by Vanessa Tait
They went through the first five letters of the alphabet, trying to find them. After that Rebecca read aloud from the article, pointing out the letters whenever she came to them.
‘The Edinburgh Seven Petition the University. It is a particular feature of our modern age that our female friends now take up cudgels and clamour to be allowed into the hallowed precinct so long belonging only to men. In our city of Edinburgh, seven women are knocking on the door of our university and …’ Look, there is an a, see how it sounds, ah, as in hallowed.’
‘You mean to say that it has two different sounds? A and ah?’
‘Oh dear! I think I am not teaching it right. One is the sound of the letter, the other of the letter when it is in a word. Let us stick to finding the letters for today, shall we?
‘Seven women are knocking on the door of our university and, demanding entrance, for the study of medicine. We beg to point out to our readers—’
‘There is an a,’ said Jenny, pointing to demanding. ‘I see it! And there, and there. For so long it has all just been scrawls on a page, or a shop front, I have not been able to find anything in it, but look, an a!’ She put her fingertips to her chin in a steeple and grinned.
‘Good, now can you find a b here? Have a look, I will read: ‘We point out to our readers that these women represent the first women of all Mankind to beg matriculation at a University. Soon will come a time perhaps when our species ought more properly to be known as Womankind, if our elders will not faint dead away!’
‘Imagine that!’ said Jenny. ‘Women learning to be doctors. Do you think it right?’
‘It would be like visiting Africa, or somewhere else where everyone is different. But I think women might want other women to attend them if they are ill.’ Rebecca’s doctor had been almost deaf, his ears blocked up with sprouting hairs. Her mother had made her visit him during her menses, because she had fainted. He had made her strip naked, to see if her womb was distended.
‘Can you find a b?’ she said.
‘Is that it, there?’
‘Beg. Quite right, bravo! B has this sound: buh.’
‘There are the Pyramids,’ said Jenny, pointing to a photograph halfway down the page. ‘I love stories about Egypt. Will you read that one?’
‘Egypt!’ Rebecca shifted uneasily. ‘Are you sure? It may be very dull.’
‘Oh no, I love the sphinxes, ever since I was a child. Won’t you read it?’
Rebecca swallowed. ‘Very well then. The long labour of the Suez Canal is almost at an end, carried on in spite of Great Britain’s laudable objections to the working conditions of the Muslim Lascars, which has been found to be deplorable. Look, another b.’
‘There is a b, and a c in that word. What does it say?’
‘Forced.’ Rebecca found her hand was shaking.
‘But where is the sound of kuh?’ asked Jenny.
‘Well, the c has a kuh sound and a suh sound. I’m afraid I am not doing very well for you, Jenny! It is hard to remember the rules when I learned them so long ago.’
‘But you are, Mrs Palmer. I am so grateful to you. Look now, I can see the shape that is an a, and a b, and a c. ’Tis like, I don’t know, panning for gold in sand. Will you read on?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Rebecca put her hand on her chest to rub away the anxiety. She could not let the girl down, when she had promised to teach her to read.
‘Even the infidel ought not be expected to carry extortionate loads of rocks on their backs in the burning sun all day. Thousands have already died under the execrable circumstances of forced labour, which was little more than slavery. Though Britain has put an end to this practice, sanctioned by the French, many more men are expected to die before the canal is finished.’
Rebecca put down the paper. If her hands shook any more she would crumple the sheets and Alexander would discover her. ‘No sphinxes, I am afraid, and I find myself tired, all of a sudden! We can continue tomorrow if you like, for I am glad to teach you.’
Jenny blushed. ‘Of course, madam. I don’t wish to put you to trouble. Would you like help with your gown?’
The maid stripped her mistress of her gown and her petticoats and her corset and her chemise, until Rebecca was as bare as a twig. She shivered and put her arms over her breasts.
‘Thank you, Jenny, just put my nightgown on the bed there and I will get into it.’
Even now, in summer, the sheets had a chill to them if there was no fire in the room. She was trembling only down to the chill, only that.
