‘Take some soot and grind it with urine, upon a shell, until it is perfectly refined; then put it into a glass vessel, that has a large mouth, filled with clear water; stir the mixture with a wooden spatula, and let it settle for about half an hour; the coarsest part will fall to the bottom; the liquor is then carefully poured into another vessel; the sediment is the most inferior Bister* and is thrown away. The same operation must be repeated with that which remains in the second vessel; it is then emptied into a third, and after letting it remain for three or four days, you procure the finest Bister.’
Constant de Massoul,
A Treatise on the Art of Painting and the Composition of Colours, 1797
Ann Jemima is walking, stumbling, trying to hold her chin firm, intent on not losing her composure. Hobnailed boots of self-reproach stamp through her mind, but she cannot dwell on such thoughts for long, she must keep her head up, up, look at the buildings around her, chart her route across London before she is stopped. Her chance to leave the palace came at seven thirty this morning after Provis left to prepare the chapel for the eight o’clock communion. The lock clacked shut behind him, and she slipped into a grey cape, making a ghost’s escape ten minutes later. She is furious at West’s deception, smarts with the humiliation of it. Cosway’s words reverberate. ‘Go about this the wrong way, and it will rebound badly.’
The best I can do is be gone, she thinks with fury.
Her anger blows her up to Piccadilly, past the Bath Hotel and Fortnum and Mason’s, past the silent booksellers and after-the-night-before taverns, to Piccadilly Circus. She has never walked this far outside the palace without an escort, she knows already that to be on the streets alone raises questions about her virtue, her social status, her marriageability. All around her the polished windows stare. Yet the recklessness of what she is doing helps to lift her spirits, and on she blows, through the gardens of Leicester Square with the statue of George I rising up in the centre, through Charing Cross, and on to Covent Garden. There the prostitutes linger in doorways, singing raucous songs and calling out to passers by. Their painted faces like masks, their thoughts part of London’s great untold story. Ann Jemima looks towards them, pulls the hood of her grey cape over her head and continues.
She has put on kid-leather half boots in preparation for her long walk, but already the leather is splattered with dirt and beginning to tear. She frets that her entire wardrobe has been designed as if by captors who anticipated that one day she was going to make this escape – her skirts and petticoats hinder her speed and two or three more miles will destroy her boots. She does not dare to hail a Hackney carriage – it will provoke too many questions, and will also create a witness to her flight. Instead she threads her way up the alleyways and to Holborn. In her head, past, present and future collide.
She had thought she was getting the sense of West. He had seemed different – because he was an American he seemed like an outsider, just as being a woman made her an outsider. Somehow this connected them, though if asked how neither of them would have been able to articulate it. Where Cosway patronised and played sexual games, West had revealed himself as his antithesis. He was socially awkward at first, which had made him seem cold and uncomfortable inside his own body, almost as if nature had bestowed on him a physique too large for his confidence. But in subsequent encounters he became generous, unpredatory, effusive about both the mistakes and discoveries that had made him who he was. When he flattered about her painting it did not put her on her guard, ‘fool that I was,’ she whispers angrily to herself.
She had prided herself that she was playing the game skilfully. Even though she trusted West, she had been assiduous in calculating exactly how much of the method she should let him see to whet his appetite, without letting him walk away with it for no money. Each time he had returned for a further demonstration it had seemed to vindicate her approach, at the same time as it trumped Mrs Tullett’s doubts and eroded any lingering scepticism on the part of Provis. She saw the way she started to change in each individual’s eyes. After surviving the fire of cynicism from all sides, she had risen like a phoenix as a force to be reckoned with. The worst that had been predicted – that her interpretation was wrong, and that West would ridicule her and Provis to the King – had not happened. At the same time as Provis had started worrying about their debt to Cosway, she had become euphoric about her daring.
And now it was all proved to be for nothing. Since she had discovered West’s deception, she realised she had convinced him of the method’s value precisely at the point at which she had most feared he was going to walk away from their negotiations. The image she had taken away in her mind of that meeting had to be revisited and reinterpreted. Something subtle had changed in his behaviour on the last afternoon when they had worked on the Venus and Cupid. But when she was in the room she had seen it as the birth of scepticism rather than of conviction.
