile. I did not know that I could swallow it.

We regained our lodgings, Mr Webber managing to walk with the support of two footmen. The bandage across his face was a terrible sight, blood blossoming through it, although it was newly applied. His face was so swollen that the bandage did not sink where the eye was gone but even so, I knew that it was missing and shuddered to think of it. I was bitterly glad that Granville had bestowed a comfortable room upon Mr Webber when he had had such high hopes for him and could not take it from him now that he was so gravely ill. It was good luck that it was beside the kitchens; Mr Webber could not have climbed easily to a garret room.

Mrs Webber was instructed to dose her husband with laudanum till he slept and to keep him sleeping, letting him wake only for food. She would only promise to find a supper for herself when I scolded her.

‘You are not long made strong,’ I told her, ‘and you will not help your husband by growing weak again. I will not have the two of you bedridden.’

We watched them walk off around the back of the house to the service entrance, Mr Webber as slow as an old man, sandwiched between the footmen, Mrs Webber hovering behind, carrying the bottle of laudanum.

At our door Granville fumbled with the key.

‘The servants will be abed,’ he said. He had forgotten the footmen, who must surely be inside now, helping Mr Webber to bed.

I did not say any of this, only listened to the clink as his clumsy hand struggled with the lock. At last we were admitted. He stalked ahead of me and rather than stand in the dark hall I followed him into the parlour where the light from the dying fire made a vague silhouette of him.

I heard him fuss with the spills upon the mantel, meaning to take one to a candle.

‘Do not you make a light on my account. I am for my bed.’ I turned, meaning to go away from him and up the stairs. The rage was fading a little and all I knew was that I did not want to be near him.

‘Do not be foolish, take a candle,’ was all his reply.

‘Very well,’ I said, for I thought, after all, that it would be unpleasant to stumble about in the dark in that strange house.

I stood while he fussed about and when at last he straightened up, his face lit by the flickering flame, I took the candle from him without a word. I could not even thank him.

As I turned to leave he said, ‘Do not linger in the morning, Charlotte. The journey is long enough without delays.’

‘Journey? You cannot mean to leave!’

‘For what purpose would I stay?’

‘For Mr Webber. He is gravely injured.’

‘You understand very little, my wife. You speak as though Mr Webber were my brother or my bosom companion. He is neither of those; he is an investment gone to the bad.’

‘He is a man!’

‘A man who is no longer of use. A one-eyed man cannot fight and I do not make it my habit to support fellows who cannot be of use.’

‘It is your duty to make him well.’

‘I have paid the doctor. I have business in Bristol. I cannot wait for Mr Webber’s eye to reattach itself.’

‘You have more than business waiting for you in Bristol! Mrs Webber is right, you are monstrous.’

‘You are run mad.’

‘I am seeing you more clearly than ever I have. Will you throw over Mrs Webber’s sister when you tire of her? You are not faithful to your duty to me or to poor Mr Webber; you are in every way inconstant.’

Granville took in a sharp breath. I could not see his eyes, but I knew well enough that he had not expected me to say such a thing. I thought he might speak but instead he darted toward me and gripped my wrist. I was still holding the candle and my arm jerked with the surprise of it; hot wax splashed upon my hand.

‘Let me go, this instant.’

‘You will make me an apology.’ His face was lit strangely, so close to the candle. He looked like nothing so much as a demon.

The candle’s flame wavered with my trembling. With my free hand I took it and put it carefully onto the mantelpiece. Then I turned to face him.

‘You took her to my mama’s house,’ I said. ‘I am glad you lost. There.’

Now I began to tremble so violently that his grip was all that kept me standing; when he released me I had to put out my hand to the mantel to keep from falling. He stood and put his hands behind his back, as though we stood in polite conversation beside the fire.

‘What would you have me do, barren as you are?’ he said.

I felt as though he struck me; I am sure I gasped aloud.

He leant toward me. ‘She has borne me a son and will give me another any day.’

I recoiled back from his poisonous face and as I did it was as though the spirit of Mrs Webber stole from where she wept over her husband, flowed through my limbs and drew back my arm. Granville was so unprepared for anything of the kind that he did not evade the blow and I felt the most ringing pain shoot through my arm as my fist made contact with his nose. He fell back into the dark, making a tremendous noise as he landed against some piece of furniture. He cried out in surprise and pain.

I stood, panting, my hand still humming from the impact. I could feel the enquiry –
Are you hurt?
– in my throat and I would not release it.

Slowly the black shape of my husband stumbled to his feet and regained the candlelight. His face was a terrible thing of shifting shadows, his hands to his nose. Above us I heard the shuffle of feet and the opening of a door. We stood in the dark, facing each other like boxers at scratch, waiting for the call of time.

The feet came halfway down the stairs and then stopped.

‘Who’s there?’ came the housekeeper’s voice. ‘I warn you, my master has left us the use of his gun!’

‘Get you back to bed, Mrs Dawson,’ Granville called, through his hands.

