According to Queeney Read online

  ‘I shall return at four o’clock’ was all he said, then, bringing his melancholy face close to hers, pressed dry lips against her cheek. It was the merest peck, yet it was not his habit to kiss her and never when sober.

  ‘Four o’clock,’ she echoed and, neither raised nor lowered by his gesture, wiped her face with her sleeve. He was a good man, one she had come to like, not love, a sentiment she felt contrary to the proper order of affections existing between men and women. Her mother, who lived on a diet of vegetables and water and could not be accused of emotions disturbed by either spirits or meat, often referred to the dead Mr Salusbury as a ‘monster she had been fond of to distraction’. At such times Mrs Thrale, observing the light of passion in her mother’s eyes, felt envy. On Sundays, in church, she sometimes prayed, without fervour, to be persecuted by love.

  At noon, Queeney awake and the weather still balmy, Mrs Thrale told Old Nurse to carry the child outdoors. Mrs Salusbury and she were about to follow when Mr Langton came downstairs. After standing in the porch for some considerable time, languidly waving his hand back and forth to test the temperature of the air, he agreed to accompany them. By the time they set foot on the gravel Old Nurse and Queeney were nowhere to be seen.

  Walking with the extremely lofty Bennet Langton was tiring. In order to remain at his side his female companions, both short of stature, were forced into an unseemly trot. There was little opportunity to remark upon the heavenly blue of the cloudless sky, the glittering reflections of sun on foliage, to breathe in the sweet perfume of the full-blown roses lolling on their mound above the ice house. Each inhalation was vital to sustain motion, if not life. True, Mr Langton checked his loping stride from time to time and sought to regulate his step, but all too soon forgot. Peering upwards at him, the cloth of his hat mottled by the shadows cast by the beech leaves, it occurred to Mrs Thrale that, should such an unlikely situation arise, she would be well prepared to keep pace with a giraffe.

  Perhaps he read her thoughts, for presently he launched into an anecdote concerning himself and Mr Garrick, who was expected that afternoon. ‘It was winter’, he began, ‘and Davy and I had been invited to take dinner at the house of a mutual acquaintance. I was late … the weather was very inclement—’

  Here Mrs Salusbury exchanged sly glances with her daughter. Bennet Langton was always late for appointments. Those who knew him wisely took it into account. If guests were expected at five o’clock, Langton was told he would be required at three.

  ‘When I entered the room Davy leapt on to a chair and asked me how I did. It was quite comical.’

  ‘And uncivil,’ cried Mrs Salusbury, puffing.

  ‘No matter. I believe I got the better of him. “Thank you,” I replied, “I am quite well …” then no sooner had Davy got down from his chair than I knelt in front of him and held out my hand.’

  ‘He is, of course, on the small side,’ observed Mrs Salusbury. ‘And conscious of it.’ She came to a halt; holding her finger to her chin as though thinking the matter over, she fought for breath.

  Mrs Thrale remained silent. She had heard the story many times, indeed fancied she had been present on the actual occasion. To the best of her memory it had been Garrick who had turned the tables – quoting from The Tempest, he had promptly retorted, ‘Give me thy hand. I do begin to have bloody thoughts.’

  At the recollection, she grew agitated, her own thoughts being far from serene. Not a twelvemonth had passed since the funeral of her second daughter, and though it was true the sickly infant had not lived long enough to leave any lasting impression, the experience had caused upset. Now, four months gone with a third child, she often tormented herself with gruesome images. She was sure Queeney had scrambled free from Old Nurse’s arms and was at this very moment tottering towards the lake. Old Nurse, blinded by age and sunlight, mistakenly took her to be sitting at her feet, tearing the heads off cowslips.

  ‘Queeney is now on the mend,’ she announced aloud, to reassure herself, and fairly scurried off along the path, although not ahead of Mr Langton. Mrs Salusbury gave up the race and coming to an upturned bucket left by workmen engaged in extending the stables, collapsed upon it, back to the sun, eyes closed and hand pressed to her thudding heart.

  Mrs Thrale, thoughts jumbled, had no sooner descended the steps that led between the lilac bushes than she saw Mr Langton and Old Nurse, the child in her arms, coming towards her.

