His Last Fire Read online

  And that always reminds her of her first marriage, for she saw the illumination, not yet knowing what it meant, standing outraged at the window of her bedroom. Harriet Sayles, 16, to the Revd. Mr J. Bone, 42. Her impoverished father, Sir Richard Sayles, relieved of the cost of her, her mother relieved of the responsibility, a girl already striking, headstrong, wayward. Mr Bone’s furtive authority would keep her from straying, they thought. And he hated music.

  Of course I ran away. And was found bemused in the street by Mrs Clavering on the look-out for new girls for her ‘nunnery’. Powdered, perfumed, fashionably dressed, Mrs Clavering flattered her, smiling through steeliness, bought her clothes, took her several times to Jefferey’s jeweller. Discovered and adored her singing voice, bought a harpsichord, briefly hired Vercelli, a singing master not attracted to women. The penury of Harriet’s childhood was swept away in a month of apparently unrestrained spending.

  But she was not malleable. She had shone at her girls’ school in Chelsea, reaped incessant praise, expected listeners to attend to her and none else. What her mother took to be waywardness was confidence, determination, stubbornness. Mrs Clavering perceived that the girl had more education than she. Might strike her with a Latin tag. She met her match.

  ‘I’ll be no common harlot!’

  ‘Why Harriet, no girl in my establishment is a harlot. Look at where we are,’ she said in an unusually wheedling tone. ‘Jermyn Street, just by St James’s. Gentlemen who call here are the greatest in the land. They expect only the highest quality. Not merely are you beautiful. You have a voice they will long to hear.’

  ‘I am willing to sing.’

  ‘And make conversation too, Harriet.’

  ‘By ‘conversation’ I mean speaking about poetry and music, Madam. There is to be no bed. My bedroom must be elsewhere.’

  ‘Then you cannot have a special mattress.’

  To Harriet the advantages of this arrangement were considerable. She was fed, clothed and groomed to a standard higher than she’d ever known, surrounded by handsome, expensive if somewhat miscellaneous furniture and paintings. The harpsichord was excellent and tuned daily. She slept alone.

  And Mrs Clavering soon saw a return for her investment in Harriet’s unorthodox behaviour. Although she was costly in trinkets and gowns she’d required no training, having excellent manners already. Her voice really was exquisite as was her haughtiness, so that Mrs Clavering’s reputation rose magnificently in the firmament of the demi-monde. The more refined clients, often the grandest, paid well to listen and be disdained.

  To prevent lascivious talk Harriet would on occasion read to them. Poetry, the tedious parts of novels, then, once, found lying under folders of lewd drawings, The Rights of Man. She chose passages with which to insult her listeners yet what did they do but revel in the castigation, licking up the words like cats with sly eyes.

  ‘Oh! To watch those impertinent phrases drop from such lips! Listening to Harriet Sayles read the traitor Paine is better than a good whipping, by far,’ said Lord M.

  The sun has burned down with casual brilliance and she rests with her newly-cut novel brought by assiduous Mrs Dent, cats beside her, dog at her feet. She consumes novels like daily bread. Thus absorbed she can exclude memory.

  Sometimes she sings. Late at night when the servants are in bed. For once, trying out her new fortepiano, there was applause outside the door. Her voice is not what it was.

  I didn’t just sing for the ‘gentlemen’. I sang for myself. When the novelty of material advantage ceased she looked about her with dismay. She had no friends among the girls who regarded her arrangement as cheating, abhorred her superiority. However much Mrs Clavering claimed that her establishment in Jermyn Street was no different from any house within easy walking distance of the palace, Harriet could hardly help overhearing the evidence of Mrs Clavering’s trade: squeals, groans, moans, hoots, roars, snores, running feet, lurching steps, thud of falling bodies.

  She sang to drown the sounds around her. The more she heard the more she sang. Of love, death, longing, despair. Of hopeless loss and glorious adoration. She flooded her being with passion and ardour amidst the mêlée of tangling limbs, jangling coins, rattling pill boxes.

