A Pretty Mouth Read online

  Better better, and yet! While it’s true my editrix has never once given me poor counsel regarding my pornographies, I find Gothic fiction so very tiresome. I really cannot account for its popularity, but I am sure that is the reason Susan is so beside herself with excitement over this project. “Dearest Chelone, you shall write me Jane Eyre—but with lots and lots of fucking! It shall be our new serial and make us ever so much money!” Not exactly the response I anticipated when I told her I must take an extended leave of absence from Milady’s Ruby Vase so I might journey into the dreariest parish in Devon to sit by the side of my former guardian while he lies gasping out his last upon his deathbed.

  To stay once again under the gabled roof of Calipash Manor, after being so unceremoniously chucked out a decade ago … I have mixed feelings about this journey, to say the least. I am certain Susan believes I am going to encounter a country house full of secret passages, drafty towers, mysterious mysteries, and handsome cousins. Well, that will happen in the pornography, of course, and to be fair, Calipash Manor does have a tower. And, I suppose, its share of silly rumors about the family. But the reality is far more boring: An old man in his tidy house, wasting away with few to comfort him, having alienated himself during his life from those who might have loved him unto death.

  I suppose there is something rather Wuthering Heights about that, but not like any of the better parts, like when So-and-So threatens to cut off the boy’s ears or whatever it is that happens.

  ***

  Later—Funny, how I had thought to include a handsome stranger-cum-deflowerer in my story; I just met a rather natty fellow that will do nicely as a model! I should liked to have had some sport with him myself, except, it was so queer. He apologized for approaching me without a proper introduction, but asked if I was by chance related to the Calipash family. I told him I wasn’t—which isn’t strictly true, of course, but we illegitimate children of the noblesse are trained to be discreet—but he would not let the matter go. He shook his head and apologized, with the excuse that he was a native of Ivybridge, so knew “the Calipash look,” and said I had a serious case of it.

  “The Calipash look!” I exclaimed, delighted. “Surely you must be referring to the Calipash Curse?”

  “I suppose I am,” said he. I was surprised by how alarmed he seemed by my amusement. “You know of the curse, miss?”

  “Of course I do, but I have not heard anybody mention it for nigh ten years!”

  “You may smile,” he said, furrowing his brow at me as if his very life depended on it, “but we Ivybridge folk know nothing connected with that family is a laughing matter. Bad blood, they have—diabolists, deviants, and necromancers all!”

  “I am acquainted with the Lord Calipash, and a better man I have rarely met.” Well, it was a true enough statement. I let him take it as he would.

  “He’s a good sort, true enough, but they go bad easy. I’d be on the lookout, miss. You surely look like a Calipash, perhaps you were … well, I won’t curse you by suggesting you have a twin lurking somewhere—but best to stay out of the ponds, just the same!”

  I told him I had every intention of staying out of ponds, lakes, rivers, streams, sloughs, and for that matter, lagoons. He seemed relieved, but the way such a dapper young man took notice of piffling country legends, well, it gave me pause.

  Of course when I used to go into the village as a girl I heard tell of the Calipash family curse—when twins are born, the devil is their father, and something about taking to the sea, or to ponds, and something about frog people maybe, of all the outlandish claims! I may not be remembering it all correctly; as a girl once I came home enquiring about it, but Lizzie, the housekeeper, reprimanded me for repeating such twaddle and I never again mentioned it. I am glad I was taught at a young age to be skeptical of supernatural nonsense.

  Really, what family that lives in a manor-house rather than a cottage doesn’t have some sort of rumor or another hanging over them like the sword of Damocles?

  Rum analogy to use when going to see a dying man, perhaps.

  Ooh—but we are slowing, and there is the whistle! I must ready myself.

  ***

  Evening. In my old room—The dolls I left behind are still here, and the white bedstead still has its rose-sprigged coverlet and pink frilly canopy. It is only how yellowed and worn everything appears that keeps me from thinking I have stepped back into another time. I feel fourteen years old in this room.

