The Silver Swan Read online

  And it was she, having visited a shop in Guildford and gone, by chance, into the coffee house frequented by Pope and Elizabeth, who — having ascertained first that Mrs Weston was not at home — called at Sutton Place and remarked to John Weston how well his wife and the poet looked. John’s thunderous silence was enough to tell her that she had hit home and she left with a triumphant swish of her hooped petticoat, larger by six inches than any other woman’s in the district.

  As she stepped through the Middle Enter, Melior Mary close at her heels, Elizabeth had sensed the leaden atmosphere and felt her heart lurch with fear. She had had no wish to fall in love deceitfully, would — if her life had worked out as she wanted — have been happily married and contentedly raising an enormous family.

  She had not wanted John Weston from the start, sensing in him that wilfulness with which only a woman as capricious as he could have contended. But her guardian, Sir William Goring, had thought the master of Sutton Place a splendid match — and that had been the close of the matter. Her brother Joseph had been full of schemes for Sootface to snatch her — from the altar steps if necessary — and carry her off to safety. But it was as to the exact location of ‘safety’ that they had finally been thwarted and it had seemed easier, in the end, to go through with it.

  So it was with a sense of doom that she saw John standing before the fire in the Great Hall — legs slightly apart, arms behind his back — the stance he always adopted when about to argue.

  ‘Mrs Nelson called,’ was all he said.

  ‘Who?’

  She had genuinely forgotten in the welter of emotion exactly whom he meant — and it was a cardinal mistake.

  ‘Mrs Nelson — the friend of the Racketts and the Englefields. The mistress of the freakish poet.’

  Poor unworldly Elizabeth had fallen straight into the trap snared for her.

  ‘It does not do you justice, sir, to refer to Mr Pope in that way.’

  He turned, snarling, and said, ‘I’ll refer to that dwarf, that rake from hell, that devil’s joke, in any way I so choose, madam.’

  ‘John, what is the matter?’

  ‘You ask me what is the matter? Adulteress, deceiver, wearer of two faces...’

  He had gone too far. His normally gentle wife shouted at the top of her voice.

  ‘Be silent, you bully! There is nothing of that kind between Alexander Pope and me. That I love him is true but we have never lain between adulterous sheets. How dare you impugn my good name! I am leaving your house.’

  ‘But not with Melior Mary.’

  A look of fear crossed her face.

  ‘A child stays with its mother. That is the law of nature.’

  ‘A child does not stay with a woman unfit to rear it. That is the law of the land.’

  ‘But John...’

  ‘Say me nothing. Go to your room, Elizabeth. I do not wish to see your face.’

  She had stood hesitating, then she had turned and gone up the stairs to a chamber known as Sir John Rogers’s room, and stayed there the night.

  For three days she and her husband had exchanged no word whatsoever, all conversation being conducted through Melior Mary or the servants. But now, on the fourth day, Elizabeth’s chance had finally come. John had left at dawn for a full eight hours hunting and, when he and his grooms had finally disappeared into the heart of Sutton Forest, Elizabeth’s personal servant Clopper packed as much as she could of her mistress’s belongings. The two coaches that were Elizabeth’s private property were brought round to the front and, leaving naught but the briefest letter, the mistress of Sutton Place and her child were now proceeding down the drive in the first of them, followed closely by the other bearing the servant and the baggage.

  The gates were open at last. Elizabeth’s gloved hand gripped that of Melior Mary as they passed through. She did not see that the child’s cheeks were suddenly as white as the unknown world outside.

  ‘I shall die without Sutton Place,’ said her daughter, almost to herself.

  ‘That is foolish. It is, after all, only a house.’

  ‘But I belong to it.’

  But Elizabeth did not answer and it was only Melior Mary’s anguished face that peered behind them as the great iron gates swung closed again and the carriage gained speed beneath the snow-laden sky.

  2

  The house was the smallest Melior Mary had ever seen, resembling a little pink shell into which she and Elizabeth escaped like two waifs of the sea. It stood in a trim bustling terrace beneath the very walls of Windsor Castle and was as different from Sutton Place as it was possible for the imagination to stretch. Yet, in its way it was comforting — extending to them a warmth that was not only physical.

