Feral Park (50 page)
Authors: Mark Dunn
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #British & Irish, #Historical, #Dramas & Plays, #Genre Fiction, #Drama & Plays, #Historical Fiction, #Irish, #Scottish
Miss Drone, who had been listening to her scientific friend with a slightly turned head (and slightly erubescent cheek), now pivoted to face him fully.“Dr. Bosworthy, do you not think there is even an ounce of a chance that another sort of life awaits us after death—a life in which bad will be converted to good and the abject sufferings of those less blessed by terrestrial circumstance will be rewarded and the ledger brought to balance?”
“I am sorry to say that I do not, Miss Drone. Life is a game of dice, and sometimes one rolls the good numbers and sometimes the bad, and then the game is over and all walk away and into the empty blackness of eternal nothingness.”
“Oh, Dr. Bosworthy, what a dreary conjecture!”
“Yet it is what I believe.”
“Then what prevents you from opening the window to your room up stairs and jumping from it, thus ending your own dice game a few years early?” asked Anna.
“First, my dear, because I would not die, as my fall would, no doubt, be broken by a wriggling carpet of fluffy, fat, and most likely copulating conies. Second, because I believe that we do not have to accept the roll of every die and are often afforded the privilege of rolling again to gain a better outcome. Or we may change the dice for another pair which will serve to better advantage, or permit better numbers for others. The world, though desolate and grim upon the whole, need not be without some measure of compensatory joy and contentment of our own making.”
“But where is God in all of this?” asked Anna.
“On holiday. Or perhaps he is a mythical creature not unlike the unicorn— pleasant to consider but nowhere in evidence.”
“I believe that there is a God,” said Anna. “I believe that there
must
be. For look: my father’s estate is crowded with everyone whom I love and is presently visited by a good many others who also bring love and happiness into my life. Only very recently I thought exactly as
you
do, Dr. Bosworthy, and this fact distressed my father greatly, but I am now beginning to see things differently. Why does Mrs. Pickler open her house to fugitives and those in need of freeing themselves from the insidious hold of intoxicants and narcotics? Is she paid large sums? No, she does it for no other reason than that this should be her mission—a mission of charity, though charity in an untraditional sense. I should go this moment and tell my father that my mind is changing and I am beginning to hold out hope for the world after all.”
“Even as the Misses Henshawe and Mrs. Henshawe sit in far more oppressive circumstances than ever before?”
“Yes, because their fate has yet to be decided, and I cannot—I
will
not allow them to languish there.”
Miss Drone smiled and offered this explanation to Dr. Bosworthy for her niece’s sudden improved spirits: “Perry is better and he loves her. All is right with the world, you see.”
For this remark, Anna rewarded her aunt with a tossed book to the belly. It was not Gibbon but a small, thin volume of short poems, and it hurt hardly at all.
Anna spent the next day at the bedsides of the two men she most loved in the world: her father and Perry Alford.
At the Pickler House, Anna was told by Trapp that it had now come his turn for saying farewell to Payton Parish and then for slipping off quietly into the tenebrous night. Trapp’s departure was somewhat different from that of his fellow fugitives, however, in that he would also bid a sad adieu to a loving brother and would be setting fire to a certain iniquitous building before taking his leave.
“And none too soon,” said Anna, “for the Henshawes are now yoked even tighter to that revolting place. My cousin Charles said that he was changing its name to the Three Whores Tavern in their honour.”
Trapp shook his head in disconsolation. “I should like to break my rule about setting a fire only when a building is empty. Mr. Quarrels is a thoroughly reprehensible fiend for what he is doing to Miss Sophia Henshawe and soon to do to her sister Eliza, and I should like very much to give him an early taste of the fires he will meet in hell!”
“Aye,” said Anna, not knowing if Trapp was seriously contemplating murder. The archness of the smile that followed told her that the statement was merely the product of a dust-dry wit. Whilst Tripp was a simple man, who spoke without irony or veiled meaning, his older brother Trapp was, on the other hand, complex in his thinking and subtle and wry.
Continued Anna, “I have learnt from the steward’s daughter at Moseley Manor that to-morrow Quarrels is to take Sophia for her last performance at the Gracechurch Street parlour in London. It will be Eliza’s last performance there, as well, but also her first. She is so frightened that she cannot even eat.”
“Perhaps Quarrels will not go whilst his own parlour smoulders. Perhaps he will remain in Payton Parish to grieve over his lost investment!”
Trapp, his jaw now set in determination, walked off nodding to himself and pounding an angry fist into a receptive palm. For this one moment he resembled no one more than his brother; his animal feelings laid open and raw.
