Fragile Blossoms

by Dodie Hamilton

  ‘It’s not a case of prefer, loving a woman just doesn’t come into it.’

  ‘There you are then. I don’t know why you feel that way, a bugger I mean, it’s beyond my understanding. But I don’t see you forced to it. More likely what you saw and heard as a child helped make up your mind. To love someone, man or woman, to want to hold and kiss them is natural. My mother says love begets love. She says nothing about hate begetting love. Perhaps I don’t know the world for what it is but I do know Freddie Carrington and you are not a brute. I think it best for your peace of mind you regard your passion for men as natural and not the result of a crazy mind.’

  ‘You said we were crazy, me and Evie.’

  ‘And so you are! You’re spoilt brats throwing your toys about but you don’t rape children, Freddie, and your sister doesn’t set fire to kittens. You’ve been abused, the abuse shows, but it doesn’t make you a pansy. You love men and want to make love to them. Don’t make it more of a curse than it is.’

  Freddie wiped his nose on his sleeve. ‘I want to make love to you, Luke Roberts, and have from the moment we met. Do you know that?’

  ‘Yes I do know but that’s not who I am. Right now I am too weary to do anything but sleep. So move over!’ He lay down beside Freddie.’ Accept it for what it is and for Christ’s sake let us both get some rest.’

  Early next morning they called in at the Lord Nelson. Luke was hoping to catch the express to London but needed to talk with Nan.

  ‘What d’you mean you were supposed to stay at the Swan?’ said Nan.

  ‘We were booked in last night. It was closer to Long Melford for Lady Carrington and her party.’

  ‘Lady Carrington and party!’ Nan blew out her lips. ‘Don’t you mean Lady Carrington and her seducing rogue of a brother and their plumber hanger-on, her ladyship’s bit of rough?’

  ‘If by bit of rough you’re referring to me, mother, I didn’t stay at the Swan. I slept at my own place last night. And if by seducing rogue you’re meaning the Honourable Freddie I beg you to remember he’s but a couple of walls away. Keep your voice down! I wouldn’t want him to hear you refer to him so.’

  ‘Why when by all accounts I’d be telling the truth. There’s talk about him and poor Susan Dudley, how he did the dirty deed and then abandoned her.’

  ‘There’s always talk in Bakers End. They talk sooner than live. Dear suffering Christ! Is this how it’s going to be all my life?’ Luke stretched his hands up to the ceiling. ‘How long must I endure this place?’

  Nan slapped him, and then drew back her hand and slapped him again. ‘Don’t you dare use language like that in my house! I don’t know what you’re used to in London but you’ll not take the Lord’s Name in vain in the Nelson, not while I draw breath. You may be my son and think you’re entitled to come and go as you please but let me tell you this is my house, mine and Albert’s, and while you are in it you’ll treat it and us with respect. This house has served you well as have I your mother. We deserve no less.’

  ‘No more you do.’ Luke pulled his mother close. ‘I’m sorry. That was wrong of me. I’ve had a bad couple of days. I’ve learned things about myself I didn’t like and it’s shaken me. I’ve lost my way, Nan, and I need to get back, not that that is any excuse for being a poor son. You deserve better.’

  ‘No!’ Nan kissed him. ‘You’re a good son, the best. You’ve always been here for me and Albert, always good and true. But you’re right. You have lost your way.’

  ‘Yes and as soon as I’m done here I’m bent on getting it back. I need the loan of the Snug for a couple of hours. Freddie needs to speak with Julianna. I did think to bring him to her cottage but know it a bad idea. I needed a place where they wouldn’t be interrupted and where Julianna would be among friends. That is here, isn’t it, Nan, among friends?’

  ‘It is!’ Nan sniffed away tears. ‘You’re among friends and if need be, you trying to help him, the Carrington lad is welcome. Have you spoken with Anna?’

  ‘I sent a note and received a reply saying she’ll wait Freddie’s invitation. The way he is cut to pieces I’m not sure it will help either. But I can’t override his needs. I put on the note to come if he calls, if he doesn’t to hold back.’

  ‘That’s an odd message.’

