London Lodgings

by Claire Rayner

‘Freddy.’ She leaned towards him. ‘I am quite destroyed by what is happening to you, my dear. But I cannot possibly allow you to speak as you have of –’

  ‘Hear me, Tilly,’ he said with a sharp and commanding air, so loudly that she was taken aback and fell silent.

  ‘Tilly, ever since I lost – ever since we said goodbye in your garden that day all those years ago, and I left you there with your baby at your breast, I have thought of you and longed for you. I knew, or believed at first, that it was a dream and it could never be. There was Alice, after all – but then Alice died, and for a little while, a very little while, I believed I might be well again myself and be free to come to you and court you as any man might. Well, it has not turned out so.’

  His voice trailed away to a flutter and she held his hand and waited. She longed to jump in to tell him she had never ever thought of such a possibility; that even had he been well enough to speak to her after Alice’s death she would not have entertained his proposal. She cared for him as a friend, of course she did, but no more. But how could she say all that to this desperately struggling creature beside her? She could not, so she held her tongue.

  ‘But now I have found you again. Just in time.’ His voice was back, like a flickering candle’s wick finding a new pool of wax to burn. ‘I have inherited Alice’s property, Tilly, especially the house next door to yours. After Alice died, I went to Mr Cobbold and tried to change my will – I wished then to leave my property to you, including that house. But the way Alice’s property was left by her father, it is not possible for me to will it out of my family. If I die married, Mr Cobbold agreed, I may leave the house to my wife. She is then, of course, my family. If I die unmarried, then whatever my will says the house must go to Alice’s distant cousin.’

  He looked at her with those huge sunken eyes. ‘You understand? I wish to give this to you. You have suffered enough hardship. If you own another house, you may sell your own and live in the one next door – which will remain in trust for members of your family, of course – and no longer struggle to make a living letting rooms. Do you understand, Tilly? This will be a marriage of days only. I know that in my bones. Let me die happy, providing for you as someone I love. Alice’s cousin is rich enough – he owns half Staffordshire! He will not be deprived by such an arrangement. Oh, dearest Tilly, my power is leaving me so fast. We cannot waste time. I have told my doctor of my plan and he says it may just be possible – he is making what arrangements he can for the necessary licence. Try to understand, my dear one.’

  She understood, well enough. Too well. She tried all she could to explain how it would be anathema to her to marry a man simply to obtain his property, however dearly he wanted her to have it. She tried to make him understand that such an action was foreign to her nature in every way. She told him it was quite out of the question. But he clung to his determination with the same tenacity with which he clung to life; and whatever she said he stared at her and merely repeated, ‘Dearest Tilly. Try to understand. Please let me die happy. Please, Tilly.’

  Until at last both were exhausted and could only sit there amid the strolling holiday-makers in their bright summer gowns and hats, hearing the children on the beach shouting and playing and the distant sound of Mr Punch’s shrill piping and the barrel organ’s silly jigging tunes. Sit there in silence, staring at the sea.

  It was as though she no longer had any control over what was happening to her. Jem came back with the children a half hour after the nurse had taken Freddy back to his doctor’s establishment, bearing with him the promise that she would send her final answer that afternoon, and refusing to believe it would be, as she assured him it would, a very firm ‘No’. As the children ran back to the beach, all previous animosity quite forgotten, to rebuild their carriage, Jem came and sat beside her on the bench.

  ‘It is a devilish position he has put you in, Tilly,’ he said gently. ‘I felt it too, and could do nothing about it. He is a dying man and has this notion so firmly in his head that it cannot be eradicated. To gainsay him would clearly be an act of cruelty. Yet to force you into his wishes would be an act of – well, I cannot find words for it.’

  She was so enormously grateful for his understanding that she turned to him and seized both of his hands. ‘What shall I do, Jem? I have been sitting here turning it over and over in my mind and I feel like a rat caught in a maze with no way out. Whichever way I turn, there he is, looking at me, and I know that is a matter of – of course, he will be looking at eternity. How can I not please him? Yet how can I? It is, as you say, the most devilish of traps.’

  ‘I have been thinking too,’ he said in a low voice. ‘And I have to say to you what I said to him. Say “Yes,” Tilly.’

