Life Mask (14 page)

Anne felt oddly shaken. Right through the cold spring she had lived in such intimate conjunction with the eagle—thought through its muscles, conjured up every feather out of curls of clay. It had seemed the epitome of strength, of furious ambition, despite the chains. And now, to think its bones had been fed to the dogs at Brocket Hall.

M
ORE THAN
a month after the actress had told Derby what she thought of his proposition he was still rigid. No one had spoken to him that way since he'd been a puny new boy at Eton. These days he tried to concentrate on business—committee meetings about the Hodge Podge Bill for any unfinished matters at the end of the Session, his investment in Lancashire canals and a remarkable new flour mill powered by steam, improvements to his tenants' cottages at Knowsley, as well as the redecoration of his Surrey villa, The Oaks. That was what men did, they got on with things. They didn't crumble because one woman, out of all the women in England, had turned her back and said
My happiness is none of your concern.

Some nights he lay awake and raw against his great carved headboard in Derby House.
Amo ergo sum. Hove therefore I am.
He knew he'd trampled on the best thing in his life. But first thing, waking up between sweaty linen sheets, different words spoke themselves in his head:
chilly bitch.
Who did Eliza Farren think she was? A brewer's granddaughter and a drunkard's daughter, turning down an earl; how his ancestors would laugh in their marble vault.

Tonight Derby was sitting on the bottom row of the Royal Cockpit behind Buckingham Palace—the spot reserved for better-born cockmasters. This sporting establishment had outlived the houses of Tudor and Stuart, and looked set to last at least as long as the house of Hanover. Its octagonal walls were lined with men's bodies; the Babel of wagers and speculation filled the air. Derby leaned forward, elbows on knees, peering into the light the dangling chandelier spread on the twenty-foot circular stage, its yellowing grass. They should have put down some fresh sod; you could see the matting of old bloodstains.

A whack on his shoulder. Sir Charles Bunbury, whisky-breathed, leaned down precariously and shouted in his ear, 'You didn't keep me a place!'

'Beg your pardon,' mouthed Derby.

'Didn't you get my note saying I'd see you at the fight? Now I'm stuck up here between my former wife's third cousin and a shoemaker. Such a ghastly mob—the master should charge more than two shillings in, that's the problem.'

But that was one of the things Derby liked best about sports.
All men are equal on the turf and under the turf
as the saying went and the same was true of cockpits as of racecourses. In this raffish atmosphere he could sit beside working men in trousers, fellows with chapped, black-nailed hands, and no one cared about anything but the game. He'd lost his purse to a butcher in his time and been bowled out by one of the Duke of Dorset's under-gardeners on another occasion; there was a refreshing equality among sportsmen. It allowed Derby a respite from the dignity and duties of his ancient name.

'How's your own birds these days—had any good mains?' called Bunbury from the row above.

Derby shook his head. His gaze was fixed on the platform of worn sods.

'May I just say, old man, that sometimes you're about as much fun to talk to as my deaf, blind, dumb and flatulent great-aunt?'

Derby's face cracked into a smile.

'I blame those theatricals of Richmond's. You haven't been yourself since.'

'That must be it,' said Derby over his shoulder. 'I've let fame go to my head.'

'Ah, fame,' cried Bunbury. 'That legendary hussy whose favours, like those of a pustulating whore, unfit us for ordinary life.'

Here came the cocks from the pens—Lord Peckinshaw's Red and Mr Foyton's Yellow, held tightly in the hands of their setters—and the spectators leapt to their feet. The law-teller, blank-faced, checked their marks against his identification list.

Bunbury roared down, 'Who's leading the main so far?'

'Peckinshaw,' said Derby. 'His birds have won seven out of ten, at
£20
a battle. But the big stake's on this odd match.'

'I should say so. A lovely pair of five-pound champions. The Yellow's a famous warrior; killed three in a row in Newmarket at the autumn meet. I hope you put a hefty sum on him. How big's the bag?'

'£200.'

There were a few last shouted wagers—'forty shillings to one on the Red'—'Done and done!'—and then the law-teller waved everyone back from the grassy platform where he and the two setters stood.

