‘It’s not easy,’ suggested Lady Kilmoyne. ‘I’m rather thankful I have only sons. Conveying that kind of information to boys is of course their father’s business – or someone’s – but it is difficult with girls.’
‘Particularly if the girl demonstrates no great interest,’ Beth revealed to her.
‘That was Flora’s attitude then?’
‘Yes. When that is the case one is, perhaps, at the time, relieved. Later, one wonders.’
‘Quite so. And her curiosity about the intimate relationship between men and women is still not aroused?’ asked Lady Kilmoyne, in a composed voice.
Beth Bennett shook her head. This was no moment for evasion, even if Lady Kilmoyne had been prepared to allow it. ‘I’ve tried to give Flora a clearer idea of what is expected of a wife,’ she told Flora’s future mother-in-law. ‘She does not take me up, when I try to approach the subject. It is very difficult, Lady Kilmoyne, to discuss a matter such as this with a young woman who appears not to understand what one is trying to say. One can hardly shout the information at her.’
‘I see,’ said Lady Kilmoyne.
There was a pause during which Beth Bennett felt very uncomfortable. She told herself she was not a servant in Lady Kilmoyne’s service who had not given satisfaction, but nevertheless, that was what she felt like. Then Lady Kilmoyne sighed, ‘Well, you had better go on trying,’ was all she said. Then, ‘I have heard there are books one can give the girl if the subject proves difficult.’
‘I see that as a last resort,’ Beth Bennett said. ‘But I’m aware it may prove necessary.’
‘Where is Flora now?’ asked Lady Kilmoyne.
‘Visiting her godfather, Father Jack Rawley, at St Auselm’s.’
‘She seems to spend quite a lot of time with the gentleman,’ Lady Kilmoyne remarked.
Tired of Lady Kilmoyne’s implicit criticisms, Beth replied, ‘There are worse places for a young woman to visit than a church – and worse companions than a clergyman.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Lady Kilmoyne, but her voice was very cold. ‘I take it Father Rawley is a Church of England clergyman.’
‘He is,’ Beth told her.
Father Rawley’s house stood next to his church in a small, poor area near Spitalfields Market. Though the narrow house was only about a hundred years old, the church dated back to the Reformation. It was reputed to have Saxon foundations – beneath those, some claimed, was part of a Roman temple. The church was small, the arched doorway being set in a normal street of houses, which had grown up on either side. The interior had been beautified by wealthy Huguenot weavers when the neighbourhood had been prosperous two hundred years before.
On her arrival Flora had first visited the church, where she sank to her knees in an ancient pew that must have felt the wool-clad rears of sea captains and merchants of Queen Elizabeth’s time. She prayed for ten or fifteen minutes. That is to say, she tried to pray, but Flora could not focus her attention on God, or even on herself. Strange images drifted with nightmare slowness through her mind, images of the River Thames some half a mile away, of her bedroom in Bedford Square, of a bluebell wood, of some cherry-coloured ribbons she had seen in a schoolfriend’s hair one Sunday in church and coveted for herself.
I am tired, she thought sadly, so tired. And it was true that each day she woke exhausted, the very act of dressing each morning was as if she had just risen from her sickbed after a fortnight. She went through the day with heavy limbs, her head swimming, her back held straight only with an effort. ‘Too tired to pray,’ she said to herself, reminding herself of what she must tell Father Rawley. She stood up, went out into the small street and knocked on the heavy old-fashioned knocker of the house next to the church.
Father Rawley let her in himself. He had only one small maidservant in his shabby house. He was a tall, thin man in his forties. His face was ruddy, his hair thick and black. He wore a faded cassock. Flora’s parents had selected him as one of her godparents when he had been a young curate in Bihar, where she had been born. He had returned to England when she was six, a year before her parents’ deaths.
Father Rawley led Flora into his shabby, comfortable parlour. A fire burned brightly in the grate. The windows, masked by heavy net curtains, stood right on the street. Sometimes the passers-by seemed very close: ‘I stood right up and said, Mr James, if that’s what you think of me …’ ‘Tenpence a pound! I ask you!’ ‘She’s due in from Murmansk on Friday with a cargo of whalebone.’
