Spare Brides

by Parks, Adele

‘But she’s asked for me?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’ A pause. ‘She’s gone.’

  ‘Gone out?’

  It sounded as though the girl was near to tears. ‘Please don’t have me sacked. I know I shouldn’t have read it, but I had a feeling.’

  Hiding her impatience, generated by mounting concern, Sarah said, ‘I’m terribly sorry, I have no idea what you are talking about. Do stay calm.’

  ‘She’s left the earl, ma’am, and she’s given me a note to tell him so.’

  The maid would not read the letter out to her over the phone – Sarah supposed she could understand that, and her sensibility and decorum was appreciated; loyalty and discretion were needed now more than ever – so a journey to ascertain the facts was necessary. Sarah immediately telephoned for a taxi; even waiting for Dickenson to send Lawrence’s chauffeur seemed too slow. She gave no thought to the expense; she simply had to be there.

  Sarah had qualms about reading the letter, too. Correspondence between husband and wife ought to be sacrosanct. But then Lydia had detonated the concept that there were things between husband and wife that ought to be revered. The envelope was a thick, creamy parchment; the feminine penmanship was neat and tidy. Sarah slid open the envelope. The words were careful, concerned. Lydia had retained enough humility to resist resorting to clichés or trying to explain how she felt about Edgar. She’d constrained herself, stuck to the bald facts. The determined and sparse note was perhaps all the more horrifying for it. She was pregnant with another man’s child. The marriage must end. She hoped he could forgive her.

  Sarah gasped. Poor Lawrence. How was she to deliver this note? She would not. It should not exist. In temper and panic she ripped the letter in half, then in quarters. Like a child she wanted the evidence out of the way, as though that somehow might obliterate the facts too. She thought of Molly hiding toffee wrappers in her pillowcase. She strode to the chimneypiece, but it was too hot for a fire. She looked about and found a heavy onyx cigarette lighter. She set alight the offending letter and envelope. She held it over the grate and watched the expensive creamy paper turn black and curl, then flake away to nothing. The heat of the secret scorched her fingertips and her hands were left sooty. She was just rubbing them together when Lawrence walked into the drawing room.

  ‘Sarah, how wonderful to see you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Are you cold?’ He clearly thought she’d been attempting to light a fire. Naturally he looked surprised; it was still seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit outside, even though it was nearly seven in the evening.

  ‘Not at all.’ She didn’t offer an explanation as to why she was poking around in the embers. She thought that in situations like these it was best not to elaborate.

  ‘Did you come here hoping to find Lydia?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Dickenson tells me she’s gone to London.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m not absolutely sure when she’s expected back.’ He looked apologetic.

  ‘No.’ Sarah didn’t know what to say. She’d burned the letter, but that wouldn’t be enough; it wouldn’t get Lydia to return. She needed to speak to Ava, who would know what to do; she’d bring Lydia back, because back she must come. Sarah suddenly felt nauseous. She didn’t like secrets. It had been enough having to live with the knowledge that Lydia was having an affair all these months, but this latest development had an urgency and desperation that Sarah couldn’t contain. This would blow up in their faces.

  Her eyes skimmed the room. She was looking for a way in to some small talk, but she found she couldn’t motivate her tongue because her mind was busy trying to conquer her internal disbelief. It was all as she’d expected. She knew the antique tapestries that hung on the walls, the books that lined countless shelves; she was familiar with the embroidered cushions and spreads, the panelled walls and grandfather clock. She glanced at Lawrence. Why would Lydia leave all of this?

  Lawrence was looking at the carpet. His hair was receding and the skin on his skull was a little pink; he’d been outside inspecting the fences most of the day. She thought he ought to always wear a hat. Suddenly she had an urge to caress the bald patch. Silly of her. The evening sunshine slid in through the window, past the nets, and splashed across the Asian rugs. The air was still, calm.

  ‘Would you like to stay for supper, since you’ve come all this way?’ He didn’t look hopeful.

  Sarah nodded eagerly and Lawrence beamed, relieved. ‘Gosh, that’s marvellous.’

  ‘I haven’t brought an appropriate dress.’

