Portrait of Peril

by Laura Joh Rowland

  She must have expected gaudy decor such as one imagines in a house of ill repute, because when she sees how ordinary my surroundings are, her face falls. The meal I just ate sits like lead in my stomach as I brace myself for another spat.

  “May I take your coat?” I say.

  “That’s not necessary. I won’t be staying long.” Though still smiling, Mrs. Barrett speaks in a tight voice, as if she’s trying not to breathe my bad air.

  Barrett recovers his voice. “Please sit down, Mother.”

  “Thank you.” She perches on the edge of a chair, and when I offer her food and drink, she says, “I’ve already eaten.”

  Fitzmorris says, “It was nice to see you again, Mrs. Barrett.” Then he excuses himself and goes upstairs.

  Barrett and I seat ourselves, sharing an uneasy glance.

  “Sarah, I can tell you’re wondering why in the world I’m here,” Mrs. Barrett says. “Thomas, I’m glad you’re here too, so I can tell both of you at once: I have the perfect solution to the problem of where you’re going to live.” She pauses, smiling, like a magician about to pull a flower out of his sleeve.

  “You’ve found a flat for us?” Barrett sounds hopeful but cautious.

  Mrs. Barrett laughs as if he’s said something silly. “No, no. You can move in with your father and me.”

  I choke down a gulp.

  “Uh, I don’t think that would work,” Barrett says.

  Mrs. Barrett flicks a sharp glance at me, but she keeps smiling. “Why not? I’ll fix up your old bedroom, and you and Sarah can live there, as cozy as two bugs in a rug.”

  “Bugs in a rug,” Barrett echoes, clearly as appalled as I am.

  I scramble for a reason that’s more pleasant than the truth, which is that I couldn’t endure her scrutiny, her disapproval, and her carping on a daily basis. I can’t tell her we wouldn’t have enough privacy for lovemaking; the very thought makes me blush.

  “It’s nice of you to offer, but you would be too crowded with us there,” I say.

  “Nonsense.” Her voice is merry, brittle. “We would be one big, happy family.”

  I shudder at her use of the phrase. “I’m sure we’ll find our own flat soon.”

  “We won’t charge you rent. You can save your money.”

  “That wouldn’t be fair to you and Dad,” Barrett says.

  I can see him weakening; he loves his parents and has difficulty saying no to his mother. “My job entails getting called to photograph crime scenes,” I say. I haven’t discussed practicalities with the Daily World crime editor, but I suppose that after I leave this house, I’ll get the calls and fetch Mick and Hugh. That’s another reason I want a flat close to them, aside from wishing to have their companionship, look after them, and keep them out of trouble. “You wouldn’t want strangers knocking on your door at all hours of the day or night.”

  Mrs. Barrett narrows her eyes. “I’m glad you mentioned your job. We need to talk about that.”

  My back goes up, and I put my foot down. “I’m not quitting.”

  Barrett’s eyes widen in alarm at my open defiance. I feel sorry for him, caught in the middle of my conflict with his mother.

  “Sarah, I understand your problem,” Mrs. Barrett says in a gentle, condescending tone. “Thomas tells me that you lost your father when you were very young, and your mother had to go to work. She couldn’t teach you about marriage and a woman’s proper place. Of course you grew up with the wrong ideas.”

  I turn on Barrett. “You told her that?”

  Even while he cringes from my accusing tone, he says, “Well, not exactly. But she’s my mother. She wanted to know about the woman I was going to marry.”

  I feel as if he’s stripped off my clothes in front of her. “You don’t know anything about me,” I snap at Mrs. Barrett. “You’re the one with the wrong ideas.” But I’m shaken to think that maybe she’s not so wrong. Indeed, my childhood has affected my view of marriage.

  “Sarah.” Her smile hardens with her effort to control her own temper. “I can help you. When you move into my house, I’ll teach you how to cook and clean, and look after your husband, and everything else you need to learn to be a good wife.”

  My mother shaped her life and mine around protecting Lucas. Now Mrs. Barrett is attempting to mold me into her notion of the perfect daughter-in-law. Anger launches me up from my seat. “I’m not moving into your house. Leave me alone!”

