Life Mask (57 page)

There was a strained silence and she knew at once that she'd said the wrong thing.

Lady Mary spoke up in a drawl. 'I'm afraid Richmond's been made the scapegoat of the matter, Miss Farren, as Master-General of the Ordnance. The guns never arrived at Dunkirk, you see, and York's had the gall to blame it on the neglect—or even malice—of my husband.'

There was much shocked tut-tutting. Eliza's mother gave her a private scowl for her faux pas.

'We were away shooting partridge at the time, as it happened, but Richmond had given the orders,' Lady Mary assured the group, 'so it's hardly his fault if the guns were accidentally packed on to a different vessel and never turned up.'

'I had a most eloquent visitor yesterday, let's dub him Dumby,' said Anne, smoothly changing the subject to Eliza's relief. '"Lord! what a charming, clever scaffold," he remarked, paying no attention to the statue itself. "What a delightfully constructed contrivance, and so sturdy and high!"'

There was much laughter. 'My dear girl, you're being harsh,' Lady Ailesbury objected. 'I know the party in question, because I brought him, and he's simply too shy to comment on matters artistic.'

'Is he a carpenter, since he's such an expert on scaffolds?' asked Fawkener.

'He must be French,' quipped the Field Marshal.

'That's right, Mrs Damer,' Dick Cosway chipped in, 'it's one of the
rights of woman
to mount a scaffold, but be sure you don't
lose your head!'

That raised a general groan and Anne gave the painter a cold look.

Strange, thought Eliza, what tasteless jokes were doing the rounds these days. It was as if the news from France was so lurid, so excessive, that satire was the only possible response.

W
HEN
D
ERBY
arrived at St Anne's Hill, on a warm afternoon, he found Fox recumbent on the lawn, 'trying to fool the birds into thinking me dead'.

'Any luck?' He held out his hand to pull up his bulky friend.

'I believe so, till you roused me, and now they think I'm Jesus Christ.' Fox squeezed Derby's hand between his two paws. '
Ravished
you could come down. I thought of Italy this summer, but Liz persuaded me we wouldn't be safe on the Continent, because I'm known to be such a friend of the French—and I must confess, it's been so Arcadian here that I'm glad we stayed at home.'

They tracked Sheridan to a stump in the woods, where he sat grinning over a pamphlet by some clever radical called Pigott who was charged with toasting the French Republic in a coffee house. 'You're rather merry,' Derby pointed out.

'Because my manager's come back,' explained Sheridan. 'I smoothed Kemble's ruffled pinions by reminding him that we're brothers in the ranks of Thespis, promising to reform my ways—oh, and a roof on the new Drury by Christmas.'

'Christmas?' asked Fox, brightening.

'That bit was a lie,' Derby guessed. 'Our Sherry's a monster of deceit.'

'One has to be to run a theatre,' Sheridan pointed out.

The three of them played battledore, not to win but to keep the shuttlecock in the air; they got up to 1239 strokes before Mrs Armistead had them called in for a delicious dinner. (For a former courtesan, Derby noted, Liz was remarkably good at housekeeping on little or no money.) Then the men lounged on the terrace, filling the little pipes that were all the rage. Smoking was considered much manlier than snuff these days—probably because of the wartime atmosphere, Derby thought, but privately he still preferred a pinch of good Masulipatam.

Fox reported on Devonshire House, where the blind windows had finally brightened again on the return of Georgiana, Bess and the other ladies.

'And Grey's child?' asked Derby. 'Left abroad in fosterage, I assume?'

Sheridan supplied the information. 'She's been sent to his parents in Northumberland to raise under the fiction of being his little sister.'

'How bizarre!'

'Georgiana's distraught about it, obviously. But she's quite changed by her exile,' said Fox. 'Penitent, and grateful to the Duke for having forgiven her and allowed her to leave war-torn France after a full year! Altogether cowed.'

'Oh,
dear.
" A chill breeze flapped their neckerchiefs. 'It's almost November, isn't it?' said Derby. 'Time to screw our courage to the sticking place for another Session.' He spoke energetically, but all he could think of was
forty-one to two hundred and eighty-two.
That had been the division on Sheridan's and Grey's Reform bill back in May: forty-one Foxite Members, fifty on a good day, with only a leaderless handful in the Lords since Portland's desertion; did that still count as a Whig Party? There was a silence, and he almost wished he'd stuck to gossip.

