James Miranda Barry Read online

  ‘In the tropics there are tiny beetles which burrow right inside the books. You find every page covered with tiny holes,’ Francisco explained as I sniffed his deadly powders speculatively, ‘but this keeps them off. Go easy on the poison, soldier. It’s not snuff.’

  Francisco read mostly poetry and philosophy. He loved both Rousseau and Voltaire. When we were together alone in the evenings he read Shakespeare aloud, trembling with passion or shaking with laughter, changing voices for every part. Even if I didn’t get the jokes, I laughed with him. When he was quite carried away, he lovingly stroked all the buttons on the front of his uniform and made them shimmer and vibrate in the lamplight. I watched the dark hair shining on the back of his hands. He told me that he had learned to hate tyrants by reading Milton and he made me recite long passages from Paradise Lost. The passage that I loved best was the creation of the world. The tiny print swam before my eyes as I clutched the blue and gold text and spoke the words by heart as the lion struggled into being out of the cloying earth. When I looked up, Francisco was gently turning his huge globe of the pendant world, his hands full of tenderness and his eyes full of tears.

  We spent hours perched on his moving wooden steps, a smooth spiral in shining elder with two platforms, one halfway down and one at the top, where we could sit on different levels and read to each other. Some of his books were locked up, and others were chained to the shelf. I gazed at these sinister, silent volumes, and the iron convent grilles which separated me from the rows of white vellum. Here was my forbidden tree, my fruit.

  ‘You’ll read them, soldier,’ said Francisco, ‘when you’re old enough.’

  Once he took down a vast volume on South America and spread it out before me on the lectern. We had reached the chapter on the conquest of the Incas. Francisco never taught me one thing at a time: this was to be a mixture of history, geography and revolutionary politics. Slavery, torture and war had precise and graphic meanings for me long before I was ten years old. As he told the story of his continent and his peoples, Francsico became impassioned, distressed and enraged.

  ‘With my own eyes, child, I have seen the Cross of Christ dishonoured and abused. Simple holy people forced down upon their knees to kiss the jewels hanging from the hands of the priests. We have grown rich and fat off foreign wars and the slavery of our fellow men . . .

  ‘Our own dignity depends upon the love and care we have for others. If I do not care for my brother, I become less human . . .

  ‘Love is not a feeling, child, nor even the passion of lovers, which always seeks only its own gratification. It is the act of caring, of giving, the act of protecting the weak, the helpless, the imprisoned and the desperate. Love is the hand raised in defence. You cannot love and keep your hands clean . . .

  ‘The Church is founded upon a monstrous lie. No priest is closer to God than a simple peasant who cannot read or write, but drives his goats across the common pasture in the mornings . . .

  ‘Do you think that God speaks in Latin? Of course you must learn Latin. To read Virgil, Ovid, Lucretius, Propertius, Tacitus. And you must learn how to interpret passion from Catullus. But you must never confuse sexual passion and the deeds of disinterested love. And you must read your Bible in plain English . . .

  ‘When you fall in love, soldier, remember this. Passion is a form of madness. You will lose your way in the forest. Love is true dedication and service to your fellow human beings. That will bring you joy, ecstasy and suffering enough. Love will bring you closer to the people you serve and closer to God . . .’

  My Beloved stood before us, like Judgement in the doorway, with a draught tugging at her skirts.

  ‘You’d be less sentimental about the people if you had to deal with them every day,’ she snapped. ‘Twelve bottles of the Portuguese dessert wine are missing from the cellar. Salvatore denies all knowledge of the matter.’

  ‘Love is sharing all your worldly goods with God’s people,’ I suggested.

  Francisco rose up in a burst of irritation and snatched the cellar keys that were swinging from Beloved’s fingers.

  ‘Who has duplicates?’

  ‘You. And Salvatore.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Francisco stalked out of the door and down the staircase to negotiate a confrontation between idealism and villainy. My Beloved sat down beside me in the firelight, and smiled in a warm, late-afternoon conspiracy.

  ‘Well, my dearest, I’ll give them twenty minutes to accuse, shout, simmer and bicker. And then I’ll ring for tea. Where had you got to?’

