Swan River

by David Reynolds

  On Saturday evening Old George broke his usual routine of retiring to bed at nine and, instead, sat up late and alone in the drawing room waiting for Sis to return. Around midnight Ernest returned from work, and they sat together drinking port. Their late-night vigil was to become a family legend.

  Ernest asked his father what Sis had worn for her big evening out. His younger son’s interest in clothes and the fripperies of life sometimes irritated old George, and when he was irritated his voice took on a low rumble, described by my father as like a small, smouldering volcano. On this occasion, concerned as he was for his daughter’s happiness, he rumbled like Mount Etna. He told Ernest that it didn’t matter what she was wearing, what mattered was her happiness and that it was time Stanley proposed; if he didn’t propose that night, there was something seriously wrong. A little later he relented and said that she had looked glorious, like Ernest’s mother departing for her honeymoon, and that she had been wearing something blue.

  At a quarter to one the two men heard the clop and rattle of a hansom cab stopping outside; a minute later Sis entered the room – wearing a red silk dress. Both men could tell immediately that she had been disappointed. She made a big effort, telling them how marvellous the play had been and how elegant Romano’s was; that the Prince of Wales had been there with a party that included Lillie Langtry; that the waiters wore grey uniforms with gold epaulets and spoke with Italian accents; that she and Stanley had a cosy table in a corner.

  She couldn’t go on. Ernest complimented her on her dress, but she broke into tears. Her father sat with her on the sofa, concerned and attentive. She said that Stanley had said nothing that mattered. In the end she had asked him about his future, had even dared to say ‘our future’. Stanley had said that he couldn’t decide anything then, that she must wait and trust him. Between her tears, she told her father that she did trust him, that she would wait. Then she kissed her father, embraced her brother and went upstairs to her room.

  When she had gone the two men sat in silence listening to her footsteps on the stairs; they heard the click of the latch on her bedroom door, her feet crossing the carpeted floor above them.

  Ernest told his father that they must do something, but Old George didn’t need to be told.

  Upstairs Sis undressed, put on her nightie, took down her hair and brushed it. Then, holding back the curtain she stood by the window and stared out at the palely lit street. She stood there, oblivious of the passing of time despite the repeated chiming of the grandfather clock in the hall below. She thought of nothing except Stanley saying, ‘Trust me.’ Slowly it came to her that from the moment he had said that, as they stood in the queue at the cab rank in the Strand, she had stopped trusting him. She hadn’t consciously lied to her father; she had been lying to herself. Looking out at the dark houses opposite, she found she couldn’t stop herself crying, deep, exhausting sobs that wouldn’t stop even when she lay down and put her head in her pillow.

  As the sky began to grow light, she found she could cry no more; she put on a housecoat and went downstairs to the WC on the landing outside her father’s room. She saw candlelight flickering beneath his door. On her way back she went in. He was lying in bed, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling with a single candle burning on the table beside him. He sat up when she entered; she sat beside him and told him that she had decided that she did not trust Stanley after all, and asked whether he agreed.

  He replied, ‘Perhaps,’ and told her to try not to worry and that he would investigate the next day. He hugged her and told her that she must sleep. She returned upstairs and spent the rest of the night writing angrily, but lucidly, in her journal.

  * * * * *

  Old George got up early and by 8.30 was walking along the Balls Pond Road towards Highbury Crescent and the home of his lawyer friend, Lew Johnson. Sis got up soon after her father went out, dressed quickly, left the house while her brothers still slept and hurried to Hackney Central station.

  Sitting by the window as the train lumbered from the city into the green fields around Dagenham, she thought once again about Stanley standing in the Strand telling her to trust him. She found she was shivering; her temples and upper lip were coated in a cold sweat; her hands tingled as if there were too much blood in her fingers, and the back of her head was throbbing. She hadn’t slept and she didn’t know what she would tell her Aunt Kate; she just knew she wanted to see her. She loved a man, a charming handsome man, but realised now that there was something wrong, that he seemed to have something to hide, a secret, something shameful. Yet, despite that certainty, she still loved him, wanted him.

