by Bianca Bloom
I touched his face, hoping that he would hold me again, but he only kissed my hand and began to speak.
“My sister wishes to see you,” he said. “Of course, I told her about seeing you at the opera. She had despaired of ever seeing you again, much as I had, and Alice, she wished to be remembered to you right away. Indeed, I quite forgot, though I think the omission is forgivable enough,” he said, running a hand over my body. “You will drive me to distraction.”
In that moment, I froze, wondering whether I could believe him. Of course he had wished to say something of his sister, but was that only because he wished to remind me of my place — my place as a former governess?
Misinterpreting my silence, he began to speak of our wedding long ago. “That night after we married was the best of my life,” he said, and I looked on him with sadness.
“It was the best of mine, at least then,” I told him, though that was not strictly the truth. It was the best night I had ever passed, or likely would ever pass.
“I thought that we should never be able to get out of bed,” he said, and the open sweetness of his face made me want to hit him.
Recalling those days made me bitter in an instant. It was as if our whole encounter had been a piece of sweetened fruit, and the memory of our wedding night had been a handful of salt that Mr. Barlow had thrown onto it, ruining all of the sweetness.
“Well,” I told him, “I am more than able to get out of a bed now.”
And I was. I was also able to dress easily, even when a man was staring at me.
“Please,” he told me. “Will you not hear me out, dearest Alice?”
When he said my name, I felt the same shudder of delight that I had felt the night before. But it was soon mixed with anger. The day that I left, he had hardly been able to bring himself to use my name, much less call me “Mrs. Barlow.” And by sending me away, he had lost all the interim years that could have been spent with me. And with our child. The talk of Lillian was nonsense, for he could have included me in his family many years ago, if that had been his true wish.
“You are an engaged man,” I told him. “I prefer to seek out only married men and widowers. I shan’t protest your annulment, and you are more than free to marry Miss Gadson as soon as you wish.”
Before he could say anything else, I had walked out of the hotel and down to the center of the city as fast as my legs would carry me.
42
I hardly knew where I walked. When I went to Beechen Cliff, thinking to enjoy the view, I saw only the children and thought of holidays past when I had walked on the same path. It had been delightful, the company of my taciturn mother and my rather too clever daughter. Luke Barlow’s daughter, in fact. He might show all sorts of cares for my physical form when it suited him, but he had been gone when I was heavy with child, or when I cried that I did not produce enough milk to feed the constantly hungry baby.
Those first years of her life, we had not come to Bath. We had hardly been able to keep ourselves well in London, let alone to afford a little holiday.
“Look!” said one of the little girls on the shore to another, their faces both pink where their bonnets were being blown back. “My flower is a violet!”
“That’s not a violet, darling,” said the girl’s grandmother without rancor. I passed the party, as I was more concerned with walking quickly than with actually looking at the beauty around me.
For the first time since I had married, I felt the fragile little box into which I had placed my life beginning to crumble. The part of my mind that adeptly added figures and performed business calculations was still perfectly well, and that little bit of my mind rejoiced that Luke Barlow would be able to obtain the right to marry again without any interference from me. It mean that I could leave Bath right away, and that no part of my usual life needed to change.
And yet, everything had changed. I had taken pride in my ability to find men only when I needed them, and on my own terms. My lovers had been unable to hurt me, as our time together was clipped and not at all romantic. For years, I had reasoned that this would suit me perfectly. And since I never believed I would see Luke Barlow, I never thought that I would have to resist him, even though some part of me believed that if I did see him I might be able to at least give him a decent tongue-lashing.
The clouds drew together over the shore, and I thought with a perverse delight that at least they were able to mirror what was in my heart. The violence of the waves made me shiver, and I walked the streets again, careful that anyone looking for me would not know me. With care, I might escape Luke Barlow forever. If he found me, I did not know whether I would strike him or scream.
It was better that he never find me, and I walked so many of the streets that I thought I would have little chance of meeting me. Finally, when my knees were weak and my breath was heaving, I thought to find a place where I might rest. But if I stopped, I might go mad, and so I changed my mind and resolved to keep walking.
After several minutes of pained steps, I was forced to change my mind yet again. I had always had a keen ear for hearing rain start in the distance, and I knew that in another instant I should be soaked. So I headed into the Exhibition Rooms, opening my purse without a thought for the price. At least I would be able to escape the company of children, and perhaps see paintings that confirmed my grim view of the whole world.
There was one painting that I thought might confirm that view with particular poignancy. It was a scene mostly of the sea, with the smallest little boat appearing just left of the center. The poor vessel was all closed in by the turmoil in the waves, and it looked as though it would surely be swallowed by the nearest swell. As I was gazing at the lonely thing, barricaded as it was by waves, I felt that no fog would ever be lifted from me. Though my return to London was inevitable, I might well spend every single day there in sorrow.
