by John Kerr
‘Yes, ma’am.’
She reached into her purse for a gold sovereign. Slipping it into his palm, she said, ‘Would you get me a bottle of decent Madeira and bring it to my house? On the quiet, of course.’
‘Of course, ma’am,’ he replied with a smile.
Avoiding the inquisitive stares of the ladies in the parlour, Cecilia hurried through the dining-room to the wing where the doctor’s office was located, where she found his secretary at her desk. ‘Good morning, Miss Stokes,’ she said. ‘I have a private note for Dr Gully.’ She reached into her purse for the envelope.
Aware of her employer’s special regard for Cecilia, the secretary rose from her chair, smiled, and said, ‘I’ll see to it he receives it directly. At the moment he’s in consultation.’
‘Thank you.’ Turning to go, Cecilia abruptly halted and, looking back, said, ‘Oh, and you may tell the doctor that he can send his reply with Percy.’
James Gully walked to the window behind his desk, unfastened the latch, and lifted the sash, taking a deep breath of fresh air, scented with just mown grass. Lowering himself into his supple leather chair, he briefly considered the consultation he had just concluded with a married woman in her late forties, not yet in menopause, but complaining of the usual symptoms: headaches, insomnia, enervation, and anxiety, generally categorized as hysteria by the medical establishment. While he had no doubt she would profit from the water-cure and other regimens of the hydro, Gully was convinced that these symptoms were rooted in an absence of sexual gratification; upper middle-class Englishwomen, he believed, seldom engaged in sexual intercourse once beyond child-bearing and, if they did so, it was almost exclusively for the pleasure of their husbands. Glancing at the watch on the silver fob chain at his waistcoat, he decided it was time for the single smoke he permitted himself in the late morning. Removing the tobacco jar and curved briar from the shelf by his desk, he filled and tamped the pipe, struck a match and cupped it over the bowl, sucking in smoke from the curiously pleasant Balkan Sobranie blend of Virginia and Latakia leaf. Tilting back in his chair, he thoughtfully perused a medical journal and puffed on his pipe as he listened to the songbirds outside the window. After several minutes his concentration was interrupted by a tap on the door. ‘Come in,’ he called out.
‘Pardon me, sir,’ said Miss Stokes, standing diffidently in the doorway, ‘but I have a note….’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Gully. ‘You may come in.’
‘From Mrs Castello.’ She walked quickly to the desk and handed him an envelope.
‘Thank you,’ said Gully, as he briefly studied the inscription. Waiting for the door to close, he clenched the pipe in his teeth as he slit open the envelope and extracted a folded sheet. Dear James, Cecilia began in her flowery cursive. A smile spread over Gully’s face as he read her extravagant praise for his public lecture and closed the brief note with an invitation to dinner at her modest cottage at seven in the evening on Thursday, the following night. Gully put the note aside with a contented expression, imagining Cecilia’s pretty face as he took another draw on his pipe.
Arriving at the cottage precisely at seven, clutching a bouquet behind his back and with a rosebud in his lapel, Dr Gully reached out to give the brass knocker a sharp rap. After a moment, Cecilia appeared, wearing a low-cut gown of blue silk with a corset so tight Gully imagined he could encircle her waist with his hands. ‘Good evening, my dear,’ he said, as he stepped across the threshold and produced his bouquet, a half-dozen long-stem red and yellow roses.
‘They’re beautiful,’ said Cecilia, accepting the flowers.
‘Fresh from my garden,’ said Gully, removing his top hat.
‘Allow me,’ she said taking his hat. ‘Please sit while I find a vase.’ Gully sat in the sitting-room in one of two high-backed upholstered chairs with his legs crossed, smiling at the extravagance of Cecilia’s blue silk bustle with its long, silvered blue fringe. ‘There,’ she said, placing the vase on a marble-topped table and taking the chair next to him.
‘You look especially lovely, Cecilia,’ said Gully. ‘I’m so accustomed to middle-aged ladies in their plain cotton dresses.’ She responded with a demure smile that accentuated her dimples, not daring to tell him that those cotton dresses were not without their comforts. ‘You’re finding these lodgings adequate?’ he asked.