  ‘You look fine. Quite lovely.’

  Sarah didn’t understand it. Here she was in the middle of a distinctly horrible situation. A crisis. And yet. A small bubble of delight had popped in her stomach.

  He thought she looked fine, quite lovely.

  51

  A CHURCH BELL struck eleven just as Lydia disembarked from the train at Clarendale. She looked around the lonely station and wondered how she’d got there. The air was still, almost steamy; the warmth of the day rose from the concrete.

  ‘Are you all right, miss?’ The stationmaster called down the platform, his voice crackling through the blue-black air, disturbing a bird in the hedgerow; it was obvious he didn’t really want to rouse himself from his room.

  ‘Quite, thank you,’ she called, and then kept her head down. She didn’t want to be recognised; if he realised that she was the Countess of Clarendale he would probably want to telephone the house and have the chauffeur pick her up; at the very least he’d insist on telephoning for a cab. Lydia wanted to walk the three miles. Or to be accurate, it was the least offensive option out of the scant choices available to her. She certainly didn’t want to pass pleasantries with a driver and she shrivelled from the idea of having her return announced at the house. She put one foot in front of another.

  It made sense to walk. It was a warm night, the streets were safe, her bag wasn’t too heavy; her heart was breaking. With each step she told herself she was not returning to Lawrence, about that she was adamant. It perhaps might seem that way to an onlooker, but in fact she was checking whether Edgar was waiting for her at the house. There had been some mix-up. Had to have been. He’d be there. She was sure of it. There was a possibility that Dickenson had made a mistake when she’d sent the telegram. Instead of writing, I’ll meet you at yours, she might have wired, I’ll meet you at mine. Lydia would not allow herself to consider that they had never, ever made such an arrangement and if Edgar had received such a telegram he would have wired asking for clarity. Instead she told herself that the unfeasible, unlikely explanation was the answer. She was not returning to Lawrence. She was just walking. One step, and then the next.

  She walked alongside the dense, overgrown hedgerows, next to dapples of daisies and clumps of cowslip closed up tight against the night. She did not notice when long nettles reached out and whipped her ankles; she just tried not to slip into the roadside ditches. Her feet were blistered, the result of being squeezed into narrow heels all day and tramping aimlessly, pointlessly around the dusty London streets; her hand was sore where she’d sweatily clasped her suitcase, and her back ached. It was an indescribable throb that she couldn’t accurately attribute to anything other than her depressed state.

  She had not known what to do with herself when she left his lodgings. She’d thought perhaps he might be waiting in one of their usual meeting places, the V&A or the Savoy. She’d visited both and made enquiries at several more bars, but she had not found him.

  Now, she trudged through the village, dodging the tipsy men who had been kicked out of the pub and were stumbling about the streets; one moment all jovial and good-natured, the next at each other’s throats. They were all about the age that suggested they would have been sent to war. What were their experiences? she wondered. What had made them so wildly inconsistent?

  She had sat in the landlady’s front parlour for an hour and a half. Then the heat had begun to overpower her, and her
eyelids – ton weights – had fallen shut; she had jerked awake with the motion of her head tumbling forward on to her chest. The desire to lie down was tremendous. It was the pregnancy. Since the baby’s conception she had been floored with vast waves of the most profound fatigue; she couldn’t fight it. She thought of Edgar’s cool bed, upstairs in the attic room. She wanted to lie on the sheets that rarely smelt clean but always smelt of them, and inhale his scent; wait for him there. It was ridiculous that she, his lover, the mother-to-be of his child, was being pinned to a chair in a fusty lower-middle-class parlour. No longer prepared to accept it, she had wandered into the corridor, the one where just a couple of weeks ago she had made love to Edgar against the wall.

  ‘I’m going to wait for the sergeant major in his rooms,’ she called. She made her intention an unequivocal declaration rather than a request, deciding that asking permission was beneath her and, besides, unlikely to offer up the result she needed.

  ‘He hasn’t got any rooms.’ The landlady emerged from the gloom of the shadowy kitchen. Waddling, so as to keep her sweaty thighs from rubbing against one another.

