Derek Beaven - Newton’s Niece

Is. Newton

I re-read the letter in amazement. I’d never had the chance to see into his illness before.

‘I didn’t apply the remedy’ Pawnee said. ‘You’ve mended miraculously enough. Your skin is unblemished.’ As she smoothed my hair back from my forehead she pressed on the little painful bump so that I felt the sharpness of it.

‘Lucy Elizabeth. You see I’m convalescing, but I’m not infectious, so you won’t be in danger of the smallpox yourself. We can talk while you put these linens away for me.’

‘Yes, Miss.’

‘You’ve made me think, Lizzy. I need you to tell me things. I need you to tell me what your life holds for you.’

‘Miss?’

‘What’s going to happen to you?’

‘I don’t know, Miss. I don’t think about it.’

‘D’you think you’ll get married?’

‘Bound to, Miss.’

‘And have children?’

‘Bound to, Miss.’

‘Is that what you want?’

‘Yes, Miss.’

‘With all the attendant dangers?’

‘You mean I could be dead before I’m twenty, Miss.’

‘If you put it like that, Lizzy.’

‘If they couldn’t get the baby to come out.’

‘Or after indeed. Some women … What choice do we have, Lizzy? If we love the man who marries us.’

‘Or gets us up the stick. Pardon me, Madam.’

‘It’s nothing. Have you been in love?’

‘I may’ve been.’

‘Have you felt loved? Are you myself who is unspoiled? What is it like to be loved?’

‘I’m sorry, Miss. I don’t conceive you. What d’you want me to say?’

‘I don’t know these things, you see. I believe I’m a strange sort of woman. I live with a guardian. How should I know things?’

‘Are your folks dead? Your Mammy?’

‘Yes. They are. Quite. So in asking you I feel I’m asking in private: a magic mirror. Here I’m lighthearted. Can you believe that? It is a special place. If you saw me in London you’d not know me. There I’m usually troubled, but here I find myself closer to … I hardly dare say it because if it were said it might be taken away directly. Well-being. Perhaps it’ll only last one more day. One more day flicking away still faster. I see these flowers you’ve brought in, so clearly. So bright; how couldn’t I have seen such beauty before? I daren’t trust this. I have to go back. Soon. I wish I might stay here, Lizzy. I wish … I need to hear what women … I am a woman now, and shall have to go back to my … my fate. Does your mother love you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Your father?’

‘He left.’

‘How does it feel to you to be shown your own likeness? We are twins, Lizzy, apart from our difference of precise age. What’s your notion? As if from your side of the glass.’

A pause. ‘You scare me, Miss, I ask your pardon. Can I go now?’

‘Are you a virgin?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Is there some young man already?’

‘Handy. Handy enough.’

‘How do you … manage that?’

‘We lie together downstairs at my mother’s till he has a house. We don’t do it all up. Just … you know.’

‘Do you love him?’

‘He’s only a country boy, Miss. He don’t have London manners. You wouldn’t think of him.’

‘But you. Do you love him? This love is why we venture our bodies.’

‘I reckon I must do.’

‘I … No. I … A man will have me.’

‘What’s his name, Miss?’

‘His name? Charles.’

‘How old’s he?’

‘Forty. Nearly. A Restoration baby, Lizzy. And now a London man. A powerful, rich, political man, and I don’t know the first thing, Lizzy. I don’t know what I should say if I can’t … if I can’t … to stop him if I don’t … Help me, Lizzy. But you can’t. You can’t, can you?’

To Mrs Catherine Barton:

Kit, dearest, I am on fire for news of you. They tell me you are alive. I prayed that you should be spared. Confirm by your own hand that my prayers have been answered, and you will lift the devastating anxiety that possesses me on your account. Forgive the familiarity of my address, but is there not already an understanding between us? You must have discerned at our interview so tragically terminated some measure of the depth of my feelings for you; I cannot believe that we two are not in some sense by this time beyond the artificiality of opening politenesses. Kit, we know each other and what we are about; write as soon as you can that all is in truth well with you. I would be, dearest ,

your ardent and ultimate servant, Charles Montagu

Pet went back before. Pawnee and I travelled after, with an armed guard, courtesy of an admirer.