‘Oh, yes,’ she replied. ‘To have a place of my own is quite wonderful, and such a short distance from the hydro.’
‘Well, dear, you may remain here as long as you please.’
‘Would you care for a glass of wine?’ asked Cecilia.
‘Well, customarily I … but perhaps this once.’
She walked to the sideboard, poured each of them wine from a cut crystal decanter, and handed Gully a glass. ‘It’s Madeira,’ she said. ‘I hope you like it.’
Taking a sip, he said, ‘It’s quite good.’ The unaccustomed effects of the alcohol, the fragrance of Cecilia’s perfume, and the bouquet of the roses combined to melt Gully’s usual reserve. ‘Cecilia,’ he said, after taking another swallow.
‘Yes, James?’
‘May I tell you how very fond I’ve grown of you?’
Blushing, she said, ‘And I of you.’
‘Not only as your physician,’ he said, ‘or as, say, a family friend but also … as a man.’ Cecilia reached over and placed a hand on his arm. ‘Despite the obvious differences in our ages and circumstances….’
The cook, wearing a black silk dress and white cap and apron, appeared in the doorway and announced, ‘Excuse me, mum, but dinner is served.’
At the conclusion of an indifferent supper of roast lamb with boiled potatoes and green beans, prepared, on Cecilia’s instructions, without seasonings, sauces, or garnishes, and accompanied only by spring water, Cecilia suggested they repair to the parlour for a nightcap. In the soft yellow of the gaslights, Gully’s eyes were drawn to Cecilia’s sparkling amethyst ear-rings and around her slender neck the matching pendant on a gold chain that bounced occasionally and fetchingly on her bosom. ‘This has been such a lovely evening,’ he said as he sipped his Madeira. ‘I daresay I can’t recall the last time I felt so completely … at ease.’
Seated beside him on a sofa, Cecilia smiled encouragingly and said, ‘As you know, James, I remain a married woman, but in name only.’
‘Quite so,’ said Gully with a nod.
‘Do I understand,’ she said gently, ‘that you, too, are in similar circumstances?’
With a faraway look, Gully put aside his wineglass and said, ‘Yes, dear, I’m afraid that is so. Trapped in marriage to a woman I haven’t seen in decades.’
‘Do you suppose,’ she said, ‘that between the two of us, we might pretend … we were no longer married?’
Gully briefly searched her eyes, reflecting the flickering gaslights, and said, ‘I’m not sure that’s the wisest course, but … I shall consider it.’
Over the following weeks Dr Gully was a regular visitor, dining alone with Cecilia with the knowledge of no one but the cook, a disagreeable woman who had no social interaction with the staff at the hydro. Departing at the conclusion of one such evening, Gully, standing at the door, lightly kissed Cecilia on the cheek and said, ‘You know, my dear, I’m leaving shortly for Bavaria to deliver a lecture.’
‘Yes, and I’ll be terribly lonely.’
‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Gully, as he donned his hat, ‘that perhaps you could come with me.’
‘Oh, James,’ said Cecilia, clutching his arm, ‘do you really?’
‘Why not? No one at the clinic will know. I’ll see to the arrangements. We’ll take the ten-fifteen on Friday.’
Travelling under her own name, in her separate railway compartment, Cecilia would have struck a casual observer as a mere passing acquaintance of the eminent Dr Gully, who frequently went abroad, to Germany in particular, to attend conferences on homeopathic medicine. Greeted at the station at Bad Kissingen by a delegation from the local medical society, G
ully proceeded directly to a luncheon, while Cecilia, by prearrangement, hired a coach to transport her, and her large steamer trunk and numerous hat-boxes, to a luxurious hotel operated by Madame Manteuffel on a hillside overlooking the Bavarian village renowned for its mineral springs. As it was late August, the pinnacle of the season at the resort, frequented by European aristocracy, it was unusual but nevertheless unremarkable for an affluent, well-dressed Englishwoman, travelling alone, to take a room at the hotel. Cecilia occupied herself with late breakfasts in her room, leisurely strolls in the manicured grounds, and a visit to the celebrated public gardens in town while Gully attended the two-day medical conference. After delivering the keynote speech to a packed hall on the final day, Gully returned to Madame Manteuffel’s, where he joined Cecilia for tea on the porch overlooking the village and surrounding countryside. With his white hair and short, rotund figure he could easily have passed as the grandfather of the pretty young woman with auburn curls seated next to him.