  Ah well, why bother changing the décor? I was always made to maintain the illusion of juvenescence to please my guardian, so why not keep my chambers in a state of static girlishness, too?

  But I should not speak ill of Lord Calipash, or rather, he who was Lord Calipash until his death—his death that I fear I may have caused not an hour ago! And already there is a new lord under the manor-roof tonight …

  Things are far stranger here at Calipash Manor than I anticipated. Perhaps there is something to the idea of a family curse—no! Stop that, Chelone. You are simply tired from your journey, and overwrought.

  Here is what happened, the facts, I mean: I arrived at the Ivybridge station on time, but no one was waiting for me, to my distress. The skies promised rain, and it was miles to walk to Calipash Manor.

  After waiting at the station for some time, I begged the use of a little wheeled cart for my trunk and went into Ivybridge proper, thinking I would visit the post office. It was from thence I had received the letter from my guardian summoning me hither. I thought perhaps I could, rather than sending a message by courier, ride with said courier (if the horse would bear us both) and come back later for my luggage.

  The town looked the same, snug stone houses and muddy streets, the occasional chicken scurrying across the main thoroughfare. The post office was in the same dilapidated cottage, I was happy to discover, with what could have been the same geraniums blooming in the window-box as when I was a girl. I went inside and explained my situation.

  “Quite a lot of traffic to and from the manor-house of late,” remarked the woman at the window, not answering my query of how I might get myself to Calipash Manor. “Telegraph yesterday, and was barely a week ago the prodigal son come in to send a letter. Queer fellow.”

  “Mr. Vincent has come home, then?”

  “Aye, for his father is soon for the grave, they say.”

  “How is he queer?” I was madly curious about Orlando Vincent, the cousin I had never seen. I should remember later to ask him about Rotterdam, where he was educated. Might be able to write something for the Vase about Dutch schoolboys or something …

  “Didn’t say nothing when he came in.” The woman’s frown would have shamed the devil himself. “Grunted his yeses and noes as if he had no human power of speech in him. Gave me a turn, he did. At first I thought he was the Ghast o’the Hills, come to take my soul. Mr. Vincent is very like the apparition, though of course his clothing is different.”

  Her words made me laugh, which I could tell displeased her. As a child I heard tell of the ‘Ghast o’the Hills,’ some sort of spirit in a frock-coat that is said to haunt the parish of Ivybridge. Once I even thought I saw it … a childish fancy, of course. I am lucky that education—and, of course, living in London—has disabused me of such country superstitions.

  “So you’ve seen the Ghast?” I asked, amused.

  “You may laugh, miss, but around here, there’s precious few who haven’t seen the Ghast! He’s as real as you or I, and wanders at night moanin and groanin. It’s said he seeks a wife to keep him company.”

  “And Mr. Vincent looks like him?”

  “Well, he’s thin, tall, with that Calipash face. All thems what come from the Manor have a look, don’t they? In fact, you have it too, my girl. Are you related?”

  I didn’t want to get into that. “I didn’t realize the Ghast was part of the Calipash Curse?”

  “Well, that family’s queer, of course, so if this town had some sort of malign spirit, it’d come from thems what—”
>
  “You hush your foolish old mouth, Hazel Smith! Telling ghost stories like a heathen. You ought to be ashamed!”

  I turned ‘round, surprised, and was pleased to see Old Bill, the groundskeeper and jack-of-all for Calipash Manor, standing behind me.

  “Bill!” I cried, and embraced him. “How are you? Oh, just look at you!”

  “Let us be gone, Miss Burchell,” he said gruffly. “Waited for you at the station, but they said you’d traipsed hither for your own purposes. Hold your tongue, we can talk on the drive. Lord Calipash is not long for this world and I have no wish to follow him into the grave if this weather turns wet.”

  At first I attributed his poor spirits to his age, for he must be closer to seventy than sixty these days, white-haired and gaunt as a skeleton. But he got my trunk onto his skinny back and into the cart quickly enough; indeed, by the time he had scrambled onto the seat, ready to leave, I had hardly finished saying hello and asking after my guardian.