Flora put her fingers in the stoup of holy water attached to the wall and crossed herself.
‘Sit down, Flora,’ said Father Rawley. ‘Tell me, do you feel any better?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ she confessed, sitting, with drooping head, in his green velvet armchair. ‘No, it grows worse. I cannot pray. My concentration fails me – other thoughts intervene. No, not thoughts – dreams, rather.’
‘And Justin?’
‘I do not tell him how I feel. I … love him,’ she said. ‘But though our marriage is being arranged, that too, seems like a dream.’ She clasped her gloved hands together and gazed at him earnestly.
‘Tell me, you have conducted many marriages, Father Rawley. Are other girls like me before they marry?’
‘You are not a girl, Flora.’
‘They call me one.’
‘In answer to your question, yes, some young women do approach their weddings in a dream. Tell me – no, first, do not think my question too strange – do you embrace your Justin?’
She gazed at him in surprise.
‘I’m not trying to pry, or upset you, Flora,’ he went on. ‘I’m a priest. And your parents may have been ill-advised to ask a raw young curate to stand as your godfather. Nevertheless, that is what I am. I’m trying to help as much as I can. This is why I should like to know – do you embrace Justin? Do you sit on his knee? Is there warmth between you?’
‘Do I sit on his knee’ she repeated wonderingly.
Father Rawley said nothing.
‘I do not sit on his knee,’ she told him.
She looked into his eyes and then looked down, and there was a long silence …
‘I do not wish to upset you,’ he said. ‘But you are troubled. You have come to me for help. You are about to be married to a good young man. And yet – you are not happy. You do not look forward to the marriage. Tell me, what would you feel if for some reason there were to be no wedding? If, by magic, all could be as it was before?’
‘I should be a little relieved, but very deeply upset. I do not want to lose Justin.’
‘That is good. Yet you do not seem happy. Can you tell me why not?’ he asked gently.
She shook her head, her mood of despair and confusion seeming to deepen.
Father Rawley was disconcerted. Not for the first time he worried that he, an ordained priest and the young woman’s godfather, was, far from helping Flora, making matters worse. He had the impression already that her family was not enthusiastic about, possibly disapproved of, her frequent visits to him. There had never been a close relationship between the Bennetts and himself. He had never met them before they became responsible for Flora and thereafter the relationship had not been warm. Momentarily he gave way to a worldly thought. He had a duty to help, but might be blamed by the Bennetts for Flora’s increasing apathy and sadness. And if because of this the wedding were cancelled the Bennetts might believe him the cause of it. If the influential Kilmoynes took the same view his own position might be damaged. Under his ministry St Auselm’s had become increasingly ‘high’. He named his services masses, rather than holy communion. He took confessions. Not all his parishioners approved of this increasingly Catholic bias. Nor did his bishop. The Kilmoynes had the power to put pressure on his bishop. What he knew to be his mission might be affected by episcopal orders to return St Auselm’s to more conventional Church of England practices.
Father Rawley knew that often if a woman did not wish to marry, or, as sometimes occurred, did no
t wish to marry the man her family wanted, she would turn to a clergyman for help and support. If the marriage did not take place the clergyman was all too often blamed for exerting undue influence over her. And, disregarding such considerations, as he was bound to do, he still did not know how to help this young woman.
‘Will you describe your feelings to me, Flora?’ he asked.
She paused, unaccustomed to such a request. Then she sat up straight, rigid. ‘I’m living in a dream,’ she announced. ‘Not my own – someone else’s. It’s as if I were walking along, and suddenly thick fog descends. I feel someone wishes me to do something. Or perhaps be something different from what I am. I do not understand it properly, but while I am under this influence I can do nothing.’ She paused, as if shocked by what she had said. She was seized by a huge lethargy sweeping over her like a tidal wave. ‘Perhaps I’m mad,’ she muttered. She looked at him. ‘Do you think I’m mad?’ She added, ‘I sometimes think Justin is displeased with me.’
Father Rawley had been praying silently. He asked her, ‘Do you think often of your parents?’
‘I cannot remember them,’ she told him.
‘Nothing?’