On their first morning together, Gully guided Cecilia on a vigorous two-hour walk up and down the nearby hills to the ruins of the twelfth-century castle at Bodenlaube, explaining along the way that an Austrian by the name of Priessnitz had invented the water-cure in the alpine village of Gräfenberg, which had then become widely popular at Bad Kissingen, known for centuries for the restorative powers of its baths. Following the bracing five-mile outing in warm sunshine, the pair lunched on Westphalian ham and boiled potatoes in the hotel’s grand dining-room. Though Gully demurred, Cecilia enjoyed two glasses of Moselle, whose effects emboldened her to place a hand on Gully’s knee beneath the linen tablecloth.
‘I’m feeling drowsy,’ she said with a smile when the dishes were cleared away.
‘From the exertion of our outing,’ said Gully, ‘and the soporific effect of the wine.’
‘I believe I shall go to my room and lie down.’ Gully held her chair and then took her by the arm as they walked from the dining-room to the wide stairs from the lobby. Arriving at her room on the second floor, Cecilia cast a furtive glance down the empty hallway and then took Gully’s hand and said quietly, ‘Will you read to me while I rest?’
‘Of course.’
Taking the key from her purse, she hastily let them in. ‘I’ll just be a moment,’ she said before disappearing into the bathroom. Gully walked to the window, glanced down on the lawn and then closed the heavy curtains. After a few minutes Cecilia appeared in the semidarkness, barefoot and wearing a thin dressing gown so ruffled that it almost hid her charms, which she clutched to her neck. Turning down the covers, she slid under the linen sheets and eiderdown as Gully watched with his hands on the back of a chair. ‘Sit closer,’ she said, plumping the pillows and snuggling her toes against the linen, ‘and read to me from my book of poems, will you please?’
Gully drew up the chair, picked up the slender volume of Elizabethan verse and briefly studied its contents. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘Shakespeare’s eighteenth sonnet. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate”.’ Cecilia listened to Gully’s strong, sonorous voice with an adoring expression, lying with her hair fanned out on the pillow and her gown partly open. ‘“So long as men can breathe”,’ Gully continued, ‘“or eyes can see, So long lives this and this gives life to thee”.’ He looked up into Cecilia’s eyes and, conscious of her exotic perfume, stole a glance at her cleavage. ‘Another?’ he asked. She nodded, and Gully turned the pages and began to read:
They flee from me who sometime did me seek
With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek
That now are wild, and do not remember….
Thanked be fortune, it hath been otherwise,
Twenty times better; but once, in special,
In thin array, after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,
And she caught me in her arms long and small,
Therewith all sweetly did me kiss And softly said,
“Dear heart, how like you this?”’
‘James,’ murmured Cecilia.
Gully closed the volume and put it aside.
‘Kiss me.’
He sat beside her, bent down and, as she folded him in her arms, kissed her, lightly at first but then with growing intensity. After a while he pulled back, searching her eyes in the dim light as she fumbled with the buttons of his waistcoat. ‘Please,’ she said urgently. ‘Lie with me.’
Chapter Four
THE COOK WAS the first to go, for the simple reason that she knew too much and her silence could not, in Cecilia’s opinion, be easily bought. Cecilia promptly engaged another domestic, a young woman from a nearby village who was just as promptly sacked when Cecilia discovered she was devoutly religious and attended services with several of the female employees at the hydro. At last Cecilia settled on an unmarried middle-aged servant whose own morals were lax and who eagerly accepted cash gratuities in return for her oath of silence regarding Dr Gully’s comings and goings. Immediately upon their return from Bavaria, Cecilia became obsessed with arranging assignations with the doctor, at least thrice a week, either in the evenings after supper, first thing in the morning, or occasionally during the quiet of the afternoon. She was driven not so much by the infatuation she’d felt for Gully since her early days at the clinic, as by a newly awakened, voracious sexual appetite. Intercourse, in all of her previous experience, had been an utterly unrewarding and dismal affair, due in part to the disabling effects of alcohol on her husband. But to her amazement she had discovered those cotton frocks, all that silk and lace and ribbon, this whole new world, and in the hands, literally, of James Gully, despite his age and unimposing physique, she attained heights of passion and physical pleasure she’d never dreamt possible.