  ‘Here. The speech by the Spanish governor.’

  She peered at the drawings of ecclesiastical torture apparatus in use upon several unfortunate Incas, sketched from life.

  ‘Darling, is this quite suitable?’

  ‘Francisco was telling me that it was all lies, because the Spanish intended to defraud the Incas of all their rights and land and force them to turn Christian. He said that real love showed itself when you treated your defeated enemy with generosity. He says treachery and deceit are the worst vices.’

  ‘Francisco is a soldier, darling. And a man of honour.’

  ‘Then you don’t think he’s right?’

  I climbed onto the arm of her chair, coming closer to her scent. I could see the fine hair on her cheek and her skin warming in the reflection of the flames. The library rearranged itself around her; all the books turned to face her, the maps fluttered in their soft tissue, the bust of Shakespeare winked, the music, neatly arranged in folders, began to hum softly to itself. She was the Queen of Wands, the Witch of Beauty, my Beloved. I gazed at her. She smiled. And my adoration became ecstasy.

  ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘you love your General. You want him always to be right and to know everything. He is a man who believes in liberty, the freedom of the people from Church and State. He has travelled the world and is very well-read. You want to believe every word he says and to be exactly like him. You will be. I promise you that. But remember that he is also a rich man. And the rich can afford to forget what things cost. Francisco will give you all he has. But you will also have something else, which is what I will give to you. You will know the cost of the real world, the price paid for Francisco’s ideas. And who usually pays.’

  I didn’t understand her. So I asked another question.

  ‘Who stole the wine?’

  ‘Salvatore, of course.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He sold it to the innkeeper at the Dog and Duck to pay his gambling debts. He hoped I wouldn’t notice.’

  ‘How are you so sure?’

  ‘Do you think I don’t know what goes on at the Dog and Duck?’

  ‘Will you dismiss Salvatore?’

  The penultimate housemaid had been dismissed for stealing. And she had denied it all, even the conclusive incriminating evidence, with a good deal of screaming in the kitchen. Francisco preferred men in his house anyway, so that it was more like a barracks.

  ‘Heavens, no. I’ll deduct it from his wages over a year.’

  ‘Is that what Francisco means when he says that real love is being generous to your defeated enemy?’

  My Beloved laughed.

  ‘Begin reading, my precious. Here.’

  * * *

  There were two washes: the small wash, half a day, supervised by my Beloved, her keys rattling as she rationed out the soap, and the great wash, which was carried out like a military operation, by Mrs Blake and Mrs Booth.

  A great wash in the household happened every two weeks. The event lasted all day and took place in the washhouse, which stood between the kitchen and the side door leading into the vegetable garden. Its windows looked out onto a small sunny yard where a bevy of scrawny cats gathered on the gravel, awaiting the regular leftovers. One had a sinister milky eye and was called Nelson. But the others had no names and would not be touched. I often sat in the doorway while the wash was going on, flicking pebbles at strategic objects in the yard: a derelict mangle, a rusting bucket. The cats
either chased the pebbles or menaced me. Inside the washhouse were two vast stone sinks with wellworn, pale, wooden washboards, streaked with grey. In the corner chimney was a small wood stove with a brick surround on which we placed a huge cauldron for boiling whites.

  If I escaped unnoticed from the nursery or lessons in the library I was allowed to fill the cauldron and help Salvatore light the fire. Then I could watch the back door and listen for the bell which announced the joint arrival of Mrs Blake and Mrs Booth. They were enormous: red-boned Amazons of tremendous proportions, who arrived in bonnets and mufflers, shawls, aprons and clogs. They had political opinions. They accused Salvatore, to his face, of being a French spy. He ignored them.

  ‘He can’t possibly be a French spy,’ I said. ‘He comes from Venezuela.’

  ‘That’s what you think, my lad. But he could still be working for the Frenchies. You don’t think Bonaparte would be so stupid as to employ a Frenchman, do you? That’s too obvious. No, he’s too clever. Much better to use someone from the Americas. Someone nobody’d suspect.’