  She stared at him, the wave of gratitude that had filled her slipping away, like the last of the tide. ‘You cannot mean that?’

  ‘I am thinking as much of Duff as of you.’

  ‘Duff? But –’

  ‘He is offering you property that will be passed on in due course to Duff. This house, as I understand it, is not entailed precisely but left in a Trust that demands it “always remains in the family”. And Freddy himself worked it out and the lawyers had to agree, the word “family” includes his wife and his wife’s children. If you marry him, Tilly, as he wishes, this useful property devolves eventually on your son. You have I know been concerned for his future welfare.’

  She closed her eyes and tried again to think clearly. It was true that she worried constantly over Duff’s future. He was fatherless, and had no other relation apart from herself to care for him. If disease should strike her – and how much reminder did she need of how possible that was in a young life than Freddy himself? – he would be left with little. He would lose his home for lack of an income to support it, and would have nowhere to go but an orphanage. A thought which sent a shudder through her. But if he were to own twice the present amount of property, he could keep his home and have money that could be invested shrewdly for his upkeep and future.

  She opened her eyes and looked miserably at Jem. ‘I feel dreadful,’ she whispered. ‘Quite dreadful.’

  ‘I’m sure you do. It’s part of the delicacy of your character, Tilly. It is one of the reasons that you are so – that I feel as I do about you, as well as why Mr Compton does. But you must override your natural delicacy for your child’s sake. He deserves this.’

  ‘Oh, Jem,’ said Tilly, and she burst into tears.

  She decided to say as little as possible to Dorcas of the truth of her situation. She had to tell her that she had some occupation on the next afternoon, for it was necessary for the children to be cared for and Tilly could not trust the rather sluttish and very disobliging landlady of her lodgings to watch over them. Jem himself had to be back in Brompton because of the shop – and was clearly torn apart by the fact that he was not free to stand close beside her and support her through what she knew would be a dreadful experience – and so she had no other choice. She lied as gallantly as she could.

  Dorcas, listening to her tale of meeting an old friend and wanting to spend some time with her, said sweetly, ‘Oh? A different old friend to the gentleman in the Bath chair?’

  Tilly went scarlet. ‘What do you know of –’ And then stopped, understanding too late how foolish she had been. ‘Oh, Sophie.’

  ‘Indeed, Sophie. She tells me all that happens to her,’ Dorcas said smugly. ‘She is my little darling – she tells her Mamma everything.’

  ‘Not so much your little darling that you wish to spend much time in her company,’ Tilly said with some acidity, but Dorcas laughed at that.

  ‘Don’t be so stuffy! I adore her and she me, but we do not need to live in each other’s pockets! So, you are going off with your elderly beau, are you?’

  ‘He is not a beau,’ Tilly said hotly. ‘That is, I mean –’

  ‘Oh, don’t bother to tell tall tales for me,’ Dorcas said gaily. ‘I don’t mind what you do. And yes, I will take care of the children for th
is afternoon – tomorrow, is it? You have taken care of them often enough after all.’

  ‘I’m glad you’ve noticed it,’ Tilly snapped.

  ‘Of course I have! But if you are good enough to do it, then I’d be a fool not to take advantage of your foolishness.’ Dorcas was in a high good humour now, feeling she had caught Tilly out. ‘Oh, don’t look so sulky, Ma’am! I’ll take the children. They’ll have a splendid afternoon – I shall take them to tea at the Pavilion and we shall parade and gawp at the other people of fashion.’

  ‘I doubt they’d enjoy that,’ Tilly said a little scornfully, and again Dorcas laughed.

  ‘Oh, they will. They will have ices and cakes for tea, and I shall take them on a carriage ride. They will adore it. You cannot deny that.’ And Tilly couldn’t. Duff had small interest in gawping at people of fashion, but a deep and abiding one in ices and cakes and carriage rides behind handsome high stepping horses.

  ‘Well,’ she said, unwillingly, at last. ‘It is but one afternoon, I suppose.’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Dorcas and went away to take tea with her friends at the Assembly Rooms in Old Steyne, leaving Tilly to prepare herself as best she could for her second wedding day.