Grabbing angrily at a handkerchief, I moved into a different room. I was meant to stay angry, not to give in to sorrow. I could feel the sorrow in me, though, playing like some sort of desolate and pounding pianoforte. If I could only stay angry, I knew, I would be able to keep it at bay for some time.
Anger, though, does not make one into a very discerning art critic. I scarcely saw anything there until the nameless man approached me.
“I hope the evening finds you well,” he said.
“Quite well,” I said to him, not sure how to respond. My cheeks were not red, so preoccupied was I with trying to find my place in the world.
But as soon as he stepped within my line of sight, I quite lost the thread of my thoughts. He looked sun-warmed and eager, yet he spoke so low that I could scare hear him.
“One of the attendants will come into this room in a moment,” he said. “He shall address you as Mrs. Wilson. You are to follow him.”
Then he walked out, and I wondered if the whole thing might, perhaps, be a grand joke. After all, even if an attendant did come in, I might not wish to follow. The man was treating me as if I were privy to his little schemes, and I did not think I would like to follow an attendant all the way to another cheap inn.
But the man who came in seemed so decisive that I did not know how to refuse. “Mrs. Wilson,” said the young man, his expression prim.
When he turned on his heel, I followed him.
43
We went up a steep staircase, around a corner, and into a room that held various paintings and sculptures, all of them covered with heavy canvas.
The room also contained the nameless stranger who had summoned me. He was pacing about quickly, and unless I was much mistaken his hand had strayed to his fall, only to be removed when I walked in with the attendant.
“Thank you, Simpson,” the man said.
“Very well, sir,” said the young man, who was either named Simpson or in on the same sort of deceptive scheme that I was. Whatever the young person’s true name, he left quickly.
I thought of following him. There was no reason for me to be there. My husband had
material enough to free himself from our marriage, and if I had been very lucky, perhaps I was not going to be returning with some horrid disease.
The man, however, had thought of this. Scarcely were we alone in the storage room than he brought out another French letter, and I gasped with horror and delight.
“Not here, surely,” I said, forgetting myself as I looked at him with large eyes.
“Yes,” he said. “For I cannot linger. I must rejoin my party, and you must surely have another engagement.”
I was silent as I looked at him. He backed me toward the wall, and I could feel all of his body on me. His hair was a darker red, as no light seemed to be coming through the curtains, but I could see that his face was also burning with desire. And when he pushed his body onto mine, I cried out with the beauty of it. His stature may have been about equal to mine, but his strength was far greater, and it was a strength that he certainly wished to use for his own purposes.
“Quickly,” I whispered, and he raised my skirts. Before I even saw him put the little paper on, I felt its familiar chafing against my skin as the man hoisted me up, pressing my back against the wall and burying his face in my bosom.
Our grunts and moans were like a sort of concerto. I knew that the gallery was not far away, and I had no idea what sort of servants might be passing near us. Once, I thought I heard a bump and the sound of slapping from outside the door, but before I could say a word about it the randy man quickened his pace and I was scarcely able to breathe. Also, feeling the French letter sliding about within me, I had no great faith that this method would continue to work, given the slick and unpredictable nature of the act.
But still, my squeaks grew louder as my lover pushed me against the wall. It was different from anything I had ever known. With Mr. Barlow, even that very day, the act had been imbued with feelings of mutual regard and a shared past, however short. With Mr. Wharton, there was never any hurry or any fear of discovery. But I felt quite wicked when I considered that the nameless man’s wife might well find us out if we did not hurry.
I bounced along with him, clutching furiously at his back, and realizing with some surprise that, even without the aid of my fingers, my body was feeling quite ready to disintegrate.
And come my death did, at the very instance that the stranger cried out, his face twisted so far that he bit my hair. No matter how many women he had enjoyed in that very room, or in other illicit locations in Bath and elsewhere, that event must have shocked him as much as it did me. For when he lowered me to the ground, he stayed inside me, and we simply stared at each other for a few moments.
I know not how he disposed of the evidence of our congress, but he did it quickly, and he had walked out the door before I was even recalled to myself. With no glass in the room, I was forced to guess at my looks, attempting to twist all of my stray hairs back into their right places. Even if I had been absolutely capable of looking as if I had just been done up by ten ladies’ maids, nothing would have altered the awkwardness I felt when I passed the servant who had shown us into the room in the hallway. If I was not mistaken, his cheeks were red as he passed me, and I realized with great horror that he might have talked the older man into giving him the privilege of listening at the door.
44
When I returned home, I was so chastened from my licentious stay in Bath that I hardly remembered the day of the week. My mother said that the shop was “fine” and that she and Viviana were “well,” so I did not know what to make of anything.
Fortunately, my little girl was able to tell me what her grandmother could not. She went into great detail about how Mr. Camp had tried to sell granny some milk that had gone off, and how he had also gotten into the strange habit of handing about disjointed political literature for all of his customers to read. She told me that the middle daughter of Mrs. Biddle, our neighbor, was marrying a sailor and meant to travel.