For the chief of Anna’s visit to the Pickler House Perry was sleeping. She was nonetheless content to sit and hold his hand, which had now been freed from the strait waist-jacket, although the chain had not come off the leg. Mrs. Pickler would keep him thus for a day or two longer; with Miss Godby in the next room, there were now two who must be watched and ministered to in alteration, and she did not wish to risk an unmonitored escape.
Anna removed herself from the room of the one who possessed her heart. She then put her head into the room of the more recently arrived of the two inmates. She found its young female occupant lying upon her back with her eyes open, staring up at the ceiling.
“Good morning, Miss Godby: do you wish company?”
“You may stay if you wish; I have no say in any thing that goes on here.”
Anna stepped into the room and took a spot for herself next to the bed. She was inclined to sit, but she would not; the invitation for her society had been weak. Miss Godby looked much improved, the mats in her hair having been combed out, a little colour having been applied to the cheek; she had been washed and scoured and both she and the room smelt fragrantly of lavender. Her attendant, who sat in a corner of the room, was one of the buxom three. The young woman looked up and nodded and smiled and then returned to her sewing.
“Gemma sends her very best wishes,” said Anna.
“Tell her, if you would, that I am sorry for what I have put her through. I am sorry for what I have perpetrated upon
all
of you. My treatment of everyone in this parish has been most abominable, and I intend to compensate each of you most generously for your trouble and inconvenience.”
“You need not pay us any thing, Miss Godby. We all know that it is the disease of drink that has caused you to do each of the things you have done. We wish only for you to mend and then to marry Mr. Dray and live happily ever after.”
Miss Godby curled her finger to draw Anna close to her so that a confidence could be securely delivered. “I know that
you
know that John Dray is not a man but a woman. She and I have, in fact, chosen the name ‘Johanna’ to be her name when we are alone. You have been very good about keeping this rather burdensome secret of her true sex to yourself, so I shall give you one of my fanciest coaches-and-four in gratitude.”
“I do not require things from you, Miss Godby. I ask only that you essay in future never again to do what you did in my father’s cellar.”
“That request will be honoured, I promise. Nonetheless, I do not understand why you should not prefer a gift from me. Are you an ascetic or some other form of self-denier?”
Anna shook her head and then thought for a moment how much she
would
like to have her own fancy chariot to take about with Gemma so as to garner looks of astonishment and admiration from all of her neighbours, her thoughtful smile thereby negating her original answer. Seeing this, Miss Godby then asked if there was no additional thing that could be done or given to make Anna Peppercorn happy.
Anna shook her head again. “What makes me happiest, Miss Godby, I possess already. He lies sleeping in the very next room.”
“You mean the one who is snoring so loudly that I can hear him through the wall?”
“That is he.”
“I have not yet met your beloved, but I shall. It is an odd place to which you have delivered me, Miss Peppercorn, but, upon my word, a good one in its purpose, and we shall all of us leave it changed and much improved. Now let me sleep. By-the-bye, the servant there whose name escapes me is knitting me stockings.” In a whisper: “I will not tell her that my father owns a cotton mill in Derbyshire, and that I possess more stockings that any woman in all of Britannia.”
Upon her return to Feral Park, Anna was finally admitted to her father’s room, and sat with him and watched him eat a cold chicken leg and a quarter loaf of rye bread, for he was, by now, quite famished and most desirous of food that was not in liquid form.
“Who, Papa?” replied Anna with a mischievous look. “I know not who you mean.”
“You know
exactly
my referent. Where did she go? Did you assist her in securing another position?”
Anna shook her head.
“So you mean to say that she was allowed to go off and that there was no concern shewn by you or anyone else as to how she would get on?”
“On the contrary, Papa! Miss Drone and I felt nothing
but
concern, and this is why we decided to keep her here in the Park by accommodating her in the Super House.”
“I see.” A silence. “But it is a very crowded place, is it not? Even more crowded than here at the mansion-house?”
“The whole of Feral Park is crowded, Papa, for we are now guardians and innkeepers for half the residents of the parish! Yesterday Mrs. Dorchester’s son arrived to visit with his mother for a day or two. I knew not where to put him, so he is sharing a bed with Mr. Maxwell, much to our purblind butler’s displeasure. There is also our burgeoning population of conies that adds to the congestion.”
“Has not the trapman begun to take them off to the woods?”
“No, Papa. He sought money in advance before commencing the removal and you could not be bothered to give it to him.”
“Yes, I vaguely recall something annoying that Mr. Maxwell was attempting to tell me the other morning. This is ridiculous. I am going to quit this bed and go down and begin to set things to rights.”
“Yes, Papa. That is a capital idea.”
“I will start at the Super House.”
“An excellent place to start, Papa.”
“I may even have a word with Miss Younge.”
“What sort of word, Papa?”
“I will ask her if she intends to spank anyone else.”
“And if she says that she does not?”
