Contents
Part One:
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Part Two:
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Part Three:
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Part Four:
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Acknowledgments
What Empty Things Are These
JL Crozier
Regal House Publishing
Copyright © 2018 by JL Crozier
Published by
Regal House Publishing, LLC
Raleigh 27612
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN -13 (paperback): 978-1-947548-12-1
ISBN -13 (epub): 978-1-947548-13-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018941143
Cover design by Lafayette & Greene
lafayetteandgreene.com
Cover Photos: Pierre-Louis Pierson (French, 1860s)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Creative Commons (CCO) and Abigail210986/Shutterstock
Regal House Publishing, LLC
https://regalhousepublishing.com
To my sons Tom and Alan Bell, who have lived with me and these Victorians for a very long time.
My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a watered shoot;
My heart is like an apple tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit…
Christina Rossetti, ‘A Birthday’
November 18th, 1857
Part One:
In which George suffers apoplexy, and Adelaide and Sobriety are left to discover their circumstances
Chapter One
Much later, I thought how Mr Hadley and I had both seemed suspended in that very long moment. Frozen, wild-eyed, as though we illustrated some penny-dreadful sold at railway stations.
There was George Hadley’s arm stretched up, in his hand the cane with the chased-silver knob (very fine and an heirloom). His dark frock coat—he had not been home five minutes—swept wide like the wing of doom. Beneath were his sombre cravat and the subtle brocade of his grey waistcoat, which spoke of his authority and his impeccable choice of tailor. The angry pink of his face glowed under the sudden tossed halo of his white hair and whiskers.
Jehovah, I thought, breathless, perhaps in this way distracting myself from the matter at hand. I waited in a partially crouching form, watching first the anger flush and then the cane descend.
The suspense of the moment was broken; the cane thumped against my side as it would a stuffed cushion.
We both, he and I, grunted with the impact.
Time burst back into itself. I began to think quickly, once again, how best to deal with this in order to stop him: Shall I whimper and apologise? Is it best this time to be stoic? I heard his wheeze and gasp and then that heavy collapse as of something large dropped from a height, as of something felled. I’d had my head averted and protective hand raised, and now, after a beat of silence, I opened my eyes. He had caught the edge of The Illustrated London News with his cane as it swooped, and the pages, at first airborne—sea birds in a wind—were sinking to the ground. Printed ladies in the latest fashions of Paris sighed to a stop across the mound of his waistcoat. He lay still as the newspaper settled, there, just inside the entry to our parlour.
I had been reading the first volume of Mr Collins’s The Woman in White when Mr Hadley had come home, had reached the part where the young Mr Hartright observed, to his perturbation, that the lovely Laura bore such a resemblance to that lunatic wanderer, the woman in white. I was engrossed in this excellent tale, speeding my way to the chapter’s end with my breath anticipatory, my finger wetted to turn the page…and so was startled at the clunk of the front door and Mr Hadley’s steps in the hall. I had neglected to hide the volume. Under a cushion would have done—such a simple thing—before his entrance into the room and into his rage.
Now I nearly dropped my novel, the cause of all this choler and collapse—though I did not, for the moment, rush to him. I was, frankly, much too surprised. The choleric moment that was so present—was just as quickly gone. In the silence the clock ticked stout and polished on the mantel; the plum velvet curtains hung as if carved; the crystal vase was bright and sharp on the lace reaching to the floor on either side of the coffee table.
Yet there he lay, and something must be done.
My mind filled with fog.
‘Ma’am,’ came from the open doorway. Sobriety, my lady’s maid—my dear, dear Sobriety Mullins—stood, feather duster in hand, fresh from straightening my room, her eyes wide in a pale face.
Thank God, not Cissy or Mrs Staynes.
I felt my shoulders cringe immeasurably against the breath of humiliation. To have attention drawn so to myself, who must be at fault as the cause, or at least for having no notion what to do, and certainly for my leading role in this unwarranted drama in the midst of sober and respectable domesticity. I had so enraged my husband that… And in any case, here was undoubtedly a task, and here my duty to undertake it.
In a moment of pure absurdity, I fancied a crowd of lorgnettes turned as one in my direction.
‘Ma’am,’ Sobriety said. ‘You make him comfortable and I will fetch the doctor.’
‘Yes, yes. Do. I shall.’ Here was the relief of duty. I thought, I shall loosen his cravat. ‘Be quick,’ I said, but Sobriety’s footsteps had already padded downstairs, and the front door slammed.
I sank, with adjustments and rustling. The careful lift to govern the tilt of crinoline and skirt was necessarily awkward, since the book was still in my hand and I must close it, with nothing to mark the place I had read to.
A base thought, how base—it came to me—how could this cross my mind?
