An Almond for a Parrot: the gripping and decadent historical page turner

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He was dressed in a grand style in a brocaded coat. With him was a black spider of man who scuttled to a curtain at the end of the room where he seemed to take instructions and papers from someone before returning to the side of the grand gentleman.

I knew that I was to be married, but which of these unpleasant-looking men I would have the honour to call husband I couldn’t say. The whole idea of being married was one I had given little thought to, but remembering my father’s words, I said nothing until I couldn’t help but speak. The room was in such darkness that for a moment I wasn’t sure what tricks the light played: for seated behind the minister was a shrivelled-up woman dressed in the dustiest of clothes.

‘Who is that?’ I asked.

The minister turned and seemed shocked to see her there. ‘That,’ he replied unsteadily, ‘is my wife.’

‘Then, sir,’ I said, ‘I am afraid she is dead.’

The remark was greeted with laughter, not from the minister or my father or his pissed acquaintance but from the folds of a curtain. A young gentleman, also wearing a mask, stepped out into the light and stood beside me.

‘Of course she’s dead,’ he said, his words slurred. ‘Marriage is murder.’

Whether or not the minister heard I wasn’t sure, but much to my father’s fury it made me giggle. Everyone was drunk except me and the minister, and I wasn’t sure how sober he was. Surely, I thought, a wedding this soaked in liquor could never be considered binding.

The minister raised his eyes to the high ceiling as if hoping to find a god to calm him and said, ‘My wife has been shown to me this night. It is a sign to remind the living of the passion to be found in life and the brief amount of light there is before everlasting darkness.’

‘On with the thing, sir!’ shouted my father.

‘This is no time for ghosts,’ said his brocaded friend.

The minister, somewhat shaken, went on, though every now and again he glanced uneasily behind him to where his dead wife sat watching.

The wedding service consisted of nothing more than the young gentleman and myself giving our consents and signing the papers that the black spider eagerly put before us.

And that was that. I never saw my bridegroom’s face, nor was I informed of his name, nor the purpose of such a hasty marriage. Cook told me the next day that my husband had gone to join the navy and I need think no more about it.

‘With luck,’ she said, ‘you will be a respectable widow by the time you’re fifteen.’

I mention these three events only because by the time the years had chased the child in me away I saw all too clearly how the upturned cart of my life was settled. I was destined to live out my days emptying my father’s chamber pot and serving him his meals. This may well have been my fate, but it was at this very low juncture that the tide changed in my favour.

Chapter Four (#ulink_4d27b1f9-171a-5650-9df8-8b82dae02bef)

My father was to remarry.

When I heard the news that I was to have a stepmother I was completely flummoxed. I could only assume that this lady, whoever she was, must be wealthy and my father had tricked her into believing she was marrying a respectable merchant. There seemed no other explanation for her acceptance of such a foolish proposal.

By this time, I was sixteen and had by degrees taught myself to read from cookbooks, discarded newspapers and the salacious pamphlets that Captain Truegood regularly purchased. It was in one of the newspapers that I had first come across advertisements by gentlemen for wives and occasionally by women in want of a husband. I made up one I thought my father might have written if he had resorted to writing to the paper in search of a wife. I read it out to Cook and it tickled her fancy no end.

An Invitation To The Ladies.

A captain who left the Navy to become a merchant finds himself shipwrecked on dry land with a wet whistle that can never be satisfied. Losses and crosses have reduced his fortune to no more than his wardrobe, a diamond ring, a gold watch and an amber-headed cane. In addition to the above he has a flaxen full-bottom, flea-ridden wig befitting a man of his age and position. I plead to the generous ladies of the cities of London and Westminster: SAVE ME. Letters to be sent to Truegood, Milk Street at Cheapside.

Cook told me only three days before the wedding that my stepmother-to-be had two daughters of about my age. That went some way to explain her decision to marry. Perhaps she wasn’t wealthy after all and was in search of respectability. Between you and me and a four-poster bed, there was little to nothing to recommend my father.

On the day of Captain Truegood’s nuptials he, was surprisingly sober and dressed in his flaxen full-bottom wig and his best suit of clothes. He stood in the hall clutching his amber-top cane, tapping it on the barometer and bellowing as if there was a house full of servants, not just Cook and myself.

‘Everything is to be shipshape,’ he roared. ‘I am off to be married.’

No one replied, only the front door groaned as it was closed.

