Sedition (15 page)

“Perversions? Deceptions? Exclamations? Ragattos? I’m warning you, Monsieur Belladroit,” said Mrs. Frogmorton with rising anger.

“Really!” echoed Mrs. Drigg. “It’s too bad!”

Monsieur jerked his head. “What is too bad?”

“All this—all this—”

A weightless voice interrupted. “All this is as it should be,” said Mrs. Brass. Six eyes swiveled toward her.

“As it should be? Are you sure, Elizabeth?” said Mrs. Frogmorton, astonished at this unexpected interruption.

The firmest nod Mrs. Brass had ever delivered. “Well then,” said Mrs. Frogmorton to Monsieur. Her voice was still testy, but if Elizabeth had actually spoken … “I suppose that will have to do.” She wished him a pleasant rest. They would see him in three weeks.

Monsieur did not have a pleasant rest. He spent the holiday unhappily cooped up at Tyburn with a summer cold and failing to persuade Cantabile to offer him cash in advance. He had his salary, which continued to be paid, but he wanted to spend money, lots of it. He wanted to feel, for once, like a rich man. Annie was a ghost in the house. She kept the place clean, served up the dinners, and tended to her mother, yet even as she went about her work in front of Monsieur’s eyes, she was somehow absent. When he asked her to play with him, she agreed, though this seemed more of an indulgence on her part than a desire. She never again played her own compositions, only what he suggested, and there was something new in the sound she created, which Monsieur took some while to identify as joy. Why she was joyful, he could not imagine.

Over this long visit, Monsieur had become used to Annie’s lip and grew tired of her father’s constant references to it. When he said so, he and Cantabile argued, and the disagreeable atmosphere was rendered almost intolerable by Monseiur’s stuffed nose and by the weather: outside objectionably hot; inside, chilled. The music master either sweated or shivered. Never, he thought, had he lived in a city with houses so badly arranged.

*   *   *

A
T
S
OHO
Square, there was also an atmosphere, though this had nothing to do with the weather. Sawney Sawneyford had never had cause for complaint about his daughter before, and though he had no discernible cause now, he felt that something was not as it used to be.

Alathea had been a half-blossomed child of twelve when she first crept to him in the night. They were living at Blackfriars, renting two rooms from an actress whose admirers often fought for her attention. Alathea had been frightened by the midnight din spilling up the stairs. She had knocked at his door. He had allowed her in. The next night, for the same reason, she crept to him again, all round and warm, with a scent like her mama’s. Of course he knew it was his daughter, not his wife who was pressing against his side. Nevertheless, if he did not open his eyes, he could pretend. It could do no harm. An innocent comfort. He kept his eyes closed. He shifted. She shifted. He turned toward her. He had expected stillness, but after a moment’s confusion, she was actively accommodating. It was over in seconds. The following night, with no din on the stairs, she returned. He never asked why; she never said. After that, though she did not creep in every night, and he never ordered her, he was always waiting. They never referred to it except when Alathea needed the abortionist, and even then, after her first alarmed request for help, only obliquely until the abortionist was needed no more. Nor, though he hoped she would, did Sawneyford ask his daughter to remove his wife’s wedding ring from her thumb. In the end, he ceased to think of it as a wedding ring at all.

The actress’s admirers called Alathea “beguiling.” The actress herself, catching the tilt of Alathea’s eyes, called her “unnatural.” The lady began to harbor suspicions. Before her suspicions could be aired, the Soho Square house turned up. Overnight, Sawneyford and Alathea were gone, with no forwarding address.

It was in Soho Square that Sawneyford first visited Alathea’s own bed. He had not been sure of his reception but need not have worried. She was accommodating as always. In her own domain—she had chosen dark top-floor rooms originally designed for servants—she appeared more adult. That was when he began to bring jewels. Some men might, by this time, have been pretending their daughters were changelings, not their daughters at all. Sawneyford did not bother. There was no need for make-believe since the arrangement suited them both. Sawneyford had never thought it would last forever. He did, however, believe that until she left him for a husband, Alathea would be exclusively his.

