The Penmaker's Wife

by Steve Robinson

  They were staying at the Savoy hotel on the Strand, which had only opened its doors a few years earlier, in 1889. It made perfect sense to Angelica, as that was where the opera performance was being held, and she knew Effie would appreciate the en-suite bathrooms and the endless supply of hot water, not to mention the novelty of having electric lights and lifts, the Savoy being the first hotel in the city to boast such modern conveniences. Their adjoining rooms had windows facing the Thames, which Angelica had mixed feelings about. On one hand, it was a lovely aspect to look out from – the course of the river and the bridges below them, winding away to the east for as far as her eyes could see. On the other hand, like seeing the train station again after so many years, the river brought back memories she would sooner forget, however much she knew she now had to face them. All the while she was in London, they would not allow her a moment’s peace if she did not.

  ‘Angelica?’ Effie called to her from the doorway between their rooms. ‘Is everything all right?’

  Angelica turned away from the window, putting her memories aside for now. ‘I was just admiring the view,’ she said. ‘They really are lovely rooms, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes, it’s all rather lavish. The yellow and white decor, and the gilt details here and there make me forget it’s November. Shall we unpack, or would you like to eat something first?’

  ‘If you’d allowed me to bring a maid with us, we could have done both,’ Angelica said.

  Effie frowned. ‘But that would really have spoiled our fun, wouldn’t it? Perhaps the concierge can send someone up?’

  ‘No, I’m sure we can manage perfectly well,’ Angelica said, putting a hand to her head.

  ‘Are you sure you’re quite well?’ Effie asked, coming to her side. ‘You look a little pale. Did you catch a chill on the train?’

  Angelica’s complexion was indeed paler than usual, but it was not from a chill. It was on account of the creeping nausea she had felt since arriving back in the city she had fled. It was the last place in England she wanted to be, but she could not turn her back to it now. Still, if it caused her to pale, then it served her purpose. It would make it easier to do what she now had to do.

  ‘Perhaps I should sit down,’ she said, moving slowly towards the chaise at the foot of her bed. ‘I don’t know what’s come over me. I have a pain in my head and the most unpleasant feeling in my stomach.’

  Effie took on a serious expression. ‘Shall I call for a doctor?’

  ‘No, no. I expect I just need to sit down for a moment.’ She lowered herself on to the chaise. ‘It’s probably all the excitement.’

  ‘Yes, and you’ve certainly been through a lot lately,’ Effie said. ‘Perhaps now we’re away, it’s all catching up with you.’

  Angelica nodded. ‘That’s probably all it is. Could you please pass me a damp flannel?’

  Effie went to the washbasin and began to soak a flannel in cold water. She wrung it out, and by the time she returned with it, Angelica was lying down with her eyes closed. She felt the cool flannel against her forehead and began to question whether she could really be so cruel to Effie, who had always been so kind and so loving towards her. She had known no other love or friendship like it. But if there was to be any hope of their friendship continuing, what choice did she have? Effie would surely not wish to know her one day longer if Jack Hardy succeeded in exposing her lies.

  ‘Would you be more comfortable on the bed?’ Effie asked, lifting the flannel away.

  Angelica slowly opened her eyes, and as she looked into Effie’s she told herself that she would go through with this for Effie’s sake – for the love they shared – knowing it was better to be parted for one afternoon than for the rest of their lives if she did not. She nodded and sat up, and Effie helped her around to the side of the bed. Angelica practically fell on to it, as if all her strength had suddenly drained from her.

  ‘Angelica!’

  ‘I’m all right,’ Angelica replied, though her voice sounded weak.

  ‘You’re not, Angelica. Look at you. You can barely hold your head up. I’m fetching a doctor.’

  Angelica quickly found the strength to grab Effie’s arm as she made to leave her side. ‘No, really. I’ll be fine by this evening, I’m sure. I just need to rest. Please don’t call for a doctor.’

  It was then that the reality of the situation seemed to dawn on Effie. ‘I don’t suppose you’re well enough to go to the opera, are you?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Effie,’ Angelica said, closing her eyes again so she didn’t have to see the disappointment on her friend’s face. ‘I really don’t think I am.’

  ‘Then I shan’t go either,’ Effie said. ‘I’ll stay here and look after you.’

  Angelica had anticipated this. ‘That would only make me feel worse. You love the opera. You must go, or I shall never be able to forgive myself.’

  ‘But I don’t want to go without you.’

  ‘There will be other operas, Effie,’ Angelica said, ‘and we shall see them all together, I promise, but you must see this one without me. I’m sure I shall feel much better when you return. We’ll have a wonderful evening together.’ Angelica opened her eyes and looked up at Effie. She found her hand and held it, squeezing it weakly. ‘Please say you’ll go. This was for you, after all. It would make me happy to know you had not missed it on my account.’

  Effie sighed as the hint of a smile creased her lips, but it was not a happy smile, born more of reluctant acceptance than pleasure. ‘Very well,’ she said, ‘but only to make you happy.’

  Angelica smiled back at her, and then her eyelids began to flutter. ‘Good. Now let me rest, and when you return you can tell me all about it.’

