comfortable situation too, in a good house. I could return in every respect to the life of a substantial body, the life you recommend. But such a life is abject. It is the life of a thing. A whore used by men is used as a substantial body. The waves picked me up and cast me ashore on an island, and a year later the same waves brought a ship to rescue me, and of the true story of that year, the story as it should be seen in God’s great scheme of things, I remain as ignorant as a newborn babe. That is why I cannot rest, that is why I follow you to your hiding-place like a bad penny. Would I be here if I did not believe you to be my intended, the one alone intended to tell my true story?
‘Do you know the story of the Muse, Mr Foe? The Muse is a woman, a goddess, who visits poets in the night and begets stories upon them. In the accounts they give afterwards, the poets say that she comes in the hour of their deepest despair and touches them with sacred fire, after which their pens, that have been dry, flow. When I wrote my memoir for you, and saw how like the island it was, under my pen, dull and vacant and without life, I wished that there were such a being as a man-Muse, a youthful god who visited authoresses in the night and made their pens flow. But now I know better. The Muse is both goddess and begetter. I was intended not to be the mother of my story, but to beget it. It is not I who am the intended, but you. But why need I argue my case? When is it ever asked of a man who comes courting that he plead in syllogisms? Why should it be demanded of me?’
Foe made no reply, but crossed the room to the curtained alcove and returned with a jar. ‘These are wafers made with almond-paste after the Italian fashion,’ he said. ‘Alas, they are all I have to offer.’
I took one and tasted it. So light was it that it melted on my tongue. ‘The food of gods,’ I remarked. Foe smiled and shook his head. I held out a wafer to Friday, who languidly took it from my hand. ‘The boy Jack will be coming shortly,’ said Foe; ‘then I will send him out for our supper.’
A silence fell. I gazed out at the steeples and rooftops. ‘You have found yourself a fine retreat,’ I said ‘a true eagle’s-nest. I wrote my memoir by candlelight in a windowless room, with the paper on my knee. Is that the reason, do you think, why my story was so dull — that my vision was blocked, that I could not see?’
‘It is not a dull story, though it is too much the same,’ said Foe.
‘It is not dull so long as we remind ourselves it is true. But as an adventure it is very dull indeed. That is why you pressed me to bring in the cannibals, is it not?’ Foe inclined his head judiciously this way and that. ‘In Friday here you have a living cannibal,’ I pursued. ‘Behold. If we are to go by Friday, cannibals are no less dull than Englishmen.’ ‘They lose their vivacity when deprived of human flesh, I am sure,’ replied Foe.
There was a tap at the door and the boy came in who had guided us to the house. ‘Welcome, Jack!’ called Foe.. ‘Mistress Barton, whom you· have met, is to dine with us, so will you ask for double portions?’ He took out his purse and gave Jack money. ‘Do not forget Friday,’ I put in. ‘And a portion for Friday the manservant too, by all means,’ said Foe. The boy departed. ‘I found Jack among the waifs and orphans who sleep in the ash-pits at the glassworks. He is ten years old, by his reckoning, but already a notable pick-pocket.’ ‘Do you not try to correct him?’ I inquired. ‘To make him honest would be to condemn him to the workhouse,’ said Foe-’Would you see a child in the workhouse for the sake of a few handkerchiefs?’ ‘No; but you are training him for the gallows,’ I replied — ‘Can you not take him in and teach him his letters and send him out as an apprentice?’ ‘If I were to follow that advice, how many apprentices would I not have sleeping on my floor, whom I have saved from the streets?’ said Foe — ‘I should be taken for a thief-master and sent to the gallows myself. Jack has his own life to live, better than any I could devise for him.’ ‘Friday too has a life of his own,’ I said; ‘but I do not therefore turn Friday out on the streets.’ ‘Why do you not?’ said Foe. ‘Because he is helpless,’ said I — ‘Because London is strange to him. Because he would be taken for a runaway, and sold, and transported to Jamaica.’ ‘Might he not rather be taken in by his own kind, and cared for and fed?’ said Foe — ‘There are more Negroes in London than you would believe. Walk along Mile End Road on a summer’s afternoon, or in Paddington, and you will see. Would Friday not be happier among other Negroes? He could play for pennies in a street band. There are many such strolling bands. I would make him a present of my flute.’
I glanced across at Friday. Did I mistake myself, or was there a gleam of understanding in his eye? ‘Do you understand what Mr Foe says, Friday?’ I called. He looked back at me dully.
