Stanley Elkin - George Mills

“ ‘What’s this then?’ I said.

“ ‘A check.’

“ ‘Well I see it’s a check. Is that the sort of gift you’d give me on my birthday? A check? ’

“ ‘Did you read it?’

“ ‘No.’

“ ‘Read it.’

“ ‘It’s for five hundred fifteen pounds, eight shillings.’

“‘Yes.’

“ ‘What an odd sum. Five hundred fifteen pounds, eight shillings. Maria, is this the amount you think will bring me out of debt? Darling, I owe thousands.’

“ ‘I know that.’

“ ‘Maria, I don’t want your money for a gift.’

“ ‘It isn’t a gift. I did not get you a gift.’

“‘What is it then?’

“ ‘The price you paid to have this house built.’

“ ‘You’re giving me my own house? Oh, darling, that’s very sweet but really I can’t…’

“ ‘He said I’d have to ask you for the title. He said if you don’t have it or it’s not handy you could write something down on a paper making it over to me.’

“ ‘ He said? Who?’

“ ‘That solicitor,’ she said, and began to cry.

“I went to him that afternoon. He was not at the offices in Parliament, where all our other meetings had taken place. The Lord Chancellor told me I might look for him at the Customs House.

“It was a dirty, dingy building smelling of brine and brackish water, of filthy contraband and sodden wood. I found him shirt-sleeved in some petty clerk’s office.

“ ‘What’s this then?’ I demanded, waving the check at him.

“ ‘Ahh,’ he said, ‘did you sign hover the deed then, my prince?’

“ ‘No I didn’t sign over the deed. I’m trying to get some explana—’

“ ‘Well no matter,’ he said. ‘You’ve haccepted the money and in law that’s a principle that shows your hintent to make a hagreement.’

“ ‘ What are you talking about? ’

“ ‘Your own good, sir, your own good. You built that house in Putney in the year of our Lord 17 hand 86. This is 17 hand 92. That’s six years, Prince George.’

“ ‘Say what you’re talking about or I’ll kill you.’

“ ‘That wouldn’t be law, sir.’

“I went for his throat.

“ ‘Law, sir,’ he gasped. ‘Common law, sir. Common law marriage.’

“I took my hands from about his neck. ‘Common law marriage?’

“Because there is no law finally, there are only arrangements. They had used the Settlement Act to arrange my bachelorhood, a sort of biding, buttoned spinstership of standby, wait-list eligibility. And repossessed our household goods to arrange, or so I thought at the time, simple, hobbled, clip-wing, rub-and-bottleneck let and hindrance.

“ ‘Oh no, sir,’ the solicitor explained later, ‘that would have been vitchious. The law his not vitchious. We done that for the presumption. The law wants a hagreement hand a presumption. What reasonable men might hinfer has to da troof of your and Mrs. Fitz’s situation based on probable reasoning hin da absence huv, or prior to, hactual proof or disproof. If we’d let you ’ang on to the furniture, all them pricey, pretty penny harticles and hinventory what you’d put togevver, dere might be some reasonable man or huvver oo’d ’ave taken it into ’is ’ead that you’d hactually hintended to make ha ‘ome togevver hafter the fashion of a ’usband and wife.’

“ ‘You left the bedchamber undisturbed.’

“ ‘We did, sir. Hafter the fashion of a man wif a maid.’

“Maria’s check had been written to neutralize one more presumption. The solicitor explained that since I had paid for the house and lived with her in it I had seemed to imply that I regarded her as my wife. If they had not acted before the sabbatical year, our arrangement, under English common law, might have been considered a bona fide marriage. By getting her to pay for the house…

“ ‘I’ll tear up the check,’ I said, and did so, in a dozen dozen bits and pieces before the solicitor’s eyes.

“ ‘Oh, sir,’ he said sadly, ‘Hi’m afraid dat were not wise. You see, sir, you’re a debtor, and, hunder law, debtors are wiffout certain rights. Dey may not muterlate monies due deir creditors. ‘Hif a penny come deir way dat penny must be paid.’ Dat his de law, sir, so noble has your action was, befitting a sweet and noble prince like yourself, may I say, sir, it was not wise? Dough Hi ’ope an’ pray dat if Hi ’ad de honor, sir, to be hin your position Hi would ’ave done de same — if Hi was has hig’orant of de law as you are, Prince.’

“So we were undivorced and unannulled for the third time.

“We continued to meet for a time, but both of us could see that what all official England had contrived to turn into an affair was finally and effectively doomed. For one thing, now that Maria owned the house she wanted to redecorate the bedroom.

“Are you too uncomfortable on that bare floor? The remainder is quickly told.

“Now I had reason to borrow again. I had not realized how much money I had not been spending while Maria had been taking up so much of my time. Unattached, I began to resume some of my old pursuits. I was gambling again. There were fine new race horses to buy for my neglected stables. My appetites became again as grand as they’d been in my fledgling good time Charlie days. My wardrobe once more took on its old princely significance. And there was Brighton. There’d always been Brighton of course, but now I had begun once again to host the magnificent feasts and balls that had so distracted me when I was younger, affairs which for the most part Maria and I had attended as guests during the period of our closest alliance. So there were debts. And reason enough to seek out assistance.

“ ‘There’s that girl in Italy,’ the Chancellor of the Exchequer said.

“ ‘His cousin?’ the Lord Privy Seal said.

“ ‘Caroline,’ said the solicitor.

“This would have been thirty years ago. The marriage was contracted and I got my money.

“ ‘They’re forcing me to marry a woman I cannot care for.’

“ ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Maria said. ‘It’s death Catholics recognize, not divorce.’

“ ‘Don’t you see?’ I told the ministers. ‘You’ve made me a bigamist.’

“ ‘You’re Prince huv Wales, sir,’ the solicitor said. ‘Take has many mistresses has pleases you.’

“ ‘Caroline’s the mistress,’ I muttered.

“ ‘Queen Caroline his your consort, sir,’ the solicitor said. ‘When she comes to term England will ’ave han heir.’

“Heiress he should have said. Princess Charlotte was born the following year. I asked the queen to taste her milk, which otherwise would have just gone begging anyway. She quite refused. It couldn’t have been very good milk.

“ ‘One thing,’ I asked Maria when Caroline returned to Rome the year the Princess was born. ‘What pressures did they apply? Did they threaten the Catholics? How did they get you to do it?’

“‘Write the check?’

“ ‘Yes.’

“ ‘That solicitor explained it. It had been a prince’s house. The home of the man who would be King of England. He pointed out what a good investment it was.’

“ ‘Oh Maria,’ I cried.

“ ‘Oh George,’ she said, ‘it’s divorce Catholics don’t recognize, not reality.’

“This would have been almost twenty-nine years ago. The Young Pretender would have been dead eight years by this time. Did you say something, Mills? No? I thought you said something. Stuart eight years gone. Still, she would not have been entirely lonely in Italy, would she? Would she, Mills?

“ Now what’s all this about some damned squire’s letter you claim to carry about with you under your blouse?! ”