  ‘Maybe but her reply suggests she understands. She writes she’ll be home after the morning service. He need only send a note and she’ll come.’

  ‘Well I think that pretty big of her considering what she’s had to put up with. If it were me I’d have sent him packing.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it. I’d like to stay, Ma, but as you know, Albert already being there, we have the hotel in Harrogate to fix. I am expected first thing Monday. I need to get back to London and pack.’

  ‘Pack? What does that mean?’

  ‘Move out.’

  ‘Out of London?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘For good?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What happens then? Shall you come back to Bakers?’

  ‘ I have the house on the Common. I could stay there. It depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Freddie was sitting in the window seat staring out into road.

  Luke came through. ‘Everything alright?’

  ‘As it can be.’

  ‘Did you order breakfast?’

  ‘I’ve ordered. Whether I’ll be able to eat is another thing.’

  ‘Just take your time. There’s no rush. You have my keys. Once you’ve seen Julianna, if you see her, you can go back to the house and see if light off the Common is as good as you thought. I’m for the nine o clock express. I’ll pass on your messages to Jamieson.’

  ‘It’s good of you. I need him to bring me a couple of things.’

  ‘There’s always the telephone? You could speak to the house direct.’

  ‘Yes and Evie on the other end.’

  ‘You’ll have to face her sooner or later as will I.’

  ‘Later will do, indeed much later.’

  ‘Shall you call on Julianna?’

  Freddie shrugged. ‘Probably not. She’s carried enough of the burden. I must heft my own baggage.’

  ‘Good decision. I’d best be buzzing. I’m to be in Harrogate by Monday. I need to sort things with Evie and hopefully clear the air.’

  Freddie got to his feet and fists curled deep in his pocket stared out of the window. ‘And what about you and me? Do we need to clear the air?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘I don’t know. I thought there might be things to say.’

  Luke thrust into his greatcoat. ‘Need we say anything, Freddie? Some things are best left unsaid, that way we don’t learn to regret them.’

  ‘Do you regret last night?’

  ‘I don’t but neither would I want to repeat it. ‘Luke picked up his bag. ‘We know how things stand between us. We know who we are and what we are. I doubt either of us will change.’ He offered his hand. ‘I wish you well.’

  Freddie shook his hand. ‘And I you.’

  Luke gone the room was suddenly small and cramped. Eight in the morning and Freddie dressed and out, it’s a miracle. Usually he’s abed until at least ten of the clock. It’s cold in this room and empty.

  ‘We are what we are. I doubt either of us will change.’

  They talked so long into the night they hardly slept. Freddie went over his nightmares and how he regretted Bella’s death. Luke made little comment only to say perhaps he needs to face up to who he is and stop running.

  In his heart Freddie doesn’t believe his love of men was forced upon him. He worships male flesh, loves the touch, the lean muscle and structure of the body. Women are softness and uncertain smells. They go in where a man goes out and they wobble. A man’s body has a scent of its own. A woman’s scent is
of need and emotion. It is highly charged, explosive, and likely to go off at any moment. A man doesn’t do that, or rather Luke Roberts doesn’t.

  Freddie is in love with Luke. He knows when it happened. It was in the cellar in the Lord Nelson over a bottle of Madeira. Head thrown back and throat exposed Luke was laughing, Freddie in that moment was a vampire mentally sinking his teeth into flesh and sucking until the body bled dry.

  Man at a Window is the official title of Freddie’s new work; Fallen Angel Challenging God is the subtitle. It shows Luke brooding in a half light, head turned, the long planes of his back and buttocks relaxed, his right hand square on the windowsill and his left cupping his genitals.

  ‘You know I painted you nude,’ Freddie had said lying alongside him, his head on Luke’s chest listening to the steady unaffected tolling of a heart.

  ‘I heard.’

  ‘I suppose Evie told you.’

  ‘She mentioned it.’

  ‘And it doesn’t worry you?’

  ‘It’s done isn’t it and up before the Hanging Committee?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Then it’s too late to worry.’

