‘You are late, again. Toujours, toujours en retard.’ The delicate lips – a trace of colour there too, Jack saw – drew into a pout before she carried on in that mix of language they used before the lessons proper began. ‘You do not care that you spend so little time here. Your lesson – pft! ça ne fait rien. Moi, aussi!’ She turned back to the window.
‘Non, Clottie, je suis desolé. J’étais … très … très … busy. For you. Pour toi. Regarde!’ She faced him again as he reached into his satchel. ‘I have three gifts—’
‘Trois cadeaux,’ she corrected, coming away from the window, eyebrows still raised.
‘Oui, trois cadeaux. Le premier …’
She squealed when she saw the Pot and Pineapple’s distinctive paper cone. ‘Les fruits au sucre?’
‘Naturellement.’ He handed them over, content to watch her revert to the girl she still could be, especially as the woman he’d kept waiting now retreated. She offered him the cone, smiling up at him, those reddened lips now smeared in crystallized white, but he declined. It was more fun watching her unobserved. When she’d finished, she took a handkerchief and delicately patted at her mouth before raising her pale-blue eyes again. ‘Et le deuxième …?’
The second present, procured at the curiosities shop, required a touch of the theatre.
‘Ferme les yeux,’ he ordered and went to the mantelshelf, moving aside the little china shepherds and milkmaids there, reaching again into his satchel. Just before he opened the Hessian sack though, he glanced back. ‘Ferme!’ he bellowed, in mock anger, and with a little giggle she complied.
When he had put the object in position, he went back to her, behind her, laying his hands across her eyes. She gasped, and her own hands rose to cover his. Behind her like this, he could feel the heat of her body, rising from the ivory folds, could just glimpse within them the rounding that was another sign of her encroaching womanhood. He knew he shouldn’t, mustn’t linger on that view, on those thoughts. So he opened his hands.
Her reaction was everything he’d hoped it would be, for she shrieked, staggered back against him, he had to hold her to him as she fought both to turn away from and regard the horror on her shelf.
‘Ah, Dieu! Dieu! C’est horrible! Qu’ est-ce que c’est?’
Her voice was frightened, her stare undeniably fascinated. She had often confessed a love of monsters. Now he had brought her one of her own. ‘C’est … c’est …’ He had no words for this in her language. ‘It’s a merman. Caught in the Sea of Japan. Half man, half fish. Un … er … demi-poisson? See.’ He tried to lead her forward but she resisted so he went to the creature. ‘It has the head of a man but look at its teeth …’ he put his fingers into the gaping mouth and then cried out, jerking his fingers back at her scream. ‘Ah, like daggers,’ he continued, smiling, sucking at his forefinger. ‘It has the arms of a man too and fingers, regarde …’ He bent one back. ‘But look at the tail – pure fish.’
She came forward a step then. ‘How … why is it so … dry?’
‘Mummified.’ He tapped the tail and it gave out a hollow note. ‘Probably hundreds of years old. Maybe thousands.’
She came close now, reached up a finger to touch it. ‘It’s terrible,’ she said, fascinated. ‘And how … how do you think he … they … is there a mermaid too?’
‘Where there is one, there has to be more. I think this poor little lad has been wrenched away from his love.’ He watched her eyes widen – delectable sight! – as she stroked the scaly tail. ‘And that … that is my third present to you.’
He led her to the chaise, made her sit. Then he reached within his bag again and pulled out the paper he’d laboured so hard on that morning. He took up position just beside the creature, adopted the prescribed pose for tragedy as gleaned from the works of Le Brun, and began.
ODE TO A MERMAN
In distant seas I sought my love
Through reeds below and shoals above
And there, by man, was t’aen.
With my last breath, Clothilde, I cried,
For thee I searched, for thee I died
For thy sweet love was slain.
Jack glanced at his audience. Tears had filled her beauteous eyes, a hand was raised to her lips. He continued.
So here I sit, sans love, sans life
And dream of you, my half-fish wife
Who swims on all alone.
Yet mantelshelf contains me not
In dreams I seek our blessed plot
In reedy beds I moan.
