Infernal Revolutions (22 page)

‘Now, according to my latest sources,' began Mr De Witt, putting on his half-moon spectacles, ‘Colonel Washington and his ragtag troops are presently encamped four miles from here at Bull's Ferry.'

A thrill went through me when I heard this. To think that there was nothing but four miles of thin air between me and the great man himself. Indeed, supposing he had decided on a whim to come this way since the information was received, his troops could be surrounding the house at this very moment. Suddenly war seemed very close. My hand shook as I recorded the news, a fact that Mr De Witt seemed to notice, for I sensed him viewing critically the unfolding words. It was not my shaking hand, however, that he was interested in.

‘You will need to encode the information, Mr Oysterman.'

‘Obviously,' I snorted, wishing he would get on with it.

‘Do it before you go to bed. One never knows who may be prowling around in the night. And once done, burn those notes immediately. You must destroy all incriminating evidence.'

‘I can't see the point of encoding,' said Dick, deigning to patronize us with his attention. ‘The rebels discover a treasonous letter about our person – they hang us. The rebels discover a coded letter about our person – they assume we're spies, torture us for the code, then hang us. Call me a coward, but I know which option I prefer.'

‘A very selfish attitude, if I may say so, Mr Lickley. You would rather your country's secrets be known than endure a little pain on its behalf. I am assuming, of course, that you would not crack under the pressure of torture?'

‘Crack, Sir? I'd bloody explode. If they so much as tickled my armpits with a feather I'd tell them everything I knew about Dolly Potter and her barmy book. Reputation is not that precious to me that I would endure agony on its behalf.'

‘Tell me, Sir,' I said, ‘How many spies like us have you processed?'

‘Since the first ones arrived in June…Oh, let me see now…about twenty.'

‘And have you ever seen them again?'

‘Not one.'

I shivered.

‘But then they are spies, Mr Oysterman. One would not
expect
to see them again. Now, where were we?'

‘At Bull's Ferry, with George Washington.'

‘Ah yes. Now, he has a force, the best estimates say, of two thousand men, most of whom are in a terrible state…' I scribbled furiously. ‘…Some are badly shaken by their first contact with the British at Long Island and Harlem Heights, others – without even going into battle yet – are ready at any moment to drop their guns and return to their farms…'

‘Slow down!'

‘I am going as slow as I can, Mr Oysterman. Any slower and I will lose the thread of my sentences. Now – see, I have lost my place again…'

‘Re..turn…to their..farms.'

‘Only Colonel Washington's rhetoric and the threat of punishment prevents them from doing so. There is a core of diehards of course – mainly Scots and Irish – who will always fight the British no matter how dramatic are the odds against them; indeed they seem to have been put on the earth for that very purpose.'

‘Their vocation, you mean,' said Dick.

‘Yes, if you like, Mr Lickley, their vocation, and – you needn't write this down, Mr Oysterman – if you ever encounter a gang of these men without a restraining officer over them, my advice is to run away as fast as you can.'

Though I was still on
diehards
, this warning registered, and I felt and saw my hand start to shake once more.

‘How will we recognize them?' asked Dick.

‘By their general demeanour of wild-eyed aggression. Some of them – so I have heard anyway, I do not know if it is true – even have the scalps of British soldiers dangling from their crossbelts as trophies. A dirty trick picked up from the Indians, of course.'

An involuntary jerk of my hand sent my pencil flying across the room. It clattered onto the harpsichord and tinkled onto the floor. Fighting an urge to scream, I shook for about a minute, until heavy breathing and intense concentration on the first lines of Gray's
Elegy
calmed me down. Then I was able to retrieve the pencil and continue from where I had left off. Talk of war in Brighthelmstone was all very well, but here, a mere four miles from the flame, it lost much of its allure.

‘Are we well, Mr Oysterman?'

‘Incipient epilepsy, Mr De Witt. That is all. An old complaint, nothing to worry about.'

‘Good, then I will continue.'