‘No. I was young when they died.’
The answer came out swiftly, as though she had been asked the question before. ‘You were seven years old,’ he reminded her gently.
‘Do you remember nothing of India?’
‘I have no memories of that time,’ she said. She glanced at the clock on his mantelpiece. ‘I must leave you shortly,’ she told him. ‘I am sorry to inflict myself on you so regularly.’
‘I shall pray for you, as ever,’ he told her. She made as if to stand up. ‘Before you go, tell me, do you think often of Miles?’
Now she did stand up. She stood quite still, her eyes fixed on the windows. ‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘I do not. I do not think of him.’ Then she turned and swiftly left the room.
Father Rawley got up from his chair and went after her. ‘Flora, it’s raining,’ he said. But by the time he reached the passageway the front door had closed firmly behind her. He opened it. Rain was pouring down. He snatched up a cloak and ran out, looking right and left, but could not see her. He turned right and hastened towards the main road, planning to catch up with her and persuade her back into the house while he went for a cab. But when he reached the main road he could not see her in the hurrying crowds. He made a futile search of the surrounding streets for ten minutes, then realised it was hopeless. Trusting she had become calm enough to get herself home sensibly, he plodded back to his house. Before he went in he looked into his empty church, in case she was there. Gazing down the aisle towards the heavily decked altar, he became certain the answer to Flora’s condition could be found in her past. That’s it, he thought, that is the key. But could he convince her of this truth?
When Flora ran from Father Rawley’s house, turning left instead of right, she didn’t know if she was running, or escaping. Unknowingly, she went towards the river. She raced through mean, evil-smelling streets of small houses and small, scruffy shops until she arrived on the broad street by the waterfront.
On the grey water, ships and barges were going to and fro under a black sky. The air was clouded by sheeting rain. Flora, her coat drenched, her feet soaking in their light elegant boots, pulled up, breathless now, outside a pub. Inside, the gas lights had been lit and there was a noisy, jostling throng of sailors and warehousemen. There were few women. One or two elderly ones in drab coats and old boots sat in corners while at the bar was grouped a noisy band of six or seven women in low-cut dresses unsuitable for the weather or the time of day. Most had heavily made-up faces. Flora, looking in, dared not enter this place. A man with a sack over his head, carrying a bale wrapped in more sacking, bumped into her as he went through the door. On the pavement a sailor lurched towards her. He slowly took her in and raised his arm towards her, pointing, about to speak. He was plainly very drunk. She turned hastily into the pub thinking she would ask the proprietor for help. Once inside, on the bare boards of the floor, she stood stock still, not knowing what to do. The smell of stale beer, strong tobacco and unwashed bodies and clothing was horrible to her. Tall, healthy and well-dressed she knew she must look, and indeed felt like a creature from another continent.
Suddenly a wet arm came round her shoulders. There was a rough hand on her bare throat. The drunk sailor must have followed her inside. She jumped, then cried, ‘Go away! Go away!’ Heads turned at her cry. She advanced towards the watching faces at the bar. The prostitutes at the end set up a chorus: ‘Oh, things are improving round here’; ‘Looking for a job, darling?’ The barmaid, in tight black satin and long jet earrings, gazed at her. She opened her mouth, revealing a gap in front. Her cheeks were broken-veined, and her big blue eyes were very hard as she asked, ‘Can I help you with something, my dear?’ The women at the end of the bar went on cat-calling. A man shouted, ‘Come over here, darling. I’ll buy you a drink.’ At her shoulder now was a knot of young men, jostling. They were small and rank-smelling. Flora, glancing in terror at the big mirror behind the bar, saw herself, pale and frightened, surrounded by black figures with dirty faces. Then there was a tug at her bag, a pouch of leather on a thong at her wrist. Her eyes turned helplessly, from the hard face of the barmaid, to the men mobbing her and on to the painted women laughing.
Flora’s mouth was dry. There was a terrible singing in her head. The nose, the slack-mouthed whispered suggestions and the hot eyes of the young men, and the laughter seemed to grow louder. Someone began to play a fast tune on the tinny piano in one corner. The barmaid stared wordlessly at her, a slightly mocking expression on her face.
