I had, by the end of that month, moved out of the fairy house into more suitable lodgings, as the Duke of H put it, in Pall Mall. I had asked him if I could take Ned Bird with me but he wouldn’t hear of it. I tried to explain why I needed him. His grace raised his bejewelled hand to silence me.
‘No,’ he said, firmly. ‘All connections must be severed. I will it so and so it will be.’
Rich and fashionable society has, as far as I can see, little breadth to it and even less depth, being on the whole obsessed with itself and itself alone. Its sport lies mainly in scandal, its nourishment comes from gossip, and it is hard to imagine how society would pass its days without them.
Shortly after I moved, the duke commissioned a portrait of me by one of society’s most eminent artists. It showed me in a white shift, leaning on the arm of a chair with my hands together, a string of pearls over my right shoulder and my left breast exposed. I stared out of the canvas with a soft smile on my full lips, my cheeks rosy, my hair pinned but not powdered. His grace was delighted with the results.
‘There isn’t another face like yours,’ said the duke, who prided himself on being a connoisseur of everything fashionable. ‘Don’t you agree?’ he asked his friend Sir Henry Slater, who I’d met at the fairy house the night I was still innocent, the night I’d first loved Avery.
‘I declare,’ said Sir Henry, ‘even if Miss Tully were not a beauty, her style would always attract attention. As would her keen intelligence.’
To the fury of the artist, copies by good, bad and indifferent engravers were made and sold so my image could be bought in many sizes, some so small as to fit into a snuffbox. Now I was recognised wherever we went.
I found Sir Henry entertaining company. Unlike the duke, he had no desire for me to sit silently in front of him – far from it. Wit and conversation was what he craved. He once asked my opinion of what might happen if the Duke of H should become king.
Without too much thought, I replied, ‘There would be a revolution.’
Sir Henry was the only person to lighten the ever-increasing boredom of the shallow life I now led. Gossip, bibble-babble. Fashion faux pas strangely held the same weight as the scandals that went on behind bedroom doors. The duke was forever recounting dull stories, embarrassing moments in society. These amused him no end.
One involved the Duchess de Vauquelin. He had been playing cards with her one night and she had lost badly. Her face aglow, she put her hand to her forehead and in doing so dislodged an artificial eyebrow made of mouse fur. Unnoticed by its owner, the eyebrow began, by degrees, to slide down the coating of powdery paint on her face.
‘How we laughed,’ said his grace. ‘Including the duchess, until her daughter pointed out what had happened. She hasn’t been seen in public since.’
I thought, this is what kills you in the end: mindless prattling, stupidity that eats away at your very soul.
Time passed and I became less sure of who I was. I saw myself more and more as an actress playing a part – the wordless part of a courtesan.
In April, a month that is neither governed by spring nor ruled by winter, the duke held one of his more intimate dinner parties at his house in St James’s Square. It was for a small circle of his closest male friends. They had one characteristic in common: a great interest in themselves. I had hoped that I might be excused, for I hadn’t had an opportunity to invite Hope to Pall Mall and longed to catch up with all the news from the fairy house. His grace, though, was insistent that I attend the dinner. Among the guests were Sir Henry Slater, Mr Luckham – he of the glove and the lion story – and Lord Frederick Fitzjohn.
He was hoping to become betrothed to the Countess Angelina.
‘The damn countess would be mine,’ he told us, ‘if it was not for my brother. He is all that stands between me and a fortune.’
I wasn’t acquainted with the last guest, a young rake who went by the name of Selway.
The duke’s idea of an informal dinner party had all the informality of a state occasion. Under a crystal chandelier, the long table was laid with the finest glass and china, and footmen lined the walls. I, being the only woman present, was the first to enter that evening. I saw her standing on the table in her stockinged feet, wearing nothing but a shift. She was about sixteen years of age and around her neck was a noose. She was trying to attach the other end of the rope to the chandelier. I knew no one else could see her and wondered which of these gentlemen had unwittingly called forth this unhappy spirit.
As we took our seats, she looked wildly about and kicked a plate from the setting in front of Mr Luckham, sending it flying to crash loudly upon the floor.
‘How strange,’ he said, I didn’t touch it.’
A footman hastily picked up the pieces and a new plate was put before the startled gentleman. As usual, I sat, not speaking, watching as more and more wine made its way round the table. All the while the girl skilfully tiptoed among the plates.
Mr Selway said, rather too loudly, ‘I hear, Miss Truegood, that you have a pearl hand.’
I smiled and said nothing.