He had turned side on to her, staring as if through fathoms of water to a heaven denied far above, a hand raised before him as if he would soar from those depths. He held the pose, waited for the sound of her tears falling, as they must.
A snort. Poor lass, he thought, so overcome that she releases so indelicate a sound. He turned to her.
‘Fishwife?’ she said, her lower lip thrust out, her brow distorted in a frown. ‘You compare me to a fishwife?’
‘What?’ Jack turned, lowering the paper. ‘No, no, not “fish-wife”. It is “Half-fish … wife”! The hyphen, see where it is?’
He showed her the paper and she squinted down at it. ‘Ah, je comprends. Je suis “the mermaid”, la Petite Fille de la Mer. Comme lui, half fish. Un moitié poisson.’
‘Exactement.’
Her frown clung as she scanned the sheet. ‘I think the terms might be better … en français.’
Of course! Everything always sounded better in French!
Surely, it was fairly clear. He didn’t mind someone analysing his endeavours, indeed he always welcomed criticism, but surely she could have shown the emotion first and saved the commentary for later?
‘Clothilde,’ he said sadly, ‘do you not like the poem I wrote for you?’
‘Ah, non, Jacques. Je l’adore. I love it. It’s so … so …’ She studied the paper for inspiration.
He didn’t think he could bear another comment. And there were other things that needed attention. ‘And does the poet not deserve a fee?’
She looked up then, all pretend innocence. ‘What fee?’
He lowered himself beside her, took her hand. They had been in this very position two weeks before. He had kissed each of her fingers then. He had something more ambitious in mind now. ‘This,’ he said, and leaned forward.
‘Jacques!’ She turned her face but did not pull away. Not far enough, anyway. His lips reached her cheek, touched her. ‘Jacques,’ she repeated but in a different tone and turned her face back. ‘We mustn’t. My father—’
‘Gone out,’ he said hoarsely, ‘and Claude has silver to warn us of his return.’
‘Claude …’ she said, her voice concerned, but he could not let another man’s name rest on her lips. So he kissed them, his hand behind her back so that he could help her resist her initial impulse to pull away. It worked, for she tensed, then relaxed and they stayed joined for a delicious age. Her lips were as sweet as their promise, as sweet as they had been in a thousand dreams. He was sure that had nothing to do with the crystals of sugar that clung to them.
He could, would have stayed like that for weeks, content only with that. Clothilde, though, had begun to lean further and further back so that to maintain contact he had to lean forward. They reached the balance point and toppled over it, she falling, him on top. Suddenly he was pressed to her at more points than just lips and he realized that she had indeed grown into a woman.
‘Clothilde,’ he said, huskily.
And then came the sound of boots on the stairs, coming up fast. Jack was across the room to the mantelshelf in a moment. Clothilde rushed to the window, trying to puff out a skirt that had been somewhat flattened. They reached their respective positions just as the door burst open.
‘Monsieur Guen!’
‘Monsieur Absolute!’ Clothilde’s father stood in the doorway. Though of smallish stature he was broad in the shoulder, with hands surprisingly large for a man who did such delicate work in gold. These wer
e clenching and unclenching now as he looked from his daughter to Jack. ‘I did not think you were coming today, Monsieur Absolute, you were so late. That is why I was not here to greet you.’ He entered the room slowly, looking around as if he expected someone else to be lurking there. Behind him on the landing stood Claude.
Jack glared at the apprentice for a moment then turned his attention back to the goldsmith. ‘Yes, I am sorry, sir, I had … business in the town that delayed me.’
‘Business?’ Her father had reached her at the window and Clothilde was not doing well under his gaze. ‘Ça va, ma petite?’ he said, then continued, turning to Jack, ‘Do you not think my daughter looks a little fevered, sir?’
‘Can’t say I noticed, Monsieur Guen. But I am fevered myself. Been having the Devil’s own time with some conjugations.’
‘Indeed? Is my child not teaching you correctly?’
‘Au contraire, monsieur. She is … most agreeable.’
‘Agreeable?’
