Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits - Donoghue [58]
Miss Elizabeth Pennington is a fortune, past twenty-five and still a spinster. Friends blame her health. Enemies blame her finickiness. She has come to Bath in the care of a humble companion, Mrs. Sheridan. ("Wife to the theatre man, don't you know, with a houseful of children left at home.") Both ladies are vicars daughters, but there the resemblance ends. The younger has all the money, it is said, and the elder all the wit.
What the gossips don't know is that a year ago, Elizabeth turned up on her friend's doorstep in Covent Garden without a word of warning. "I am come to take up my abode with you," she stuttered, absurdly Biblical. Words memorised in the hired carriage, sentences stiff with anticipated disappointment.
"I find it impossible to live without you."
She strained for a breath.
"You may shut your doors against me—"
The doors swung open.
She lived all that year with Frances and her Air. Sherry and her children. Elizabeth taught the smaller ones Aesop's fables, poured tea for Sherry's visitors, and could always be relied upon to have read their latest works. When the new baby came, the Sheridans named her Betsy, in Elizabeth's honour.
She made sure to make herself indispensable. Sherry joked that his wife had no need of his company anymore; he stayed out late with poets and ballet-masters. In letters from home, the Reverend Pennington asked his daughter with increasing querulousness how long her friend would require her. Elizabeth answered only with remarks on the weather.
She picked at her food, and fed the best bits to the baby. Whenever she was taken by a coughing fit, that long winter, she covered her mouth with one of her two dozen handkerchiefs, each of them trimmed with the best Bruges lace.
Frances refused to be alarmed by her friend's husky voice, the violet tinge about her eyes. All her darling Elizabeth needed was a trip to Bath: taking the waters and seeing the sights would restore anyone to perfect health. Especially one so young. Especially one so worthy of all life held in store.
And what could Sherry do but agree? What husband could object, except a brute? What could any man say, who had the slightest sense of the exquisite force of female friendship?
They promised to write to him weekly. They left the baby with a good clean nurse.
Before dawn Elizabeth is shaken awake by the rattle of carts, the bawling of muffin-men.
"I declare," yawns Frances beside her in a perfect imitation of Lady Danebury, "this is such a fatigating life, I scarce have strength to rise!"
This town was designed by the sick; every hour a different amusement keeps death at bay. At sunrise they go to the Bath in sedan chairs; the chair-men's puffing breaths leave white trails on the air. The first time Elizabeth saw a bathing costume, she was so appalled she laughed out loud, but now she pulls on the yellow canvas jacket and petticoat and thinks nothing of it. What she shrinks from is the moment of ducking under the arch and wading out into the basin, under the gray sky. The water scalds, even on the coldest mornings. Elizabeth cannot help imagining that she is being boiled down to the bone, rendered into soup.
Oblivious to the heat that flushes their cheeks, ladies stand and gossip with their necessaries laid out on little floating trays: snuffboxes, pomanders, nosegays wilting fast. Clouds of yellow steam fill the air. In a far corner, Frances has her bad leg pumped on. She chats with the pump-man as if he were family; she lacks any sense of the gulf between herself and the lower orders. Elizabeth can always make out her friend's voice in a crowd; still full of Dublin, after all these years.
Two boys dive in, raising wings of water. Elizabeth holds down her stiff skirts so no one can snatch at them. She tells herself that no one is looking at her, but lodgings crowd around the Bath, and footmen and beggars ring the walls, pointing out the fairest faces,