Not all that quietly, I think.
He examines his fingernails. “Unfortunately, you left the rest of us high and dry.”
“High and dry? You children had everything you could possibly want.”
“Except our Mama.”
He looks at me so pitifully that I cry out: “Don’t say that! Don’t blame me, Eddie. For Heaven’s sake don’t do that!”
“I’ve tried not to—believe me, I’ve tried—but all my life I keep remembering that you didn’t even say good-bye.”
I feel hot with guilt. “I wanted to, Eddie, believe me. I begged your father to let me have a few last moments with you all, but he was adamant: I won’t have wailing or gnashing of teeth, he said. So I had to creep round the bedrooms after you were all asleep and say good-bye to each of you in the silence of my heart.”
“Did you do that?” His face breaks into that beautiful smile.
“Of course. You and Georgie had that corner room. The one with three stairs up to it and the big wardrobe in the corner.”
He nods. “It was always a capital place to hide. Except Georgie had a tendency to sneeze because of the dust—and I had a tendency to pummel him for it. And those wretched stairs always creaked.”
“They creaked that night, too. I was afraid I’d wake you—but you were both dead to the world.”
“If I’d have known it was my last chance to see you, I’d have stayed up all night, pinching myself.”
“Would you?” I am touched. “I pictured you both for years afterwards—sleeping sweetly on your pillows with the moonshine on your faces. Georgie cradling that little wooden boat of his, you with your hair on end, wearing gloves for some reason.”
“They were new gloves. I was so proud of them I didn’t want to take them off.”
We laugh, then fall into silence. Suddenly Eddie leans forward and grasps my hands tightly. “How could the Old Man have allowed all that to happen? For some young girl! When he could have stopped it with a single word and saved us all that misery?”
“How do you know that, Eddie?” I look him in the eye. “Could you have stopped if you’d been in his place and there was something—someone—you wanted more than anything in the world?”
He springs up. “You still make excuses, Mama! But we both know what extraordinary willpower Papa had. To do and think only what he wanted to do and think. To the exclusion of all else.”
I look at him, so clear, so definite, so very young. “Oh, my dear, have you never been in love yourself?”
He drops his eyes for a second. “Well, if I have, I’ve never lost my senses. I mean, she was the same age as Kitty! And there’s no doubt he was guilty about it—he got to be so touchy at the mere mention of the words ‘theater’ or ‘actress’ that we hardly dared speak on the subject. O’Rourke will bear that out; I’m treading on eggs, Ned, he’d say. Honestly, Mama, you’ve no idea how he carried on when you first left.”
“Kitty said he was ‘mad.’ Although she exaggerates, I daresay.”
He leans against the mantelpiece. “For once, I think not. The only way I survived was to pretend it was all happening to somebody else, some other Eddie whom I knew slightly but didn’t care much for. They all thought I was content, because I went about with a smile on my face, but deep down I hated everybody—including you, Mama, I’m sorry to say.”
“Me?” I look at him with shock. It has never occurred to me that my children would hate me. Ignore me perhaps, despise me even; but not hate.
He turns and looks me in the eye. “Oh, Mama, did you never ask yourself why I didn’t write or come to see you until this very afternoon? Why do you think I waited until I knew the others would be here? I was afraid of what I might say to you if we were alone!”
“But what could you have said? I acted for the best—what I thought was best for you all.”
“Really? Did you ask us what we wanted, what we thought was best?”
“Well, of course not. You were far too young!”
“Mama! Kitty was seventeen; Alfie, fifteen; and I was eleven. And may I remind you that the sainted Edward Cleverly was only eight when he left the workhouse with a loaf of bread and two pennies, and went to London to look for his grandfather? Papa didn’t think he was too young to know his own mind. The difference is that Papa sympathized with the poor, sensitive boy with the fine feelings—whereas he didn’t sympathize with a bunch of pampered silver-spooners such as us.”
Eddie speaks so harshly, he frightens me a little. “It’s silly to compare yourself with Edward Cleverly,” I say. “He wasn’t real.”
