Sixpenny Stalls

by Beryl Kingston

  The chill in his voice when he finally spoke to her was terrible, for she’d been expecting comfort and tenderness, not anger. ‘You were responsible for this,’ he said. ‘How could you allow such a thing to be sold? How could you? I thought you checked every book.’

  ‘I did,’ she said, looking up at him at once, her tears dried by his coldness. ‘I do. I always do.’

  ‘Then how did this happen?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s all so vile I can’t even think. What am I to do about it, Henry? You must tell me.’ And she looked straight up at him, the expression on her face an appeal for help even stronger than her words.

  But his anger was more violent than her abhorrence. He was beside himself with it, shaken by the pornographic pictures, panicked by the threat of a lawsuit, furious to be so suddenly at risk and all through no fault of his own. ‘How could you have been so foolish?’ he said. ‘We shall all be ruined if this gets out. Ruined! I thought you had more sense.’ All the good work he’d done in the last two years was to be undone in a second, the position he’d earned for himself, the status and respect he enjoyed, it would all be gone, all of it, and all because of her stupidity. ‘How could you have been such a fool?’ He was pacing again, full of useless, restless energy.

  ‘Don’t speak to me like that, Henry,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t done a-purpose. You’ve no right to call me names. It ain’t kind.’

  ‘Kind?’ he said, his voice rising with anger despite all his efforts to keep calm. ‘Why should anyone be kind to you when you’ve been selling this filth?’

  ‘I didn’t sell it,’ she said sharply, his anger firing hers, just as it always did. ‘You speak as though I was standing behind every bookstall urging people to buy.’

  ‘You ordered it, which amounts to the same thing.’

  ‘Ordering isn’t the same thing as selling,’ she said, trying to be reasonable, but aware that she was being petty.

  ‘In this case it’s exactly the same,’ he said. ‘Don’t quibble! You should be above that. It’s exactly the same.’

  Why are we quarrelling about a word, Caroline thought weakly, when that book is lying on the table? ‘What are we to do?’ she asked. She’d had a plan in her mind when she first ran into the room but his anger had shattered it so thoroughly she couldn’t even remember the beginning of it.

  Solving problems was beyond him in his present state. He was so angry he wanted to kick something, or punch the wall like he’d done when he was a child. ‘How could you have countenanced such a thing?’ he said, his mind stuck in the impossibility of it all. ‘Couldn’t you see how disgusting it was? Or didn’t you look?’

  ‘I did look. I look at every book. Oh, Henry, my dear, help me. I’m being punished enough.’

  ‘Then you must have seen this one.’

  ‘No, no, no, I didn’t. I would never have bought it if I had. Surely you can see that.’

  ‘Then you didn’t look,’ he said, exasperated by her lack of logic. ‘Oh God, why didn’t you look? You stupid, stupid woman.’

  ‘Don’t abuse me.’ She was shouting now, fighting back.

  ‘I’ve every right to abuse you,’ he yelled. ‘You’ve ruined the firm. Ruined my life! Don’t you understand? This is what comes of meddling in men’s affairs instead of staying at home and looking after your child like a proper mother.’

  The injustice of such a charge made her catch her breath with pain. ‘That has nothing to do with it. Nothing at all. How can you …’

  Anger was pushing him further and further away from reason and control. He turned on his heel and spun away from her, shouting as he went. ‘It has everything to do with it. You should never have come here in the first place. Nan was a fool to allow it. But no, you would work. You would have your own way. I’ve never known anyone so selfish. Self! Self. Self!’ He turned to face her, his face blazing. ‘That’s all it ever is with you. You’ve never cared for anyone except yourself. Not me, or Nan, or Pheemy …’

  ‘I have so!’ she said, springing to her feet to face him. ‘I have! Look how I love Harry! And …’

  ‘Harry!’ he said throwing up his hands in the most scornful gesture. ‘Poor little beggar. You don’t love Henry. Not as a woman should. Dragging him here like a parcel day after day, making him cry. You don’t love Harry. You don’t love anyone. Look how you spoke to Pheemy when she went to St Bartholomew’s. “You mustn’t work at night or I shall never see you.” That ain’t love. That’s self! That’s all it is. Self. Self! Self!’