  ‘I’ll wait upstairs.’ Lydia already had her foot on the third stair; she was holding the banister. The air was too hot and close for this wordplay. He didn’t have rooms as such. He had one room. Did the old witch of a landlady want her to say ‘bedroom’? Was that the point she was making? Would she gain some vicarious erotic charge by hearing Lydia admit as much? She was clearly enjoying Lydia’s discomfort.

  ‘He’s cleared off.’

  Lydia had paused, mid step, her foot waving helplessly and awkwardly in the air, missing the tread. She didn’t know whether to place it on the next step up, or the next step down.

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand.’ She heard the quiver in her own voice and hated herself for it. Her tone suggested she understood all too well.

  ‘Left yesterday. Although he was paid up to the end of the month. Fair and square about his money, I’ll say that for him. Although that’s all I can say.’

  The insinuation was far too clear, far too much. Lydia shot up the stairs, not believing the stupid, evil woman. She’d flung open his door, expecting to find him in all his glory. White shirt open and flowing, dark trousers held up with braces, bare feet and a big smile. Eyes that never took no for an answer. ‘Hello, Lid.’

  The attic room was deserted. Abandoned, empty. The landlady might have given every impression of being lazy, but she, or at least someone – perhaps Edgar himself – had worked efficiently to obliterate all traces of his existence. There was still a chair near the chimneypiece, but there was no tartan rug hung over the back of it. A clean green plate, saucer and cup, a knife and fork were piled neatly next to the deep stone sink, but there was no sign of the delicate yellow and gold cups and saucers, or the tiny silver spoons, the candlesticks or the gramophone. There were no books. The two splintered wooden chairs and the small table remained, but the dusty, yellowing newspapers had been removed. The bed had been stripped and the mattress lay, grubby and exposed; no signs of the love it had absorbed, the passion it had hosted. Lydia inadvertently shivered a little to think how they’d used it; it wasn’t clear to the nosy, lingering landlady whether her tremor was disgust at the meanness of it all, or desire. Lydia could smell rotting vegetables again, because there were no bunches of roses to mask the stench; there was no scent of heady, sweet loving.

  She could not misunderstand the barren wasteland.

  The cat appeared from nowhere and rubbed up against Lydia’s stockinged legs. He nuzzled his head into her calf with force. Lydia, desperate, was prepared to interpret his actions as affection rather than hunger. She bent down and petted obligingly, then scooped the cat up. She held it close. ‘You too? He left you too?’ she whispered.

  ‘Left in quite a hurry, did the officer. He said he’d come into a bit of unexpected money.’

  ‘May I have his forwarding address, please?’ Lydia tried to remain efficient and detached, but it was agony.

  ‘Didn’t leave none.’

  Lydia had begun to sway. She held the cat tightly to her, too tightly; it miaowed and struggled to be set down. She didn’t notice until it scratched her arm and then leapt from her, a mass of protest and anguish that she’d tried to domesticate it, if only for a few minutes. Her stomach churned; she felt a slackening in her jaw and anus. Everything seemed loose and detached.

  ‘Are you all right? You’ve gone a bit peculiar-looking.’ Lydia was certain that the landlady wasn’t genuinely concerned. She was enjoying the drama and was particularly happy that the victim was a well-to-do sort whom she’d no doubt judged as no better than she ought to be.

  ‘I need some water.’ Lydia staggered to the stone sink and turned the dripping tap. The water gushed into the green cup and on to her fingers; it splashed on her dress. No glasses, I’m afraid. His words came back to her, so vivid, so real that she turned with a jolt, expecting to see him. We managed with so little in the trenches, I got used to it. Besides, I don’t spend much time here. She stumbled to the bed and sat down on the browning mattress. She put her hand on it. Their sweat, their stickiness. And others’, too? Who? How many must there have been?

  ‘He can’t have gone.’ She coughed, trying to encourage her voice to have some conviction. She looked up at the landlady with defiance.