“Then I may invite her to play backgammon with me to-night. Move, daughter, and suffer me to leave this bed. It reeks of my malingering occupancy.”
Mr. Peppercorn had vacated the room before Anna could even say her “very well.”
This very good day was followed next by a very bad day—a horribly bad day, which cast its dark shadow from its earliest daylight hour. Here is what happened:
In the early morning Anna was sitting at the breakfast table in the company of Mrs. Taptoe and all of her family, save the one who was presently sailing upon the Atlantic Ocean, this grouping representing the first of two sets to fill the table for eggs and toast, and rashers of cured bacon sent along with Anna by Mrs. Pickler with her compliments. As Anna took a bite of bacon, her thoughts were of the kindness and generosity of the rotund woman who was good by every definition except that she once opened her womb to men for a fee and then was later the one who purveyed younger women for the same purpose. It was therefore a shock to Anna to see the very object of her thoughts through the windowpane stepping from her carriage! Missing from Mrs. Pickler’s face were the lineaments of her usual cheery disposition. Despite the rouge, there was even a discernable pallor upon the cheek.
The purpose of the visit was conveyed without delay: “Miss Peppercorn, I have grievous news. From the look of your face you have not heard.”
“Heard what?” asked Anna with apprehension as Mrs. Taptoe and all the Mallards gathered round to know the news as well.
“May I speak freely?”
Luther Mallard made his own reply before Anna could answer: “We are, each of us, enlistees in both of your causes, Mrs. Pickler. My own uncle was taken to prison for cutting down a yew tree in a park. He was sentenced to death under the Bloody Code.
He
did not have the chance to escape from
his
fate.”
“Alas, Mr. Trapp’s own luck has now run out. He was arrested last night by Constable Whitaker as he was attempting to burn down the Three Horse Inn and Tavern!”
“So the tavern did not burn?” asked Anna fearfully.
“Just a shrubbery in the front, which was not much liked anyway.”
“How did it happen? How did they come to take him so easily?”
“Mr. Trapp must not have been aware that Quarrels and Sir Thomas have hired men to guard the place at night—to hide and then to pounce. I suppose that Trapp was also unaware of how much the investment was valued by its investors.”
Anna sat herself down in the nearest empty chair. “It is beyond belief. What have they done with him?”
“Constable Whitaker said that the prisoner cannot be transported to London for a fortnight, even though he is already a candidate for the gallows for his earlier offence. There has been yet another break-out from Newgate Prison, you see, and there is no one presently available to come down for him. In the interval, he is to sit in the parish gaol and serve as an example to everyone else who may be entertaining thoughts of burning down a monkey parlour. No one is to see him and no one is even to bake him a pie. Severe terms, to be sure!”
It was a difficult thing to tell Tripp what had happened, but Anna had no other choice. Mrs. Taptoe’s groom took the news quite well at first, but then half a minute after the telling he damned the constable’s soul to eternal perdition and said that he would lead a private militia to storm the Payton Parish Bastille. It was therefore required that Umbrous Elizabeth come to soothe and calm him. It was monstrous, indeed, to think that Trapp would be executed, after all the good that he had done and all the good that he intended in future to do, and in so short a time as a fortnight. For her part all that Anna could do for some minutes was to pace in anguish and refuse the rest of her bacon. She was additionally troubled by the fact that it had been she who had put the idea of committing arson within the parish into the head of Tripp’s brother, and though she did not think that he would ever implicate her, she was inextricably and guiltily entangled in his fate.
Not even an hour later came news from Gemma and Bella that, if not equally as distressing as Trapp’s impending transport to London to be hanged, was nonetheless troubling: Mrs. Quarrels had now been made aware of the Feral Park ball. She had learnt of it from the invitation, which was to be put into the hand of Mrs. Henshawe, but because Mr. Maxwell, due to his poor sight, could not tell the difference between two women of nearly the same height, complexion, and age, he gave it to Mrs. Quarrels instead (for it was she who had come to the door instead of her own butler, curious to know why the Feral Park butler was paying a call to Moseley Manor).
Most important to convey was the horrible fact that Mrs. Quarrels had decided at that very moment that not a single one of the Henshawes would be given leave to attend the ball, and it was only due to Mrs. Henshawe’s refusal to sign and send along a card of regret with Mr. Maxwell that no confirming communication was presently held within Anna’s hand. “What is worse,” continued Bella in a disturbed tone, “is what was also decided then and there: that the opening of the monkey parlour would be fixed for the very same night—Midsummer Eve!” and so here now was the perfect reason that none of the Misses Henshawe should be able to attend the Fête Galante, there even being something to which Nancy would be assigned to do at the vile establishment.
“Should we cancel our ball?” asked Anna of her sister, and in a voice so steeped in gloom that she could scarcely produce the words.