Alasdair Gray - Poor Things

Even the General opened his eyes and watched for a moment as Baxter returned to his seat at the table and rearranged the papers so that a different set lay on top. He glanced at the upper page and said, “On the 16th of February 1880 Lady Blessington, then in an advanced state of pregnancy, was visited by another heavily pregnant woman, a former kitchen-maid in Porchester Terrace who said she was Sir Aubrey’s discarded mistress and begged for money. Sir Aubrey—”

“Take care sir!” barked the General but Baxter spoke louder: “Sir Aubrey broke in on them, flung the visitor into the street and locked his wife in a coal-cellar. Next morning Lady Blessington had disappeared.”

“Mr. Baxter,” said the solicitor swiftly, “you now pretend to know astonishing things about the past of a lady of whom, until this moment, you pretended to know nothing. If these allegations are not backed by eye-witnesses who will swear to their truth in a court of law — witnesses who will not collapse under the stress of skilful cross-examining — you will pay dearly for that slander.”

“My information comes from Sergeant Cuff,” said Baxter, “who you perhaps know of, Mr. Grimes?”

“Late of Scotland Yard?”

“Yes.”

“A good man. Asks big money but gets results. Likes sniffin around the skirts of the aristocracy. Yooimploydim?”

“I employed him last month to find all he could about Lady Blessington, after a letter from Wedderburn told me Bella Baxter was a reincarnation of Victoria Blessington. Cuff’s report here names many who will testify against the General in court, most of them servants who resigned or were dismissed from his service soon after Lady Blessington disappeared.”

“No connection,” said the General. “English servants are the worst in the world and none last more than two months with me. People say I dealt too savagely with the savage races, but the only man I can entirely trust is me Indian manservant. Odd thing, that.”

“Servants who testify against their former employers,” said the solicitor, “have very little credit in an English court of law.”

“These will be believed,” said Baxter. “Please, Mr. Harker, take this copy of the report back to your hotel and discuss it privately with the General. Go now, at once. Too many wounding things have been said here today. Tomorrow I will visit you in the St. Enoch’s Hotel and hear what you decide to do.”

“No God,” said Bella in a firm, gloomy voice, “my past has grown too interesting. I want all the details now.”

“Tell her, Baxter,” said the General, yawning. “Play your word game to the end. It will change nothing.”

Baxter sighed, shrugged and started summarizing the report while the solicitor, on a chair near the window, studied the copy he had been given. Baxter spoke straight to the General, however; not to Bella. Had he done so he would have been disturbed by the change the story made to her face and figure.

He said, “Dolly Perkins, a girl of sixteen, was your parlour-maid until the day before your wedding, Sir Aubrey, when you hired an apartment for her in a boarding-house near Seven Dials. You did not give your name to the landlady, Mrs. Gladys Moon, but she recognized you from your pictures in the Illustrated London News . She says you visited Miss Perkins regularly for two hours every Tuesday afternoon, and also on Friday afternoons when you paid the rent. This went on for four months, then one Friday while paying Mrs. Moon you told her, ‘This is the last time I’m doing this, you won’t see me again. Dolly Perkins is no use to anyone now. If you do not get rid of her she will give your house a bad name.’ Mrs. Moon spoke to Miss Perkins who admitted she was penniless and pregnant. So she was told to leave.”

“She was not pregnant by me,” said the General coldly, “because me revels with Dolly never involved impregnation. Nobody will believe that , of course, so the greedy bitch tried to blackmail me into givin her money to give birth to the bastard, sayin she would tell me wife I had sired it if I refused. So I told the slut to go to hell and left her without a shillin.”

“You queer sad old General,” said Bella mournfully, “did you honestly think your wife a maniac because she wanted warmed by you more than an hour a week, while you regularly hugged a young girl for four?”

“I never hugged Dolly Perkins,” said the General through tightly clenched teeth. “For God’s sake tell her about MEN, Prickett. She has learned nothin about em in this place.”

“I believe Sir Aubrey wiwiwishes me to say,” said his doctor faintly, “that the strong men who lead and defend the BuBuBritish people must cucultivate their strength by satisfying the animal part of their natures by rererevelling with sluts, while maintaining the pupupurity of the mumumarriage bed and sanctity of the home where their sons and daughters are engendered. And that is why pupupupoor pupoor pupoor—” (here the General’s doctor pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed his face) “—that is why poor Dolly had to be treated in that tutututerrible way.”

“No need to blub about it, Prickett,” murmured the General placidly. “You explained that very well. Now finish your story, Mr. Baxter, while rememberin I have done nothin I am ashamed of, indoors or out of it.”

Baxter finished the story.

“On the 16th of February 1880 Dolly Perkins entered 19 Porchester Terrace by the servants’ entrance. She was exhausted, ragged, penniless and hungry. The cook, Mrs. Blount, gave her a cup of tea, something to eat and a chair to rest in, then went on with her work. Shortly after she saw the chair was empty. Dolly Perkins had crept upstairs to the drawing-room, confronted Lady Blessington and told her story—”

“Mostly lies,” said the General.

“—and begged for help. Lady Blessington was about to give her money when Sir Aubrey entered, called in his footmen who thrust Dolly Perkins out into the street, and with the help of his manservant dragged his wife upstairs—”

“Carried her upstairs. She had fainted,” said the General.

“Then she soon recovered. You locked her in her bedroom but she flung up the window and started throwing things down to Dolly in the street outside: first a purse and jewellery then every small item of value in reach. By now, though it was a snowy day, a crowd of the poorer sort had gathered. I imagine—”

“What you imagine is not evidence,” said the solicitor without looking up from the copy of the report he was reading.

“—her violent actions before an appreciative audience must have filled Lady Blessington with a kind of ecstasy. No wonder. They were probably the first decisive things she had ever done. She now flung out dressing-table sets, shoes, hats, gloves, stockings, corsets, dresses, pillows, bedding, fire-irons, clocks, mirrors, crystal and Chinese vases which smashed of course—”

“And a small oil portrait by Ingres of me mother as a girl,” said the General drily. “A cab wheel ran over that one.”

“At first Sir Aubrey thought the uproar in the street was caused solely by Dolly Perkins and a mob of her plebeian friends. When at last he learned the truth and rushed into the bedroom Lady Blessington was flinging out chairs and light tables. She was dragged down to the basement by his footmen and manservant—”

“Carried!” said the General firmly. “She was in a delicate condition, even if she had turned into a ravin lunatic. The basement was the only part of the house with barred windows.”

“Yet you locked her in a windowless coal-cellar.”

“Yes. I suddenly realized every damned room down there except the coal-cellar had keys I did not know about, and I did not trust the servants. Victoria had always been too friendly with em and I feared they would help her escape. Which happened. It took me three hours to collect Prickett and another doctor who would certify her, and find an insane asylum which would accept a pregnant lunatic, and was prepared to send along a padded ambulance with three stout nurses to manage her transport. When I got back she had flown the coop.”