He went on copiously – so that I had to ask for more and yet more paper – to describe the rebel firepower, its lines of communication and its anticipated movements. Then, moving on, he gave us a list of Loyalists in the area willing to give us shelter, and a list of wobbling Patriots who might be won over to the British cause in consideration of a cascade of guineas and a guarantee of lifelong protection for themselves and their families. When it was all over my hand was aching like the devil, as though it had been up a cow's arse for a week, and before me on the table lay five sprawled sheets of highly incriminating evidence. These I folded up and craftily passed to Dick.

‘So that's it, gentlemen,' said Mr De Witt, helping himself to another glass of wine as he rose from the table. ‘That is all I have at present. Still, for three guineas, not a bad bargain, I think. ‘Tis not, after all, information you can get in the
New York Gazette
. Now, if you'll excuse me, ‘tis time for me to try and get some sleep. I trust you will be gone in the morning before I awake, so…' He shook our hands, ‘…it has been pleasant to meet you, and I wish you luck and God's blessings in your duties. Goodnight, gentlemen. Remember to blow out the candles.'

And off, to our great surprise, he went, leaving the door ajar behind him.

‘A bit sudden,' said Dick.

‘Perhaps he is springing some sort of trap,' I said, still jittery with all the talk of mad Irishmen.

‘No,' said Dick, after some thought, ‘I think he is just embarrassed.'

‘About what?'

‘Well, door ajar, no beds down here. If I am not mistaken, he has just given us tacit approval to sleep with his daughters.'

‘No!!'

‘Yes, Harry, yes! We are in, I am sure we are.'

Dick gave me a bear hug, which I reciprocated with assumed heartiness, trying to hide the fact that I was more nervous than excited – Eloise in her perfumed bower being the amorous equivalent of a platoon of rabid kerns. The passive and grateful acceptance of a foot on my puddings was one thing, the active discharge of my manly duties quite another. Feeling the shakes coming on again, I raised my eyes dolefully to the ceiling.

‘Which rooms are they in? Did you manage to work it out?'

‘Clara's here, I think,' said Dick, taking a chair with him to the end of the room, stepping on it, and tentatively knocking on the ceiling. Sure enough, back came a far from tentative drum tattoo.

‘And Eloise?'

‘Next room. Clara told me.'

‘I do not want to end up in dull De Witt's bed, you know.'

‘No? I think you would have more fun with him than that Eloise drip, personally.'

Allegations of drippiness were easily refutable since the undertable groin massage, but I did not wish to compromise Eloise's reputation by referring to it. I was a kisser, I prided myself, not a teller.

‘But should we go up, Dick?' I laid a restraining hand on Dick's shoulder, as, licking his lips, he made his way to the staircase. ‘Are we not doing wrong by taking advantage of these poor girls' vulnerability?'

‘Harry, there is nothing we can do to protect them from marauding gangs or anyone else. There is not much we can do to protect ourselves, come to that. You, I understand, have offered to take Eloise with us on our travels but she refuses; they want to stay here and fight – they have told us so themselves. What more can we do? Look, there is no time for prolonged courtship in wartime, so why not seize the moment and indulge in a little physical refreshment with them now? ‘Twill give us all fresh vigour for our respective fights ahead. Besides which…' He pulled his customary cowface, which for once did not amuse me, ‘…this could be the last sheet-shaking we ever do on this earth.' Adding, inevitably: ‘Or in your case, the first and last.'

I gave my by-now-customary contemptuous snort to this childish reference, and then, after thinking about what he'd said, blew out the candles and lanterns, and followed him quaking to the foot of the stairs.

‘Here we go then, mate,' whispered Dick, placing his hand on the banister and lurching upwards. ‘Good hunting, and we'll compare notes in the morning.'