'Yes, I must begin, like some fat, wheezing Sisyphus, to roll the stone up the hill again,' murmured Fox. 'Though weak, we are right and that must be our comfort.'

'I think most people are sickened by the war, even if they daren't say so,' Sheridan argued, 'and Pitt's repression is doing a better job of making the country hate him than we could do. Those Scottish judges are more rabid than any Jacobin committee; imagine, fourteen years in Botany Bay for advising a man to read a book! Remember Holt?'

Fox nodded.

'He was sent to Newgate in July for reprinting a harmless old article about Reform from '83. I just heard he died there.'

Fox shuddered. Derby wished Sheridan hadn't mentioned such a depressing thing—then told himself not to be ridiculous; they couldn't treat their leader like a child.

'But it's hard to sail on when half the crew have mutinied and rowed off the other way,' said Fox with a pained grin. 'There's Loughborough gone over to Pitt, to be Lord Chancellor, and Porchester bribed with an earldom, Carlisle with a Garter...'

'Better this way,' barked Sheridan. 'Now you know who your friends are and we know what you stand for.'

'We may be few,' Derby said huskily, 'but every one of us would go to the gallows for you, old Fox. And I'm quite convinced the tide will turn.'

'Tell him about your bets,' said Sheridan.

Derby grinned. 'At Brooks's the other night, I staked 500 guineas that some measure of Reform will be passed by March '95—that gives us a year and a half—and another 1000 that by the same date Pitt will be toppled and you'll be Prime Minister.'

'If he hasn't—Pitt, I mean,' said Sheridan, deadpan, 'we'll have to assassinate him.'

'Oh, my dear fellow,' said Fox, shaking his head at Derby, 'you used to be such a cautious guardian of the family fortune!
Bet on knowledge, not chance,
that's what you used to preach.'

'But I do know this, in my bones,' said Derby, trying to convince himself.

'We're not meant to reveal this before the ceremony,' said Sheridan suddenly, 'but—'

Derby nodded.

'To hell with it, this is as good a time as any. The fact is, old Reynard, we all know you're on the brink of bankruptcy.'

'You'll end up in debtor's gaol before me, Sherry,' said Fox, trying for flippancy.

'Undoubtedly,' said Sheridan, 'but it seems your friends love you more than mine do me. All this summer a committee at the Crown and Anchor has been collecting funds from your well-wishers.'

'Let me tell you, it couldn't have been easier,' Derby broke in. 'Not just gentlemen but shopkeepers, farmers, country clergymen have all sent in their mites—even many of Portland's followers have subscribed, out of old affection.'

Sheridan was businesslike. 'It amounts to
£61,000
—which we calculate should defray your debts and give you and Liz an annuity of
£2000
a year for the rest of your life.'

'My dear friends! I—' Fox's ripe face seemed about to burst. He crushed Sheridan to him and then seized Derby.

'You're wetting my lapel,' Derby joked after a minute, but his eyes were brimming too.

I won't pretend to you,
Anne wrote to Mary,

that this intense effort of carving my
King
doesn't fatigue me—but moderation is impossible, from my nature & that of the work. Besides, seven hours in my bed cures me & when I think of the sleepless nights I constantly passed, in the misspent years before I took up sculpture seriously, I realise I owe much composure of body & mind to this very occupation.

High on her scaffold, she set her flat to the stone robes again.
Strike for seven, rest for four.
Her right hand ached as it took the hammer's impact.
Strike for seven, rest for four.
She was trying not to think about the news of the execution. Marie Antoinette had gone to her death without a single friend to comfort her, and with dignity. Would Anne have that much strength in her?

The important thing in such times, she told herself, was to concentrate on one's own duty. And hers was to finish this huge statue this year. She felt a little faint; she'd lost count of her blows. The blade of the flat slid, gouging a line; she made a little growling sound and bent to correct it. Her back ached. She'd have to get the car penters in to lower the scaffold so she could finish the hem of the robes.

'Madam?'—Sam, with a note on a silver salver, picking his way through the carpet of white dust.

'The post can wait,' she said a little impatiently.

