the marquis's memory 2

 

Chapter 2

 

Geoffrey woke to the curtains being opened, and the smell of coffee. He was confronted by a small person who might be twelve or thirteen,  or older, if malnourished, with a thatch of red hair, dressed in what described itself to Geoffrey in his own mind as an apocalypse of mismatched clothing without pretence of style. He had bare feet.

“Who the devil are you?” asked Geoffrey.

“I’m Pip, sir; Pip Moyse. Mr. Pigeon said you needed a servant?” said the young sartorial disaster.

“Where are your shoes?” asked Geoffrey.

“I do-ant hev no shoon,” said Pip. “Oony clogs.”

“I will want you to get more seemly clothes, and shoes,” said Geoffrey.

“No point, master,” said Pip. “Me da’ll oony taerk un, an’ sell un fer liquor. An’ yew be-an’t about to knock un down, nowise, at the moment.”

“Alas, true,” said Geoffrey. “However, if you suit me, when I move on,  I will enact physical chastisement to your father, and clothe you appropriately.”

“Shoon with buckles and frogging on my coat?” asked Pip, interested.

“Rather old fashioned, but… well, let us see if you suit me,” said Geoffrey.

 

Geoffrey found the services of Pip to be invaluable; the child was cheerful and willing, and ready to run any errand.

“Can you read?” asked Geoffrey.

“Yes, Miss Effie learned me,” said Pip. “I can read a list, no worries, if that’s what you need.”

“Good,” said Geoffrey.  He was wondering about sending for a tailor; but that would eat a lot of his money. He had set off with three hundred pounds in his pocket, which was enough to live well for a considerable time, but clothes of the quality he was used to would leave a large hole in it.

“Where to people go for clothes?” asked Geoffrey.

“Oh! There are tailors in Ipswich town,” said Pip.

“I drove clear to Suffolk?” said Geoffrey. “Well!  I wondered if anyone did ready-mades.  I don’t have all my finances with me.”

“You’ve remembered rightly who you are, a’n’t you?” said Pip, shrewdly.

“You’re too sharp,” said Geoffrey.  “I never forgot, but I wanted to get away.”

Pip nodded.

“I understand that,” he said. “I run away a lot. I got a nice pigstye, which scrubbed up nice and clean, an’ it’s warm in winter, an’ I fixed up a chimbly-like with an old piece o’ drain, an’ I dug down to make more head room, an’ put the earth around an’ planted seeds, an’ it look like a hillock covered in weeds, only they’re all edible weeds, good king henry, chickweed, dandelions, alexanders, lovage an’ stuff.”

“Very enterprising,” said Geoffrey. “Well! I shall be out and about in a day or two, even if not fully healed, and when my curricle is mended, I can go shopping. Er… where am I, exactly? The village, I mean.”

“This here is Cross Haddington,” said Pip. “There’s Much Haddington, Less Haddington, and Haddington St. Martin, which is about four houses and my pigsty. The church is here in Cross Haddington, and the new vicar keeps trying to civilise me.”

“I’d like to do so, myself, in terms of dressing you better.”

“You don’t preach, though,” said Pip, pulling a face. “Reverend Congreve was a good man afore he was taken off by pleurisy. Miss Effie, she’s a good woman. Are you sweet on her, or are you daft-like over Miss Alethea? She do-ant be half so good as her aunt, though she’s young yet. An’ that Reverend Coot is sweet on Miss Effie, an’ he keep pesterin’ arter her. Cuh! I hope she oon’t go for him, just acoss he’s half a live one, he’d maerke her downright mis’r’ble. He reckons takin’ pleasure in the beauty o’ nature is pagan.”

“As I recall, when God made the world, he saw that it was good,” said Geoffrey, who would have been horrified a week ago to be told that he would be challenged on his Biblical knowledge by a youth too young to shave.

“Erzackerly!” said Pip. “And he has sticky-out ears and a mouth like a fish, which is not nice to have over the breakfast table I shoo’n’t think.” He considered. “Now, even if yew wasn’t well-blunted, which you are, reckon her’d prefer a good-lookin’ one to a Friday-faced man-milliner.”

“She might be put off by my temper,” said Geoffrey.

“Reckon you got a control on yours,” said Pip. “You ain’t backhanded me once yet, nor thrown nothin’ at me, an’ you’re in pain which is some excuse.”

Geoffrey sighed.

“My anger is cold, but I say things I sometimes later regret,” he said.

“Ar, well, if you want her bad enough, you’ll learn not to,” said Pip. “I c’n shave you if you like; I know how.”