There was a wonderful peace to our house, as there always was the moment the captain left. I could almost hear the walls let out a sigh and settle back to relish their bricks, bones and plaster conversations. It was at these moments that the house became bearable; the quiet peace of it, the enticing smell of fresh bread wafting from the kitchen. I thought I would have the best part of the morning to enjoy the silence before Captain and the new Mrs Truegood returned.

‘Do you think…’ I asked Cook. She had just taken a batch of fresh-baked rolls from the oven and I was putting them on a wire rack to cool. They smelled so good that my mouth watered and I slipped one surreptitiously into my apron.

‘I saw that, miss. Now put it back.’

Reluctantly I did as I was told and she huffed.

‘Do you think – ’

‘I try hard not to,’ interrupted Cook, stuffing a fowl.

‘Do you think that my father will tell my stepmother that she has a stepdaughter?’

Cook was never a great conversationalist and my question was greeted by a grunt, which I took to mean ‘no’.

I sighed. I had asked as I was certain that it would come as something of a shock to my father’s new wife for I doubted that he had told her of my existence. The reason, I supposed, was that he had so long persisted in treating me as a servant that he must have felt it to be the truth. Quite why he saw me in this unfavourable light I have never fathomed. I didn’t think for a moment that my stepmother’s discovery that I had sprung from Captain Truegood’s loins would go in my favour.

‘Do you think I will be asked to leave?’

‘Leave where?’

‘Leave here.’

‘What? You buffle head, of course not. What would you do?’

‘Be my own mistress,’ I said, ‘for I am determined not to be beholden to a man – especially one like Mr Truegood.’

‘I have no time to listen to this stuff and nonsense.’ Cook softened. She took one of the rolls and handed it to me. ‘Help yourself to butter then go and see if the canaries are still alive. I’ll call you if I need you. And try to bring some reason into that muddled head of yours.’

All that was left of the grand furnishings in the blue chamber was a four-poster bed. The chamber smelled of oranges and cloves just as it always had done. When I was little I would sit at the table with Cook, my fingers hurting as I pushed cloves into the orange flesh, releasing its puff of perfume. I felt cross at the idea of anyone else occupying this chamber, removing the veil of my mother’s ghost by their presence.

I opened the shutters and sunlight showed up the shabbiness of all within. It was only in candlelight that the chamber had any pretence to grandeur. I took the cloths off the two cages, pleased to see that the canaries were alive, and put them in front of the window where the birds started to sing, their bright yellow in such contrast to the blue.

Satisfied that all was as it should be, I resigned myself to the fact that I would no longer be able to come here. I took a last glance at the antechamber. The only piece of furniture there was my mother’s full-length looking glass.

I decided then that this was perhaps the only opportunity I would have to take stock of my figure. I had read somewhere that an accomplished young lady should be able to play a musical instrument, speak French fluently and dance. I could do none of the above. The writer also said that a good figure and a pretty face could outshine all these achievements.

My father, in his drunken wisdom, had decided not to waste his money on my education. He strongly believed that knowledge gave women the wrong ideas and made them a nuisance to their husbands. I cannot tell you how much I longed to be in charge of my own destiny. Never again did I want to be beholden to another soul. I had lived sixteen dull summers subjected to the tempestuous seas of my father’s ill-spent fortune and if I was ever allowed to have a life I did not want to be held prisoner by another man’s purse strings. In short, I was determined to earn my own way in this topsy world.

If there was a time for an honest appraisal of my assets, surely it was now, there being no one else in the house apart from Cook. I undressed and for the first time stood as naked as Eve before the mirror and studied myself in the long glass. I had rounded ivory globes that sat well, but I thought were a little too large for such a trim waist, though they did have pleasing rose petal nipples. I had a flat stomach, and a dark, soft covering of downy fluff hid my Venus mound. As for my shoulders, they were not too bony, more soft as was the fashion of the day. Those at least I thought were passable. My legs I decided were shapely. I had fine ankles and slender wrists, all of which I put down to being in my favour. But my face was the greatest disappointment. I could tell I was not destined to be a beauty. It was long, as was my neck; my nose, alas, seemed snubbed. I had thick eyebrows that met in a bow in the middle and lips too full. My teeth I deemed to be my only asset worth a mention: they were neat and white. I felt the whole composition had been put together in a clumsy, ill-thought-out manner. The portrait was framed by thick, unruly hair of a mouse-coloured hue. The only striking quality about my looks, or so I thought, was the colour of my eyes. They were green and my skin alabaster, which was not due to any design but by the mere fact that I had hardly seen any sunlight since the day I was born.

