Feral Park (32 page)
Authors: Mark Dunn
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #British & Irish, #Historical, #Dramas & Plays, #Genre Fiction, #Drama & Plays, #Historical Fiction, #Irish, #Scottish
“I will do that, yes.”
“And then perhaps an arrangement may be made—if he is put into a state of mind to want to please and assist me, to win my favour—to slip me the cabinet key at some future date.”
“To put you for ever in his debt, I think that he should do it. He is a good man and loyal to his employer, but I think also that once he gets to know you, Anna, he will undoubtedly fancy you—”
“Or at least my legs.”
“And he will be loyal to your heart and helpful and accommodating to our purpose.”
“My dearest Gemma—whoever said that
I
was the only one of the two of us with the talent to devise a promising plan? It is clear to me now that we are
both
gifted in the art of scheming and intrigue, and I will do exactly as the two of us have decided: be extremely agreeable and pleasant and solicitous toward Mr. Waitwaithe on Friday night, even as I struggle to understand why my father’s hugger-mugger nature compels me to intrigue in such a way, simply to see those things that I should see by filial right!”
“Even so. But you
will
succeed, Anna, for you have succeeded for, lo, all this last half hour in keeping our discourse amicable and productive, so it is clear that whatever you seek to do you
shall
do.”
“Determination joins us just as securely as does blood and friendship. We make a fine brace, do we not?”
“Depend on it.”
Anna reached out to Gemma again. “I am so happy to learn that you are my sister.”
“As I am happy to learn the same.”
And then after having first made the announcement in the wrong room, Mr. Maxwell entered to say that Dr. Bosworthy had arrived—a fortnight early—and to ask which guest apartment was to be his for the balance of the summer so that his trunks could be carried up.
That evening Anna could not find a single moment alone with her father until after Dr. Bosworthy had gone up to bed. It would not be a terribly late interview, for the doctor was most knocked up from his trip and sought a good twelvehour slumber. He had come early since his trip to Scotland was cancelled when the retired proctor with whom he had hoped to tramp about the highlands fell ill with farmer’s lung and could hardly even remove himself to the chamber pot, let alone take staff in hand to see the moors and the glens. The doctor had attempted to improve his friend’s ill health by encouraging him to partake of his own urine, contending of its natural restorative properties, but the proctor had rejected the idea and then, thinking too much upon it, had vomited all about the bed and had the up stairs maid glowering at the guest of the house for the remainder of his abridged visit.
Now Dr. Bosworthy was early in Feral Park and had come in the midst of preparations for Friday’s dinner and whilst Anna had a troublesome foot and during a coincident bout of some very poor spirits on the part of Mr. Peppercorn, who hid them admirably over dinner and supper and tea, but once his professorial friend had repaired to his rooms, had allowed himself to sink down into a brown funk, which Anna now witnessed as she stood, supported upon a crutch borrowed from James (who had one summer been lame from a fall from a horse), at the door to the library. Whatever book had previously rested in Mr. Peppercorn’s hands now lay upon the floor at his feet, and Anna’s father had the look of an equestrian who had just lost his favourite horse or a sultan his favourite wife—one notch, that is, above total all-consuming despondence.
“Close the door, daughter, and come and sit next to me. Can you pick up that book with your crutch? For I cannot even get my body to budge an inch to retrieve it.”
Anna picked up the book. It was
Necromancer of the Black Forest
, which Anna did not think her father even owned and could not believe him ever to wish to read, since he had always expressed contempt for the gothic novel as a general rule. As for Anna, gothic novels had once been her secret schoolgirl passion. “Perhaps,” thought Anna, “he has merely taken up the book for the purpose of distraction and diversion, as such novels tend to distract and divert with great success.” However, in the case of
Necromancer of the Black Forest
, the book had apparently accomplished neither goal, and had been dropt by her father rather negligently upon the floor, which is where, Anna believed, the reviewers had put it themselves when it first came to be published in translation from the German.
“Cook was in a bad humour this evening.”
“Oh, was she, Papa? I had not noticed.”
“Perhaps it is the extra mouth to feed. Dr. Bosworthy was to come after your aunt and Miss Pints had quitted Feral Park, and now we are all to be here together.”
“But Mrs. Dorchester’s complaints cannot be the cause of your own low spirits, Papa,” said Anna, sitting down next to her father and taking his hand into her own. It felt good for Anna to get off the other foot, which was bearing all the weight and taxing her. “Were you also unprepared for such an early visit from the good doctor?”