Derby had eyes only for the narrow, close-cropped birds, each of them strapped into a pair of long curved silver spurs. Peckinshaw's scar-thumbed setter moistened the Red's head with his own spit to flatten the feathers. The birds struggled as they were set down a yard apart on the wide chalk ring. The setters backed off, raised their hands to show they weren't interfering. The Yellow was the first to let out a shrill crow of defiance. He manded fiercely, spreading each wing over each outstretched leg in turn, making himself look huge. The Red didn't make a sound, but ran straight at the other and seized him by the neck. The crowd let out a deep grunt.

It was rare for a fight to be a true battle from the start; often all the birds wanted to do was get away from each other. But these two were the right stuff, thought Derby with a quiver of pleasure. They broke apart in a flurry of colour, then closed in again. Every man in the cockpit leaned forward to see what was happening; the audience moved like one body. Foyton's Yellow was a hasty, hearty fighter, but he wasted too much of himself shrieking out his superiority; the silent Red was closer-heeled and deadly with his grip. Another hiss from the crowd; the Yellow had staggered backwards and might have fallen over the raised rim of the stage if the setter hadn't seized him and thrown him back in. Both birds were bleeding now, but not heavily. The Yellow had stopped crowing; neither of them let out a sound. They walked to and fro, toes gripping the worn grass, regarding each other.

The law-teller started the count. It was often like this. Derby could think of a hundred battles in which an initial show of valour settled down into this wounded sullenness, as if courage had leaked out of the birds with the first drops of blood. 'Nine and twenty, thirty, one and thirty.'

Derby found his fingers digging into the polished knob of his cane; he loosened them and rubbed them on his leather breeches.

'Five and thirty, six and thirty.'

At last the Yellow stirred into life; he ran at his adversary as if to peck him in the eye. A chaos of feathers and Lord Peckinshaw's Red struck. Screeching, dragging. He was hung in the Yellow's wing. Peckinshaw's setter jumped in bare-handed and disentangled the red bird's spur from the other's wing feathers with one twist.

Rumpled and outraged, the birds backed off again. 'Five, six,' chanted the law-teller. The setters stood over their cocks but didn't touch them, only hissed incitement. 'Nineteen, twenty, one and twenty.'

'Fight, by gad,' roared Derby, surprising himself.

As if obedient, the birds engaged. The Yellow's wing was ripped and dripping scarlet. He had the Red by the hackle feathers, he was heeling him hard but half the kicks went wide. Derby's eyes stung but he didn't blink; in this game you could miss the decisive moment if you so much as wiped your face. There was a lot of gore now, on grass and feathers, but it was hard to tell which bird had lost the most. A shame, Derby always thought, that blood couldn't be identified by colour as plumage was.

They shook each other loose and withdrew. 'Eight and twenty, nine and twenty.' The law-teller's face was unmoved as he chanted the numbers, his fingers marking them out. After forty counts between fighting, the rule said that the birds were to be set close to, because otherwise they'd never finish it.

'Chop 'em in hand,' shouted a spectator.

Each setter seized his bird in two hands; it was hard to get a tight grip when the blood was fresh and slippery. The silver spikes on the heels were muddy-looking now. The birds were set down beak to beak on the chalk mark at the very centre of the circle. Mr Foyton's Yellow was staggering; the Red broke away, but Lord Peckinshaw's setter had him back on the mark in half a second. The cockpit rang with shrieks now; the birds were silent but the men were crowing out their urgent fury. The Red drew himself up, clawed the Yellow to the floor and with one movement sliced open his throat.

Derby relaxed on to the bench. All around him men were whooping or cursing, arguing or slapping each other on the shoulder. Derby shut his eyes. All things considered, he preferred a battle to the death. Though a fight could be won by default—when one bird turned tail and refused to fight ten times—it always felt unsatisfying. And what was the point of saving the life of a broken-spirited cock, after all, when you'd never risk a penny on him again? No, it was better to let nature take her course.

Foyton's setter had picked up the Yellow by his torn neck to carry him off. Derby found himself thinking of Hector's body, dragged round the walls of Troy. Peckinshaw's man had the Red in his arms, as if embracing him, but of course he was checking his wounds; he put his lips to a deep cut and sucked out the dirt. Now he would pack up the bleeding bird in a warm crate and bring him back to the sheds, for a week of careful nursing, then a month or two of convalescence at His Lordship's estate in Shropshire. It occurred to Derby that the bird couldn't complain; this was better treatment than most army officers got after a battle.