  They had two servants, Clopper — who had come with them from Sutton Place — and Tom, a thin pinch-faced boy of eleven or twelve, who did the menial tasks. Tom was a present from Mr Pope, who had found him street begging, and had decided that nobody as unprepossessing as the wretched child could be dishonest. And after having had him bathed — an ordeal from which he emerged looking, if anything, slightly worse — he had taken the boy to the house in Windsor.

  There he had eaten a whole meat pie, been beaten by Clopper with her mistress’s walking cane against the time he should misbehave and had stuck out his tongue at Melior Mary. For this misdemeanour he had received a bent and cuffed ear from Mr Pope.

  For a man so small the poet threw a considerable blow and Tom had sat whimpering by the kitchen fire until Melior Mary had crept up and emptied a saucepan of cold water over him. With his orange hair flattened like a wet cat’s and his grimy blue eyes set permanently at a squint by cruel fate he had resembled a gargoyle.

  ‘Don’t yer be emptying any more worter over me or I’ll string yer up by the petticoats.’

  ‘And what sort of language is that meant to be, pray?’

  ‘It’s Dublin talk — for that’s where Oi was born.’

  ‘Then small pity they didn’t leave you there and you shall address me as Miss Weston in future. Do you hear?’

  And with that Melior Mary had deposited the contents of a pudding basin, which Clopper had left half mixed, over his ginger head and marched out triumphant. But Tom had waited his chance and Melior Mary had jumped into bed later that week, only to find the sheets a veritable ice pond of goose grease. She had howled, two bright pink spots had appeared in Elizabeth’s cheeks, Clopper had used the walking cane once more and Mr Pope, on his next visit, had grimly told the boy to go outside and wait in the carriage. At this things had come to their final head.

  ‘No, Mr Pope, please. I am as much to blame for I put him in a nice torment,’ Melior Mary had cried.

  Then Tom had said the thing that moved the poet considerably.

  ‘Oi know Oi’m ugly in me face, sirrh. But it doesn’t mean Oi’m ugly in me heart.’

  To Alexander, the words had such a tragic ring that he felt the tears leap into his eyes.

  ‘Dear Heaven,’ he said. ‘You must not speak like that, child. We are given what God wills at birth. It is only by our acts that we are judged. And if you cannot behave as a good servant to Mrs Weston, who is kind to you and feeds you, then you can only expect to be treated ill. But if you are of a sweet nature then we care nothing if...’

  ‘You are ill-favoured,’ put in Melior Mary, adding, ‘Mr Pope, you’ll not make the boy go, will you? He’s company of a sort.’

  Without sentiment Tom’s stumpy hand was extended and she found the squinting blue gaze turned on her with something resembling affection. She had gained a friend for life.

  But John Weston was like a giant with a thorn in his toe, leaving the matter of his marriage alone until it began to fester. To his neighbours and friends he acted out the role of ill-used husband with unerring accuracy — at first unwilling to speak and then, tall and brooding, standing within the admiring gaze of Mrs Nelson, Mrs Englefield and Mrs Rackett — and pouring out his heart. There had never been a more admirable man in their view than
John nor a more badly behaved wretch than Elizabeth. It was their considered opinion that Melior Mary could come to no good subjected to such an influence and they strongly advised him to remove the child without further delay.

  ‘For what benefit can come of it, Mr Weston? Who knows who might be calling upon her.’

  And with that all eyes turned on the unhappy Mrs Rackett — who shared her father with Pope — and she blushed hideously beneath her redoubtable wig.

  ‘I shall have words with her guardian,’ answered John, thinking of Sir William Goring with one hand on the Bible and the other on the kitchen maid’s thigh. What better candidate for a saintly exposition on the virtue of Christian marriage!

  Winter passed and with the first burst of spring the daffodils flowered and Melior Mary, looking at the brave little clump in the walled garden, thought of Sutton Place and the golden carpet that stretched as far as the eye could see.

  But the season — even though it spoke of regeneration and birth and the old primeval stirring of blood — brought anxiety to Elizabeth. For there among her letters lay the familiar hand of her guardian and on opening it she read:

  ‘Elizabeth,

  I have been acquainted with everything you have done of late and I must insist that you have conference with me about the welfare of Melior Mary. The censure of damning lies in the hands of Him Who Sees All but...’