  ‘Well, this empty room says differently.’ The landlady remained at the open door. She clearly wanted Lydia to leave. Lydia could not. Instead she lay down and inhaled the thin mattress. Nothing. He wasn’t there. It smelt of dust. She let out a howl. The sound came from deep within her gut and her history. She pulled herself into a tight ball, fists clenched, knees tucked into her belly, head pulled into her chest. Like a foetus. Vulnerable. The howl reverberated around the frail walls of the house, out through the open windows and into the street. She wondered how far it would travel: at least to France; maybe further, maybe to the Baltic.

  With each step that Lydia took towards the great house of Clarendale, she remembered something Edgar had said to her; something inconsequential, like the fact that John Charles Robinson became curator of the V&A in 1853, or something enormous, like the fact that rats gorged themselves on human flesh until they lit up like lanterns. Worse than remembering what he’d said, she felt something he had done to her. The arousing scratch of his whiskers, the gentle touch of his fingertips, the important feeling of him inside her. That could not stop. It must not. Where was he? He’d crept so close, and then run away.

  Unwillingly she remembered that after lovemaking, when there was nothing and no one to dilute them – just the essence of them – he’d often closed his eyes. Avoided her, tried to shut her out. She’d always thought that, with time, she’d get him to give up that habit.

  Lydia hadn’t eaten all day, and she felt sick, woozy and disorientated. She didn’t know if it was shock and disappointment, or the baby. Oh, her baby. She put a defensive hand on her belly. How was she to protect this baby now? There had been a shift in her thoughts and focus regarding becoming a mother. Before Edgar, she’d believed that having a child was her duty. She’d longed for it in the way one might long for one’s horse to win on Derby Day. She had not felt a deep, unrestrained longing. She had needed a baby to alleviate the menacing, unsound but genuine fear that without one she was nothing. She had not anticipated any extreme intimacy with a child; she simply hadn’t wanted to be blamed for dashing Lawrence’s dreams and birthright. She looked back at the woman who had harboured these detached and clinical thoughts and didn’t recognise her; was almost repulsed by her.

  This baby was vitally important. More important than anything, certainly than herself. What she felt for it was tender, grand and enormous. This baby was everything. It was Edgar’s child.

  Where had he gone? Why would he go? It was madness. It was hell.

  She couldn’t face knocking at the grand entrance of Clarendale Hall. She knew she must look a fright. Her dress was streaked with perspir
ation and the day’s grime; her face was awash with mascara tears. She decided it would be simpler and more discreet if she simply sneaked around the back of the house. A patio door or a window was likely to be open. She knew how it would be. Net curtains, in folds like a gown, fluttering in the night breeze. An orange light flooding from the drawing room. Picture perfect; the jaws of hell. She would slip in and go to bed without being noticed. She could face Lawrence and the consequences of her note tomorrow.

  Her own distress was so virulent and raw that it didn’t cross her mind that Lawrence might be up late, perhaps agonising over her letter, the one that stated her intention of leaving him, starting a new life. Or perhaps he’d be drinking more whisky than was good for him, maybe sitting head in hands in the drawing room, lit only by candles. She certainly didn’t expect to see his shadowy figure move quickly from one side of the room to the other, darting towards Sarah, arms outstretched, to cradle her face in his hands and then draw her towards him in a passionate kiss. A kiss that went on and on.

  52

  SARAH COULD NOT sleep. Lawrence’s kiss, strong, engulfing and welcome, had left an imprint that robbed her of the ability or even the need to rest. The kiss, his kiss, had been quite unlike the disappointment on the dance floor with the stranger. Lawrence was not Arthur – no one ever could be – but his kiss did not seem like a compromise or a letdown. His firm and fine lips had fitted; they had not clumsily clashed teeth. His fingers framed her face tenderly and yet with a manly assurance that had thrilled. Sarah was awash with glee and excitement for moments at a time, until she remembered that Lawrence was a married man. He was married to her friend.

  Part of her was astonished to find that she immediately comforted herself with the fact that her friend had a lover and was expecting a child with that other man. It seemed so selfish to be thinking this way, but she couldn’t help herself. She wished she’d kept the letter. Yet she took some pleasure in the fact that Lawrence had kissed her not knowing his wife was abandoning him. He had kissed her because he wanted her.