Part One

The House in the Country

 

The man with a moustache sweeps me up in his arms and bangs me down upon the balustrade. A huge puff of smoke floats out of his mouth. As if he were a dragon. There is a chain hanging from a pin only a few inches away from my nose.

‘Dragon. Gold.’

‘Stand to attention when you’re addressing me, my girl.’ He peers into my eyeballs. I see that his eyes are grey, but flecked with gold. ‘You don’t look like your mother yet, you know. But there’s hope that you will.’

Is he wearing a uniform? Gold shiny buttons and a silk cravat? I put out my fingers and touch the gold. I unleash a strange smell: herbs, musk, forests. And the weariness of immense distances.

‘Travelling dragon.’ I look up at him, already in love with his adventures. ‘Give me gold.’

‘Gold? You little mercenary! Well, well. Don’t think I didn’t offer all that to your mother. Estates, servants, riches, a world of luxury. She wouldn’t have me. Wouldn’t. Even her damned father advised her to reconsider. Another mercenary bastard. She’d promised herself to the other one. Would you believe it? Promised? Who in God’s name makes or keeps promises at the age of sixteen?’

The General has lost his audience. I am now peering over the side of the balustrade. What can I see? A torrent of yellow flowers, falling, falling into a large basin. A stone dolphin with two putti astride, laughing forever, their faces turned in different directions. A little spurt of water. And circle upon circle of reflections. My face, far below me, shimmers, vanishes, shimmers, gone. The General hauls me upright.

‘Easy there. Don’t you fall off. Your mother will say that I had a jealous fit and pushed you.’

The dragon is giving out small, equal gusts of smoke. I stare hard at his moustachios to find the fire. The little brown poker is too small and thin to produce all that smoke. But come to think of it, the more brilliant the fire, the less smoke. I remember a perpetually blazing corner of the nursery and sit thinking of the dolls on the window sill and the inevitability of tea-time. The dragon unties the chain of gold and carefully fastens it around my neck. He has huge hairy fingers and wears an elaborate heavy ring. But his fingers are gentle, hesitant, insecure. He lays the chain flat, free of my lace collar and red curls.

‘There you are. You asked for gold.’

I understand at once. The dragon is asking me to be his friend. We will be friends forever. We will have adventures together.

‘Dragon.’ I reach up to put my fingers into silk, my head into smoke, my nose into gold. The General kisses the top of my head.

‘Francisco! I thought you’d kidnapped her.’

She is there. My Beloved. All her smooth pink scents, the prickle and stab of her jewellery, the rustle of her silks, the curl of her lip, a pearl in each ear. Now I am perched on her hip, my plump legs astride her waist. I look down at the stone putti in the fountain beneath us. They are riding dolphins. I kiss the shelving pink curve of her jaw and cry out in her ear.

‘Look! Gold.’

‘Now who gave you that?’

Her face is inches away from mine. My Beloved fingers the chain.

‘Mine,’ I say defensively. Hoping we can share it later.

‘Of course it’s yours. Francisco, you mustn’t give her such expensive things.’ But I know from her tone that she is only pretending to disapprove. She looks up at the dragon. He is twice her size. She is so beautiful to touch. I finger her skin, her pearls. She is mine. She smells of lilacs and powder. The dragon is enveloped in a dense cloud of smoke.

‘Come down into the garden. They won’t miss you for twenty minutes. Don’t look so suspicious. Bring that child. How can I be guilty of any gross improprieties if you’ve got the child in your arms?’

I am swept away into the shrubbery.

Here the earth smells of leaf mould and damp. Drops of water in sunshine become a cluster of brilliants on the rhododendrons. I stare at thick green rushing towards me at eye level. The woman says very little to the man. My Beloved holds me as if she were drowning. But I am looking up, up, up at a vast gulf of blue. Beyond the green cathedral, spangled with pink and purple flowers, into an eternity of luminous blue.

‘Blue. Mine,’ I shriek in her ear.

‘Shhh, darling.’

The dragon is talking to her. Above his low muttering I hear the creak of leather, the cracking of twigs. Now my Beloved is my faithful mare. We are charging towards a gap in the enemy ranks. I dig my heels into her pure white flanks as we sweep past the poised Frenchies, with their green faces and their pink flowering guns. One of the rhododendrons has been transformed into a general. The colossus with the explosion of purple in his cockade must be Bonaparte himself. I flash my sword at him. He wants to steal my chain. My mare shifts beneath me.

‘Don’t kick, sweetheart.’

We sweep towards the gap. My standard-bearer is in front. Smoking. Galloping. We come out of the shrubbery and my mare falls beneath me. But we have escaped the French. Here, all before us, are English fields. Cows standing, chewing, staring, in the spring sunshine. The white fence is a network of shadows on green. Above, the eternity of blue, and all before me, the vastness of this world.

‘Why don’t you run about a little, my love?’

I have lost my army, my horse, my weapons. But I have escaped the French. As I always do in my dreams. I see my Beloved, growing a little smaller, laughing, laughing. Suddenly I have fallen over a grave.

It is a large mound of earth moving slightly at the edges. It is a small grave, not yet decorated with a slab and a name. But it is opening. I sit quite still to watch the resurrection of the dead and my buttocks are growing damp. The earth sarcophagus is cracked across. There is a huge fissure in the lid of this grave, as if the last day had already been announced and the spirit had escaped. I peer superstitiously into the crack, but see only lichen, earth and broken stone. I sit staring at shining wet oceans of green and a trembling grave. This is a child’s grave. A child even younger than I am. A child who never knew her Beloved. But she is coming back, struggling under the weight of earth. I lean forward to help. This is a mistake. I catch sight of her claws and pink nose. Quickly. Quickly. She descends back into the grave with a flurry of wet, crumbling earth. I am nearly in tears with disappointment. My dragon must dig her up. My Beloved must find me a baby. I look round for reinforcements. I demand help.

The dragon has quenched his fire. They have both fallen over, like toppled, coloured columns. He is trying to gobble up my Beloved. His moustachios encircle her soft face; one giant claw is fixed in the back of her head, disturbing her gorgeous torrent of ribbons and curls, his other claw is clamped about her waist. No, it is rising, rising carefully towards her left breast. His back arches above her as she falls prone on the grass. Crushed. Her white silk is being eaten by his grey and red stripes. I love her. And he is killing her.

I let out a great wail.

The dragon lets her go. A little. But she is in no hurry to come to me. She enjoys being eaten. She wants him to consume her. She has lost the use of her legs. I increase the volume and frequency of the wail.

At last my Beloved is sweeping across the green meadows towards me. My Beloved, her hooves pounding the earth, her mane flying, her blue and pink banners trailing in the wind, her eyes flashing as she catches sight of the tiny grave.

‘Oh, my darling love. It’s only a mole. Did it frighten you?’

Yes, it did. The dragon is not to be trusted. He will eat you if you let him too close. I look up mistrustfully, my eyes filling with tears. But my Beloved is not bleeding. Nor is she covered with bites. She has escaped the dragon’s claws. I can see him puffing gently on the horizon. If he comes any closer I will steal all his gold. Yes, all his gold.

But as we scamper back towards him I lose all my fears. They fall away. I have what I want. My Beloved’s hand in mine. Warriors we are. Comrades. Lovers. I will give her all the dragon’s gold. And we will live forever, alone in a cave, somewhere behind the gulf of blue.

‘Chooses her moments, doesn’t she?’ remarks the General.

Suddenly I want to confide in him. Now that my Beloved is completely mine once more.

‘Dead babies.’ I point towards the grave.

‘I haven’t tried to kill you yet.’ The moustache twitches. ‘In fact, for the sake of your mother I will give you anything you want, child. Ask.’

I stare. I have understood. The dragon has become an ancient, leathery, well-travelled magician. He is going to offer me three wishes and this is a test: of my honesty, my breeding, my honour.

My Beloved intervenes. She is not talking to me.

‘I never forgot you. I gave her your name.’

‘She could have been mine in more than name, woman. In fact, can you swear to me that she is not my child?’

Of one thing I am quite certain. I do not belong to the dragon. But he sinks his enormous hairy fingers into my Beloved’s arm. I am too fascinated by his rings, glinting in sunlight, to begin screaming. But as his fingers release her flesh I see small indentations, blue becoming red.

My Beloved bites her lip. I snuggle into her skirts, triumphant, fingering my gold chain. All around us is a world turbulent with spring light. I am delighted; for I have the distinct impression that they are quarrelling about me.

 

*  *  *

 

I watch the firelight making patterns on the tiles. The tiles are black and white marble in the shape of huge diamonds. I try to make my two hands fit completely into one diamond. And they do, easily. I hop like a rabbit from diamond to diamond, each time making sure that my hands never touch the black. If they do touch the black, even the slightest part, something terrible will happen to me. My thumb inadvertently crosses over the forbidden line. And at once my game is finished. I have arrived in a soft, warm stream of red, orange, gold. It is a Turkish carpet. An obstacle presents itself. Four decorated legs in curving black and gold. I hide behind the sofa and peer into two close masses of silk, which are geometric, like the tiles, one is black and one is white. The ladies’ knees are touching. One of them has dropped her glove. I settle down beneath them, their personal voyeur, their spy.

‘. . . a scandal. Well, these days just something of a scandal. I hear she didn’t wear her widow’s weeds a year. I don’t care what she does. Her husband didn’t leave her a penny anyway. It was all entailed to the cousins. And knowing her she’d want the best black silk. Or not wear black at all. But for the look of the thing . . .’

‘. . . mind you, he’d always been her lover. She met him years before. He used to visit our family. And the Barrys were well-connected. She was torn between the two of them when she was sixteen and really very marriageable. The General went off to fight with the French against England and there were tempests of tears. All kinds of carryings-on. He may be twice her age, but he’s a very handsome man. Well, dear, don’t look so startled. I’m old enough to say so. Lady Melbourne thinks so too. He’s wealthy, talented . . . Of course, he has quite shocking political opinions. He always did have. But even radicalism is perfectly fashionable, if you have enough money to carry it off.’

‘Isn’t he from the Americas?’

‘Venezuela. Or somewhere like that, savage and exotic. But wealthy, my dear, with estates, servants, horses, gold. And of course he’s very well-travelled. I heard him say that if the French invasion had succeeded in ’97 it would have been the best thing that could have happened to us. He thinks the world of Bonaparte. And because he fought on the side of the French he’s a marked man in this country. But he has too much money for them to touch him. Mind you, he’s watched. All the time. I have that on the very best authority. Oh yes, he’s a Papist. And it’s rumoured that he’s had that child baptised. The Barrys were Catholics. But what with all his revolutionary sentiments and French principles he’s probably out of favour with the Papists too. Well, you can see why she’s in love.’

‘. . . Jeremiah Bulkeley was a better catch when she was sixteen. Or at least she thought so. She wasn’t quite so adventurous then. And had all the usual illusions. She was just a little country girl. The General had run off to the wars and the Barrys weren’t rich. But, as I say, they were always well-connected. No, she couldn’t have expected to do better than Bulkeley then . . .’

‘She’s free to marry the General now if she wants to. Then she could be received everywhere. Well, perhaps not everywhere . . .’

‘My dear, I’m not sure he’s the marrying kind. And she has some very odd notions.’

‘. . . and there’s that red-headed child of hers . . .’

‘. . . that’s Bulkeley’s child all right . . .’

‘. . . if not my brother’s . . .’

‘. . . my dear Louisa, you don’t suggest . . .’

‘. . . I’m in a position to know and I’m afraid I do . . .’

‘. . . General Francisco de Miranda and Mrs Bulkeley. No, no, we are disgracefully early. Please don’t apologise . . . May I introduce . . .’

I watch the flicker of my Beloved’s dancing slippers as she crosses the tiles. I flatten myself out onto the rich, warm surface. Her satin slippers look like the tropical butterflies Francisco described, with brilliant golden wings, and spots of black, disappearing suddenly by magical cryptic colouration on the surface of a tiger lily. She arrives on the carpet and her feet vanish. This is my choice too – vanish, or be sent to bed.

Overhead I hear the muffled slither of politeness. I have blocked up my ears. If I cannot hear I cannot be seen. I survey the battlefield: to my right, leather boots and dancing shoes, frills, flounces and furbelows, straight ahead, chaise longue legs, two, not very solid-looking, to my left, an armada of fire irons, logs and flames. The door is too far away. There can be no escape. I am a spy. I will be shot. Francisco says that spies are always shot. At once. Without trials. I will therefore fight to the death.

No need. The boots creak backwards, giving me a better view of elegant light trousers, and my Beloved’s graceful ankles, revealed briefly as she turns, the hem of her shawl trailing across the surface of black and white diamonds. A great gust of cold as the other hall door shuts and the winter pours in from the outer world. I slither away towards the umbrellas and coats and discarded bonnets. Pause in the doorway, then a rapid escape to the bottom of the staircase. Hide behind the sideboard.

The double doors are open into the downstairs dining room. This is one of my favourite rooms. So long as I don’t crash into anything I am allowed to wear Francisco’s slippers. These are at least ten sizes too big for me, but I can wedge my feet into the toe and use the open flat backs for ballast. Then, gathering speed on the diamonds in the hall, I can slide from one end of the dining room to the other. Rupert bows ironically low. Polishing the oak boards again, Mademoiselle? I’m glad to see that Mademoiselle takes such an interest in the housework. Rupert thinks that I am monstrously spoilt. He says so. Then panders to my desire for sweet cakes, dipped in sweet wine. Only men work for Francisco. We used to have a maid. But my Beloved had no more money to pay for her. So she left. Then there was no more money to pay for the house. So we left that too. Now we live with Francisco.

