Newton’s Niece

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‘I don’t know these things, you see. I believe I’m a strange sort of woman. I live with a guardian. How should I know things?’

‘Are your folks dead? Your Mammy?’

‘Yes. They are. Quite. So in asking you I feel I’m asking in private: a magic mirror. Here I’m lighthearted. Can you believe that? It is a special place. If you saw me in London you’d not know me. There I’m usually troubled, but here I find myself closer to … I hardly dare say it because if it were said it might be taken away directly. Well-being. Perhaps it’ll only last one more day. One more day flicking away still faster. I see these flowers you’ve brought in, so clearly. So bright; how couldn’t I have seen such beauty before? I daren’t trust this. I have to go back. Soon. I wish I might stay here, Lizzy. I wish … I need to hear what women … I am a woman now, and shall have to go back to my … my fate. Does your mother love you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Your father?’

‘He left.’

‘How does it feel to you to be shown your own likeness? We are twins, Lizzy, apart from our difference of precise age. What’s your notion? As if from your side of the glass.’

A pause. ‘You scare me, Miss, I ask your pardon. Can I go now?’

‘Are you a virgin?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Is there some young man already?’

‘Handy. Handy enough.’

‘How do you … manage that?’

‘We lie together downstairs at my mother’s till he has a house. We don’t do it all up. Just … you know.’

‘Do you love him?’

‘He’s only a country boy, Miss. He don’t have London manners. You wouldn’t think of him.’

‘But you. Do you love him? This love is why we venture our bodies.’

‘I reckon I must do.’

‘I … No. I … A man will have me.’

‘What’s his name, Miss?’

‘His name? Charles.’

‘How old’s he?’

‘Forty. Nearly. A Restoration baby, Lizzy. And now a London man. A powerful, rich, political man, and I don’t know the first thing, Lizzy. I don’t know what I should say if I can’t … if I can’t … to stop him if I don’t … Help me, Lizzy. But you can’t. You can’t, can you?’

To Mrs Catherine Barton:

Kit, dearest, I am on fire for news of you. They tell me you are alive. I prayed that you should be spared. Confirm by your own hand that my prayers have been answered, and you will lift the devastating anxiety that possesses me on your account. Forgive the familiarity of my address, but is there not already an understanding between us? You must have discerned at our interview so tragically terminated some measure of the depth of my feelings for you; I cannot believe that we two are not in some sense by this time beyond the artificiality of opening politenesses. Kit, we know each other and what we are about; write as soon as you can that all is in truth well with you. I would be, dearest,

your ardent and ultimate servant, Charles Montagu

The Suitor

Pet went back before. Pawnee and I travelled after, with an armed guard, courtesy of an admirer.

‘You’re well, Kit. You’re beautiful, by the grace of God. You’re rich in most people’s terms. Why do you frown? We’re nearly at Colnbrook. If there was going to be an attack it would have come by now. There’s no cover here for them to hide in.’

‘I’m not afraid of robbers and ravishers. I told you that. I’d use the gun – on myself, if necessary.’

‘Kit!’

‘Or on us both. I’d find a way.’

She didn’t speak for a minute.

‘Is it Charles, then?’

‘I can’t bear it, Pawnee. I’m their prisoner. I know it.’

‘How’s this? Your uncle loves you I think. They both care for you. You just torment yourself with your suspicions of them. I see no reason, except they’re men, and all these European men are beasts in their own normal way. This I know for myself. But it isn’t as you think.’

“These aren’t just men. Now you’re like the voice inside me that tells me constantly I’m wrong or bad or ungrateful. Perhaps I am. Perhaps you’re right.’ I paused and looked out of the coach window, where the meadows stretched flat to the heath. We rumbled on the rutted Bath Road.

‘What’ll he expect of me? He’ll expect a real woman.’

‘You are a real woman, Kit.’

‘He’ll want a mistress. I shall want, ha! to fall in love. But I can’t, Pawnee. Not with him. Not with anyone, perhaps. I can’t. I’m a wreck. I’m maimed. I’m maimed in my deep self. I cannot let him. So then what’ll he think? I told you I was once a boy. I haven’t got the right feelings. I haven’t got the right responses. When he gets close to me, no matter how compliant or helpful – or female – I shall want to try to be … and Pawnee in part I do want to be normal now. I do perhaps want to be like everyone else. To be quiet and happy as we’ve been.’ A surge of feeling took me by surprise. I hit the coach-work with my fist so that my knuckles bruised. Then I denied my pain. ‘I’m so … distorted.’ Then I tried to shudder myself into great, heartbreaking sobs. But only pitiful trickles squeezed themselves out of my eyes. I wished I could drown the Thames, but I was locked and blocked. ‘If he gets near me I’ll have to … stab his neck. Cut him somehow. Pawnee, what’s wrong with me? I’m possessed, aren’t I? I’m a monster the Devil made in the moon. That’s what my mother used to say’

She leant across and put her hands on my hands on my thighs.

‘Why does it matter? Can’t you refuse him and go on as you are now? As you and I do. An honourable spinsterhood. Yes, people do, so why not you and I? Plain girls of good family do, and so do good girls with no money. For years. They live and live. They sew. And you; you’re a wise scholar woman. You’ve got your project, you said. What do you want with a man? Yes they are rascals. They spread pox and pregnancy. They blame us. They beat us. And then they leave.’