  ‘And this?’ Freddie had lipped Luke’s chest, breathing him in, the scent of olive trees in the rain and wet dog. ‘Does this not worry you?’

  Stomach hard and sentiment equally so Luke didn’t move, neither smile nor frown. ‘Do you want me to worry?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I shan’t.’

  ‘This was just the one time, wasn’t it, one night and one moment?’

  ‘Hardly a night, Freddie. Like St Peter we heard the cock crow three times and never slept an hour. As for the moment and the quantity, that’s up to you.’

  Up to you! Those words! They so filled Freddie with desire that he had taken the moment again. He took what he could while he could. Some caresses were allowed others not, the arm pushing Freddie away close to a fist.

  How it happened he doesn’t know. All was a jumble of sight and sound. He was weeping and scared, a child again perched on a footstool. He knew that Luke drew him into his arms as a mother might comfort a child. Exhausted then Freddie had slept. When he woke it was to find the man he adored beside him. It was easy them to kiss and stroke and to move down that long body with intent. That Luke continued to lie quiet might have been a gift or token of forgiveness. It was left for the receiver to decide.

  Twenty One

  A Sinner

  ‘So you are going?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Luke is leaving. Evie sat in the window seat arms about her knees watching. As with every day that follows a bite of the Black Dog she’s exhausted, an empty shell sucked dry of feeling. There’s nothing she can do to fill the gap, no pills to swallow and no magical spell to lose the blues. A last resort is laudanum but that causes her to sleep when she shouldn’t and wake when she’d sooner sleep. All that’s left is to sit in the window and try not to mind the sunlight making a concertina of her mouth.

  Wrinkles in one’s forties are inevitable. Perhaps she should smile more. Sidney maintained smiles exercise muscles. A jolly man inclined to wobble about the knees he would tug her hand. ‘Come on, Evie, forty-three muscles to frown and seventeen to smile? You could never resist a bargain.’

  What a good man Sid was and what a beast she was to him. Every day of their marriage he gave her comfort and wealth. She gave him tantrums and an aborted child. A Quaker, a descendent he claimed of the Boston Martyrs, Sidney Bevington-Smythe rolled into her life August of ‘74, at St James’ Palace, the Ambassador’s Ball, and the inauguration of Edward Thornton, Minister to the United States. Already in his late fifties Sidney claimed the first waltz and by the end of the evening the hand in marriage of society beauty Lady Evelyn Carrington, daughter of Sir George and Lady Iphigenia Carrington. 1882, victim of a brain seizure, Sidney rolled out of Evie’s life into the Pacific Ocean, his earthly remains sewn into an oilskin shroud at one with the seas he loved to sail. Foulmouthed but kind and so fabulously wealthy when asked how his fortune was made he said his money thrives as do roses fed with horse shit, his particular brand of compost ‘shat by the Iron Horses that hourly gallop the American Mid-Western plains.’

  Sidney was shrewd. Recognising despair in his young wife and a world full of carpet-baggers who couldn’t wait to get their hands on her ass and his cash he secured his railroad stock in gilt-edged bonds in a deal so tight that though gone almost twenty years his roses continue to thrive. He left a note with his millions: ‘When it comes to Property Acts I’m at one with Charles Dickens’ Beadle, the Law is an Ass. You’re young and beautiful and you’ll make mistakes. I’ll leave you wealthy, Evie, but I’ll not leave you dangerous. ’

  Luke Roberts was a mistake, not a fiscal mistake so much as a cultural and spiritual mismatch. Evie with her flyaway temper and desire to die and him with his stiff-necked pride they don’t meld.

  Look at him now his back rigid packing things into a battered holdall! Last summer she bought him a crocodile skin bag from Libertys. He doesn’t use it. Same with the silver-backed hair brushes and pearl handle letter-opener. For the good they do they might have stayed in Garrard’s along with the monogrammed cufflinks. The cufflinks were an Easter gift and arrived on the breakfast tray with champagne and smoked salmon. He opened the box, ‘EBC is your monogram?’ When she nodded he’d bared his elegant arse. ‘I think you’ll find a brand is meant to go there. Upper left cheek, in quick and out quicker is the way to do it.’ Evie had laughed and slapped his arse. He laughed with her but didn’t wear the cufflinks. Occasion demanding he wears plain gold, a coming of age gift from his mother. When asked why he said, ‘I’m comfortable with my own things. I don’t mind them getting bashed about.’