The dining table is being laid for supper. There is a huge centrepiece of flowers and fruit, surrounding a small statue of the goddess Flora. Her robe is made of flowers and she carries golden apples in her basket. She is a warm fountain of gold among the white china and dead silver soldiers. I stare at the glasses I am forbidden to touch. Each one has a different face etched in fine swirls. I know all the faces. I have stared at their scratched features, at their grimaces, at their earrings of grapes, their goat-like beards, their ivy-covered rods, their sneers. I want to touch the faces. I am forbidden to touch.

So much I desire is forbidden.

Disgruntled, I check both hall doors, drawing-room door, kitchen door, give myself the all-clear, and then begin the long ascent of the staircase, keeping close to the shadows, counting. The stone stairs are uneven, but I know every step. The candles are lit on the half-landing. The fine glass shades are clear, polished. Salvatore cleans them every day. Francisco bought them from a theatre in Venice that burned down. It was there, just one week before, that he had heard one of the most famous castrati of his age, singing. He explained to me in great detail what a castrato was. It sounded wonderful. You were specially chosen, then you remained a boy forever with a voice borrowed from God and became famous, fat and rich. You never turned into a woman, nor did you die in childbirth.

There is a horsehair cushion on one of the little sofas on the landing. Now it is my saddlepack. I tighten the girth, running two fingers underneath to make certain that my horse is comfortable. I put my feet through the fat stone bannisters and line up my cannon on the front hall door. I have to be both the gunner and the mounted guard. Every so often I change roles. So that my muscles do not freeze up. Up here the hall fire has very little effect. But I cannot be seen. I can pick off anyone who tries to get in. All the guests who have been invited by Francisco and my Beloved are here now. I count out a convoy of elegance and snobbery. Anyone else is an enemy invader. They will be picked off, ascending the staircase.

But no one comes. Rupert and Salvatore are working downstairs. Far away, in the drawing room, the music begins. But I must not abandon my post or fall asleep. At all costs I must guard the door. The intruders may poison the dogs, murder Rupert and Salvatore with machetes, cutting their throats at once so that their screams are inaudible, swarm up the staircase. I am the last outpost of defence. The city depends on me. I stand guard. But no one comes. I begin to doze off, clutching the stone bannisters. My arse is getting cold. The candles gutter above me.

Suddenly I am awake again, staring at the huge picture that is always there, halfway up the staircase. A man and a woman lean close together. They are vast, giants on Olympus. She holds him close to her. Her fingers are entwined in his long black curls. She shows him her naked breast, her nipple appearing pink between the tresses of her torrent of golden hair. The figures are two solid masses of pink and gold, a gigantic expanse of rich merging flesh, looming far above me. Their nakedness shimmers and gleams in the candlelight. His mouth almost touches hers. For a moment I am terrified. Francisco and my Beloved. They have become monsters. Then the world turns black.

‘Why aren’t you in bed yet, child?’

Francisco has stepped out of the painting, dressed in seconds, and is relieving me of my duties.

‘Will you take the second watch?’ I murmur as he disentangles my legs from the cold stone diagonals of the staircase. If he takes over my post he will not be able to climb back into the picture. Yet again I have rescued my Beloved.

‘I’m on duty all night, soldier.’

Now his moustachios are against my face, his arms around me. I hold on tightly, just in case he tries to get away.

‘You are my prisoner. Don’t try anything,’ I give the orders here. He strides up the stairs, two at a time. There is the library, also lit by candles, brown, red and black leather volumes with a gold globe on the top of one of the bookshelves. The wooden ladder is there for a second, then vanishes as we turn the corner. The terrible painting sinks beneath us. I lean over to see whether it is torn at the edges where Francisco stepped out. But now it is too far below us, it is becoming too dark to see. The nursery is engulfed in shadows. We have reached the top of the house.

‘You can’t get away from me,’ I mumble accusingly.

‘You’ve taken me prisoner, have you? Right, I yield.’ Francisco lays me out flat upon my bed. He removes my boots.

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, child, your feet are freezing.’

I used to sleep with my Beloved. She used to warm my feet. Since we came to live with Francisco I have been banished to the nursery. There are compensations, but sleeping alone is not one of them. Francisco gives my toes a bracing rub.

‘All right, soldier. Get in. Wriggle down.’

‘Will you tell me a story?’

Anything to keep him here. And out of the painting.

‘Which one do you want? The escape across the marshlands? The battle with the alligator? The Mohammedan brigand who saved my life?’

‘Tell me the story of the picture on the staircase.’

‘No game, soldier. You’re not old enough for The Rape of Lucretia.’

‘No, no. Not the one with the black horse. The big, big one with the woman and the man.’

‘That’s Juno and Jupiter on Mount Ida. They were the King and Queen of the gods. But Juno was playing a very clever game. You see, there was a war on between the Greeks and the Trojans. All because Paris had run off with Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world . . .’

‘Is she more beautiful than my Beloved?’

‘No, of course not. Juno wasn’t pleased about this, so she was on the side of the Greeks . . .’

‘Why wasn’t she pleased?’

‘She thought that married people shouldn’t run off with people they aren’t married to, so . . .

‘But you said . . .’

‘Listen, soldier, do you want this story or don’t you?’

‘But . . . all right . . . go on.’

‘Juno was on the side of the Greeks and Jupiter was backing the Trojans. So she was hoping to seduce him off to sleep so that she could arrange the war without any interference. She asked Venus, the goddess of love, for help and Venus gave her a secret potion made with the dew of plants from the forest. And Jupiter was overcome with drowsiness and love . . .’

I don’t hear all the story. But I have the impression that Juno and the Greeks are going to win. And so I am reassured. This is my Beloved’s doing. My Beloved is always on the winning side.

 

*  *  *

 

I hear her step, somewhere in the room. I smell warm roses in sunshine. She has been dancing. Her hands are damp.

‘Is that you?’

‘Shhhh, darling. Sleep now. It’s nearly morning.’

But I am wide awake.

‘Did you dance all night?’

She laughs softly.

‘Most of it, yes. When we weren’t eating supper.’

‘Do you love me?’

‘More than anyone else in the world.’

This sounds sufficiently extravagant. But I want more.

‘But do you love me the best? More than Francisco?’

‘Well, it’s different. You can’t really compare.’

This will not do.

‘But if you had to choose?’

There is no hesitation.

‘I would choose you.’

‘Mmmmm.’ I snuggle back down into the dark, satisfied. But there is one more question.

‘Who painted you and Francisco on the staircase?’

‘On the staircase?’

‘Yes, enormous.’

She laughs again. She has gathered up her shawl. She is leaving.

‘That’s Juno and Jupiter. Not us. And that was painted by your uncle, James Barry. Now go to sleep, my love.’

But she is lying. I know she is. It is them.

 

*  *  *

 

I knew who James Barry was. And I was afraid of him. He hated children. He had the reputation of being cantankerous and unreasonable. He was not often in the house. When he was there he ignored me. He usually ignored my Beloved too. He only talked to Francisco. But I spied on his passage through the hallway, up the staircase, into the library, out of the French windows, down the garden walks and into the bushes. I watched over his steps. I hid behind the great ornamental chest which contains the logs to watch him stump into the drawing room. I tried to remember all his swear words. I practised them in secret, on my own, hiding in the gardens. I counted the holes in his stockings. His wig smelt of linseed oil and ashes. I was afraid of him, but I was also fascinated. There was one particular thing about him which held me in thrall.

He looked like me.

And so I began to stalk him. After the night when I saw his painting move I began to lie in wait for him. I stared out of carriage windows. I hunted the walkways in the park, keeping low to the ground. I followed my Beloved’s steps. I checked her daily collection of visiting cards. I listened out for gossip. James Barry was my target, the focus of my imagination.

When I knew James Barry he was an old man, stocky, robust, heavy on his feet, violent with the servants, rude to rich men, and ruder still to ladies who believed in religions. His lined face was impeccably shaven, his eyebrows thin, arched, aristocratic, his glance an inferno of desires.

Barry came to find Francisco. I had seen him from the schoolroom window, where I was sitting in a draught, learning Latin verbs by heart. I looked down through the early leaves which had just begun to thicken and shine. I saw his shabby hat bouncing up the gravel four floors below me. I knew Francisco was out. James Barry was hammering at the door. I crouched and slithered, calculating every distance crossed in relation to the sight-lines up the staircase. I must not be seen. Out of the schoolroom and along the landing, I uncoil steadily, oozing like liquid jelly, one step at a time, flat on my belly, all down the staircase. My Beloved is coming out of the upstairs drawing room; a breath of warm air accompanies her steps. I freeze into a wooden pilaster and become one with the tall clock in the corner as she patters down before me.

Salvatore opens the door. Spectacular, majestic in his bad manners, Barry drops his hat on the bench, refusing to wipe his muddy shoes on the scraper, and marches into the house, leaving a handsome trail of prints all across the immaculate sequence of black and white. He sees my Beloved and grunts the most minimal of greetings. She increases the speed of her descent, but he does not wait for her and stomps away into the downstairs breakfast room. Wherever Barry goes he leaves a trail of dirt. I wait for her to close the door, and for Salvatore to sweep up the mud on the hall flags. Then I continue upon my spiral downwards. By the time I have flattened myself against the breakfast-room door they are having an argument. Unfortunately, James Barry is winning.

‘Ask your husband’s family, girl. I’ve told you. Not a farthing. Not one damned farthing . . .’ Barry’s voice is sharp with irritation. ‘She’s not my responsibility. Can’t you save something out of the housekeeping? Doesn’t Francisco give you enough?’

‘James, this is a family matter. It ought to be. Can’t I even discuss it with you?’

‘Oh, don’t bother me, Mary Ann. If the child’s clever she’ll make her own way in the world. And a better marriage than you did. Let her amuse herself. You’re like a harp with a single string. One long irritating whinge . . .’

I could hear one of them fiddling with the fire irons. That meant that their backs were turned. I risked the door. One of the great advantages of being small and thin is that you can ooze through doors like a flat shadow. I sat holding my breath, crouched between the piano leg and the curtain, when the door, which I had failed to re-shut properly, blew open. They both turned quickly away from the fire. My Beloved was pale, with two red spots, high on each cheek. She stepped across to the door and shut it firmly. Barry pulled one of the chairs closer to the fire. He spat a sizzling gobbet into the flames, then farted as he settled into his seat.

‘Shall I ring for tea?’ he asked rudely, as if nothing was the matter between them. My Beloved sat down upon the sofa, ignoring the bell rope, her back straight.

Barry chuckled, grunted, bit his lip, stared into the flames.

‘I have enemies, Mary Ann. They are jealous of my success. Yes, my success. You may not see me as a success. But even if every door in London was locked against me they would still envy my work.’

Then he began to stare at her. She remained seated in silence while the fire snapped and shuddered. For a few minutes neither of them said anything. Holding my breath involved an enormous effort. I began to dribble into the curtains. Suddenly she rose and tugged at the bell rope. All the drapes shuddered. I feared discovery. Barry watched her every movement, as if he saw her bones beneath the skin.

‘Sit for me again, Mary Ann,’ he cried out with terrible intensity. She sprang to her feet. She was facing me. The two red spots in her cheeks flooded out to her ears and down her neck.

‘No,’ she shouted. And she rushed out of the room, creating a huge gust of air which lifted the curtain and exposed my toes. I felt the tug of her skirt and pelisse, billowing out like a sail as she passed. The double doors slammed behind her.

I peered at the vibrating doors, astonished and impressed. Francisco and my Beloved never shouted at each other. When they discussed their affairs, especially the account books, there was a good deal of laughter and kissing. But she occasionally shouted at me. Barry had made her shout. He not only looked like me, he had the same effect upon my Beloved. As the vibrations from her departure gradually ceased Barry settled back into his chair, then he drew out a pipe and a leather pouch of tobacco. He chuckled to himself. I tried not to breathe. He puffed away quietly for about twenty minutes, accumulating a blue haze by the writing desk and the huge Oriental vase with blue shiny dragons, their faces like Pekinese dogs, which Beloved had told me never to touch. Pins and needles developed in my knees. I was on tiptoe, my single eye pressed to the crack in the curtains.

I grew bored with watching the lines on his face, the creases on his hands, the frayed edge of his coat, his stringy greying hair poking out from the offensive smelly wig, and the mud slowly drying on his tattered shoes and stockings. He was less frightening when he was closely observed. His hair had once been red like mine. I could tell from the thin streaks tied back behind his ears. But it was straight, as Beloved’s would have been had she not spent hours with papers and curling tongs, persuading it to froth and whirl into beautiful curls. Barry clearly spent no time whatsoever on his toilette. He was neither handsome nor glamorous, he wore no jewellery and no frills. He was uncompromisingly plain.

Suddenly he was on his feet, four strides across the carpet and his fist clamped to the back of my neck, flesh and collar and all.

‘Come out, you jealous little bastard or I’ll pull you out by those damned red curls!’