“’Tis an inconvenience only, daughter, and not something that should disturb my humour so very much. No, my present recession of spirits comes from something altogether unrelated to Dr. Bosworthy. You see, I have gone to Turnington Lodge to pay a visit to Miss Younge—that is, to take her some school books from my library, which I felt may be of use to her with the Turnington girls—and what do you think I found when I got there?”
“I would not know, Papa. Someone being paddled?”
“No.” (After a thought,) “Why ever would you say that? Miss Younge would never be the sort of governess to place the ferule upon the hind sides of her delicate young charges. No, my foolish daughter, what I discovered was Louise and Caroline wondering what had become of their governess, for she had disappeared for all of the afternoon! Each child was required to pass the remains of the day in the custody of an up stairs maid who knew nothing whatsoever of how to properly educate a young girl, and so instructed her temporary charges in that which she
did
know: household scrubbing and polishing as she reclined in leisure, humming and picking at her teeth with a broom bristle.
“I made several enquiries and no one knew the whereabouts of Miss Younge nor the hour at which she was to return. Nor could I find Sir Thomas. Lady Jane, it appears, is gone for above a week to visit her sister in Chawton.” Here Mr. Peppercorn sighed, his expression becoming Cimmerian. “It troubles me, daughter, to think that in her absence Sir Thomas and Miss Younge might be in some place
together
and that there could be harm coming to either of the two for whatever reason.”
With mention of the word “harm,”Anna’s first thought was of Miss Younge spanking the rear of Sir Thomas. Yet it would not be an act she would define as
harmful
in its more injurious sense
.
The thought which rudely followed this one carried with it a shudder of fear: that it should be
Sir Thomas
perpetrating something terrible upon
Miss Younge
—something along the lines of that which he had perpetrated upon the former governess Miss Pulvis or upon the defenceless inmates of Stornaway Asylum, including Anna’s own legal mother and her Aunt Drone’s shadow Miss Pints. But Anna could not say any thing of what she knew along these lines about these three, nor any of the others—a group of victims which she suspected was great in number. She could only wait to hear what her father would say further—her father, who had lately kept his own lips pressed tightly together in defiance of his previous promise to be forthcoming about all the iniquities of the parish. But was
she
not doing the very same thing herself now—keeping intelligence from
him
so as not to disturb him too greatly? Secrets! Odious secrets! “Please, please, please, tell me what you think is going on between Sir Thomas and Miss Younge, Papa,” she pleaded with her father in her stentorian thoughts, “for I could very well be equally fearful of the same.”
But all that Mr. Peppercorn said was, “Sir Thomas may not be the good man you think he is, Anna. He did not administer the asylum as
I
would have done. The inmates were always ill-clothed and hungry and seemed most unhappy, and it was not a tidy place, for I once saw a bug there.”
Could her father be any less informed, to think that enforcing retrenchment and economy at the Stornaway Asylum was the chief of Sir Thomas’ faults? Anna wondered. Or was he simply papering over all the scabs and crannies of the wall of truth that advertised the hideous character of Sir Thomas? “It simply must be the latter,” thought Anna, “that if he does not know the facts and details of Sir Thomas’ acts of evil, then surely he must know of the man’s
propensity
for it.” Did her legal mother never once hint to her husband about that to which she had been subjected whilst an inmate at the asylum? Certainly, she must have said at least a little of what was done to her by Sir Thomas’ devilish hand (and by other parts of his odious body)! “I see the look upon my father’s face. Is it not one of fret and worry? How can he
not
be thinking what I am thinking: that we should never have placed Miss Younge in Sir Thomas’ employ?”
“I think, daughter, that I will go again to see her very soon, to make certain that she is being treated well there—getting enough to eat, falling in comfortably with her duties. I suspect that on this particular day she has merely wandered off upon some innocent errand and fallen asleep beneath a tree. Yes, that most certainly is the thing. For Sir Thomas must have been in the village or at the post office gathering everyone’s letters, or who knows where
his
errands might have taken him apart from her own? It is merely coincidental that the two were away in simultaneity whilst the children were in need of their governess and forced in her absence to make beds and use the mop. Now. I feel better already. Hand me that book and let us read and laugh at the wretchedness of the writing.”
“Yes, Papa, that should be a most enjoyable employment of the remainder of our evening, and then we will be able to retire with smiles upon our faces.”