  At the door she was greeted by Uncle Gibson, short, stout, kindly Uncle Gibson, whom usually she loved to see. Clearly the sight of her, her pallor, her red-rimmed eyes, alarmed him. When Kate appeared, Sis grasped her round the neck and sobbed the slow rhythmical gasps of the previous night, but this time there was no need to stop. The sensitive Gibson removed himself to his workshop, with his two-year-old daughter Kathleen.

  In the cosy Braintree kitchen Kate stood in front of Sis stroking her hair from her cheeks where it was stuck with tears. Sis told her about the theatre, Romano’s, the taxi rank in the Strand and the thoughts she had had during the night; Kate listened leaning forward in her chair with her hands on Sis’s knees.

  Privately, Kate suspected that Sis was right: that the man had a secret which would prevent marriage probably for ever, or at least in the short term. For Sis this was more than a suspicion. It was certainty and she wanted Kate to tell her that it was all right to love a man with a secret. Kate couldn’t do that; love had to be founded on total trust; there were no alternatives; all else was unthinkable. She said this gently but unequivocally over and over.

  But that day and the next Sis’s brain didn’t work as it had worked for twenty-two years; the values and safety mechanisms that she had learned as a child and had accepted for so long were suddenly of no use to her, discarded as worthless. That morning Sis was crazy. She said that she feared her father would forbid her to see Stanley and, through her tears, talked of eloping and living with him, unmarried if necessary. Kate quietly pointed to the pitfalls, the loss of self-respect, the loss of family, the loss of her life hitherto.

  They talked till near lunchtime, till little Kathleen refused to be parted from her mother any longer. They put her in her pram and walked out to Panfield Woods, familiar to Sis since childhood as her family’s favourite picnic place. There, with Kathleen running ahead of her, trying hard but failing to control a hoop that was too big for her, Sis relaxed just a little. She picked up her skirt and ran with her small cousin, told her the names of flowers, birds and trees, and carried her part of the way home on her shoulders.

  In the evening, Sis was pleased when Kate insisted on returning to Norfolk Road with her.

  When they arrived there was no one at home but Little Alice. Sis went to her room, washed and changed her clothes. Kate joined her and they brushed each other’s hair. First Kate fussed over Sis, unhurried and careful; when it was Sis’s turn she did her best to reciprocate. Hair in place, they lay side by side on the bed and Sis fell quickly to sleep with her head on her aunt’s shoulder. It was seven o’clock.

  Soon after eight Old George returned with his friend Lew Johnson. Kate heard their voices and, without waking Sis, got up and went downstairs. There her brother quickly told her his news. What they had all begun to suspect was true: Stanley was already married.

  Johnson described how they had gone to Guy’s Hospital, and to Stanley’s rooms in the Borough, and had eventually found him in a small house in a village called Elmer’s End, near Beckenham. The door had been opened by a pale woman, with a baby in her arms and a small child at her side. Stanley had come to the door when she called him but, when he had seen who they were, had tried to close the door on them. Old George had grabbed his arm, held him firmly and demanded to know if the woman was his wife and the children his children.

  Stanley had
stared at the ground and answered, ‘Yes.’ During the harangue that followed he had held his head in his hands. Old George had told him what decent people thought of married men who preyed on innocent young women and had the cheek to befriend their families, and had rasped his disgust at the way Stanley had deceived everyone, including his own wife and children. Stanley had spoken only once, mumbling, ‘I’m sorry. I love Sis.’ When the older man had sworn at him and threatened to break all his bones if he went near Sis again, Stanley had tried to jerk himself free – only to have his other arm pinioned by Johnson.

  When, eventually, Old George had no more to say, Lew had persuaded him to let go of Stanley and had led him away.

  Later, Sis came downstairs and heard the truth from her father and her aunt. She had no interest in any details. She murmured simply that this was what she had expected, left the room and returned to bed. Kate followed and spent the night with her niece lying in her arms moaning and shivering.

  * * * * *

  In the morning, over breakfast, Old George asked Kate and Young George to look after Sis while he went to his office to prepare for a holiday. He would take Sis to a friend’s house near Barnstaple in Devon the next day, and he hoped that Kate, and Gibson if he could get away, would join them. Straight away Kate said she would come.