  ‘I will,’ Effie said. She stood up and went to their adjoining doorway. ‘I’d better get ready then,’ she added. ‘I’ll look in on you before I go.’

  Effie closed the door, and Angelica could do no more than lie there with her thoughts while she waited for Effie to leave for the theatre. She was anxious to go to the address she knew Hardy would be heading for, if she was right about his reasons for being in London, but she had to be patient. Hardy also had to check in to his hotel first, and to her knowledge he did not know London well, and neither did he know the precise whereabouts of the address in question. He would have to enquire as to where it was, and he would then have to find it, so she had a little time.

  She began to wonder whether anyone from her old neighbourhood would recognise her after so long – Angelica Wren née Chastain, the woman who had supposedly drowned with her son in the Thames. For the most part, she doubted it, but she would have to be careful. There was one man in particular who most definitely would recognise her if he ever saw her again, and under no circumstances could she afford to let that happen.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The house Angelica had gone to stood beside a crooked old barber shop on Bull Lane, Stepney, in East London. It had never been a very nice house to look at, and from where she was now standing, on the opposite side of the street, trying her best to blend into the shadows, she could see that time had done nothing to improve it. If anything, it was even more dilapidated than it had been when she was last there. The dark green paint was peeling from the window frames, and most of the windows themselves were cracked and filthy with grime. Its poor condition, however, did not stand out; it looked just like every other house on Bull Lane. This was not somewhere Angelica wished to live ever again.

  It was cold in the shadows. The lane was narrow, which made the wind that periodically howled along it all the more ferocious. She raised the collar of her coat and pulled her fur-lined hat further down over her ears to meet it, until she could barely see out from beneath the brim. She thought that no bad thing. Should anyone who had once known her see her standing there with her back to the wall, as if waiting for someone, they would not be able to see enough of her face to draw any recognition.

  That much no longer worried her. Now she worried that she had a
rrived too late. Had Jack Hardy already been and gone? It was a possibility. She had been forced to stay in her room at the Savoy longer than she had hoped to, because of Effie’s insistence on looking in on her before she went to the opera. Had Hardy already heard what he had come to London to hear? Perhaps he was still inside the house now, talking to the man from her nightmares while she stood out in the cold, powerless to stop him. The notion worried her. It worried her a great deal, because she knew the only way she could find out whether Hardy was there was to knock and see if anyone was home.

  But what if he was home?

  Angelica could not bring herself to knock and find out. After all, she could be wrong about everything. Hardy may very well have come to London for other reasons. He might not know about this house at all, and in knocking she risked the chance of coming face-to-face with her past. She would have succeeded in doing Hardy’s work for him by bringing her world tumbling down around her. There was still a chance, however, that Hardy had learned of this address but had not yet arrived, so she decided to wait.

  The lane was relatively quiet given its proximity to the High Street. A group of children in need of a wash and a meal were sitting in the gutter further along, no doubt crafting some new mischief with which to occupy themselves. Someone had not long left the barbershop, and while several people had passed her since her arrival, there was not so much activity that Hardy’s approach could be missed. She would see him coming in plenty of time, and if he were already inside the house, then she would see him leave, and would know without a doubt that he was leaving with every means to destroy her.

  As it was, Angelica did not have to wait very long.

  No more than five minutes had passed when the door to the house she was watching opened and a young, blonde woman with a pale complexion and a small baby wrapped in her arms stepped out and began tapping dirt from a dustpan into the street. Angelica did not recognise her. She wondered who she was and how she came to be living there. Had the man from her nightmares taken up with this woman, or had he moved on? There was only one way to find out. A quick glance to her left and then to her right told Angelica that Jack Hardy was nowhere to be seen, although she still could not be sure that he was not already inside the house. A horse and cart carrying beer barrels was approaching along the street, but she did not wait for it to pass before crossing. She stepped out from the shadows at a pace.

  ‘Excuse me!’ she called when she was halfway across.

  The young woman had stepped back inside the house and had almost closed the door. She opened it again and looked Angelica up and down with a bemused expression, as if wondering what such a finely dressed woman was doing on her doorstep.

  ‘I’m sorry to trouble you,’ Angelica said, glancing along the street again. ‘I’m looking for a Mr Wren. I was told he lived here.’

  The baby in the young woman’s arms began to cry, prompting the woman to bounce the child in her arms. She shook her head. ‘Not no more, he don’t. We took over the rent from him two years ago.’

  ‘He moved away? Do you know where he went?’

  ‘I should say I do, and I’ll tell you the same thing I told the gentleman what called before you. He’s moved up the West End with his wife and daughter – that’s what my Jimmy said.’

  ‘His wife?’

  Angelica had not considered that he might have remarried, but why not? She had apparently drowned in the Thames, after all, leaving him legally free to marry again.

  ‘That’s right,’ the woman answered. ‘Got a fancy shop in Regent Street now, they have. What’s all this interest in Mr Wren about, anyway?’

  Angelica barely heard the question, her mind suddenly focused on questions of her own. ‘How long ago did the gentleman you just mentioned call?’