I began yelling at the top of my voice as he dragged me onto the hearth rug. I knew at once that he intended to put out my eyes with a red-hot poker.

‘Silence,’ he thundered, and boxed both my ears.

I shrieked and struggled. Barry picked me up by the belt and suspended me over the fender. The flames were barely two feet away and Barry’s face was bloated and purple. I bit his wrist as hard as I could. He dropped me at once with a tremendous roar and reached for the poker. I somersaulted backwards on the rug, ready to run. Barry was upon me. The double doors flew open with a crash. Handsome, laughing, magnificent in his military uniform of unknown origins, every inch a revolutionary general, Francisco was standing in the doorway, peeling off his gloves.

‘Well, well, James,’ he said, ‘am I interrupting a family discussion?’

 

*  *  *

 

‘You mustn’t bite your uncle,’ my Beloved reproaches me gently, ‘whatever he says to you.’

‘He made you shout too,’ I counter.

‘And you mustn’t spy on your elders.’ She flushes slightly, re­­­opening the abandoned Latin verbs. ‘Let’s try confiteor.’

‘Was he really my father?’

‘Whatever gave you that idea?’ she says sharply, but I am watching closely and she has turned slightly pale. ‘He’s your uncle. He’s my brother.’

‘But I never met my father.’

‘Yes you did. You just don’t remember him. You were very small when he died.’

A pause. I am still looking at her intently and my Beloved picks up her embroidery. She bites her lip. Then she continues.

‘Won’t Francisco do? He’s like a father to you.’

‘He’s not my father. He’s my commander-in-chief.’

‘But that’s what fathers are.’ At last relaxed, she laughs. I persist gently.

‘He’s my General. Not my father.’

But she was right too. Francisco had become a father to me and I loved him for it. I wanted to give in to her. I wanted her to win. And so I recited the verb confiteor, through all its conjugations, without hesitation or mistake.

 

*  *  *

 

It was Francisco who taught me to read and to write. He taught me geography, history, philosophy, Latin, Greek, German and Spanish. We read the classics together. I read Homer in Greek long before I read Pope’s translations. We also studied botany, but his books were about the plants in South America. All this information was exotic and marvellous and proved useless when I was confronted with English hedgerows. Every morning, even on the mornings when they had had guests or had been to the theatre the night before, Francisco would be waiting for me in the library, and I would stand before him and recite whatever I had learned, before we proceeded to the next lesson. Learning was like building a cathedral. There was a proper order in which to construct the building. Francisco had a masterplan. I never doubted that. I learned many things by heart. Francisco said that it was important to learn with all your heart. And to know things, so that whatever else was taken from you, if you were a prisoner, or a hostage in the mountains, you would still guard many things that were secret, that only you would know. Knowledge would always protect you from destruction. He told me that it was more important to be clever than to be beautiful.

Beloved also heard me recite everything I had learned. Often in the late afternoons, when she was getting dressed. I loved to deserve her lavish praise. She never praised without kissing. And she taught me French, because he said she had a charming accent, which I would do well to acquire. But I never learned dancing, drawing, embroidery or theology. James Barry said that I had never learned any morals either. I heard him say so. And Beloved turned pink again with rage. But she didn’t say anything. That was years later, when I didn’t need her to speak up for me.

Francisco would wait for me in his library and when I appeared and saluted formally, legs together, back straight, keep your elbow parallel with your ear, that’s right, he would always ask the same thing: ‘What’s the news from the front today, soldier?’ turning his face to the fire so that all his colours matched the bindings of his books, red, grey, brown, black, gold. His lamps had special safety devices, which snuffed them out, in case they were overturned. But he ordered a fire in the library, even in July, because he loved and treasured his books so well. That was one way I knew he loved me. He let me read his books.

On the lower shelves were ranks of huge encyclopaedias with blue and black leather bindings, dictionaries and books on natural history with hand-coloured engravings. Each image was separated from the facing page by a soft detachable sheet of absorbent paper. I was allowed to look at them if I could prove that my hands were clean. Francisco had travelled the world, amassing trunks of foreign languages and images. He had great hard-backed portfolios of maps and diagrams, architectural plans, political cartoons and anatomical explanations. He had an enormous collection of scrolls, some of them in Arabic and Hebrew. I was shown these on special occasions, but never allowed to touch them, no matter how clean my hands were. They were covered in a strange white powder, which slaughtered approaching insects.

‘In the tropics there are tiny beetles which burrow right inside the books. You find every page covered with tiny holes,’ Francisco explained as I sniffed his deadly powders speculatively, ‘but this keeps them off. Go easy on the poison, soldier. It’s not snuff.’

Francisco read mostly poetry and philosophy. He loved both Rousseau and Voltaire. When we were together alone in the evenings he read Shakespeare aloud, trembling with passion or shaking with laughter, changing voices for every part. Even if I didn’t get the jokes, I laughed with him. When he was quite carried away, he lovingly stroked all the buttons on the front of his uniform and made them shimmer and vibrate in the lamplight. I watched the dark hair shining on the back of his hands. He told me that he had learned to hate tyrants by reading Milton and he made me recite long passages from Paradise Lost. The passage that I loved best was the creation of the world. The tiny print swam before my eyes as I clutched the blue and gold text and spoke the words by heart as the lion struggled into being out of the cloying earth. When I looked up, Francisco was gently turning his huge globe of the pendant world, his hands full of tenderness and his eyes full of tears.

We spent hours perched on his moving wooden steps, a smooth spiral in shining elder with two platforms, one halfway down and one at the top, where we could sit on different levels and read to each other. Some of his books were locked up, and others were chained to the shelf. I gazed at these sinister, silent volumes, and the iron convent grilles which separated me from the rows of white vellum. Here was my forbidden tree, my fruit.

‘You’ll read them, soldier,’ said Francisco, ‘when you’re old enough.’

Once he took down a vast volume on South America and spread it out before me on the lectern. We had reached the chapter on the conquest of the Incas. Francisco never taught me one thing at a time: this was to be a mixture of history, geography and revolutionary politics. Slavery, torture and war had precise and graphic meanings for me long before I was ten years old. As he told the story of his continent and his peoples, Francsico became impassioned, distressed and enraged.

‘With my own eyes, child, I have seen the Cross of Christ dishonoured and abused. Simple holy people forced down upon their knees to kiss the jewels hanging from the hands of the priests. We have grown rich and fat off foreign wars and the slavery of our fellow men . . .

‘Our own dignity depends upon the love and care we have for others. If I do not care for my brother, I become less human . . .

‘Love is not a feeling, child, nor even the passion of lovers, which always seeks only its own gratification. It is the act of caring, of giving, the act of protecting the weak, the helpless, the imprisoned and the desperate. Love is the hand raised in defence. You cannot love and keep your hands clean . . .

‘The Church is founded upon a monstrous lie. No priest is closer to God than a simple peasant who cannot read or write, but drives his goats across the common pasture in the mornings . . .

‘Do you think that God speaks in Latin? Of course you must learn Latin. To read Virgil, Ovid, Lucretius, Propertius, Tacitus. And you must learn how to interpret passion from Catullus. But you must never confuse sexual passion and the deeds of disinterested love. And you must read your Bible in plain English . . .

‘When you fall in love, soldier, remember this. Passion is a form of madness. You will lose your way in the forest. Love is true dedication and service to your fellow human beings. That will bring you joy, ecstasy and suffering enough. Love will bring you closer to the people you serve and closer to God . . .’

My Beloved stood before us, like Judgement in the doorway, with a draught tugging at her skirts.

‘You’d be less sentimental about the people if you had to deal with them every day,’ she snapped. ‘Twelve bottles of the Portuguese dessert wine are missing from the cellar. Salvatore denies all knowledge of the matter.’

‘Love is sharing all your worldly goods with God’s people,’ I suggested.

Francisco rose up in a burst of irritation and snatched the cellar keys that were swinging from Beloved’s fingers.

‘Who has duplicates?’

‘You. And Salvatore.’

‘Hmm.’ Francisco stalked out of the door and down the staircase to negotiate a confrontation between idealism and villainy. My Beloved sat down beside me in the firelight, and smiled in a warm, late-afternoon conspiracy.

‘Well, my dearest, I’ll give them twenty minutes to accuse, shout, simmer and bicker. And then I’ll ring for tea. Where had you got to?’

‘Here. The speech by the Spanish governor.’

She peered at the drawings of ecclesiastical torture apparatus in use upon several unfortunate Incas, sketched from life.

‘Darling, is this quite suitable?’

‘Francisco was telling me that it was all lies, because the Spanish intended to defraud the Incas of all their rights and land and force them to turn Christian. He said that real love showed itself when you treated your defeated enemy with generosity. He says treachery and deceit are the worst vices.’

‘Francisco is a soldier, darling. And a man of honour.’

‘Then you don’t think he’s right?’

I climbed onto the arm of her chair, coming closer to her scent. I could see the fine hair on her cheek and her skin warming in the reflection of the flames. The library rearranged itself around her; all the books turned to face her, the maps fluttered in their soft tissue, the bust of Shakespeare winked, the music, neatly arranged in folders, began to hum softly to itself. She was the Queen of Wands, the Witch of Beauty, my Beloved. I gazed at her. She smiled. And my adoration became ecstasy.

‘Listen,’ she said, ‘you love your General. You want him always to be right and to know everything. He is a man who believes in liberty, the freedom of the people from Church and State. He has travelled the world and is very well-read. You want to believe every word he says and to be exactly like him. You will be. I promise you that. But remember that he is also a rich man. And the rich can afford to forget what things cost. Francisco will give you all he has. But you will also have something else, which is what I will give to you. You will know the cost of the real world, the price paid for Francisco’s ideas. And who usually pays.’

I didn’t understand her. So I asked another question.

‘Who stole the wine?’

‘Salvatore, of course.’

‘How do you know?’

‘He sold it to the innkeeper at the Dog and Duck to pay his gambling debts. He hoped I wouldn’t notice.’

‘How are you so sure?’

‘Do you think I don’t know what goes on at the Dog and Duck?’

‘Will you dismiss Salvatore?’

The penultimate housemaid had been dismissed for stealing. And she had denied it all, even the conclusive incriminating evidence, with a good deal of screaming in the kitchen. Francisco preferred men in his house anyway, so that it was more like a barracks.

‘Heavens, no. I’ll deduct it from his wages over a year.’

‘Is that what Francisco means when he says that real love is being generous to your defeated enemy?’

My Beloved laughed.

‘Begin reading, my precious. Here.’

 

*  *  *

 

There were two washes: the small wash, half a day, supervised by my Beloved, her keys rattling as she rationed out the soap, and the great wash, which was carried out like a military operation, by Mrs Blake and Mrs Booth.

A great wash in the household happened every two weeks. The event lasted all day and took place in the washhouse, which stood between the kitchen and the side door leading into the vegetable garden. Its windows looked out onto a small sunny yard where a bevy of scrawny cats gathered on the gravel, awaiting the regular leftovers. One had a sinister milky eye and was called Nelson. But the others had no names and would not be touched. I often sat in the doorway while the wash was going on, flicking pebbles at strategic objects in the yard: a derelict mangle, a rusting bucket. The cats either chased the pebbles or menaced me. Inside the washhouse were two vast stone sinks with wellworn, pale, wooden washboards, streaked with grey. In the corner chimney was a small wood stove with a brick surround on which we placed a huge cauldron for boiling whites.

If I escaped unnoticed from the nursery or lessons in the library I was allowed to fill the cauldron and help Salvatore light the fire. Then I could watch the back door and listen for the bell which announced the joint arrival of Mrs Blake and Mrs Booth. They were enormous: red-boned Amazons of tremendous proportions, who arrived in bonnets and mufflers, shawls, aprons and clogs. They had political opinions. They accused Salvatore, to his face, of being a French spy. He ignored them.

‘He can’t possibly be a French spy,’ I said. ‘He comes from Venezuela.’

‘That’s what you think, my lad. But he could still be working for the Frenchies. You don’t think Bonaparte would be so stupid as to employ a Frenchman, do you? That’s too obvious. No, he’s too clever. Much better to use someone from the Americas. Someone nobody’d suspect.’

‘But you do suspect him, Mrs Booth. So it hasn’t worked.’

Like all children, I was relentlessly logical.

‘Well, I have my suspicions. But that’s because I’m nobody’s fool.’ She unwound her shawl, which smelled of sweat and woodsmoke, and laid it down beside the mangle in the washhouse. If I helped with the wash I was allowed to feed sheets through the mangle. Sheets, pillowcases and underwear were boiled hot to kill the bugs. The rest was washed in icy water which we purchased from the neighbour’s well. Mrs Blake never said anything except ‘Down with the King’ from time to time, to get on Mrs Booth’s nerves. My Beloved often said that Francisco employed political eccentrics who would never be employed anywhere else.

‘But that can’t be true,’ I argued. Mrs Blake and Mrs Booth did the great wash for all the other houses all down the street.

Next time they came I made trouble deliberately, and asked Mrs Booth outright whether she thought that Francisco was a French spy too. His past was certainly against him.

‘Never,’ she thundered. ‘Your stepfather is a gentleman.’

This was the first time that I had heard him referred to as my stepfather. My Beloved was there with us, bent double, her hands filthy, organising the wood to stoke the bread ovens and the washhouse fires.