Rebecca had thought that by marrying Alexander she would be a house with a room in the middle of it that would be locked. She had hoped that if the room were locked for long enough she would forget it was even there, and not miss it. That would, she thought, be a fair price to trade for a dark space shut up in the centre of her. But if she was trembling over a foolish little newspaper article, perhaps she had not guarded it well enough.
Rebecca had expected to sleep the night through, because of her exhaustion, but some hours later – in the middle of the night, it seemed – her eyes flew open. It took her a few moments to understand that someone was in the room with her. She sat up, bunching the bedclothes in her fist. His skin was dark, she could only make out the hollows of his eyes and cheeks.
He had come back at last!
No, no, not him, of course not. She rubbed her eyes.
Her husband. Breathing through his mouth. He had come back, yes – only from the pharmacy, and from Eva. Her heart, jolted awake, started to beat against her chest and she put her hand to it, like a woman surprised, in a painting.
But would he smell of Eva, taste of her? Or had Eva thwarted him in some way, that he was now coming to her?
‘What time is it?’
‘It is late.’
It was too dark to see the hands of her clock. But the darkness had paled now that Rebecca’s eyes had been open for a moment. Through the gap in the curtains she could see the sky lined with light, as if drawn over with a pen with silver ink in its nib.
‘I do not know the time, Rebecca, why do you ask?’ Alexander sat down on her bed and pulled at his shoes. He got one off and it dropped to the floor with an animal thump.
‘Where have you been?’ she asked.
‘At the pharmacy, and then with John Badcock.’
‘For all this time?’ She hated the querulous tone her voice had taken on.
But he was struggling with his buttons, and did not hear it. ‘We were toasting our success. Help me, would you?’ He sat back heavily on his hands.
Surely if he had gone to Eva he would not now be coming to her! Not a man of nearly forty. She turned to him and unfastened his top coat. The night air still clung to his hair. Now that she had taken off his coat she could feel his chest under it, not big but unyielding, and she faltered then, her breath catching in her throat.
He was her husband, after all, and one that many women would die for.
Alexander went to lay his coat on the back of the chair. Now he turned to his jacket, which he managed himself, and his collar, and his waistcoat, and laid them all on top. The back of the chair, in the half-light, looked like a pair of ribs which, the further Alexander disrobed, grew more and more like a living thing, watching them both.
At last he stood there in his pulled-up socks, his undergarments and his vest. He sat down heavily on her bed, chaffing the skin of her thigh with his weight. She wriggled away awkwardly to the other side of the mattress, though she could not get far, it was quite narrow and bounced her towards him, as he fell back.
Now, though, as they lay there side by side, their ribs rising and falling, Rebecca’s mind jumped about. A snatch of the song that the band had played, how the sun had glanced off the puddles. The china shepherdess on the shelf at the foot of the bed had no sheep. She had not seen any sheep in the china department.
Without turning over, her husband placed his hand on her breast. His fingertips pressed against her ribcage and the palm of his
hand put pressure on her nipple through the thin fabric of her nightgown.
Rebecca ought to have bought some sheep! The pretty little shepherdess twisted her head back under her bonnet as if she were looking for them.
Alexander let go of her breast, propped himself up on his elbow and started to pull the bedclothes down in a series of jerks.
‘Shall I?’ said Rebecca, also propping herself up and trying to help him. The blankets had been tucked in too tight. But he shook his head, and with a final pull he threw them all the way down past Rebecca’s feet.
The air was chilly. She longed to be back under her bedclothes. But her white voluminous gown was revealed now in the brightening morning, like some giant grub. Her feet, at least, were self-composed, the toes of each of them companionably angled towards each other. They almost seemed not to belong to her. The cream Jenny had brought had eased the redness, which was as well, because Alexander was touching them, squeezing her instep as he had done her breast. He still wore his vest, as bright in the dimness as the hair that curled out from under his arms was dark. He bent forward and put his lips to the middle of her feet, and then his teeth, biting into them as if into a ripe pear.