Lying contentedly spent on her pillows after an afternoon of prolonged lovemaking, with the pleasurably warm sensation of bare skin on skin, Cecilia drifted in and out of a dreamless sleep. When she awoke, drowsily rubbing her eyes, she looked up to observe Gully, clad in a silk dressing-gown, as he entered the upstairs bedroom, carrying a tray with a teapot, cups, and saucers. ‘Ah, Cecilia,’ he said as he lowered the tray to the surface of the dresser. ‘I see you’re awake.’
‘Yes,’ she said happily, sitting up on her pillows and drawing the covers up to her neck.
‘Shall I pour your tea?’ he asked.
‘Thank you.’
Handing her a steaming cup before pouring his own, he said, ‘And you also have a letter.’
‘Oh, really? I wonder what it could be.’
‘Postmarked London,’ said Gully, lifting an envelope from the tray and holding it up for her inspection.
Placing her cup and saucer on the bedside table, Cecilia took the envelope from Gully, briefly studied the return address, and then slit it open. She removed a folded sheet, quickly read it, and said, ‘Oh dear.’
‘What is it? Nothing the matter…?’
‘Richard’s dead.’ Cecilia looked around the room at the disordered bedcovers, and at Gully, who suddenly struck her as quite old with his silk robe, and was overwhelmed with a wave of shame and self-loathing. ‘I must dress,’ she said. ‘Might I have some privacy?’
After a hot bath, Cecilia dressed in a black silk gown, found Gully in the parlour, who, wearing his usual frockcoat, waistcoat and striped trousers, resembled more a parson than a paramour. ‘Do you know any of the details?’ he asked, as he rose from his chair.
‘Only that he died at his hotel in Germany.’
‘Poor fellow,’ said Gully, with a sad shake of his head.
‘The letter,’ said Cecilia, ‘from Richard’s solicitor, requests that I come to London as soon as possible, whereupon he promises to provide me with information concerning Richard’s death and, I gather, his financial arrangements.’
‘I see. When will you go?’
‘First thing in the morning.’ She walked over and lig
htly kissed Gully on the cheek. ‘I should be back,’ she said, ‘by noon on Thursday.’
Alighting from a hansom cab before an imposing Georgian edifice on Chancery Lane, Cecilia, dripping with jet, in finest Battenberg lace and edged smooth wool, with a black shawl, hat, and veil, briefly studied the brass plaque by the double doors and then let herself into the foyer. She approached an elderly secretary seated at a writing desk, cleared her throat and said, ‘I have an appointment with Mr Throckmorton.’
‘And your name?’
‘Mrs Richard Castello.’
‘Excuse me, madam,’ he said, as he rose from his desk and exited through a mahogany door. After a brief interval, he reappeared and said, ‘This way, Mrs Castello,’ ushering her into a nearby room, panelled in burl walnut, with a long table, Persian carpet, and red leather armchairs. Oliver Throckmorton, of the firm Throckmorton, Dewar, & Bell, stood with his hands on the back of a chair at the end of the table. A leather folder, tied with a black ribbon, lay before him on the gleaming table. Wearing the uniform of his profession, a black frockcoat, matching trousers and white shirt with a starched Piccadilly collar, he met Cecilia midway around the table, bowed stiffly and said, ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Castello. Please sit.’ Choosing a chair near the end of the table, she briefly studied the lawyer, whom she judged to be in his mid-forties, a tall, clean-shaven, and ascetic-looking man with an aquiline nose. ‘Do you care for tea?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘Thank you, Higgins,’ said Throckmorton to the secretary, who nodded and retired. ‘Let me begin, Mrs Castello,’ Throckmorton continued, ‘by offering my deepest condolences on the untimely loss of your husband.’
‘Thank you.’ Cecilia was repelled by the lawyer’s unctuous tone and odd manner of wringing his hands as he spoke.