  ‘Queeney, Queeney,’ she called out, and ran to clasp her close. She met with resistance; no amount of tugging, or pinching, would budge the child. Face flushed with resolve, Queeney stared defiantly and tightened her grip about Nurse’s neck. Her bonnet had slipped off and the glitter of the lake tipped her curls with silver. Relief replaced with anger, Mrs Thrale would have slapped her into submission but for the lofty presence of Bennet Langton.

  ‘The bond between nurse and child’, he observed unwisely, ‘is often stronger than the natural one we suppose to exist.’

  ‘The sun is too hot,’ snapped Mrs Thrale. ‘We shall all be more comfortable indoors.’ Retracing her steps, she snagged her dress on a lilac bush and could have wept with vexation.

  Mrs Salusbury, dozing on her upturned bucket, was disturbed by the sound of footsteps on gravel. Opening her eyes, she saw in the distance the portly figure of Mr Johnson rounding the wall of the pigsty, an addition caused to be built by the pork-loving Henry Thrale to house a Cheshire hog, recently slaughtered on account of its being virtually wild, without fat and so savage as to be a danger to all within reach.

  Mr Johnson’s advance along the path, though no less erratic, was more convoluted than usual. He had abandoned his rolling gait in favour of a zigzag progression, each diagonal embarked upon the moment the appropriate foot met the grass verge. Several times it was apparent he had turned too imprecisely, for he walked back and started over again. But for good manners Mrs Salusbury would have swivelled the opposite way, to avoid confrontation.

  Mr Johnson and she were not friends. When first he had come to her son-in-law’s table in the Borough, she had been delighted to make the acquaintance of such an enlightened man. She had so many questions to which he alone, being so learned and yet so lacking in cant, would be able to provide the answers. From the very beginning – she had sought his opinion of the silk riots – he had put her down and continued to do so. His residence at Streatham Park, his every need catered to by her daughter, Hester, had restored his health but failed to improve his temper. Though he no longer woke the household in the dark hours with his mumbling perambulations along the corridors, excursions which drove the befuddled servants from their beds and obliged them into nightly stalkings for fear he put his candle down beside a curtain and set the house ablaze, he was still fiery in regard to herself. She had caught him out more than once in the invention of answers to her numerous enquiries as to his opinion of this or that political conundrum. At first she had laboured under the delusion that the chuckles that punctuated his replies, the frequent glances he cast around the table, the throwing of salt over his shoulder, were no more than displays of eccentricity. No longer; she now thought him ill-bred.

  Her daughter held that the antagonism between them was the result of jealousy on his part. He needed her undivided attention, seeing he was beset by demons and had not had the advantage of a mother’s love of the sort she herself had known. Mrs Salusbury knew this was sincere; she loved her daughter and to the best of her ability had not tried to mould her. Even so, she kept hidden her own feelings of jealousy occasioned by the encroaching influence of the ever-present Mr Johnson, who at this very moment, burbling to himself, was on a zigzag collision course with her person. She shut her eyes once more and slumped lower as his mutterings grew louder.

  He came so close that his sleeve brushed her bonnet – she distinctly heard the curious words, October good blast to blow the hog mast – and then he veered to the right and was gone. She had taken the precaution of tucking her feet out of reach, though even if
he had trodden on them he would not have noticed, of that she was sure. It was not poorness of vision that rendered her invisible, simply that she was of no more interest to him than the stone urns set at frequent intervals along the way. Turning, she saw his stout white calves were devoid of stockings and that he wore slippers. The slip-slap of his feet as he veered down the path grew fainter and faded altogether as he entered the shadow of the oak trees and melted from sight.

  Gradually she became aware of other sounds, the shrill barking of Belle as she raced alongside the poultry yard, the hum of bees in search of roses, the rush of air as birds swooped overhead. She dozed again, hearing in the swish of wings an echo of the waves lapping the shore at Pwllheli, where once, her shoes laced with salt, the argumentative Mr Salusbury had knelt in the damp sand and asked for her hand. If one is not caressed, thought Mrs Salusbury, one develops thorns. She was not entirely thinking of Mr Johnson.