Sawneyford was a man who knew things. He prided himself on it. He knew, for example, all the sharp practices of the trading floor and the sharpest practitioners. He knew the name of every member of the Society of the Friends of the People. He knew that Brass’s hairdresser had not paid the powder tax. He knew that Mrs. Frogmorton hid Frilly’s butcher’s bill. He also knew, although it was of no interest to him, that Everina Drigg’s new teeth had cost twenty pounds and were, in fact, secondhand. It was troublesome to realize that there was something about Alathea he both knew and did not know. While outwardly nothing had changed, Sawneyford felt a presence. When he dripped his diamonds, he felt another’s eyes. When he touched her hidden folds, he felt another’s fingers. Her lips were darkened by another’s shadow, her scent edged with something unfamiliar. He feared a trespasser. In his own bed, in this state of knowing unknowing, he lay unmoving and uneasy. Alathea, Alathea, Alathea. Daughter, lover, the only person in the world about whom he cared. How to discover what he wanted to know without breaking the silence about such matters that they both observed? He tried several times. He scuffed over words, never sure which ones to use. He grew angry with himself, and then with her. She waited patiently, whatever his mood, never interrupting. They ate meals together. They sat together. He knew they were no longer together. Somehow, without any visible sign of departure she was leaving him, and he could not bear it.

TEN

Lessons resumed and Monsieur rejoiced, at first, when his mornings were busy again. But he, too, had a problem. It was not Mrs. Frogmorton. She had ceased attending lessons. Monsieur could have stripped naked in the drawing room and danced a jig without fear of interruption. It was not even that if he wished for Alathea’s services, he must now instigate proceedings. Her lips, hair, and hands were willing, only he must ask. His problem was unexpected, namely that when he thought of tumbling Marianne, everything wilted. Marianne was not a girl. She was not even an animal. She was a vegetable and he could muster no desire for a vegetable. Yet he could not leave her out. Once one girl had fallen, all must quickly follow. Soon Mrs. Frogmorton would give him the concert date and then he must set his date for the deflowerings.

With some exasperation, he also found himself at a loss with Georgiana, though for different reasons. Georgiana touched him. Apart from Alathea’s lessons, which were hardly lessons, the hour with Mademoiselle Brass was the one to which he looked forward most. Her perfect nose occasionally stopped him midsentence. The blue veins tracing her wrists delighted him. The small dip at the base of her neck moved him. And that tiny mole behind her left ear. He had only recently noticed it and thought she was quite unaware.

Monsieur had chosen Georgiana’s
Clavier Übung
variations with care. “Variation 2, my dear dove. The tune is wistful if taken slowly, and the left hand—my hand to start with, I will play with you—so steady and dependable. You will imbue it with magic. Then Variation 3, the first canon, no less. Not the best of canons—even Herr Bach nods from time to time—but my arrangement of it and your playing will remedy its deficiencies.” Her rapt attention was flattering. And this disconcerted the most: he was not a man easily flattered.

Worse, her innocence dampened his lust. It would be like defiling a child. True, when her skin flushed with effort and the milk-white top of a breast blossomed through the stitching of a gown, if he concentrated hard, he felt reassuring stirrings. But a man needed more than stirrings.

Today, with September well established, he decided he would try to stiffen the stirrings. He wondered whether laughter would help. He could remember instances when it had.

Georgiana arrived wearing green, the end of her nose still charmingly tanned from her week by the sea. Before she sat down, he played Variation 30. “Mademoiselle, Herr Bach called this a ‘quodlibet,’ or ‘what pleases.’ And do you know what pleased him?” He was smiling so broadly, she had to smile too. “Folk dances, and comic roundelays,” Monsieur said. “He would gather his family together and they would mix up all manner of songs”—his entire being twinkled—“some rather naughty, Mademoiselle Georgiana! How they would laugh, Herr Bach and his family, at those naughty concoctions. And Herr Bach wanted to share his fun, so here, at the end of this work for the soul’s delight, is Herr Bach laughing.” He played the quodlibet again, with mock solemnity, then played it again, taking liberties with the time, which might not have pleased Herr Bach.

Georgiana obligingly laughed out loud. She was still laughing as she and Monsieur left the quodlibet and practiced the first canon’s semiquavers, his fingers playing the bass, hers the treble, their shoulders brushing. “Curve, curve, curve, mademoiselle!” She curved, her semiquavers grew lighter, and there she was, flying and laughing as their hands collided. “My dear Georgiana,” Monsieur murmured. He directed his eyes to her bosom, to those thighs, separated for the pedals. A slight flicker. He concentrated on it.