Charles’s man saw me to the Jermyn Street front door where my uncle embraced me. I inspected him for signs of the distraction he’d shown in his letter to Pawnee. His smile was tight, as if he was making the effort to be of good cheer. Mary and Tony embraced me cautiously. And so I settled back into the red; I re-established myself in the richness and lace of my bedroom, where they had hung the portrait of Charles beside the chimney-breast. There were fresh flowers in two jugs, and a new outfit of clothes laid on the bed. There was a silver save-all candlestick. New sconces had been fitted on the chimney-breast above the fireplace, on either side of a pretty little convex mirror in the Flemish style. My skull had been left where it should be, I was pleased to see, and a shelf had been put up to receive some decorative China plates, on which were four exquisitely perfumed wash-balls. An opened parasol in Japanese lacquer. A little jewellery box. A porcelain container beginning to sprout what looked like very expensive foreign bulbs. I took it all in. I re-entered my determined universe.

Charles came to call. He was shown up to my bedroom by Mary as if it were an established thing. Nobody seemed to bat an eyelid, least of all me. I read these relationships of polite force.

‘Kit. My jewel. You’re safe.’

‘Charles.’ He seized my hands and pressed them to his lips. I didn’t ask myself what was this assumed intimacy, nor on what it was based, nor what I had done to arouse it.

‘Dearest Kit. You’re as beautiful as ever.’

I looked down. He sat; as one who felt no stranger to the room. I sat too, in the chair in front of my dressing-table. I was in technical deshabillé – in that the finishing touches weren’t on yet.

‘They tell me so.’

‘I’m so glad to see you. So happy.’

‘And I to see you, Sir.’

‘I believe you are. Kit, I believe you feel for me. Am I right?’

‘Charles. As much as I’m able to feel anything, I feel for you.’

‘And you are flesh and blood. Therefore I take heart. You don’t lie to me. Although you torment me, you are honest and honourable.’

‘Torment you? How?’ I was astonished.

‘You must know.’

‘Know what? What have I done to you?’

‘You’ve robbed me of my heart. You’ve had it out of me with the oyster knife of your eyes. Now I bleed Venus’s salty fluid.’

‘That’s disgusting.’

‘You haven’t stolen my humour. But your eyebeams impale me, seriously; I can’t sleep for thinking of you. I can’t eat. It’s all the fault of your exquisite form. I blame you, Kit; your skin, your hair, your cheeks, your absolute gestures, the low sweetness of your voice. I’m on the rack of your feminine perfection.’

I stood up. ‘Come. This is a game. Where does it lead?’ I was twenty, politely losing patience. When I was a boy, I remembered for a flash, I used to think it was my fault. Turning my back, I looked out, over the yard and to the park beyond.

‘You’re very direct. You’re unlike other women. At least I’ve never met one like you. You say these outright things and I’m nonplussed. It puts me beside myself.’ He came over to stand behind me.

‘I’m different, I know it. I can’t help it.’

‘No. I don’t wish you any other way. It’s part of your beauty.’

‘My beauty. Yes.’

‘You say them with that bewitching half-smile.’

‘And …?’

‘And I’m overthrown.’

‘Do you like that? Do you like to be overthrown? Be honest with me, Charles, if you want to secure my respect.’

‘What do the poets call it? Sweet torment. Delicious agony.’

Feeling him touch my shoulder, I slipped sideways to escape, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I passed it.

‘Did you love your wife?’

‘I married for career reasons.’

‘Did you come to love her?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because for someone who could bid to understand the economy of a whole country, and wished patriotically to serve – I put the best construction on what I know of your past – even for a man who hoped to make a dazzling success in politics and wanted resources, marriage with a rich old woman is remarkably cynical. It’s stage comedy stuff, Charles, I believe. Was she … beautiful?’

‘You can’t interrogate me like this, Kit. You realise who I am?’

‘Very well. I shan’t interrogate you like this. What do you want of me now?’ I took up the sash I planned to wear. ‘You have a reputation about the town, I’m told.’

‘Who tells you this? What reputation do you mean?’

‘That you have pretty young society women for breakfast, and pretty young whores for supper.’

‘You believe this?’

‘Let’s merely assume there have been other women in your life. What do you do to them?’

‘What do I do? … What do you mean what do I do?’ He got up and stalked to the corner, where he sat under his portrait.

‘Charles. I want to know what’s expected of me. Here you are in my bedroom. Don’t you grasp my … my situation? My reasonable uncertainty?’ I felt myself smile suddenly. ‘Reasonable, Charles.’

‘For God’s sake, Kit, I love you. I’m the uncertain one. Do you understand? I have fallen in love with you.’

‘But what does that mean for me? What am I expected to do? Exactly.’

‘Don’t you have … some feeling for me? Kit, I’m supposed to be a busy man. A public man. And I’m … crucified. Forgive the reference.’ He put his head in his hands to hold the frustration.

I heard myself sigh as I put down my sash, although my teeth were now clenched tight. I wished I could force myself out of my body; out of the room. Instead I started untying the bows at the front of my bodice. After a while he looked up.

‘Good God. What are you doing?’

‘Undressing.’

‘Stop. Stop it at once. Do yourself up. By God’s blood you’ll see me under. Are you a whore? How many lovers have you had, Madam? And I thought I was assured of your absolute chastity.’

‘You were what? How were you assured?’

Charles looked lost. He said: ‘I’ve known you since … when was it? … Ninety-three?’