Read by Kieran Knowles
"Happy for all her maternal feelings was the day on which Mrs. Bennet got rid of her two most deserving daughters. With what delighted pride she afterwards visited Mrs. Bingley, and talked of Mrs. Darcy, may be guessed. Pemberley was now Georgiana's home; and Georgiana had the highest opinion in the world of Elizabeth; though at first she often listened with an astonishment bordering on alarm at her lively, sportive, manner of talking to her brother –"
Nah, sorry. I can't keep it up. “Lively and sportive”? Bleeding fishwife, more like.
Lizzie Bennet could talk the hind leg off of a donkey and had a kick like one too, as I soon discovered when I come back late from whist night with Bingley, a little bit the worse for port I admit, and she nearly had me knackers off with her dancing slipper.
So when Pemberley's real master returned from his plantation in Barbados, wondering whose boots exactly was sitting outside his bedroom door, and what exactly had happened to his good-looking butler, Fitzwilliam Darcy, recently engaged on the glowingest references from London, well, I reckoned it was time for another Darcy scarper.
Tragically my old lady Lizzie, hampered as she was by being up the stick to the tune of six months, was unable to follow me out the bedroom window and into the flowerbed, so I blew her a final kiss and legged it across the rolling acres of what she'd up until then had good reason to believe was my ancestral estates. Well, you win some, you lose some, innit?
As you've probably guessed by now, I ain't quite the Darcy you might of imagined, i.e. a pompous twat with a stick up his arse, but don't be disappointed: Fitzy knows a thing or two about Regency flange, so hang about and you might learn something.
I was born in Newgate, son of a highwayman and a Limehouse tart, and believe me it was all downhill from there. I was either in the workhouse or on the streets till I was fifteen and got meself apprenticed to a theatrical set-builder in Drury Lane, and in my time backstage I learned some very interesting things.
Number one: if you talk proper and dress nice people love lending you money and hate asking for it back. Which is handy if you lost it betting on the ponies the night before (something else toffs love to do, apart from drinking and bumming each other).
Number two: women love a haughty bastard. Brooding is your keyword: you wanna get your brow-furrowing and disdainful glances sorted before you even go near a drawing-room.
Number three: posh birds are fucking gagging for it. All them balls and cotillions, all that fan-play and “pray madam spare my yearning heart” shit gets their juices flowing something fierce under them corsets. And if you're the sort of bloke who can press your suit in the shrubbery without signing their new bombazine, if you know what I mean (I mean you won't spunk on their frock) you, my son, should invest in a sturdy swordstick from Smith & Sons of Holborn, for the purposes of beating off the lubricated locust-swarm of totty heading your way.
So for fifteen years I sulked my way through the drawing-rooms of London society, seeking out only the fittest daughters of the gentry for conquest. I had at that time no thought of marriage, mainly because I weren't fucking mental, but also cos I hadn't tumbled that hitching yourself to a skirt with a nice big dowry was the shortcut to Easy Street, and didn't have to interfere with the nocturnal adventures of Mr. Darcy Junior, if you know what I mean. (I mean shagging other birds).
But after a while, every player tires of the game and wants to put his feet up in a nice country mansion with a brace of domestics, and a well-set-up Missus firing out little Fitzies every few years. So when I heard about the job at Pemberley I caught the next coach to Derbyshire and presented myself to the master, who fell for the Fitzy charm hook, line and plonker. He left me in charge, and as I waved him off to the Colonies that fine Spring morning, the game, as they say, was afoot.
I soon found an excellent wingman in Bingley, the dirtiest bastard who ever sharked a card-table, and we set about snaring a couple of peachy birds. Obviously I went for Jane first, her being the looker, but then Bingley said he wouldn't mind rifling her gusset so I stepped back like a gent and started ignoring Lizzie instead. Stupidly, I'd thought cos of her dad's big place she'd have money (I didn't know about entailments and all that shit, being a Newgate boy), and by the time it emerged she didn't have a pot to piss in and was planning to live on me, I'd ignored her knickers off and it was too bleeding late.
So this time, I resolved (as I leapt the ha-ha and pegged off through the game woods), I was gonna do it proper. Find a proper rich bird, get her up the aisle and retire to a life of luxury and feeling up saucy kitchenmaids in the pantry. Heiress, ring, happily-ever-after: bish bash bosh. What could be simpler?
So, picture the scene: your humble correspondent in new blue frock-coat and the tightest britches Savile Row can sew, hair curled like a Turk's beard, brooding forehead firmly furrowed, enters the drawing room of Lord and Lady Tightarse of Mayfair. (Names changed to protect the innocent, etcetera ...) A murmur of interest shivers through the assorted totty; I can practically feel their minges twinge. I stride forward, every mother calculating how much this well-dressed slab of testosterone must be pulling in each year, not to mention what a stir I'd make in their stagnant gene-pool.
The best way to your real target, I've found in these situations, is through the mother; chat up the old girl and the daughter's a done deal.
“Lady Chatsworth, how delightful to make your acquaintance! I have heard tell of your great beauty and that of your daughter, but words, as ever, prove inadequate.”
