Four Bare Legs In a Bed Read online

  The most unnatural spectacle to be seen in Somerset since the Flood was surely my union with Squire Clodpoll here. A dainty girl of seventeen yoked to a greasy, untoward, ill-natured, slovenly wretch! We were the laughing stock of five counties.

  Now it is five months since our wedding, which I should rather call a show of Merry-Andrews, with nothing pleasant about it at all but the foolery of a farce.

  The nuptial banquet was crammed with baskets of plum-cake, Dutch gingerbread, Cheshire cheese, Naples biscuits, macaroons, neats’ tongues and cold boiled beef.

  My new husband had drunk heartily. The guests cried out for a speech. He staggered to his feet.

  My head aches consumedly, said he; I am not well.

  He raised his glass to me, then toppled over behind the table.

  There was such a laughing, they roared out again. The ladies teehee’d under their napkins. The teehee took a reverend old gentlewoman as she was drinking, and she squirted the beer out of her nose, as an Indian does tobacco.

  By the time the bashful bride, meaning myself, was brought to bed, this numbskull had in some wise recovered his wits. He called for a mouthful of something to stay his stomach, a tankard of usquebaugh with nutmeg and sugar, if you please, and also a toast and some cheese.

  ‘Supper, sir!’ said I. ‘Why, your dinner is not out of your mouth yet; at least ‘tis all about the brims of it.’

  That sharp comment confounded him, so that he cursed, and rolled about the bedchamber like a sick passenger in a storm; then he comes flounce into bed, dead as a salmon in a fishmonger’s basket, his feet cold as ice and his breath hot as a furnace.

  His head is a fool’s egg which lies hid in a nest of hair. He hangs his nose in my neck and talks to me whether I will or no. What a poor sordid slavery there is in the state of marriage.

  During our brief courtship, he wailed out some songs of love.

  I have a mistress that is fair

  And as sweet as sugar candy,

  Had I ten thousand pounds a year

  I’d give her half a pint of brandy.

  And all the while he gazes on me like a sick monster, with languishing eyes.

  I burst into laughter: ‘Lord, sir, you have such a way with you, ha, ha, ha!’

  At night He went into the garden to pray, and He spent much time in prayer. I dare scarce ask thee whither thou wentest, or how thou disposedst of thy self, when it grew dark and after last night. That has set my husband a-tittering. Now he nudges me with his elbow, the filthy fellow. I have no stomach for him. About midnight He was taken and bound with a kiss, art thou not too conformable to Him in that? Is not that too literally, too exactly thy case? at midnight to have been taken and bound with a kiss?

  Yes, yes, Parson Snakepeace, I was taken captive in a garden, at my Lady Wildsapte’s last summer fête champestre, though I cannot see why you should make a sermon of it, for it had nothing to do with you or your talk of the grave.

  We went chasing off by the light of torches down an alley of trees, shamming to fight each other with long hazel twigs.

  My lady’s grounds are full of little pagan temples and other fancies, and at last we fell down breathless at the foot of a pretty Egyptian obelisk brought back by her son from his late stay in Rome. Screened by the friendly shade of some low bushes, we fell upon the ground together; the leaves around us were of the crimson flowering currant for I can still recall the sharp smell when we bruised ’em by lying upon ’em.

  ‘Cherubimical lass,’ he called me, and gazed on me devouringly. Our eye beams were in that moment tangled beyond redemption, and I could not bring myself to draw away when he caught me by the hand, wringing and squeezing at it as if he were mad.

  He offered me no other rudeness at first, but we only gazed on each other with half smiles; and our breathing grew laboured when we twisted and knotted our fingers together as if in combat. Then indeed my bounding blood beat quick and high alarms.

  He swore that he would come down from London in a fortnight, and marry me.

  And so we progressed until, with broken murmurs and heart-fetched sighs, he so mousled and tousled me that I cried, ‘Sweetheart!’ and he clapped a hand over my mouth to save us from discovery.

  Good gods! What a pleasure there is in doing what we should not do.

  Then were we animated by the strongest powers of love, and every vein of my body circulated liquid fires; until we came at last to that tumultuous momentary rage of which so much has been whispered since the world began.

  O Jesu, when I think back to the heat of his sweet mouth and the smell of his skin, I could weep for weeks together.