Then came a loud voice: ‘Cut it out, you lot.’ She heard a firm tread on the floorboards behind the bar, and a big man materialised beside the barmaid. To her he gave a savage look. To Flora he said, ‘This isn’t your kind of place, miss. Shouldn’t you be elsewhere?’
At first Flora could not speak. Then, ‘I’m lost,’ she found herself able to say. ‘Can you direct me? Can you get me a cab?’
‘Where’s home?’ he asked.
‘Bedford Square.’
There was a shout of laughter from one of the women, quickly quelled when the landlord’s eye lit on her. ‘I’ll send a man out for a cab,’ he said. ‘Will you sit down in the meanwhile?’
‘I’ll wait outside,’ she said.
‘Perhaps you’d better.’ He shouted for a boy to run and find a cab, then took her to the door. He left her, just inside, leaning faintly against the wall, sheltering from the rain.
The cab was not long in coming. She lay, breathless, against the upholstery, the smell still in her nostrils, the sounds of jeering laughter and whispered obscenities still in her ears. It was a part of the world she had been trained to ignore and avoid. She had never been in close contact with this ugly, brutal world, these people who seemed not to be human, as she understood humanity.
And yet – and yet – it had been worse than that. For in a blink of the eye, as she had dizzily and half-fainting stood at the bar mobbed by leering, laughing men, she had seen in the mirror behind the bar, leaning against the wall to her left, near a half-open door which revealed a flight of stairs, the young officer who had twice invaded her bedroom. There he stood in his khaki uniform, his face a pale oval against the old streaked green paint of the pub wall, regarding her calmly, perhaps with some pity, but certainly without any outrage about what was happening to her. He gave no indication that he was about to come to her assistance. But Flora had recognised him now. She knew who the young man was. In her cab she began to weep inconsolably.
At Bedford Square, seeing her condition, the cabbie hastened to the front door and rang the doorbell vigorously. He and Bradley supported her into the house. Then Beth Bennett put her straight to bed and called the family’s doctor. She sent a message to Justin’s barracks saying Flora would be unable to see him that night as planned. She had got drenched while out shopping, come h
ome with the symptoms of a cold and had taken to her bed in the hopes of preventing it from developing.
Having dispatched this note, Beth sat on at her writing table in an upstairs room overlooking the square. She was worried and not a little angry. Father Rawley would not have been surprised to know he was the object of her anger. She was indignant not only because Flora had got lost on her visit to him and ended up, apparently, in some low waterfront tavern. Her objections went deeper: she disliked Rawley’s Anglo-Catholic religiosity. She reflected that he probably believed virginity to be the highest state a man or woman could aspire to and was probably trying to turn Flora into some kind of Protestant nun – at any rate an old maid. She believed he was encourging Flora’s melancholy, and contributing to that withdrawn state which was causing both Bennetts secret anxiety. Small wonder, she thought, he had not even had the common sense to summon a cab for her, had let her rush about the worst part of London in the rain. ‘Really!’ Beth said indignantly, aloud. ‘Really!’ Well, godfather or not, Flora’s visits to St Anselm’s ought instantly to cease. She would talk to Geoffrey and was almost sure he would agree with her. Otherwise, she thought, the Kilmoynes would think they had a lunatic on their hands. ‘No more Father Rawley,’ Beth Bennett said to herself.
Twenty-One
Not long after lunch Father Rawley came to the house in his black cassock, under a big black umbrella. Beth decided to confront him straight away, although she would have preferred to speak to her husband first about the matter.
Once Rawley was seated by the fire, an incongruous figure in the large, well-furnished drawing room, he said, ‘I am relieved Flora is here, safe and sound.’
‘She returned,’ Beth told him. ‘As to safe and sound, she was wet through, very shaken, and I was obliged to call the doctor. I’m surprised you did not find a cab for her, or at least see her on to a bus when she left. And – I will be blunt – I wonder whether her frequent visits to you are not upsetting her. She is a recently engaged girl. Sometimes the thought of a coming wedding can be a little nerve-racking. It is almost to be expected. But that is not really a matter for the clergy.’
Miles and Flora Page 8
