Girl in a Blue Dress

by Gaynor Arnold

  But Michael is in full flow. “Sometimes, I swear, he behaved as if he was above the laws of nature! But Nature overtook him in the end, Dodo. He was forced to realize that life is not a novel, that those around him were not his characters, and that in spite of all his fame and success, he couldn’t will himself a happy ending.” He coughs and takes out his handkerchief to wipe his whiskers.

  “What about Miss Ricketts?” I say cuttingly. “Wasn’t she supposed to be the happy ending?”

  He shrugs. “I doubt it—or he would have looked more content. The last time I saw him, he was so old and ill looking, I was appalled.”

  “Don’t say that.” I cannot bear to think of that. I want to remember him at his best—young, quick, vigorous, sharp as a Sheffield knife.

  He sighs. “But it’s true, Dodo. He’d lost all that wonderful exuberance. When I last saw him he was walking along the Strand, limping and looking as miserable as it is possible to look. We talked for a little and he said he wished we could all go back to the good old days in Wellard Street: ‘I was a better man, then. A far, far better man.’”

  Wellard Street. When we were so happy. “Did he speak of me?”

  O’Rourke shakes his head. “I wish I could say yes. But you were too much of a reminder to him, a reminder of the wrong thing he had done. The only way he could manage you was to flatten you out of existence, as he’d flattened Jack Black under the wheels of the Dover coach. But he could not quite suppress his guilt. He told me that he was continually laid low with stomach cramps or monstrous headaches.”

  “I’m not surprised. Kitty said he never ate a proper meal.”

  “Only bits here and there. And he smoked like a chimney and downed more champagne than was good for him. The doctors kept warning him; Jenkins even said there could be a brain seizure, but it seemed as though he didn’t care—started on new reading tours as if he were still young and fit. Put himself through months of travel, all over England, all over America. Trains, boats, cabs, and carriages. Snow, ice, rain, and sleet. Strange hotels and hot concert halls night after night. New audiences clamoring for his every word and gesture, new critics ready for the kill. The wretched Miles wrote an article saying that he wasn’t satisfied with being the richest writer in England but had to hawk himself around like a cheapjack, piling up more and more booty. But you and I both know that it wasn’t the receipts that drove him on. He needed to know his Public still loved him, that they still communed with him on this great shared stage that is Life.”

  “And they did, didn’t they? I heard they came from everywhere to see him.”

  “Oh, yes. Lamming told me he’d seen men actually plying their fists outside the box office. Alfred dared not cancel a single performance for fear of riots breaking out.” He shakes his head. “The halls would be filled to capacity, people packed as close as it was possible to be, the temperature near to boiling. He should have seen what he was doing to himself. He was sometimes almost dead with exhaustion, had almost to be carried into the building, saying: I can’t disappoint My Public.”

  I’d have loved, if only once, to have slipped in at the back of the hall, incognito, to watch him as Miggs and Edward Cleverly and James Bartram. But in truth it would have been too much for me. “I try to picture it, you know,” I tell O’Rourke. “I imagine him like Abanazar at Christmas.”

  “Not so different, in fact. The same red curtain; the light arranged to fall exactly on his face. But it had become a finely tuned performance and he’d wait, watch in hand, for the exact second to show himself. And when he did, the cheers would be deafening. But he’d put up his hand, just so, to request silence, as if our adulation was absolutely nothing to him. And when there was silence—and only when—he would open the book, and begin. No introduction, no address to the audience—straight in. Something from Miggs, usually, to make us laugh. Then Little Amy, or the death of Tom Welby, to make us cry. Or the ghost chapter from The Red House to make our hairs stand on end, or the drowning of Poll Lowton to horrify us all and make the ladies swoon.”

  “Kitty hated it when he did Jack Black.”

  “I’m not surprised. He became a different person.”

  I have often wondered why Alfred was apparently so compelled to reenact that particular scene, and whom it was he wished he were throttling so comprehensively in the black, black water of Hungerford Bridge. Maybe I am glad, after all, that I did not see this scene played out, that I was spared the violence that so distressed Kitty. She was always sensitive to that streak of cruelty in him—the jokes that went too far, the frightening bedtime stories, the sudden changes of mood—and mystified as to how it ran alongside his tremendous compassion, tenderness, and affection.

