Charlie leaned forward. “What’d you see, then?”
Maggie leaned forward as well. “We saw him an’ his wife at it!”
Charlie chuckled, but Dick Butterfield seemed unimpressed. “What, rutting is all? That’s nothing you don’t see every day you look down an alley. Go outside and you’ll see it round the corner now. Eh, Jem? I expect you’ve seen your share of it, back in Dorsetshire, eh, boy?”
Jem gazed into his beer. A fly was struggling on the surface, trying not to drown. “Seen enough,” he mumbled. Of course he had seen it before. It was not just the animals he lived among that he’d seen at it-dogs, cats, sheep, horses, cows, goats, rabbits, chickens, pheasants-but people tucked away in corners of woods or against hedgerows or even in the middle of meadows when they thought no one would pass through. He had seen his neighbors doing it in a barn, and Sam with his girl up in the hazel wood at Nettlecombe Tout. He had seen it enough that he was no longer surprised, though it still embarrassed him. It was not that there was so much to see-mostly just clothes and a persistent movement, sometimes a man’s pale buttocks pistoning up and down or a woman’s breasts jiggling. It was seeing it when he was not expecting to, breaking into the assumed privacy, that made Jem turn away with a red face. He had much the same feeling on the rare occasion when he heard his parents argue-as when his mother demanded that his father cut down the pear tree at the bottom of their garden that Tommy had fallen from, and Thomas Kellaway had refused. Later Anne Kellaway had taken an axe and done it herself.
Jem dipped his finger into the beer and let the fly climb onto it and crawl away. Charlie watched with astonished disgust; Dick Butterfield simply smiled and looked around at the other customers, as if searching for someone else to talk to.
“It wasn’t just that they were doin’ it,” Maggie persisted. “They were-they had-they’d taken off all their clothes, hadn’t they, Jem? We could see everything, like they were Adam an’ Eve.”
Dick Butterfield watched his daughter with the same appraising look he’d given Jem when he tried to find a stool. As easygoing as he appeared-lolling in his seat, buying drinks for people, smiling and nodding-he demanded a great deal from those he was with.
“And d’you know what they were doing while they did it?”
“What, Mags?”
Maggie thought quickly of the most outlandish thing two people could do while they were meant to be rutting. “They were reading to each other!”
Charlie chuckled. “What, the newspaper?”
“That’s not what I-” Jem began.
“From a book,” Maggie interrupted, her voice rising over the noise of the pub. “Poetry, I think it was.” Specific details always made stories more believable.
“Poetry, eh?” Dick Butterfield repeated, sucking at his beer. “I expect that’ll be Paradise Lost, if they were playing at Adam an’ Eve in their garden.” Dick Butterfield had once had a copy of the poem, in among a barrow full of books he’d got hold of and was trying to sell, and had read bits of it. No one expected Dick Butterfield to be able to read so well, but his father had taught him, reas oning that it was best to be as knowledgeable as those you were swindling.
“Yes, that was it. Pear Tree’s Loss,” Maggie agreed. “I know I heard them words.”
Jem started, unable to believe what he’d heard. “Did you say ‘pear tree’?”
Dick shot her a look. “Paradise Lost, Mags. Get your words right. Now, hang on a minute.” He closed his eyes, thought for a moment, then recited:
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and providence their guide:
They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.
His neighbors stared at him; these were not the sort of words they normally heard in the pub. “What you sayin’, Pa?” Maggie asked.
“The only thing I remember from Paradise Lost-the very last lines, when Adam an’ Eve are leaving Eden. Made me sorry for ’em.”
“I didn’t hear anything like that from the Blakes,” Jem said, then felt Maggie’s sharp kick under the table.
“It was after you stopped looking,” she insisted.
Jem opened his mouth to argue further, then stopped. Clearly the Butterfields liked their stories embroidered; indeed, it was the embroidery they wanted, and would soon pass on to everyone else, made even more elaborate, until the whole pub was discussing the Blakes playing Adam and Eve in their garden, even when that was not what Jem had seen at all. Who was he to spoil their fun-though Jem thought of Mr. Blake’s alert eyes, his firm greeting, and his determined stride, and regretted that they were spreading such talk about him. He preferred to speak the truth. “What do Mr. Blake do?” he asked, trying instead to guide the subject away from what they had seen in the garden.
“What, apart from tupping his wife in the garden?” Dick Butterfield chuckled. “He’s a printer and engraver. You seen the printing press through his front window, han’t you?”
“The machine with the handle like a star?” Jem had indeed spied the wooden contraption, which was even bigger and bulkier than his father’s lathe, and wondered what it was for.
“That’s it. You’ll see him using it now and then, him an’ his wife. Prints books an’ such on it. Pamphlets, pictures, that sort o’ thing. Dunno as he makes a living from ’em, though. I seen a few of ’em when I went looking to sell him some copper for his plates when he first moved here from across the river a year or two ago.” Dick Butterfield shook his head. “Strange things, they were. Lots o’ fire an’ naked people with big eyes, shouting.”
“You mean like Hell, Pa?” Maggie suggested.
“Maybe. Not my taste, anyway. I like a cheerful picture, myself. Can’t see that many would buy ’em from him. He must get more from engraving for others.”
“Did he buy the copper?”
“Nah. I knew the minute I talked to him that he’s not one to buy like that, for a fancy. He’s his own man, is Mr. Blake. He’ll go off an’ choose his copper an’ paper himself, real careful.” Dick Butterfield said this without rancor; indeed, he respected those who would clearly not be taken in by his ruses.
“We saw him with his bonnet rouge on last week, didn’t we, Jem?” Maggie said. “He looked right funny in it.”
“He’s a braver man than many,” Dick Butterfield declared. “Not many in London show such open support for the Frenchies, however they may talk in the pub. PM don’t take kindly to it, nor the King neither.”
“Who’s PM?” Jem asked.
Charlie Butterfield snorted.
“Prime Minister, lad. Mr. Pitt,” Dick Butterfield added a little sharply, in case the Dorset boy didn’t know even that.
Jem ducked his head and gazed into his beer once more. Maggie watched him struggling across the table, and wished now that she had not brought him to meet her father. He did not understand what Dick Butterfield wanted from people, the sort of quick, smart talk required of those allowed to sit with him on the stool he kept hooked around his foot under the table. Dick Butterfield wanted to be informed and entertained at the same time. He was always looking for another way to make money-he made his living out of small, dodgy schemes dreamt up from pub talk-and he wanted to have fun doing it. Life was hard, after all, and what made it easier than a little laughter, as well as a little business putting money in his pocket?
Dick Butterfield could see when people were sinking. He didn’t hold it against Jem-the boy’s confused innocence made him feel rather tender toward him, and irritated at his own jaded children. He pushed Maggie abruptly from his knee so that she fell to the floor, where she stared up at him with hurt eyes. “Lord, child, you’re getting heavy,” Dick said, jiggling his knee up and down. “You’ve sent my leg to sleep. You’ll be needin’ your own stool now you’re getting to lady size.”