  It went on thus for three pages and at the end of it she felt ill. In exchange for her freedom it would seem that she must return her daughter to John Weston. Her brief respite from worry was over.

  *

  ‘So as she has not answered your letter, you will see her and demand the return of Melior Mary forthwith?’

  ‘Indeed I shall, John. Indeed I shall.’

  Sir William Goring patted his stomach and belched gently into his cheeks. He had just dined magnificently with John Weston feeding on various game, boiled beef, mutton pies, fruit jellies and cream custards washed down with exceptional wine and now given the final touch by a mature port and first-class snuff.

  As he took a great nostrilful he thought that he had not been so pleased in an age. But it wasn’t the food or drink that was gratifying him, nor the fact that he had been called in to visit his capricious ward and take her to task — a mission he relished for he liked nothing better than to act the role of stern judge — but the serving girl who had brought him his steaming jug of water and must later run the warming pan over his sheets. She was what had set him thinking. Such a plump little thing with big dark eyes and tumbling black hair and that suspicion of a wink as she bobbed her respects. When he looked again she had been demure but he had noticed it quite surely. And for once his wife had not accompanied him to Sutton Place being at home with throbbing veins in her legs. His last glimpse of her had been sitting up in bed reading aloud from the Bible, only the frantic lurch of her eye as he had gone out of the room giving him the feeling of alarm which she constantly aroused in him.

  But now all other emotions were being swamped by the contemplation of ravishment.

  ‘...and everyone is scandalized by Pope. The Englefields and Mrs Nelson are no longer calling on him. And he has even fallen out with his own sister.’

  Sir William snatched his concentration back to John.

  ‘Pope?’ he repeated.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said John peevishly. ‘That wretched dwarf Elizabeth has taken up with. She must have gone out of her senses but the fact remains they are seen together.’

  Sir William pursed his lips into a very small O.

  ‘There’s a bad strain in the Gages, John. I feel I may speak frankly of it now. Somewhere — not so far back — there was something amiss.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A bad marriage — low blood brought in.’

  John thought at once of his own coarse grandfather. ‘These things happen in most families,’ he said abruptly.

  ‘Indeed, yes. But in the Gages how clearly it may be seen. Joseph the rakehell, Elizabeth playing the slut.’

  ‘A harsh phrase,’ said John.

  ‘The truth never is pleasant. You must steel yourself. Just as I will on the morrow when I explain the wages of sin to your wife.’

  He poured himself another measure of port and drank it in two hearty gulps.

  ‘And now to bed. I shall pray, John, as you must also. If Elizabeth’s sin is indeed adultery then it is grievous.’

  He sighed heavily and heaved himself out of his chair. John rose also but Sir William said, ‘No need to come with me. Finish your drink in peace. Goodnight to you.’

  And as he crossed the Great Hall behind the footman bearing aloft a candle branch, his hopes were rewarded. Peeping down at him from one of the musicians’ galleries was the sensual servant. He had just time to catch a glimpse of her before she ducked out of sight. But there was no sign of her when he finally arrived at his chamber and saw in disappointment that the bed had already been turned down and warmed. His spirits flagged. His cross examination of her was something he had been looking forward to.

  He was just getting into the sheets when his door opened. Without even so much as a knock, the maid stood there. The light from the passageway blinded him for a minute but then he was amazed and excited to see she wore no stitch of clothes.

  ‘Merciful God, girl,’ he exclaimed. ‘How dare you? What are you up to?’

  ‘Oh, sir,’ she answered, ‘I’ve come for your help. For I’ve the great sin of lust upon me and I’ve heard that you are a good man who prays regular — and who the Lord smiles upon.’

  She smiled broadly and innocently but her eyes belied her.

  ‘You must go away,’ he said.

  She advanced towards him.

  ‘Oh won’t you hear my confession, Sir William? Please, sir.’

  And with that she fell on her knees before him, clasping her hands together. Sir William’s tongue worked round his lips like a lizard’s.

  ‘Leave me, you wanton.’

  But his eyes had lit with an unpleasant glow and she said, ‘Should I show you what men do to me sir? The better that a saintly man like you might understand it. For there’ll be things you don’t even know of I reckon.’