  Hang him, let him alone. He’s gone.

  Hast thou gone about to redeem thy sin, by fasting, by Alms, by disciplines and mortifications, in the way of satisfaction to the Justice of God? that will not serve, that’s not the right way, we press an utter crucifying of that sin that governs thee; and that conforms thee to Christ.

  Well, I am eight months gone with child. I may follow Mrs Myrtilla’s example more speedily than expected. That would indeed be a convenient conclusion, to be dispatched by my own sin. That would provide matter enough for a month of fine long thundering sermons.

  This husband sits beside me like a ball and chain. A pack of squalling infants will do the rest, forging my bonds link by link, and soon I shall inhabit as heavy a carcass as my sister Sarah’s. Then will I keep company with the mid-wife, dry-nurse, wet-nurse, and all the rest of their accomplices, with cradle, baby-clouts and bearing clothes – possetts, caudles, broth, jellies and gravies. I grow nauseous when I think of them.

  I may build castles in the air, and fume and fret, and grow pale and ugly, if I please; but nothing will bring back my free and airy time.

  Outside this church it is almost summer; see how the sun struggles through these coloured glass saints to fall in jewels onto my gown.

  I will not die of the pip, so I will not.

  O merciful God, who hast made all men, and hatest nothing that thou hast made, nor wouldest the death of a sinner, but rather that he should be converted and live; have mercy upon all Jews, Turks, infidels, and Hereticks, and take from them all ignorance, hardness of heart, and contempt of thy Word; and so fetch them home, blessed Lord, to thy flock, that they may be saved among the remnant of the true Israelites, and be made one fold under one shepherd, Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

  Give Me Daughters Any Day

  ‘DOES HE HAVE to be here?’ said her grandmother. ‘It’s not right, having a man in the house when I’m ill.’

  ‘He does live here,’ said Ruth. ‘We’re married, you see.’

  ‘Call that a man,’ said her grandmother. ‘He’s back by five o’clock. He doesn’t even teach a proper subject. We all know English! He’s no use. Look at the handle on that door, it’s hanging half off. Why doesn’t he fix it?’

  ‘We haven’t been here long,’ said Ruth. ‘We’re doing things gradually.’

  ‘Gradually!’ jeered her grandmother.

  ‘Can I make you some more tea?’ asked Ruth coldly. ‘Only I’ve got to get on otherwise.’

  ‘Oh yes, your job. Why don’t you make that husband of yours get a proper job, a man’s job. He’s limp.’

  ‘Women don’t like only doing housework and having babies these days,’ said Ruth. ‘We want to be independent and fulfilled too.’

  ‘You do talk a lot of rubbish,’ said her grandmother. ‘Just like your mother. She made a fool of that man, cooking him casseroles and buying him Shetland jumpers. Didn’t stop him leaving though, did it. You’d better watch out for that.’

  ‘I’m not staying in this room if you won’t be polite.’

  ‘Suit yourself. You’re not doing me any favours. I don’t want to be here, I was made to come. I wish I’d never agreed. I want my own things. I hate this house.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Ruth. ‘I don’t blame you. But
you know what Dr Singh said. The alternative is hospital.’

  ‘Oh, doctors,’ said her grandmother, and lapsed back onto the sofa-bed, grey-yellow hair awry on the candy-striped pillows. ‘Your ceiling looks like the icing on a wedding cake,’ she continued, gazing upwards with gooseberry-coloured eyes.

  ‘She wants you to stay out of her room,’ said Ruth to Denzil.

  ‘But all my clothes are in there!’

  ‘Well, I’ll have to bloody well get them out,’ said Ruth.

  ‘There’s a strong Anglo-Saxon element in your family,’ said Denzil. ‘Your language. Your grandmother’s gnomic utterances. “We all have dustbins for minds, but some of us prefer to keep the lids on.” “You’ve got a son until he marries but you keep a daughter for life.” As for that spare room now … Did you ever hear of Grendel’s cave?’

  ‘No. And don’t do that. I’m too tired.’

  Denzil let her go.

  ‘Do you know what she said to me this evening when I asked her how she was?’ he said after a while. ‘She said, “I’m feeling a little queer but I suppose I mustn’t grouse.”’

  ‘Why did I get married?’ said Ruth.