  “Things are quite dire,” was his reply. “‘Tis good you’ve come now, though you might’ve sent more notice of your arriving. Lizzie is beside herself getting your old room ready, not to mention the cooking for an extra person.”

  “I telegraphed yesterday,” I replied, rather taken aback by this admonition. “And really, Lord Calipash himself invited me—bid me come with all possible haste!”

  “As you say,” said Bill, looking at me askance as he chucked the reins.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Master’s not been able to lift a quill in some time,” he said with a shrug. “Before his son come home, I was writing all his letters for him.”

  “You, Bill!”

  “Aye. I went to the village school as a youth and learned to read, write, and cipher—no need to look so surprised, Miss! I do tolerable justice to my lord’s handwriting, he himself asked me to learn the trick of it when he was struck with arthritis. But now him that’s to be the next Lord Calipash has taken over the duty, so he says, but unless he posts the letters himself, nothing’s gone out in some time. Hasn’t asked me to go into the village since his arrival anyways.”

  “But that woman said Mr. Vincent delivered the letter himself!”

  “Did she now?”

  “Yes … perhaps Mr. Vincent was the one who wrote to me. But, then, why disguise his writing? I should have come if he had extended the invitation to me, of course.”

  “Couldn’t say, Miss. He’s a strange creature, full of notions and temper. Perhaps he thinks you are like him. I had to write to him in the Lord Calipash’s own hand, begging for his return, to get him to come! Ignored all the letters I wrote as myself.”

  “Rotterdam is a very far distance to travel on short notice …”

  “Aye, and the road to hell is a short and easy path! Honor thy father says the Bible.”

  “Oh, Bill. I’ve missed you,” said I, shocked to find it was the truth, as I had always remembered him as the bane of my childhood. Somehow he knew when I was up to mischief and would foil my plans if he could, with a Bible verse ready to shame me for my willfulness.

  I opened my mouth to ask him another question, one about Mr. Vincent, but my power of speech left me entirely at that moment. We’d crested a hill, and Calipash Manor had come into view.

  I looked upon the ivy-wreathed front doors and the ancient moldering stone of the house, pale in the weird light of the coming storm, and felt a strange flutter inside my chest. I could not help thinking that manor looked as if it had weathered a good deal more than ten years during my decade-long absence. The tower, where I had once held tea-parties with my dolls, or played at being Rapunzel, now looked so rickety it would not support a dove’s nest; the plentiful windows, upon which I had painted frost-pictures in the winter and opened to feel the breeze during the mild country summers, looked smaller, and dark with the kind of soot and filth one sees in London but few other places.

  “I have been away a very long time,” I whispered hoarsely. “Drive ‘round, Bill, so I may get inside and see the place.”

  “Go through the front doors, Miss Burchell,” urged Bill.

  This drew a laugh to my lips, and I wiped my eyes. “I am no lady, and certainly not the lady of the house. Drive ‘round, the servants’ door was always good enough for me.”

  “No, Miss. You’re here as our guest now, after all.”

  I knew that tone, and it meant no arguing, so I thanked Bill and hopped down from the haywain. I was seized with a girlish fancy to take the steps two at a time as I had always used to do, but I only managed a few such leaps before my corset prevented further exertion. Thus I was sweaty-faced and breathing hard when I threw open the door—and saw the foyer for the first time in ten years.

  The floorboards groaned under my shoes as I entered, and the high ceilings amplified the echoes of both footfall and wood-creak. The first thing I noticed was that the watery light spilling in from the door was hazy with little swirling motes of dust. My hasty entrance had stirred the air more than it had been in some time. Indeed, filth and grime lay thick on every surface, and I was overwhelmed by the smell of mold. When I looked up, I saw the chandelier was missing more than one pendalogue, and the candle-cups did not look like they had held tapers in recent memory.

  I could not move for astonishment. I remembered this room as a bright and welcoming space; recalled the sound of my guardian’s laughter as he would chase me, shrieking, through the hallways, much to the displeasure of the housekeeper, Lizzie, who said I should grow up wild.