It was a word Jack would have had back. He was sure there was something similar in French that he meant to say. That was the problem with this bantering in two languages at once!
Monsieur Guen raised a hand to his daughter’s brow. ‘Hot indeed. I fear for her, monsieur.’
‘Papa, I am quite well,’ Clothilde protested.
Her father ignored her. ‘Would you mind if we terminated the lesson for today to let her rest?’
‘Oh no, Papa, why?’
Jack struggled to veil his disappointment. He had thought of little but Clothilde since waking and now to have only these brief moments with her? But the goldsmith looked immovable.
He swallowed. ‘As you wish, monsieur.’
‘Same time, next week then, But downstairs, hein? Where I will then make sure I can keep an eye on your … conjugations, yes?’
Jack collected his satchel from near the fireplace, his hat and stick. Straightening, he winked once at the merman, then turned.
Clothilde’s father had the poem in his hand. ‘Fishwife?’ he enquired.
As his mother said, these days every man styled himself a critic. It was best to ignore them. ‘Monsieur. Mademoiselle.’ He bowed to each of them then proceeded to the door where a smirking Claude stepped aside. Jack gave him another glare. There was no doubt that the fellow had gone to fetch his master back, despite the sixpence he had retained. There was nothing that Jack could do about that now. But he’d pay him for it one day, nonetheless.
Gaining the street, plunged immediately into the hurly-burly, Jack leaned in the doorway and took stock. Disappointment still held him. But then the second of his morning reveries returned and he remembered what his satchel, lightened by the removal of the merman, yet contained.
‘Chair!’ he called out and immediately two fellows stopped beside him. It was not a long walk but the streets were crowded and the cobbles made slick by a small shower. Besides, he wished to conserve his stamina. He suspected he would need it.
Climbing in, he called out his destination. ‘Golden Square.’
– SIX –
Sonnet
There was a mews that ran from Warwick Street along the back of Golden Square and it was at the entrance to this that Jack got the chairmen to set him down. He was not allowed to enter the house from the front, for the lady was assiduously rebuilding her reputation and a handsome lad dashing up the front steps and not leaving for hours would not help in that. So he paid the men off, then entered the cobbled cul-de-sac. Carriages were being readied, for it was near the hour that calls would be made. Thus occupied, no man paid him attention as he went to a small entrance, unlocked it with a key hidden for the purpose above the lintel, and slipped inside. There he paused, back to the door, staring down the garden to the rear aspect of the house.
His first delight at seeing her, stood before her fireplace, changed swiftly to chagrin when he saw that she was talking to someone, ire increasing when his hope that it was merely a maid was dashed by a man who approached her – touched her dress! – before disappearing again out of sight. In that glimpse, Jack confirmed it was not Lord Melbury; Jack had calculated that, as Parliament sat, His Lordship would not visit his mistress before it rose and thus he was safe in this surprise. But a stranger – and young from the glance of him! Jack would not be so churlish as to be jealous of the man who paid for the house and everything inside it. But any other rival he would not brook.
Jealousy spurred him forward. He could have gone through the rear door, up the two flights to the salon. But a wrought-iron balcony gave onto the room he sought and a sturdy vine was as good as a stair. Swiftly he climbed. As he did he heard laughter – hers, so distinctively husky, so full of pleasure – and the man’s. Lowering himself carefully over the balustrade, he moved to the open window.
‘You cannot mean it, sir,’ came her voice, ‘you wish me to clutch it … thus.’
‘Exactly so, madam, yet fingers closer to the tip … yes, now thrust it forward and a little more on the side.’
‘Like so?’
‘Just so. Yes, madam, yes! That is … exquisite!’
It was the man’s groan of delight that brought Jack from his hiding place and into the room with a bellow of indignation.
‘Pox!’ yelped the man, stumbling away, nearly bringing down what Jack saw to be an easel. Clutched in his hand was a palette and knife.
‘Jack,’ yelled Fanny, ‘what the …’ She gathered her full hooped skirt and marched towards him. ‘What the Devil do you think you are up to?’
‘Um … thought I’d surprise you. Didn’t know you had company.’