  She took herself to the address Freddy had given her in a four wheeler cab, sitting silently in its dusty depths as it toiled up the hill on the far side of Montpelier Terrace, marvelling at the way the nurse, Mrs Friel, must have worked to push Freddy’s Bath chair. It was easier to think of that odd waddling shape struggling with the incline than of what lay ahead. She had decided only after much more talk with Jem that this was the only way to deal with it all; to pretend it was a matter only of the moment and to refuse resolutely to think of anything else. But it wasn’t easy.

  The doctor’s establishment was a large yellow brick house of quite amazing modern ugliness, Tilly decided, when she alighted from the cab. The windows were carefully closed and the curtains drawn, even though it was again a hot and indeed rather sultry afternoon, and she went up the front steps and pulled the bell handle with a sense of foreboding.

  Inside, the house smelled powerfully of lavender oil and soap and of another disagreeable odour about which she preferred not to think. She held her handkerchief firmly in one hand, so that she could bring it to her mouth at every opportunity and did so, though unobtrusively; she did not want to offend the people in the house, if she could avoid it.

  The doctor, a man as round and rosy as his patient Freddy was cadaverous and grey, greeted her with a facial expression nicely balanced between celebration and woe.

  ‘This is a generous action. Ma’am, a most generous action,’ he said unctuously. ‘These dying men take such notions, you know, and generally we try to disabuse them if we can, but Mr Compton – well, he would not be gainsaid. And if you are willing to stand beside him and go through with this form of marriage – well, it will do no harm. It is not as though it will be a true marriage in any sense, after all.’ He smirked unpleasantly and looked at her sideways and she felt as though she had been touched by a dirty slimy hand, and lifted her handkerchief to her nose and pretended to blow it, to hide what she knew was a disgusted expression on her face.

  ‘I am Doctor Beeston, by the by. I have made all the arrangements – you will find the vicar ready for you.’

  He nodded to Mrs Friel, who had appeared out of the dimness, and she nodded back, quite unsmiling, and led Tilly to a door on the far side of the hall, which was a large area lavishly fitted with small tables bearing many ornaments. The door led out to a conservatory filled with plants and smelling, much to Tilly’s relief, of leaf mould and growing things, and she straightened her shoulders and went in.

  Freddy was in his Bath chair, but this time without his hat. His hair, which had been so strong and vigorous, had thinned and faded sadly and that added to his air of pathos, and she looked at the way he was dressed in a jauntily cut frock-coat over sparkling white linen and how it hung on his gaunt frame, and could have wept. The bravery of him, the joy in him, was palpable in the small steamy room and she smiled at him a little tremulously and then shifted her gaze to the other occupant.

  ‘Afternoon, M’m,’ he mumbled. ‘James Ferrari at your service, M’m. Any impediment to this marriage?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ she said, taken aback.

  ‘Got to ask you. The law. Got the special licence and all, but got to ask you any impediment.’

  He was, she realized, less than sober. He was a thin man but had a protuberant belly thrusting against his cassock and his collar and bands were soiled, but she was too numb to care about any of that. It was all dreadful, quite, quite dreadful, and she thought suddenly and oddly of the brandy tantalus at home and how comforting it might be to take a glass, to deaden the way she was feeling. But her belly lurched nauseously at the idea, and she pushed it away. Brandy makes me ill, she thought, not better. I mustn’t think about nasty things. Think of Duff. Think of Duff…

  She thought of Duff throughout. She stood there beside Freddy, with the doctor and Mrs Friel hovering behind them as witnesses, as the Reverend Mr Ferrari gabbled his way through the service, and held out her hand obediently when told to so that Freddy could slip a ring on to it. It was too big and slithered on her finger and she thought with a sudden wildness – it is like me, lost and wandering and likely to fall off and disappear into perdition.

  But she took a deep breath and controlled the panic and let the service run to its end, and when instructed bent and kissed Freddy’s moist hot cheek. He looked at her with wide eyes and said in the faintest of breaths, ‘Thank you, Tilly. Oh, thank you.’

