‘Kitty!’
The girl brings her lips back in a snarl. ‘I’ll not let them hurt you.’ When she is set down she darts to Mrs Chappell’s side and clings fiercely to her hand.
‘There, there. You are a good girl.’ Above there are sounds of further struggle; thuds and scampering, and the curses of the men. ‘Saints alive, they’ll do somebody a mischief. Call them off, call them off,’ she says to Mr Trevithick. ‘Tell them I demand it.’ She gives Kitty’s shoulder an affectionate shake. ‘They are bound to be upset; they love the seaside.’
He ventures upstairs and the furore first escalates, then abates. When he descends again with his men, they drive before them four of Mrs Chappell’s girls in various stages of sullen undress, their gowns ripped, their hair tousled, and their bosoms heaving with the exertion of their fight. ‘That’s the lot of them,’ says one of the officers with considerable pride, ‘along with a gentleman wearing only a pair of stays. Ought we to bring him in?’
‘What are you about?’ asks Mrs Chappell, jabbing her fork at the girls. ‘Fighting so!’
‘Biting, screaming, throwing chairs …’ chips in Mr Trevithick.
‘Oh, but they left off soon enough. Twenty years ago they would have torn a man limb from limb by now. You’re soft,’ she says to her girls.
‘When Lucy Fletcher coshed the gentleman with a rolling pin!’ Mr Trevithick recalls fondly, and Mrs Chappell rocks in her seat, wheezing her appreciation.
‘I shall never forget it. And the night the ladies of Mrs Scott’s set fire to the whole place rather than let it be taken.’ She glances at the girls. ‘Now that is a course of action I do not advise.’
‘The quality’s not what it was,’ agrees Mr Trevithick. ‘The young ladies now got no spirit in them.’
‘Well, that’s the fault of the gentlemen. They demand good manners. Refinement. How would I sustain a cohort of screaming hell-bitches if nobody’d ever pay me for ’em?’
‘Ah, ’tis a sorry time for whoring. Not like our youth.’
‘We’ll not see those days again. But I’ve kept you long enough,’ says Mrs Chappell. ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting to do your job.’ She offers her wrists and Mr Trevithick manacles them very gently before her, with so much slack as to curtail her movements very little indeed.
‘Not too tight? No? Not rubbing?’
‘Very comfortable. I’m much obliged to you. Come, girls, help me.’ One of her white-clad mob stoops to lift her bad leg gently from its stool; another comes to her chair to help her rise. Mr Trevithick offers his arm and Mrs Chappell seizes it with both hands and hauls herself up, all the blood in her face so that her eyes fairly pop.
‘Is he taking you away?’ asks Kitty, most afraid.
‘Oh, do not take alarm. The gentleman is only doing his duty, and once justice is served we should go unmolested by it for a good long time. Confound it; I hate to be in court, all the mob crowding in to look upon one, throwing their orange peels and making up their dreadful ditties. If I had aspired to entertain so I should have taken to the boards. Well, if I am to be looked at, I shall need my rouge. Fetch it, Kitty.’
‘Anything for your comfort?’ asks Mr Trevithick. ‘It may be a long day.’
‘Aye, of course. My cushion too, Kitty, and my pills, and my book. There’s a good girl.’ She squeezes the child’s hand with her little shackled claw. ‘I shall be out within the day, you may depend on it.’
As Mr Trevithick guides her out of the breakfast room he says, ‘’Tis a shame, Bet, that it’s come to this. I hope you are not detained too long.’
‘Ah, I shall be out again in a twinkling,’ she says. ‘And I am glad it was you who came for me; I have not seen you in a great long time. Tell me, how does Mrs Trevithick?’
I have been borne a great distance. This dull thud of nothing encloses me yet, but somewhere above the water is the burble and twitch of animal life. I am crushed here in this egg – I long to expand, and to rush, and to leap, oh! I strain – and I listen. And I am still. And I turn over, the better to feel their voices and movements quiver upon my being.
Out there, souls flicker. And I would call out to them, if they can hear me: come hither, come hither. Touch me again with your speaking. The hectic crowded feeling of being: I would drink it all in. Brimming with things that swell, and make me flip over on myself: elation and jealousy and spasms of love. The sensation I know is the one from the sea, when I jostled among and beside and through and about a chorus of knowings that were all my own. The drowned ones who slipped down through the water breathed out globes of grief and rage, which flew up towards the air; we shivered at their passing.
There is the thud of a heart that attracts me especially. A young one – I know this sort – all wondering like the dark-eyed calves that totter into streams; an ebullient soul which might expand vastly if it were not constrained. I like this young and joyful voice upon me, smooth as milk. Come here, I call, come here, come closer.
TWENTY-FIVE
‘Pilloried!’ repeats Mrs Chappell, clinging to Mr Trevithick’s arm. ‘I cannot credit it – sincerely I cannot. What have I done to deserve this?’
The constable shakes his head. ‘A very usual punishment, Bet.’
‘Aye, for some! Lady so-and-so, with her gambling den – she did not get the pillory. She is too good for it, and yet I am not?’
‘Judges now-a-days – no sense, Bet.’
‘And younger than they used to be! Did you mark that?’ She shakes her head as they descend the steps of the court with agonising slowness. ‘Why was the fine not enough for them?’
‘They want to make an example of you. Keep the others in check. You must own that it is your turn. I have done what I can, and rushed it through – if we go now there will be no time for a crowd to gather. And then you are at liberty to go to your party.’
‘As if I shall still be inclined to.’ At the foot of the stairs Mrs Chappell must pause to regain her breath. ‘A shame,’ she wheezes at length, ‘to make such a spectacle of an old woman! To mock her!’ She allows herself to be led to Mr Trevithick’s carriage, and expounds breathlessly as he and his men heave her in. ‘Aye, that is what crowds like – to pelt a poor chained-up old woman with filth. What will my girls say? ’Twill break their hearts in two.’
‘Now, it may not be so bad,’ says Trevithick, taking his seat beside her. ‘You don’t know; you may have a kind crowd.’
Mrs Chappell curls her lip. ‘Not these days. They’re a nasty mob, this generation. Look at America. We are all brutes deep down, they say; well, some folk seem to have given up hiding it.’
‘Do not fret. Go with dignity – do your time – ’twill all be over.’
The carriage doors are closed and it moves off. It is not the smooth ride Mrs Chappell is accustomed to; she wobbles on the seat and winces at her many pains. Her little hands scrabble at Mr Trevithick’s cuff. ‘I cannot do it,’ she whispers. ‘I cannot stand all those hours, locked up like they must have me,’ and he nods sadly, knowing this to be the truth.
‘Well, you need not,’ he says. ‘You may lie down for it. Can you manage that? To lie down for the three hours?’
She expels a juddering lungful of air. ‘I am loath to. But I can.’
‘There’s your spirit. There’s your dignity.’ Mrs Chappell is to be pilloried at Charing Cross; as the carriage inches along the crush of Swallow Street, more passers-by turn to stare, and indeed the traffic is so slow that one man, on foot, keeps alongside them for some time without breaking into a jog; he scowls through the window at Mrs Chappell and mouths words that, to judge by his expression, are not complimentary.
‘We should have travelled more discreetly,’ says the abbess. ‘This was bound to happen.’