He was aware how pathetic it sounded. Fanny took charge, just as she always did. ‘You will apologize to Mr Gainsborough at once for your japes.’ Turning to the artist, she said, ‘I am so sorry, sir. My brother lives in the country and does not know the rules of the town. Such as using the customary entrances.’ She turned and glared.
The artist had righted himself and his easel. ‘Not at all, madam. I was … unaware that you possessed such a thing as a brother.’
‘Half-brother, actually.’ Jack had stepped forward on Fanny’s look and allowed his accent to slip into some of the wider vowels of his youth. ‘My sister’s kind enough to narrow the gulf between us. I’m only up for the week, see. Lawks, what a time I be havin’.’
‘Indeed? And what part of the country are you from?’
Deep into a lie, Jack thought he might as well continue. ‘Somerset,’ he said with the suitable ‘zeds’.
‘Really? I am off to Bath myself shortly.’
‘Sure, I’ve been bathing myself since I was four,’ he said, and let out a hoot of laughter.
‘Pay no attention to this idiot, sir. The distaff side of the family, you know. T’was ever mad.’ She glared again at Jack before continuing, ‘Mr Gainsborough means he is off to live and work there. I was fortunate enough to waylay him as he passed through London. And before his reputation is so established I will be unable to afford his time or pay his fee.’
‘Ah, Miss Harper,’ the artist replied, ‘there is always time for such beauty.’
Fanny beamed, while Jack thought, notice he didn’t snub the money!
‘Still,’ Gainsborough continued, ‘I am sure you wish to visit with your brother. And my hand will shake somewhat after that … ha, ha … shock. So perhaps we will leave it here for this day.’
‘Oh, sir. And just when I got this into the correct position for you.’ She raised the porte-crayon in her left hand.
‘We will remember it for next time.’ He was packing up his things. ‘One more session should accomplish it.’
Jack and Fanny waited, side by side, while the artist finished gathering. Then he carefully laid a cloth over the easel, stepped back and bowed.
‘I do see the familial resemblance now you are together. Perhaps, next time, a double portrait?’
‘We would be zo honoured, sir. Zounds, we’ve a site for such a one ’bove the old fireplace in Harper
Hall.’
His accent wandered around the West Country during this sentence and her nails dug in so hard he barely restrained a yelp. Gainsborough smiled and left the room. They heard his tread down the stairs in silence and the front door close.
‘Idiot!’ Fanny hissed.
‘Fanny,’ he laughed, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Oh yes, you seem it.’ She stood, hands on hips, glaring. ‘Here have I been working to restore my name and you jeopardize that work with your schoolboy antics.’
Jack felt chastened. It had been, for Fanny, a long path back from the nadir of appearing, five years before, in Harris’s Book of Ladies. It was just after her husband, Thomas Harper, the actor, had sued her for ‘criminal conversation’ – her adultery with a fellow player. The divorce had sent her into a decline but Harris had been premature – she had never ‘traded’ in the way that most of the girls in his list did. In the gradation of bought love, she had never sunk even as low as a ‘Lady of Pleasure’. And now she was a ‘kept mistress’, why, she was almost respectable. Nonetheless, ‘The Harp’ as she had been known, had been written up in alluring terms indeed. Jack knew them well. After their first … encounter, he had found an old copy and had clipped the page to stick within his Greek Grammar. It was more enticing than any Ovid.
And this Venus had chosen him! All because Lord Melbury had been too busy to escort her home from the theatre three months before and had sent the schoolboy Jack in his place. She had drunk a little and fondled him in the chair. At her house, she had invited him in and, within minutes, had taken what he had long sought to give away.
‘Well, young Jack,’ she’d said then, lying back and laughing, ‘you do have much to learn.’
And for the three months since she had taught him. She only had three rules: cleanliness, cundums and kindness. So he bathed. He bought his engines (‘for only the man who keeps me here may come to me unarmoured!’ she’d declared). And he learnt how to take his time and return the pleasure given.
And for these lessons, he repaid her with jealousy and threatened exposure?