The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows - Olivia Waite Page 0,31
army, and Mr. Kitt half pay from the navy, and between them both they cobbled together a household and argued affably over whose turn it was to buy the beer. Mr. Biswas owned the Four Swallows—“named for my tattoos: one swallow for each crossing of the Equator,” he’d explained, one hand tapping proudly on his barrel chest—and like any good host he rose every so often to make the rounds, checking in on the clusters of sailors and farmers and the few solitary drinkers, putting an oar into a well-worn argument, ducking into the kitchen to confer with Mrs. Biswas.
It was not that Agatha was bothered by all the noise: London had a way of making noise comfortable that Agatha had long embraced. But Agatha had spent the whole day out of her element, and now she faced a group of friends whose shared jokes had long since carved grooves and furrows into one another’s metal. She watched Mrs. Flood lean over her tankard, laughing at Mr. Thomas teasing Mr. Kitt, and wondered how to fit into the picture.
A peal of notes rang out, and the whole group turned back toward the ballad singer at the front of the long room. Nell had pulled out a small guitar and was tuning it carefully. A sense of excitement visibly washed over the crowd, expressions rippling like waves beneath the gust of a new wind.
Agatha cast a sidelong glance at Mrs. Flood, whose cheeks were flushed with anticipation and whose eyes were bright as stars.
When she caught Agatha staring, she winked.
Agatha’s face flamed.
She was saved from having to say anything by the start of Nell’s song:
“Come listen, friends, and hear the tale
Of a gay young pair of lovers
They had no care for any fair
Unless ’twas one another.
They wed one bonny summer’s day
And deemed the match successible—
But the lass was seen to turn pure green
When he wore his Inexpressibles!
As he walked up and down the town
Every maid’s eye turned to goggle
At calves and thighs of marvelous size
All in those buckskins coddled.”
The sly gesture Mr. Kitt made while singing along with coddled made Agatha snort half a tankard’s worth of ale up her nose. Listeners hooted approval. More halfpennies rang out against the wall.
Nell grinned acknowledgment and the song went on:
“She chose her day of vengeance well,
By her spouse it went unguessable:
In she did stride, he almost died—
She wore his Inexpressibles!
He hollered up and down the lane
A-cursing her uncladness
She shouted higher, ‘It’s your attire
That drove me to this madness.’
Whene’er the row began to fade
Another shout revived it
When dawn appeared, the town crept near
To see who had survived it.
The wife emerged all bathed in smiles,
Her joy quite irrepressible
Sprawled out in bed, poor husband said:
‘She wore out me Inexpressibles!’”
Half the crowd was shouting along by the end, from the young farmers’ wives to the old salted sailors. The piece was clearly a local favorite—Agatha’d heard and printed a great many ballads in her time, but never this one. She cheered and clapped until her hands ached, and when Nell’s son came around with the broadsides she pulled out a halfpenny of her own and asked him for a lyrics sheet.
He shook his head. “That’s one of Mum’s own. Never been printed. I’ve got ‘Jenny of the High-Way’ or ‘The Milk-Maid’s Complaint,’ if you like.” He brandished samples of ballad sheets and caricatures, some plain black ink, others painfully bright with cheap color.
Agatha glanced down at the sheets, and with a little start realized many of them were Griffin’s printings, from the London workshop. She glanced at Mrs. Flood. “Can I ask you for one more introduction?”
Mrs. Nell Turner gave the guitar over to her son and shook Agatha’s hand. “A pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”
“The pleasure is mine,” Agatha replied. “But I have to ask you—how did you come to sell Griffin’s broadsides here in Melliton? I wasn’t aware we had any wholesalers outside of London.”
“My husband works for Birkett’s,” Nell explained. “He brings me the latest ballads when he comes home on his days off.”
“When he remembers,” the younger Turner muttered.
Nell cuffed him softly on the shoulder.
Agatha pulled her sketchbook and pencil out of her pocket. “I wonder if I might interest you in a more direct arrangement . . .”
A quarter of an hour later Agatha had the lyrics to “His Inexpressibles” jotted down to be set and printed, with more generous payment terms and a new wholesale arrangement for Griffin’s other broadsides, signed with both her name and Mrs. Turner’s.