  There was a fatal flaw in Mrs Clavering’s plan: Harriet was never corrupted. She sang all day. I cannot live alone without my love. My dearest woodlands, farewell. Ice and snow have finally melted. I feel within my heart such pain and sorrow. Lascia ch’io pianga. Figlia mia, non pianger, nò. Lasciate mi morire.

  She was Ariadne, Eurydice, Dido, Almirena.

  And came to realise that the gulf between her sung life of wonderful suffering and the world of Jermyn Street was absurdly great. Somewhere, surely she could find love?

  ‘I wish to leave,’ she announced. Soon after, Mrs Clavering presented her with a bill for £1,354, 12 shillings for eighteen months’ board, lodging, gowns, kerchiefs, ribbons, hairdressing. A further £500 for jewels or she must return them. Then told her the story of the girl who’d protested, whom she turned onto the street quite naked.

  There was only one way to get out.

  She’d had many offers, though few of marriage. Lord this, Lord that promised huge yearly allowances, a house in Grosvenor Square, clothes, diamond necklaces, her own carriage and liveried servants, such was their proclaimed Ardour and Passion.

  In the end she accepted Gatcombe’s offer of marriage. It was by no means the best, but he was a little younger, slightly less odious than the rest. It wasn’t love of course. The gulf was not filled. He was certainly an improvement on Revd. Mr Bone (who, meanwhile, had conveniently died) for he liked a good tune, but his interests were not hers and his attention span was small.

  There’s no stopping memory now.

  ‘No. Mitchell, I shall go to bed later tonight. I’ll ring when I need you.’

  She lifts a cat onto her lap, pats the sofa for Fitz to join her which the huge wolfhound does delicately, like a small horse. Mitchell disapproving again.

  Gatcombe’s family was old, his money evident enough if not overflowing, but neither was enough to counter obloquy. The marriage was an affront. No one wanted to approve of it. Harriet Sayles had been a demi-rep; marriage into one of the country’s oldest families could not disguise a past at Mrs Clavering’s. Gatcombe was a fool. She couldn’t possibly be accepted by the best in society.

  She sees herself at a ball approaching a battery of grandes dames, formidably coiffured. Fifty-four-gun women of war in formation. What did she say her name was? Pray, repeat it, would you? Greetings that barely slip through lips, tones of dismay, breaths sucked in disgust; fingers held out, limp with distaste; eyes sidling; sudden cessations of speech; her name caught muttered behind fans; sniggers, snubs, sneers, men’s leers. Morning Post. Satires. Smears. Tide of retreating gowns.

  He took her to Italy where surely no one would know. In golden Florence the British Envoy received her; in sunny, stinking Naples they barred the doors.

  She rings the bell, hastens to bed. Counts out her drops, adds fifteen or twenty more and sleeps.

  Next morning, brushing the thin strands, Mitchell says:

  ‘Lady Gatcombe.’

  ‘You’re going to tell me off – I can hear it in your tone.’ See how she frowns at the back of my head. Look at my face now. Surely Harriet Sayles still glares with the same old fire?

  ‘No, my lady, certainly not. It’s the Colonel. He has confided in me.’

  ‘Goodness, Mitchell! Really?’

  Mitchell knows her mistress is difficult in the morning.

  ‘He has asked that you inspect his new spinet.’

  Mitchell and Harriet Gatcombe see more of each other than most married couples. Mitchell’s loyalty is faultless, her guile not at all.

  ‘He told me there could be no better person to assess his new purchase and that he would send his carriage
with curtains drawn.’

  ‘With curtains drawn! Mitchell, how can you imagine that I do not see straight through your strategems, your conspiracies with Colonel Corbett. With curtains drawn! I shouldn’t do it if the entire carriage were shrouded in black crepe! I shall not do it. You know I shall not. Tell him all spinets are the same!’