The crowd was shuffling and pushing out. 'Can you drop me home? My carriage's got a broken wheel,' said Bunbury.

'If you help me find mine.'

It was a humid June night; Derby's shirt was sticking to his ribs. They stood on the corner, looking up and down the crowded street, till Derby's coachman managed to thread his way through the other carriages to his master.

'How much did you drop on the Yellow? I'm down by £50.'

'Nothing,' said Derby.

His old friend glared at him. 'I told you to put £100 on that bird.'

'Well, just as well I didn't, since it's coq-au-vin by now.'

Bunbury's bristling eyebrows met. 'Don't tell me you backed the Red,' he said.

'I didn't wager tonight.'

'What, at all?' Bunbury puzzled over this. 'Are you broke, M'Lord?' he asked satirically. 'Or ill?'

'I didn't care who won.'

Bunbury blinked twice. 'That's not like you. So why did you go, if you weren't meaning to stake so much as sixpence either way?'

'I wanted to see it,' said Derby through his teeth.

A
FTER THE
terrible scene at the Richmond House Theatre, Lord Derby hadn't sent a single note to Eliza, or even his footman to enquire after her health, but his carriage did continue to turn up outside her door every day, as always. Mrs Farren saw this as a hopeful sign—
'a mark of great
politesse,' she called it—but Eliza knew it for what it was: an outstretched claw. Derby was a stubborn man and he thought he could win her back by mute pressure. Well, she didn't need an armorial carriage (
Sans changer,
it nagged her,
Sans changer
) and she didn't need a maritally entangled aristocrat who had nothing better to do than hang around her like a noose. So every day she told the coachman, 'Please tell your master that we don't require his carriage.'

After a week it stopped showing up. Perversely, this made Eliza afraid. Her mother preserved a stiff silence on the matter. At first Eliza had felt that this hiatus was a punishment she was inflicting on Derby; now it occurred to her that he was punishing her. The afternoons were warm, so she walked down Drury Lane to the theatre, or hailed a hackney if it was raining; she was getting used to their scarred upholstery, the marks of other people's muddy boots. She was working very hard to memorise her last role at Drury Lane this season—the satirical spinster Beatrice in
Much Ado About Nothing
—as well as her new ones for the summer season at the Haymarket. She hadn't time to consider what it would be like to be an unmarried actress who was no longer being wooed by the richest man in England.

It was in a Mount Street hat shop that Eliza bumped into Mrs Damer. 'My dear,' said the sculptor, 'it seems for ever! I've been working so hard on a bust of my mother, I've barely been out.' She admired Eliza's green silk redingote with black buttons. 'You're always such a picture of elegance.' Eliza memorised the compliment for her mother, who had a sharp eye and helped her pick out her costumes every morning.

They ordered some raspberry ice to eat at one of the little tables. Mrs Damer was dithering between a slouch hat in felt and shirred silk, and a high-crowned beaver with tassels, for her daily ride. She went on and on about what a friendly fellow feeling the theatricals had produced among the Players, whose constant company she missed. 'Such a distressing sensation, when the mob broke the windows, though,' she murmured. 'I've always thought of myself as a friend to the people, a true follower of our dear Fox. But that night, with broken glass all over the floor, I must confess I shrank from my own countrymen as from wild beasts. So fortunate that you'd gone home early,' she added, patting Eliza's hand.

Conversations with Mrs Damer never stayed on the surface for long. So Derby mustn't have said a word to his old friend about the quarrel, Eliza realised. The ice was tasteless on her tongue. Had he told no one, then? Or was Eliza being discussed at this very minute, with coarse contempt, in the coffee room at Brooks's Club? She shook herself slightly. 'I've had a hard morning's shopping. Drapers, confectioners—I couldn't resist those new chocolate drops at Gunter's—and then three different hat shops, looking for the perfect
bergère.'

'I think you've found it,' said Mrs Damer, nodding at the box between them, which held an immensely wide, shallow-crowned straw with ribbons to tie it on.

'But should I wear it with fresh flowers, or a lace valance?'