Free Havisham: A Novel by Ronald Frame

everyone’s attention: or at any rate, the figure I represent is the focus of every pair of eyes in the room (the dog’s apart). I shall never feel more essential to the Chadwycks and their friends and their friends’ friends than I do at this supreme moment – actually two, extending to nearly three minutes – until the blade starts to wobble, and the dog (snuffling) wanders off, and the most pious in the audience need to excuse themselves for air, and one of my genteel ladies threatens to faint, and the dog barks.
    Curtains are drawn across our stage. The actors all relax, and make for the side tormentors. For some reason no one thinks of assisting me to my feet. But what of it, I am only a pretend queen, and a queen done to death, as if the ritual of human sacrifice was still being practised in the year of grace, anno domini 1587.
    *   *   *
    We were also attending Assemblies, in the towns of fashion in the South. We accompanied Lady Charlotte to Cheltenham. And thence to Bath, where we bathed with her in our caps and shifts. There too we were drawn to the lights and music, like moths.
    *   *   *
    A personable stranger’s face meeting mine. The same pair of hands crossing with mine several dances apart, then for a couple in succession.
    ‘You don’t recall?’
    ‘“Recall” … Should I?’
    ‘The theatricals. At Chartridge. I saw your Mary Stuart. Splendid. I shed a tear or two.’
    I was carrying my fan and a woollen shawl Mouse had lent me, since she knew about the Bath draughts.
    In my embarrassment I let go of the fan. My interlocutor picked it up for me.
    ‘A famous trick, that one.’
    ‘I beg your pardon?’
    ‘A lady dropping her fan.’
    He laughed. I was puzzling how to respond when I felt a hand on the small of my back and I was very swiftly propelled from the spot. I hadn’t time to do more than look over my shoulder, not even apologetically.
    ‘It was someone who…’
    ‘What, Catherine? Did I interrupt you?’
    Sheba turned and looked back, in the wrong direction.
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘Over there.’
    But he had gone: and perhaps – quite possibly – Sheba hadn’t even meant to look towards where he had been standing.
    *   *   *
    We repeated our success with the Queen of Scots. As I lay with my head on the block, I could see him. My fan-recoverer. I hadn’t meant to notice anyone, but …
    He was in one of the front seats, not at all secretive about his presence. I tried not to notice him after that. I concentrated on Mary instead, on her struggle to see nothing of what was happening to her, not to feel, not to think back or to think forward either, in case she screamed out with terror, but to give up her Catholic soul gladly to her Maker.
    *   *   *
    He found me.
    He left the people he was talking to. Someone called after him, ‘Mr Compeyson!’, but he ignored the request. He congratulated me. The voices were so loud, he had to lean closer.
    ‘Didn’t they let you go on wearing your show-clothes, your friends?’
    ‘Our costumes?’
    ‘Not that I’m objecting to what you’ve got on, you understand. You could teach most of them here a thing or two.’
    ‘I think not.’
    ‘I beg to differ. Why so little confidence, Miss Havisham?’
    ‘You know my name?’
    He held out his programme. He had marked a red cross against my name.
    Lady Charlotte was approaching, and I backed away from him. She was raising her glass to her eye. I swept past him, muttering an apology. I fixed my gaze on Lady Charlotte, and smiled boldly, feeling … feeling that an aviary of tiny panicking birds was suddenly let loose inside my head.
    *   *   *
    ‘It’s always been understood,’ Mouse said, ‘that’s all. We’ve always known.’
    ‘And W’m knows too?’
    ‘Yes. He will make a good match, and assure the future of Durley.’
    Why was I being told this?
    ‘When?’ I asked.
    ‘When he finds whoever she is.’
    Mouse smiled, looking out the window, across