  They abandoned abroad. Gatcombe was surprised by their reception. Annoyed, for it touched his own reputation. Had he imagined that he could sweep all before him? Had he been too stupid to anticipate it? Considerate at first, his patience quickly fled and Lord and Lady Gatcombe returned to England where an old disease caught up with him at last.

  She didn’t miss him, except that there was no one to share humiliation. Her confidence was shot ragged by fleets of well-aimed cannon. Determination exploded amid showers of brickbats.

  Only stubbornness remained.

  Her house is fine, remote from the metropolis, the vistas from the windows pleasing, unpeopled. There’s an income; she wants for nothing. Here she’s safe. She has no expectations. The gulf was never bridged. Longing, love, grief remain hers to enjoy alone.

  Each day she discusses the menu with the cook. She has become fat, her once glorious hair now thin and faded beneath its cap. Her life is dull but safety and certainty defeat loneliness. The servants are used to her, know what she wants. They only look at her that way out of habit.

  I know what they say among themselves. If only she’d go out. It would do her good, they say. She hasn’t left the house for twenty-three years.

  Her breathing is poor. She refuses to be bled but summons a lawyer.

  ‘Mr Bearcroft, I shall leave £20 a year for each cat, £25 for Fitz. Until their deaths.

  ‘I leave £2000 each to Mitchell and Gerald. Oh and to Mrs Ramp, my cook. Mrs Dent can take as many of my novels as she likes and the Colonel. Hmm. Would it be cruel to leave him my fortepiano when he can hardly play?

  ‘£1000 each year to provide loaves for the poor of the village. How many that will be per week I’ve no idea. Someone will have to do the sums.

  ‘There’s to be a special fund of £5,000 for poor girls of the district to keep them at home or in service nearby. It must be well invested. On no account are they to go to London.’

  The streets of St James’s surge through her memory and with them a realisation she faces suddenly for the first time.

  I shall be taken out of the house! I have stayed indoors for twenty-three years but I shall be carried out! Of course I’ll be dead, but all the same, they’ll get me out at last; what they’ve wanted all this time, Mitchell, Dent, Corbett, Gerald.

  And what if I’m not dead? What if they think I’m dead but I’m still alive?

  ‘Take this down, Mr Bearcroft. There is to be no funeral until four weeks after my death.’

  ‘But Lady Gatcombe . . . ‘

  ‘No! Don’t interrupt. So as not to become offensive, my body is to be washed each day in spirits. Mitchell can do that. Unless she’s dead herself of course.

  ‘Only then may my body be removed from the house. And in two coffins, the outer one of oak. These two will be encased in two more, the outer one of marble and placed in the Gatcombe vault.’

  I shall not be disturbed. No sounds will penetrate the marble. No cavorting, moans, squeals will reach my ears. No remarks, titters, gasps at the sight of me. Nor shall I see eyebrows rise, mouths frown, nostrils flare; nothing ridiculous, mocking, no cruelty.

  If corpses sing I’ll charm myself with songs. No one will hear me. There’ll be no applause.

  NOTES

  HIS LAST FIRE

  Cape St Vincent: Admirals Jervis and Nelson defeated the Spanish off Cape St Vincent in 1797

  Opera house: This was the King’s Theatre, Haymarket.

  THE PLAY’S THE THING

  London Corresponding Society: Consisted largely of artisans, small traders, clerks and labourers wanting reform of parliament and elections and manhood suffrage. Corresponded with similar societies throughout the country of which there were about 80. Very active in the 1790s, finally suppressed in 1799.

  Catapotium: Purging pill, to be swallowed without chewing.

  Fizz-gig: Gadding, idle gossip.

  Cold-bath-fields: House of Correction, Clerkenwell, built 1794.

  FLASK BETWEEN THE LIPS

  Brighthelmstone: Brighton

  Memoirs: Memoirs of the Late Mrs Robinson Written by Herself. This was Mary ‘Perdita’ Robinson, actress, writer, notorious beauty.

  REVOLUTIONARY

  Copemen: Receivers of stolen goods.