The theme for the painting was of a mother comforting her son who had been stung by a bee. When Ann Jemima realised this, she felt a spasm of grief for a mother she could hardly remember, yet she did not talk of this to the President. No pictures in her mind, just a twisting inside, and a sense of a fury she could not articulate. As ever she concealed this by playing the role she knew was expected of her. Calculated that by doing so, she and West might finally reach an agreement by the end of that day.
Late autumn sun streamed through the window of the studio as they worked together on the painting. After lunch West was suddenly called away unexpectedly for an hour. Engrossed in what they were doing, Ann Jemima had taken it upon herself to fill in the details of Cupid’s face, and the white silk of his mother’s dress on which his hand rested. In the glazing and layering of paint she applied all that she had learned of the way Titian captured light. And as she stood back she saw how what she had done brought to life not simply a mother and child, but the sense of an infant thriving on the love it received. In the flush of the child’s face she could see how it had been upset and now was calmed, how its hand had rested on its mother not just as a sense of comfort but as a life source. Upset, for reasons she couldn’t understand, she started to shake. Then, to her shock, she realised that West had re-entered the room, and quickly recomposed herself.
Her concern that she might have betrayed any kind of emotion to the American was quickly supplanted by her alarm at the way he seemed to react. When he saw the painting, he stopped dead. She suddenly feared he was angry – pushing her own emotions to the side, she apologised for having done so much while he was out of the room. He shook his head and walked closer to the painting. ‘Is this from the part of the method you have not allowed me to see?’ he asked. She was silent, not knowing exactly how to answer. ‘Or is it what you have deduced from what I have taught you?’ he continued.
She found some words, unable herself truly to understand. ‘It was from the method,’ she replied firmly, ‘though…’ she continued as she saw the expression hardening in his eyes, ‘… you have taught me much. But it was the method that allowed me to do this.’
He turned to scrutinise the painting again. She saw a sense of shock in his bearing, a return of the unease she had noted when they had first met. She feared she had overstepped the mark, that somehow she had broken some unspoken contract between them.
‘The method,’ he repeated. ‘That it lets you – if you’ll excuse me, my dear – that it lets you create this…’
‘Have I done something wrong?’ she asked.
She looked towards the dark eyes stricken with doubt.
‘In truth, my dear, I cannot understand what you have done.’ He could not stop looking at the painting. And at that point, she thought with fear, he has turned against me. She could feel it as surely as if he had declared his hostility out loud, but she could not understand it. She thought back with anxiety on what she had said to him before he had left the room. She wondered if some careless word had pricked him, some thoughtless observation had put him on his guard. Then she looked towards the painting again.
There is something wrong with it that I cannot see, she thought in faint desperation. He was happy to have me here and now he is not. Please God, tell me not that we have gone through so much to reach this stage, and now it is I who have ruined it.
She could not say anything more to him beyond the polite formalities as she was ushered out to a carriage. Even as he smiled and bade her farewell, it was as if a wall had sprung up between them. How often had she chastised herself since then? How often had she wondered what naïve mistake she had made, what unspoken code she had violated. Yet after Cosway’s visit she could see that the change in his attitude represented something that even she could never have dared imagine. ‘His loss of composure was because it was I and not he who created the full Titian effect,’ she whispers to herself. ‘When he said, “That it lets you create this…” it was not an expression of disdain, it was an expression of wonder.’
In the Sub-Dean’s vestry at the Chapel Royal, Provis has no conception that Ann Jemima has fled. Round and round he paces, muttering in the incense-silenced air. Eventually, to calm himself, he sits down, picks up a communion chalice, and starts to polish it.
Clicking heels on the chapel’s marble floor interrupt his solitude.
‘Provis?’ The Serjeant of the Vestry, Joseph Roe, is in the doorway. Small dark eyes blaze with the intensity of fire in a pale elongated face. ‘I need you to come and assist me with trimming the candles.’
