by Brandy Purdy
We both believed that games of chance were the most fascinating, exciting thing in the world; nothing surpassed the thrill that took possession of us when we played, not even the passion we found together in bed. We reveled in Lady Luck’s fickle and flighty embrace, constantly trying to coax, court, and woo her. She was aloof and cool one moment, passionate and all-embracing the next. Beautiful and pitiless, sometimes she hurt us, but we always came back for more. Many years later, when Lady Luck had long since spurned and turned her back on me, I would see a most delightful film, full of dancing, fun, farce, and mistaken identities, The Gay Divorcee, in which the debonair Fred Astaire loftily spoke the words “Chance is the Fool’s name for Fate.” I wish those words had come to me in those heady, halcyon days with Jim; I would have embroidered them on samplers to deck the walls and handkerchiefs for both of us, and even on the hems of my petticoats, they so perfectly expressed how we felt.
On our last day in Paris Jim woke me with a kiss, then hurried me into the frothy white muslin frock with the pearl buttons and straw hat he had laid out for me. He took me back to Versailles, to picnic at the Petit Trianon. We fed the swans and golden carp bits of bread and cake and lay back in each other’s arms, filled with contentment, lazy as two cats who had supped their fill on cream, and kissed and dreamed. Life could not have been more perfect or exquisite!
Then came Florence, Rome, and Venice. The Grand Canal, like a picture on a postcard: a starless black night lit by torches. A golden-haired girl in a golden gown and a shawl of beaded black lace. Black plumes in the rich gleaming coils of her high-piled hair. A mask twirled idly on a long gilded stem, playing a coy game of peekaboo with her face. She reclined languidly in a gondola, leaning back against her husband’s chest, watching in breath-stealing wonder as the golden sparks of fireworks showered down into the glassy black waters that mirrored them. The gondolier sang in a velvety tenor voice, magical as the night itself. They kissed as they glided beneath the graceful arch of the Rialto Bridge. Joy everywhere, love everywhere—crowding the landing stages, filling the surrounding squares, leaning from balconies and windows, skipping and frolicking over the bridge. Everyone in love, with each other, the night, or just in love with love.
Cream linen suits and sensible straw hats, museums, coffee in quaint cafés, feeding pigeons in the square, masterpieces of Renaissance art, classical statuary, and Baedeker by day. Churches whose gilded spires soared up so high they seemed to puncture Heaven. Kisses stolen in fields of scarlet poppies and golden wheat. Roman ruins and romance by moonlight. Sipping sparkling wine and dancing beneath the starry brilliance. Cool silk gowns of white, ice blue, or mint green, ardent hands, and red-hot kisses. Cold, unyielding white marble statues staring with blind eyes at soft, pliant, living pink skin.
Our last night in Rome, we waltzed in the moonlit arena of the Colosseum, humming our own music, beneath the shadow of the cross where Christian martyrs had been thrown to the lions.
More beautiful picture postcards to paste in the album of my memory, to remind me that it wasn’t all just a dream, that, for a time at least, my life really was picture-postcard perfect.
3
When we returned to Liverpool and drove past a high ivy-clad stone wall along Riverdale Road, turning in at No. 7—our lucky number!—and I saw Battlecrease House for the first time I nearly died of rapture. I couldn’t speak. I didn’t know whether to laugh or weep. I was falling in love again, this time not with a man but with a house—the house that would be our home. I would be the living, beating heart of these twenty rooms, the one who made sure it really was a home, not just a stately three-story pile of pale-champagne gold bricks held together by mortar.
Silly as it sounds, I wanted to lie down on the lawn, to roll, wallow, and sprawl on the grass as though it were a green velvet bedspread. I wanted to cup each flower in the garden gently in my hand and caress its petals as I bent to breathe in its sweet fragrance. I wanted to sit in blissful idleness on each stone bench, feed the fish in the pond, pet and feed carrots to the horses in the stable, bones to the hunting hounds kept in the adjoining kennel, hug the statuary and dance round the trees like an adoring pagan acolyte, and tame the proud pair of peafowl that roamed the palatial gardens to eat from my hands. There was even a wishing well I wanted to throw my whole purse into just to say, Thank you! I wanted to invite the whole world to a croquet party straightaway and say warmly to each and every person, Welcome to our home! as I served them tea and tiny sandwiches and dainty cakes with blue and pink frosting. It was all I could do not to dash across the street to the Liverpool Cricket Club and invite the men in spotless white flannel playing on the green beneath the blinding blaze of the sun and the ladies lazily watching them from beneath their shady hat brims and drooping parasols to come over right away. Like the Pied Piper, I wanted to lead them all back, skipping and prancing, singing and dancing, to our home, Battlecrease House, No. 7—lucky number seven!—Riverdale Road. Home! My home! my heart kept singing. Home sweet home!