  Barrett and his mother rise too. His expression is sheer panic, hers dark with fury.

  Hugh ambles into the room, rubbing his eyes and yawning. He’s unshaven and barefoot, clad only in loose pajama bottoms that hang low on his hips. “I say, did I miss dinner?”

  Mrs. Barrett sucks in a loud gasp, horrified to see the famous sodomite in the half-naked flesh.

  “Oh, it’s Mrs. Barrett.” Hugh smiles and hitches up his pants. “Good evening.”

  Clutching the back of her chair as though she’s about to faint, she turns to me. “Does he always walk around unclothed?”

  “Not always.” I’m too furious to be polite.

  “Are you and he … intimate?”

  Barrett cringes as though he wishes a hole would open up in the floor and swallow him. Before I can retort, Hugh speaks in his frostiest, most aristocratic manner, his defense against this uninvited guest who beholds him with such revulsion in his own home. “My dear lady, there has never been anything improper between Sarah and me. We once went swimming together in a sewer, but we were both fully dressed.”

  That happened during one of our investigations; we almost drowned. So did Barrett. He evidently hasn’t told his mother, who says, “Now you’re mocking me,” and glares through tears at Hugh and me. “You’re both terrible, disgusting, cruel monsters!”

  Hugh looks down his nose at her. “And you, Madam, have no right to insult us under our own roof. You have the manners of a fishwife.”

  Mrs. Barrett breaks down sobbing with rage and humiliation. Barrett says, “Come on Mother, I’ll take you home.”

  As he leads her away, she calls over her shoulder to me, “I wish he’d married Jane instead of you!”

  My knees give out, and I crumple into my chair. Hugh sits beside me. “God, I’m sorry, Sarah. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  I’m wondering who Jane is, and my anger at Mrs. Barrett spills over onto Hugh. “No, you shouldn’t have. Things were bad enough, and you made them worse.”

  “I said I was sorry.” Hugh’s contrition has a sharp edge. “Can you forgive me?”

  “I suppose so. I’ve had to forgive you for so many things recently; what’s one more?”

  “Well, if you want to be that way, then I rescind my apology,” Hugh snaps.

  We’re taking out our emotions on each other. I don’t want to strain our relationship, but his behavior is hurting him more than anyone else. “Forget Tristan Mariner. Pull yourself together, or you’re going to lose your friends as well as your job.”

  Hugh stares at me, shocked that I would address him in a manner so devoid of compassion. There’s a brokenness in his gaze, like a shattered window through which I can see the deep, black despair in his soul. Then he carefully pushes back his chair, stands, and says with cold dignity, “Thank you for your advice, Sarah. If Barrett leaves you—and God knows, his mother is probably urging him to give you the gate right now—I’ll repeat it back to you.” Then he trudges upstairs.

  Ashamed because I’ve hurt my best friend, I call, “Hugh, I’m sorry.”

  It’s too late; he doesn’t respond. I cover my face with my hands for a moment; then I wash the dishes. When I’m finished, Barrett hasn’t returned, so I go up to my room and prepare for bed. An hour later, at nine o’clock, still no Barrett. I pace the floor in my dressing gown. Then comes his knocking on the front door—three raps, a pause, then two more. My heart leaps. I hear Fitzmorris go down to let him in. When he comes up, he hesitates at my threshold.

  “Sarah.” He looks tired, his expression
filled with chagrin. He’s carrying a valise, which must mean he’s spending the night as we planned. “Can I come in?”

  I sigh with relief; his mother hasn’t convinced him to give me the gate. “Of course.” But when he steps into my room, I have to say, “I don’t appreciate your telling your mother about my personal family business.”

  “I didn’t know you would mind so much. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”

  He looks so ashamed and regretful that I nod, letting him off the hook. But the next words out of my mouth are, “Who is Jane?”

  “Um.” Barrett holds his valise in front of him like a shield. “Jane Lambert. She’s a girl I used to see.”

  “See? What does that mean?” I realize he must have known other women before we met, but he’s never mentioned any.

