had no banter, did not make a play of anything. It was not Gwendolyn
who had gone in search of me one day when the great house was over-quiet and empty, and found me in my candle-lit cupboard; had crouched down to admire peg-dolls and misspelt tales of romance and daring, kissed me and crept away with her finger to her lips in promise to keep my secret. Gwendolyn did not make play with words and names; she did not find humour in anything much. Gwendolyn had not dipped and swirled, laughing as she taught me to dance, taking the part of a young man to my clumsy girl. ‘You shall curtsey here, and I will bow, thus, as befits my manliness,’ Mama had said, her voice pitched low as a boy’s so that I laughed and lost my balance.
I thought, I closed my eyes gently a moment, I had thought at that time that more would come from dancing, and balls.
Instead, instead…the memory came and went like the slap of a hand. So like a slap it was to recall how, when I lay still stitched, slow and weak after Toby’s wrenching birth, I heard Mr Hadley speaking with the doctor and that it became loud so I could not help but hear what he said. Later, though he held the babe with a large and possessive pride, he had turned from me in a manner so decisive, so…full of meaning that it made me shrink into my sheets. I would not bear him more sons, and he was angered by it.
Too long ago, surely, to affect me so now. I breathed out.
I put down the pages so that they lay like crackling sheets. Instead of vanishing into a lonely burrow of Gwendolyn’s making, I mused, I might become a hostess in very high fashion, with the assistance of the Farquharsons, and folk might well be invited to attend my own gatherings to discuss the times and the arts.
Mr Hadley! And, with stabbing insurrection, George! Do you see? I might succeed at your game!
My thoughts were wavelets back and forth against the shore. Dickie and Amanda will poke their heads out from under that perpetual cloud in which they live. The sun will shine for us all. I put my head back against the cushion behind me and contemplated the little landscape on the wall, without at all seeing the field of corn depicted there. We might all undertake a tour of the European places of antiquity. We might go further. Oh, yes…
The shadow passed through my mind once more—the now-
accustomed shadow of that ragged girl—and I frowned, winced as if at some small pain. My every rising hope makes her seem the more diminished. How can this be my fault? Why do I feel I caused her pain? I did not! I did not! I imagined that…egret…in her dirty, once-bright skirt as a member of that wailing crowd whose skeletal fingers had once scrabbled at our carriage window—though she had, of course, not yet been born into her pitiless world. I might, I thought in reassurance to myself, take up charitable works among those who dwell in London without a home…
For some moments now there had been, beyond the closed door, an urgent muttering, a rising and falling of voices. It had moved closer, having travelled from elsewhere in the house, from the landing, to various points upon the stair, and now was so near as to be impossible to ignore.
Lord, what now? Revolution? Beyond my own petty insurrections? I laughed to myself, just as there came a tap at the door at last.
There was a small crowd there in the doorway, it seemed. Sobriety held little Cissy’s hand, and Mrs Staynes stood behind Cissy, and each face was pale as milk. I could not tell whether the universal pallor was due to pique, or nervousness or, indeed, fear. Surely not, I thought of the last possibility, for I have never been very frightening. It must be admitted I am not frightening.
In Mrs Staynes’s case, it was very soon evident, the cause of her pallor was pique. ‘I do beg your pardon, ma’am. I feel I should say that I was most reluctant to bother you in this way. Cissy has been…difficult…for some days…’
Ah. The cause of argumentation and poor temper is finally to be revealed.
The girl stared at the carpet and shrank against Sobriety. Perhaps as if to hide in a fold of her skirt, I thought, and understood by this that Cissy’s white-faced fear was of Mrs Staynes.
‘In any case, I did want to have it understood—’
‘Mrs Staynes did want to leave you in peace, it is true,’ Sobriety said. I thought how pallor always made Sobriety’s eyes very dark, as they were now.