‘Did you become an honest woman and marry Francisco? Without telling me?’

Her ears turned red. Then she boxed mine smartly. Mrs Booth chuckled into her soap suds.

 

*  *  *

 

She may not have been married to him, but my Beloved managed every aspect of Francisco’s household. She never lay about in bed drinking chocolate like some of the ladies whom we visited. She nosed around in cupboards and kept an immaculate ledger of household accounts. She had two books. One was her rough copy, which had lots of crossings-out and figures scrawled in different colours. The other was in ravishing italics, with no mistakes. This was the one she presented to Francisco for inspection every Friday morning. I don’t think he ever added up the figures; he just admired her handwriting and kissed her fingers. She could have been accumulating a small fortune, for Francisco was very generous with his money. But she always insisted that it was very important for women to be above and beyond all suspicion in matters of honour and matters of money.

‘You must always be able to account for every hour and every penny.’ She placed her blotter carefully on her final addition. Mrs Booth said that there were only two authorities to whom women were accountable: God and their husbands. I repeated this. My Beloved exploded.

‘You must never marry! Never! I forbid it.’

Then she burst into tears.

I promised her never to marry. I was so anxious to reassure her, that I never asked her why.

I was nine years old at that time.

 

*  *  *

 

I did not see James Barry again, after the biting incident in the breakfast room, for at least half a year. He may have come to the house late at night. My Beloved may have visited his studio. Or he may have been travelling abroad. She never mentioned him. I never heard him announced. He didn’t leave visiting cards. I went through the collection on the hall platter. But that didn’t mean that they hadn’t seen him or that he hadn’t come.

That spring I studied hard: Italian, French, botany, history, Latin and mathematics, at which I excelled. Francisco was delighted with me. But I still never learned how to draw, press flowers into delicate arrangements or execute passable water-colours, and I didn’t have a dancing master. I realised that other children learned these things and that I was being given a selective education. That was the year we set up a telescope on the back lawn and spent hours gazing at the stars. Francisco named one constellation after another. I too learned how to read the strange invisible lines in the sky: Orion, Ursa Major, Pleiades, the seven sisters clustered together, see, see how clear they are.

‘The secrets of heaven and earth, soldier, are engraved in the tiniest things, in the ants you never notice until you lie flat on your stomach in the grass, in the great formations of the clouds and in these distant specks of light, which are the source of so many myths and dreams. The greatest mysteries of all are written in the hearts of women and men. Look, there’s Mars, the bloody planet and the God of War. The brighter one on the left. Hold on, I’ll lift you up.’

Francisco lifted me onto a stool, to stare out into the blurred void. He wanted me to grasp this distance, this immensity, without fear. He wanted me to feel that my small spot of earth was the point from which I had the right to watch the whole world and all the worlds beyond. I remember the gleam of his pearl cufflinks, which shone in the pale dark of a London garden. Francisco brought me up to ask questions and to insist upon my right to know the answer.

We packed up the house at the beginning of June, just as our city garden unfolded into a torrent of colours.

‘Where are we going? Where are we going?’

‘To Shropshire,’ said Francisco, ‘to spend the summer at a big house in the country with a very eccentric friend of mine – and your mother’s. He’s wealthy, learned and amusing. He’s the eleventh Earl of Buchan. There will be other children there and you will enjoy yourself. And you’ll be seeing your uncle, James Barry.’

He paused. He looked at me hard. Then he laughed.

‘And whatever you do, don’t bite him again. Understood?’

Yes, sir.

 

*  *  *

 

My Beloved complained all the way to Shropshire. She complained of the heat, the inns, the beds, the coach, the roads, the mosquitoes, the food, her fatigue, my fidgeting, Francisco’s equanimity. I gathered from all this that she did not want to visit the country at all. But I was transfixed by white blossom and fresh, glimmering green. Down all the muddy roads, throughout all the counties, beside every turnpike through which we passed, a lavish, floating mass of white pushed against the carriage doors. I sat pinned to the grimy windows, mesmerised by the unending flood of hawthorn and cow parsley, fresh in the damp sunlight, breathless beside this glamorous, sinuous, seductive green. The whole colour of my world, illuminated by June shafts of heat, was green. Thatched roofs, brick walls and roses always gave way to green; even the beggars seemed less menacing as they emerged, tattered and haggard, from the wall of green. My city eyes were drunk with green. I fell in love with a spring that I had never seen before, my first green spring.

‘Don’t you remember Shropshire, soldier? Or the house?’ Francisco tucked my curls into my cap so that no one would see how short my hair had been cut.

‘How could he?’ snapped my Beloved. ‘He can’t have been more than three years old.’

‘It was where I first met you,’ he said, ‘and I was very jealous when I realised that Mary Ann loved somebody else. Even a red-headed little body with ginger freckles, like yourself.’

I saw nothing, trying to remember; just a stone balustrade, two fat cherubs astride a stone dolphin, and a golden chain.

The house in Shropshire was enormous, but we arrived after dark. I was asleep in Francisco’s arms when we trotted into the park. I only half remember the uneven outline of its massive bulk. I don’t remember the people standing on the great steps under the perpendicular Tudor chimneys, but apparently they were all there to meet us. I didn’t like to think that someone had looked at me when I was asleep. Francisco carried me up all the long staircases to bed. I fell asleep again, convinced that I was in one of Piranesi’s carceri.

My room was at the top of the house and I awoke in the early dawn to a cascade of birdsong and chilly, damp sheets. I was still wearing my vest and short trousers. My other clothes lay in a heap on the floor and I was dangerously hungry. I pissed in the chipped blue chamberpot which was kept under the bed. It had a sinister yellow stain all round the rim. I tried not to notice, pulled on yesterday’s clothes and set off to explore the house.

It was a monument of dull mirrors and chipped gilt. I crept through the shadowed spaces, but all my initial precautions were worthless, as it was a house where children were ignored. I caught sight of Rupert descending the cellar staircase as if he had lived there all his life. He nodded, winked at me, and disappeared into the vaults. The kitchens were in action, with a good deal of shouting going on above the slit throats of dead poultry, as yet unplucked, and the large vats of milk, which a woman with huge red hands was skimming off, dipping her fingers into the cream from time to time. I stole two bread rolls still warm from the ovens and ran for my life. No one took any notice of me. So I slithered on, past pantries, up back stairs, into a room hung with foul-smelling linen and a row of full chamberpots awaiting attention. I inspected their washhouse, twice the size of ours. I tried the door of the dresser. Locked. I hid in the broom and bucket cupboard while the butler cleaned the fish knives and candlesticks. He muttered to himself while he did it and never saw me. I willed him to see me, but he never once looked round. I finally reached the drawing room, which had four sets of French windows, opening out onto endless damp lawns and a distant ha-ha.

I was discreetly trying out the sofa springs when the great clock, whose face was painted with sentimental pansies, suddenly gulped, whirred, breathed and struck eight o’clock. Beside the clock, on a shining table, under a thin glass dome, stood an authentic, once living fox, stuffed, dynamic, with its teeth bared. Beneath one triumphant paw, a dead rabbit lay stretched out, bloody and bizarre, its glass eye fixed on heaven. I gazed at this for a long time. It was very odd to see the natural world, murderous but frozen, presented as a decoration in a family drawing room. I pinned my nose to the thin dome of glass and watched it mist over slightly, as if the animals were breathing. Francisco did not have any curiosity cabinets or geological collections, only books. I peered into the dome, anxious to verify my suspicions that the moss and grass under the fox’s handsome lifted brush were in fact made of slit waxed ribbons.

I never heard him come in. I simply felt his hand clamped to the back of my neck. I was twirled round like a marionette, my feet clear of the ground, and found myself eyeball to eyeball with James Barry.

He hissed into my face, with a little spray of spit, ‘If you try to bite me again, I’ll knock all your teeth out.’

There was a terrible pause. He put me down and whistled quietly for a moment, but he did not relinquish his grip on my collar, and he began to stare into my face with grim fixity. Close to, I could see that his teeth were yellow and rotten. His breath smelt of alcohol and tobacco. He crouched above me triumphantly, staring so hard that I became convinced he was counting my freckles. Gradually, I became less afraid and stared back. The old painter was masticating like a feeding beast. I watched the black hairs in his nostrils quivering as he chewed.

‘I’m sorry I bit you, sir,’ I said finally, and my voice came out firm, but one octave too high.

‘Never say that you’re sorry for the things you meant to do, child.’

He paused and went on chewing and staring.

‘Come and visit my studio, before your eyeballs crack.’

He put out his hand. It was perfectly clean, soft and white; the skin around the fingernails was cracked and scarred. I understood that this was a genuine gesture of friendship and so, without hesitating, I put my hand in his.

James Barry’s studio was on the north side of the house, facing the hill and a huge mass of rhododendrons, which had finished flowering and now formed a darkening phalanx of thick and sultry green. The floor was of polished wood and around the two huge wooden scaffolds which supported his painting there was a mass of crumpled, stained canvas sheeting. His paints lay in disarray on a long table, with a variety of dishes and bowls. I saw a pestle and mortar made of marble, both stained with red. The room was vast and cold, and stank of varnish and turpentine.

I didn’t look at the painting, but out of the great windows. In the rushing shadows and bright bars of sunlight crossing the gardens, I saw rabbits bouncing in the grass and above them, a roaring, seething mass of green.

‘Come and have a look from here.’ Barry gestured towards the painting. ‘You’re too close to see it by the window.’

I stepped back. Parts of the stretched canvas were naked and raw. Across the grimy, unpainted spaces he had drawn careful lines in faint blue crayon: designs for faces, a horse’s arched neck and splayed mane, a staircase on which stood two large classical pots, decorated with grimacing satyrs, just like those on our wine glasses at home. They were partly blocked in with thin paint. I stared, but could not make sense of the fragments. The whole refused to appear. Barry pulled me a little further backwards and set me on a high stool. He was surprisingly strong. I was now on a level with the images before me. And then the action of the painting began to take place. It was Rome, built on the hills in the pale, diminishing background. In the foreground, a battle of sorts. Here were huge Roman figures with straight noses and reddened muscular thighs, flat swords, arms raised in slaughter, or embracing pale, gleaming mounds of naked female flesh. The blood, blond hair and undulating breasts surged and rippled into patterns. It was the scale of the painting that sickened me. Too large, too brutal and too close to my face. I stared. Then shut my eyes.

‘Well?’ Barry was unperturbed. He now stood very close to the painting with his back to me, peering into the layers of paint. ‘Well, child?’

‘What is it?’ I kept my eyes firmly shut. Tell me, I don’t want to look for myself.

‘It’s an historical subject. Naturally. As are all the greatest paintings. You know your history, don’t you? Can’t believe that Francisco hasn’t taught you about the rape of the Sabine women and the founding of Rome.’

I opened my eyes. Once explained, the flesh looked less menacing. Barry ignored me and began working on one huge enfolding Roman arm. Reflected sunlight flickered for an instant on the studio walls. I could hear the faint chime of bells from the domestic quarters in the household. I gazed at the stony Roman profiles, the dimpled jaws, full cheeks and fixed grey eyes. It was oddly frozen, each figure embalmed in gleaming colour; even the tortured female forms seemed suspended, like scientific specimens floating in spirits. I gazed at the static canvas for a long time. And there the figures remained, monumental, immobile, and as lifeless as the volcanic bodies at Pompeii.

‘What’s rape?’ I asked finally. It was clearly slightly different from butchery.

‘It has two meanings, both of which are current here,’ said Barry, without looking round. ‘What does rapere mean in Latin? Answer quickly.’

‘To seize or to snatch.’

‘There you have it,’ Barry commented, beginning to scratch gently at one point of the painting with a tiny razor. ‘The Rape of the Sabines. But it also means to have carnal knowledge of a woman without her consent. I don’t think that the Romans were given to asking anything politely. Anyway, all societies are based on the seizure, slaughter and slavery of women, child. You ask your mother.’

I reflected on this information for a while, but I had the fixed idea that carnal was something to do with meat and thus formed the opinion that the Sabines were obliged by the Romans to eat meat, after having been strictly vegetarian. Francisco had read Horace with me and so I was under the illusion that the Sabines all lived on farms.

‘Here she is. Your mother.’

He stepped aside so that I could see the dark, luminous face of a woman in white, escaping from the painting. It was my Beloved, younger, but just as slender, quick and graceful, her hand half raised to protect her face, her dress torn, one breast exposed; she turned, mouth open, crying out, her curls falling loose down her back. But she was getting away from the Romans; a long, empty alley of cypresses stretched stiffly before her. The painting would soon no longer contain her. I smiled, and Barry understood my smile.

‘Ha. Yes. That’s Mary Ann. Always finds a way out, your mother does. Surprised she got caught pregnant with you, really. Or that she didn’t put paid to you with pointed twigs or by swallowing cockroaches. No morals, that woman. Just brains, plenty of brains . . .’

Barry went on talking, but more to the painting than to me.

‘She’s beautiful now. When she’s not in a temper. But ten years ago she was very, very beautiful. You don’t look like her at all. More’s the pity for you . . .