Mr. Peppercorn picked up the book and began to read. Then he stopt himself and said, “I have not done what was done to your Aunt Drone on her previous visits—that is, banish her from my library—but she seems to respect my privacy upon this visit, for, you see, she does not come and rap at the door to importune me. Your aunt is somewhat changed, I should think, a bit quieter, more reflective. She and Miss Pints were respectfully quiet at the dining table this evening. Are they well?”
“I believe that they are quite well, Papa. None of us was prepared for the premature arrival of Dr. Bosworthy, and when Dr. Bosworthy takes command of a room few others are much allowed to speak.”
“Yes, daughter, even when he is fatigued, he is voluble. But no more thoughts of our house guests. It is only Papa and Daughter here now. So let us see what skulks upon the next page!”
Mr. Peppercorn smiled with a little effort, and Anna requited with a little effort of her own. She and her dear papa had not only banished their house guests from the room; they had also temporarily banished the nagging fearful thoughts that had earlier tugged so rudely at them—thoughts of how Sir Thomas might be skulking within the shadows of Turnington Lodge to do harm to Miss Younge. And thoughts of what must be done to stop him.
The next morning there was hubbub and flutter up stairs as Miss Pints stepped into the corridor at the same time as Dr. Bosworthy, who was wearing an iron contraption about the jaw and fixed to the back of the head and pulling at the nose, of his own invention, which he said performed the dual purposes of keeping him from snoring too loudly as he slept and also from misaligning his “gnáthos” in the night, the time when one is most inclined to pop the jaw out of place. Miss Pints did not see a therapeutic device; she saw only the face of a metallic monster, and so she screamed and everyone woke at that instant and the house was brought to a state of disarray until she could be calmed down and shewn that the contraption was as harmless as the man who wore it.
From that moment forward Miss Pints and Dr. Bosworthy were on cordial terms. It was he who suggested that she ride with him that morning— chaperoned, of course, by Miss Drone—all about the parish to see the tiny corner of England which Henry Peppercorn proudly called home. “It would be even better, Henry, if you wished to join us in the role of cicerone to point out the sights,” said Dr. Bosworthy, following the unrelated observation that his friend had that morning eaten more eggs than ever he had seen one man put into one mouth.
“It is a splendid idea,” said Mr. Peppercorn, “but I cannot go off and leave poor Anna with her hurt foot wishing that she could come along.”
“I will be fine here by myself, Papa,” said Anna, seated beneath the breakfast tray brought to her bed, “and as the carriage most comfortably holds four, it is best that one of us stay behind at all events.”
“You are certain that you will not miss us?” asked Miss Drone.
“I shall miss you all terribly,” said Anna with a mischievous smile, “but I will survive the separation.”
After the carriage was gone and the house grown quiet, Anna said goodbye to Miss Leeds, for it was her day off, and hurried through her unattended toilette. Though she would not breathe it to anyone, she was most eager to see Perry Alford when he called later that morning, and although the two would not be chaperoned, she was certain that an allowance to societal convention was generally made for artists and poets who were not rigid in their own subscription to propriety.
Having done with her toilette, Anna left her room and journeyed downstairs with a laboured descent of the steps and hobbled upon her crutch into the kitchen. It was Mrs. Dorchester’s day off as well, and she had gone into Berryknell to visit with another cook and exchange receipts and gossip, and Betsey had been left behind to prepare breakfast and had done not a bad job of it, although the fruit had spots. Betsey was now washing dishes and Anna asked if she would stop for a while to go and fetch some milk from the milkmaid, forgetting that Betsey was also the milkmaid.
“Then go and fetch some milk from yourself,” said Anna, after having been corrected.
“But I have not yet
milked
the cows, ma’am.”
“Then go posthaste and milk all of them that require milking and then give the milk to yourself to bring in.”
Betsey did not seem to understand why it was so important for her to be gone from the kitchen at that very moment, but Anna knew that she was dense and would not figure out that it was because Anna sought some time alone to pour herself another glass of absinthe in the absence of the bottle’s owner—a small drink—very small—for Mrs. Dorchester should not notice that any of it was gone. Nor should there be an intrusion by the housekeeper Mrs. Lacey, who each morning shut herself off for an hour or two to do the household accounts and then to nap.