The front of me being thoroughly weighed and found wanting, I had turned my attentions to my bottom, when to my utter horror the door to the antechamber opened and there stood a gentleman in the finest clothes I had ever seen. Such was my embarrassment to be discovered this way that I daren’t look up and neither did I think to find my shift to cover my modesty. Instead, head bowed, I stared at his riding boots.

‘Madam, pardon me,’ he said, as calmly as if he had found me fully dressed. ‘I did not mean to intrude upon your toilette. I am looking for Captain Truegood.’

‘He has gone off to be married,’ I said. ‘No one is at home.’

‘And who do have I the honour of addressing?’

‘Tully Truegood, sir.’

Daring myself to look up, I was struck dumb by his appearance, for he was not only most handsomely dressed but possessed a face which, unlike mine, seemed to have been put together with great thought, and a certain knowledge of how good features and a strong jawline and a straight nose could make a girl weak to the knees.

I must have gone white, or whiter still, for he helped me to a chair then went in search of port wine. I found my shift and hurriedly, if unsteadily, put it over my head.

He re-entered the chamber with a glass and, smiling, said, ‘Madam, I prefer you as you were for you have been blessed with a figure that is a delight to look upon.’

He handed me the wine and I drank it down in one great gulp.

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘I will come back,’ he said, ‘when your father is at home.’ He bowed and went to leave.

‘Who shall I say called, sir?’

He didn’t reply. And then to my amazement he came back into the room and lifted my face to his and kissed me. Having never been kissed before I was uncertain as to what I was supposed to do. He wasn’t, and before I knew what had happened my mouth was full of his tongue and a part of me that had never ached before felt as if it might die if something wasn’t done to soothe the yearning.

He pulled away from me so suddenly that I felt bereft and without a thought to modesty I put my arms round his neck. Laughing, he untangled himself from me and undid the ribbons on my shift so that it fell once more to the floor. He stroked my face. His fingers were long and elegant, and slowly they went down my neck, over my breast, and circled my nipples, which had the effect of making them hard. His hand caressed my stomach and wherever his fingers went they seemed to waken the flesh of me that before had been fast asleep. He touched the inside of my thigh and then up into the soft purse of my Venus mound.

I should have been outraged and I was not, just ablaze with longing – for what, I didn’t know. I felt certain that I was about to find out, but he took his hand away.

‘Don’t give that sweet, white rose of yours to any stranger,’ he said. ‘Wait for your husband to come and claim it, and more besides.’

‘I don’t think he ever will,’ I said.

He smiled and kissed me once more. ‘Oh, he will. Believe me, he will.’

And with that he was gone.

I tried to compose myself but the ache in me was so terrible and all of it stemmed from between my legs. I wondered if I was ill with a fever but could not think of any remedy. How long I sat there in that bemused state I could not say. At length I was startled into action by the sound of a carriage pulling up outside our house and the noise of people arriving. Hurriedly, I dressed, my cheeks still on fire.

I went down the stairs and stopped on the first floor landing from where I could see all the people in the hall without being seen.

Quite a party had arrived and I could not fathom which of three elegantly dressed ladies was my stepmother for all were so beautifully turned out. But it was not the sight of the exotic plumage that unsettled me: it was the tall, thin man with a wooden leg coming in with my father. His face was bleached of colour as I remembered it and behind him came the little white dog. I held tight to the banister for there was a whooshing sound in my head and the taste of iron in my mouth. The little dog discovered my hiding place, ran up the stairs and jumped up, asking to be lifted from the ground.

My father, upon entering the hall and seeing me, gave me a look and, if looks could be fired from pistols, that look would have killed me.

‘This way, madam,’ he said, and guided one of the ladies into the parlour where Cook had laid the wedding breakfast.

It was then that I was overtaken by a most strange occurrence that I put down to the unusual excitement of seeing the one-legged man again. He whistled to call the little dog back and winked at me, showing his painted eye. The whooshing sound in my head said he had seen right through me, that he knew about the gentleman. I was standing on the Coffin-Maker’s step and in my hurry to move on I must have tripped, and it felt to me as if my clothes were wings, unravelling from me, and I had taken flight. The one-legged gentleman’s face appeared to become detached from his body and floated nearer to me and at that moment I saw the stairs rise, felt myself falling into them, and fortunately remembered no more.