Heart pounding, feeling like a Shakespearian assassin, I followed Dick up the creaking stairs. Half-way up we passed a small window, through which waning moonlight shone. Distractedly pausing to peer out, I was drawn up short by a very strange sight: Elzevir standing at the well, throwing what looked like items of clothing down it. I reached out my hand with the intention of drawing Dick's attention to this phenomenon, but he was gone, his loins having propelled him forward in a very fast and stealthy manner. I nevertheless continued to observe Elzevir's antics until my curiosity was satisfied, which it was when Elzevir drew out his tallywhacker and began pissing into the well, his stream a silver arc in the moonlight. Then, realizing I was alone and could tiptoe downstairs again without Dick knowing, I debated the pros and cons of
bottling it
, and spending the night on the dining room floor. But as, in sum, the fears downstairs (Elzevir, broken glass, roaming Irish kerns) outweighed the fears upstairs (rejection, sexual failure), I decided against this cowardly course of action. Thus was I prodded on to the landing, where I turned and put my ear to each door in turn. From the first came heavy snoring; from the second low male and female giggling; and from the third, around the edge of a partly-open door, came candlelight. On this door, quivering, I knocked discreetly.

‘Come in, Harry – ‘tis open.'

My heart leaped; she was expecting me! Realizing the hunt was as good as over already, I sidled in and found myself in a sort of artist's grotto, full of bottles, brushes and canvasses, and pungent with the smell of pine and paint. Books on a shelf basked in the moonlight, while an open window let in the sigh of a breeze which gently but repeatedly kissed a candle flame on the bedside table. The scene was so magical to me that my eyes darted all over the room, lapping it up, until at last they fixed upon Eloise, and never moved again. For she was sitting on the bed in nightclothes that revealed arms naked up to her elbows and legs naked up to her knees – temptations that were enough on their own to paralyze me with lust and fear. But that was not all…

‘Look Harry – I've got them out for you!'

She had as well, and I stared with dry-mouthed wonderment at the two pearly meringues bursting plumply out of the top of her bodice. I licked my lips involuntarily.

‘I mean my paintings,' she said curtly, following my gaze and quickly covering up her fruits with deft drapings of her gown.

‘Oh!' I exclaimed, turning with awkward quickness to the canvasses propped up against the walls. ‘Oh yes. Oh
yes
!' I gushed, overcompensating. ‘They are marvellous, marvellous.' I ran towards them with feigned rapture. ‘These are what I had come to see.'

I was quickly down on my hands and knees, staring deep into the paintings one by one, gesticulating astonishment at such genius. Secretly, however, I was trying to hide my embarrassment and make out what the gloomy shapes represented.

‘The ones you have been looking at so far,' said Eloise, as I worked my way round the room, ‘are not finished. In fact they are hardly started – just blue background washes really. Here, though, are my finished efforts, which I hope to sell one day in Philadelphia.'

‘Why, they are beautiful,' I said, having no other choice. They were of farm landscapes at either sunrise or sunset, all plastered in thick red paint at the top, as if she had created them in a temper. ‘These are the ones you did this morning, are they? Of the fire?'

‘Oh no, long before.' Then, sensing my doubt: ‘The sky really was that colour, you know.'

‘Yes, I am sure,' I said, wondering if there was something wrong with her eyesight.

‘And here,' she said, flickering a candle over the last two canvasses, ‘are portraits I did of Papa and Clara.'

They were so flat and childlike that I could barely prevent myself from laughing out loud. I had seen more depth in the Cerne Abbas Giant.

‘Dick is with Clara now, is he?' she said.

Reluctantly, I admitted he was, not really at ease talking about midnight meanderings.

‘It upset me, you know, what she said about me at dinner.'

I got up and sat next to her on the bed, relieved that we were on to new topics. ‘Twas also comforting when the heel of my boot hit what felt like a full chamber pot under the bed; she was just a human being after all.

‘I'm not really prudish, Harry, though everybody seems to think that I am. I just try to be good, that's all. I just try and do my best and not hurt anyone.'

I wondered if she was setting me up again, tempting me to put my arm around her so that she could rebuff me with a vindictive reminder of our loving-friendship pact. But her distress seemed genuine enough, and I still had memories of her caressing foot to embolden me. I was about to succumb to temptation when I saw gleaming in the candlelight the breech of a flintlock propped up in the corner of the room. Grateful at last for the opportunity to handle something I knew about, I rose and went to it, expressing admiration and surprise.