  “We were, well, unofficially engaged. I’ve known Jane since we were children. Our families are old friends. It was sort of understood that someday we’d marry.”

  Even if the engagement wasn’t official, theirs was a long, apparently serious relationship. A needle of jealousy stabs me, and I cross my arms over my chest.

  “But I never proposed to Jane,” Barrett says. “And I broke things off a long time ago.”

  “Exactly how long ago?”

  He pauses. “In March of last year.”

  “You were still seeing her while you were courting me!”

  “Not after things got serious between you and me,” Barrett hurries to say. “Then I told Jane about you, and it was over.”

  How wrong I was to think that Barrett had no secrets from me. More wounded and jealous than ever, I say, “When you and I … Did you and she …?”

  He drops his gaze, a clear admission that he had carnal relations with her and didn’t stop after he started having them with me. I never asked him if there was anyone else, and neither of us promised to be faithful until we exchanged our marriage vows, but it’s agonizing to learn that while I never had any other lover, he had Jane. Maybe he was with her on the very same days he was with me!

  “Was she at the wedding?” I demand.

  “Our families are old friends; I told you.”

  I try to recall meeting her, but the faces of his guests are a blur. This woman who’d experienced intimate pleasures with my husband watched me marry him! Perhaps she scorned me because I was innocently oblivious to their past.

  “When was the last time you saw her, other than at the wedding?”

  He still won’t look at me. “A few days ago.”

  “A few days ago?” I shout.

  He sighs. “I went to my parents’ house. She lives down the street with her parents. She happened to be outside when I passed by.”

  “That’s a likely story.” I’m afraid to ask what else happened. “Is she still unwed?”

  “Yes, but what does it matter?” Now Barrett sounds exasperated; he meets my eyes. “I’m not interested in her. She’s not interested in me.”

  I’ve never been in this situation before, and I’m at a loss for how to handle it. All I can do is follow a script that seems bred in the blood, created by a feminine possessiveness I didn’t know I had in me. “Are you going to see her again?”

  “Not if I can help it.” Barrett sets down his valise and puts his arms around me. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Jane. I should have.”

  “What else aren’t you telling me?”

  “Nothing!”

  I stand rigidly silent in his embrace, awash in hurt and confusion.

  “Sarah, you’re the one I married.” His tone is urgent, passionate. “I love you, and only you.”

  I want to believe him, but my old, ingrained habit of distrust grips me. My father and my mother both hid devastating secrets from me. What others might my husband have besides his former fiancée?

  “Am I still spending the night?” he asks cautiously.

  No, I never want to see you again; you can go back to Jane.

  Please don’t leave me!

  The opposite impulses steady me, as does the realization that we’re married until death do us part. “Of course,” I say.

  But we’re uneasy with each other, and in bed I lie facing away from him as he undresses and washes. He climbs under the covers, and now I’m hot with lust for him. It’s high time for our delayed wedding night, but an internal battle between desire and anger inhibits me. I want to make passionate love to him and show him that he’s better off with me than Jane. I want to punish him for the fact that he ever knew a woman before he met me.

  I lie motionless, nursing my ill will.

  CHAPTER 12

  I wake to the sound of church bells. It’s Sunday, barely light outside. When I turn over in bed, I bump into a heavy, inert form. I’ve forgotten that Barrett spent the night. The memory of our quarrel slaps me wide awake, and the anxious tone of Fitzmorris’s and Mick’s voices downstairs tells me something’s wrong. I climb over Barrett, who stirs groggily to life, put on my dressing gown and slippers, and run down to the second floor.

  Mick and Fitzmorris, clad in their nightclothes, stand at the open door of Hugh’s room. “He’s gone,” Mick says.

  “He must have sneaked out while we were asleep,” Fitzmorris says.

  Looking into his room, all I see is the evidence of his troubled state of mind. His expensive clothes are strewn on the bed, chair, and floor. Empty glasses and bottles litter the table, and the air smells of stale liquor and perspiration.