  He, finding the grounds deserted save for Mrs Salusbury, whom he had stumbled upon squatting on the path in the act of passing water, felt he had been abandoned. Rising from his bed, he had come downstairs to a house empty of all but the servants, and now rehearsed in his head in what manner he would reproach Mrs Thrale when next they met.

  Dear Mistress, he would say – smiling to soften the rebuke – I thought to see you at the breakfast table. She: My dear friend, the sunshine called me, seduced me, etc. He: My dear Madam, the sun will burn everlastingly. Our little illumination, I fear, will be extinguished in the time it takes for a leaf to fall from the tree. Far from satisfied with this exchange, he lunged at the oak leaves with his stick.

  Four months had elapsed since the day when, like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh, reason had forsaken him and he had been brought to Streatham Park. For five long weeks he had remained closeted in his room, seeing no one but Mrs Thrale. They had neither nature nor nurture in common, yet in her alone had he confided the thoughts that caused him such unease. Not quite all …

  Since that enforced seclusion he had sufficiently mended to resume his old way of life. Though he now spent the better part of each week in the country, he tried, whenever possible, to return to London on a Friday evening to give both companionship and succour to the troublesome occupants of Johnson Court. There, on Saturdays, he received callers and dined with friends. Sundays, he made sure the members of his household ate a hearty dinner, after which, gathering them around the coals in the parlour, he endeavoured to convince them of the common vicissitudes that bound them together.

  Mondays were fraught, for at noon Thrale’s coach arrived and either Mrs Desmoulins or Mrs Williams, often both, contrived to delay him by a listing of Dr Levet’s numerous faults. He fought to be without prejudice but his sympathies lay with Levet rather than with the blind Mrs Williams and the all-too-seeing Mrs Desmoulins. Levet never resorted to tears.

  He returned home – he had come to think of Streatham in no other light – to a flattering regard for his well-being. He had no sooner to mention that a broiled lobster or a game pie was to his liking than it appeared on the dinner table. If, in an aside, he remarked that the writing table in his chamber was good but small, a more commodious one was placed at his disposal within the hour. Aware that on such a bed of roses the weeds of indolence flourished, he dropped to his knees every night and resolved to mend his ways and rise early – so far without success. Mid-day generally found him still abed.

  A stone having lodged under his heel, he stopped on the path to shake it loose and was surprised to see that he was wearing slippers. He supposed he had prudently left off his shoes on account of the silver buckles Henry Thrale had provided him with three weeks before.

  He had cause, beyond footwear, to respect Thrale, who had recently shown him drawings of the library he planned to build on to the west wing of the house. ‘Its design, Sam,’ he had said, ‘will be mine … but I depend on you to choose the books on its shelves.’

  Thrale’s honesty, his lack of affectation – he was that contradiction in terms, an educated man who cared little for reading – was to be admired. Many wealthy men had been known to furnish a library and later blame others for its lack of excellence.

  The task would require patience and diligence, a Gothick rather than a Modern library was desirable, but the request was only reasonable considering the hospitality, tempered with affection, so lavishly bestowed. No man loved another without expectation of returns.

  Standing there, it occurred to him that he was feeling in excellent bodily health. His breathing was sound, his stomach easy, and he was free of those pains which afflicted his groin.

  On an impulse, and to test his lungs, he lumbered into a run, which he sustained until he reached the lake. A solitary duck flapped its wings at his approach. Breathless, but not unnaturally so, he dug into his pockets and skimmed orange peel across the water, promoting ripples. The duck, obedient to natural laws, swam in widening circles.

  He was about to turn back in the direction of the house when his attention was caught by an object trapped in the rushes. He took it for a log of wood, but closer scrutiny revealed it to be a roll of canvas tied with twine. Using his stick, he attempted to poke it loose, at which it cast off and began to bob away.

  Without a moment’s thought, he tore off his clothes and plunged into the lake, only to find the water came no higher than his knees. He was in time to pluck out the package before it sank. Climbing on to the bank, he examined the contents, which proved of no great interest, being but an ancient fan set with glass panels in which were embedded three round objects. He fancied they might be coins, until, rubbing off the mud, he saw they were buttons, each one engraved with the image of a leaping dog.