Betsey quitted the house, as requested, and through the window Anna could see the youthful maid lifting her skirts to trudge through fresh dung to the barn to milk the cows that required milking and then to give herself the milk and carry it back in an operation that parodied that of a large estate—one which did not economize on servants by combining duties in such a way that had the servants knocked up before the day was even half done.
“Now how did Gemma say this was to be done?” Anna asked of herself, remembering vaguely that the process had something to do with sugar and cold water—but in what proportions? She could not recall that Gemma had even addressed the matter of proportions.
“Perhaps,” thought Anna, “there are instructions on the label of the bottle. Now, where
is
the bottle?”
After some searching, which left her feeling tired from the crutch and vexed from Mrs. Dorchester’s attempt to hide the bottle, Anna found it under the woman’s mattress and brought it into the kitchen, being glad that her father’s cook slept very near to that room and not upon the top floor of the house with the lower servants. She did the best she could with the sugar but in the end it tasted bitter nevertheless. She drank it anyway, sitting alone in the drawing-room and feeling quite guilty about the whole thing.
And then she felt better. And then she felt
very
good, in fact, and then she saw a flower within the wallpaper that had not been there before, and she stopt drinking—at least until the flower disappeared.
In this quiet, contemplative state Anna considered how necessary it was for her to go to the dwarf cottage and clear up the fix in which she had put Tripp and Umbrous Elizabeth, and she thought of how difficult it was for her to do any thing with a swollen ankle and only a crutch—and why had not her father said no to the foolish idea of taking the carriage on a tour of the parish when it would have been put to far better use by its being driven by James to the dwarf cottage that very morning so that Anna could do some good and have the whole odious Tripp business happily resolved in time for a luncheon with her adopted aunt?
“Surely the foot will be better by to-morrow, and Papa will have no regrets about lending me the carriage the first thing in the morning, for he will have used it himself for most of the previous day, and did he not feel badly about leaving me behind this morning? So there. It is decided. I will sit here and finish the green drink unless the phantom flower returns and that thing which looked like a disconnected hand upon the floor, but no, it was only the pattern of the wood. I must not drink any more of this strange drink which causes people to imagine things that are not there or I should some day be a candidate for Stornaway myself!” Anna set down the glass and did not pick it up again for a full three minutes.
“I must compose myself for Mr. Alford, who is sure to come very soon with my poem,” said she, before falling asleep.
When Anna awoke, it was after nine o’clock and Mr. Alford had not yet come and her sleep had been disturbed by a dream in which Umbrous Elizabeth came down to Feral Park and hacked her into pieces with an axe, and although she did not scream upon waking, the desire was strong enough that she had to cover her mouth with her hand whilst blinking herself into full wakefulness.
“The dream has told me that I cannot wait! I must go to the dwarf cottage this very instant,” declared Anna, rising from the sofa. “It will take me longer with the crutch, but perhaps not so terribly long if I apply myself diligently to the task. My sister Gemma marches all about the parish with a leg that is not even her own and which is shorter than her real one so that it makes her limp and hobble so, and yet she never even thinks that she should not go to a certain place; she simply
goes
. And so I will go and make things right, and as for Mr. Alford, something, no doubt, has come up and he cannot come to see me this morning, and whilst I fear that it is because he is at Thistlethorn discussing with Gemma over tea and muffins all the books that she has never read but which she will pretend to have read so that she should win him, I will not permit myself to lend credibility to the fear by believing it
too
strongly.”
And so Anna was off to Turnington Lodge and its dwarf cottage with her crutch under her left arm and her jaw set in a most determined way.
It is a long way from Feral Park to Turnington Lodge when one is conveying oneself through use of an old wooden crutch—a very long way indeed. Anna tired after the first half-mile and set herself down to rest and eat an egg. “I will remain here for a moment or two and then go as far as the abbey and then I shall rest again. It is a good plan and I have enough eggs to take me all the way to Turnington Lodge!”
After a few minutes she was off again.
At the abbey she found a shady spot in the ruins of the chapel and listened to birdsong and was glad to have rescued herself from the recuperative, yet tiresome, divan. Then a rustling sound behind the wall gave her a start. “Who is it?” she asked, her voice catching in her throat.
From behind the wall appeared Lucy Epping. “Good morning, Mrs. Epping,” said Anna.
“Good morning to you, Miss Peppercorn. Oh, you have hurt yourself.”
“I have, to be sure, but as you see, it does not stop me from getting out and about.”