  The violence is in her too, I think, in her restlessness and passion and sudden displays of rage. I think of her at lunch, flitting between anger and guilt, and I feel ashamed that I have not spoken to her more kindly, that my preoccupations have overshadowed hers. She needs me more than ever now that Alfred is gone and Augustus is in such a wretched state. I turn to Michael: “Do you think Augustus will tell Kitty frankly of his troubles? It isn’t right for a man to keep his wife so much in the dark.”

  He coughs. “I’ve no idea what that man is likely to do. He’s a mystery to me. And it’s a mystery what Kitty sees in him.”

  I suppose, as ever, it all comes back to her father. I think that in cleaving to Augustus, she was attempting to be free of Alfred. “Poor girl, she took his indifference for tolerance and his idleness for good nature—and will never admit she is mistaken.”

  “Like him, then.” He sighs as he rises to go: “You know, Dodo, before you came back today, she was recounting some incident she had seen in the street, some altercation between a hansom cab driver and a dogs-meat man, and I could see him right before me: the red curtain, the light, the compelling gestures, the vivid eyes. It was eerie. His ghost come to life.”

  MANY GHOSTS ARE coming to life. No sooner has O’Rourke gone than Wilson comes in with a note. It’s from Alfie again. He wants to bring Caroline and the baby to see me tomorrow afternoon. Around tea-time, if that is convenient for you, Mama.

  I write excitedly to tell him that it is. I inform Wilson, who compresses her lips at the thought of more refreshments. She is already in bad humor about the cost of the impromptu lunch, and the positioning of the Box (which is impeding her accustomed path between the door and the fireplace) but I will not be deterred from arrangements to see my own son and very first grandchild. “See that we have plenty of cake, and make sure the tea caddy is replenished with some decent Darjeeling. Oh, and some China tea too; I don’t know my daughter-in-law’s tastes.” I fish from my purse the coins I did not spend on the hansom cab. “I’m sure Mr. Collins will be grateful for a little cash in advance, and you may need to encourage the baker, too. Seed cake isn’t suitable for a child. Perhaps a Dundee. Or a good Madeira.”

  “Madam.” She takes the money, bobs very slightly, and goes out, heavy with disapproval. Sometimes she’s worse than Kitty.

  21

  IT’S LATE AFTERNOON, AND I START TO LOOK THROUGH the box. Wilson is right; I don’t have space in this apartment for anything new. I’ll have to sit down and make a proper list, set aside time to sort through it all at my leisure. I can now hardly believe what a dread word leisure used to be, how I had to parcel out my time, make every small activity—breakfast, luncheon, supper, reading the newspaper, combing Gyp’s coat—last as long as possible. Now, no ingenuity at all is required to keep myself amused; events occur of their own accord.

  Gyp fusses around my skirts as I kneel on the floor by the box. He’s out of humor with me lately; he’s not used to his mistress being absent from her favorite chair, nor to the strange scents of tobacco smoke and camphor that Augustus and O’Rourke have been bringing with them every day. He has found another new scent now—he is wagging his tail, sniffing at something in my pocket. I remember suddenly the little notebook I filched from Alfred’s desk and pull it out.


  It’s the kind of notebook Alfred always favored—small enough to slip into his pocket, large enough to carry all the information he needed. He must have gone through dozens of them in his life-time—but at the end he always tore them up, putting them on the fire for good measure. So I suppose this book must be the last of its kind, the final notes for Boniface. I don’t know why I stole it; if Sissy finds out—as no doubt she will—there will be repercussions for our newfound amity. But for the moment I am infused with a new spirit of insouciance.

  I am excited as I open the first page. It is jammed with his own peculiar shorthand, but I can see straightaway the word Boniface written in full among the crabbed symbols. Even as I look at it, though, I realize that it resembles none of his other notebooks. It’s too neat. There are no random jottings, no ideas for titles, no lists of wild and wonderful names. The writing is minute, but consecutive. It is, I am sure, a narrative. Can he actually have started to write a chapter in this book? I strain to make out the words, astonished to find I can still remember how to decipher his strange abbreviations.