As the variation ended, Georgiana leaned in to look at some fingering, then turned, her face open to his. “When we both play, it’s like cat’s cradle,” she told him with her shy smile.

“A cat with a cradle? What strange habits you English have!”

“Don’t you know it?”

“I know nothing about cats.”

“It’s a game, Monsieur!” She pulled out a ribbon from her hair, tied it, and spread it taut over her fingers. “See! You must take it from me by catching these two strands between finger and thumb and passing them under.” Since both hands were occupied, she touched the ribbon with her nose.

“Like this?” He followed her instructions.

“Up and over, Monsieur, and then spread your fingers and thumbs.” He spread—the ribbon collapsed.

“No, no, Monsieur Belladroit.” Georgiana shook her head. “Let’s try again.”

They tried again, Georgiana the sweetest of tutors, Monsieur the humblest of pupils, and there, amid the collapse of the cradle, Monsieur reckoned that with Georgiana all would be well. When the time came, he would take her, and he would treat her with the care she deserved.

Mrs. Frogmorton caught him as he was leaving. “The concert day,” she said, beaming. “The second Saturday in December.”

“The girls will be ready,” he said, looking her straight in the eye. “Quite ready.” On his way back to Cantabile’s, he lectured himself about Marianne and set a date of his own.

*   *   *

I
N EARLY
October, everything damp, all summer’s light and heat vanished as though never intending to return (the Manchester Square winter drapes went up smartish), Harriet was the first to notice a change in Monsieur. She noticed it in his mouth. “Are you quite well?” she asked. “Is it the drizzle? It doesn’t always rain in October. Sometimes we can have a nice week. Sometimes.” She did not wish to raise his hopes.

“It is my father, mademoiselle,” Monsieur said.

She stopped playing. “Bad news?”

“Yes.” He sighed. Harriet was encouraging. Monsieur feigned unwillingness, then capitulated. “He is dead.”

“Oh! I am sorry!” Harriet removed her hands entirely from the keys—she had been about to start, almost at full speed, Variation 17, which she was to play with Georgiana, and with which she still had many difficulties. “Is your mother alone?”

Monsieur considered. “My mother has been alone for some time,” he told her. It was useful, a pianoforte stool, for this kind of story. You could turn to face or look ahead at the music. Both seemed natural. “She and my father married for love, but love did not last. Since I was a tiny child they have lived separately.”

“That is sad,” said Harriet.

“The sadness, mademoiselle, lies in the fact that my father was a wastrel and cared neither for me nor for my mother. He has now been executed as a Jacobin. He was not a Jacobin. It matters little. My father has always been on the wrong side of everything.”

“Executed?” Harriet’s round eyes grew rounder. She was wearing her bloody shoes today. The stain had never quite come out. She rubbed the toe on the underside of the sustaining pedal. “Oh, Monsieur. That’s horrible.”

“Horrible? Oh no. Very quick, I think. And my mother did not mind. She has always depended on me, not on him. It is why I give lessons. I do not resent it. Though the sea currently parts us, my mother and I are close.”

“The reward you get from teaching us can’t be more than shillings,” Harriet said, glad to move on from the blood, “and you’ve no time to teach anybody else. Your mother must survive on very little.”

“I send everything I can, and it is sent with love, mademoiselle.” He did not hide the fact that his heart was stirred by Harriet’s practicality. His expression had precisely the right effect.

“Of course,” said Harriet, and touched his arm. “We can’t supply love but I’m sure we can supply more money. I’ll tell my father.”

“Indeed no,” said Monsieur, slightly caught out. “I am paid most satisfactorily, and I would be grateful also if you would not tell the others.” He could not remember what he had said to Marianne or Georgiana about his parentage. “I do not wish for pity. Let us continue. Your respective papas do not pay me to talk of my troubles. We need to work on your staccato and I would like to hear Variations 11 and 20 before we finish. You are doing well, Mademoiselle Harriet, but both are difficult, and I think, even at the concert, I must help you out. If you are ready, let us arrange ourselves carefully.”

Harriet was still concerned. “Don’t you want to go home for the funeral?”