Mrs Staynes let out a breath, relieved perhaps at this understanding, that whatever was afoot was nothing, any longer, to do with her, and she would not be held to account. ‘I must get back to Mr Hadley now. Mind yourself, Cissy.’ She frowned at the back of the girl’s head. Then, dithering a moment, she said, ‘It is my opinion, ma’am, that the girl tells monstrous and shocking tales, most unsuitable to your ears. Her imagination must be curbed, and I wonder at her aunt.’ With this rushed jib at Cook, she bobbed once and rustled away to the stairs.
I turned my gaze to the other two and raised my eyebrows.
‘I am to learn at last what has so agitated my staff?’
‘Yes,’ Sobriety sighed. ‘I have only been told what ails everyone this morning, myself, and I felt…’ She wrapped Cissy’s hand in both of hers. ‘Cissy?’
Upstairs, Mr Hadley’s chamber door was shut with a bang.
Cissy raised her other hand and brushed at her eye.
What is this? What now? I felt as though I was at the theatre.
‘There is no call for nervousness, Cissy, though you must do your duty if what you say is true,’ Sobriety said.
‘It is, Miss. I—’ Cissy’s voice faded to nothing.
‘Sobriety?’ I said, thinking: It is pantomime, with the audience obliged to take part. There was a moment when I might have laughed out loud. ‘Behind you, behind you!’ Oh stop it, I chided myself.
Sobriety took breath, and looked quickly down at Cissy and back at me. ‘Cissy is quite certain she has recognised the gentleman, Mr Farquharson, the baby’s father.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Yes, only from Manchester, and under very different circumstances.’
‘Well, yes, he does speak with a very little accent—’
‘—Cissy says that Mr Farquharson is the Mr Forster who is a grocer in Manchester, fairly well known as such to Cissy’s family…’
Cissy gripped and twisted her apron, her eyes round and fixed on the tiny side table that bore my cup. Sobriety closed her own eyes a moment and drew another loud breath.
‘Yes?’ I said into the pause.
‘That is, this Mr Forster…’—Sobriety began to speak very fast so as to be almost incoherent, and I was obliged to concentrate—‘…has a different family, mostly grown, and all living in Manchester, and none so grand as the Mr Farquharson living here in London.’ Sobriety breathed out in a deep sigh. ‘Ma’am.’
She then perhaps feared the point was not yet made. ‘That is, Cissy says he has two families.’
I looked at Cissy. I think my mind had completely emptied of all thought at that moment.
‘Mrs Staynes felt this may all be a young girl’s fancy and its airing would cause too much of a disturbance.’ Sobriety patted the child’s hand. ‘But I felt the disturbance may well be the worse for ignoring it.’
I turned my eyes to Sobriety.
‘Thank you, Miss,’ Cissy whispered.
Chapter Seventeen
Cissy hovered a moment in Mr Hadley’s sick-room, holding the vase. She had dropped three objects to my certain knowledge since the inspector’s visit alone. There was a bowl in the kitchen (the baize door had been open and I had heard Cook’s shout and then the smash), then in the morning room a spool of thread, which rolled under the small armchair. Afterwards, a day spent at the centre of so much concentrated attention only fed this clumsiness the more. My piece of Sèvres tumbled, as the girl swung the feather duster, but Cissy (heaven preserve us) caught it before it struck the floor.
It was clear Cissy had not yet recovered from the strain of so much confrontation, not to mention from
the extended fright of being for so many days at loggerheads with Mrs Staynes. Poor child. She must have expected the tumbril at any moment.
The girl seemed calmer now, and was perhaps to be trusted with the vase. It held white roses, speckled and overblown at this time of year, cut from our small arbour and placed in the crystal vase every other day. I wanted the vase taken from the little table by the window in Mr Hadley’s bedroom. When the roses and vase were gone from there I, Adelaide Hadley, could place upon this little table my writing box and do my writing. As I had done before, but from now on, the roses would dwell elsewhere, and I would lay claim permanently to it. Its height and its size suited me. This is a thing Mrs Hadley may do. This is a thing that Adelaide Hadley does. The writing box, up until now an occasional visitor to this room, would take its place here also, always ready and set to one side on the tabletop. Until such time, of course, that this room itself was no longer in use by Mr Hadley.