Provis opens a drawer in the cupboard next to him, removes a white linen cloth, and starts to fold it in preparation for laying it over the chalice.
‘If you will forgive me, Mr Roe, I desire to remain alone right now.’
He refuses to meet his eye.
‘Mr Provis,’ Roe spits out in a whisper. ‘I know you believe you have been wronged, but that is no reason to be insolent with all around you.’
‘There have been many nights that I have not slept this year because I thought Benjamin West might be laughing at us.’ He looks at Roe through reddened eyes. ‘Now I discover I was right – but it is not because he attaches no value to the manuscript. It is because he attaches no value to myself and my daughter.’
Roe sits down at the table to their right, and raps on it to indicate that Provis should sit on the other side.
‘I am concerned, Provis. Have you considered how serious the accusation is that you are making?’
‘This is the gamble he has taken. He knows that all will ask why a man as important as he would want to swindle people as lowly as we are. He knows that they will speculate that the money we were asking was too much, that the method was of little importance,’ he declares. It occurs to Provis as he speaks that his outrage is bestowing a lethal confidence – now he has no doubts at all about the sum they should receive. ‘Yet he would have no trouble paying us. Each time I have been to his house I have noticed something of value.’ His anger wrenches at him. ‘In his hallway he has a mirror with a frame carved by Grinling Gibbons. In his dining room he has a seventeenth-century Flemish tapestry that covers more than half one wall. To my mind he could sell just one small painting in his drawing room and have enough to pay us three times over. Why would he deny us £500?’
Roe’s eyes narrow.
‘I am sure there is some reasonable explanation. You should calm down before doing anything, Mr Provis, your frame of mind helps no one, least of all yourself.’
‘You are sceptical, I see.’ Provis speaks more calmly now. ‘Well, so be it. But what is important here is that Mr West is not. Can you not see how West’s dishonesty is also a vouch of faith in what we have revealed to him? I fail to comprehend how the situation can be read otherwise.’
Roe is silent for a moment. ‘What does your daughter say?’
Provis takes a deep breath. ‘She was calling out in her sleep in the night, and she would not eat this morning. I pray that West’s insult is not compounded by her becoming ill.’
‘She is a most admirable young lady.’
‘Yet she has had to combat so much. Some will condemn her for being too ambitious. If that is enough to acquit West, then this is a world without justice.’
‘But this is a world with justice.’
Provis regards his employer with withering irritation, marvels again at his unquestioning belief that his God is just, and that the English monarch is the prime instrument of God’s rule on earth.
‘Well in that case,’ he replies with barely disguised irony, ‘I shall simply wait till all is resolved favourably.’
‘The King and Pitt are with us for communion this morning.’ The Serjeant of the Vestry rises. ‘We shall talk on this later.’
A chorus of croaks and jeers distracts Ann Jemima from her thoughts. The bell tolls in a small church to her left – ahead of her a crowd is gathering. Horses trip and stumble as they pull the carts of revellers down uneven streets. When she looks up at the windows, men, women and children are pressed against them. Despite the early hour and coldness of the morning, people are standing outside taverns drinking.
‘What is happening?’ she asks an old man with hollow cheeks and disappointment scarred beneath his eyes. He surveys the passers by over his tankard. ‘What is the celebration?’
‘Execution,’ he replies shortly.
‘An execution?’ she repeats with shock.
‘We have not had one like it at Newgate for a while,’ he replies. ‘Five ’angings including a woman.’
‘What is their crime?’
‘They counterfeited coins. For men the punishment’s always been ’anging, but the woman is lucky.’
She looks at him, incredulous.
‘Lucky?’
‘Six years ago they would’ve burnt ’er at the stake.’ He surveys her impassively. ‘Women counterfeiters was punished more ’arshly – the crime was considered a greater perversion of their nature. But some bleeding ’earts got the law changed. As I said, she is lucky she is just being ’anged.’
His mouth opens to become a cave stinking of beer. She takes her leave swiftly and walks on. All around she sees the faces darkened with anticipation, smells the hunger for death, hears the ribald denunciations. She imagines the condemned men and the woman in their cells. Wonders if they are terrified or defiant, resigned to their fate or raging against its injustice.