“I’ll let you try, but I’ll stop you if you don’t seem as good as you think,” said Geoffrey.

Pip felt the razor, sighed, and stropped it well.

“It’s the late vicar’s,” said Geoffrey.

“Ar, well, if he had a fault it was bein’ a bit nervy,” said Pip. “Reckon there’s no point usin’ a razor du yew can’t cut a hair for fallin’ on it. Else yew’ll oony tearke out chunks o’ skin.”

He proceeded to shave Geoffrey with an aplomb and skill which surprised Geoffrey.

“Do you shave your father?” he asked.

“Not half; but I can shear a sheep,” said Pip. “It ain’t so different, an’ you do-ant have dag locks in your face hair.”

“Dag locks?” asked Geoffrey.

“The draggles by the tail where sheep get shit in the wool,” said Pip.

“You are a quite revolting brat.”

“Well, you did ask,” said Pip, injured. “And I said you didn’t have no dag locks. Pa does, from drool when he’s drunk.”

“Oh. Well, I suppose you have a reason for associating it with beards, then,” sighed Geoffrey. “Pest, you have taken off my side whiskers!”

“Ladies do-ant like them,” said Pip. “At least, Miss Effie don’t. She said of the curate that it made him look loike a…a…” he frowned as he searched his vocabulary, “A lugubrious spaniel.”

“Well!” said Geoffrey. “And to think that when one follows the fashion, one has no idea what the fairer sex really thinks!”

“Yew du look roight comely without them,” said Pip. “You don’t hev a weak jawline to hide.”

“That could explain much,” said Geoffrey. “I believe the fashion was started by the Prince of Wales when he was young.”

“Him! He do-ant have a jawline, jus’ a fold in the skin twixt neck and face,” said Pip.

“He was, by all accounts, handsome when he was young,” said Geoffrey. “But it is a weak jawline.”

 

oOoOo

 

It may not be supposed that the arrival of a decorative young man in the district would go unremarked.

“Do you suppose he’s a fugitive from justice?” asked Aggie Cubitt, wrapping asparagus for Patty Ball. Patty might be a slovenly sort of servant, but she knew enough to scoff at this exciting piece of titillation.

“Don’t be sich a totty-hidded mauther,” she said in scorn. “Finest linen he has, ar, and laundry marks an’ all; an’ what sort of fugitive hev laundry marks?”

This silenced Aggie, who deflated over such practical proof of the stranger’s bona fides as someone not on the run.

“Drivin’ too fast, like all them ow’ young bloods, an’ upended hisself,” said Patty. “Mind, I will say this, he was civil enow to avoid runnin’ over Sarey, which he might easily of done.”

“Ar, that hog o’ Miss Effie’s is a roight caution,” agreed Aggie.

“Well, it ain’t as if many folks use the road, bein’s as it oony go to the foreshore,” said Patty. “I dunno where he thought he wuz a-goin-of; and he don’t know hisself now, not hevin’ any more idea of who he moight be than Sarey does, ar, an’ prolly less idea, her bein’ a clever enow sow, or at least, roight clever at bein’ stupid.”

“Yes, if I wuz him, I wouldn’t of come that way at all,” said Aggie. “But then, if I wuz him, I wouldn’t even start from here, anywise.”

This idiom disposed of the concept that nobody in their right mind visited this muddy corner of the Shotley Peninsula at the best of times, unless heading for Shotley itself, as some naval folks might, or already having stopped somewhere with more pretence at being somewhere, like Erwarton, or Chelmondiston, or as it was pronounced locally, Chumston.[1]

“So, hev yew any idea who he moight be?” asked Aggie.

“Well, he’s wearin’ a signet ring o’ some black stone, set wi’ silver, wass got a hoss wi’ a pointy bit on its hid,” said Patty.

“That ain’t a hoss, you mean unicorn,” said Aggie.

“Don’t you call me mean, an’ I ain’t a yewnicorn neither, I’ll hev yew know moy parents wuz married,” said Patty, angrily.

“Do-ant yew be so daft-loike, a unicorn is a magic hoss wi’ a horn on its hid,” said Aggie. “I weren’t callin’ yew one, yew daft mauther.”

“Why’d yew call me ‘mean’ then?” demanded Patty.

“I didn’t! I said you mean unicorn, not meanin’ a hoss,” said Aggie. “Yew do take on so.”

“Well, I can’t hardly help it, wi’ Miss Effie ridin’ me, her an’ her slop pail! Wass wrong wi’ emptyin’ chamber pots out o’ the winder, I arsts yew? An’ her so particular I wash me hands afore touchin’ food and arter I come out o’ the shit house. It ain’t as if I wipes me arse wi’ me hands, thass what we git the Ipsidge Journal for.”