  Bashed about is what he does with her pride. His refusal to bend to her will rankles but not nearly as much as he, arrogant male, might imagine.

  Evie stares out of the window. It is a beautiful day cold yet bright and clear, a day for catching up on acquaintance and for purchasing shirts for Freddie in Jermyn Street, and then perhaps an after lunch stroll through the Gallery. The Hanging Committee accepted Man at the Window. It is a fine work reflecting Freddie’s talent. Evie is delighted for him but also afraid. It’s not artistic criticism she fears, it is Queensbury and his mob currently baying for homosexual blood on the corner of every Soho alley. ‘I blame Oscar Wilde!’ said Hugh Fitzwilliam. ‘Him and his bloody poetry! Had he lived his life sooner than written about it the world would be a happier place.’

  Godfather viewed the painting weeks ago when it was still on the easel, Evie smuggled him up the back stairs to the studio. Hugh’s eyebrows flew into his hair. ‘Talk about a coming of age! If society didn’t know him of the Greek love they know now.’ For an hour or more he stared and then threw up his hands. ‘So what? Does anyone in this hideous world care what pot we piss in! It’s a game of chance whoever’s in your bed. Let him offer it. With a bit of luck he’ll kill the painting before the painting kills him.’

  Now it is hanging and without fuss. In company of other canvasses, particularly the French School of slack flesh and gluttonous derriere, Freddie’s nude is refined. It’s when you take time to query the stance at the window the languorous lips and the hand on the genitals, covering and covetous, that you see the other male, the artist, equally nude watching.

  A fuss with respect of Freddie’s habits occurred recently at Long Melford. Afraid for him, the Black Dog chewing her heel, and jealous of Julianna, Evie flew into one of her rages, the consequence of which, like the Walls of Jericho, is now falling about her. Madame Leonora hasn’t been in communication. No one has. Leonora probably feels a gate placed between them. Of Julianna nothing is heard and nothing expected; she left that night head high and heart intact. Sunday Freddie caught the ferry for Montparnasse and the Sargent family, his usual bolt hole. Luke prepares to go, and in all truth Evie, the adju
dged villain of the piece, wishes them all to go to hell!

  For God’s sake she did her best! Thirty years she’s agonised over Freddie, the past and his foibles. A magnet for rogues and hangers-on he’s always in trouble. Throughout school years it was she who paid off the sharks that would have cut him to pieces. Later at Cambridge it was she who settled the Chancellor when a student was abused and Freddie about to be sent down. He swore he knew nothing of the incident, that it was a Cambridge Don that did the deed and not he. More disposed to do violence to his self than others Evie believed him but it was another stain on his character.

  Every year there was trouble culminating in Bella and this crucible of fire.

  Evie turned to Luke. ‘When are you coming back?’

  ‘I doubt I shall.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I reckon not.’

  ‘Oh well, it is as it is. You gave me fair warning. You said if I were to hurt her you’d leave and as we all know you are a man of your word.’

  ‘I’m not going because of Julianna.’

  ‘Then why are you?’

  ‘I think it best for both of us.’

  ‘Je m’en fiche!’ She shrugged. ‘It’s all the same to me.’

  Head down so damned sure of himself and his ideals he blocks all attempts at reconciliation and packs the leavings of his brief sortie here in Russell Square. He’s been this way since Italy and the spat in the Borghese. Some spat, a month on and he still bears a scar on his shoulder. She shouldn’t have bitten him but he drove her wild with his suburban pride and civilised behaviour.

  Strange how men can think they’re kind when they are cruel. Some acts of cruelty are visible like a bruise on the jaw or teeth marks in flesh, others not so obvious but as hurtful like the averted profile and the stony look, Luke is master at that. He leaves for them both. To be sure he doesn’t put up a fight. The bag he packs is metaphor of the man high quality and tough as old boots.