  The doctor was rubbing his hands together. ‘We have arranged a small collation for you, Mrs Compton,’ he said with beaming affability, and a most unpleasant air of roguishness as he said the name. ‘Once the certificate is signed, we can perhaps – if you feel up to it, dear Mr Compton –’

  ‘I shall sit and watch you,’ Freddy said. And so he did. The vicar, who partook eagerly of the sherry that the doctor had provided, and Mrs Friel who was equally eager for the cakes and ratafia biscuits, said little, but the doctor made up for their silence by chattering on at a great rate about the weather and the local flora and fauna, and the healing waters of dear Brighton: ‘Good Doctor Brighton, as it was once known and still should be, tee hee!’ All the while Freddy watched and she sat next to him, an untouched glass of sherry beside her and her handkerchief clutched in one hand. It was as unlike a wedding as she could imagine, and quite the most extraordinary day of her life.

  But she had done it, she prayed, for the right reasons. One day, she told herself, looking down miserably at Freddy beside her, who had drifted into an exhausted sleep and was lying with his head back in his chair and his eyes only partially closed so that a rim of white showed between the lids, one day I will forgive myself for what I have done here today. Oh, Duff, I. hope you too will forgive me when you find out. I hope you will understand I did it for you. But I don’t know if I will ever forgive myself.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  THE LEAVES WERE brown and curled and thick on the lawn in the back garden and the trees were almost bare before she could even begin to think about her situation. She had kept herself busy during these painful weeks by adding the making of new sheets for every bed in the house to her normal household duties and by dint of concentrating on every stitch she set, she was able to keep her mind away from her state of confusion.

  She had told Jem when she went to the shop to buy the linen for the sheets that she needed time alone. He had looked for a moment as though he would never smile again but then managed, somehow, to compose himself and said gravely that he understood how she felt, but begged permission to visit her occasionally. But she refused him.

  ‘I know you mean kindly, and I know that those times we spent together were agreeable. But all has changed. I cannot feel – I am different. It may seem absurd to say this, but I am. I need time to understand it all. I cannot find that time in th
e company of others.’

  He looked stricken at that. ‘I had hoped I was enough of a friend to be able to – well, let be. But I must tell you, Tilly, that I will not let you go on for too long. I wish you to understand that I have not accepted my congé.’

  ‘I can’t think about the future at all.’ She was aware of how weary she felt, wanting to get home as soon as she might.

  ‘Don’t ask it of me.’ And she went out into the street to pay her bill at Charlie Harrod’s and then at Spurgeon’s the butcher, leaving them both convinced she was ill, for she was so unlike her usual tranquil self.

  The children had become subdued as the weeks went on. Dorcas was out a great deal, leaving the children to Tilly’s care, but since they really took care of each other all day, being more or less inseparable, and relying on Eliza to see to their meals and to get them to bed, there was little for her to do with them. She did still always read to them each night and heard their prayers; but for the rest, she was left much alone. Eliza, too, seemed to have understood there was something amiss, about which even she might not quiz Tilly, and kept her own counsel.

  But today was different. Today she had to think about how she would re-create her life and bring back to it some sort of peace. Mr Cobbold’s letter begging permission to wait upon her had come the day before, and ever since, she had been as tightly strung as a violin. Now she stood at her drawing-room window looking out into the Grove, willing herself to think about Mr Cobbold’s visit.

  She knew of course what he was coming to tell her. Freddy had died three days after their wedding and had been buried in Brighton with just herself and the doctor and Mrs Friel to see him to his last resting place. As well as the sadness, she would remember the sheer discomfort of the day, for it was still and sultry in the extreme. The little cortège had moved through the dusty streets beneath threatening purple-clouded skies to the church; the horses pulling the hearse were streaked with sweat after only a few hundred yards. Her head ached under the heavy black straw hat and veil she had thought it proper to wear, as sweat ran down her own face to mingle with the tears she shed for Freddy. The trees they passed stood with an air of exhaustion as their leaves drooped in the heavy air. In the churchyard the gravediggers stood leaning wearily on their shovels as the vicar, seeming anxious and distracted, gabbled his way through the service. The earth she picked up to throw on the coffin was dry and hard through her glove and she opened her fingers over the open grave stiffly, shrinking with a frisson of horror at the rattling sound it made on the wood; and then jumped as the first flash of lightening whitened the churchyard. It was followed a moment or two later by the grumble of thunder.