“You’re dirty , Patty Ball,” said Aggie.

“I am not, either! I’m not five-and-twenty yit,” contradicted Patty. “As if it matter.”

“Ar, well if yew do-ant wash more often, yew won’t live to reach thirty,” said Aggie as a parting shot, correctly interpreting Patty’s mishearing. The Balls family were not, in the local parlance, the sharpest sticks in the bundle.

 

 

oOoOo

 

Effie had also wondered about the significance of the unicorn rampant, and consulted a book of heraldry her brother had had; and discovered that a unicorn rampant, argent, bearing a crown and horn, or, on a ground, sable, belonged to the Calver family, but as this left her no better informed, having little idea of the families of the upper ten thousand, she could not guess what this might mean.

She walked up to the Running Buck to ask Geoffrey, and was taken to him by Pip for all the world as if she was visiting royalty.

“I came to ask if your surname might be ‘Calver,’” said Effie, coming to the point.

“And why do you think that?” asked Geoffrey, evasively.

“I found some heraldry attached to your signet,” said Effie.

“Oh!” said Geoffrey. “And what else did you find?”

“Not a blessed thing,” said Effie. “My brother’s library contained a book of heraldry, but nothing about the families distinguished by the same.  You were headed for the foreshore; maybe you have a yacht?”

“What river?” asked Geoffrey.

“The Orwell,” said Effie.

“The Orwell! Why on earth was I coming down here?” wondered Geoffrey. It was a genuine enough question; he had given his horses their head. One of them had come from here, from… Geoffrey closed his eyes and groaned.

“What is it?” Effie was all concern.

“I think my pair came from around here, so they know the place,” said Geoffrey. He was not going to mention that they had come from a tenant of his, who was squire of Much Haddington. Philip-Paul Seward was in some wise a cousin of Geoffrey’s, some ten years older, and Geoffrey despised him cordially.

“Oh, from when Squire Seward had to retrench?” asked Effie.

“That’ll be it,” said Geoffrey. “I hope you aren’t on visiting terms with him; he’s a libertine.”

“Yes, any red-heads around here are likely sired by him,” said Effie. “Young Pip is one of his get.”

“Well, I’m damned! Brat, I planned to take you out of here anyway, but if you’re Philip-Paul’s byblow, you’re my responsibility.”

“A relative of yours?” asked Effie.

“A connection. I think,” growled Geoffrey.

“Well, at least you are getting your memory back?” said Effie.

“That isn’t necessarily an advantage,” said Geoffrey.

“I suspect the whole thing has fallen into place,” said Effie.

“If it has, I’m not saying,” said Geoffrey. “My mother overstepped the mark this time, and I need time to work out what I am going to do. I hesitate to send her to Akenheth and imprison her in the dower house.”

“I take it that this is something I do not ask,” said Effie.

“Not at the moment, if you please, Miss Congreve,” said Geoffrey. “I am still trying to get my temper under control.”

“Then, we shall abide by the fiction that you are Mr. Jefferson, for the time being, shall we?” said Effie. “Incidentally, Pip can speak properly, when he wants. I made sure of that, in case Seward ever did step up to his responsibilities. “

“Pause for ironic laughter,” said Geoffrey. “I expect it’s safer for the poor brat to speak like a local.”

“Yes,” said Pip.  “My da beats on me dew I talk posh, an’ I get beat up by the local kids too.”

“Well, it will at least be a start,” said Geoffrey. “I can hardly take you as my tiger, though.”

“You said you would if I was good enough!” cried Pip, grabbing Geoffrey by the arm.

“You do not cling to me like a drowning rat, Pip!” said Geoffrey. “You misunderstand; you will leave with me, but as my ward, not as my servant.”

“Oh.” Pip was big-eyed and scared. “I’d rather be your tiger.”

“Nevertheless, you have gentle birth, and will learn to live up to it, and gain an education commensurate with it,” said Geoffrey. “Perhaps you will be my steward, one day.”

Pip sighed.

“Miss Effie learned me a lot,” he said.

“And you shall learn more,” decreed Geoffrey.

Pip sighed.

It had to be better than his drunken da, who was, if what Miss Effie said was true, no da at all to him.

 

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[1] It’s become a dormitory town for London, these days, and the locals have gone all twee and call it ‘Chelmo’ since there aren’t any natives left. Just raising a couple of fingers to incomers here. My villages here are fictional and based loosely on such other collections of villages like the Ilketshalls, the South Elmhams, and the Creetings.