I bow low, kissing the Mum's ring.
“Mr. Darcy, you are too kind. Allow me to present my charming daughter Amelia.”
Score. Amelia's fit as fuck with saucy blue eyes and charms I could motorboat until the invention of the four-stroke engine. I stare at her, broodingly.
“... and her friend, Miss Evelina Scrimshaw. Miss Scrimshaw is the ward of Amelia's betrothed, Captain Slaughterton of the Ninth Dragoons.”
Oh, fuck me. They've stitched me up proper: I'm the consolation prize for Amelia's mate, and there's no chance of getting my end away with a Dragoon's intended: he'll cut me up and spit-roast the bits. It wouldn't be so bad if Evelina was doable, but this girl is butters; she's got a face that could wilt Wellington's stallion.
I hastily offer to fetch some punch. However, while I'm spooning my dipper in the hot spicy liquor (not a euphemism), I hear a couple of geezers banging on about some good-looking tart who's loaded but so stuck-up she won't even talk to them.
“She says she wants a man with poetry in his soul!” says Nob Number One in tones of affronted disbelief. “A gentleman with pride and bearing!”
Oy oy.
“That's education for you,” remarks Nob Two.
“I'd hardly call the Pinkerton Academy education.”
“Her guardian, at least, should have taught her better manners,” opines the second.
“Oh, he is overseas, and has no control over her, or her fortune,” sniffs the first, “her ridiculous parents did not even bother with a trust, God rest their souls.”
“Well,” concludes Nob Two, “if she'll not let any man near her, let her die an old maid, for all her looks and money.” And they mince away.
Orphan with a fortune is it? Guardian overseas on business you say? Control of her inheritance and a thing for haughty bastards? Fitzy, I say to myself, two words: Get In.
Asking around, I discover the minx's name (Rebecca), and clock her: a lovely bit of strumpet, blonde with big eyes and a pair of dowries that make my fingers itch. She looks like butter wouldn't melt, and barely over sixteen, but she must be twenty-one if she's a day, and a good thing too, cos Fitzy's not the type to sink a hole in one just cos there's grass on the green. I prefer my grouse to hang a bit longer, if you know what I mean. (I mean I ain't a paedo).
I brush brusquely past her, help meself to a drink, stare her up and down, and harrumph.
“I fear we are not acquainted, sir,” she says, coldly, but I know her merkin's moistening; no girl can resist the famous Fitzy frown.
“Harrumph!” I repeat, furrowing me brow.
“Are you having a pleasant time?” she enquires, with all the politeness and concern of a Tyburn hangman.
I smile sadly, soulfully. “As the poet Shelley says, First our pleasures die, and then our hopes, and then our fears, and when these are dead, the debt is due: dust claims dust, and we die too.”
“Take me, you fucking legend!” she says (or words to that effect).
For the next couple of weeks, Beck and me are inseparable: riding in Hyde Park, walking in Vauxhall, dancing at every ball and salon. So she don't suspect I'm after her money, I spin her some bollocks about an estate in Scotland (too far to visit: clever, eh?) and a plantation in Barbados. I've saved some cash from fencing the Pemberley silver, so I can afford to take her out: it's worth it to get my hands on her thousands. Everything in the pleasure-garden, in short, is loverly.
Come the wedding day, I pull out all the stops: gold-trimmed carriage-and-six, French lace wedding-dress, the works. She's bought her own trousseau, thank Christ, so I just have to pony up for the ponies. Luckily, this is the last thing I intend to pay for for the rest of my natural: the good life is so close I can almost taste it.
So imagine my dismay when I wake after our first night of nuptial bliss to discover a note pinned on the pillow, my secret sock-drawer sov-stash gone, and Becky scarpered.
“You cunt!” says the note (or words to that effect). “You said you was loaded and now I find out you're not only a pauper, but a bleeding bigamist into the bargain! Stuff your six geldings where the sun don't shine: I'm off to seek me fortune. Twat. - Becky.”
I might of guessed it was too good to be true; I should of known that once again, a seemingly unattainable miss was not necessarily the prize she seemed. Quite frankly, I ought to have ignored the pleadings of Fitzwilliam Darcy Junior (I mean my cock), for once in my numpty life and realised that Becks was as sharp as her surname; a right little chiseler and no mistake. Maybe we deserved each other.
Oh well; never say die, Fitzy; never say die. There's good times just around the corner. Maybe it's time to look for love again, or at least tops and fingers. I saw this proper tasty piece crying in the park the other day; looked like she needed a bit of comforting, if you know what I mean. (I mean she needed a good seeing-to). Marianne ... something: I didn't quite get her last name. Darkwood? Dashwood?
Yeah, I'd smash that up and no mistake. Watch this space.
--
Darcy's Progress by Sam Carter was read by Kieran Knowles on Tuesday 10th May 2011 at the Liars' League Pride & Prejudice event at the Phoenix, Cavendish Square, London.
Sam Carter is a reviewer and long-term student who has lived all round the world (currently in Nottingham), and has only recently turned to writing "real" stories. Sam has had three previous stories performed at Liars' League and is working on a play.
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