Chuckling with delight, Jim swept me up into his arms, playfully comparing my ice-lemon silk gown, so creamy and cool, over crisp layers of ruffled white organdy, to a beautiful lemon meringue confection, and carried me up the front steps to a door set with the Maybrick coat of arms, the haughty hawk, perched on a gold brick with a sprig of flowering may in his beak, over the boldly written banner TEMPUS OMNIA REVELAT—TIME REVEALS ALL.
The white tulle atop my hat was tickling Jim’s chin and he tilted his head, angling to avoid it, but it was just too much.
“Although that hat frames a face as pretty as a picture, would you mind taking it off, my dear? The tulle is rather ticklish,” he said.
I laughed in sheer delight and instantly complied.
“Daisies.” Jim smiled at the silk flowers tumbling haphazardly over the brim. “You remind me of Mr. James’s Daisy Miller. ‘She was the most beautiful young lady I ever saw, and the most amiable.... She was also the most innocent.’ ”
I smiled and sighed, “Oh, Jim!” as though it were the first time I had received this pretty compliment when in truth it must have been the thousandth; my beaus were always comparing me to the impetuous and innocent madcap Miss Miller, the free, frank, and unfettered American girl traipsing across Europe with her mother and brother in tow.
The door opened before us and I found myself staring into a face rigid as a marble soldier’s, so frigidly strict and superior beneath its tight, smooth-lacquered mahogany-red coiffure that I felt instantly inferior, as though I had just been found guilty of the most grievous offense and was about to be stood up against a wall and shot. I blinked and blinked again, then sighed with relief. The face I now saw before me was smiling, gracious, and inviting. I must have been more tired than I realized. Or it was just a trick of the light.
“Welcome,” she said, stepping back and ushering us into the oak-paneled entrance hall. “Welcome to Battlecrease House!”
“Didn’t I tell you Matilda was a marvel?” Jim smiled as he set me down.
I couldn’t answer him; the sedate opulence that surrounded me had quite stolen my voice away. I was standing on a Turkish carpet, an oriental fantasy worked in deep red and antique gold, and right beside me, within fainting distance, was a beautiful oak sofa carved with an intricate pattern of clinging vines and flowers, upholstered in deep crimson, echoing the leaf pattern of the paneling and the crimson damask covering the walls.
In those, my first moments inside Battlecrease House, a sort of magic was at work. This was my home and I never wanted to leave it. I felt the most enchanting, wonderful contentment falling like fairy dust from the ceiling onto me, seeping through my skin straight into my soul. If a fairy had emerged from the woodwork right then and asked me my wish I would have instantly replied, To live and love here forever with Jim. No girl had ever been as lucky as me.
Like a child on a treasure hunt, I wanted to explore every nook and cranny, but Jim’s hand was gently cupping my elbow, guiding me into t
he parlor.
Here all was royal-blue and white damask rococo splendor, as though Jim and I were a pair of lovers walking right into the Blue Willow pattern. There were sofas and chairs and footstools with ball and claw feet, all upholstered with blue and white damask, rich royal-blue velvet curtains trimmed with silk bobbles, tables and cabinets of gleaming dark mahogany, and an impressive array of gold-rimmed Blue Willow china pieces on display. Presiding regally over the mantel of a fireplace set with porcelain tiles illustrating the ancient love story that had inspired the famous pattern was a beautiful statue of the Chinese Goddess of Mercy mantled in rich blue and gowned in white with a fat black-haired almond-eyed baby in her arms. And a big blue and white Buddha sat cross-legged with a lotus blossom blooming out of his outstretched palms on the tea table.