  The pain of understanding stabbed into her brain like a needle, as she recognized the truth of what he was saying, and rejected it in the same sharp instance, shaking with conflicting furies. ‘We’re not talking about love,’ she said. ‘We’re talking about that book.’

  ‘I’m talking about love!’ he raged. ‘Or your lack of it. That’s what I’m talking about.’ With the last remaining vestige of reason he knew he was saying unpardonable things that he didn’t really mean, but his brain was boiling with suppressed anger and the words erupted from him, hot as lava. ‘Love!’ he said striking the table with his clenched fist. ‘You don’t know the meaning of the word.’

  She walked round the table to face him, suddenly and unaccountably afraid of that heavy fist but determined not to let him see it. Her mouth was so dry she had to lick her lips before she spoke. ‘I see what it is,’ she said, her chin in the air. ‘Your precious position is more important to you than I am.’

  Now it was his turn to hear the truth and reject it. How dare she say such a thing? How dare she even know such a thing? ‘Never mind my position,’ he shouted. ‘I’m not talking about my position. My position ain’t important. This will be the ruin of the firm. Don’t you understand? The firm.’

  ‘Squit!’ she shouted, sensing his inconsistency, but too shocked and angry to analyse it or understand it. ‘It ain’t the firm. It’s you. All that nonsense about being a poet, when you’re no more a poet than I am. And now you puff yourself up with this precious position of yours. I may be selfish, Henry Osmond, but you’re vain. That’s what you are. Vain!’

  He advanced upon her, trembling so much that even his face was shaking. ‘Stop it! Stop it! You ain’t to say such things! I’m not the one who sold those books.’

  ‘I didn’t sell them. I ordered them.’ Oh God, why were they back in this stupid argument again?

  ‘Sell! Order!’ he yelled, clenching and unclenching his fists. ‘There’s no difference. How many more times have I to tell you?’

  ‘I didn’t sell them!’ she said, standing her ground. ‘Oh, what’s the use in this? I came to you for help and all you do is argue over words. I thought you’d protect me. But there’s no help or kindness in you at all. You don’t care. That’s the truth of it. Your precious position, that’s all it is. Your vanity.’

  ‘Stop it! Stop it!’ he roared at her. ‘You ain’t to say such things. You ain’t …’

  ‘I’ll say what I like, dammit, I’ll say …’

  His anger exploded into action, all control shattered. He had to hit out, to throw something, anything to stop these awful words, to put an end to all this ugliness. He grabbed at her, his hands falling on her shoulders, fingers tightening, and then he was shaking her, his face distorted with passion, shaking her violently, so that her head jerked from side to side, and her stinging words blurred and became a cry, ‘You – ya-aah – aagh!’ And she tore herself from his hands and stepped back, her eyes blazing with such fury that he was stricken dumb by it, his anger wilting away, and he stood before her panting and trembling and anguished at what he’d done.

  ‘How dare you!’ she said, speaking with an ice-cold control he’d never heard before. ‘How dare you lay hands on me! Nobody has ever laid hands on me in all my life. Nobody! And nobody ever will again, do you understand?’

  Hair pins were still tinkling from her hair onto the floorboards, and the little scrabbling sound irritated him.

  ‘You asked
for it,’ he said, shamefaced, but trying to defend himself. ‘You drove me to it.’

  ‘Nobody!’ she said. ‘Ever!’

  ‘If you’d checked those books …’

  ‘Our marriage is over,’ she said coldly. ‘I can’t live with you now. Not after this. You understand that.’

  His mind was stuck. He couldn’t, wouldn’t understand what she was saying. ‘If you’d only …’

  ‘I am leaving you, Henry,’ she said. ‘I hope it preys on your conscience that you drove me to leave you. If you have one.’ And she picked up the book and the letter and made a dignified exit, face set, spine straight, skirts swishing angrily.

  I am on my own, she thought, as she walked back to her office. I must deal with this on my own. She was yearning for Nan or Will or Euphemia. But Nan was in Bury with Mr Brougham, and Will was miles and miles away in Paris, and Euphemia was working at St Bartholomew’s Hospital again. Dear Euphemia, Caroline thought, I do love her. She takes everything so calmly, and she knows so much. Look at the way she talked when Harry was being born.