  As soon as I piece together the first sentence, it is clear that this is not a novel. Indeed, it is not even fiction. I stop short, guilty, wondering whether it is allowable for me to go on. He didn’t mean this to be read, that is certain. But my curiosity is more intense than I can say. If I do read it, who is to know? He is not here to reprove me. All the same I can’t help looking up, afraid for a moment that I shall find him standing in the doorway, with damp yellow earth on his clothes like the spirit of Jonas Buckleberry. But there is no one there; the door is closed, the chenille curtain is drawn tight against the drafts and the whole room is cozy and warm. Anyway, I don’t believe in ghosts—and never did, even when Alfred read the Haunting of All Hallows’ Eve so thrillingly that every hair on my head stood up in horror.

  I draw my shawl close and start to read:

  I have always been blessed (or maybe cursed) with the gift of premonition. And as this year draws to a close, I feel that my life, too, is near its end. I am ill with the colic, I can hardly walk, and my sight in one eye is so poor that the page in front of me retreats and blurs and sometimes disappears altogether. I hope only to stay alive long enough to complete Boniface. I should not want to leave it a mystery to my readers—although at this moment I have to admit it is something of a mystery to myself. Every time I pick up my pen I am filled with a strange sense of unease and I have an almost superstitious dread as I see the last chapters come towards me, as if they are some kind of Nemesis; and I shy away from them. Perhaps my powers of invention are failing. I am very tired, certainly.

  Jenny Wren says I should ‘write down my life’. I tell her that is precisely what I’ve been doing since I was twenty. But I need a relief from Boniface—he drives me hard to no good purpose at present. So I shall humour her.

  They say I am a Great Man. I suppose that’s true. I have certainly accomplished a good deal in my fifty-eight years, more than I could have thought I was capable of when, as a small boy of no very good education and indifferent health, I first conceived the notion of becoming a writer. I was a reader first, of course, as most writers are. I was enthralled by the worlds of fantasy the books of my childhood opened up to me; how in reading them, I could escape completely the dullness of my life, or its sufferings. I read and re-read the same favourites, and it did not seem to matter that I knew not only the endings of my heroes’ adventures, but could almost recite each narrative word for word, and engage with them as if with my friends.

  Of course, I was not encouraged in this life of the imagination by my early circumstances. I have written of them in many guises, but they still demand to be described over and over again. Even now, as a man, I can feel all the anguish of my childhood as fresh as if it were a new wound. I can hear again the sound of threats from butchers’ boys and bailiffs, as unpaid bills mount, creditors clamour at the door, and we are turned out of rooms for which the rent has not been paid in the past and is unlikely ever to be paid in the future. Once more I bundle up my pathetic belongings in the flight from bad lodgings to worse; once more I endure the shame of hiding behind curtains in a back room, holding the dog’s muzzle so he does not bark; once more I stammer out a false name to the court constable in a vain attempt to evade recognition. And finally, when there is nowhere else to flee to, I follow my father to a dingy room in the Fleet Prison. Even now as I think of it—even as I write of it all this time later—I am in tears.

  Yet while I regret those wretched times as much as I have regretted anything in my life—I know they have made me what I am, given me the determination to struggle against all odds. My daughter has called me ‘implacable’. Well may she do so. She has—thank God—never had to suffer the privations I knew or had to steel herself against daily disappointment and despair. She does not know what it is at the tender age of eight to be put to work; to any work that was available; to any work that would bring in a few shillings; to any common work where a tender newcomer might rub shoulders with boys whose only object in life was to give a good drubbing to their fellow labourers; in short, to any work where the life of the imagination was as nothing.

  And I was a sensitive little fellow. I don’t think I belie myself to say so. If I had been less aware of the existence of finer feelings, perhaps I would have been content to subside into the general life of drudgery that my parents were satisfied to see me in; happy to do nothing more than work like a donkey during my allotted hours, and eat, drink and sleep when the work was finished. What more, after all, do poor working boys do? What energy do they have, after hours of toil, to indulge in fantasy and speculation? What money to pay for books or entertainment? A song in an ale-house perhaps? A Punch and Judy show got up in haste down some back alley? A dance with a ready girl who takes pity on a small boy and kisses him on the lips while she waits for a paying customer? Had I not determined otherwise, with the most solemn of promises to myself, those miserable entertainments would have been the sum total of my enjoyment.