She moves further down the street. In the distance she can see where the gibbets have been set up. She walks over to a boy who is selling pamphlets.
‘Tale of Eleanor ’arris and ’er gang,’ the boy intones, dull-eyed, holding out one of them. ‘Cost you a farthin’.’
‘Is she the woman being executed?’
‘The very one.’
‘How did she commit her forgery?’
‘She did what many have done before ’er. Clipped the edges off coins, and melted the metal for counterfeit moulds.’
‘And for this people must die…’
‘She and ’er ’usband and ’is friends. Yes they must die. Can’t show disrespect to the King’s image in these times and get away with it.’
Ann Jemima looks around her again. ‘Move along, missy,’ shouts an old man. Now she feels herself being shifted along the ground – all around her she can see open mouths, raised hands, hears the shouting get ever louder. She cannot quite comprehend the surge of energy around her, the vibration of sound that invades her body and skull. She wants to scream for it all to stop, to call out that it is a madness. Every atom in her body is driving her to flee from here, and yet at the same time she feels that she must stay, be one person in the crowd who is not jeering, screeching, vomiting contempt.
She realises there is a low wall to her right, and with a little effort climbs up onto it. A cart is rattling from the other direction down the street. As it passes her she sees it is carrying three women in rags smiling happily with children – the youngest seems little more than six. She looks beyond them and sees that in the distance animal carcasses are being loaded onto carts before setting off towards Smithfield. All around her, the crowd swirls and eddies – the surging waves of excitement, the rhythmic pulse of baying sound. Kisses are blown back and forth, the voices of hawkers tout food and pamphlets, stray dogs bark from surrounding alleyways.
And in the middle of this all, five gibbets standing in a row. Death among the living, silence amid the noise. The sun catches the gibbets, paints their loops in shadow on the ground. In the prison cells, the condemned are waiting.
As the Serjeant of the Vestry is taking his leave, the door gapes open again. There stands Darton, his eyes swiftly reading the situation.
‘I see we are in serious debate, gentlemen,’ Darton says. ‘Shall I return at a later point?’
‘We talk of West,’ says Provis grimly.
Darton studies him for a moment.
‘Mrs Tullett told me. I was sorry to hear it. From what Ann Jemima said to me when we last met, the signs were hopeful.’
Roe indicates that he should step to one side, so he can leave the vestry.
‘I must prepare the altar for today’s service,’ he says. ‘I hope to see you in the chapel shortly, Mr Provis.’
At his departure, the atmosphere in the vestry changes – as if molecules have arranged themselves in orderly lines on his entry, and with the force of his exit have been sent rolling around like billiard balls. Darton shifts his frame to the seat opposite Provis. He looks hard at the face that even in good humour seems blighted by misfortune: shadows like bruises under the eyes, the misshapen nose, the heavy mouth. ‘What do you intend to do to take revenge?’ he asks quietly.
‘I have not calculated it in detail, but revenge I will take.’
‘Will you have him attacked?’ Darton looks around him quickly. ‘I could arrange it.’
Provis grimaces. ‘I intend something slightly more subtle.’ He stares. ‘Something that will leave its stamp on his reputation for a long time.’
Darton is quiet for a moment.
‘Provis, if you’ll forgive me, I have come here to see you on another matter. You seem to have been avoiding me of late.’
The verger’s eyes flicker.
‘I have many troubles in my life right now. You will forgive me if having a friend who I know to be sympathetic to France feels a little burdensome. More than a few people have told me that you have been looking for me. If you want some information that might help your cause, I am not your man.’
He stares at him. Darton shakes his head and quickly goes to the door and opens it. Satisfied that no one is standing outside, he returns swiftly.
‘You should not be worried. My visit to France was not altogether what I expected,’ he replies in a low voice.
‘I take it you were not just singing.’