‘Or if we had mops in London, as they have in the west country,’ said Foe, ‘Friday could stand in the line with his hoe on his shoulder and be hired for a gardener, and not a word be passed!
Jack now returned, bearing a covered tray from which came an appetizing smell. He set the tray down on the table and whispered to Foe. ‘Allow us a few minutes, then show them up,’ said Foe; and to me: ‘We have visitors, but let us eat first:
Jack had brought roast beef and gravy, together with a threepenny loaf and a pitcher of ale. There being only the two plates, Foe and I ate first, after which I filled my plate again and gave it to Friday.
There was a knock. Foe opened the door. The light fell on the girl I had left in Epping Forest; behind her in the shadows was another woman. While I yet stood dumbstruck the girl crossed the room and put her arms about me and kissed me on the cheek. A coldness went through me and I thought I would fall to the floor. ‘And here is Amy,’ said the girl — ‘Amy, from Deptford, my nurse when I was little. There was a pounding in my ears, but I made myself face Amy. I saw a slender, pleasant-faced woman of my age, with fair curls showing under her cap. ‘I am happy to make your acquaintance,’ I murmured; ‘but I am sure I have never set eyes on you before in my life.
Someone touched my arm. It was Foe: he led me to the chair and made me sit and gave me a glass of water. ‘It is a passing dizziness,’ I said. He nodded.
‘So we are all together,’ said Foe. ‘Please be seated, Susan, Amy.’ He indicated the bed. The boy Jack stood at Foe’s side staring curiously at me. Foe lit a second lamp and set it on the mantel. ‘In a moment Jack will fetch coals and make a fire for us, will you not, Jack?’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said Jack.
I spoke. ‘It is growing late, Friday and I will not be staying,’ I said.
‘You must not think of departing,’ said Foe. ‘You have nowhere to go; besides, when were you last in such company?’
‘Never,’ I replied. ‘I was never before in such company in my life. I thought this was a lodginghouse, but now I see it is a gathering-place for actors. It would be a waste of breath, Mr Foe, for me to say that these women are strangers to me, for you will only reply that I have forgotten, and then you will prompt them and they will embark on long stories of a past in which they will claim I was an actor too.
‘What can I do but protest it is not true? I am as familiar as you with the many, many ways in which we can deceive ourselves. But how can we live if we do not believe we know who we are, and who we have been? If I were as obliging as you wish me to be — if I were ready to concede that, though I believe my daughter to have been swallowed up by the grasslands of Brazil, it is equally possible that she has spent the past year in England, and is here in this room now, in a form in which I fail to recognize her — for the daughter I remember is tall and dark- haired and has a name of her own — if I were like a bottle bobbing on the waves with a scrap of writing inside, that could as well be a message from an idle child fishing in the canal as from a mariner adrift on the high seas — if I were a mere receptacle ready to accommodate whatever story is stuffed in me, surely you would dismiss me, surely you would say to yourself, “This is no woman but a house of words, hollow. without substance”?
‘I am not a story. Mr Foe. I may impress you as a story because I began my account of myself without preamble, slipping overboard into the water and striking out for the shore. But my life did not begin in the waves. There was a life before the water which stretched back to my desolate searchings in Brazil, thence to the years when my daughter was still with me, and so on back to the day I was born. All of which makes up a story I do not choose to tell. I choose not to tell it because to no one, not even to you, do I owe proof that I am a substantial being with a substantial history in the world. I choose rather to tell of the island, of myself and Cruso and Friday and what we three did there: for I am a free woman who asserts her freedom by telling her story according to her own desire.
Here I paused, breathless. Both a girl and the woman Amy were watching me intently. I saw. and moreover with what seemed friendliness in their manner. Foe nodded as if to encourage me. The boy stood motionless with the coal-scuttle in his hand. Even Friday had his eyes on me.
I crossed the room. At my approach the girl, I observed, did not waver. What other test is left to me? I thought; and took her in my arms and kissed her on the lips, and felt her yield and kiss me in return, almost as one returns a lover’s kiss. Had I expected her to dissolve when I touched her, her flesh crumbling and floating away like paper-ash? I gripped her tight and pressed my fingers into her shoulders. Was this truly my daughter’s flesh? Opening my eyes, I saw Amy’s face hovering only inches from mine, her lips parted too as if for a kiss. ‘She is unlike me in every way,’ I murmured. Amy shook her head. ‘She is a true child of your womb,’ she replied — ‘She is like