‘She used to sit for me. When I couldn’t afford models. I put her in every painting. As Juno, Pandora, Cordelia, Eurydice . . . I painted her as Chastity, as Fertility, as Liberty, as Artemis, as Aphrodite, as the Angel or the Maenad. In The Education of Achilles you can just see her beyond the Centaur, a pale wraith, gazing back from the darkness, excluded and envious. She isn’t going to be taught by Centaurs. There’s an odd mixture of cunning and envy in Mary Ann. You can’t see her face, it’s her body I’ve painted . . .

‘I wrote to her, almost daily, during all the years I was in Rome. Why didn’t she wait for me? I’d have sent for her as soon as I was in a position to do so. I’ll never forgive her for that cretinous wretch Bulkeley. A waste, a waste . . . I sent her presents when I had the money. Patterns, stuff, silk, the best lace I could buy from Cambrai. She wanted to travel too, of course. And Father wouldn’t let her. All the education she ever had was what I taught her. And what she taught herself. You’re a lucky little bugger to have Francisco to teach you. He’d take great pains with you. And he’s good to her. But it was through me that she met both Erskine and Miranda. Damn her. She’d never have been anything if it hadn’t been for me . . .

‘I made her what she is, child. But I never made her a whore. She did that all by herself. The woman survives by trickery. Disguises. Who is Mary Ann Barry? Mary Ann Bulkeley? Even her own child will never know. There she sits, nice as pie at the dinner table. Smiling at the men. Pretending to be up on society conversations. The woman wears every face I’ve ever painted . . .

‘I’ve made love to that woman in oils, child, year after year, and she’s always hated me for it . . .’

Suddenly he swung round and glared at me, jabbing the air between us with his brush. The Romans looked out of the painting, swords raised.

‘What does she say about me? Mind you speak the truth.’

There was another terrible pause. I spoke perfect truth.

‘She never mentions your name to me, sir. And when I ask anything about you, she changes the subject.’

‘Ha!’

Barry growled at the Romans, thrusting his nose into a pile of turpentine rags. He said no more. After some minutes had passed in silence and gentle scratching, I climbed carefully and silently down from the stool and crept away into the bowels of the house, closing his studio door behind me.

 

*  *  *

 

The house belonged to the servants in the early mornings. Some of the scullery maids and kitchen boys were my age or only slightly older. I looked at them all with haughty curiosity, spied upon them from cracks and knots in the pantry doors, the tops of garden walls, from behind the dresser. I was desperate with loneliness. Sometimes they giggled and pointed. But mostly, they carried on working or laughing amongst themselves and ignored me. By mid-morning neither my Beloved nor Francisco had appeared and my misery was complete. I had prowled through the stables, cackled at the chickens, eaten a cucumber from the greenhouse and broken one flowerpot. No one wanted to play with me or to be my friend. In fact, I had no idea how to approach the kitchen boys. In London I was used to living with four self-preoccupied adults, but they always had time for me. Francisco gave up part of every day to teach me. I invented my own worlds when I was alone. I knew no other children. Now I was marooned in a mansion of possible acquaintances, none of whom I had managed to meet. I sat down on top of the ha-ha in a pool of gloom, gazing at the distant purple hills of Wales.

Then I saw something white rustling in the long grass beneath me. Hastily, I assumed battle stations, took aim with my stick and prepared to defend my position.

‘Halt! Who goes there?’

A small, dark-headed girl with a dimple in her smile and a gold gypsy ring in her left ear came out of the grass with her hands up.

‘Drop your weapons,’ I commanded.

‘Haven’t got any,’ she said, but she was carrying a ball of white in her left hand.

‘Give me that.’ I still had her covered.

‘Catch.’ She flung up the bundle and swarmed up the sheer face of the ha-ha with rapid agility. Her knees and her apron were covered in grass stains. She worked in the kitchens. I had seen her very early that morning, scouring carrots. She sat down beside me as I laid aside my rifle and undid the bundle. It contained two pairs of white silk stockings.

‘Just trying them on,’ she explained, ‘but they’re too big yet. I’ll keep them till I’m grown.’

‘Whose were they?’ I already knew they were stolen. The dimpled smile was unabashed.

‘Who’d you think? They belonged to the Missus. I’d never lay my hands on your mother’s stockings. Hers don’t have darns. But Lady Elizabeth won’t miss them. She’s got dozens. They’re ever so rich.’

She pulled at my short curls in several different places and gazed at me anxiously.

‘Is it really true you’re Mr Barry’s natural son?’

I flushed bright red with embarrassment and shouted, ‘It’s not true. My father’s dead. He died before you or I were born. And now we live with the General and I’m not a son.’

I hesitated. I had never been dressed as daughters usually were and was therefore swaying in limbo between the safe worlds of either sweet ribbons or breeches.

‘No offence meant,’ said the kitchen girl amiably. ‘My mum’s no more married than yours is. Are you really a girl? Prove it.’

I couldn’t think how to prove it.

‘Don’t be silly,’ she giggled, ‘show us your prick. If you’re a boy you’ve got a prick and if you’re a girl you’ve got a hole. Like skittles. Look.’ And she pulled up her apron and skirts to reveal two plump dirty thighs and a blossoming triangle of soft dark hair. She looked proudly down upon the display. It was more difficult for me to remove my breeches, but I began undoing all the buttons. I fumbled with nervousness and fright. She twitched impatiently at this lengthy operation and before they were half undone she pushed my muddling fingers aside and thrust her hand down my pants. It was a most perturbing sensation. For a second she looked at me, puzzled and amazed, her fingers moving on an exploratory voyage between my legs. Then she burst out laughing, withdrew her hand and kissed me.

‘Well, you’re a sort of a girl, I suppose. But definitely not like me. Perhaps you’re a girl dressed up as a boy? Or a boy that’s got enough girl for it not to matter too much either way. Well, I’ll tell everybody that you’re not Mr Barry’s son after all.’

‘Yes, tell them,’ I said tearfully, floundering in a pool of ambiguity.

‘Don’t cry. Boys don’t cry. And anyway, it’s not sad. He’s an awkward old bugger and I wouldn’t want him for a father. But it is funny that you look just like him.’

‘That’s because he’s my uncle. You can look like your uncle, can’t you?’

‘Then that’ll do as an explanation.’ She gave me another hug and wiped my eyes with the hem of her apron.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

‘Alice Jones.’

She never asked me mine.

‘Come on,’ said Alice. ‘I’ll show you the new kitchens.’

The rain had begun. We ran all the way.

Through the dining room, down the back passage, left by the pantry, down one flight of stone steps, behold a cream door with a large hatch and a little shelf to lean on, too high for either of us, stop, listen, turn the knob, slide in.

David Erskine had invested in a new range with a boiler at the back to supply both the kitchens and the scullery with hot water and steam for the warm closet and steam table. There was a tap at the front and a kettle beneath. The kitchen itself was a furnace of good smells. A very large, handsome woman was extracting a currant cake from its hoop. The solid, rich black mass descended with a thud onto the scrubbed wooden table and the cook prodded it expectantly. Alice clung to the end of the table and peered at the cake. There was a boy I’d never seen before snoring in the corner.

I stared at the mass of new pots and the dripping pan, all larger and more lavish than anything we had at home. There was an old iron skillet with which the cook had clearly refused to part, but it was redundant beside the handsome copper stew pans hanging on the wall in descending sizes, all with their own polished lids. My hunger had reached starvation levels. Apart from the two bread rolls, I had eaten nothing since seven o’clock on the previous evening.

‘Any chance of a small pie each?’ asked Alice.

Cook didn’t look at her. ‘Get the grater and prepare the nutmeg. Then we’ll see.’

No promises.

Alice knew where everything was kept. She pushed me onto a stool by the table, then climbed up to reach a tin on the dresser. The tin was not marked. The one next to it said curry powder and next to that was a large bottle of anchovy essence. David Erskine liked foreign foods. So did Francisco. I was quite sure I wouldn’t.

Alice washed her hands before energetically settling down to grate fingernails and nutmeg into a fine dust.

I looked around. Two plucked ducks and a goose were hanging naked over the sink, their limp necks a spectacle of tragedy. Cook saw me looking.

‘You’ll be happy enough when you eat a bit of those tonight,’ she snapped. ‘And they’re a lot cheaper than what your master pays in London. We only eat our own. That foreigner you’ve brought with you, who’s so brown you’d think he was born in a desert or in Africa, says that a good goose in town costs five shillings. He says his name means Saviour. Blasphemous, if you ask me. I shouldn’t be surprised if he was a French spy.’

‘Everybody thinks that,’ I admitted.

‘Then it must be true,’ cried the cook triumphantly. She began her elaborate decorations on the cake.

I was beginning to understand the force of general opinion.

‘Pies, please,’ said Alice, handing over a little dish of grated nutmeg.

Cook extracted two small meat pies from the pantry and we sat on the back porch, just out of the chilly rain, munching our spoils.

‘Are you older than me?’ I asked doubtfully. I rather thought that she was.

‘Yes. Lots. I’m four years older than you. You’re ten. We asked the man from Africa. But I’m small for my age. I know my birthday. It’s written down in the parish register and the rector put on his spectacles and read it out to me. Mum says he’s a good man. He writes down all the children in the parish whether their mum is married or not. So everyone is officially born and no sermons or questions. There’s some people who don’t like it that we’re in the same book as them. People round here think that they’re as good as Londoners . . .’ Now she looked at me, impressed, suddenly remembering that I lived in London.

‘Can you get your mum to take me on? I’m desperate to get to London, but if I didn’t have a situation my mother wouldn’t let me go. What’s it like? Speak truth.’

‘Noisy and dirty,’ I said, mired in truth.

This was not the correct answer.

‘But aren’t there grand buildings? And great wide streets? And bands? And the King? And parades?’ Alice didn’t have any images against which to test my words. She gazed at me in disappointment. I was not delivering the goods.

‘There’s the Lord Mayor’s Day parade,’ I suggested helpfully. ‘That’s very grand. But in winter there’s fog all the time and mud in the streets. We live in a street near the park, where there are trees. It’s only when you go east into the city that it smells. And it’s full of beggars and thieves.’

Alice was alarmed.

‘But theatres? And musical evenings? And fine ladies in dresses from Paris?’

‘Oh yes. We have all that in our house.’ I brightened up.

‘Do you dress up?’

‘Not for the visitors. I just watch from the staircase.’

‘Like us,’ said Alice. So I wasn’t special after all. ‘Sometimes I serve the cakes at tea, but not often. Cook says I’m never clean enough. And Harold hates me.’

Harold was David Erskine’s butler, whom I had seen polishing the fish knives. An unexpected equality was now established between us, so Alice moved on to the personal questions.

‘I’d like to wear boy’s clothes too, but Mum wouldn’t let me. Can you read and write?’

‘Yes.’

And suddenly a real passion flashed into her face. There was no hesitation, only desire.

‘Teach me.’

‘All right.’

‘Starting today. I’ll find you. Promise. You’re staying all the summer. I’ll kill myself if I can’t read by harvest. Oh, promise you’ll teach me. Cross your heart and hope to die. Give me my stockings. They’re in your pocket. Don’t tell. Kiss. No silly, on the mouth. Cook says boys kiss girls on the mouth, not the nose. Don’t forget. Don’t you dare forget.’

And then she leaped up and ran away across the kitchen yard through the rain, past the gate in the wall to the vegetable garden and on down the brick path to the stables. She didn’t look back.

 

*  *  *

 

The bright morning had sunk into a soggy grey torrent of chill rain. It was still raining when we all sat down to dinner at four o’clock. My Beloved had insisted on walking through the shrubbery in her galoshes and had come back with her skirts and stockings dripping and spattered in mud. The geraniums on the terrace bowed down, shedding their petals, and the pansies folded up. All colour vanished, then the countryside did too. Nothing remained, just one grey sheet of rain.

The mistress of the house was not beautiful. She looked old, but kind, and she wore formidable layers of white lace, all of which vibrated as she walked. When I first saw her she was shaking in the hallway, and demanding fires in all the rooms.

‘Ridiculous weather for June,’ she said to me, for I was crouching on the staircase. ‘We shall all die of boredom. Come on downstairs, child, and let me look at you.’

I descended slowly, one step at a time. She waited, staring, clearly surprised by my appearance. When I was within reach she put both hands on my shoulders and looked at me hard.

‘Well,’ she said softly, ‘Mary Ann’s little baby. Her only child . . .’ She suddenly kissed me on the forehead. I hate it when adults touch me. They never give any indication that they are going to do so and they always smell peculiar. I sat down on the last stair, overwhelmed by the stench of musk and powder. She smelt like a damp cupboard full of linen. But she laughed out loud and drew me to my feet again.

‘Come along, my dear. I haven’t set eyes on you for nearly six years. But that’s not because I didn’t want to see you, nor for lack of invitations. You’ve grown up into someone quite different from what I had expected. Have you eaten anything at all today? Francisco went out shooting and then it came on to rain . . . they must have quite forgotten all about you. Would you like to bang the gong for dinner? Then you can go into the drawing room and tell them all that dinner is served. I always bang the gong and no one ever moves.’

She took my hand and rattled on cheerfully, handing me a giant drumstick and introducing me to a gong the size of a cathedral door. It was engraved with intertwining Chinese dragons and serpents. I hammered its glossy sides with zeal and then pranced ahead of the moving caravan of lace into the drawing room.

