Marianna

by Nancy Buckingham

  ‘But ... but I cannot. Glancing round, she appealed to William. ‘Please...you do not truly wish this?’

  He came over in three swift strides, while the photographer withdrew to fiddle with his camera.

  ‘Kindly allow Mr Carstairs to do as he wants, Marianna.’

  ‘But it is so ... so improper.’

  ‘How can it be improper, when I am here?

  ‘But... I don’t like the way Mr Carstairs looks at me,’ she whispered. ‘He even touches my bare skin. It’s so hateful.’

  William sighed his impatience. ‘Can you not get it into your head, you foolish child, that Mr Carstairs is a professional man, almost as a physician would be? To him, these photographs he is taking of you are merely another commission. He aims to capture your tender young beauty and record it on a photographic plate just as if his subject were a landscape view or even a bowl of fruit.’ Her husband’s frown loosened and he smiled at her coaxingly. ‘Just place yourself in his hands, my love, and allow him to arrange the further poses in whatever way he decides.’ She started to make a further objection, but William silenced her with two fingers pressed against her lips. ‘It is my express wish, and I require your obedience. Do you understand?’

  Marianna nodded wretchedly. William was her husband; she had no option but to submit.

  His voice was deep with reproach. ‘Oh, what a doleful little smile she gives me. You can do better than that, my angel. Right, Mr Carstairs, my wife is quite ready to continue now.’

  Somehow Marianna overcame her revulsion and strengthened herself to go through the motions of obedience, permitting the photographer to draw away more and more of her gossamer covering until, in the final pose, she was completely undraped apart from the tiniest wisp across her thighs. Whenever a fresh wave of shame caused her to resist, a warning cough from William would remind her where her duty lay. In desperation, she tried not to think about what was happening, not to notice the indignities to which she was being subjected.

  And at last, at long long last, the ordeal was over. As the photographer advanced towards her this time he proffered a large enveloping shawl, which Marianna gratefully accepted.

  ‘There, my dear young lady, you are free now to retire and redon your clothing. You’ve been a most excellent subject for me, I do assure you, and I have not the slightest doubt that your husband will find the results entirely to his satisfaction. More than that, he will be overjoyed with them.’

  Hastily redressing behind the screen, fumbling with the fastenings, Marianna could hear the murmur of the men’s voices. At one point the photographer said, ‘But of course, my dear sir, your wishes will be observed to the letter. The prints will be made without delay and delivered tomorrow to your residence in a sealed package marked for your personal attention,’

  William came to assist her with the hooks and eyes she could not reach. He hardly spoke and appeared as eager to be gone now as Marianna did herself. Under his prompting, she managed to stammer some sort of leave-taking to Mr Carstairs. A cab had been summoned for them and was waiting outside. At Trafalgar Square, she saw from the clock of St Martin-in-the-Fields that they had spent well over two hours at the photographer’s. The most wretched two hours, Marianna thought with a shudder, of her entire life.

  William seemed distracted on the journey home, making not the smallest attempt to coax her from her despondent mood — which only added to Marianna’s resentment. Presently though, after their glances chanced to meet once or twice and her husband looked quickly away, she began to wonder whether her own attitude might be at fault; whether perhaps she was making a mountain out of an unimportant molehill. She fervently wished that she knew how other wives would have reacted to the afternoon’s experience.

  The moment they reached Cadogan Place, William shut himself away in his study. He was unusually silent at the dinner table, only addressing her when the servants were waiting upon them; and later, when he rejoined her in the drawing room after sitting over his port, he brought The Times with him. He did not speak one single word to her as he took a chair, but put on his gold-rimmed spectacles and settled to read. Presently, in an effort to catch the warmth of his attention, Marianna went to the piano. After a glance through the sheet music, she started to play some of the catchy tunes by Sir Arthur Sullivan to which, she had discovered, her husband was especially partial. But William did not so much as look up from his newspaper.

  ‘Do you wish me to continue playing?’ she asked eventually.

  ‘I think it is high time you retired to bed.’

  ‘Oh dear! Is my performance so very bad?’ she countered with a nervous little laugh,

  ‘You are tired. You’ve had an exhausting day.’