  ‘Not that again,’ said Denzil, leafing through his Dictionary of Historical Slang. ‘Queer, adjective. Base; criminal, from sixteenth century. Derivative senses, drunk, 1800, hence unwell, giddy, from 1810.’

  ‘She says you’re queer because you’re called Denzil,’ said Ruth.

  ‘Does she,’ said Denzil. ‘That’s rich, coming from someone called Vesta. Grouse. Cognate with the old French groucier. From 1850, dialect, to grumble.’

  ‘She said there was nothing she could fancy except boiled tongue,’ continued Ruth with a bitter laugh. ‘So I found a tongue in that smelly old butcher’s down by the station but when I got it back and read the recipe it said I had to skin it and put it under heavy weights for hours and hours. It was very expensive too.’

  ‘Tongue,’ said Denzil. ‘Can’t you buy it by the pound at Cullens?’

  ‘I tried that. She said it tasted wrong.’

  ‘What do you want me to do, then? Have a go at skinning it?’

  ‘Don’t bother. She’s had pints of Slippery Elm so she won’t starve. Wrap the damn thing up in newspaper and take it out to the dustbin.’

  ‘Couldn’t we give it to someone?’ asked Denzil uneasily. ‘Seems a waste.’

  ‘You bloody well cook it then!’ yelled Ruth, tears spurting from the corners of her eyes in jets. ‘I haven’t been able to do any of my work. You’re all right, colouring in your third-year charts with pretty crayons, but my agency is grinding to a standstill before it’s even got off the ground and much you care.’

  ‘Modern men,’ croaked Denzil. ‘They’re all the same. Dirty rotten lot.’

  ‘And don’t sneer,’ wept Ruth. ‘You patronising git.’

  Ruth was in the process of setting up the Little Bo Peep Agency for baby-minders and nannies. She had allowed this month to check up on local council regulations and to write an emergency information sheet to distribute among the less experienced of her team.

  ‘Projectile vomiting,’ she copied out from a baby manual. ‘Do not be alarmed. This is not too serious. Clear up the wall, and inform the mother on her return.’

  She took up a tray of tea.

  ‘What have you been up to?’ said Vesta.

  ‘I’ve been trying to write a leaflet but I don’t think it’s any good.’

  ‘You’ve been wasting your time, then, haven’t you,’ Vesta said, incontrovertibly.

  ‘I think I’ll try and work here for a bit,’ said Ruth, and brought out her book.

  ‘Always bloody well reading,’ said Vesta, glaring at the wardrobe. ‘First your mother, now you. And if it’s not the books, it’s some mad scheme or other. Never any money, either. Your mother’s never had two pennies to rub together. Look at the state of her flat. I wouldn’t be seen dead in it. At least you live in a house. Of sorts.’

  Ruth tried to concentrate on the print in front of her eyes. ‘It is important to teach the child basic principles of “do as you would be done by”. It may seem obvious to you that it is wrong to scream your head off when thwarted. It is not obvious to a very young child.’

  ‘What are you reading?’ asked Vesta.

  ‘A book on babies so I can write a leaflet for my Bo Peep Agency.’

  ‘What a damnfool name that is,’ said Vesta. ‘And a damnfool idea too. What do you know about babies? You’ve never had any.’

  ‘You don’t always have to experience things personally to know about them.’

  ‘You’ve left it a bit late in the day if you’re thinking of having one now. Even if you did, you’d have old babies. Wizened little things with all sorts of problems.’

  ‘I’m only thirty and I’m not thinking of having one now,’ said Ruth. ‘Time enough when I’ve got some money coming in from Little Bo Peep.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bother if I were you,’ said Vesta. ‘They’re more trouble than they’re worth. I never had anything but trouble from Janet.’

  ‘But mum’s been visiting you every fortnight since grandad died,’ said Ruth. ‘And that was over twenty-five years ago.’

  ‘Only because she’s a social worker,’ spat Vesta.

  ‘She says we’ll have old babies,’ fretted Ruth that night in bed.

  ‘We won’t have any babies if you carry on setting your cap at me,’ said Denzil.

  ‘Don’t try to make jokes,’ said Ruth. ‘Anyway, you agreed it’s more sensible like this until you get a Scale Two.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘More sensible.’

  ‘Why do you make me out to be such a killjoy?’ asked Ruth.