Rebecca gasped. Alexander ran his hands up her ankles, circling the bone with his fingers. Then he pushed her nightgown up her legs, his fingers palpating her thighs, moving inwards, moving and rubbing, circling and dabbing, his breath coming faster.
Rebecca closed her eyes, the strangeness of air circulating between her legs made her think of being outside. She was lying on the lawn, she knew by the way it curled out from the house that it was Gabe’s lawn, with her legs exposed. Pray God their mothers would not see them! Fingers were touching her thighs and stroking and at each touch pleasure sprung upwards to tug at her between her legs.
Rebecca sighed and turned towards him. She wished he would kiss her. She reached her hand to the back of his neck and tried to guide his face across to hers. She pressed the length of her body against his body, feeling, below the crush of her nightgown, the bones of his legs against her own and the hardness of him poking into the soft skin of her stomach. She began to move against him, to rub at the ache that was growing between her legs. She wanted to pull him into her, and he wanted the same thing—
Alexander stiffened. Had he spent already, into his drawers? But there was no sound, no grunt of release or embarrassment, no wetness against her nightgown.
Rebecca kissed his cheek, trying again to bring his mouth to hers. But he arched away. Rebecca stopped moving and opened her eyes, searching for his face, but could not find it.
Alexander detached his hands, rolled his shoulder under him and sat up.
‘What is it, my love?’ she said. ‘Did I do something wrong?’
His back, held straight, radiated displeasure.
‘Will you come back?’ she said, more falteringly.
He turned to look at her then. His face was determinedly impassive, but something at the corners of his mouth suggested disgust. ‘You ought not to be so eager.’
Her stomach fell. She pushed the nightgown down.
‘It is not right – in a wife.’
‘But I thought …’ she stammered out. ‘I did not know. I am sorry! Won’t you come back and I will be different? I can be, I think. I can be whatever you would like!’ And she really thought, in that moment, that she could.
But all he said was: ‘It is too late.’
Rebecca wrapped her arms around herself, feeling the air cooling on her skin. Alexander was already retreating into the dimness, merging with the shadows. He only stopped to pick up the clothes from the chair, piece by piece, until the ribs of its back were revealed once again and she was alone.
CHAPTER 3
By the time Alexander returned home, around the middle of the morning, Jenny had already been up for six hours. She had polished two pairs of his shoes to a high shine, so that if Alexander chose, as he sometimes did, to hold them up beneath the chandelier before going out, their points could be clearly seen in the toes. It was hard going, the kind of work that would usually fall to a manservant, but the Palmers had none. Her knuckles were ribboned with cuts.
Then she had set to work cleaning the ceiling rose in the parlour, first with bread to remove the grease, and then with soap and water. After that she had scrubbed out the soot from inside the gas lamps, and then – well, at eleven o’clock she was sitting before the fire in the kitchen drinking a mug of tea.
She heard Alexander say, out in the hall: ‘I need a new shirt. Call Jenny.’
‘Yes, husband, let us change it,’ said Rebecca. ‘Did you stain it in the laboratory?’
‘Lionel left the chemicals out, when I have asked him over and over to clear them each night. But never mind that. Where is Jenny?’
Jenny paled and set down her mug and went out into the hall. ‘May I talk to you, Mrs Palmer?’ she whispered.
‘What?’ said Alexander. ‘I cannot ask for a shirt in this house without whispering?’
Jenny’s hand fiddled with the frill of her cap. ‘There are no more clean shirts! Mr Palmer is wearing the last one.’
Now Rebecca paled too. ‘The last one?’
By the time Jenny had come to use the goose iron on Mr Palmer’s shirt her arms were worn-out. She had heated the iron on the stove in the kitchen but by the time she had stretched out the shirt on the ironing board it had gone cold. So she gripped it by the neck with a stab of homesickness, wishing she were with a real goose, back on mother’s farm, not a goose iron, and set it by the fire to warm.