‘Left by a passing spy, I suppose,' I said thoughtlessly, realizing too late that I had just cast aspersions on Eloise's self-professed goodness. She did not, however, take it other than in the jocular manner intended.

‘Oh no, Harry. Clara and I have had our own guns since we were children. We started off with pistols and built our way up to muskets, one of which you are holding now.' Then, she added sadly: ‘Some girls have dolls.'

I picked it up, a keen
aficionado
of the beasts, and examined it. ‘Twas a French
Charleville
musket that I had heard so much about.

‘Have you ever used it?'

‘Never, Harry. I could not kill anything. Clara has shot a few salesmen in her time though.'

‘Dead?'

‘
Winged
‘em.'

I smiled, wondering if Dick knew what he had let himself in for. Then I hoisted the weighty piece horizontal and aimed it out of the window at a dark distant tree, pretending I was back on the parade ground. This, perhaps my first unconscious act in Eloise's presence, obviously stirred something deep and womanly in her, for her hands were soon roving all over my chest, and she was squashing and squirming her dumplings against my back. Clearly I had inadvertently hit upon the magical combination that unlocked Eloise's lovebox –
politesse
and violence.

‘Oh, Harry – you are not effete after all,' she breathed hotly into my right ear.

My quarterpounder burst into lurid life. Hurriedly, I returned the gun to its corner and turned to face my melting lover. A few seconds of deep soulgazing, and we were off, frantically bussing and groping for all we were worth. Panting, I tried fumblingly to get her clothes off before I exploded, but she wriggled free and dived under the bedclothes coquettishly. I dived in after her, and there followed a confused period of squirming, tugging, unfastening and unclipping until eventually we were free of all encumbrances, and in position. The prize securely mine now, I took a satisfied breather and prepared for the push to the summit. I felt good and strong and indescribably potent, and I was about to begin my final ascent to Heaven when, to my amazement, Eloise pushed me off and rolled onto her side.

‘Sweetie, what is it?' I enquired, horrified and disbelieving, uncomfortably aware that my ball had, in a manner of speaking, left the barrel.

‘Oh Harry, I cannot, I cannot!'

‘Why not?'

I rutted involuntarily on the spot that Eloise had just vacated.

‘I have the painters in!'

I was completely baffled by this remark, but I did not want to appear ignorant.

‘Ahhhh!' I groaned, coming on the Damned Bed with bitter disappointment. ‘The painters.'

‘Yes, I know. A problem, is it not?'

It might have been, if I had known what she was talking about.

‘Otherwise I would, Harry, I truly would.'

My head clearing now, it suddenly struck me what she was referring to. Indeed, I could understand how it might be offputting, having even bad representations of your father and sister staring at you as you swived.

‘Stack them outside the door then. Here, I will do it.'

I made to leap up, eager to try again.

‘Not – not the paintings – the
painters
.'

Perhaps this was another new American phrase. I struggled to translate.

‘What then? You did not paint the pictures yourself? You got someone else to do them for you – is that what you are trying to say?' The anguished headshaking into her pillow convinced me that I was on the right lines. There had been some plagiarism going on, I felt sure, so I put my hand on her shoulder to reassure her, artist to artist. ‘'Tis nothing to worry about, Eloise – I could tell they were not really your works; someone like you could never paint so atrociously.'

‘Oh!!' she gasped, turning to me with a look of fury in her eyes. ‘You stupid English fool! I'VE GOT THE PAINTERS IN!! How much more description do you want?'

Considerably more. Who did she think I was, Isaac Newton? Abashed, hurt, baffled, I collapsed onto the bed and fell to pondering, my sticky-mouthed little cannon down and out. By a slow process of elimination, I deduced eventually that the painters were a sexual problem of some sort; though of what sort exactly I did not like to speculate too deeply. The more I thought about it, however, the angrier I was with Eloise's behaviour. I levered myself up onto my left elbow and put it to her straight.