After all… I breathed out slowly. Our looming circumstances did demand it, and there would, apparently, be no rescue. No gallant on a charger, or, more to the point, no bonds or shares would lift me and mine from penury. My only hero would be myself. I had gone beyond timorousness, gone beyond mere pastime; this hero’s permanent place of work was here at this table. Here, at this symbol of my transformation, I may—I must—earn my keep. I must come out from behind the curtain and proclaim my craft…and hope I would be paid for it.
There was, to say the very least, much to think and write about, after the events of the past few days. Shock, perfidy, fraud. High society and base deceptions. Drama on a grander scale than I had ever dreamed of or been visited by in nightmare. Inspector Broadford must frequently witness such things. Was he so much as startled by the message I sent him after Cissy’s tale was told us?
‘Ma’am…’ Cissy said, after a moment of looking around the room. Every surface was covered in Mr Hadley’s personal things: his precious little bowls and pillboxes; his hinged containers fashioned in chased silver or with an Asiatic inlaid patterning in polished slivers of exotic timbers; his watch and chain, the silver-backed hair and clothes brushes, the pomade, the tray of shaving brush and blade and towel. And there were the carved busts and carved animals that had been collected or given as gifts. And above it all, Mr Rossetti’s painted woman pouted down, robust and forward as a flame on the wall behind the bed of the faded invalid.
Each thing is linked to another. No thing exists entirely on its own. Each person, event, object has something at its tail. Nothing is simply done, ever.
The delirium of Mr Farquharson’s party and the ecstasy of hope that attended my sleep and my rising did but last, after all, a moment in time. The descent was rapid, the gloom that settled then was due to disappointment, and, I was nearly ready to confess, to the realisation of myself as foolish and so very, very easily duped.
Nothing is simply done.
‘Oh, take the vase to the morning room, Cissy. I will think about it later.’
Cissy left the room, holding the vase to one side so as to see her way past the roses. Petals fell to the carpet; I bent to pick them up, and sat by the sickbed stroking the petals without thinking until they went from satin to a damp, greying bruise. Mr Hadley breathed steadily like a saw in rhythm and stared all unknowing with his pinkened eyes at some point an arm’s length before his face. (Things with him these days were very different indeed, from the time of a previous illness caught while away on business, some ague that laid him in his bed and had him calling out or thumping his cane upon the carpet or ringing a little silver bell several times every hour. The household, including myself, his wife, was a-running up and down with hot drinks and cold, bringing foods and taking them away again
uneaten, fetching journals and, in my case, reading them to him. Nothing pleased him, though it was a mercy eventually that he had shouted himself hoarse and must sip quietly at his brandy-and-
honey.)
Cissy interrupted my reflections, arriving at the door with my writing box in hand. I held it while the girl carried the little table back to the window where the light was best. She lifted away its lace cloth before I put the box down. It was a little like a ritual, a ceremony of dedication. Cissy placed the chair at the table and was about to leave the room when I called her back. I gave the petals, creased now as well as bruised and pressed together, into the little maid’s hand. The door closed too slowly behind the girl, for she was attempting not to bang it.
Do I trespass, Mr Hadley? In this corrupt world of yours? George?
The steady rasp of my husband’s breathing was again the only sound, bar the ticking of his mantel clock. I listened, suspended a moment: How time does follow us about. I rested my hands on the polished walnut surface of the writing box. It was cool, sturdy with its brass edging, and I looked at it as if it were not the writing box I had used many, many times before for letters, notes, and lists. It was as if it was something new, and I would be surprised at what might be inside it. I shook my head the smallest fraction, and rubbed between my eyes. My writing box, in truth, was merely my writing box, I knew, yet I stroked it once more before reaching for the key at my waist and turning it in the little lock. I opened the lid, extracted a stylus and the brass rocker blotter, chose a nib, and selected several sheets of paper.
There I was, my foot upon a path at last. Women such as myself did nowadays take pen to paper and, sometimes, even earn a living thereby. This was both a little shocking and a little thrilling. But in any case, what was left to me after the airy dream of an independent income from investments was blown away on the breath of Mr Farquharson’s disgrace?