I stood there awestruck, no doubt giving a fine imitation of a slack-jawed country yokel who had never seen the inside of a fine house before. It wasn’t that I was unaccustomed to such opulence. Far from it, I had never known anything but the finest things in life, in the various plantations, town houses, mansions, chateaux, country estates, seaside castles, baronial manors, and hotels I had stayed at throughout the years. It was simply that this time I was not a guest; this was my home! I had never felt such an instant connection to a place, as though the walls had a life of their own and were reaching out with invisible hands to welcome me. I wouldn’t be packing up and leaving when boredom set in or a new sensation beckoned. Jim and I would live, love, and grow old here together. This wasn’t fleeting; this was forever! Everything here that was new now would become old, familiar, and dear, timeworn, and even more wonderful. I would give birth to our children in one of the beds upstairs, play with them in the nursery, celebrate their birthdays, and someday toast their engagements in the dining room. And if Heaven blessed me with a daughter, when she turned sixteen I would host a ball here in her honor.
Mrs. Briggs cleared her throat and Jim gently nudged me forward.
A man with a big black walrus mustache and fast-retreating hairline was seated at the piano, idly tricking out a tune. Abruptly he stopped and with the cold and distinctly superior air of a Prussian general stood up and came to bow stiffly over my hand.
This was my husband’s famous brother, Michael, better known and beloved by the British public as Stephen Adams, the composer and singer of popular songs. Jim had told me all about him. Michael, whose brilliance had first been remarked when, as a boy, he sang in the church choir, was the darling of the music halls. He had toured the world, given concerts at Covent Garden and command performances for crowned heads. His fine baritone voice, equally adept at grand opera and popular ditties, everything from stirring sea chanteys to sentimental ballads, had been heard soaring in Mendelssohn’s Elijah and Wagner’s Lohengrin. I had seen him in the latter myself during my travels with Mama and had even thrown a red rose at his feet when he took his bow. But, of course, he hadn’t noticed me. Why ever would he? I was just one amongst the admiring throng. I had even heard that when he played the music halls, where the atmosphere was wont to be rowdy, some—I hesitate to call them ladies—had even been so brazen as to throw their drawers onto the stage. Some even attached little notes giving an address where he might meet them for some amorous disport if it pleased him.
Michael’s talent had afforded him two fine homes—a London mansion overlooking Regent’s Park and a summerhouse on the Isle of Wight—and a reputation as one of London’s most desirable bachelors, rendered even more irresistible to covetous females because he appeared entirely impervious to their charms. Some whispered that he and his songwriting partner, Frederick Weatherly, were partners in an even more intimate manner. But I never knew Michael well enough to ascertain whether there was any truth to those rumors. He would later, albeit in the aftermath of the Oscar Wilde scandal, suddenly marry his housekeeper, the aptly named Laura Withers, a butcher’s forty-year-old icebox-cold spinster daughter with a face like a meat cleaver who was happy to be married in name only to a famous man if it meant she could gad about town in feathered hats and fine dresses in a black japanned carriage and lord it over all the shopkeepers who had once looked down upon her as a servant.
When he spoke to me, Michael’s words were cold and precise, like daggers of ice, and his eyes were no warmer. After meeting him, I could never again quite convince myself that I had actually seen this man bounding across a stage with a big, cheerful smile plastered across his face, joyously belting out song after song for his adoring public. Surely the footlights had played a trick upon my eyes and it was only a man who resembled my brother-in-law. This arrogantly sneering cold and condescending man standing in my parlor and that hale and hearty, bubbly and bouncy, singing and dancing fellow couldn’t possibly be one and the same man!
Whenever Michael looked at me, his eyes seemed filled with hostility. Perhaps he thought I wasn’t good enough for Jim? Or, being an astute businessman with powerful and widespread connections in artistic, business, and social circles, possibly Michael had made inquiries about my family and discovered just how much had been exaggerated. Or he might have been one of those chilly Englishmen who deplored all Americans, holding each one he met personally responsible for hosting the Boston Tea Party and igniting the spark of rebellion in the Thirteen Colonies. I never could figure out quite why he so vehemently disliked me and disdained my every overture of friendship.