I put the book down, with no marker, and leaned in with fingers poised while my husband breathed, badly but evidently. I looked at the knot on the cravat to see where would be best to tug to undo it. This was a thing I had never done before. There was a pin with a small sapphire set in silver, which I removed delicately. I myself was not breathing, absolutely intent as I traced the convolutions of the knot, until I pulled at the correct point and it slid apart. I undid his topmost shirt button, took a breath and let it out, then sa
t back on my folded legs.
At last, achievement. What next?
A head lying in that way upon the hard floor, and turned oddly as it was, could not be comfortable. I cast my eyes around the room from where I sat. Most of the embroidered cushions were much too large and stuffed. But the small blue satin cushion that had bolstered his back in times of strain—this was in its place on the divan. I rustled and teetered to my feet and fetched it, lifted his head very gently, and placed the cushion beneath it. When I leant over him there was an ache at my side, bruised now, and pressed hard as it was by stays.
At the time of his last chastisement, we had been visiting his sister, Mrs Courtney. We stood on the steps of the house, awaiting Mr Brent and the carriage—with all the world walking or trotting past in the street—and I had had to stay his hand with: ‘Mister Hadley, we are in public!’ I have no memory of what my infraction had been. And so he saved his task for home, struck me almost without anger, and his cane left a pattern for days on my ribs where it had struck across whalebone and stitching.
I supposed he was as comfortable, there on the floor, as I could make him. Adjusting myself to rise, I noticed the newspaper, still with its sheets splayed. I reached, shook and folded it carefully, before lurching to my feet once more, hand against the doorjamb both for balance and to achieve a tilt that would not hurt my bruised ribs.
I went to sit on the side chair by the mantel and fireplace—that chair with its cameo rose tapestry so entirely pristine and formal, so very rarely sat upon. I myself had never sat on it before that day. It did, at least, face where he lay. I could keep watch while his mounded waistcoat rose, hovered, and fell, and his head lay wild and white against his cushion. I perched there, skirt spread and hitched a little at the back to allow for sitting, very straight with my hands in my lap. Watched him and listened to the silence—a silence of aftermath reflected from the walls and the paintings in their gilt frames of varying sizes, from heavy mahogany legs and clawed feet to the arched tapestried backs of chairs and settee and the polished pianoforte with its stool tucked beneath; all rich and heavy and voiceless. At the window and between the heavy falls of velvet, a fragile light from the innocent day reached through the shower of lace.
Into the silence the clock ticked, then chimed briefly. It was eleven in the morning. Outside, a horse clattered past in counterpoint. The many minor noises that make up silence, I thought, and again became aware of the rough drag of Mr Hadley’s breathing.
And then knew a distant clamour behind that fog in my mind that was a tiny voice insisting: I am responsible, I am not responsible, I am… As I sat perfectly still and perfectly erect, the voice joined with a nausea of terror to become a distant chorus: What if I am responsible? His chest rose and fell as my own ribs pushed against corset and chemise and bodice and the very air of this suddenly stifling room.
Tugging at my own mind to make it listen to the clock as it ticked—to calm all this turmoil that I felt—I thought, He might die, and broke into a sudden perspiration, a light damp sheen over hot cheeks. There was elation, sheer joy, and then panic.
To think that!
But I was reduced, made abject, packed. I could see myself: a whirling figure seeking escape, turning and turning in the fog, grey skirt swaying as a bell tolling without sound. I could not begin to parse this feeling, to separate one pain from another, perhaps because I was quite simply not brave enough.
Simply not brave enough. My lack of courage settled over me in a pall, drab indeed.
I sat there and tiny tears pricked. Outside, a cloud crossed the sun; the light dimmed a moment and returned.
Neither Mr Hadley nor I had moved (though his mouth sagged open and his breathing was rough, like something dragged across rocky ground) when the door opened just as the clock chimed the half hour. Sobriety entered with the doctor and his big Gladstone bag, and the doctor’s ‘boy’—a large man in an ill-fitting coat who exuded a musky dampness, a stale sweat that billowed across the room. Like fingers clicked in my face, the odour caused me to rear back, its hulking maleness shouting of life and death, both. The others seemed unaware of my little movement. Perhaps I had only thought I moved.
Rising to my feet, I remembered on my way to greet the doctor that I still held newspaper and book. I left them on the bureau and reached to shake Doctor McGuiness’s hand. A small man, he moved in an open-legged manner that had the effect of clearing a space before him and gave a firmness to his presence.
‘Ah, Mrs Hadley, a sad business. I shall test his vital signs a moment before we convey him upstairs.’ Doctor McGuiness was curt, though his face, in its frame of tight springing grey curls, creased just enough to demonstrate sympathy.