  ‘Look at the way she talked.’ Why, of course. Euphemia had seen statues. There were statues in the temples in India showing – well – all that sort of thing. She’d said so. Perhaps there was hope. Perhaps these drawings weren’t bad after all. Not to someone used to seeing such things. Euphemia would know. And Euphemia might still be at home because she didn’t leave for the hospital until after ten o’clock. Before she did anything else she would test Euphemia’s opinion.

  Anger had stiffened her resolve as well as her spine. She knew exactly where she was going now and exactly what she was going to do, and she started doing it the moment she was back in the office. First she ordered her clerk out into the Strand to get her a cab. Then she sent a runner down to the warehouse to ask Edward if he would be so kind as to come up to her office for a moment or two. As this horrid matter was bound to affect the warehouse sooner or later, she had better tell her cousin about it too and particularly as six of his men had been in Henry’s office when she ran in.

  But Mr Edward had gone out ‘not five minutes since’, according to the runner. ‘Gone like lightning he was, the minute Jack an’ the others come down from Mr Henry’s.’

  The cab was waiting outside the main entrance, as she could see from her window.

  ‘No matter,’ she said calmly. ‘I will tell him when he returns.’ Then she put on her bonnet and gloves, wrapped her shawl lightly about her shoulders and went downstairs to give the cabbie his instructions. If he made good time she could reach Euphemia before she left the house.

  Euphemia was tying her own bonnet when her cousin knocked on the door.

  ‘Carrie!’ she said. ‘How nice to see you, my darling, but I’m just off to St Bartholomew’s. Didn’t you realize that?’ And then after a closer look at her cousin’s expression, ‘Oh my dear, is anything wrong?’

  ‘Henry shook me,’ Caroline said.

  ‘Oh my dearest! How terrible!’

  ‘So I have left him. Harry and I will be living here from now on.’

  ‘Oh, Carrie my dear! Would you like me to stay at home with you? I was just off to Barts but I could send a message.’

  ‘No,’ Caroline said at once. ‘Of course not. You mustn’t do any such thing. I wouldn’t hear of it. No, no. I’ve a cab waiting at the kerb. I shan’t even make you late, I promise. Put on your gloves and we can talk on the way. I need your advice.’

  It was enclosed and intimate inside the cab, but even so Caroline had a moment of doubt before she took the book out of her reticule and handed it across. ‘This came to me with a letter of complaint,’ she said. ‘The man who sent it called it a public nuisance, and when I showed it to Henry, he shouted at me and abused me and … Well you know what he did. I haven’t shown it to anyone else. I think it’s horrible, but I could be wrong because I know nothing about such things. Would you look at it please, my dearest, and tell me what you think? You are the only person I could possibly ask to do such a thing.’

  Euphemia looked at the book, and although her face remained calm, she shuddered visibly. ‘Oh, Carrie my dear,’ she said sadly, ‘this is an evil, ugly book, fit only for the flames. It ought never to have been written.’

  ‘And never sold,’ Caroline said. Her little hope of reprieve was gone. It was as bad as she’d thought.

  ‘Never,’ Euphemia said. ‘And yet presumably it was sold, was it not?’

  ‘Read the letter,’ Caroline said, ‘and I will tell you all about it.’

  ‘What will you do?’ Euphemia asked when her cousin had told her all she could. From the approaching sound of bleating sheep they knew they were close to Smithfields.

  So Caroline told her that too, quickly before they stopped at the hospital gates. And Euphemia kissed her and promised she would help in any way she could. And then the rush of the day took them away from each other and Caroline told the cabbie to take her back to Bedford Square.

  Once there she let herself into Nan’s study and wrote two letters, very quickly and fluently.

  The first was to Harry’s nursemaid in Richmond, telling her to pack the baby’s clothes and toys and bring him straight to Bedford Square on the very next train. Totty was to come with her and any other servants she thought necessary. ‘I am to be away for a day or two,’ she write. ‘Totty is to bring all the linen and all our summer clothes and you are all to stay in Bedford Square until I return.’

