Settlement. Ann Birch
once, then changed her mind. If he had not been successful and well connected, would she have married him, knowing his cold, reserved demeanour?
Her friend Ottilie von Goethe had asked her once if their marriage had been consummated. Yes, it had been consummated. A grim word, but the right word. It suggested the completion of sexual congress without any of the joy or desire a married woman had a right to expect. In the early days, there had been caresses which had led to gropings and perfunctory encounters, but there had been no northern lights, no shooting stars.
Once she had found on his desk a poem of fourteen lines written to him by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s son, Hartley. In length, it seemed to be a sonnet, but she remembered the unorthodox rhyming couplet which formed its beginning. And the even stranger content:
Thou art my dearest love. O Rob! Sans thee,
A vast and woeful wasteland my life would be.
“How dare you poke into my private correspondence?” Robert had said, coming into the room as she held the poem in her hand. She had put it aside hastily, but now, as she remembered it, she recognized a truth she had long tried to suppress.
She took from her portmanteau the pocket of otter fur that Ottilie had given her on a fine summer morning in Vienna, as they drank coffee in lodgings overlooking the gardens of Schönbrunn Palace. She held its softness against her cheek now, feeling its warmth and a hint of Ottilie’s scent.
“It’s so pleasant, so pretty,” she had said to her friend, “but what is it?”
“It’s a foot muff, my dear Anna. I understand there will be a frozen lake in that faraway place to which you seem determined to go. No doubt when you are there you will travel in a calèche all by yourself with only the horse to talk to. Keep your poor cold toes tucked inside the muff while you discuss oats and harness.”
Sitting down now at the pine table that must serve as a desk, she put her cold toes into the warm fur. Perhaps she could find release by recording her day’s disappointments in her journal. Better still, she would write a letter to Ottilie. She would begin, “Dearest Ottilie: Here in this forsaken outpost, by that frozen lake you warned me about in July, I long for your overflowing high spirits and joie de vivre.”
She took the inkwell from the top of the bureau and set it on the table. Then she saw that the ink had a thin layer of ice over it.
In his bedchamber, Sam Jarvis dressed for dinner at Government House. Mary came in to help him attach the collar and cuffs to his dress shirt and to brush his top hat. “I am looking forward to this dinner,” she said. “It will save me from an evening with Mama and Eliza. They are stitching petticoats for the bazaar for the poor—utterly, utterly boring.”
“No doubt your sister would have some gossip. Has she met Mrs. Jameson?”
“Not yet. Some of the ladies intended to call today and leave their cards. Eliza has heard that she has written some popular books. And she carries a Spanish guitar and a stiletto wherever she goes. She also is apparently great friends with a man named... named... Go Thee, who wrote about the Devil.”
“I met her briefly on the wharf the other day and summoned a cab for her.”
“Oh, Sam, why didn’t you tell me? What does she look like?”
“Not as pretty as you, my dear.” Though, indeed, he did not especially like the immense sleeves of Mary’s dress which closed with a tight-fitting cuff. No doubt it was the current style, but it made her arms look grotesque.
“A new face will be welcome in this town,” Mary said. “If nothing else, the lady will furnish us with new sources of scandal, provided the stories that preceded her are true. Do you think she’ll be there tonight?
“Possibly, but do not suppose that the Governor’s affair will be any livelier than your sewing circle. Sir Francis will be sure to bore us again with his tales of exploits in Argentina. There are times when I wish that his horse had fallen over a cliff in the Andes and—”
“Sam, you must keep on the man’s good side. No arguments with him or anyone else, please. And put yourself forward for promotion if you have the chance to speak to him personally.” She reached up and patted his shoulder.
“You’re singing the same old refrain, Mary. I don’t need to be told what to do. I know that I’ve got to get a promotion. I’ve heard he’s looking for someone to ‘control the savages’—that’s what he calls them.”
“What an opportunity, dear Sam! Surely you can play up your friendship with Jacob Snake.”
“Not sure he wants someone who has an Indian friend. But I mean to do what I can. Otherwise, I may end up in debtors’ prison. And believe me, a four months’ lockup in 1817 was more than enough for one lifetime.”
“I’ve been thinking. We could discharge Miss Siddons. After all, twenty-five pounds would go a long way towards settling our debts with the butcher and the baker.” She attempted a laugh. “And the candlestick maker.”
“The girls must be educated. I don’t care what it costs. Do you want them to grow up like your sister, dependent on the goodwill of relatives? Accepting handouts in return for labour in the kitchen and the sickroom?”
“But the girls will marry, will they not? They need only to be educated to fill that capacity. My sister is a plain woman, but the girls are pretty. There will be men who—”
“We can sell them to. Is that what you want?”
“Is that why you married me? In return for my father letting you off on the murder charge?”
For a moment he could not speak. He could only feel the pulse in his head and his face growing redder and redder. “Murder, Mary? Is that what you think? Do you truly believe I murdered Ridout?”
She moved towards him then, wrapping her arms around his waist. “Oh, Sam, forgive me, forgive me. I say these things when we quarrel. Of course, I don’t mean them.”
He looked at his knuckles, white and clenched. He took a deep breath, sat down on the bench in front of the pier glass and spread his hands on his knees.
“Now, Mary, you will remember that the children are my responsibility as well as yours. Our sons are at a fine school. But there is very little education for girls in this town. That is why Miss Siddons is so necessary. Hang the expense.”
“But Eliza and I could teach them drawing and stitchery skills. I could ask her to—”
“Stitchery and drawing be damned. Let us be clear. I will not have the girls wasting their lives making hair bracelets and watercolour daubs of the peony patch. As for your sister, what could she teach them except the pleasures of laudanum and whiskey? I don’t blame her, mind you, she must do something to relieve the tedium of her life.”
Mary started to cry. ““Hair...hair...bracelets, Sam. You can be so cruel. Say what you want about Eliza. She has her faults, as do we all. But that remark about hair bracelets. Why do you bring up poor little Eddie? He’s part of every waking memory. I don’t need your sarcasm to make it worse.”
Their small son, Eddie, had died in 1828, only one year old, and Mary cut off all his beautiful red hair just before his burial. Then she had spent days making a bracelet from it. He could not bear to look at her when she wore it, and she had finally put the thing away somewhere.
“I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
But what the hell. She’d had the nerve to mention his trial for murder. It had happened almost two decades ago. And he had been exonerated. How dare she suggest that he’d made some deal with her father, Chief Justice Powell?
“I’m sorry, Sam, so sorry.”
He reached for her hand.