  Young George, who had only just learned the truth about Stanley, dared to question the need for him to stay at home guarding his sister – he was already dressed for work in frock coat and starched collar, and was always fastidiously punctual at his office in London Wall. It was a foolish protest and provoked a deep rumble from Old George. His son sent a message to his ‘guvnor’, saying that owing to a family emergency he would not be able to come to work that day.

  At half past eight Sis came downstairs in full outdoor clothing, down to grey kid gloves and a stylish toque hat trimmed with grey ribbons. She took her coat from the hall hat-stand and made for the front door. Young George tried vainly to stop her, but couldn’t bring himself to use force. Kate ran after her down the street as far as the Norfolk Arms on the corner. Sis screamed at her to leave her alone. Her brother caught up, ignored her protests and walked behind her in silence to Hackney Downs station.

  As they stood on the platform Sis acted as though he wasn’t there and, when the train arrived, hit him in the chest and screeched at him to go away. George had to push his way on to the train past a well-meaning porter, who seemed to think he was molesting the smartly dressed young woman; that George was dressed in a frock coat without a hat, collar or tie may have added to the impression that he was some sort of madman.

  The train was packed with men on their way to the City – on a normal day George would have travelled the same route less than an hour earlier – and three or four of them leaped up to offer Sis a seat. She graciously accepted one by a window, leaving George standing in the crowded aisle. At the first stop, London Fields, as the train gathered speed to leave the station, Sis stood up, opened the door and jumped out. She caught her foot in the doorway and fell face down on the platform. George could do nothing – by the time he reached the door the train was moving too fast – but, craning from the window, he could see people standing over what appeared to be Sis’s inert body. At Cambridge Heath he jumped from the train before it had stopped, sprinted across the footbridge, boarded a waiting train and arrived back at London Fields a few minutes after leaving it. By then Sis had disappeared. George took a cab – to his father’s office in Shoreditch.

  Old George was angry, but only for a moment. At Hackney Downs Sis had bought a ticket to Liverpool Street which suggested to them both that she intended to get a bus from there across London Bridge to Guy’s Hospital. Old George borrowed a hat, collar and tie for his son and they set off by cab.

  Neither Sis nor Stanley had been seen at Guy’s Hospital or at the rooming house in the Borough. Father and son took another cab to the house in Elmer’s End, where they startled the pale woman whom Old George had seen the previous day. Stifling tears, she told them that a young woman had come to the door a little earlier and that Stanley had gone out with her, saying that he didn’t know when he would be back; she had no idea where they had gone.

  As they returned to the City by train, the two men discussed the possibility that Sis and Stanley had eloped, even though they could not legally marry. They imagined Sis travelling with Stanley to France, Scotland or Ireland and even considered that they might never see Sis again.

  Young George – now suitably dressed – went to his office, while his father spent the afternoon at Norfolk Road hoping that Sis would come home or send a message. From there he sent Little Alice with a note to Lew Johnson asking if the law could do anything to prevent Sis’s leaving the country.

  Johnson returned with Little Alice and explained that there was nothing to be done legally by anyone except Mrs Andrews, who could, if she could afford it, take steps to prevent Stanley from leaving the country until he had made proper provision for her upkeep and that of her children. But he felt that his old friend was being alarmist – a view shared by Kate; that, for her own reasons, Sis wanted to see Stanley, perhaps just one more time. The three of them could do nothing but wait.

  Young George came home, as usual, soon after six. A few minutes later Sis returned, tearful, angry and unwilling to talk to any of them. She had a raw graze on her cheek, but waved Kate away when she tried to look at it. She told Little Alice to bring her a basin of hot water and went to her room.

  * * * * *

  The next day, Tuesday, Sis allowed herself to be taken by her father and Kate to the house near Barnstaple. For many weeks she wrote almost nothing in her diary; the little she did write was angry and vituperative and directed at herself as much as at Stanley. Much of what happened at this time I learned from my father, who as a boy and an adult was close to everyone involved – in particular, he was to discuss these events many years later with his great aunt Kate, but only after Sis had given Kate permission to speak.