But there my tongue was tied. The fox and the rabbit had been joined by people I had never seen before and one of them was even more extraordinary than the lace tower. She was wearing a loose black silk dress with a tight high collar, and her hair was scraped back into a mean little roll at the nape of her neck. She wore neither powder nor paint, but had a pale, faintly yellow skin. Her face was timeless, unlined and utterly still. It was her stillness that unnerved me. Everyone else in the drawing room was talking, or waving their hands. Even my Beloved was smoking; an elegant white clay pipe, dappled with love knots all round the bowl and down the stem. But this woman sat quite still in the midst of them. And looked at me.

‘Lost your voice, sweetheart? Don’t bother. Here, I’ll call them all.’ And the lace woman clapped her hands, so that a little shower of powder fell down upon my head. I stared at the black silk woman in alarm as the chatter surged on above me. She finally moved, very slowly, like a serpent uncoiling, and rose to her feet. I flung myself into Beloved’s arms.

‘My darling, have you been amusing yourself? Have you broken anything?’ she asked gently, giving me a hug.

‘One flowerpot,’ I confessed.

‘Met any other children, soldier?’ Francisco was beside her, his long legs stretched out towards the fire.

‘Yes.’

I did not like to admit that I was already under contract to Alice Jones for reading lessons. They all began to disentangle themselves from their sofas and chairs. I edged away from the rustle of black silk and placed myself carefully between the white lace tower and my Beloved. Their voices rang above me as I sat staring at rows of silver cutlery. It was the first time in my life that I had sat down to dinner with the adults.

‘Did you wash your hands and face, soldier?’ whispered Francisco, as the master, David Erskine, who looked like a stringy mass of red flesh and white whiskers, rose to say grace.

‘Yes,’ I muttered.

‘. . . per Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.’

I was staring at the coil of black silk with her still hands and steady gaze. She was either a spectre or a debt collector. And now she was staring at my uncle, James Barry.

The old painter shuffled in halfway through grace and took his place behind his chair at the end of the table, wiping his brow and thick lips with a paint-spattered handkerchief. He drank his soup without looking up once, making terrible slurping noises. No one rebuked him, as Beloved would have done if I had been the one to slurp. I understood very little of what they said. They talked, laughed, gossiped, argued, disagreed. Every so often one of them would claim everyone’s attention and hold forth until another interrupted. Sometimes one of them, usually one of the men, told a joke and the whole table rocked and chuckled. Then they all paired off and talked very earnestly to the person next to them. David Erskine rapped his glass, which tinkled like a tiny bell, and made a short toast and they all rose up, dropping their napkins and snagging their chairs on the carpet. Francisco poured a mouthful of wine into my glass and I watched it shining like fresh blood, afraid to drink.

Outside, the rain attacked the terrace and poured out over the rims of the gutters, creating a thick waterfall in front of the windows and rushing in a little river down the mossy steps. The cupids astride the dolphins soon found their naked toes bathed in water. I slid down from my chair between courses and pressed my nose to the windows. The world was swallowed up in an unnatural early dark. Candles were lit on the table and all around the room. Now they were talking politics, peace and war, and the necessity for both. Barry described his journey across the Alps, chewing his mutton chops at the same time, so that we could all see a mess of meat at the bottom of his mouth. He talked, indifferent as to whether anyone was listening or not. Then David Erskine told us how much he had paid for a huge oil painting of the St Gotthard Pass and Barry told him that there were no landscape painters of any significance left in England and that he had certainly been cheated. I was listening to the rain, the wine glass’s dangerous crystal pressed against my lips. And the black silk serpent was staring at the white tower of lace, forcing her occasionally to smile, nod or glance anxiously down the table at my mother. Our hostess was not at ease. But I was used to this. This was the world of women and men, who always seemed to be demanding something of one another, implied rather than honestly spoken out loud.

I lost interest in their long significant glances and eager chatter and thought about Alice Jones. I tried to remember how I had learned to read. And I found that I could recall the exact moment, when I had taken my finger away from the printed line of The Arabian Nights, realising that now each word followed the next effortlessly, flawlessly, in a vast ascending curve. But that was after several years of trying. Start with the alphabet. A is for Apple. B is for Bird. C is for Cat, which has eaten the Bird. D is for Darkness, where no one can see her. E is for Emerald, which she wears on her breast. The black silk serpent was wearing a large green brooch just beneath her left collarbone. And now, once more, she was staring at me. But I had grown bolder, and I stared back through the red glow of my crystal wine and it looked as if her face was on fire. As I watched she smiled ever so slightly, and raised her glass just a little, in an almost imperceptible toast. It was a wry, small smile, breaking her stillness. And then she winked at me.

Before I was ten years old, I had learned, as all children do, to watch the shifting winds, to learn the high tides of adult friendships, adult loves. But now I was at last knowingly implicated in the intrigues of the adult world. The serpent woman had presented me with her visiting card. I looked down at the wine in the glass. And, almost imperceptibly, I blushed. Our complicity was complete. But the agreement had not gone unseen. Francisco had watched the serpent wink. And at once he leaned down to cut my meat, which lay cold and congealing in a mixture of fat and gravy. I held on to the edge of his coat, and stared into my plate.

When the ladies rose to take coffee in the drawing room Francisco pulled back my chair too.

‘Hop it, soldier. Off to bed. And don’t bother your mother. Can you find your way up all those staircases?’

I nodded and fled.

On the second landing my arm was seized by a pink scrubbed hand hiding under a sideboard, which, by coincidence, also had painted pink legs.

‘Hssssst.’

It was Alice Jones.

‘You haven’t forgotten?’ She scurried up the staircase just in front of me, increasing speed with every step.

‘No, but I don’t have many books in my room. I’ve looked.’

‘One will do. Any one. Surely once you’ve read one you can read them all?’

‘Some’re more difficult. Like the Bible.’

‘I’ve already learned most of that by heart,’ declared Alice breathlessly as we reached the room at the top of the stairs in total darkness. ‘Or at least, all the bits that really count.’

There was only one candle, but someone had lit the fire, so that the small room was alive with leaping shadows. The smell of damp had gone. Outside the rain battered against the windows. Alice climbed straight into bed with all her clothes on and without removing her boots, while I undressed clumsily, desperately nervous, and fumbling with all the buttons. No one came to help me. There was no water in my pitcher and the morning’s piss was still floating in the chamberpot. I had been completely forgotten.

‘Come on. I’ve not got that long,’ said Alice, balancing both pillows behind her head.

I picked up the book with the largest print, which was Pilgrim’s Progress, and climbed into bed beside her.

‘As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted upon a certain place where was a Den, and I laid me down in the place to sleep; and as I slept I dreamed a Dream. I Dreamed, and behold I saw a man clothed with Rags, standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a Book in his hand, and a great Burden upon his back.’

We read the same passage again and again, learning the alphabet as we went. Alice learned to recognise three words. BOOK. WORLD. DREAM. Then the candle burned down, flickered, vanished into a smoking pool of greasy tallow and went out. Alice was already fast asleep.

 

*  *  *

 

The storm blew itself out in the night. When I awoke there was sunlight behind the curtains and Alice Jones was long gone. Her side of the bed was cold and the only trace of her visitation was a dry sliver of mud on both sheets. The room too was cold and I now faced a chamberpot that was dangerously full and occupied by a large, floating turd. The murky water in the basin was left over from yesterday. I gave my face and ears a perfunctory wash and sped away down all the long staircases, straight to the kitchens.

Alice was watching the bread rise.

‘D-R-E-A-M. Dream,’ she said, smiling. And pinched my cheek. We sat happily on the bench, swinging our legs and chanting the alphabet. A is for Apple. B is for Bird. C is for Cat. D is for Donkey. E is for Elephant. F is for Fox. G is for Garden . . .

I crouched among the sprouting dahlias, eating bacon rinds and bare toast, the first of many loving and edible presents from Alice Jones. She explained that this was all advance payment for the next lesson.

‘I’ll find you in the gardens as soon as they’ve eaten their luncheon. Cook says I’m to serve and help clear. But I’m not in the scullery today. Swear that you won’t forget.’

‘I swear.’ We clapped each other’s hands in rhythm. I had made my first friend. Indeed, I was already in love with Alice Jones.

The adults spent hours eating or lounging in armchairs. Sometimes there was a burst of activity and they all dressed up and went out, riding and shooting, or visiting the neighbours, in capes, hats and feathers. I was never taken with them. If it rained they sat in melancholy groups, emphasising their imminent demise from utter boredom. In the evenings, I dozed on the window seat, while they sang, danced, flirted or played cards. Dinner was a nightmare of anxiety. Sitting in between Francisco and Beloved I was painfully visible. I tried eating as little as possible and refusing to look up.

At night Alice kept me awake in a frenzy of sentences, sometimes frustrated, once bright red with tears, she insisted on every single word by John Bunyan. She upbraided me if I did not know their meanings. I was obliged to consult Francisco on the finer points of Protestant theology. But Alice would not be defeated. And she would not give up.

Gradually, towards the end of June, the summer weather pulled itself together, took hold and closed in. The days were transformed into a burning fiery furnace and the nights were breathless and sweating. We reached the Slough of Despond. The adults fanned themselves and sought out agreeable breezes. They organised boating parties and parasols. James Barry had nothing to do with any of their activities. He went on painting.

Alice ran to and fro with iced drinks. We loved the ice house, with the great blocks wrapped in sacking. Cook taught me how to hack little pieces off with a hammer and an ice pick. When I wasn’t helping Alice I lay flat on my stomach in the shrubbery, spying on the wild life with Lady Elizabeth’s purloined opera glasses. The rabbits basked on dirt mounds in the evenings and the dogs were far too hot to chase them. The dew steamed on the grass in the early light, the air lost its freshness at once and the heat grew steadily. The people working in the fields covered their heads with broad hats and scarves. The hot rotting smell of the cut hay and the buzz of flies accompanied my lethargic adventures. I lay with my feet in the stream that encircled the meadows before ending its course in David Erskine’s ornamental pond. I often saw him, strolling in the meadows, pausing to inspect his ducks. He was always cheerful and gentle when he spoke to me. He had lumps of stale bread in his pockets which I could feed to the aggressive flotilla. If the bread was not immediately delivered the creatures climbed out of the water and pursued him across the lawn, bellowing. The old earl had holes in his stockings. He and James Barry were the only men in the company who still wore wigs and his also stank of ancient powder.

‘Is he really very rich?’ I asked Alice.

‘Mmmmm,’ she said, chewing grass and staring at the open book before her, ‘very, very rich. Richer than all the kings like Belshazzar and Nebuchadnezzar. He owns all Shropshire and most of Staffordshire besides. All the villages, churches, farms, woods, parks. Occasionally he sells off a bit of land to pay for his gardening improvements. What does this mean? Here.’

Alice could spell every word now, but couldn’t yet link them into coherence.

‘Why doesn’t his wife mend his stockings?’

‘Lady Elizabeth? She’s much too grand for that.’

‘But he’s got holes in his stockings.’

‘Does it matter?’

Alice looked at my feet. I no longer wore stockings or shoes and my sunburnt freckled legs were as dirty and strong as those of Alice Jones.

‘Come on,’ she insisted, kissing me on the nose, not the mouth, and then biting it a little, ‘help me with this bit.’

 

*  *  *

 

The afternoons in late July beat all previous records for burning airlessness. The lawns turned brown. The wood in the window frames dried, shrank and split, the paint peeled away. The kitchen yard bricks stayed warm under our bare feet till far into the night. The cattle dozed in the stream, their tails constantly flicking at the flies; even the chickens clustered idly in the shade. Alice was confined to the dairy by her mother, in case she got sunstroke, and put to scouring out buckets. Beloved suddenly remembered my existence and ordered a daily siesta. The clocks talked to themselves in the silent still household. Only James Barry went on painting day after day, despite the climatic excesses. My room was high up, under the eaves, and by four o’clock the dark air inside the shutters was intolerable. I went out into the glazed white light.

I scuttled, sweating, through the green mass of rhododendrons on the north side of the house. There was an overgrown avenue which was always in the shade and eventually led back to the great studio where James Barry worked. I got out my opera glasses to spy upon him. He was there, half turned towards the windows, brows drawn together, hardly moving before his colossal canvas. I watched his slight movements, the muscles of his face twitching. The sweat from my forehead blurred my sight. Gradually I realised, from his shifting glance, that there was someone with him in the studio. His eyes always returned to the same place, just out of my sight. He was copying someone onto the canvas. He gave commands. His lips moved. I watched the mystery enacted in dumb show. Whoever it was remained hidden by the rhododendrons and was outside the reach of my glass. I persevered, fascinated. Barry made a large gesture, raising his right hand, wiping the sweat from his face. A shadow moved slowly on the far wall of the studio. Then, into the double blur of my opera glasses, majestic as any diva, rose the figure of a naked woman. Her loose curls were tied up above her bare shoulders. She yawned, stretched, her breasts rising as she did so. Then, unclothed, but perfectly at ease, as graceful as if she were entering a ballroom, the woman walked across the floor and stood beside James Barry. She leaned against his shoulder. And there they were, grotesquely unmatched, Polyphemus and Galatea, both peering at the canvas.

It was my mother.