My husband, I noticed, had wet his trousers at some time during his apoplectic fit. There was a wetness the size of a hand unfolding there. As the doctor opened his bag and listened to Mr Hadley’s heart with an instrument, bent an ear to listen to the labouring of Mr Hadley’s lungs, I was riveted by this growing stain. Both startled and confused to be so suddenly suffused with pity for my husband—whose toilette was the concentrated ritual of an hour every morning before his meeting with the day—I was then washed over with needle-pricks of mortification and had to turn away. I possessed an acute desire to apologise or to rush some covering over Mr Hadley, and neither of these things was possible since either would attract attention to his shame. Still, I looked about covertly for something that might serve, though there was nothing. I made to stand as near as possible to hide the damp patch from view, but this created only awkwardness with everybody standing about so close on the landing or in the doorway: There was Sobriety, small and alert for some direction; the doctor’s boy, shambling and odorous (like Bottom on the India rug, holding his cap in big red hands); the doctor, crouched over my husband who lay in shadow cast by the crowd; and myself, by now pacing about behind them.
Doctor McGuiness picked up the cane from where it had fallen and handed it to Sobriety, who took it downstairs to place it in the umbrella stand, where it stood next to the feather duster. This seemed odd to me, suddenly. Sobriety must have thrown the duster there, in her haste to fetch the doctor. I thought, That speaks of crisis. What else would a duster in the umbrella stand signify? Then I blinked away this distraction. Sobriety rustled quickly back up to the small crowd upon the landing.
‘Madam, shall I fetch Cissy to prepare Mr Hadley’s bed?’
‘Yes, yes.’ The agony of uselessness lifted. ‘And…and perhaps she should light his fire. Perhaps a hot bottle, too. And Mrs Staynes will have suggestions to make. And Albert to help carry—’ There seemed little time for much of this just now, for almost as soon as Sobriety had trotted back down the carpeted stairs, Doctor McGuiness gestured to his boy. They grasped Mr Hadley’s arms and legs, lifted and, remarkably gently, bore him up upwards, the lumbering doctor’s boy checking his way behind him all the difficult way.
I rushed into my husband’s chamber ahead of these men with their burden. Mr Hadley’s sheet and counterpane must be pulled back in readiness, which I did, though it was by myself. All that heaving and heavy breathing—and the air loaded with the sweat of the doctor’s boy—while Cissy, breathless, was by now a-tremble and fumbling to begin her work at the grate, and Albert loitered bewildered at the door, waiting for his turn to deal somehow with the question of Mr Hadley’s clothing.
But when they had placed my husband on the bed, the doctor turned and said, ‘Mrs Hadley, there is no need for you to stay. We will attend to him. My boy and Mr Hadley’s man will change him into nightclothes. I will speak to you after a more thorough examination.’
This was undoubtedly dismissal. I said, ‘Oh, oh yes, of course’, and left too quickly for real dignity, with Cissy scraping desperately with matches, so that she could leave too and run for the hot water bottle Mrs Staynes must by now be preparing in the kitchen.
Thus I found myself again in the silence
of the drawing room, on the tapestried side chair, with a muted squeak of floorboards from above. My eyes closed for just a moment, and I thought of Mama saying so often ‘Take three breaths,’ and I dutifully did so. I tried to imagine what might be needed next (beef broth…?), and was calmed a little. My mind drifted.
I began to muse upon the cut and expense of widow’s weeds and how, if one were not too pale, these could be becoming on a blonde woman, especially one still young. I had seen instances where the effect was appealing, fragile and dramatic all at once. The widow—Oh Lord. The room blurred about me; I felt a tear travel over the curve of my cheekbone.
Such ungovernable thoughts. Such a contemptible woman.
I brushed the tear away.
Chapter Two
When I, Mrs George Hadley, was the very small and whispering Adelaide Broom, perhaps five years old, I would be called to sit upon my father’s knee on evenings when there were guests. I tipped my oft-patted faery-white curls to one side, gazed out of my glass-blue eyes (so noted by my elders), and hid my face in Papa’s shoulder if his friends spoke directly to me. Sometimes I must present my face so that my cheek might be pinched, then caressed by fingers yellowed with tobacco.
My sister Gwendolyn, older than me by a decade and the eldest of we younger Brooms, might play a popular piece on the pianoforte, adequately enough. She would then sit for a decent interval before slipping away (always unsmiling and straight as a dowager-in-
waiting, careful of her dignity and that it not be questioned), perhaps for chess with my older brother Harry. Dickie, aged between Harry and me, yet closest to Harry, would stay to be chaffed by the men, his face patched florid with pleasure at their attention. When Nanny tapped at the door at bedtime, I got up with a jump of many inches to the floor, curtseyed, and kissed my papa on his cheek. I left the room wrapped in the approval of Papa and his friends, knowing that their gaze followed me to the door.
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