‘Although it is her chiefest.’
‘Females have little enough of their own in the first place,’ he says, weighing the thought to see whether he believes it. ‘Many good women are coerced into things they are not easy with; I do believe that redemption is possible.’
‘When I marry –’ she offers up an enigmatic little twitch of the lip – ‘perhaps it will be. Repentance is much easier when one is of comfortable means. For now –’ waving her hand across her cluttered room – ‘I enjoy my earthly glamours. But, sir, the hour for tea is over.’
He dons hat and coat most meekly. Then he fumbles; holds out a banknote as a token of his gentility. ‘Where do I put this?’ he asks.
‘Back in your pocket, sir.’
‘But—’
‘I have asked nothing of you,’ she says softly.
‘No.’ And in fact he has not expected any transaction, only that, if he be the quality of gentleman who may visit and sit with a celebrated courtesan, he must also be the quality that can afford it. ‘A gift,’ he says.
‘No, no.’ They stand apart a little longer. Her eyes are all downcast, and her mouth has a droop to it. ‘I do not need reward for every ordinary meeting I have.’
‘Permit me,’ he says, and takes her hand. ‘I mean you the warmest friendship.’
She sighs. ‘Even the warmest friendship has conditions to it.’ But as she shakes his hand she brightens. ‘You may visit me again,’ she says. ‘I would like that.’
FOURTEEN
In the Portland Square house there is a vast basin of wassail highly spiced and bobbing with apples, and there is music from a fiddle and a pipe. More girls have been delivered from Mrs Rawson’s, amongst them Miss Clark who is a whisper over four feet tall and famed for the extraordinary tininess of her feet, and a pretty black-eyed Malay maiden in a silk turban. ‘Oh, we shall have a fine time of it,’ says Elinor, and seizing Polly’s hand draws her into the room, where the men let up a great cheer. ‘A dance! A dance!’ Elinor cries, and dance they do, until the room grows hot as an oven and Polly must throw herself down into the window seat, panting and laughing.
A young gentleman comes to sit by her. ‘Are you tired?’ he asks.
‘Only hot,’ she says, and indeed her brow is wet with perspiration. She takes out her handkerchief and dabs it upon herself; when she looks up she sees him watching with peculiar interest. ‘What is it?’ she asks sharply, but he shakes his head and looks quickly down at his shoes. She dabs again, and watches as he darts a look at the handkerchief upon her skin.
She touches her own cheek and holds her fingers up for him to see. ‘’Tis my skin,’ she says sharply. ‘It does not come off.’
He colours deeply and still will not look her in the eye. ‘Only that one never sees ladies of your complexion about the town.’
‘You do not go to the right places,’ she rejoins.
‘We were very glad to have secured you for this party,’ he says, taking her hand, ‘for not a one of us have ever tried it with a negro before now.’
All of a sudden her mouth is a stopped bottle ready to pop. To restrain herself, she looks about for Elinor, nods towards her. ‘And why did you order Miss Bewlay?’
‘The sorrel-pated one?’ He leans in confidingly. ‘We hear they are most unnatural in their appetites.’
She laughs aloud but the pressure in her head is not relieved. ‘Rarities, are we? To add to your collection?’
And he grins with relief, not seeing her anger. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘oh yes, that is exactly it. You are a woman entirely out of the common water; we all desire to sample every sort of woman there is in the world.’
‘What an education it will be,’ she says, and rises.
Elinor, just seized jokeously up into the arms of young Mr Hammond, the host of the party, sees her: ‘Are you going outside?’ she calls. ‘Wait for me, dear.’
‘Let us all go,’ says Mr Hammond. ‘It is fiendish hot in here.’
And out onto the terrace they go, Polly casting about for a glimpse of Elinor’s bright hair, but she is leaning against the parapet lost in conversation with some young blood, and does not look up. Polly, standing yet amongst the group, bethinks herself to regain her composure with a stroll, and surveys the dark garden, its paths mapped out with twinkling lights. There is a little round hut at its centre, with a weathervane atop it, and a pretty lattice up which a dark vine grows. Is it a place she might sit quietly for a little? Or too secluded? She would not like a gentleman to be inspired to follow her there. ‘Is it a summer house?’ she asks, and the men guffaw.
‘It is the necessary!’ they say. ‘Is it not artfully done? You never did suspect.’
‘So clever,’ she says.
The young man who first spoke to her has reappeared at her side; now he seizes her wrist, a gesture she finds quite startling. Caressing her fingers with great earnestness, he says, ‘Madam, may I ask you a great favour?’
‘I think you are going to either way,’ she says.
‘What I said before – we are all in dispute amongst one another as to who will have you first.’ He looks over at Mr Hammond, who is regaling Elinor Bewlay with an anecdote she finds irresistibly hilarious. ‘Now, I believe I was the first to talk to you …’
‘Sir,’ she smiles. ‘There is no first. There are no turns; I am not a toy to be passed about. I am an item of great value and rarity which few men are fortunate enough to ever possess. If you want me, you will earn me. Excuse me, please,’ and she gestures to the little rustic necessary. ‘I must avail myself of your summer house.’
She walks – and this part of her journey is clearly observed by several onlookers – down the brick path bordered by ankle-height box hedges, and circles the wall of the building until she finds its door. It is dark within, a mere snib of candle yet burning, and a draught comes up from the three apertures over the soil, which smells of nothing at all but fresh sawdust and dried lavender. Polly, whose skirts would prevent her from using them even if she needed to, rests for a moment on the edge of the bench, and ruffles her fingers in her hair, which she suspects of wilting. Christ, the things we must tolerate. She thinks that later she will tell Elinor about it; ‘“Most unnatural in your appetites,”’ she will mimic, and surely they will laugh together, but still she cannot find much mirth.
She closes her eyes. She could sit here all night; without, the noise of the party goes on – the men are laughing immoderately at something – and she hears Elinor’s high and joyful shriek. Must I return? she thinks. Oh, I must.
She sidles out quietly, hoping to peep at the company and better prepare herself to rejoin their merriment, but as she looks to her right something catches her eye. It is a door in the high wall, a plain little wooden door just wide enough for a gardener to pass through, and it stands ajar.
Beyond it – what? She does not know.
She glances again at the group, but they are playing and shouting without thought for her. Elinor has snatched something from one of the men, and as he lunges to retrieve it she skips away, and darts into the house holding it aloft.