‘You’re well, Kit. You’re beautiful, by the grace of God. You’re rich in most people’s terms. Why do you frown? We’re nearly at Colnbrook. If there was going to be an attack it would have come by now. There’s no cover here for them to hide in.’

‘I’m not afraid of robbers and ravishers. I told you that. I’d use the gun – on myself, if necessary.’

‘Kit!’

‘Or on us both. I’d find a way.’

She didn’t speak for a minute.

‘Is it Charles, then?’

‘I can’t bear it, Pawnee. I’m their prisoner. I know it.’

‘How’s this? Your uncle loves you I think. They both care for you. You just torment yourself with your suspicions of them. I see no reason, except they’re men, and all these European men are beasts in their own normal way. This I know for myself. But it isn’t as you think.’

“These aren’t just men. Now you’re like the voice inside me that tells me constantly I’m wrong or bad or ungrateful. Perhaps I am. Perhaps you’re right.’ I paused and looked out of the coach window, where the meadows stretched flat to the heath. We rumbled on the rutted Bath Road.

‘What’ll he expect of me? He’ll expect a real woman.’

‘You are a real woman, Kit.’

‘He’ll want a mistress. I shall want, ha! to fall in love. But I can’t, Pawnee. Not with him. Not with anyone, perhaps. I can’t. I’m a wreck. I’m maimed. I’m maimed in my deep self. I cannot let him. So then what’ll he think? I told you I was once a boy. I haven’t got the right feelings. I haven’t got the right responses. When he gets close to me, no matter how compliant or helpful – or female – I shall want to try to be … and Pawnee in part I do want to be normal now. I do perhaps want to be like everyone else. To be quiet and happy as we’ve been.’ A surge of feeling took me by surprise. I hit the coach-work with my fist so that my knuckles bruised. Then I denied my pain. ‘I’m so … distorted.’ Then I tried to shudder myself into great, heartbreaking sobs. But only pitiful trickles squeezed themselves out of my eyes. I wished I could drown the Thames, but I was locked and blocked. ‘If he gets near me I’ll have to … stab his neck. Cut him somehow. Pawnee, what’s wrong with me? I’m possessed, aren’t I? I’m a monster the Devil made in the moon. That’s what my mother used to say’

She leant across and put her hands on my hands on my thighs.

‘Why does it matter? Can’t you refuse him and go on as you are now? As you and I do. An honourable spinsterhood. Yes, people do, so why not you and I? Plain girls of good family do, and so do good girls with no money. For years. They live and live. They sew. And you; you’re a wise scholar woman. You’ve got your project, you said. What do you want with a man? Yes they are rascals. They spread pox and pregnancy. They blame us. They beat us. And then they leave.’

Charles’s man saw me to the Jermyn Street front door where my uncle embraced me. I inspected him for signs of the distraction he’d shown in his letter to Pawnee. His smile was tight, as if he was making the effort to be of good cheer. Mary and Tony embraced me cautiously. And so I settled back into the red; I re-established myself in the richness and lace of my bedroom, where they had hung the portrait of Charles beside the chimney-breast. There were fresh flowers in two jugs, and a new outfit of clothes laid on the bed. There was a silver save-all candlestick. New sconces had been fitted on the chimney-breast above the fireplace, on either side of a pretty little convex mirror in the Flemish style. My skull had been left where it should be, I was pleased to see, and a shelf had been put up to receive some decorative China plates, on which were four exquisitely perfumed wash-balls. An opened parasol in Japanese lacquer. A little jewellery box. A porcelain container beginning to sprout what looked like very expensive foreign bulbs. I took it all in. I re-entered my determined universe.