  ‘Sweetheart, nothing could be further from my mind,’ said Denzil. ‘But, if the cap fits.’

  ‘You could always bugger off,’ said Ruth. ‘See if I care.’

  ‘How are you feeling?’ asked Ruth.

  ‘Need you ask?’ croaked Vesta.

  ‘Here’s the Mail,’ said Ruth, ‘And here are your glasses.’

  ‘Have a cup of tea with me,’ said Vesta. ‘Look, you’ve made a ridiculous big pot, I can’t drink all that by myself. When I see the waste that goes on in this house I don’t wonder you’re as poor as church-mice.’

  ‘All right, I’ll have a cup,’ said Ruth. ‘But I’ve got to make some phone calls this morning.’

  ‘I’m not stopping you,’ said Vesta. ‘Did you go out for my Mail again? You shouldn’t have to do that. Why can’t you get it delivered? You must live in a very poor area. You should see my paper girl. She’s the sexiest little devil you ever saw. It’s disgusting really. Ginger hair, too. I wonder why it always goes with ginger?’

  ‘I’ve got auburn hair,’ said Ruth.

  ‘You’ve let yourself go,’ said Vesta dismissively. ‘No make-up. Just scraping your hair back. Tell me when you get divorced, won’t you. Not that he’s much to write home about either.’

  ‘Why don’t you read your paper,’ said Ruth, picking up her copy of Baby Management. Her grandmother glared at her through her sharp-cornered reading glasses, then studied the headlines.

  ‘Students again,’ she muttered. ‘Education’s a dirty word. Look at the Communists, they’ve all been to University. That’s why your husband won’t get a proper job. All those ideas he got at University sapped him.’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ said Ruth.

  ‘You’ve got no control over him,’ shouted Vesta. ‘You can’t even get him to put on a bloody door-handle.’

  ‘Have a betablocker,’ said Ruth coldly. ‘If you’ve finished your breakfast.’

  In the old days, Ruth had been sent by her mother during the school holidays to be company for her widowed grandmother.

  Every morning they went shopping locally in Mortlake, with Ruth carrying the zip-up vinyl bag, for half a pound of this and a quarter of that. On the way they might meet one of Vesta’s neighbours, and there would be a formal five-minute exchange on the s
ubject of physical deterioration, while Ruth stood to one side, staring at the pavement. The conversation over, she followed her grandmother off again with mortified canine obedience. Their main meal, at midday, of chops or offal or stew, was followed by Vesta’s Rest.

  Ruth sat on the rug in the sun and filled in her diary. ‘Je suis avec ma grandmère,’ she wrote. ‘Ce soir nous donnerons le poisson au chat de Mme Grayling, qui est au Minorca en vacances. Hier soir nous avons entendu Radio 2 depuis deux heures et joué aux cartes. Je suis absolument …’ She paused and bit her biro. What was she, absolutely?

  She gave up and started to read, alternating chapters of Mansfield Park with Forever Amber. At about four, she went back to the kitchen and laid the tea things. She was in a hot trance of reading and wanted never to speak again.

  At ten past four her grandmother came downstairs.

  ‘Always got your nose in some damn book,’ she said. ‘What are you reading now?’

  ‘At Mansfield,’ Ruth read aloud, ‘no sounds of contention, no raised voice, no abrupt bursts, no tread of violence was ever heard; all proceeded in a regular course of cheerful orderliness.’

  ‘How boring,’ said Vesta. ‘I like a bit of life. Why can’t you put that down and be company.’

  ‘I’ve got to revise,’ said Ruth.

  ‘Don’t think exams will get you anywhere,’ laughed Vesta. ‘Look where they got your mother. Spending her time with drug addicts and sex maniacs and the scum of the earth. No wonder that rotten husband of hers upped and offed.’

  ‘You mustn’t talk like that about my father,’ said Ruth.

  ‘I’ll say what I want in my own house,’ huffed Vesta. ‘He was a lazy, dirty good-for-nothing. It’s no surprise he ended up in the gutter.’

  ‘I won’t listen!’ shrieked Ruth.

  ‘You’re getting absolutely neurotic,’ said Vesta with distaste.

  From the top of the kitchen dresser she pulled down her own favourite book, The Pageant of Life by Dr Ethel Tensing, 1931.