  He was wiping himself dry with his shirt, the beams of the sun striking fire from the gold amulet hung about his neck, when he spied someone advancing along the path. At this distance, judging from the pace, he thought it to be one of the elderly Southwark workmen employed on extensions and improvements, yet, even as he watched, the figure turned tail and retreated with speed, arms flapping the air as though pursued by wild beasts.

  I am not alone, he told himself. The world is full of madmen.

  From London that afternoon came Mr and Mrs Jackson, Miss Reynolds, Arthur Murphy and the Jesuit, Dr Fitzpatrick, the last being an old friend of Henry Thrale, as was Humphrey Jackson, the chemist. Both had known him from his fox-hunting bachelor days when he’d kept a pack of hounds at Croydon. Garrick was to have brought Miss Reynolds, but at the last moment he had been delayed and Murphy had obliged. The reason for the delay, when explained, caused merriment all round.

  ‘At three o’clock’, Murphy said, ‘the manager of Covent Garden sent word to Drury Lane that Davy was to come immediately owing to Mr Quin having suffered a calamity in the middle of his denouncement of Desdemona.’

  ‘What sort of calamity?’ asked Mrs Salusbury, who until that moment had been leaning back in her chair and wishing herself in bed.

  ‘The comical sort,’ said Murphy.

  ‘Tell, tell,’ squealed Mrs Jackson.

  ‘It appears’, continued Murphy, ‘that for some years past Quin’s gums have been in a diseased state …’

  ‘Which is why Mrs Ford waves her fan so vigorously,’ put in Mrs Thrale.

  ‘He had enunciated with admirable restraint, Iago, All my fond love thus do I blow to Heaven, yet when the time came for him to make his exit such was his feeling for the drama that all caution left him and he fairly bellowed, Damn her, lewd minx! O, damn her! … at which exclamation his few remaining teeth lost their hold and flew across the stage.’

  ‘Flew,’ echoed Mrs Salusbury.

  ‘Like crumbs,’ said Murphy.

  The laughter was prolonged, Mr Johnson, in particular, positively shaking with mirth. Indeed, the story tickled him to such a degree that he strode about declaiming Othello’s words several times over. He had caught the sun and his face glowed. Even Miss Reynolds allowed herself a half-smile at Quin’s expense.
This was unusual; due to domestic circumstances she generally leant towards the underdog. In spite of the hilarity, Mrs Thrale was aware there wasn’t one among them, herself included, who wasn’t secretly engaged in running their tongue along their gums.

  She was pleased the party was proceeding so well. It was not always easy to promote a convivial atmosphere before the wine had taken effect, and well-nigh impossible if Johnson happened to be out of sorts; when he was in a gloom the whole company fell under his shadow.

  Bennet Langton not yet come down and Mrs Jackson politely enquiring after the health of Queeney, Henry Thrale demanded the child should be brought from the nursery. When she came he sat her on his knee, where she perched quite contentedly and accepted the attentions of the company with composure. She even allowed her mother to dab the perspiration from her scarlet cheeks.

  ‘The inoculation against the small-pox is a success,’ Mrs Thrale announced. ‘Dr Sutton assures me all danger is past.’

  The compliments on her daughter’s prettiness – such lovely eyes, such a winsome curve to her mouth – provoked her into boasting of Queeney’s more important attributes. She said, ‘She knows the compass as perfectly as any mariner upon the sea, is mistress of the solar system and the signs of the Zodiac …’

  ‘What a little marvel,’ babbled Mrs Jackson.

  ‘… and is thoroughly acquainted with the difference between the Ecliptick and Equator. She is also able to pronounce the names of all the capitals of Europe, recite the paternoster, the three Christian virtues in English …’

  ‘A little marvel,’ repeated Mrs Jackson, who had no children of her own, and was glad of it.

  ‘… also the four Cardinal ones in Latin.’ Mrs Thrale’s last words were rendered almost inaudible by a tremendous clearing of the throat executed by Mr Johnson. She looked at him and saw that he was frowning, and knew the cause, for he had once told her that as a clever child he had suffered much from being put on show by his father. All the same, she saw no reason to subdue her own motherly pride. Raising her voice, she said, ‘In the last few months she has learnt to recount, with near perfect accuracy, the Judgement of Paris and the legend of Perseus and Andromeda.’