“Are you going to Turnington Lodge?”
“Aye. I intend to visit Mrs. Taptoe.”
“With the sun so strong and you without the bonnet I have trimmed for you—the beautiful bonnet which resembles in precise detail the one which I saw a gipsy girl wearing just yesterday?”
“What an amazing coincidence!” marveled Anna with a blush.
Lucy Epping arched a brow and curled her lip and was not equally amazed.
“And why have you come to the abbey to-day, Mrs. Epping? Are you like my father? Is this the place where you ponder over things that disquiet you?”
“You have hit the nail upon its head, Miss Peppercorn. Presently, for example, I am pondering over how strange it is to see my friend Anna Peppercorn venturing on foot into this part of the parish without her man-servant.”
“James is the Feral Park coachman to-day; he is busy driving our visitors about, so that they may view the parish, apparently without touching any thing. I have concluded that the gipsy children are harmless, but if there is any trouble from them I will swing this wooden weapon of mine most vigourously to frighten them all away.”
“My husband has heard that Constable Whitaker wishes to have the entire band of gipsies removed, so that they will no longer disturb and incommode the citizens of this parish. Now if only the constable would consider the removal of certain other malefactors from our society! But even Newgate Prison would not be large enough to hold all of
them.
”
“I discern dyspepsia in your address, Mrs. Epping.”
“Aye. If I tell you its cause, you will not breathe it?”
“Does it concern the paddling of men’s behinds? For you have spoken much already upon
that
topic.”
“No, Miss Peppercorn, it is not about paddling. What troubles me relates to the selfsame constable and his brother Mr. Whitaker, the publican who owns the Three Horse Tavern and Inn, as well as two other men: Mr. Quarrels, recently situated at Moseley Manor, and Sir Thomas, whom you know as well. I have learnt some very disturbing intelligence from my husband, who was present at the pub two nights ago, concealed behind a tall settle before the fireplace. Inadvertently but quite clearly did he overhear a lengthy private conversation amongst the four I have just mentioned which conveyed the following information: that Mr. Whitaker is to take on his brother Constable Whitaker and Quarrels and Sir Thomas as financial partners to turn the place into one of those parlours where women are forced to—” Here, Lucy Epping stopt herself in her story. “I am sorry, Miss Peppercorn, but I am just this moment recollecting a promise I made to my husband after I addressed you upon the indelicate topic of paddling behinds. He said that I should do better to shew you that I am now a respectable married woman and a mistress of a household and no longer scraping together a meager existence upon the street and feeding myself from rubbish piles. The change, he says, should be reflected not only in the choice of my society, but also in my aspect and address and every thing else that will recommend me to the likes of, let us say, Miss Peppercorn of Payton Parish.”
“Mrs. Epping! I was not aware that you had previously been so egregiously impoverished!”
“Aye, mine is a sad history, Miss Peppercorn. At one point I even sank to the lowest depths of working as a maid-of-all-work in service to Stornaway Asylum.”
“Did you now? My own mother, I have learnt, was once an inmate there.”
“Aye. She left before I came. I did not stay long myself. It was a dismal place, and as there was so little to eat, I was often compelled to go round back and root with the pigs for my supper. When my behaviour became suspect— this was the time, you see, when my mind began to take me on little journeys of fancy to escape the daily drearies—I began to fear that I should be confined there myself, and so I scuttled off late one night never to return.”
“And when was it that Mr. Epping took you in as his ward?”
“He says that he first saw me late of a night—I am ashamed to say it, Miss Peppercorn—upon a street in Winchester soliciting the attention of men with mischief on their minds.”
“My dear Mrs. Epping, it astounds me to think that you ever worked in such a capacity!”
“I did not do it for long. Indeed I was not at all like Mrs. Pickler, who spent her entire youth and part of her middle years as wench and bed-mistress— an occupation for which I see little difference except in treatment and remuneration. I did it for I had no other choice. A parson in the town took pity upon me and stood me before his congregation and said, ‘Is there no one here to-day who will take this young girl as his ward so that she will not die a lewd woman’s death upon the begrimed streets of Winchester, here in the shadow of our Lord’s cathedral?’ and Mr. Epping, who was attending services at the chapel that day, stood up and proclaimed, ‘I will take the wench for my ward!’ and this is how I came to be the ward of Mr. Epping and later his very wife, and this is why I am now so blissfully happy in my present circumstances.” The last was said with some tears.