'But this came by messenger from Mr Walpole.'

She put down her heavy tools and her hands felt curiously floating. She knelt and stretched down to pluck the note from the tray. It was probably another five-page eulogy of the late Queen of France. The footman slapped the dust from his shoes at the door on his way out.

My dear,

I hate to impart such news, but I must. Toulon not having received the Allied reinforcements it asked for, has been besieged by French artillery encamped on the surrounding hills, & our old friend General O'Hara is reported to have been wounded & captured in a gallant attack on a battery. The enemy forces by the guile of an officer called Bonaparte have seized the fort & Admiral Hood has withdrawn the fleet—which leaves O'Hara in the brute claws of the French without hope of ransom or rescue.

Anne stopped reading at that point. She had a choking feeling. Strange how horror wasn't quite real until it happened to someone one knew well. How was the General hurt, she wondered, and how badly? His legs, his chest, his massive shoulders or black-bristled face? Would his captors even bandage him, let alone find him a doctor? More traditional armies made prompt exchanges of prisoners; the raw volunteers of the Republic scorned the practice.

Anne remembered O'Hara in her parlour upstairs three summers ago, so warm and vigorous, pulling open his shirt to show her his old bullet hole.
Wish for another war,
that was what he'd joked, it came back to her now;
wish for another war, with another wound
to make me famous.
He'd been on the point of a generous proposal, and Anne had turned chilly and spinsterish, pretended not to understand him. And now the man was face down in the fetid straw of a French gaol, bleeding his life away, or in a wagon on his way to the Guillotine.

She must have reached out blindly, or stepped the wrong way, because suddenly she was slipping through space. She grabbed a pole of the scaffold, she swung heavily and felt a terrible jolt. She was on the floor in a heap, but she couldn't remember exactly how she'd got there. When she tried to stand up her right leg wouldn't support her. She sat very still for a few minutes, breathing in the dust that covered the floor. It seemed as if death was in the room with her. She found herself thinking of a distant cousin who'd somehow got a splinter in his hand while foxhunting; the wound had festered and he'd died of it.

This was ludicrous. Anne gave a heave and clambered to her feet. Everything seemed to work. She was only bruised and shaken. She wiped her mouth with her hand. She tried walking round the workshop; she brushed herself down as she went.

Voices in the yard; the door swung open. 'I assure you,' her mother was saying, 'visitors delight Mrs Damer, she works even better with the eager eyes of posterity upon her! Isn't that so, my dear?' Lady Ailesbury bestowed a kiss on her daughter, who tried to smile. 'This is Madame Duvalle, of whose exquisite beadwork you've heard me speak.'

Anne knew she must look appallingly dishevelled. She shook hands with the bony, nervous Frenchwoman and found her voice, offering her visitors a seat.

'Are you granting yourself a little respite from your labours, dear?' asked Lady Ailesbury.

Anne nodded. Her right leg was throbbing so loudly she could hear it. 'I think perhaps—' She backed away unevenly.

'Darling girl, are you ill? You look shocking ill.'

She mustn't admit to the fall. 'Just a little faint.'

Lady Ailesbury had already picked up the bell and was clanging it. 'You must go upstairs directly and take some hartshorn and water. Or James's Powders—isn't Walpole always raving about James's Powders? Where are those idle servants of yours? They really do take advantage.'

Sam came into the workshop, slightly out of breath.

'If you could fetch Mrs Moll—' began Anne.

'Your mistress is ill,' butted in the Countess, 'you must carry her upstairs, and ask the housekeeper for a good big glass of hartshorn and water.'

N
OVEMBER 1793

Anne's thigh swelled up like a balloon. There was a navy-blue bruise the size of a fist that turned purple, green and dirty yellow. Doctor Fordyce thought it might be nothing worse than an inflamed tendon. When he felt the leg for splinters of bone, she didn't weep but she bit her lip hard. He bled her, a procedure that had always filled her with ridiculous dread; although she knew it was for her good, she couldn't stand the sensation of her life draining away into a basin.

Only alone at night did she let herself cry. The poultice on her leg smelt foul and her whole body seemed to pulse with pain. She thought of gangrene. A female sculptor was freakish enough; imagine how the caricaturists would go to town on a one-legged female sculptor!