‘No indeed.’ The smile is almost indiscernible. ‘I was sent to meet an Irishman – a man called Wolfe Tone. A prominent and passionate Republican.’ He sits down again. ‘I thought the man was a genius – but he has a plan that is entirely reckless. He is conspiring with the French to send a fleet across the Channel, first to liberate Catholic Ireland, and then bring fear and terror to the English mainland. He has neither sufficient forces nor the organisation to do it. I predict it will be a disaster.’
Provis clears his throat.
‘Your friend, the leader of the opposition, must be delighted with your conclusions.’
‘My friendship with Mr Fox has not been so warm since my return. We have not been able to see eye-to-eye on this matter in the slightest. I have sympathy with Mr Tone on the injustices he feels Ireland has suffered. But he believes the French are happy to serve him, when it is clear all he is doing is serving them.’ He sighs. ‘I have seen enough now to realise that England should not have its own Terror. As a result it is Mr Pitt who is currently most happy to receive me.’
Provis stares for a moment with incredulity.
‘After all these years? Are my ears deceiving me?’
Darton swallows.
‘They are not.’
Provis recovers himself.
‘You were ever the pragmatist, Mr Darton. Does he pay better too?’
‘I suspected it might be in your character to condemn me, even if you agree with my position. Well hear me, Provis, I have seen far too many senseless deaths now to want to help someone who will only cause more. We have watched wave after wave of leaders in Revolutionary France turn on each other in hatred. Even now we cannot tell who will lead the country a year from hence, and what the consequences will be for the countries they have invaded. I know you are of the same mind. I hoped you might be happy to hear what I said.’
His anger is making him breathe fast. He pauses for breath.
‘You believe this invasion of Ireland to be imminent?’ Provis asks quietly.
‘A message was brought to me in the middle of last night saying that it could happen within days.’
‘Does the King know?’
‘Why do you seek me out on this?’
‘Having this change of heart has not been an easy matter. I wanted to seek the counsel of the most discreet individual I know. You have always challenged my political views in the past, but you are no one’s man, nor will you ever be.’
‘Maybe you give me too much credit.’
‘I think I know of what I speak.’
Provis is about to reply when the door opens again at speed. This time it reveals Mrs Tullett. The two men catch each other’s eye in alarm.
‘How long have you been wai—’ Darton begins, but she has no time for his words.
‘Mr Provis, you must come right away! Oh God help us, you must come now.’
‘What has happened?’ he says.
‘Ann Jemima,’ she says. ‘She has fled.’
She starts weeping loudly, and the Serjeant of the Vestry comes running.
‘What is the commotion? The King and Mr Pitt will be here any moment.’
‘My daughter…’ gasps Provis. Without speaking further he pushes past Mrs Tullett and Mr Roe, and leaves the chapel at a run.
Ann Jemima stays till the condemned men and the woman appear in two separate carts. The men travel together, and the woman on her own. Two of the men are drunk – one shouts and leers at the crowd, though she cannot make out what he is saying. The second sways and lurches, while the two other men sit, grim and insensible.
When the cart with the woman rolls past, Ann Jemima sees that she is small, neat and dressed in a white tunic. Her lips are pinched, her shoulders hunched, her eyes burn with quiet anguish. She does not look at the crowd. The louder the noise, the more she seems to retreat into herself.
As she watches the carts progressing towards the scaffold, Ann Jemima realises that she cannot stay and watch the cleaving of soul from body, of life from flesh. She steps down from the wall and starts to fight her way out of the crowd – through the men shouting bawdily at the prisoners, and the children throwing food. The wall of bodies seems to go on forever – a maze of inhumanity, a labyrinth of cheap hate. Some people push back as she tries to pass, others shout angrily, others are insensible to any external force as they stare towards the prisoners being led out of the cart and up to make their confessions. Then, suddenly, Ann Jemima does not have to fight any more. There are still people around, and the noise continues to pursue her, but she feels as if she can breathe and move freely as she makes her way up towards Cheapside.
Where am I fleeing to?
The question patters across her mind with increasing urgency. No relatives left in the country, no world for her outside London. She thinks of crowded stagecoaches, of roads snaking in the darkness to villages with no names and faceless inhabitants. She tries to imagine herself as a governess teaching whey-faced children, or as a companion to a silhouette constrained by corsets and privilege.