  ‘Only half an hour or so, and before you ask, I’ll tell you what I told him. I don’t exactly know the number of the shop in Regent Street, just that he makes and sells leather stuff – cases and whatnot.’

  Angelica already knew his business. She had not lied to Effie when she told her that it had been his obsession, to the detriment of everything and everyone around him. It was true that he had never made any more money at it than to pay the rent while she had been living there. A roof over their heads was all he needed to be able to fashion his fine leather cases, his head full of fancy dreams, while their bellies were as empty as their coal buckets. She had suffered because of him, only turning to prostitution behind his back so that William would not, mixing with all the wrong kinds of people – brutal people like Reggie Price and Tom Blanchard. William’s father, Jonathan Wren, was not dead, as she had told everyone. The man from her nightmares, her first husband, was still very much alive.

  Angelica did not thank the woman for her help. She simply turned and walked briskly away, desperate to get to Regent Street, to stop Jack Hardy from proving that her life was a lie – that she was a bigamist with no legal right to have married Stanley Hampton. The repercussions, should the truth be known, were unthinkable.

  The hansom cab Angelica was quick to hire sped across London at a bone-jarring pace, weaving between the other carriages, carts and omnibuses, which at times made the main thoroughfares so congested that other routes had to be sought. She had told the driver that haste was of the utmost importance, a matter of life or death, and perhaps for her it was, or at the very least the death of the life she had become accustomed to. She had offered to pay four times the usual fare if they arrived in Regent Street in good time.

  ‘Slowly now!’ she called to the driver as they left Piccadilly Circus, not that he had much choice as the area was so busy.

  Regent Street, regarded as the centre of fashion, was a long, crescent-shaped road lined with shops selling all manner of niche items to the more discerning customer. Rather than look for the case-maker’s shop on foot, jostling with the Saturday-afternoon shoppers and the many street vendors and advertisement conveyancers, Angelica thought it would be quicker to look for it in the cab, but even that was not easy, especially as her view was often blocked by one of the many double-deck omnibuses going the other way. The combined noise of so many people and horses was deafening, and she quickly found herself wishing she were back in Edgbaston with this unwelcome part of her old life behind her once and for all.

  The afternoon was still bright enough to warrant the many awnings that extended out over the pavement on one side of the street, making it difficult from her elevated position to see the shop windows fully, and all but impossible to read the signs painted on the fascias above them. Thankfully, though, every awning that was out had its business, or the name of the proprietor, emblazoned on it. But which one was it? Angelica’s neck began to ache from continually looking to her left one minute and then to her right, turning back and forth as the cab made its slow progress, and all the while she feared she was too late to prevent Hardy from making the discovery she knew would destroy her. She was a bigamist, after all. If Hardy could prove as much then it would nullify her marriage to Stanley Hampton. What then of Stanley’s estate? What then for William? It upset her to think that her son could be left with nothing after all she had done, but it was the thought of William discovering her lies that scared her the most.

  It absolutely terrified her.

  They were about a third of the way along the crescent, heading in the direction of Oxford Street, when she thought she saw what she was looking for. She caught her breath and rose out of her seat to better see it, and now there was no mistake. One of the shops to her left had the name ‘J. Wren’ written in gold lettering above the window. It was on the shaded side of the street where no awnings were out, although an omnibus carrying advertisements for Hudson’s soap had stopped adjacent to it, preventing her from being able to read anything more.

  ‘Stop here!’ she called to the driver, thumping her hand against the roof. ‘Pull over across the street there, by that large awning where it says London Stereoscopic Company.’ She did not wish to stop right outside Wren�
��s shop in case he saw her, and she thought the shade from the awning would provide good cover.

  The cab slowed further, waiting for another that was travelling in the opposite direction before crossing to the other side of the road. Once it had passed, the driver pulled up outside the photographic studio Angelica had indicated. The driver smiled toothily as Angelica handed him his generous fare, then as he pulled out into the traffic again, she stood back beneath the shade of the awning to take a better look at the shop across the street. The omnibus had moved on by now. There was no doubt that she had found the right place.

  ‘J. Wren. Case-maker. Purveyor of fine leather goods,’ she said under her breath as she read the sign in full.

  She stepped closer, almost to the edge of the pavement, so that her view was not hindered by all the people coming and going on the pavement in front of her. She had no fear of anyone but her husband or Jack Hardy recognising her in such a fine area of London as this, but it was still no use. Through the gaps between the horses and the carriages, the bicycles and the pedestrians on the other side of the street, she could make out the shapes of the many leather cases in the display window, but little more. She quickly realised she was too distant to see inside the shaded shop and would have to move closer.

  Angelica crossed the street with great apprehension, all the while looking out for Hardy. When she arrived outside the shop, she stood with her head bowed low, feigning interest in a silver saddle flask and case that was sitting on top of a long gun case with heavy brass locks. She waited a moment, taking everything in, thinking that her husband’s workmanship really was very fine, and a part of her was glad to see that his dreams had come to fruition at last. It had simply taken far too long to do so for her.