  She took a deep breath for courage. ‘William, are you ... cross with me?’

  ‘Why should you suppose that?’

  ‘Because you’re being most unlike your usual self. So withdrawn, so silent.’

  He rose from his armchair and strode to the fireplace, where the coal fire burned brightly. Consulting his watch, he opened the glass of the mantel clock and made a small adjustment. When he turned back to her his face looked tired and

  ‘Run along to bed, child!’

  But Marianna could not leave it there. She felt deeply unhappy, and contrite too, because clearly she was responsible for her husband’s displeasure. Rising from the piano stool, she went to stand before him.

  If I have annoyed you in some way, I am sorry for it, William. Perhaps, at the photographer’s this afternoon, I behaved a little foolishly. I ... I was not prepared.’ She braced herself, and added, ‘It would have been better, I think, if you had warned me in advance what you expected of me...’

  Her husband cut her short. ‘Enough of that! The matter is over and done with.’

  ‘But William, I cannot bear you to be angry with me.’

  ‘Go to bed! How many more times must I tell you?’

  Marianna was overcome by a sense of desperation. Always her husband treated her as a mere child. But would she ever earn his respect as a woman if she never behaved like a woman? Somehow contriving to force her face into a smile—the inviting smile, she hoped, of a mature wife expressing her devotion for her husband — she laid a hand upon his arm and said in a soft voice, ‘You order me to bed, William, but am I to go alone?’

  For the space of a few seconds he seemed puzzled by her sudden change of manner. Then, to Marianna’s startled dismay, he took her face between his two hands and gave her a kiss of such bruising force that when he thrust her back from him a moment later, there was the taste of blood on her lip.

  ‘I told you once before,’ he said thickly, ‘don’t play the coquette with me, child!’

  Marianna’s heart was numb with shock and she felt sobs gathering in her throat. Turning, she fled from him and did not stop running until she had reached the sanctuary of her room on the floor above.

  Hilda was turning down the bedcovers. She glanced at her mistress curiously.

  ‘I am very tired,’ Marianna said, ‘and I want to go straight to bed.’

  Her maid, though, was bursting to talk of all the exciting things she had been hearing about London from the other servants. One of them, an under-footman by the name of Albert, had promised to take her for a ride on the underground railway when the family moved to London for the winter; also to see the conjuring at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly. Marianna, guiltily aware that she ought to break it to the girl at once that this fond hope would never now be realized, was brusquer than she might have wished.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, stop chattering and get me unhooked.’

  In bed, with Hilda dismissed and the gas brackets extinguished, she lay tensely listening for the sound of her husband in his dressing room next door. But the whole house seemed utterly silent, with only the occasional rumble of a. passing carriage penetrating the heavy fabric of the window curtains. Would William come to her bed tonight and hold her tenderly in his arms? Or did what had happened today
presage a change in his feelings for her? The thought was terrifying — for without William’s love, where would she be?

  Marianna must have drifted into a doze. Her eyes snapped open as she heard the click of a closing door. Her husband was moving across the room, stealthily as was his habit, so as not to disturb her. She gave up a prayer of thankfulness, knowing that she would find infinite comfort in his embrace, his whispered endearments.

  But tonight something was different. This Marianna sensed in those final seconds as he paused at her bedside. It was his breathing that gave her the clue, heavy and somehow laboured, as if his throat were constricted.

  ‘William, what is wrong?’ she whispered.

  It was as though the sound of her voice acted as a trigger. The bedcovers were wrenched aside and her husband fell upon her, crashing down onto her slender body so that she was knocked breathless. Sheer instinct made Marianna struggle, though she was helpless under his crushing weight. Then suddenly she realized with a flood of shock and horror what it was that her husband was about. At one time she had been so ready in her mind, but now she was totally unprepared. Or had she ever truly been prepared, for this?

  ‘William, please,’ she gasped out. ‘You’re hurting me. Please be more gentle.’