The biggest news that my daughter had to share involved her hat designs. She had one with a great swath of velvet, cut and shaped to make it into something slightly resembling a feather, sticking nearly straight up from the hat itself. Another had so many feathers that it looked rather like a deceased bird.
“I’m not sure it is a wise idea to put these in the shop, Vivi,” I told her, holding another hat with great puffs of lace on it.
She smiled at me. “You’re always just talking of the money in it, mama.”
“Darling, much of what goes into a business is money.”
This earned me only a sigh from my daughter. “Yes, but how are you ever to make more money if you have no interesting notions?”
I decided to end the discussion. “You’d do better to finish your Latin.”
Viviana only twirled about the room. “Mama, I am sick of Latin. You must recall how dull it is.”
I went looking for her books, talking to her over my shoulder. “Yes, but it will serve you well as an educated young woman.”
“I do not see how. You never use it yourself.”
“As a governess I did.”
This stopped her for a moment. “Mama, you were a governess?”
I rubbed at my temples. “Yes. Well, not exactly. I advertised my services as a governess, but I ended up starting the shop instead.”
It was not exactly a lie. After all, I had been in the business of being a governess for only three years before my disastrous marriage and Viviana’s birth. I had been a hat shop proprietress for far longer, and the Latin had been useful enough there. I could impress customers, or understand what they were saying when they spoke to each other in Latin or French, trying to be clever while making silly remarks about the quality of my hats not being high enough to justify the prices.
“So you were never actually a governess in any homes?”
I sighed. “Viviana, I will try one of the hats.”
She smiled, but I held up a finger. “Only if you make all the copies of it yourself. I know that you do not like to sew, so consider if you will want to make several more of these hats.”
At this she only smiled. “I love sewing, mama. It’s just that I find the work you always give me rather dull, and so you think I don’t like to sew at all.”
“Dull? That is the very work that keeps us fed.”
“Mama, I know. But beautiful hats like mine will feed our minds.”
Feed our minds, indeed. Sometimes I wondered what in heaven was happening in my daughter’s mind, and how it might veer even farther from mine as she neared womanhood.
45
To my surprise, Viviana’s hat ended up looking much better than I had anticipated. It was bold, daring, and a much brighter purple than I would have chosen, but I had to admit that there were many ladies I knew who might look very well in it.
One young lady seemed particularly interested, though as soon as her papa saw the hat he frowned and shook his head.
“You cannot think of buying that, Virginia,” he said to her. He was tall and thin, and wore clothing that was so finely made that it seemed ostentatious, even for one of my customers. His hair was thin, and he bared his teeth in a way that reminded me strongly of a wolf.
“Indeed,” said a taller young lady who accompanied them, and whose green dress was much bolder than young Virginia’s white muslin. “What we should be talking about is how to help the wounded from Peterborough, not spending money on hats.”
“The wounded?!” said the older man. “What you fail to see, my young niece, is that it is precisely hats like this that you young women must avoid. The fashion today is to be as ridiculous as possible, with nothing of the decorum that befits a young lady or a gentleman. If we did not have fashions like this, those ‘wounded’ of which you are speaking would have known their place, not gone out and caused all kind of havoc.”
“You’re saying that this purple hat has something to do with the massacre at Peterloo?” said the young woman in green, wrinkling her nose. “Uncle, please be serious. One tinge of purple and you think that the whole co
untry is going to the dogs.”
“I said no such thing,” he snapped. “Although when young people think it fit to riot in the streets, rather than respecting traditions they know little of, you may be sure that we all ought to be concerned about the direction of our country.”
“And when those same young people are butchered by the army,” said the young woman, “We must all be doubly concerned.”
“Please, cousin Kitty,” said the other young woman, speaking for the first time and looking up at the tall woman. “We must take care not to upset papa.”
The woman in the green dress shook her head, and though she turned so that I could only see the back of her, I surmised that her eyebrows continued to perform much of the work, animating her face as she refused to let the issue go. Indeed, she was like a dog with a bone, just as I might have been. “People out of work, and dead, and starving? I agree, we oughtn’t to upset anyone. There is great hazard in it.”
Though part of me still wished the woman might do me the great favor of purchasing some item, I could no longer resent her. And the man, who had been so insistent on purchasing a great many hats, suddenly seemed like my enemy.
“Please, my dear niece,” he said. “I realize that this men’s world must seem rather brutal to you. But you mustn’t believe that you understand it. After all, it is quite outside your experience, and your education, of course.”
“That is because you and my father have seen that nothing of any import dare enter my education. What I have learned of the massacre, I have learned myself in between dancing lessons and sessions with our Latin tutor. I do not see the use that Latin will have to anyone, least of all myself,” she breathed.
With a twinge of guilt, I thought of my daughter and her Latin verbs. Perhaps I had been neglecting some part of her education, favoring respectability over substance. I should have to remedy this immediately. Vivi was always asking me about broadsheets that she saw, and I realized with some shame that I rarely took the trouble of discussing them with her.