The ghost was unpinning her hair so that it fell over her shoulders. She now moved among the dishes that were being served and, to my amusement, rested her hand on the duke’s wig. He shuddered and demanded that more coal be put upon the fire for the room had a chill to it.
The meal was over, and I had risen to leave the men to their port when Mr Selway said, ‘You didn’t answer me, Miss Truegood. Is it true? Do you have a pearl hand or is it only a myth?’
To my utter surprise, the duke said, ‘Tully, why don’t you show the sceptics here what you can do with just one touch?’
‘I am sorry, your grace…’ I said.
‘Show them, woman. Come on, I demand it. Who wants to volunteer?’
There was a moment’s silence and then I suggested Mr Luckham for the ghost was standing behind his chair. She looked at me and smiled.
‘Very well,’ said Mr Luckham. ‘I’m up for the sport but I wager you will have no success with me. I am made of firmer metal than you, your grace.’
‘I will bet ten thousand guineas that Tully will do it with one touch.’
Mr Selway said, lazily, ‘I will bet double that she cannot.’
The atmosphere had taken on a more serious quality. Such hefty wagers brought with them a certain sobriety.
‘Sir,’ I said to the duke, ‘this is not wise.’
‘Not wise,’ he repeated. ‘And who, pray, asked you for your opinion?’
I positively hated this man, and I’d had more than enough of being thought of as nothing but an empty-headed doll.
The duke asked where I wanted Mr Luckham and if he should be seated or standing.
‘Seated,’ I said, and pointed to a spot furthest from the table where everyone would have a good view.
A footman duly put a chair there and Mr Luckham seated himself. I knew what I was going to do and I doubted that it would end well. If the fools wanted amusement, I would let them have it. I stayed where I was on the other side of the table and began to will the spirit to be visible to all in the room.
‘By Gad,’ said Lord Fitzjohn. ‘How long does this nonsense take?’
‘Yes,’ said the duke, impatiently. ‘I don’t remember having to wait so long. What are you doing standing there? Go to him, Tully.’
I didn’t move.
‘Come on, madam,’ said the duke. ‘You must…’ He stopped, for there she was, for all to see.
There was a gasp.
‘Where the hell did she come from?’ asked Lord Fitzjohn.
The girl knelt beside Mr Luckham and, speechless, he stared at her as if trying to remember just how much wine he had drunk. She undid his breeches. No one at the table dared breathe.
‘It’s a ghost,’ said Sir Henry. ‘How amusing.’
‘Silence!’ commanded the duke.
Mr Luckham, his voice trembling, said, ‘Mary…’
The spirit began to sing:
Mistress Mary,
Quite contrary,
How does my garden grow?
‘You remember me,’ she said, ‘Your Mary.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Mr Luckham.
‘You remember…
With Silver Bells,
And Cockle Shells,
And so my garden grows.
‘You was going to marry me, you were. Remember all them fine words you spoke? Promised you did, if I would ride your cock horse. You ain’t forgotten? And I, all innocent, believed you to be an honourable man.’
She took off her shift and stood before us in all her voluptuous beauty, then eased herself onto his erect pole.
‘Ride a cock horse,’ she sang moving up and down, ‘we goes up to town to marry me, into the grave to bury me.’
He threw his head back and groaned as she began to fade from him. I walked to where he was sitting and put my hand once on his member. ‘Mary,’ he screamed, and exploded into the empty air.
There was a scraping of chairs for now the apparition could be seen dangling above the table from the rope about her neck, turning round and round, her face a skull.
Mr Luckham sprang up. ‘Help me cut her down, help me someone, for God’s sake…Mary!’
She vanished and all the candles went out.
‘How did you do it?’ asked the duke the following morning. ‘Was she one of Queenie’s girls? Or an actress? How did you smuggle her in?’
‘Your grace,’ I said, ‘if I had done so, that would be supposing I knew what you were going to ask of me.’
‘Mmm,’ said the duke, being forced into the uncomfortable position of having to think logically. ‘I am a rational man. There must be an explanation, for there is an explanation for all things.’
I said nothing.
‘Madam, I asked you a question. Tell me how you smuggled in the woman.’
‘I didn’t, your grace.’
‘Are you suggesting that this…ah…Mary was really a ghost?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Balderdash,’ he said. ‘We will speak no more about this. You are forbidden ever again to do such a thing in my house – or anywhere else – while you are my mistress.’
There became an even greater distance between us. One thing I knew for certain was that Sir Henry would spread the story of last night’s events – spread it further than jam on bread.