  “I should’ve stayed home with him last night instead of lookin’ for ghosts at the church,” Mick says. “By the way, I didn’t see none.”

  “I was here, and I didn’t hear him leave.” Fitzmorris sounds angry at himself.

  “No, it’s my fault,” I say. “We quarreled last night. That’s why he left.”

  Barrett comes downstairs, fully dressed, smoothing his rumpled hair. When I tell him that Hugh is gone, he says, “Hugh’s a grown man. What he does is his own responsibility.”

  Knowing that Barrett is right doesn’t make us feel any better. Breakfast is a quiet, gloomy meal. When Barrett finishes eating, he says to me, “I’d better get over to the station. I’ll see you tonight,” and he leaves.

  I try to put Jane and his mother out of my mind. “The meeting of the Society for Psychical Studies is at noon,” I say to Mick. “I’ve things to do first, so I’ll meet you there.”

  * * *

  After my father disappeared, my mother and I lived in six different lodging houses from the time we left Clerkenwell in 1866 until her death nine years later. They’re scattered around London, near the factories where she worked. She moved from one job to the next whenever we relocated.

  Our first lodging, in Tottenham, is only about seven miles north of Clerkenwell, but when she took me there, it felt like the end of the earth. Now, alighting from the train at Seven Sisters Road station, I remember waiting on the platform with our few possessions while she hired a cab. The landscape looks much the same as then. In the distance, above the terraced houses, the funnel-shaped chimneys at the tile kilns belch smoke into the foggy air. I remember wishing I could wave a magic wand and send us home to our old, normal life with my father. That same loneliness steals like a cold, desolate sickness into my heart as I walk along the high street. The fog coalesces into raindrops, and I’m glad to open my umbrella to block my view of the shops we once frequented. Reluctance slows my steps down Eastbourne Road. My body stiffens, as though the sight of the house where we occupied a cramped, sparely furnished room will be a physical blow.

  The house has been torn down, the whole terrace replaced by a five-story tenement building. My relief is so great that I’m not disappointed when I go inside, knock on doors, and discover that the residents who answer never knew my mother. I head toward the button factory where we both worked before she sent me away to boarding school. This was the route we walked Monday through Saturday, before dawn and after dusk. On a road that backs onto the yard outside the tile kilns, the factory still stand
s. I halt by the wall that fronts the two-story building. Time has eroded the bricks, stained them with soot. It’s closed for the Sabbath, but I imagine the steam from the roaring boilers, the loud buzz of sanders, and the punch-punch of the stamping machines. I picture my childhood self at a table with twenty other girls, sorting, inspecting, and packaging buttons, breathing the dust from ground animal bones, hooves, and horns. I rub my fingertips together, remembering the cuts from sharp edges on defective buttons. That job strengthened my determination to become a photographer and never do menial, mind-numbing work again.

  There’s no one to ask for information about my mother, but I’m suddenly struck by the memory, forgotten until now, of why we left the factory.

  When I first began working there, the other girls tried to befriend me, but my mother had warned me not to talk to them. They thought my silence rude, and they started bullying me. They mixed up my buttons, called me bad names, pestered me with questions about myself, and blocked my way to the privy so that I wet myself. Then one day my mother stormed up to the table, shoved the ringleader’s face into a tray of buttons, and held her down while she screamed. The foreman pulled my mother away, then fired us both. I was happy to leave, and it was one of the rare occasions where my mother had done something nice for me—she usually endured troubles with a stiff upper lip and expected me to follow suit. But now I realize that her assault on the bully wasn’t in my defense. She did it to make the girls leave me alone so that I wouldn’t be forced to give up information about my family and they wouldn’t discover our connection to Benjamin Bain, the fugitive rapist and murderer.

  An hour later, on the train, I gaze out the window at the view of London’s western suburbs while I think over what happened at the factory. I myself am the witness I’ve been seeking—the person who knew my mother, who observed her tendency toward violence. I picture her holding down Ellen Casey while Lucas watches. But my memory won’t hold water with the police. I’m the daughter of Benjamin Bain, and who could blame them for thinking I’ve invented a memory to support my claim that he’s innocent?