But now when Jenny came to press the shirt flat, instead of the snowy whiteness she was expecting, the iron had created a path of muck in its wake – she had forgotten she must never heat the iron by the fire – it was caked with soot.
She had rushed to the sink to put a scrubbing brush to the shirt, but nothing would shift it. Jenny had not had the time yesterday to put any other shirts in the tub and washboard because Mrs Bunclarke had called her in to help tear the feathers from a pheasant.
‘Speak up, won’t you? I am waiting for a simple thing, merely a clean shirt! No use whispering it all to my wife,’ said Alexander, beginning to undo the buttons of his waistcoat.
Jenny tried to stammer out her explanation. But as she spoke Alexander grew still. As still as stone, or a rock.
‘So am I to expect that there is no clean shirt in the house? Nothing for me to wear?’
‘No, I am sorry, sir!’
‘And what, do you think, I should do then?’ He took a step closer to the girl. ‘If I go back into the pharmacy like this it will look very bad. It will look as if I cannot control my household, and leading from that, as if I cannot control my shop. This is your fault.’ He turned on Rebecca. ‘Since you are the person who employed her. You ought to have known she was no good.’
‘She is good!’ said Rebecca, looking over at Jenny. ‘She is a good girl and a good worker and I don’t see how she can be blamed—’
Alexander’s fists clenched and unclenched. ‘Jenny is clumsy, with no experience whatsoever. She has ruined our dining-room table.’
‘What?’
‘There is a stain there, the shape of the Isle of Skye. Wine, I presume. It has taken off the varnish. I look at it every time I sit down to eat.’
‘I am sure I did it myself. Yes – I remember I did, with the wine, yesterday evening, when you did not come home. Could you not have worn an apron?’
‘Oh, do you now tell me what to do, woman? In front of the servant girl?’ Rebecca shrank away, even though the flight of stairs where it unspooled into the hallway separated them. ‘Do you know that I only wear an apron upstairs in the laboratory, and not when I am downstairs in the pharmacy? Do you know that? Ach, to be surrounded by women! I ought to have stayed a bachelor. You can go, you stupid girl, get out of my sight.’
Jenny turned on her heel and ran to the back of the house, the palm of her hand pressed over her face.
Rebecca’s he
ad was pulsing with pain. She longed to lie down in her bed. ‘I am sorry, Alexander,’ she began. ‘I know how you insist upon order—’
‘You put it as if it is a preference of mine, when the world would not have got as far as it has without organization. Rational thought. Though of course those are masculine attributes. Females lack such order, which is why I now have to go to work in a soiled shirt.’
Two gilt mirrors hung on opposite walls of the hall, Rebecca had thought them pretty. Now she could see the back of Alexander’s head, with its full head of hair, multiplying itself into infinity.
She turned away then to go upstairs, though her heart was so full it made her whole body heavy and the front of her slippers dragged against the stairs as she went up. She had not reached the top when she heard the front door bang in a way that gave Alexander’s wrath full expression – one of the lighter oil paintings leapt on its hook like a struggling fish – and Rebecca felt a corresponding hurt shoot up the side of her cheek.
In that first moment of pain she had the impression that the slam of the door had caused it, that an arrow of air had shot straight into her face. Rebecca grabbed onto her cheek and sank down where she was standing, her knees striking the Turkey rug. But the pain in her face kept going, it was not an arrow, it was something from her. She bent forwards, letting her forehead touch her lap.
The pain. It was all up and down one side of her now. A high scream forced itself out of the back of her mouth that sounded, even to her own shocked ears, like an animal caught in a snare.
She could not tell where the pain ended and she began. Her nerves had been hit by lightning. One side of her body was on fire with it.
Alexander must have come back in, for now he was crouching somewhere near her ear. ‘What has happened?’
‘The pain!’ she said.
‘Where is it?’
But, as suddenly as it had come, the pain withdrew, leaving a tenderness in Rebecca’s cheek, a tingling along her side. Only her kneecaps throbbed. ‘I am recovered, I think. It has withdrawn. Ring for Jenny.’