As she hurries on she stumbles into a flock of pigeons pecking at a hunk of mouldy bread. They sheer up into the air. For a moment, all she is aware of is wings and dust. As the shock agitates her mind, she is propelled back into a small dark room where the twenty-year-old painting master hired by her grandmother is showing her the first picture she has ever seen to depict a scientific experiment.
It is this work that more than any other has made her want to paint. It’s a painting by a man called Joseph Wright of Derby, ‘the greatest artist to bring together science and art’. In her memory she can hear her painting-master’s words, the sound of a voice that once meant much to her. For a moment she can see his face, the thin elegant nose, the eyes furious with curiosity, the dark hair that one day she suddenly wanted to touch. The sense of impatience that animated his whole body when he was gripped by an idea. The laughter lines that transformed his face when she said something clever, the distracted air when she did not. Septimus Green. He could not see that when she went to his lessons, this skinny irreverent fourteen-year-old found a light there that was otherwise absent in her dark and tedious world. He had agreed to teach her simply in return for money to buy equipment for his scientific experiments. When he had seen how well she could draw, he had told her that one day she might become an excellent scientist’s assistant. Told her about Madame Lavoisier – wife to one of the greatest scientists in the world – about her skill in drawing scientific equipment and translating ideas that made their experiments among the most exciting in Europe.
When Septimus shows her the picture by Joseph Wright, she feels as if she is inside and outside it at the same time – that she is the observer and the observed. She is watching a group huddled round a table – through the window a full moon can be glimpsed through the clouds, but it is candlelight that paints their faces and emotions. There are two young girls in the group – one of them cannot bear to look up at what is taking place, but there is one, about nine years of age, who stares with a mixture of curiosity and sorrow that breaks her heart. In all there are ten people in the room, one man deep in thought, one young boy operating some kind of device, one man comforting the older girl, and the others either looking on in fascination or engaged in conversation.
In the centre is a man who looks like a long-haired prophet, haunted by what he sees in the future. He is a scientist whose hand hovers over a large glass bulb – inside that bulb is a white bird, its chest resting on the bottom, just one wing held out, trapped and unable to fly. The device operated by the boy is slowly sucking the air out of the bulb. Normally the bird would be acting wildly, but the experiment is depriving it of enough air to do so, instead it is docile – and that docility is a prelude to death. The man in the centre is trying to sustain the right amount of air in the bulb to keep it between docility and extinction. But he does not know if his calculation is right, and some in the picture are not upset by this. If the bird’s life is sacrificed, then some level of knowledge will have been achieved, and that alone will have made the experiment worth it.
And then she is in the picture. At first she is the girl looking up, she cannot stop looking, she wants to see all that is wrong and right. She craves knowledge about how air sustains life, and she is curious to see if this creature will live or die. She watches the bird, which was terrified and beating against the glass just moments earlier. She cannot understand why it is so still.
When Septimus asks her if she likes the work, she wants to tell her him that when she is not allowed to draw and read what she wants, she too feels deprived of air. That when Hooke’s Micrographia was confiscated, and she was instructed to read a book for The Improvement of Young Persons instead, her desire was to smash a window. She wants to say that the precious hour with him each week is like the breath of life in a suffocating existence. But she does not say any of this. She thinks she might say it to him in a couple of years when she is older. But then a week after smallpox takes her grandmother away, he too is dead of the same cause.
Where am I fleeing to?
Her mind casts around wildly. There is another memory – it comes to her as a voice first, it is the voice of a girl the same age as she is, she can hear the friendliness in its rhythm, its easy lilt. They are talking easily in a large drawing room, she is confiding in her about what she has loved and what she has lost. This girl is the first ally she has known since coming to London, it is in her parents’ house that Ann Jemima stays before she arrives at St James’s Palace. She remembers helpless laughter and shared secrets, fleet-footed chatter and carefree afternoons. In this friendship she finds a kind of home, a sense of complicity that allows the wretched hours and days to speed away before she is united with Provis.