I started to crawl closer, keeping the glasses fixed to my sweating slippery nose. I had never seen her naked. She only had a bath once a week. And I had usually been scrubbed in the first bath and put to bed. I had never been able to imagine her like this, naked, but standing there, talking to someone who was fully clothed. Her backside was perfect, two pearl ovals, like gigantic eggs. Barry hardly glanced at her. He was pointing to something in the canvas. She stepped back, folding her arms over her stomach, rubbing one foot against the other. James Barry leaned into the canvas as if the huge structure was a sail, and he was now ready to put about. My mother stood behind him, listening, yawning, stretching from time to time. Barry made a curt gesture with his palette knife, and then, frowning, irritated – I knew that expression so well – she moved back to her original position, outside the two blurred, inflated circles of my glass. I buried my face in dead leaves and warm, moist earth.

From time to time I looked up. Barry went on painting. I knew that she was there from the ferocity of his glance. He looked at the painting, and then he looked at her, unhesitating, unforgiving, without pity. She was becoming one of his forms, awash with pigments. I sniffled into the leaves. I hated her. I hated him. I was bitterly jealous. I wished that I knew how to paint like James Barry.

A line of ants moved across the leaves. Two or three ran counter to the flow, greeting every third or fourth ant in a flurry of nodding segments. Do they have names? I asked Francisco. Ants aren’t individuals, he had said, they’re a system. Then he had paused thoughtfully and added, Actually, human beings are a system too. We are governed by invisible natural laws and whether you can see this or not depends on your perspective.

But I felt myself to be outside every system.

And then I fell asleep, my nose deep in the dead leaves of the rhododendrons, my sleeve traversed by ants, the opera glasses clutched tight in my damp hand.

 

*  *  *

 

A black padded foot and a bare white ankle turned me over with a shove, as if I were a dead animal. Someone in fine black silk with a yellow face leaned into the overgrown shrubbery, grasped me by the shoulder and gave me a vicious shake. Too close to mine was the still, unlined, unpowdered face of the serpent. The same wry smile with which she had so disconcerted me was fixed across her jaws. She picked up the opera glasses and stared at me for a moment, unblinking.

It was evening, but no longer bright. The air had changed. It was as if we were looking at one another inside a bell jar, like stuffed animals in a vacuum. The light behind her black outline was lurid, orange and purple, like a painted apocalypse on a church wall.

‘Were you spying on your uncle and your mother?’

Just in case the end of the world, when all lies would be exposed and added up, was close at hand, I spoke the truth.

‘Yes.’

She smiled again and slowly extended one long and sinuous hand. She wore no rings. She was not really female. She was not natural. I decided that I would look her up in Francisco’s gigantic illustrated volume: Miraculous Encounters with Creatures of the Occult and the Cabbala in Exotic Lands, or The Further Adventures of Lemuel Gulliver in The Vales of Faerie.

‘Don’t judge her. She does it for you. She does it all for you.’

I took the woman’s hand. The heat around us held its breath. She dragged me through the bushes, pulling the branches away from my face. I only reached her elbow. She was uncannily tall.

‘Are you a widow?’ I was not being impertinent, only attempting to account for the black, which no one else was wearing.

‘Goodness me, no. I never married. I’m in mourning for my father, who died three months ago.’

‘I never had a father.’

‘Oh yes you did, you just don’t remember him.’

‘That’s what my mother says.’

The serpent smiled again, ironically. I looked up at her.

‘Do you know who my father was?’

I asked as if I was only half interested and trailed after her, dragging a stick. If she thought I didn’t much care she might tell me something. But she said nothing. Twigs snapped beneath her feet, deafening in the stillness. The heat swayed, suspended in the peculiar light. We came out onto the lawns and saw that the sky had gathered itself up into a concentrated purple darkness. I heard the horses stamping in the stables, and caught sight of a man rushing away with an armful of rugs. Then a long jagged arrow of yellow flame, accompanied by a deafening crack and a rush of wind, descended into the kitchen garden, slicing through the ruthless rows of strawberries and lettuce. I clamped my hand more firmly into the serpent’s scaly grasp. She never quickened her step.

‘We’ve all been sent out looking for you, child. One of the kitchen girls said you were lost.’

The light became fantastical and horrifying. The house loomed before us. I pulled at her hand.

‘Let’s run.’

‘No need.’

And her timing was perfect. Just as we reached the terrace the first huge drops struck my shoulders. I saw my Beloved, now fully dressed and jewelled, rushing across the drawing room to fling open the French windows and welcome us home, as if we had returned from the wars.

‘Don’t say anything to her. Ever,’ hissed the serpent, bending down towards me. ‘Promise.’ This was an order, not a request.

‘All right.’

The rain exploded on the terrace.

 

*  *  *

 

Alice always knew what went on in the house. At first, I was too proud to admit that I had no information. Opera glasses were poor substitutes for valets, chambermaids and kitchen talk. Servants in the house passed through the corridors like ghosts, with breathtaking impunity. They could be dismissed at any time. Yet they were the keepers of incredible secrets. This was all that I had in common with Alice Jones: forbidden knowledge and powerlessness. ‘But now, in this Valley of Humiliation, poor Christian was hard put to it; for he had gone but a little way before he espied a foul fiend coming over the field to meet him; his name is Apollyon. Then did Christian begin to be afraid . . .’

‘A-F-R-A-I-D,’ Alice spelt out the word. Now she easily recognised the words that came again and again. But she was still blocked by combinations of letters that she had never seen. Sometimes she got so frustrated that she attacked the book. Bunyan had developed a dent on his spine from her pummelling. We were sitting on an empty wagon in the farmyard. Once we were facing Apollyon, I asked about the black serpent.

‘Tell me about the black silk woman who looks like a snake.’

‘Louisa Erskine. And she does look like a snake. I’ll tell Cook.’

‘But who is she?’

‘She’s the master’s younger sister and the mistress’s special friend. They all grew up together. She’s here sometimes six months together. She used to come with her father. He used to be the master. But he went all peculiar and gabbled and raved. When he was old and sick she looked after him. Then he died.’

‘She said he died . . .’

‘She’s not bad. Last year she combed all the lice out of my hair. It hurt something terrible. And she can be a bit frightening. She caught me stealing some Turkish Delight from the drawing room last Christmas. And she beat me black and blue. Don’t do anything that drives her to hit you. But she never told anyone. Not Harold, nor my mother. I thought she’d tell. I was dead scared. I went on tiptoe for at least a week. She never told. I’d already prepared a long speech for Mum if I got dismissed.’

‘But everybody steals . . .’

‘Yes. But there’s a sort of stealing allowance that you can’t go over. And you must never get caught doing it.’

‘Salvatore stole some wine from Francisco once to pay his gambling debts.’

‘What happened?’

‘Francisco threatened to kill him. Not dismiss him. Kill him. For personal betrayal. Then he got given a second chance and Francisco paid all his debts.’

Alice laughed.

‘My mum says your General’s a gentleman. Here. Go on. Next bit.’

‘You’ll like the next bit. There’s a battle.

‘So he went on and Apollyon met him. Now the monster was hideous to behold; he was clothed with scales like a Fish (and they are his pride); he had wings like a Dragon, feet like a Bear, and out of his belly came Fire and Smoke; and his mouth was as the mouth of a Lion . . .’

‘Wonderful,’ cried Alice, ‘F-I-S-H. I’ve seen that on the Menus. F-I-S-H. Fish. Teach me the rest. Why’s he called Apollyon and what does it mean?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘See. You don’t know everything.’

‘I never told you I did. Francisco says Apollyon rules the Kingdom of This World.’

‘I’ve never wanted any other, for all that Mum sings about the Blessed Other Land in chapel.’ She looked down at the words, as if she could see the monster in the book, and stretched out her toes so that they passed over the hard line of shelter in the shade and emerged into the sun.

 

*  *  *

 

Dinner began at four. There were dreadful delays between courses. I was eating up my pile of vegetables and potatoes, on Francisco’s orders. The sun was still on the lawns, but by then it was almost six o’clock and the heat was beginning to ebb. David Erskine remarked not only my existence at the dinner table, but my activities in the house. I almost choked.

‘Francisco, did you know that this child is brewing rebellions in my kitchens?’

‘Is he?’

‘He’s teaching the scullery maids how to read.’

Everyone laughed. I turned appallingly, guiltily red.

‘Isn’t that so, young chap?’ enquired David Erskine encouragingly.

‘Yes, sir,’ I gulped, almost inaudible. Caught.

‘What are you teaching them, sweetheart?’ demanded my Beloved, a little angry and defensive.

‘Pilgrim’s Progress.’

Everyone laughed again. The still black eyes of Louisa Erskine were fixed upon me. I was being devoured.

‘Pilgrim’s Progress won’t lead to revolution, David,’ laughed Francisco, ‘more’s the pity.’

‘Mark my words. It’ll be The Rights of Man next and don’t tell me that he hasn’t already got every word off by heart.’

Now they were laughing at Francisco. I was let off the hook. Only Louisa was still looking at me. She smiled slightly. She said nothing. When the ladies rose to leave for coffee in the drawing room I rose with them, clutching the edge of my mother’s shawl. But as I passed him David Erskine leaned out and caught my hand. Close to, his face was deep red, full of white hairs, holes and black spots.

‘Don’t worry, my dear. You teach the girls to read. I’m all for it.’

His breath stank of rotting teeth and old food. I slunk away up the staircase, embarrassed and furious.

 

*  *  *

 

August stretched out before us: a march-past of blazing days and late-afternoon thunderstorms. David Erskine, in smock and peasant trousers, convincingly dirty, departed into the fields, to direct the harvest himself. Only his mouldy wig differentiated him from his tenants. The adults sometimes went out to watch, but always gave up early in the day, and trailed home complaining of exhaustion, sunstroke, nettle rash, brambles and stomach ache. Alice and I worked side by side in the vegetable garden. We fed the rabbits, ducks and chickens. The other children, whether older or younger than Alice, never disputed her exclusive right to my attention. One afternoon, her mother marched up from the village to look at me. She was nursing yet another squalling baby. I backed away from the bundle. So she handed it over with the announcement, ‘Alice is the third of nine. Five living. Praise the Lord!’

She must have been several years younger than my mother, but she looked older, fatter and ferociously healthy. She went to chapel, not to church, but insisted that the vicar baptise all her children for their father’s sake, and attended all the major festivals, much against her minister’s advice. The church services were sometimes attended by Papists, whom David Erskine most unwisely tolerated as visitors in his household. Close proximity might well lead to a lifelong contamination. Alice’s mother had strong views on the rights of women. She thought they ought to be allowed to preach in chapel. On these and other issues she was often at variance with the elders, who nevertheless persisted with their dear and erring sister. Why she persisted with them was less clear.

Alice and I stood side by side in the stable yard for the presentation. Cook came outside to watch.

‘So this is Mrs Bulkeley’s famous tomboy daughter we hear so much about,’ said Mrs Jones, after a long look. The new baby began to grizzle pathetically. She handed it over to Cook.

‘You should wear a hat, child, with your complexion. Look at her, Cook. She’s one enormous freckle. Alice, get a hat from the dairy.’

Alice always obeyed her mother. She rushed off. Mrs Jones pinched my cheek. I objected, but decided that I liked her.

‘I hear you’re teaching my eldest to read,’ she announced at last.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ I admitted cautiously.

‘Well, I’m grateful to you. I can’t read myself, though my husband can. But girls should be taught properly. When she can read I want you to go on helping her. Can you lend her books?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ I agreed. Books were very expensive. Francisco never allowed any of his books to be taken past the library door. My mother had her own small collection on a shelf in her boudoir. Volumes weren’t allowed to stray from one collection to another. I wasn’t sure how I was going to steal the books for Alice, but I was sure it could be done.

‘Thank you, child, and I hope that your stepfather intends to continue your own education.’

‘I think so. I haven’t asked him.’

Suddenly she blazed up and spoke very sharply. ‘Your mother must insist upon it. You’re dressed up like his son, not his daughter. You can claim a son’s privilege.’

She spoke with the same passion, the same gestures Alice had used when she had asked me to teach her to read. Alice returned with a large straw hat and clamped it onto my head. The baby began wailing. Mrs Jones sighed and took the child from Cook.

‘Off you go, children.’ We were dismissed. She kissed us both goodbye and we rushed away. I noticed that she smelt of fresh grass and warm hay, much cleaner than the adults in the house.

‘That’s my mum,’ said Alice proudly.

 

*  *  *

 

There was a summer ball at the house every year, held on the last Saturday in August, to celebrate Lady Elizabeth’s birthday. It was a jolly, unsophisticated affair to which all the local families were invited. The Erskines were not snobbish and invited absolutely everybody, so that the social confusion was considered slightly shocking. Alice described the last one with zest. She could remember who had drunk too much and been sick, whose stockings had descended, whose stays had had to be loosened, who had danced all night, and with whom, who had fallen asleep in the library, only to be discovered next morning with their head in a fruit dish, which of the glasses had been broken, and what they had had to eat in the kitchens. The children were not only allowed to watch, we were allowed to dance. I solemnly asked Alice Jones for the first dance. She said that she would have to consult her little book. We spent the rest of the afternoon stitching one together, so that she could consult it.

My Beloved’s exotic plant catalogues had arrived from London and she was busy choosing new specimens for her conservatory. I boasted that I had asked Alice to dance, and been accepted as her principal dancing partner. My mother looked at me thoughtfully.

‘You ought to wear a dress for the ball, dear. People do talk.’

I had never worn a dress before.