  Old George had often stayed at the house with friends; it was the second home of a wealthy London furniture manufacturer whose passion was fly-fishing. Spacious and easy to run – an obliging elderly woman with no teeth came in daily to help Kate – it was on a slope above a road, beyond which were fields at whose further edge ran a bottle-brown stream filled with trout, pike and gudgeon; across the stream dense woods rose steeply to the plateau of Exmoor.

  It was late September and their first days there were grey and chill. Sis did little but sob quietly or sit silently staring, her eyes roving but unfocused. On Wednesday Uncle Gibson, having closed his shop until further notice, arrived with little Kathleen. The adults, even Gibson who at first didn’t feel that it was his place, tried hard to engage Sis’s attention; she would reply in a polite, clipped voice to routine remarks but would look away in silence at any reference to her disappointment. Only the child, Kathleen, could break through. Her innocent admonitions – ‘Don’t cry Sis’, ‘Why are you sad, Sis?’ – produced a faint smile, a stroke of the hair, a cheerless hug.

  At first the party spent the time walking by the trout stream, and, with the exception of Sis, playing chess; she was a good chess-player but declined all offers of a game. And every other afternoon they all walked into Barnstaple to choose food at the High Street grocer. Old George seemed to have a lit pipe with him constantly, and took to taking Kathleen for walks. The child grew attached to him, forever asking for piggy-backs and to be taken to see the horses, a white mare and her near full-grown foal which shared a field above the house with a noisy donkey who made the child scream with laughter.

  Gibson had brought his work with him and set himself up with an angle-poise light in a conservatory overlooking the river, while Old George worked at designs for chimney glasses in an upstairs room with a northerly view towards Hartland Point. Kate spent her time with her child and made sure that she was with Sis if no one else was; the two women slept in a large room with twin beds, while the uncomplaining Gib
son shared a smaller adjoining room with his daughter.

  At least once a day Old George would ask Sis if she would like to return to London or go somewhere else. The answer was always ‘No’; it was ‘peaceful’ or ‘quiet’ there and she wanted to stay.

  * * * * *

  A week after their arrival the weather grew warmer, and on the second Saturday the two men went out early to spend the whole day fishing. Sis remained with Kate and Kathleen.

  In the warm kitchen, coaxed by Kate and with Kathleen playing around her, hugging her and resting her head in her lap when she cried, Sis gradually began to talk – slowly and incoherently, with snatches of information, angry displays of feelings, tears, opaque silences. She had her aunt’s total and devoted attention, as Kate struggled to understand and murmured her sympathy.

  Kate was standing by the range making a second pot of tea when Sis’s manner changed abruptly. Clearly and deliberately she said that she wanted to tell her all that had happened, to confess what she saw as the complete, shameful truth. With an intensity that Kate found alarming she demanded that her aunt swear on her daughter’s life to tell no one; she would tell her what had happened on the day before they came to Devon and on other days, but she had to be sure that her father, her brothers, Uncle Gibson, no one would know.

  When the oath had been solemnly recited, Sis spoke quickly: cursing her own weakness; damning Stanley to hell while repeatedly saying she still loved him; but more than him, continually damning herself. Speaking ever more rapidly, she told Kate that she had sometimes gone alone with Stanley to his room in the Borough. And, yes, she had slept with him. She would never have done that, had she known he was married; she had assumed that they would soon be married. She whispered that it had been perfect, but now seemed shabby and shaming. It was his fault; he had deceived her. But it was her fault too; there had been no coercion. They had been in love. They were in love.

  Kate was horrified, but was able to hide her shock because Sis barely looked at her as she spoke; she was speaking almost as if Kate was not there. And Sis kept talking. On the Monday, after she had escaped from George, she had gone to the house in the Borough and there she had learned from another doctor – a man she had met before – that Stanley’s other home was in Elmer’s End. The man didn’t know the address. She had got it from the local post-mistress, and had found Stanley with his children and his ‘thin, white-faced wife’. She spat these words, but it was clear to Kate that her venom was aimed at Stanley and not the innocents.