♦ ♦ ♦
Ned on the other hand thinks of fate as a purely negative force. In accordance with Rise’s Law (all things that rise must contain yeast), he’s been expecting a fall. Little does he realize, as he settles back in the soothing clasp of the sedan chair, secure in his disguise and reapproaching equilibrium for the first time since Boyles howled out his name in the street, that he is about to soar. Nor does he have an inkling, as he hawks his wares up and down Soho Square, that he is teetering on the verge of a momentous discovery. No: his thoughts are purely mercenary. Debits and credits, pounds and shillings. Jars sold against passage to Amsterdam and a fat nest egg. Yes, Amsterdam, he’s thinking — canals and tulips and frazzle-headed fräuleins. Dutch genever. Hans Brinker. Paris is definitely out. What with all the beheadings and Jacobins and reigns of terror. . he’s had enough terror right here in London. No, Paris is out. The celebrated whores and full-bodied wines (or is it the other way around?) will have to stay corked — for the time being, anyway.
At No. 14 the cook takes three jars and invites him in for a cup of tea. The cook compliments him on his bonnet. He compliments the cook on her pans. Two doors up a scullerymaid shuts the door in his face. At No. 19 a dog bites him in the thigh. But the sun is sitting atop the trees like a big round cheddar, the breeze is full of petal and blossom, and in spite of being dead, depressed and exiled, trussed up in a woman’s foundations and haunted by shadows, Ned Rise throws back his head and bursts into song:
As I was going to Derby,
Upon a market day,
I saw the biggest lamb, sir,
That ever was fed with hay,
That ever was fed with hay.
The lamb was fat behind, sir,
The lamb was fat before—
But then, right in the middle of the verse, the world stands him on his ears and rearranges his senses: a voice, pitched high and pure and ringing with the conviction that there is after all peace and plenitude on earth, has suddenly joined him:
She measured ten yards round, sir,
I think it was no more.
Ned wheels around, his skirts crepitating like a hidden audience. There before him, wicker basket tucked under her arm, stands a girl of seventeen or eighteen. White mobcap, blond ringlets. A chocolate frock over her white stiff tucker. A parlormaid, thinks Ned, as she launches into the next verse as casually as if she were singing before the hearth:
The wool grew on her back, sir.
It reachéd to the sky.
And there the eagles built their nest,
I heard the young ones cry.
The wool grew on her belly, sir,
And reached to the ground,
‘Twas sold in Derby town, sir.
For forty thousand pound.
He’s amazed. Staggered. She’s something out of a Renaissance painting. Mary the milkmaid, sun firing the nimbus of her ringlets, a basket of fresh eggs and a jar of cream cradled like an infant Messiah in the crook of her arm. Innocence, beauty, sweetness and light: the combination is breathtaking. Without thinking he leaps right into the next verse and plays his tenor against her wavering contralto:
And all the boys in Derby, sir,
Came begging for her eyes,
To kick about the streets, sir,
As any good football flies.
The mutton that lamb made
Gave the whole army meat,
And what was left, I’m told, sir,
Was served out to the fleet.
And now she’s laughing, her teeth perfect, head thrown back, a little dollop of flesh under her chin. “Quite a voice you’ve got there, Mistress,” she laughs.
Ned is grinning like a shark. “I may not be all that I seem. Mistress.”
“A wolf in sheep’s clothing?”
“Not exactly,” replies Ned, tearing off cap and bonnet.
She claps her hands and giggles. “A Mister-Mistress!”
“Actually,” says Ned, “I’ve just come from a costume ball. Very elaborate affair. Glass punchbowls cut in the shape of elephants, melon balls, iced caviar.”
“Oh!” she says, “what fun!”
Ned clicks his heels and nods his head. “Ned Rise, at your service.”
Her name is Fanny Brunch. She’s house parlormaid at No. 32, the residence of Sir Joseph and Lady Dorothea Banks. She doesn’t mind if he walks her home.
The street is deserted. Sun dapples the trees, birds flit from branch to branch. Ned takes her arm and shuffles off down the avenue, his skirts massaging hers. “You know,” he says, “I’m beginning to feel like Pizarro when he stumbled across the Seven Cities of Gold.”
♦ FALLING ♦
What could he do? His life was transformed.
He woke with Fanny on his mind, hawked fish eggs and thought of nothing else, tumbled into bed with an ache like hunger gnawing at him, swollen and empty at the same time, and dreamed of Fanny, Fanny, Fanny. Women he’d had. Dozens of them. Whores and barmaids, farmgirls, shopgirls, flowergirls, the daughters of fishmongers and tinkers, nurses, nannies, souses and sluts — the Nan Punts and Sally Sebums of the world. A matter of exercising his organ, as simple as that. You put it in, you take it out. But this, this was different. This time his heart was involved. And his mind.
The day after he met her he haunted Soho Square — disguised as a piano tuner. It was raining. Drizzling, actually. His false mustache drooped, the dye ran out of his hair, his sack of tuning forks, pewter hammers and whisk brooms grew sodden. Sir Joseph glanced out the library window and saw him leaning against the iron pickets, soggy and forlorn. Lady Banks passed him by on her way to Mrs. Coutts’ for whist. A stray cat urinated on his stockings. At one point a scowling clerk from J. Kirkman & Sons, Piano Forte Makers, stepped from the shop at No. 38 and asked him to move along. Fanny never knew he was there.
The following day was no better. He hired a coach, set the driver in back, took the reins himself and trotted up and down the square from dawn till dusk. His eyes strained to catch a hint of movement behind the windows at No. 32, but aside from two partial glimpses of Byron Bount and a full frontal of Lady B.’s pug, he saw nothing. On ensuing days he dressed as a seaman, bellows mender, furmety woman, floorwipe, terminal syphilitic and King’s guard. Fanny hadn’t been out of the house in over a week. Pounds were slipping through his fingers. The caviar business was languishing.
Then one evening, as he skulked about the shadows arrayed in the torn and soot-blackened weeds of a chimney sweep, the front door swung open and a female form — jerked by a pug on a silver leash — descended the steps. Ned moved in, heart pounding, simultaneously formulating a greeting — should he whistle a few bars of “The Derby Ram”?—and an inspired excuse for the way he was dressed. “Fanny,” he whispered, his voice hoarse with passion.
“ ‘Ey? Wot’s ‘at?” came the reply in a voice that could scour the streets. He was staring into a face crusted over with eczema, and a milky, leering eye. The pug growled.
“Begging your pardon, Mistress,” he said, bowing. “I thought you would be Fanny Brunch.”