Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

Then out of the blue she sent a note with Willy Insell that she could not see him for some time-but she gave no reason. Dazed at the affair, Insell could provide no reason either, save that the knocker was off her garret door and he fancied she was staying with Mrs. Barton. I cannot deal with losing both of them, Richard thought as he wandered in search of either of them. What I feel for her is base metal, heavy and dull and dark as lead, so how can I mourn at losing her? The fire still consumes me.

Giving up the search, he spent his days inside the Cooper’s Arms drinking rum, talking to nobody, the quill and paper he had taken to write to Mr. James Thistlethwaite lying dry and blank.

“Jim, please tell me what to do,” Dick begged of Cousin James-the-druggist.

“I am an apothecary, not a doctor of the soul, and it is poor Richard’s soul is sick. No, I do not blame it on the woman. She is merely a symptom of his disease, which has been coming on ever since William Henry drowned.”

“D’ye really think he drowned?”

Cousin James-the-druggist nodded emphatically. “I have not the slightest doubt.” He sighed. “At first I thought it was better for Richard to cherish hope, but when he took to rum I changed my mind. His soul needs a doctor, and rum is no cure.”

“Except,” Dick objected, “that the Reverend James is such a-a fizzing sort of minister. ’Tis you has good sense and can see all sides, not the other James. Imagine trying to tell him about this French whore-he would be off with his prayer book in one hand and a Roman crucifix in the other to do battle with one of Satan’s imps! For so he would regard her. Whereas I think she is just a meddler, and very attracted to Richard. Why can he never see that women fancy him? They do, Jim! You must have seen it for yourself.”

As both his bracket-faced spinster daughters had been in love with their cousin Richard for years, Cousin James-the-druggist had no hesitation in nodding emphatically a second time.

By the27th of September Richard was soaked to the core in rum; when he received a note from Annemarie Latour saying that she was back in residence and dying to see him, he floundered from his chair and was off at a run.

“Richard! Oh, how marvelous to see you! Mon cher, mon cher!” She drew him inside, covering his face with kisses, took his hat and coat from him, purred and murmured and cooed.

“Why?” he asked, hanging back, determined this once to be his own man. “Why have I not seen you for a week?”

“Because Mrs. Barton has been ill and I have been with her-Willy should have told you. I asked him to tell you.”

“So far you have not dropped a single aitch,” he said.

“Because I have been with Mrs. Barton, ’oo- who -hates it when I speak the bad English. I have had to nurse ’er- her, ” said Annemarie, looking injured.

Richard slumped onto the bed, feeling the rum. “Oh, what the hell does it matter, girl? I have missed ye and I am glad to be back. Kiss me.”

So they played at sex with lips, tongues, hands, wetness and fire, the sodden ecstasies of utter shamelessness. Hour upon hour, he upon her, she upon him, upside down, right way up, she fertile of imagination, he consumed to go in whichever direction she pointed.

“You are astonishing,” she said at the end of it.

His eyes were closing, but he summoned up a huge effort and kept them open. “In what way?”

“You stink of rum, yet you can still fuck-that is a good word-like a boy of nineteen.”

“You would know, my dear.” He grinned and did close his eyes. “It takes more than a few pints of rum to knock the stuffing out of me,” he said. “I have lasted a great deal longer than John Adams and John Hancock.”

“What?”

He vouchsafed no answer; Annemarie lay back against the soft pile of pillows and gazed at the ceiling, wondering how she was going to feel when this was over. When Ceely had persuaded her-assisted by several rouleaux of golden guineas-to seduce Richard Morgan, she had stifled a sigh, taken the money and reconciled herself to however many weeks of boredom. The trouble was that she had not been bored. For one thing, Richard was a gentleman. Which was more than she could say for that two-faced, double-gaited monster Ceely, who by profession called himself a gentleman yet would not have recognized one on the street.

What she had not counted upon was the victim’s attractiveness (to herself, however, she called it beauty). On the surface, a drab and genteel ordinary man of Bristol with no pretensions to fashion and no ability to turn heads. Then when first he smiled at her he seemed to whip a veil from his face, was suddenly strikingly handsome. And beneath the clothes of the time, designed to make all men look paunchy, round shouldered and sway backed, lay the physique of an ancient Greek statue. He hides, she thought, groping after the English adage, his light under a bushel. It is there only for those with the eyes to see. What a pity that he has never valued himself enough to stand forth. A superb lover. Oh yes, superb!

How then might she feel when all this was over? Not long now, depending upon how malleable Richard was-Ceely wanted it done soon, and the rum would be a great help. Her own part, she suspected, was a minor one, and she would never know the outcome. But playing that part meant goodbye to Ceely and to England. Her looks were still at their peak, she could pass for twenty even though she was thirty; between what Ceely would pay her shortly and what he had already paid her over the course of four years, she would be able to quit this country of dirty pigs and go home to her beloved Gironde, there to live like a lady.

For an hour she dozed; then she leaned over and shook Richard awake. “Richard! Richard! I ’ave an idea!”

His head felt swollen and his mouth was parched; Richard got off the bed and went to the white pitcher in which Annemarie kept small beer. A good beaker of that and he felt a little better, though he knew it would be several days before he cleared the rum from his system. If he stopped drinking it. But did he want to?

“What?” he asked, sitting on the bed, head in his hands.

“Why do we not set up house together? Mrs. Hale downstairs is moving out and the rent for two floors is only half a crown a week-we could move our bedroom down so there are not as many steps, and put Willy up here or in the cellar. His rent would be a help-he pays a shilling. Oh, it would be so nice to ’ave a proper establishment-do say yes, Richard, please!”

“I have not got a job, my dear,” he said through his hands.

“But I ’ave- have -with Mrs. Barton, and you will soon get one too,” she said comfortably. “Please, Richard! What if some horrible man moves in? How would I protect myself?”

He took his hands away from his face and looked at her.

“I could say we were married, that would make it respectable.”

“Married?”

“Just to satisfy the neighbors, cher Richard. Please!”

It was difficult to think, and the small beer was making him feel a little sick; Richard grasped the proposition and turned it over in his befuddled mind, wondering if this might not be the best way. He was outwearing his welcome at the Cooper’s Arms-or else the Cooper’s Arms was outwearing him. “Very well,” he said.

She jigged up and down on the bed, beaming. “Tomorrow! Willy is helping Mrs. Hale move today, then he can help me. Tomorrow!”

The newsthat Richard was leaving stunned his parents, who looked at each other and resolved to say nothing against it. His consumption of rum between coming home and going to bed was greater than ever-if he transferred himself to Clifton he would have to pay for at least a part of what he drank.