Eddie snorts. “You tell that to Papa. You ask him what was most real to him.”
“Nonsense. You and Kitty both talk nonsense at times.”
“Have it your own way, Mother.”
There is silence. Eddie taps his boot against the fireguard. They all feel so aggrieved, my children. Alfred gave them so much, but they always wanted more. And apparently I have contrived to make Kitty rebellious and Alfie miserable, and Eddie fearful of addressing me. I look at him: “And do you still hate me?”
He smiles. “Isn’t it obvious? The moment I saw you with your teapots and cake stands and your lovely gentle smile, I realized I’d always loved you. And I remembered how much you loved me.”
“Oh, Eddie!” I open my arms, but he remains leaning against the mantelpiece.
“It doesn’t excuse him,” he says, pushing a coal fiercely with the poker. “Or her—Wilhelmina Ricketts, I mean.”
Her name comes as a shock from Eddie’s lips. “Ah, yes, Miss Ricketts,” I say, feigning calmness. “What is your opinion of her?”
He shrugs: “Hard to say. I met her only twice. Unless you count the stage at the Haymarket when I was ten.”
That wretched play again! “Was she very good in it?”
“Well, there was an awful lot of talking and swooning. But I was very struck with her looks. …”
“Beautiful?” I have an agonized flash of jealousy, in spite of all the years that have passed.
“Not exactly, but something appealing, at any rate. I remember going backstage afterwards and saying how pretty she was. And I remember Papa turning round to me with the greasepaint still on his face, and saying that she was indeed pretty, but more importantly she was a very good and ladylike person to whom no stain or blemish (I remember his exact words) should attach. I remember the words because up to then I had had no inkling that any stain would have attached itself to her, and it was a funny thing to have said.”
“Quite.”
“Then, when you came back from Leamington, it all started in earnest, of course.”
“What started?”
“Oh, Mama, you know—whispers from the servants, voices raised behind closed doors. Shouts. Arguments. Sounds of drawers being pulled out. Screams. Sobbing. Crashings. Boots thrown against doors. Footsteps up and down the stairs. All the stuff of domestic bliss.” He shakes his head. “I didn’t understand what was going on. Kit kept saying Papa had behaved badly and he was mean and hypocritical, and Lou said it was all rubbish and that Papa would never do anything wrong.”
I try to picture it, as it might have seemed to them, listening behind closed doors, huddling under the bedclothes, trying to make sense of it all. I’d never thought about how anxious they must have been. I’d assumed they didn’t know, that Sissy and Bessie would have protected them from our arguments. But of course they were not deaf and blind.
Eddie is still staring at the fire: “I wanted so much to ask you about it, but you were either crying in your room or roving around with such a strange look on your face that I daren’t even approach you. I thought maybe you’d gone a little mad. The servants kept saying ‘poor Mrs. Gibson’ and ‘that poor creature,’ and wouldn’t look any of us in the eye. And then, suddenly, one morning we found you’d packed and gone away. We were all in an uproar then. Poor Bessie didn’t know what to do with us, nor Sissy. We were quite hysterical. Eventually Papa called us all
together—captive audience, you know the sort of thing—and stood on the damned hearthrug looking all wise and noble, and said that circumstances had forced him to say things he would otherwise not have said. That he did not wish to cast scorn on you—‘God knows your Mother’s feebleness is not her fault’—but that for some reason known only to yourself, you’d chosen to become insanely jealous of a particular young lady and to imagine the wildest things with regard to this same person. ‘I need not say that the young lady in question is in every way innocent of the charges, but your mother’s delusion was such that she opened every private letter addressed to me, thinking they were from this young lady—when of course they were not.’ And then he went on about how you’d begun to rifle through his drawers and throw his books and papers about in a foolish attempt to find such letters. And not content with these private manifestations of mistrust, you’d made his position impossible by your public accusations to friend and stranger alike, saying he was a Hypocrite and a Deceiver. ‘What is marriage if there is no trust? There is no marriage. After that, there was no course open to me—to us both—than to choose to live apart.’”