  Shouting and stomping startled me out of my reverie. It was a man’s voice I heard coming from the interior of the house—and all of a sudden there was a tall, thin fellow with messy black hair and bulging eyes at the top of the front staircase, then galloping down it! He was too busy howling at the top of his lungs to notice me.

  “Bill! Lizzie! Anyone! The old bastard is in need of something, but I cannot understand his infernal mumblings!”

  It was such an excellent entrance that upon recollection, I cannot help but now contemplate how I will translate it into my narrative of Camilla’s coming-of-age:

  I have no words to express my surprise when I saw that Laurent was all grown up! Pale of skin and darkly handsome, his face held a haughty, cruel expression that checked my first impulse to rush into his arms and demand a longed-for kiss from my oldest, dearest friend in the world. How serious he looked! His black coat and trousers would have been better suited for a funeral in London than his ancestral country home. Still, I blushed to see him—and felt a blush where not three hours ago I had been brought to the golden threshold of love by the gamahuching of Mr. Reeves. I never thought I would see my cousin in such a light—and yet …

  But of course, my Camilla has her memories of Laurent to contrast with the man she meets upon arriving at The Beeches, as I think I shall call her former home. (“A Camilla Among The Beeches” sounds like an excellent title to me—we shall see what Susan thinks.) I, however, had never before laid eyes upon Orlando Vincent. My first impression was of a flustered wretch of about my own age, clad in a wrinkled suit, and waving his arms about and carrying on in a dreadful manner. I could see how someone might mistake him for the Ghast o’the Hills—if one were inclined to see ghosts and spirits everywhere, that is.

  “Why Mr. Vincent, I declare!” cried Lizzie, stepping into the dusty foyer, drying her hands with a dingy rag. How old must she be now, I wondered? Always slender and tall, she was now made all of angles, and her impressive mane of dark hair was now a lustrous gray—handsome, to be sure, but no longer youthful. “And here’s our Chelone! Why, just look at you, grown! I’m surprised at you, Mr. Vincent. Let the young lady come in and rest herself before alarming her with your profuse ejaculations!”

  I am aware those not in my profession use that word without heed for its alternative definition, but I confess I giggled—which caused Mr. Vincent to blush very pink indeed, and sneer at me down his long narrow nose.

  “It is good
to meet you at last,” said I, to cover the awkwardness I had caused. “I used to read your letters to the Lord Calipash. How was your journey from Rotterdam?”

  “Spare me this nonsense,” he snapped. “You must come, Lizzie—now—he gurgles and sweats out his very life, I think. You can understand him better than I, come and discover what it is he wants!”

  Lizzie looked appalled. “Mr. Vincent, you must not—”

  “I shall make love to the chit later if it please you—only come now and see to my father! Are you so silly that the health of your lord does not take precedence over your sense of decorum?”

  “Excuse me, Chelone,” said Lizzie. “I shall get you settled directly, but if you like, please go now to your old room. I know you know the way.”

  “Let me come with you,” I suggested. I had no wish to be left alone in this dreary, unremembered house! “Perhaps I can be of some help.”

  “You’ll be the most help if you shut your mouth and stop distracting us all! Why you have come now, at the eleventh hour, is a mystery to me!” Mr. Vincent turned on his heel and fairly ran away from us, taking the steps two at a time.

  I was, of course, concerned that he who had posted, and I had supposed, written the letter to me also had no notion of my coming, but I had no time to muse on this—Lizzie had followed after him, saying over her shoulder:

  “Come along, then. You always had a certain rapport with the Lord Calipash, perhaps the unexpected sight of you will restore him.”

  “I cannot account for this,” I said, as I followed her. “Why did he not tell anyone of his invitation to me, I wonder? And how did he get the letter into the post?” I laughed. “Perhaps it really was the Ghast!”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Oh, nothing—just, the woman at the post office said Mr. Vincent was very like the Ghast o’the Hills, you know, the ghost that—”

  “There’s no such thing as ghosts,” interrupted Lizzie. “Let us see what the Lord Calipash requires, yes?”