‘If the painters are in now, Eloise, then they were presumably in over dinner, when you chose to excite me by continued application of your foot to my privy parts. Why do this, why encourage me and let me go this far if you had no intention of satisfying my natural masculine propensities? Explain yourself, Madam!'

‘I did no such thing!' the brazen hussy turned to me and ejaculated.

‘What!' I spluttered, astounded at this shameless denial. ‘What! Oh yes you did, by George! How can you deny that you enticed me up to your room?'

‘Yes, I invited you up here to see my paintings – which are not, by the way, atrocious – but nothing else. I did not intend for us to end up in bed together. If you had not forced the issue I would never have gone this far. I was just trying to avoid hurting your feelings. And as for my foot and your private parts – why, I think you have quite taken leave of your senses. I did
not
, repeat
did not
, and
never would
, stoop to such a thing.'

‘Then who would?' I said, astonished.

As if on cue the answer came through the wall. While we had been bickering, Dick and Clara had obviously been using the time to build up a good head of steam, and were now able to let us in audibly on their delights. From the rhythmic grunts, wild yelping and creaking bed, it sounded like Dick was trying to murder her with a blunt instrument. I sincerely hoped it did not feel as good as it sounded, for I knew now, with sickening certainty, that it had been Clara's foot that had been pleasuring me, and I had chosen wrong yet again.

But obviously I was not the only one suffering great emotional anguish. Eloise too, judging by the way her eyes glittered at the ceiling, appeared fretful.

‘This always happens,' she said. ‘Listen to her, just listen.'

I listened. Indeed, I could not help listening, for the moaning and groaning and sobbing were hellish and surely uncalled for. Nothing could be that good.

‘How can I ever hope to compete with that?' said Eloise, lying back on the bed and communicating with me via the ceiling. ‘If I slept with a different man every night for the rest of my life I could never be as experienced as her now!'

‘There is more to life than sex, Eloise,' I comforted, though secretly gloomy with doubt. ‘Believe me.'

Perhaps rightly, Eloise snorted like an infidel at this remark.

‘I know,' I said eagerly, an idea suddenly occurring to me. ‘Why don't we try to do what they are doing? We could start quiet and build up to a few sighs, and then we could….'

‘No, we could not, Harry. ‘Tis all too disgusting. ‘Tis all too late.'

She buried her head in her pillows and tried to shut out the noise. Obviously not succeeding, she snatched my pillows and threw them at the wailing wall.

‘Quiet, you damned whore!' she screeched, very haglike.

The continual reminder of what I was missing next door, and the unexpected sulky petulance of Eloise, put me in a vile mood, and I did – I must admit – feel like playing the Hessian with her. I lifted the blanket and peered at her bare flanks, wondering whether to or not. But I was deterred by Eloise's demand that I stop looking at her, and the belated realization that I was a little English gentleman, and had better start behaving like one. So I dropped the blanket and lay down on my back, grimacing as the cold sodden bed squelched beneath me. Then I simply stared at the ceiling until Clara's final scream rent the New Jersey night, and all went quiet.

Eloise, I sensed, was still awake and fretting next to me, but I was not going to touch her again. I would leave it to her to break the ice if she wanted to, when I would be perfectly amenable to whatever she suggested. But I had not bargained for the vicious counterattack she now launched on my artistic sensibilities.

‘Do you have any of your own poems with you?' she said with surprising sweetness.

‘Yes,' I said. ‘They are in my pocket.'

Objective gained, the sweetness veil was pulled aside, and an insulted, vengeful artist was revealed.

‘Good,' she snarled, jumping up and dressing minimally before heading towards the chair where my clothes lay crumpled, ‘Then let us see if they are as bad as my paintings.'

‘Twas vindictive stuff, and I was not happy with the development. Somehow I sensed she would not like them, but I did not attempt to stop her, knowing that the growth of a hard shell was essential if I was to survive the heartless barbs of the English critics, if and when I got back home. Wincing, I drew the blanket over my head and quivered like a jelly in fearful anticipation.