that I was corrupted by a wicked stepsister. But I was by far the keener player, by far the most inquisitive, the one who most desired to understand the joys to be found in our pleasure gardens. The new delights Mercy showed me made me look forward to bedtime, for I was still a prisoner of Milk Street. Mercy and the pleasure she brought were my only form of escape. In my body I began to find another land that held another treasure.
Not being worldly-wise, I had no inkling of the intrigues that lay behind my father’s new marriage. I couldn’t for the life of me see why my stepsister Hope would want to marry Mr Sitton, for she was exceedingly pretty and Mr Sitton could not be called handsome, being beetle-browed with a chin that had lost the will to stand away from his neck. In my humble opinion there was little to recommend him apart from what he stood to inherit upon his marriage: a newly-built house in Grosvenor Square and another in Chelsea, forty-one servants and three carriages. I thought that if I was Mr Sitton I wouldn’t have dallied a moment in making Hope my wife. But Mr Sitton belonged to a banking family that was extremely careful in all matters financial. There was no end of to-ing and fro-ing, made many times worse by his irksome widowed mother who held more than the purse strings of her only son.
As we lay in bed one lazy morning, I asked Mercy if Hope couldn’t find an altogether more agreeable husband with a more agreeable mother. Mercy burst out laughing.
‘No,’ she said, and kissed me before she climbed out of bed. She stood naked, silhouetted against the window, the spring light illuminating her ivory skin. She had a very fine figure and I somewhat wished mine was not so full of curves, for I liked the lack of them in her and the way it all was so pleasingly joined together. Her downy, dark bush, unlike mine which was hardly there at all, marked well the point of all desire.
‘Mrs Sitton,’ said Mercy, pulling the bedclothes off me and tickling me until I could bear it no more, ‘Mrs Sitton wants her only son to marry into another wealthy family. And Hope is not wealthy.’
Catching my breath, I persisted. ‘Then why doesn’t Hope find someone else?’
‘Ninny. She doesn’t want anyone else and you are far too young to know the half of it or truly understand the value of a vintage wine.’
Genuinely, there was so much that I didn’t understand. So great were the vacant spaces in my knowledge that sometimes I despaired that I would ever amount to anything and would remain a fluff-head of a girl.
‘I want to learn about love,’ I said.
She kissed me again. ‘It will be my pleasure to teach you.’
Her lessons riveted me as Mr Smollett’s and Mrs Coker’s had not, and by degrees I became less modest in both thought and deed.
Mrs Truegood employed a dancing master for me – a Monsieur Le Choufleur. He came with a fine reputation. To begin with I thought Monsieur Le Choufleur quite splendid, for he wore tight satin breeches that showed off his assets to such enchanting effect that I may well have forgotten myself if it hadn’t been that my stepmother supervised the lessons, fearful, no doubt, of more unwanted instruction on horticulture.
‘The thing that baffles me,’ I told Mercy, ‘is what part a root vegetable plays in this game of love.’
‘My sweet virgin,’ said Mercy, laughing, ‘that isn’t my speciality, but when the occasion arises it will be plain for you to see.’
The occasion arose sooner than expected.
It was his eyes that in the end put me off Monsieur Le Choufleur. He had the appearance of a dog in need of a meal and, over the weeks, he came to look starved and struck dumb by a tragic melancholy for which there was no remedy.
After my lesson had finished one afternoon, I returned to my bedchamber and was seated at the dressing table, trying on the pretty pearl earrings that Hope had kindly lent me, when one of them fell to the floor and disappeared behind a fabric screen. I was on my hands and knees, looking for it, and so was hidden from view when the door opened and my maid came in with Monsieur Le Choufleur. I thought I should stand and ask them what was the meaning of this when the meaning became all too clear, for my maid was kissing Monsieur Le Choufleur. This I could see for I had a perfect view of the proceedings due to a fortuitous rip in the fabric of the screen. The maid was not young and had a full figure, and I wouldn’t have imagined for a moment that the dancing master would have been interested in that abundance of flesh.
She locked the chamber door and asked if sir would be needing any assistance with his breeches. I had left it a kiss too late to announce my presence and decided instead to satisfy my curiosity.
My maid had undressed Monsieur Le Choufleur to reveal a most glorious pinkish parsnip that rose and leaned towards her. Such a noble sight – nobler by far than its puny owner. A blue vein ran to its tip and she gently stroked it. Monsieur Le Choufleur undid her stays and her breasts were so large they would have filled a market basket. The sight of them was too much for the dancing master. He went at them as if he was a babe in arms and the effect was to make that noble parsnip grow to a prize vegetable. The maid wasted not a moment in pushing him onto the bed, climbing on top of him and settling herself upon the root.
The dancing master, displaying his skill in manoeuvring his partner, rolled her over so her carriage – and a very fine one it was – was open to him. Placing his hands on her backside, he thrust in his root up to the hilt. They set to and both let out a cry of joy. I was somewhat startled to hear my dancing master shout, ‘Oh, Miss Tully, my love!’, which must have been disappointing for my maid, whose name was Prue.
Seeing such a sight and the pleasure it gave both parties, I had happily acquired the knowledge of how a male and female root join and there seemed nothing evil in the union whatsoever.
The next day, Monsieur Le Choufleur wrote to say he was indisposed and didn’t feel able to continue the dancing lessons. All that was left of him was a small stain on the bedcover.
‘It seems, Tully,’ said Mrs Truegood, ‘that you have had quite an adverse effect on poor Monsieur Le Choufleur.’
‘Was it my dancing?’ I asked.
‘I think that it might have accelerated his condition. Did you not realise that he had become besotted with you?’
‘No,’ I said, which wasn’t the full truth.
‘Well, then. If ever a man again tries to tell you what he feels about you through dance, I can rest assured that he is wasting his time.’
A week after Monsieur Le Choufleur left, a parcel arrived. Inside, wrapped in far too much paper, was a book with a note written by my dancing master. ‘You are made for love,’ it said.
Intrigued, I sat down in the drawing room to read it. I was pleasantly surprised by the novelty of its illustrations: women all undone, no hoops or stays to hinder entrance to their pretty little gardens while the men possessed wonderful upright roots. Both male and female embraced each other in the most joyous of ways. My senses were inflamed by such glorious visions.
I was left wondering if there were men in this world who really boasted such male roots as were engraved there. Not the dancing master nor the boot boy and most decidedly not Mr Smollet possessed anything as fine. These vegetables, I thought, were much exaggerated by the artist whose imagination had perfected what nature had failed to enhance.
I think it was this book more than what I had witnessed between my maid and the dancing master that made me long for adventure. At night my dreams had to do with the stranger in the