  ‘But you do suspect him, Mrs Booth. So it hasn’t worked.’

  Like all children, I was relentlessly logical.

  ‘Well, I have my suspicions. But that’s because I’m nobody’s fool.’ She unwound her shawl, which smelled of sweat and woodsmoke, and laid it down beside the mangle in the washhouse. If I helped with the wash I was allowed to feed sheets through the mangle. Sheets, pillowcases and underwear were boiled hot to kill the bugs. The rest was washed in icy water which we purchased from the neighbour’s well. Mrs Blake never said anything except ‘Down with the King’ from time to time, to get on Mrs Booth’s nerves. My Beloved often said that Francisco employed political eccentrics who would never be employed anywhere else.

  ‘But that can’t be true,’ I argued. Mrs Blake and Mrs Booth did the great wash for all the other houses all down the street.

  Next time they came I made trouble deliberately, and asked Mrs Booth outright whether she thought that Francisco was a French spy too. His past was certainly against him.

  ‘Never,’ she thundered. ‘Your stepfather is a gentleman.’

  This was the first time that I had heard him referred to as my stepfather. My Beloved was there with us, bent double, her hands filthy, organising the wood to stoke the bread ovens and the washhouse fires.

  ‘Did you become an honest woman and marry Francisco? Without telling me?’

  Her ears turned red. Then she boxed mine smartly. Mrs Booth chuckled into her soap suds.

  * * *

  She may not have been married to him, but my Beloved managed every aspect of Francisco’s household. She never lay about in bed drinking chocolate like some of the ladies whom we visited. She nosed around in cupboards and kept an immaculate ledger of household accounts. She had two books. One was her rough copy, which had lots of crossings-out and figures scrawled in different colours. The other was in ravishing italics, with no mistakes. This was the one she presented to Francisco for inspection every Friday morning. I don’t think he ever added up the figures; he just admired her handwriting and kissed her fingers. She could have been accumulating a small fortune, for Francisco was very generous with his money. But she always insisted that it was very important for women to be above and beyond all suspicion in matters of honour and matters of money.

  ‘You must always be able to account for every hour and every penny.’ She placed her blotter carefully on her final addition. Mrs Booth said that there were only two authorities to whom women were accountable: God and their husbands. I repeated this. My Beloved exploded.

  ‘You must never marry! Never! I forbid it.’

  Then she burst into tears.

  I promised her never to marry. I was so anxious to reassure her, that I never asked her why.

  I was nine years old at that time.

  * * *

  I did not see James Barry again, after the biting incident in the breakfast room, for at least half a year. He may have come to the house late at night. My Beloved may have visited his studio. Or he may have been travelling abroad. She never mentioned him. I never heard him announced. He didn’t leave visiting cards. I went through the collection on the hall platter. But that didn’t mean that they hadn’t seen him or that he hadn’t come.

  That spring I studied hard: Italian, French, botany, history, Latin and mathematics, at which I excelled. Francisco was delighted with me. But I still never learned how to draw, press flowers into delicate arrangements or execute passable water-colours, and I didn’t have a dancing master. I realised that other children learned these things and that I was being given a selective education. That was the year we set up a telescope on the back lawn and spent hours gazing at the stars. Francisco named one constellation after another. I too learned how to read the strange invisible lines in the sky: Orion, Ursa Major, Pleiades, the seven sisters clustered together, see, see how clear they are.

  ‘The secrets of heaven and earth, soldier, are engraved in the tiniest things, in the ants you never notice until you lie flat on your stomach in the grass, in the great formations of the clouds and in these distant specks of light, which are the source of so many myths and dreams. The greatest mysteries of all are written in the hearts of women and men. Look, there’s Mars, the bloody planet and the God of War. The brighter one on the left. Hold on, I’ll lift you up.’

  Francisco lifted me onto a stool, to stare out into the blurred void. He wanted me to grasp this distance, this immensity, without fear. He wanted me to feel that my small spot of earth was the point from which I had the right to watch the whole world and all the worlds beyond. I remember the gleam of his pearl cufflinks, which shone in the pale dark of a London garden. Francisco brought me up to ask questions and to insist upon my right to know the answer.