But I cannot return.
There are different emotions concerning other people in this house. She knows she is but a short distance from where it is now and her mind begins to weigh up the memories, frantically balancing her happier recollections against the swirl of confusion that followed. Her feet carry her on, up Cheapside, past the Bank of England, and up to Bishopsgate, till she reaches the alleyways that span out like arteries around the market. Above her patches of deepening blue sky are fringed by clouds gleaming gold in the sun. She thinks of Mrs Tullett talking about the houses for harlots in this area, about the women smuggled into the Palace for the pleasure of the Prince of Wales and other dignitaries at the Court. There are agencies for domestic work around here too, should she decide her only course is to become a scullery or laundry maid.
Where am I fleeing to?
For a moment her mind goes back to the condemned men and woman, the different expressions on their faces as they rattled past in their carts. She imagines each one, framed by an unforgiving sky, taking those last few steps towards nothingness. Their deaths seem both unbearably close, and yet a hundred miles away. As the chaotic thoughts loop and swirl around her head, Ann Jemima is suddenly aware of her own frail physicality, of the veins pulsing blood beneath her skin, of the lungs taking in air and turning it into life. For the people she has seen earlier that day, all of this is has stopped. She sees their heads placed in the nooses. A sob surges in her throat, as she thinks of them dropping towards the ground while the crowd shouts in ecstasy. For what seems an eternity, the bodies judder, till finally they stop moving.
Next to this my problems are as nothing.
The thoughts continue to loop and swirl, but her feet are taking her directly to the house in Spitalfields. And now she sees it. Her heart starts to beat faster. For some reason it is a shock to see it still standing there. She looks at the street name, recognises the blue door, sees once more the distinctive doorknocker in the shape of a man’s head wreathed with laurels.
‘I have no choice,’ she whispers to herself. Behind that door so many memories that she has banished for years. ‘It is my only chance for now.’ She takes a deep breath and approaches it unhappily. Gathers her cloak around her. When she raises the knocker and drops it for the first time, there is no answer. The blue painted wood seems to mock her. She raises the knocker higher so it hammers louder. She stands back and sees curtains moving, glimmers of lamplight.
And then the door opens. The young woman behind the servant who opens it has high colour in her cheeks and dark hair. She wears an elegant long green dress, accompanied by cream gloves. She looks imperiously at Ann Jemima without seeming to recognise her. Then she takes a second glance and frowns in disbelief. ‘You!’ she exclaims. Ann Jemima is about to reply when footsteps approach her quickly from behind. A hand suddenly seizes her arm, forcing her to walk further down the street.
She shrieks, and turns in outrage to find herself staring into Darton’s face.
‘Miss Provis,’ he says. ‘Your father is looking for you.’
‘How did you find me?’ she gasps, looking back. The woman has stepped out of the house to see what is happening, but when she observes Darton she quickly retreats and re-emerges with an older woman who looks shocked, before ushering her back inside again.
‘You had no right to find me,’ shouts Ann Jemima. ‘I knew what I had to do. Mr Provis is suffering because of everything I have done. The best thing was for me to be gone.’
She looks wildly back to the house again, but the door is now closed though she can see a curtain moving on the first floor.
He waits for a moment till she is calm again.
‘You must come back and hold West to account,’ he says. ‘You owe it to your father to do so.’
‘I will not come home. It is too great a risk,’ she hisses.
‘I have never seen your father so upset,’ he says, grasping her arm still more tightly.
‘I persuaded him to approach West. I have caused him nothing but trouble. I must be gone from his life, from everybody’s lives.’
He relaxes his grip on her arm, and stands back.
‘You will cause him yet more by running away.’
‘I do not think you understand.’
‘What do I not understand?’
She studies his face for a moment. Her own expression is filled with a mixture of defiance and terror, he has a sense that she is not sure what she is about to say or what effect it will have on him when she says it.
‘It is your duty to help Mr Provis take revenge.’
He gestures solemnly behind her.
It is at this point that she sees the waiting carriage, and Mr Provis waiting within it.