Edwin, however, was an absolute delight, affable and sweet, full of gossip and glee. Jim’s nominal partner in the firm of Maybrick & Company, Edwin had lived with Jim and would continue to do so here at Battlecrease House with us, when he was not visiting Michael as an excuse to enjoy himself in London. The youngest Maybrick brother and, honesty compels me to admit, the handsomest one was twenty-eight, tall, sun kissed, and slender, unlike his paunchy, pasty siblings, with his dark hair still luxuriant and thick, and lively brown eyes lit up with a devilish twinkle. He cultivated a pencil-thin mustache and had a taste for loud checkered and striped suits, garish neckties, waistcoats, and dressing gowns that looked like the bold, bright patterns were the work of color-blind lunatics. He was as avid for penny-dreadful novels as any twelve-year-old boy; that day in the parlor there was a copy of Varney, the Vampire peeping from his pocket. And he loved dime museums and melodramas and liked to boast that he had not only seen the Elephant Man but also shaken his hand. There was a warmth and sense of fun about Edwin that set me instantly at ease, and I liked him from the first moment.
While my eyes were still being dazzled by his forest-green waistcoat with a bold pattern of gaudy, bright yellow lemons, green-and-yellow-checkered suit, and striped tie he took my arm and led me away from the grim and glowering Michael to sit upon the sofa.
“Don’t mind Michael. He can’t help being a cold fish; it’s just his way. I keep telling him he should dress up as an old woman with gray hair and spectacles, a cane, ear trumpet, and shawl, and do a song and dance about the agonies of old age and rheumatism; don’t you know, they’d love that in the halls,” Edwin added with the most infectious grin. I already knew it was going to be fun having him for a brother.
Still holding my arm, Edwin leaned even closer and discreetly jerked his chin in the direction of Mrs. Briggs.
“Don’t be fooled by that iced-lemon exterior, so cool and poised. She’ll scratch your eyes out—in a perfectly nice way of course—and kill you with kindness if you let her,” he whispered. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Didn’t anyone tell you?” He drew back and searched my baffled face for some sign of comprehension. “No, I can see they didn’t! Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! Well . . . better that you should hear it from me . . .” He dived right in with all the relish of a glutton into a vat of chocolate sauce. “Jim jilted dear old Mattie over there to marry you, my darling Florie—I may call you Florie, mayn’t I? Formality really has no place in the bosom of the family,” he added with a lingering glance down at my own. “To save face, she rushed Horace Briggs to the altar so she wouldn’t
have to force a smile and welcome her erstwhile betrothed’s radiant young bride home, to the house she decorated and always thought would be hers someday, as an old maid. Poor old Horace.” He gave a wicked chuckle. “He stood at the altar looking like a cow on the tracks struck dumb with fright at the sight of an approaching locomotive! A locomotive covered in white satin and orange blossoms! It was so sudden I didn’t even have time to buy a new tie,” he pronounced as though this were some great tragedy.
I giggled and slapped Edwin playfully upon the knee. “I do declare, Brother Edwin,” I said, my voice full of syrupy sweet Southern charm, “you’re as gossipy as an old woman!”
“Brother Edwin.” He pursed his lips and shook his head dolefully. “You make me sound like a monk, though if any woman could drive a man to such despair he would contemplate entering a monastery I daresay it’s you. Oh, Florie”—he gripped my hand hard and stared deep into my eyes—“if only I had met you first!”
This was no joke or frivolous, flirty banter; he was serious! There was such an intensity in his eyes, and the way I felt his thigh burning mine through my skirt I was afraid he would forget I was his brother’s wife and pounce upon me right there in the parlor in front of everybody. I squirmed, trying to fight the vivid picture that suddenly filled my mind of Edwin on top of me, kissing me.
I suddenly felt very hot, flushed and flustered, and guilty, even though I hadn’t actually done anything. I loved my husband! How could I be entertaining such thoughts about his brother? I bolted up quickly and went to join Jim, linking my arm possessively through his and darting a warning glance back at Edwin, who merely smiled at me and pulled a big bright yellow silk handkerchief out of his pocket and began toying with it, forming the folds into a shape with a pair of ears that very much suggested—if I am not mistaken, and I don’t think I am—a bunny.
