The second event took place when I was nine. The boot boy, who was twelve, told me he loved me and wanted to see what lay under my skirts.
I, being innocent, replied, ‘Petticoats.’
‘No,’ he whispered. ‘I want to see what is there after you have lifted them aside.’
If this was what love was, it seemed a trifling thing to show him, and being curious as to what lay in his breeches, I agreed, if he would unbutton himself.
I remember a pink plug tail that hung down and that I wasn’t much impressed. But a bargain being a bargain I duly pulled up my petticoats and was surprised to see the way the small shrivelled plug tail became all perky and stood engagingly to attention. After that I don’t think I saw him again, and lost all interest in the rising and falling of such a small drawbridge.
By now my father had become attached to the whorehouse and addicted to the gaming tables so that his considerable fortune began by degrees to diminish. As it depleted, so did his servants, until there was only Cook and myself to run the house, and it was in these very diminished circumstances that the third event took place.
I was twelve when I was married.
Ah, sir, I see now I have your full attention. My unexpected wedding took place one Friday in the middle of the night. My father, roaring drunk and mighty out of temper, came all bellowing, sail flapping, into the chamber I shared with Cook. She, poor woman, did her level best to guide the Captain’s sinking wreck into a safe harbour.
‘No, sir, leave the girl alone,’ she said.
But Captain Truegood was set on his course and neither the cook nor the devil was about to stop him. He was persuaded that he should at least wait downstairs until I was dressed.
Sleepily, I put on my threadbare clothes, Cook put my hair into a cap and thus attired in the plainest of styles I went to join my father in the hall. Two sedan chairs and their porters were waiting. I could only think of the mess they had made of the white stone floor and wondered if my father had need of me to clean it after he and whoever his guest was had departed.
To my astonishment it appeared that the second sedan chair was for me and for the first time in my life I was to be allowed out of the house. Where I was bound I had no idea and could not ask my father, for Captain Truegood had not left off his shouting at one and all to make haste. I remember the journey vividly, though having no knowledge of the city I had been born into I cannot say where I was taken other than it was a tall house where a great number of people were gathered within. Most lined the stairs. They were a motley crowd made more merry by the gin. Captain Truegood, still roaring, waved his stick about, clearing lovebirds from the stairs for each couple seemed very free with one another.
‘She’s a bit on the young side,’ said one woman.
‘Do you know what you’re about?’ another asked me.
‘Let me pass, madam,’ thundered Captain Truegood, who, having hold of my hand, near as dragged me to the first floor and along an ill-lit corridor. Only when we were outside a door did he stop. Fumbling in his pocket, he took out a mask and told me to put it on.
‘All you need do is say, “I consent”, nothing more. Do you understand?’
Not waiting for an answer, my father, swimming in wine, threw open the door and, tripping on the carpet, nearly capsized altogether. He was saved by a minister of the church.
The chamber we had arrived in was empty but for a minister and a gentleman in a fine wig who appeared to be as drunk, if not more so, than my father.
‘You are late, sir,’ said the gentleman.
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.
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