  We packed up the house at the beginning of June, just as our city garden unfolded into a torrent of colours.

  ‘Where are we going? Where are we going?’

  ‘To Shropshire,’ said Francisco, ‘to spend the summer at a big house in the country with a very eccentric friend of mine – and your mother’s. He’s wealthy, learned and amusing. He’s the eleventh Earl of Buchan. There will be other children there and you will enjoy yourself. And you’ll be seeing your uncle, James Barry.’

  He paused. He looked at me hard. Then he laughed.

  ‘And whatever you do, don’t bite him again. Understood?’

  Yes, sir.

  * * *

  My Beloved complained all the way to Shropshire. She complained of the heat, the inns, the beds, the coach, the roads, the mosquitoes, the food, her fatigue, my fidgeting, Francisco’s equanimity. I gathered from all this that she did not want to visit the country at all. But I was transfixed by white blossom and fresh, glimmering green. Down all the muddy roads, throughout all the counties, beside every turnpike through which we passed, a lavish, floating mass of white pushed against the carriage doors. I sat pinned to the grimy windows, mesmerised by the unending flood of hawthorn and cow parsley, fresh in the damp sunlight, breathless beside this glamorous, sinuous, seductive green. The whole colour of my world, illuminated by June shafts of heat, was green. Thatched roofs, brick walls and roses always gave way to green; even the beggars seemed less menacing as they emerged, tattered and haggard, from the wall of green. My city eyes were drunk with green. I fell in love with a spring that I had never seen before, my first green spring.

  ‘Don’t you remember Shropshire, soldier? Or the house?’ Francisco tucked my curls into my cap so that no one would see how short my hair had been cut.

  ‘How could he?’ snapped my Beloved. ‘He can’t have been more than three years old.’

  ‘It was where I first met you,’ he said, ‘and I was very jealous when I realised that Mary Ann loved somebody else. Even a red-headed little body with ginger freckles, like yourself.’

  I saw nothing, trying to remember; just a stone balustrade, two fat cherubs astride a stone dolphin, and a golden chain.
<
br />   The house in Shropshire was enormous, but we arrived after dark. I was asleep in Francisco’s arms when we trotted into the park. I only half remember the uneven outline of its massive bulk. I don’t remember the people standing on the great steps under the perpendicular Tudor chimneys, but apparently they were all there to meet us. I didn’t like to think that someone had looked at me when I was asleep. Francisco carried me up all the long staircases to bed. I fell asleep again, convinced that I was in one of Piranesi’s carceri.

  My room was at the top of the house and I awoke in the early dawn to a cascade of birdsong and chilly, damp sheets. I was still wearing my vest and short trousers. My other clothes lay in a heap on the floor and I was dangerously hungry. I pissed in the chipped blue chamberpot which was kept under the bed. It had a sinister yellow stain all round the rim. I tried not to notice, pulled on yesterday’s clothes and set off to explore the house.

  It was a monument of dull mirrors and chipped gilt. I crept through the shadowed spaces, but all my initial precautions were worthless, as it was a house where children were ignored. I caught sight of Rupert descending the cellar staircase as if he had lived there all his life. He nodded, winked at me, and disappeared into the vaults. The kitchens were in action, with a good deal of shouting going on above the slit throats of dead poultry, as yet unplucked, and the large vats of milk, which a woman with huge red hands was skimming off, dipping her fingers into the cream from time to time. I stole two bread rolls still warm from the ovens and ran for my life. No one took any notice of me. So I slithered on, past pantries, up back stairs, into a room hung with foul-smelling linen and a row of full chamberpots awaiting attention. I inspected their washhouse, twice the size of ours. I tried the door of the dresser. Locked. I hid in the broom and bucket cupboard while the butler cleaned the fish knives and candlesticks. He muttered to himself while he did it and never saw me. I willed him to see me, but he never once looked round. I finally reached the drawing room, which had four sets of French windows, opening out onto endless damp lawns and a distant ha-ha.