  But he made no response; there was only the sound of those laboured breaths rasping in his throat. Marianna’s frail resistance ceased and she lay utterly motionless. He was rough, brutish, totally uncaring when she cried out with the sudden searing pain that shafted through her. She submitted to him in an agony of disillusion and humiliation, praying for the end of this bruising assault upon her body. For how long must she endure it she had no idea, only that the torment seemed to be lasting an interminable time. It was not until her husband flung his sweating body aside that her tears began to flow. She longed desperately for a kind word from him now, a whispered loving word to reassure her, a gentle kiss on the brow that would help to erase the misery of what had just occurred.

  Marianna tried to speak his name, but could utter no sound. Her silent tears flowed on, brimming over and rolling down to dampen the lace-edged pillow. When she felt her husband thrust himself up from the mattress, she shrank away in expectation of another horrifying onslaught. But he was leaving her bed, departing without having uttered a single word. In the darkness she heard him lurch across the room, then for a moment she saw him outlined against the light from his dressing room, until he drew the door shut behind him.

  Sobbing now without restraint, Marianna thought bleakly — yet at the same time with a kind of awe — is it this that makes me a true wife? Is it only tonight that I have known a man, as it says in the Bible? She tried to move, to ease her bruised and battered limbs, but found she scarcely had the strength to stir. She lay limp and listless, longing for sleep. For oblivion. But sleep was denied her.

  The realization came suddenly. I could be with child now. It brought Marianna no comfort.

  Chapter 9

  Standing at the window of her bedroom, Marianna looked out at the depressing morning scene. It was raining hard, and wet leaves brought down by the night’s high winds lay spattered all across the street and pavements. A baker’s delivery man, his head and shoulders draped in sacking, his laden basket covered with a piece of grimy canvas, scurried towards the area steps and clanged the iron gate behind him.

  But Marianna had cocooned herself from the dreariness and the chill, letting her mind carry her to another place, another clime. She was lost in a lovely dream ... golden mists of sunlight filtering through the trees, the sweet sound of birdsong and the trickling levada, the cool feel of water between her bare toes, the fragrance of ferns and moss and the abounding wild flowers. And Jacinto sitting beside her, his proud face stern with concentration as he read aloud from the book they held between them, his quick grin that made his dark eyes dance ....

  With an aching sadness Marianna turned from the window and rang for her maid. A few minutes later Hilda appeared bearing a tray of tea.

  ‘Morning, ma’am. And a right dull old morning it is, too.’ She went to the windows and looped back the curtains. ‘Still, the weather don’t really matter when you’re in London, do it, ma’am?’

  To avoid meeting the direct glance of Hilda’s sharp eyes, Marianna busied herself searching for a handkerchief in the sleeve of her wrapper. Would her ordeal in the night be revealed in her face, she wondered wretchedly, for everyone to see? How much did the girl know and understand of such matters? What would she be able to interpret from the stains on the bed sheets?

  ‘I would like a bath,’ she said with a shudder.

  ‘Yes’m. It’ll be ready in a few ticks. It’s ever so easy here with that huge water boiler thing they keeps on the go permanent.’

  ‘Is Mr Penfold up yet?’ she inquired, after a moment.

  ‘Ooh, yes’m. The master’s up and had his breakfast and left the house long since.’

  ‘Left the house?’

  ‘He’s gone to his firm, I expect, ma’am. Where he sees to all them ships of his, an’ that.’

  Without a word to her! Yet it was a relief to Marianna that she would not have to encounter her husband yet awhile.

  In less than fifteen minutes Hilda returned with another maid, bearing large steaming copper cans which they emptied into the hip bath that was placed behind a chinoiserie screen. Marianna stepped into the perfumed water, almost as hot as she could bear it, and soaped and scoured herself all over with the flannel cloth, hoping to rid her body of its feeling of contamination.

  Her maid, who was laying out Marianne’s clothes, said chattily, ‘The master left special instructions that you was to be reminded about the dressmaker, ma’am.’

  ‘The dressmaker? What is this, Hilda?’

  ‘Why, she’s coming this morning, ma’am. Eleven o’clock, the master said.’

  William might have told her! It seemed autocratic in the extreme that he should arrange such a personal aspect of her life as this, without even bothering to consult her wishes first.