  ‘All fornication is disgusting,’ said Sir William. ‘It is a hideous act. But perhaps there is hope of saving your soul. If you truly repent.’

  ‘Oh, I do sir. I do.’

  ‘Then you may act out for me how badly you have been treated in order that I may pray for you.’

  She gave him the lewdest wink he had ever seen and fell to kissing his puffy white knees. And all was squeals and panting and drops of sweat as too much weight and age pursued too much depravity and youth, and Sir William in the height of his appalling pleasure called out, ‘Wicked, wicked, wicked’, over and over again and she in turn clawed till she drew blood.

  *

  It was not to fashionable Bath that Elizabeth repaired after her encounter with her guardian but, at Pope’s suggestion, the little known village of Malvern Wells where they could be quiet together and try to restore their thoughts. The poet had arrived at her house just in time to see Sir William Goring stepping into his departing coach, and inside he had found Elizabeth not in tears but in a far more dangerous state. White to the lips and unable to speak she had sat frozen in her chair and the story had come from Clopper who had overheard it all.

  ‘I beg your pardon, Mr Pope, but he called her an adulteress and a whore and said that Melior Mary must be returned to her father forthwith.’

  ‘And what did Mrs Weston answer?’

  ‘She said never, never, for it would break her heart and there was an end to it.’

  ‘And what did Sir William say to that?’

  ‘He said they would use force if necessary and then he went stamping out and you came in.’

  It was an hour before Elizabeth would speak. Then she said, ‘Oh Alexander, they can’t take her away.’

  ‘They shall not be allowed. I have an unfinished letter to John Ca
ryll at home and I shall add a post script. Let him try again to mediate. He is a man of great influence.’ ‘He has already done so once. My guardian ignored it. Alexander, they are threatening forcible removal.’

  The poet began to pace the room, his face twitching with distress.

  ‘If I were a proper man I would call John Weston out and settle the matter for once and for all. Nothing would please me more than to put a sword point between his eyes.’ His naughty humour bubbled. ‘But at my height, alas, all I could manage would be a dagger tip between his thighs.’

  Elizabeth laughed as Alexander went on, ‘Then watch out Mr John Weston. I’ll cut you off in your prime, sir. And you Sir William Goring. And you. And you.’

  He danced about the room shadow boxing and making imaginary cuts in the air, his wig flying out, his eyes twinkling like a merry fieldmouse which, at that moment, he greatly resembled; the goodness of heart, the greatness of intent, shining out from that poor little body.

  And so, two days later, they found themselves bound for Malvern in the company of Joseph Gage who was heading for Bath and would deliver them at their destination.

  ‘I shall lend you Sootface,’ he had said on hearing the story of John Weston’s threats. ‘He shall keep Melior Mary safe.’

  ‘But Joseph, for how long? You can’t give me your servant indefinitely and they could pounce at any time — next week or in a year. The situation is hopeless.’

  Joseph had stopped to think, leaning back on his crimson coach lining, one hand grasping a cane the head of which was a brilliant aquamarine. But whether this represented a trapping or an investment to him was not known, for rumours of his wealth were both legendary and prodigious. It was said that he held a greater personal fortune — through land, houses, jewels, various monies and secret, hidden treasures — than Queen Anne herself. And yet no-one, not even his family, knew the answer.

  Joseph was an enigma. Rumour upon counter rumour circulated the coffee houses of London. He was a homosexual; he was a voracious devourer of women’s virtue. He gambled incessantly; he never touched cards or dice. He dined at dawn; he insisted on sleeping a full night. He had friends in high places; the inner circle would not associate with him. He was a drunkard; he only sipped wine. He was a rakehell, a devil’s man, a libertine; he was afraid of women, a Catholic, a man of good character. Such was the manner of Joseph. Nobody knew him — and this was what he wanted. A certain hidden part of him was his own tranquillity. His own secret, private place to which he could fly when he felt the world to be intrusive. And all these question marks were hidden beneath a head that was always fashionably wigged but which really bore thick fair hair; heavy-lidded green eyes that seemed sleepy and often lethargic; a fairly small frame — neither too tall nor too fat; and a slow smiling mouth that could charm a lord or a lunatic and yet could, when it chose, turn into a thin and cruel snarl. That was Joseph Gage.