‘I can’t ask Alice if I don’t wear trousers,’ I protested. ‘We’d be two girls.’

My mother was baffled.

‘But you must wear a dress. I’ve bought the material. You’re growing up now. It’s not correct otherwise.’

‘I won’t.’ My temper was rising. Obscurely, I realised that my ambiguous clothes were what had made me special and interesting in the eyes of Alice Jones.

‘But, my darling . . .’

‘Won’t!’ My ears went red. I was fighting for the right to remain interesting. I faced her, chin up.

She suddenly smiled, her eyes full of love.

‘Sweeheart, don’t be angry. You’re the image of my brother.’

I hammered her knees with my fists and all her catalogues fell to the floor. The black silk form of Louisa Erskine abruptly uncoiled out of the carpet.

‘Don’t attack your mother. It’s very impolite.’

I left off, abashed.

The serpent looked me up and down, then came to a decision.

‘We can go into town tomorrow, Mary Ann, and buy some more material and buttons. She’s so small it really won’t take long.’

I was to go to the ball in smart blue regimentals, dressed as a soldier. Costume was much more acceptable than disguise. Alice was thrilled. She had always wanted to dance with a soldier. The 13th Light Dragoons had passed through the country some months before and broken every heart in the village.

On the day of the ball two families arrived mid-morning on a fleet of donkeys, causing immense excitement. David Erskine was seen running across the fields without his hat, to greet them.

The kitchens were much too hot. Alice and I were on duty killing flies, a task which we performed with great zeal, breaking off at regular intervals to rush upstairs, stare at all the new adults and children and criticise their clothes.

‘Mrs Sperling’s lost some more teeth. Did you notice? Last Christmas she made whistling noises when she drank her punch.’

I had no idea how many teeth Mrs Sperling used to have. Alice praised and condemned like a court ambassador constructing a society column. She pointed out one of the magistrates, and revealed that he frequently beat his wife.

‘Does your stepfather ever hit your mother?’ Alice asked curiously.

‘No! Not ever!’ I was scandalised.

‘That’s interesting,’ said Alice. ‘She had a black eye once. I didn’t see it, but it still gets talked about. And it was given out that she’d fallen down in Mr Barry’s studio and had an accident. My dad hit my mum once. She hit him back and burst his eardrum. He’s deaf in one ear now.’

My favourable impression of Mrs Jones was confirmed, but I had no time to brood over the origins of my mother’s black eye, for here was the magistrate’s wife and her smile, too, was ruined by her missing teeth.

‘Maybe the magistrate knocks her teeth out?’ I suggested.

‘Oh no,’ said Alice, ‘they just rot.’

The orchestra arrived in two carts, demanding ale at once, on account of the heat. There were fiddlers tuning up in the stables and a new harpsichord unloaded through the French windows on the terrace, upended in the drawing room and carried through into the great hall, where the dancing was to take place. Two gigantic vases of gladioli were standing to attention on either side of the mirror above the fireplace, and all the doors stood open, into every room of the house. A Babel’s tower of tiny flies blocked the main doorway and the drugged blooms of Lady Elizabeth’s geraniums overflowed the window sills. We rushed ecstatically up and down the kitchen stairs, shrieking. The house was full of laughter, arguments and delicious smells. Francisco was surrounded by ladies, all alive with fans. There was no sign of James Barry.

The men setting up the tables in the orchard had gouged a channel through one of the lawns. The head gardener was hysterical and had to be dissuaded by Elizabeth Erskine herself, resplendent in sweet muslin and looking younger and more joyful than she had ever done before, from settling accounts then and there. I heard her praising the healing power of rain, but as it hadn’t rained for weeks and might never rain again, her reassurances sounded far-fetched. At four o’clock the first round of eating began and the household paraded out into the orchard, stumbling and giggling in the rough grass, supporting one another and then falling over deliberately, rushing back inside for fans and parasols. Alice and I scurried back and forth from the orchard to the kitchens, too excited to eat, intent upon our role as spies. We saw two young people who had slipped away, kissing in the shrubbery. I was all for exposure, but Alice said that it wasn’t a scandal, as they were engaged to be married.

‘It’s only a scandal if they’re married, but not to each other,’ she explained, ‘and sometimes not even then if it’s been going on for ages and everybody knows.’

The adults ate, laughed, talked and sang, sitting under the trees in the golden light. They looked happy and innocent. Or at least I thought so. Alice didn’t. But then, Alice understood more of the world than I did.

At last the orchestra took their places on the creaking stage in the great hall and began tuning up. They sat sweating behind a barricade of fresh flowers. The great hall was not often used. Beyond it was the portrait gallery, burdened with pictures of long-dead members of the Erskine family caressing numerous horses and dogs which had held honoured positions. The curtains smelled of damp, and ivy had almost covered two of the windows. Alice had told me which members of the family were bankrupts or murderers. There they hung, unsmiling, blackened beneath layers of varnish and grease, all looking equally culpable. Now both the great hall and the portrait gallery reeked of beeswax and honeysuckle. And as we danced in on a faint breeze, we heard the glass chandeliers chiming in the draught.

And here are the refreshments, laid out in coloured rows: jellies, fruits, iced cakes, chicken and fish sandwiches, expensive white wine wrapped in linen and iced punch in huge silver bowls with devil’s spoons. I guarded the food, stiff in new trousers with the regimental stripe and far too hot in my military jacket with brass buttons. Everyone described me as charming. Mrs Emmersley, the vicar’s wife, told my mother that she had been quite convinced that I was in fact a mechanical doll, perhaps even a musical one, as I was so realistic. The fashion then was for flat shoes and loose dresses. Gentlemen’s trousers were daringly tight. I suspected Francisco of wearing a corset, but I couldn’t prove it. Alice said that we could hide in his rooms, inspect his chests and find out. He was glamorous, foreign and shockingly radical in the eyes of the country people. So everyone wanted to dance with him. There was the odd minuet and even a mazurka, but for the most part we danced country dances, with the top couple calling out the dance as they chose. This meant that no one was left against the wall; everybody danced, until they sank onto chairs fanning themselves, the survivors stamping with gusto. As the night went on and the candles guttered there was a good deal of ogling, flirting, squeezing and pinching, accompanied by shrieks and giggles. It was very indecorous, very uninhibited. The women’s ribbons swirled in the reels and I danced with Alice Jones.

Alice was cleaner than I had ever seen her. A layer of sunburn must have been rubbed off. She wore a light blue dress and dark blue ribbons cut out of one of Elizabeth Erskine’s cast-offs. She had no shoes on, but nobody noticed. She knew all the dances and bullied me into position with shouts of ‘No, left hand, silly!’ and ‘Quick, down the other way!’ For most of the dances we swopped partners in every set for the different steps and sequences. One moment I was cavorting like a dwarf around Elizabeth Erskine, then gazing adoringly at my mother’s beauty, the next clasping once again the cold hand of the black serpent. My uniform was stuck to my back with sweat, fear and excitement.

Supper was announced at midnight.

‘Look, look,’ cried Alice, gorgeous in her ribbons and her audacity, ‘Mr Barry’s wearing a clean shirt.’

 

*  *  *

 

We had both fallen asleep behind the sofa in the drawing room when I felt someone gently shaking my shoulder. The curtains gaped apart. Outside, the earth was in the grip of a metamorphosis, the dark was already lightening into a deep grey-blue. The cattle shifted, ghostly in the fields.

‘Wake up, child, you must come with me now.’ It was Louisa, cold, unhurried, dark against the slow dawn.

I disentangled myself from Alice Jones and followed the black outline of the woman, drowsy and confused. I could hear the music, still thudding in the great hall. She led me out into the gardens. The chill hit me in the stomach and the face. I gulped cold air and shivered. The grass was wet with dew and spiders’ webs hung from the flowers. The statues loomed, pale and fragile, above the yew hedges in the Italian garden. The yew remained a solid block of darkness, darker now than the night sky. Louisa stepped firmly into the maze.

The maze was on the east side of the house. We often played hide and seek there in the afternoons. It was a perfect square, each avenue parallel, a duplicate of all the others. There was nothing sinister about the maze. But I had never breached the labyrinth at dawn. Now it was uncanny, the hedges giving out a strong scent, the earth glimmering beneath our steps.

I smelt cigars. From the core of the maze, where the fountain bubbled at the feet of the goddess, rose the blue-grey cloud of smoke. We stepped into the heart of the maze, into the last square, and there, sitting round the fountain, was the triumvirate of cigars: David Steuart Erskine, Earl of Buchan, General Francisco de Miranda and James Barry, RA. They all looked very powerful and very drunk.

‘Here she is,’ said Louisa quietly. She let go of my hand. I thought I was dreaming. Francisco opened his arms to me. I clutched onto his uniform, which stank of sweat, alcohol and my mother’s musk.

‘Well, my dear,’ said David Erskine, ‘we’ve been discussing your future. We can’t waste you. You’re a very clever child. Something has got to be done.’

James Barry stared at me. He said nothing, but puffed convulsively at his cigar. His shirt was no longer clean.

‘Listen, soldier,’ said Francisco, ‘would you like to study properly? At a university?’

‘Yes,’ I whispered, suddenly feeling sick and shivery.

‘Well, that’s what you’re going to do. There’s just one thing that you’ll have to remember from now on. You never will be a girl. But you won’t find that hard. You’ll just go on being a tomboy.’

The light was gathering strength. I could see their faces now. These were men who were getting older, fatter, grey-haired; the adventure of their lives was already undertaken and achieved, their roads already chosen. Now they were choosing for me.

‘From now on you’re going to be a boy. And then a man. Your uncle and I are giving you our names. And David’s volunteered to be your patron and your guardian.’

David Erskine laughed hoarsely. It was a wonderful idea. A trick, a masquerade. A joke against the world.

‘I’ll put my money where my mouth is. And gladly. It’s about time I did something for you, child. I’m your banker from now on.’ David Erskine chuckled wickedly to himself. He loomed over me in the lightening blue.

‘Welcome aboard, James Miranda Barry. You’d be wasted as a woman. Join the men.’

Then they all laughed.

 

*  *  *

 

All around us, the entire village and every single member of the household, whether chapel, church or Papist, bellowed out their thanks to God. David Erskine, Earl of Buchan, had a three-line whip out for the harvest festival, so that we would all be obliged to marvel at the size of his pumpkins. A row of them burgeoned on the altar, enormous, orange and opulent. Bouquets of wheat and barley were fastened to the pillars down the aisles, purple Michaelmas daisies and fountains of goldenrod sheathed the pulpit, baskets of apples, tomatoes bulbous as clenched fists, ginger lilies with huge protruding stamens which the Reverend Emmersley described as unsuitably suggestive, were massed upon the altar steps, tea roses, delicate but unscented, were wound round the crucifix, Christ’s crown of thorns blossomed in the autumn sun. Mysteriously, a keg of cider, last year’s, was positioned near the font.

We thought about our sins. But not very seriously.

We asked Him to forgive us as we forgive those who trespass against us. Alice was convinced that this was Jesus’s warning against persecuting poachers. She had at last understood the sign on the gates by the woods: NO TRESPASSING. She asked to be forgiven for two rabbits and a pheasant.

‘What happens to the fruit afterwards?’ I whispered.

‘The vicar gets to eat it all. Some goes to the curate’s family.’ Alice gazed regretfully at her cucumbers, bottled in vinegar. The choir belted out the Gloria, Mrs Emmersley conducting, her head on one side and her elbows gyrating like windmills.

As the vicar picked his way through the mass of farm produce towards the pulpit to give thanks at length and to exhort us to do thou likewise, I noticed my mother getting out her sewing. She and Louisa were absorbed in a frenzy of tailoring. I was to have a whole new wardrobe. My new life had begun. My red curls were already cropped even closer to my head and I was stuffed into Alice’s youngest brother’s shirt. The vicar was talking about valour and the progress of the war in an unknown foreign part. He had explained the meaning of sacrifice and was getting on to the importance of tradition when Alice began tugging at my sleeve.

‘Come on,’ she hissed. ‘I want to read the last bit. I practised last night. You can tell me if I’ve got it right.’

‘Where are you two going?’ snapped Mrs Jones, as we disrupted the entire row.

‘He’s got to piss,’ lied Alice calmly, putting all the blame on me.

We scuttled out of the church and round to the vestry, jumping all the graves. Alice had hidden the book under a cassock. We settled in amongst the clerical robes, once Alice had checked through the pockets of all the coats. Out came the book, battered, dented, grass-stained, some pages loosened, smelling faintly of chicken shit.

‘I see myself now at the end of my Journey, my toilsome days are ended. I am going now to see that Head that was crowned with Thorns, and that Face that was spit upon for me.’

Alice moved her finger from one word to the next, slowly, intoning the text. One word after another, like a rite chanted. Through a crack in the door we heard the vicar doing the same thing.

‘I have loved to hear my Lord spoken of, and wherever I have seen the print of his Shoe in the Earth, there have I coveted to set my Foot too . . .’

I held my breath, willing Alice not to make any mistakes. She was shaking with excitement and pride.

‘I may give those that desire it an account of what I am here silent about: meantime I bid my Reader Adieu.’

‘That’s right! You can read, Alice, you can read!’

She hugged me till my bones cracked.

‘I want to try a French novel next.’

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost, As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be. World without end. Amen.