  ‘Oh yes, of course,’ she said. ‘How silly of me, I was quite forgetting.’

  Marianna interviewed the dressmaker in her boudoir, feeling that this was appropriate. Mrs Christabel Prebble had such a commanding presence that the young assistant who followed in her wake seemed no more than a scurrying mouse. Mrs Prebble was an extremely large woman of Linguareira’s proportions, and was so tight-laced as to be rendered somewhat breathless.

  ‘Miss Larkhay — forward with the designs, if you please. Now, madam...’ She paused while casting an assessing glance over Marianna, then amended, ‘Now, my dear ... that good husband of yours is the most generous of men, is he not? “See that my bride is suitable fitted-out for the coming winter,” was his instruction to me. “There is to be no stinting, Mrs Prebble.” Those were his very words. “You are to be her guide and mentor and ensure that she has everything she will require.”’

  Marianna felt compelled to answer the implied criticism. ‘I had little time in which to prepare for my wedding, you see. It wasn’t possible, before I left Madeira, to put together a complete trousseau.’

  ‘I quite understand. Besides which, in such an outlandish place, there wouldn’t be the artistes of the profession. That stands to reason.’

  ‘Madeira is not an outlandish place.’

  Mrs Prebble smiled condescendingly. ‘Well, it isn’t England, my dear, let’s put it in those words. It’s not exactly the hub of civilization.’

  ‘May we please get on,’ Marianna said stiffly.

  Leafing through the portfolio set before her on the pedestal table, it seemed to Marianna that all the clothes depicted were of a style more suited to the maiden she had been before her marriage, rather than to the wife she had now become.

  ‘Did you make the white voile dress that was delivered for me yesterday, Mrs Prebble?’ she inquired.

  ‘Indeed I did! Were you not delighted with it? Normally, of course, I always insist on giving my clients per
sonal fittings — that’s only fair to my reputation. But in this case I obliged Mr Penfold, because he wanted the dress made in a great hurry. For an appointment at a photographic studio, he explained.

  Marianna took a deep breath. ‘As a matter of fact, Mrs Prebble, I thought the dress rather too youthful for me in style. And I find the same fault with every one of these designs you are showing me now. So I would like to see some that are more ... more mature.’

  The dressmaker shook her head. ‘Your husband himself selected these sketches from my large range, and just left it to you and me to decide which particular ones you are to have ... and the colour and fabric and trimmings, etcetera.’

  ‘But I don’t approve of any of them.’

  ‘I’m afraid it wouldn’t do at all to go against Mr Penfold’s wishes, my dear — for either of us.’

  Their eyes met, and it was Marianna who glanced away. But she went on doggedly, ‘There is no point in my looking further at these sketches. Kindly show me some others.’

  ‘That would not be possible, Mrs Penfold, as I have been at pains to explain.’

  ‘In which case,’ Marianna said with dignity, ‘I must thank you for calling and bid you good-day.’

  The dressmaker did not take affront and sweep out of the house, as Marianna had expected. She tried to cajole her, advising her earnestly to be sensible and count her blessings. If a wealthy gentleman like Mr Penfold had the fancy to dress his wife in the apparel of a sweet young girl, well, where was the harm? Didn’t it only indicate how protective he felt towards her? And of course Mr Penfold was a goodly number of years older than herself, so it was understandable that he should look upon her in a somewhat different light than he would a wife of more his own generation.

  ‘Stop it,’ cried Marianna, covering her ears. ‘Will you please leave, this minute?’

  The hours of the day dragged slowly by. She made a poor luncheon, seated in lonely state in the dining room, which was a gloomy, overbearing chamber. What little light seeped in through the lace curtains was at once swallowed up by the mulberry coloured walls and heavy pieces of mahogany furniture. Afterwards, she retired to the morning room and endeavoured to screen off the joyless present and lose herself in sketching, letting her pencil have its way. Again and again it was a face which emerged on the paper, always the same face — Jacinto’s face. Marianna screwed up her drawings and tossed them into the fire. With a numbing sense of pain she watched them scorch and curl.