Andrew Pepper - The Revenge of Captain Paine

‘Pyke.’

Someone was calling his name.

‘ Pyke.’

He walked around the two black mares, both tossing their heads and snorting, and nodded to the driver.

Slick with perspiration and illuminated by a gas lamp, Marguerite’s face looked as though it had somehow drifted free from the rest of her body, the whiteness of her skin set against her black cloak and the dark furnishings of the carriage.

Pyke climbed up into the carriage and the door swung closed after him. His hands were still trembling. He felt a little feverish, despite the dampness of his clothes.

‘What happened to you?’ Gently she touched the gash under his eye and winced, out of empathy. ‘My poor darling.’

They were sitting next to each other on the horsehair seat, the floor covered with wet straw.

She pulled him towards her and kissed him on the mouth. It was like opening the door on to another time. For many years after she had left for Paris, he had thought of her almost every day, wondering what she might be doing and whether she still thought about him. With the passage of time, these thoughts had faded and dwindled to almost nothing. Or had they? Because the moment their lips touched, Pyke wanted to kiss her again, only harder this time, as Marguerite threaded her fingers through his coarse hair and pulled him still closer, their tongues intertwined in a sticky embrace. Now, all these years later, Pyke could taste only her sadness, and he wanted more of it because it spoke to a feeling locked up inside him that he couldn’t find any other way of touching. Pyke drew the curtains and grappled with the layers of her petticoats, too far gone to care about what he was doing or who he was with, but afterwards all he would remember was a blur of unfulfilled desire. Trousers around his ankles, he pulled up her petticoats and took her there in the carriage, the creaking vehicle rocking back and forth on that wet, deserted street as he finished in a series of jolting, painful spasms that made him feel simultaneously alive and yet one step from death.

As the first shards of watery daylight leaked through the muslin curtains, Pyke was jolted from his sleep by a pungent smell that seemed as deeply familiar as his adolescent memories. He lay there for a while, the thought of what he had done flooding back to him along with the guilt. Next to him, the quiet murmurs of Marguerite’s breathing reassured Pyke she was still asleep, but he hardly dared turn his head to make sure, in case he woke her up. Where were they? He looked around the unfamiliar room, guessing that they had returned to Cranborne Park. He blinked and opened his eyes. Yes, he remembered now. What they had done in the carriage and then again in the bedroom. Was it shame he felt most acutely or guilt? he wondered. And what was the difference? Taking care not to disturb her, he slid from underneath the sheet and realised he was naked. Various items of his clothing were strewn across the floor. He had just put on his trousers when Marguerite called out, ‘You don’t have to creep around on my behalf, you know, Pyke.’ Her tone was warm and playful.

Perhaps there had been news about Emily and Felix. He had to make his excuses and go. Turning around, he saw she was sitting up in the bed, the sheet pulled up around her shoulders, to cover her nakedness. She smiled. ‘I’ve often imagined what it would be like, waking up next to you again.’

He picked up his shirt from the floor and started to put it on. ‘What happened last night shouldn’t have happened, Maggie.’

‘But it did, didn’t it?’

Pyke couldn’t bring himself to look at her.

‘Do you regret it?’

‘I’m married to someone else, Maggie. I love my wife.’

‘Then why did you fuck me?’ she said, her tone becoming harder. She coiled the sheet a little more tightly around her body.

‘Because…’He looked over at her and hesitated, not sure what to say. There were so many reasons he couldn’t fathom them all. And he detested having to make excuses for something he’d done. Accept, learn and move on. That was usually the way he did things. He wondered what he might learn from this.

‘Let’s face it, Pyke. You fucked me because you wanted to,’ she said, rearranging her hair. ‘You always did try to over-complicate things.’

‘And you’re the same old Maggie Shaw. Nothing ever got to you, did it?’

‘Is that what you thought?’ She stopped fiddling with her hair, her face quizzical rather than angry.

‘What I thought fifteen years ago doesn’t really matter now, does it?’

‘Maybe you should have looked a little more closely,’ she said, with a small shake of the head.

‘Would it have made a difference?’

‘You tell me.’ Marguerite waited until she was certain he was listening and added, without changing her tone, ‘You know I was carrying our child when I left for Paris all those years ago.’

Her tone had been so matter-of-fact that it took him a few seconds to comprehend what she’d just told him. He hadn’t known, of course. And yes, it might have made all the difference. He had to sit down on the end of the bed, his head suddenly alive with useless possibilities.

‘I had it in Paris,’ she said, without shifting position in the bed.

‘A boy or a girl?’ Finally he managed to look at her, not sure whether he wanted to hug or beat her with his fists.

‘A boy.’

‘Is he still…’

‘Alive?’ Marguerite shook her head, her eyes empty and sad. ‘He died just before his fifth birthday.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I didn’t know I was pregnant when I left London.’

‘But why didn’t you send me a note from Paris once he’d been born?’

‘I didn’t have an address.’

‘But you knew where Godfrey lived. Where Godfrey still lives.’ He heard himself getting angry.

Perhaps that’s what she wanted, Pyke thought, trying to make sense of the opaque expression on her face.

‘Would it have made a difference if you’d known?’ This time her tone was gentler and more conciliatory.

‘He was my son.’ Briefly Pyke thought about the burial ceremony he’d witnessed, Marguerite and Bolter standing over the freshly dug grave. Had that been him? The grave had surely been too small. The boy, if he’d lived, would have been fifteen or sixteen years old. And Marguerite had just told him that he had died when he was five, the same age as Felix, some time in the twenties: 1826 or ’27.

‘He was my son, Pyke. You’d already chosen a different life.’

‘And this was your way of punishing me for that decision? Keeping me from my own flesh and blood?’

‘It wasn’t about you. Don’t you understand that? I didn’t have time to think about what was right or wrong. In case you didn’t know, raising a child in a foreign city on your own isn’t an easy task.’

Pyke nodded, not wanting her to see he was as angry as he was. ‘So what was his name?’

‘James.’

‘James.’ He repeated the name. Saying it out loud didn’t make him any more real.

‘He was the most beautiful boy you’ve ever seen. White-blond hair and the bluest eyes.’ She was crying now but Pyke didn’t feel like trying to comfort her.

‘How did he die?’

Marguerite sniffed and dried her eyes on the sheet. ‘He caught a fever. He fought it like a little tiger but, in the end, the fever spread to his lungs.’

‘Why tell me about it now? I mean, what fucking purpose has it served, telling me after all these years, apart from rubbing my nose in it?’

‘I thought…’

‘You thought what?’

She stared at him, shocked by his anger. ‘God, you’re a cold, self-centred bastard. I thought last night meant something.’