It sounds very convincing—the Jealous Wife, the Wronged Husband, the Maligned Young Lady, the Nonexistent Letters. “What else did he say?”
“That we had to hold fast to our faith in him, and not believe anything bad that was said about him—or about anyone dear to him. Of course he meant Sissy. ‘I won’t have disloyalty, especially to your Aunt.’” He pauses, frowns, looks awkward: “You know things were said about her, don’t you? The very worst things, I mean? She didn’t deserve that.”
“But didn’t they realize that people were bound to think the worst when I was forced out and she stayed on? Didn’t they imagine people would say that Papa preferred the slim and pretty sister to the fat and ugly one?”
“Oh, Mama! You were never ugly. You aren’t ugly now.” Eddie rushes to me and gives me a kiss. A proper, manly kiss. He smells so intoxicatingly of lavender, I have to pull away for fear of fainting.
He takes my hand. “Anyway, we weren’t disloyal to Sissy—except for Kit, that is. But Miss Ricketts was a mystery to us all. Papa owned the connection—but only to point out how innocent it was: ‘You may hear a certain young lady mentioned in connection with me. Some of you may have been privileged to see her perform. She’s a fine actress and I do my best to help her career when I can. Do not give credence to anyone who tries to say differently.’ Of course, I didn’t know what he was getting at. I was only eleven. I couldn’t understand why anyone should malign him for simply helping a young actress in her career. As far as I was concerned, he was always helping people. I remember the time he gave a whole ten pounds to that housemaid with a sick father in Walthamstow. I recall her crying her eyes out on the back stairs, telling Mrs. Brooks what a lovely man he was. So I couldn’t understand why you’d been so angry about him helping poor Miss Ricketts and why he was so furious with you in return, so furious that you could no longer reside in the same house. We were such innocents! We only came to know the extent of the gossip because Kitty got Yates’s News from John the coachman, and read them to us huddled up in the pantry. They were pretty brutal, you know—about the ménage à trois. But Miss Ricketts was never mentioned.”
I’d never read that sort of publication, of course. O’Rourke said I was better not to. He said ridiculous ideas were being thrown around. “Ménage à trois?” I ask Eddie. “Did they really have the temerity to say that about Alfred Gibson?”
“Not in so many words. But they said you had left the family for reasons ‘not altogether clear,’ and that Sissy was remaining with Papa, as his boon companion, with the ‘ostensible purpose’ of bringing us up. I remember sitting on the stone floor of the pantry and asking Kitty what “ostensible” meant and how she glared at me from her seat on the slab. The worst thing was that they put at the bottom: ‘Mr. Gibson is notable for his campaigns castigating vice and immorality and for many novels in which the sanctity of the home has been much praised.’”
I can see him reading that. Flying into a rage. Rushing to take up his pen and reply in any way that would clear his name, even if it meant lying about our entire life together. And yet, through it all, he managed to keep the actress out of it.
“But you met Miss Ricketts only twice, you say?”
“Yes, Mama, only twice, Honest Injun. And one of those times was last week, after the funeral. She said nothing then. Well, no one spoke to her. The other time was … a few years ago.” He runs his finger thoughtfully across his mustache. “That was a damned curious thing when I think of it. I was at home doing nothing in particular—the long vac I think—when His Nibs comes rushing out of the study with a letter in his hand. Stops when he sees me and says he has an errand for me. ‘Take this to the address on the cover. Make sure it’s handed over in person. Wait for a reply.’ I remember objecting—quite mildly—to being treated as a messenger, and him flaring up with anger: ‘Can I ask nothing of you? I educate you, clothe you, give you an allowance second to none, and you won’t lift a finger to help me!’ So I told him to keep his hair on, and dashed off as soon as I could. The address was 2 Pembroke Villas, South Norwood. It was for Miss Ricketts, marked URGENT.”
“South Norwood? Where’s that?”
“Oh, Mama, d’you still not know London? Out beyond Peckham. Very respectable.”
“And you saw her, talked to her?” I try to read his firm, handsome face.