I sighed. One piece had not been accepted, but the next may be.
I could very nearly smile at this.
The great Mr Farquharson’s star was now brought very low, and all respectable people obliged to turn their backs to him. I had rushed yesterday to Dickie to warn him as Sobriety waited upon Mr Broadford’s arrival. For this was crime, shocking crime, and I must report it, and did so. Inspector Broadford, by return note, announced his intention to visit in order to interview our little witness. That I had been associated in any way with that man, Mr Farquharson, caused me sick dread, especially as I recalled how nearly I had succumbed to the promise of his investments.
Dickie, when he heard the news, could not form words for a long time, while florid patches fled across his face, much as painful thought no doubt fled through his mind. Amanda, her eyes on his face while he looked away, placed her hand on his shoulder. She herself had her mouth set firm as if it took some self-control to do so, as if she might otherwise weep, or as if her gorge revolted.
‘Of course, one cannot be further associated,’ Dickie said at last; yet I thought he struggled, in making the very self-evident statement, to convince himself of this.
I kept my voice steady, so that he could be in no doubt. ‘No, indeed.’
‘No.’
‘And it must be made clear that any understanding arrived at last night between you and Mr Farquarson is no longer so.’
‘Yes.’
‘Yet, there is still the prospect of a small profit—did you not tell me?—with the sale of your existing investment, is there not?’
‘Yes, yes.’ Dickie made to straighten his shoulders, though his mind was still so clearly not at rest. ‘I must set about this straightway.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And then there will exist no more link.’
‘Yes. That is to say, no.’
The quiet that followed was smudged with distant shouts from the children, for Dickie and Amanda’s offspring were by nature and nurture boisterous and untamed. Amanda looked across at me.
‘May I suggest,’ she glanced at Dickie, ‘that we need not disturb Gwendolyn with this news. That Dickie…that we…’
‘No, no. We need not. Of course not.’
A door banged upstairs and running feet made
a racket down and then up the stairs. We foolish adults, meantime, were lost each in a personal world, pondering lost dreams and the appalled recognition of what must be seen as a very close shave with disgrace and penury.
I set up the sloped writing surface, laid new paper on it, unscrewed the lid of my inkwell and set it back in its slot. I would not, I decided, continue with my call to the ‘Ladies’. My way was lost there, and all would surely recognise it. I would begin upon another theme. I took a breath and felt for a moment the tension of those tiny voices hissing in opposition within me: I am too fearful, weak, courageous, absurd, rebellious…foolish, foolish woman… I had had one lesson already in humiliation. I have exposed myself to contempt. The paper sat virginal, white, expectant.
Or is it that I am arrogant, that I assert myself in unattractive fashion…or that I simply do not have the courage of my own arrogance?
I let my breath out.
I have not enough light.
I pushed the little table forward to make space for my rising, pulled the great brocaded curtains open to their furthest extent. I hitched up my skirt so that the hoop beneath should not pinch, sat, pulled the table toward me and smoothed the paper, which was already without a wrinkle.
I dipped the nib into the ink. My hand hesitated over the blank page.
Mr Hadley wheezed and then he coughed. It was a light cough, but it cut through the rasping back-and-forth, back-and-forth of his breathing and the slow tick of the clock.
I held myself still: it was his cough, surely, unlike any of the sounds he had made since the day he fell down. Familiar as a memory, the cough of the man who ruled here, not so long ago. I sat, looking at the hand that held the stylus.
No.
I could not look elsewhere, certainly not at Mr Hadley. Was he waking? I was cold—as if a damp shadow climbed my neck and stroked my face with ice—and yet while I felt cold there was the prickling of perspiration across the top of my lip and on my forehead.
He coughed again. A little pair of coughs, and they held behind them a trace of his voice. Dear God, I can hear his voice, as with the clearing of his throat on so many mornings—it felt so long ago—between the sip of coffee and the twitch of the newspaper.
What Empty Things Are These Page 14