‘Sir?’ she said. ‘Are you quite alright? Are you hurt?’

We heard her steps begin to hurry down.

‘Get you back to bed!’ Granville shouted, in a voice I had never heard from him before. ‘If you want to have a place in the morning, you will not open this door!’

The steps stopped. I thought I heard her say, ‘My stars, the things that . . .’ although the rest was lost. Her footsteps began to ascend again.

Now Granville shot out his hand and gripped me again by the wrist, bringing it up to my chest and pulling me so that I was captured against him. His other hand still covered his nose; a warm drop fell upon my lip. I put my tongue to it without thinking and tasted the warm tang of his blood.

‘Curse you, witch.’ His face was so close that I could not see him properly.

‘You, curse me!’ My voice was breathy with hysteria. ‘You, who will make your heir on a whore? I have always known I married beneath myself but you, sir, are lower than a worm. You are lower than ever I thought you.’

‘I am low? I have a drunkard for a wife.’

I could feel his fingers digging deep into the flesh of my arm. His breath was wet upon my face. I thought, very clearly,
If I do not stop you now, you will have the mastery of me
– and I raised my free hand and gripped him by the throat, pushing with all my might. He did not let go my arm, but the shock of it made him step backwards, pulling me with him. He fell over some small piece of furniture there and we both tumbled to the floor. One of my legs twisted underneath me and I cried out. I landed atop him, his breath puffing out in a rush. For a moment we lay, shocked in the darkness, and then I sat up astride him. My twisted leg sent a bolt of agony through me as I moved.

Out of nowhere Granville’s open hand met my cheek. My head snapped to the side with the force of the slap, jerking my neck painfully, my teeth clacking together. I shook my head, as Mr Belcher had shaken his, when Mr Webber struck him; I could not help it, though it hurt my neck.

I was filled with a desperate fury. I could not see, but that did not prevent me from throwing my fist downwards, into the black shape of him. I struck some part of his skull – the impact travelled up my arm in a terrible vibration. I heard the thud as his head hit the floorboards.

His flailing hands found my throat and squeezed. I felt no pain, only fear jolting through me like an ice-bath.
He must not conquer me, he must not
– I thrust out my hands as blindly as he had done and felt the horrible bounce of my finger against his eye. He cried out again and his hands fell. I scrambled off him, feeling my leg scream with the effort of it. Like an animal I backed away from the light and stood panting in the corner, watching him. My pulse beat hard in my aching throat.

Granville sat up and again put his hands to his face. He did not try to rise.

The candle was still sitting upon the mantelpiece exactly as I had left it. I went to it and took it up, keeping as far away from him as I could. I had a thought that he might reach out and grab my ankle, but he did not.

‘Goodnight, then,’ I said, without meaning to.

He made a noise into his hands, something between a snort and a sob.

I left him there. What else was there to do? I walked up the unfamiliar stairs, hearing the wakeful servants creak the floor above. It was only once I found my bed and started to feel how injured I was – my hands sore, my arms bruised, my throat as tight as though he squeezed it still – it was only then that I thought,
I won a fight. I shall have to tell Mrs Webber
.
Then I recalled the whole of that awful day. My tears burnt my throat and I hardly knew any longer which of us I wept for.

I slept and my dreams were full of water, and when I woke the darkness was very deep. I heard the sound of my own sobs as though I had been crying without pause. After a moment my mind cleared and I realised it was not myself I heard weeping but Granville, beside me.

When I awoke Granville was gone and I could not be sure that he had been there at all. When the maid, Brown, came to fetch me up she stared at my face quite openly before she remembered herself and dropped her eyes. She had come, she said, to tell me that Mr Dryer had asked her to say that he wished us on the road by nine.

She continued, ‘Mr Dryer bid me tell you he very much wants you with him and that if you come now, he’ll see that Mr Webber is looked after here and carried to Bristol when he’s stronger. I am to tell you that if you must stay, madam, then the Webbers will stay with you and he won’t foot the bill for it.’ She blushed, but I thought she was enjoying being the bearer of such an uncommon message. ‘And then he used language, madam, that I don’t like to repeat.’

He was holding Mr Webber to ransom, then. I was too exhausted to debate it. If my husband wanted my company so badly then I would travel with him. He was my burden, and I, his.

I sank back upon the pillow.

‘Then you may tell your master that I will be quite ready by nine o’clock, Brown.’

‘Yes, madam.’ Her voice was sweet as honey.

I sent her away as soon as she had helped me into my gown. My hair I secured in a knot beneath my cap. I had a little shock when I looked into the dressing glass, and knew then what had made Brown stare so; I had the beginnings of a bruise upon my cheek where Granville had slapped me, and upon my throat there were faint finger-marks, like the ghost of a broken necklace. I thought of painting them over, but I had not time – I wanted to see Mrs Webber before I left.

I hurried down the stairs and asked another parlour maid where I might find Mrs Webber. She led me to a room beside the kitchens, glancing all the time at me from the corner of her eye. No one answered her knock.