  The second was to Will.

  ‘My dearest brother,’ she wrote.

  ‘You cannot know how unhappy I am as I write this to you. An absolutely disgusting book has found its way, I truly do not know how, onto the Easter stalls. A gentleman has bought a copy and written me an abusive letter and means to take the firm to court for causing a public nuisance.

  ‘If you could come home, even for a day, my dear, dear Will, you would be such a comfort to me. Of course I realize that you have work to do which might make your return impossible, and if that is the case I shall not blame you or berate you if you cannot do as I ask. Nevertheless it is the thing I most desire.

  Your ever-loving sister,

  Carrie.

  P.S.I am staying in Bedford Square.’

  Then she addressed the envelopes, sending Will’s letter to Vienna and marking it ‘Please forward’, and instructed the butler to see that they were taken to the post, and to call her another cab.

  For the second time in her life she was running away from trouble, and of course she was running straight to Bury St Edmunds and Nan.

  Chapter 26

  Nan Easter had spent the afternoon in the rectory garden at Rattlesden with her daughter Annie, her two granddaughters Meg and Dotty and all seven of her Norfolk great-grandchildren. It had been a lovely idle afternoon, settled with sunshine. The older children had been building themselves a tree-house, and a fine untidy eyrie it was; the babies had slept in the porch as plump and easy as cats; and Nan had sat in the shade of the holm oak with Annie and watched and gossiped, and once, it had to be admitted, drifted off into a brief cat-nap of her own. Now she was waiting with happy anticipation for the four o’clock tea she always took at the rectory. Meg and Dotty had already gone indoors to supervise it.

  Since her three grandchildren had taken over the day-to-day running of the firm she had led a much less hectic life, wintering in Westmoreland with Frederick, summering in Bury, and with plenty of time for family visits and the sort of social occasions she enjoyed. ‘And why not?’ as Frederick said. ‘You have earned your laurels, my dear.’

  Caroline’s abrupt arrival into the garden was like a sudden storm.

  ‘Why, my dear child!’ Nan said, sitting up at once, as the pony cart skidded to a halt on the drive with a roar of ‘Whooah!’ and a spatter of gravel. ‘What brings you here? And at such speed. It must be something serious.’

  Caroline jumped from the cart and ran to kiss her grandmother and Annie and to wave at the children. Her cheeks were harshly pink, her
hair uncombed and her eyes strained and shining. Excitement or temper? Nan wondered as they kissed. Well, we shall soon know.

  But Caroline waited until the cart had been led away to the stables before she said anything. Then she exploded her news upon them. ‘I’ve left Henry,’ she said, standing before them with her hands on her hips in the defiant stance they both remembered so well from her childhood.

  Annie decided to take it calmly. ‘Oh, what nonsense!’ she said. ‘Don’t say such things. It ain’t seemly. Come and sit here on the bench with us. We’re going to take tea presently.’

  Caroline stayed where she was, her crinoline settled and bulky, as if it would never sway into movement again. ‘I mean it,’ she said. ‘We’ve had the most frightful row and I’ve left him.’

  ‘Wives don’t leave their husbands,’ Annie told her implacably. ‘It ain’t allowed. And all lovers have tiffs. You will get over it.’

  Nan reached for her walking stick and eased herself out of her chair. ‘Come into the house, Carrie,’ she said, ‘and tell me what all this is about.’ Whatever was troubling the child it was more serious than a lover’s tiff. She had that goblin look about her, with her brows puckered like that and her pretty mouth drawn in. Come into the house. Annie will stay here with the children, won’t you my dear?’ giving her a flickering glance of warning.

  ‘Of course,’ Annie said easily, turning her attention at once to the untidy eyrie in the trees.

  ‘Come you on, then,’ Nan said, and she walked towards the porch as briskly as she could on legs grown stiff with idleness.

  They could hear Meg and Dotty giggling together in the kitchen and there was plenty of coming and going between there and the dining room, but the parlour was cool and empty.

  They sat in the window seat together, framed by Annie’s floral curtains and with her flowering garden busy beyond them, and Caroline thought how peaceful and loving and beautiful it was in this place, and was ashamed because she was the bearer of such ugly news.