  Light-horsemen: Renegade mates of ships and revenue officers.

  Scuffle-hunters: Thieves of goods from quaysides.

  Tom Paine: His Rights of Man vol. I, price 3/-, sold 50,000 copies in 1791. By 1793, after vol. II had been published in 1792, 200,000 copies had been sold. Paine fled to France, was prosecuted in his absence, and Rights of Man banned as seditious libel.

  SHELL: THE PEDLAR’S TALE

  Gordon Riots: In June 1780 the delivery of an Anti-Catholic petition to Parliament by the Protestant Association, led by Lord George Gordon, drew huge crowds which turned riotous. Enormous destruction over several days ravaged London; the army was called in; 285 rioters were killed.

  Coram’s: Foundling hospital built mid-century in Lamb’s Conduit Fields.

  SHELL: THE SAILOR’S TALE

  Victory: Admiral Duncan defeated the Dutch at Camperdown, October 1797.

  Quota-men: Those who took money to join the navy. Usually prisoners.

  Mutiny: From April-June, 1797, the fleet mutinied at Nore and Spithead.

  LASCIA CH’IO PIANGA

  A Two-decker Firing a Morning Gun: Oil painting by Lieutenant Thomas Yates, 1790.

  Burin: Engraving tool that cuts directly into metal plate, producing a line which tapers to a point.

  Lascia ch’io Pianga: Aria from Handel’s Rinaldo (first performed King’s Theatre, 1711).

  FORGIVEN

  Foxite: Follower of Charles James Fox, reformist politician, ‘champion of the People’. Foxite colours, buff and blue, were copied from George Washington’s troops.

  Thelwall: John Thelwall, Jacobin, friend of Coleridge. His public lectures drew huge numbers.

  SHRIVEN

  D’Oyley and Mant: The Authorized Version prepared and arranged by The Revd. George D’Oyley BD and The Revd. Richard Mant DD, 1817.

  FROM THE LIFE

  Star-wheel: Four large spokes in wheel formation to turn rollers of printing press.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks are due to the editors of The London Magazine for publishing ‘His Last Fire’ and an earlier version of ‘The Play’s the Thing’; Penpusher for an earlier version of ‘Flask Between the Lips’; New Welsh Review for ‘Forgiven’ and Ambit for ‘Eels’ and ‘Mad’.

  AUTHOR BIO

  Alix Nathan was born in London and educated there and at York University where she read English and Music. She now lives in the Welsh Marches where she owns some ancient woodland. She has published many short stories and her novel The Flight of Sarah Battle will come out with Parthian in 2015. She has recently completed another novel, Into the Depths.

  THE FLIGHT OF SARAH BATTLE

  Born in her father’s coffee house in Exchange Alley, London, Sarah Battle is brought up in an alcohol and smoke-thick atmosphere. Witnessing and suffering from the destruction of the Gordon Riots in 1780, she longs to escape her surroundings into a better life.

  Her first attempt is via marriage to a man who’s not what she thinks he is. Her second sees her in the brave new democratic world of late 1790s Philadelphia where she experiences deep love, warm friendship. On her final journey, exhilarating, dangerous, Sarah’s vision of both past and future reveals the direction of a new life.

  The Flight of
Sarah Battle is set in the turbulent final decade of the 18th century in a London of rioters and revolutionaries hoping for a French invasion, and Philadelphia, bursting with new building and hope, with a democracy not quite fully fledged and shadowed by the terrible threat of yellow fever.

  To follow in March 2015...

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Parthian

  The Old Surgery

  Napier Street

  Cardigan

  SA43 1ED

  www.parthianbooks.com

  This ebook edition first published by Parthian in 2014

  © Alix Nathan

  All Rights Reserved

  Epub ISBN 978-1-908946-88-1

  Mobi ISBN 978-1-909844-15-5

  The publisher acknowledges the financial support of the Welsh Books Council.

  Edited by Claire Houguez

  Cover design by theundercard.co.uk

  The right of Alix Nathan to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.