“For a brief moment. There was an older woman and a younger one. I recognized them both from the play, although they looked different in their own hair and ordinary costume. The younger one read the note and wrote something in reply, sealing it up. ‘Thank you,’ she said. That was all.” He shrugs.
“Was she as pretty as you remembered her?”
“Not quite. More anxious, I think. A little frown always there”—he points to the place where the nose meets the forehead—“but it was dark, and only one lamp was burning.”
“Did she say anything else?”
“No. I was rather vexed she took so little notice of me after all my haste in getting there.”
“And did Papa say what the note was about? Why it was so urgent?”
“He never spoke of it again. I think he realized he had overstepped the mark, confusing his two lives in that way.”
“Two lives? How did he manage two lives with the Public’s eye on him all the time?”
“Mama, I don’t know. I was at Oxford; I kept out of his way. But when I was at home, he seemed to follow his old routine pretty much: up early, scribbling for a couple of hours, walking, going to the office. But apart from the reading tours, he was at home most evenings. In fact, he made a point of us all dining together every night, seven o’clock sharp.”
“All of you?”
“When we were all there. But it wasn’t how it used to be. Alfie and I were away a lot, and Kitty was persona non grata—but Sis, Lou, Georgie, and Fan were the regular troops. Of course, Carrie started to dine with us in the last few years, which much improved his mood. He seemed to come out of himself when there was company; in fact, I’d often plead with O’Rourke to stay for supper purely to spare us the silence. One odd thing, though—he’d started the habit of saying grace, emphasising the truly thankful. He’d always drink his soup, but he didn’t seem to have an appetite for much else. He’d often read, with his book propped up against the cruet, although he never let anyone else take the liberty. Sometimes he’d close his book and hold his hand to his side as if he were in pain, and Sis would run about and make up little concoctions for him at the table: three spoonfuls of this, two spoonfuls of that—all whizzed up in seltzer water. He’d say, Phelps trying to poison me still?—but he’d drink it all the same, as if he wouldn’t mind being poisoned.”
“It was digestive colic. His mother told me he was sometimes prostrated with the agony of it as a child. But he didn’t like people to know.”
He raises his eyebrows.
“I suppose it would never have done to admit that the great Alfred Gibson—the High Priest of Hospitality—was a finicky eater.”
“Perhaps. But it was the act of hospitality that he loved. He never ate a great deal himself.”
“Full up with that damned seed cake, I expect!”
We laugh. And then fall silent. I want to know more about Miss Ricketts. She dances in and out of my imagination in her taunting gray silk dress. “Did he stay with that woman at that house of hers? Did she travel with him? You must know something.”
“No, Mama.” He looks exasperated. “All I can say is that she was never received at our house. I can’t speak for what he did when he was away. I daresay he saw her in Norwood, but you know Papa—here, there, and everywhere. Appearing and disappearing like blessed Abanazar. As sparing with information as if it had been gold dust. Even Sissy didn’t always know his movements—whether he’d be staying at the office or not—or whether he’d suddenly been obliged to furnish three thousand words overnight before getting a cab home and collapsing on the sofa with one of his corkers.”
“So he maintained to you all that she was no more than a friend? A protégé?”
“He went into a fit if anything was even suggested in the other direction. We all knew, I suppose. But it was easier not to mention it. But now he’s left her mother that house—well …” He gets up and strides to the fireplace again, gives the fireguard a ferocious kick. “Oh, for Heaven’s sake,” he bursts out, “why couldn’t he have been like other men and kept a mistress discreetly? Why did he have to break up the family and put you out? And moreover make it all public? Was he completely mad?”
Mad with love, perhaps. It was all or nothing with him; I have seen that over and over again. But as I look at Eddie staring grimly down into the coals, I am suddenly too tired to make sense of it all. Eddie seems to realize this, and comes and sits by me, and takes my hand. “I’m sorry, Mama—temper getting the better of me. Sometimes I feel I’d like to pull him out of the grave and give him a good shaking, purely to relieve my feelings. But it wouldn’t change the past, would it? It wouldn’t make anyone the slightest bit happier.”
Girl in a Blue Dress Page 35