  But even at my most despairing, I could not settle for this. From my earliest remembrance, I determined to do well. I even had ambitions to be famous. I have always felt this need to be active in the matter of my own fate; never to rely on others. But I have to own that I had the narrowest of escapes. An unexpected legacy caused my father to be released, and I was put back into a respectable school with a suddenness that surprised me. How delightful it was to wear new clothes and boots; to have clean hands, clean linen, and friends of whom I was not ashamed! And to reside for whole periods at the same address, eating off china that would have once only graced the interior of the pawnbroker’s, and willing for the servants to open the door to the tradesmen when they called!

  My chief comfort throughout my whole childhood was my sister, Lottie. I do not know what I would have done without her. Indeed, I hardly know how I manage now. She was a steady rock in my life; the only person who never failed me.

  Although she was exactly one year younger than me, she had an understanding well beyond her years, and was possessed of such a wonderful, joyous spirit that I would have defied anyone to be sad in her company. We were close companions as children; night after night we invented wild stories or played out charades, pulling from the old attic basket a variety of ancient clothes which my mother was always going to mend but never did. I sported many a brocade waistcoat and dun-coloured frock-coat as worn (said my mother) by her own Papa when times had been ‘more favourable’. Lottie would seek out threadbare shawls and prance about fluttering feathery fans that were so full of dust that we would sneeze as profusely as if we had been taking a juvenile form of snuff. And when Sydney was left in our charge (as he increasingly was) we would assign him the roles of pet dog or monkey and let him crawl about on the floorboards until he was a veritable porcupine of splinters. I see them both now, Sydney grimy from the floor-dirt, his mouth sticky with bread and jam; Lottie neat and bright, her hair in braids around her head, making him a p
aper boat or cradling him against her childish frame. Sometimes she cradled me, too, and I remember the sense of comfort that came from being in her arms, as we lay like Hansel and Gretel in the midst of the wild wood of our parents’ chaotic affairs. But I could not indulge these moments too often; I knew that someone in our family had to be grown-up, and it was clear our parents were to be despaired of in that direction. So it fell to me to be the strong and self-reliant one. I had to whistle and stride about like the hero of my own story, and forgo the delights of Lottie’s firm little arms.

  Did my mother not embrace me herself? I think back as hard as I can, and have no remembrance of it. Her hands, as I recall, were usually busy wringing themselves into a genteel state of anxiety, and her contact with my person was usually confined to a curious attempt to ‘smarten me up’ by ruffling my hair sideways, or giving me a sharp poke in the region of my ribs when she wished to emphasise how fortunate I’d been to benefit from the generosity of her deceased relative: ‘I hope you will always be a credit to us, Fred. Goodness knows your father and I have suffered enough for you.’ But anything nearer an embrace I do not recall. As for a kiss—no more than the habitual proffering of a hard cheek even while she was in the midst of talking to someone else.

  And my father? I once had hopes of my father’s affection. He was an affable man and took a more sanguine attitude to existence than my Mama. He saw there were matters beyond the mundane, and aspired to them. It was his library of books that I had devoured from childhood, and I believe his love of words must have affected my own enjoyment of the same. My father, I recall, would not use one word where four or five would do—and this impressive characteristic was, I am sure, significant in his ability to borrow money in circumstances in which a more taciturn man would have failed; he wound words around people until they did not know what they were at. Perhaps I have inherited that ability—but I have put it to better purpose, I believe. My father was proud of me, but proud only insofar as he could make use of me. He would show off my facility for remembering whole swathes of poetry by standing me on the table at the ale-house or coffee-shop and letting me spout Shakespeare by the yard. It must have been quaint to see me there, barely four foot high and dressed as a diminutive gentleman, lamenting my fate as Cleopatra or defying the world as Lear. People would put money in my hands, or in my pocket, and chuck me under the chin, saying, ‘Well done! You’re better than Kean!’ And after the performance, my father would solemnly relieve me of the coinage I had amassed, patting me on the head and offering to buy me a half-pint of porter as a treat.