“No, Eddie, you are right. I see you are still philosophical at heart.” We both laugh, and he rises, kisses me on the cheek, and picks up his (very elegant) hat. I tell him that I am so glad he has come back to me, and to be sure to come again soon.
“I will, Mother dear. Very soon. And I shall bring you a half-pound of best-quality Ceylon, and a positive Firecracker of a joke.”
25
I’VE SLEPT BADLY. I’VE THOUGHT IT OVER ALL NIGHT, AND AT breakfast I decide. “Please get me a cab,” I tell Wilson. “I’m going out.”
“Out? Again?” She disapproves of this “gallivanting” of mine, although I imagine she’s glad at least that O’Rourke hasn’t turned up in the gig. It’s a raw morning, and she insists I wear my heavy old pelisse and fur-trimmed hat.
Soon I’m trotting briskly along the new Embankment. What a wonder it is—with its wide pavements and elegant streetlamps. Almost like Paris, I think. There’s no sign of the wretches who once thronged the shoreline, barefoot and bent double among the rotten debris, sifting through the unmentionable for something to sell. I wonder where they have gone, these displaced women and children. Moved on, he would have said. Poor creatures, always moved on.
Now we are crossing the bridge, black smoke trailing from the pleasure boats beneath us. And where it clears for a second, I spy, in the threshing water, a leaky rowing boat, expertly pulled by a young girl, her hair loose on her shoulders like a second Grace Darling. Suddenly there are dozens of small vessels every way I look, with tar-stained boatmen hauling at ropes or standing at tillers. The river’s full of every kind of life. Full of death, too, he’d say. He was fascinated by it, by the ebb and flow, the cold and the darkness, the activity and noise, the desolation and pitilessness of it all. He’d sometimes go out at night with the dredger-men and watch them track dark parcels of clothing floating under the bridges or driven up and down by the tides. Once there was a woman, he said. Pale and bloated and covered in slime, but with fine hands and a silver locket around her neck. I shudder at the thought, even now. But he was always energized by such things, his face bright as lamplight, his hair practically standing on end.
We turn abruptly away from the river, and as we rattle into the suburbs I see how enormously London has changed: rows of respectable new terraces in parallel lines like furrowed fields, and here and there more substantial villas with bay windows and laurel bushes. I try to imagine the kind of house I am bound for. It’s secluded, I don’t doubt. South Norwood is well out of town.
We travel through Battersea, Clapham, and farther south; and I am becoming more and more nervous. Eventually, we come to Norwood. The cabman slows the horse to a walking pace and asks directions of a butcher’s boy who is minding the horse-and-cart and throwing stones into a hedge to pass the time. The boy stops and moves his hand, indicating turnings left and right, before resuming his occupation with the stones. We turn up a lane where there are no other houses. We cross several small roads and pass out to a wider road, where there is a doleful-looking church and an equally despondent inn. We turn near a railway bridge, and suddenly we are running alongside a wall with a high holly hedge, above which I can discern a shallow, slated roof. I see a name carved in the stonework: Pembroke Villas. There are two gateways. I ask the cabman to stop at Number Two. “Please wait,” I say, as he helps me out.
Number Two has a blue front door. It is a small house, but immaculately kept. I pause for a moment. She may not be at home, I think. Or she may be at home but be unwilling to let me in. Or she may let me in, then send me away ignominiously. Or, again, she may be polite but tell me nothing of what I want to know. I wonder fleetingly what I would do if our positions were reversed and Wilson had arrived in the drawing room announcing that Miss Ricketts was below. Would I have been curious enough to admit her, so I could at last compare her face and figure with those of my imagination? Or would I have exercised the only power I have left, sending back her card with a withering rebuff: Mrs. Gibson regrets that she is unable to receive a personage of whom she has no prior acquaintance. I really cannot tell what I would have done. But then, I cannot imagine Miss Ricketts would ever have paid me such a call in the first place. And no doubt she will be equally surprised to see me today.
As I walk up the flagstone path, I feel eyes on me. I knock, boldly, and stand very upright, showing any watcher that I am not ashamed to be here. But inside I’m trembling. I’ve rehearsed my opening words all the way here, but I cannot remember them. My mouth is dry and my lips seem stuck together. For a moment I hope that my knock will not be answered and that I can go home swiftly with no harm done. But hardly has my hand fallen from the knocker than the door opens.
A woman looks at me. I am taken aback. She is ramrod straight and very handsome, but she is the same age as me. I realize that she must be the mother.
“Is Miss Wilhelmina Ricketts at home?” I use all the hauteur I am capable of, reminding myself that I (and no one else) am the widow of the most famous man in England.
Her face is impassive. “What name is it, ma’am, if you’d be so good?” She seems to spread herself slightly as though she is barring the door, protecting what is beyond.
“Mrs. Gibson.”
She is very self-possessed—tremendously so—but she cannot hide the start her body gives, or the look of surprise in her eyes. “Mrs. Dorothea Gibson,” I add, to clarify any doubts.
I watch her face. I see that she is considering closing the door on me, or telling an untruth to be rid of me. But, seeming to observe that I am calm and alone, she makes an instant decision.
“Mrs. Gibson—honored to make your acquaintance.” She bows a little. “I am Henrietta Ricketts. Please come inside.”
I step into a narrow passageway. There is a hall stand with a looking glass. On it are two bonnets, two cloaks, and two umbrellas. On the shelf beneath the glass sit an ivory hairbrush and comb. Mrs. Ricketts ushers me into the front parlor. It is cold and dim. Thick lace obscures the window and the green chenille curtains are half-drawn. There is a looking glass over the mantel, and a smaller one above the piano. The furniture itself is simple yet comfortable, as he always liked. There is a bookshelf containing a dozen or so volumes and, in the window, a desk. There is nothing on the desk save an inkwell.
I sit, and Mrs. Ricketts goes out. I wait several minutes. I think I hear voices raised in agitation but I am not sure. I think I hear footsteps on the stairs, but again I am not sure. In the meantime, I become very well acquainted with the wallpaper and the three small ornaments that sit on the mantelpiece. Eventually Mrs. Ricketts returns. She has an expression both wary and anxious. “If you would be so kind, Mrs. Gibson, there’s a fire in the back parlor. I think we’d all be more comfortable there.”
I follow her out of the room. I notice to my surprise that, in spite of her elegant demeanor, Mrs. Ricketts has work-worn hands and wears a dark blue apron pinned across her skirts. The room we enter gives upon the back garden and (in contrast to the front room) is full of light. As promised, a fire roars in the grate. In the middle of the room, standing exactly in the center of a large round carpet, stands Wilhelmina Ricketts.
To see her in the flesh nearly floors me. I thought I’d prepared myself but I have not, and I find myself standing stock-still, at a loss for words. She is so small, so very small. And young-looking, almost like a child. She is so fragile and seems so innocent—so unlike my idea of her—that I feel the breath knocked out of my body and I can only acknowledge her with the stiffest of nods.
She makes a deep curtsy in return: “Mrs. Gibson—an honor to make your acquaintance.” She has a sweet, low voice, yet it trembles as she speaks, and I see she is frightened to death. She looks such a child that I want to put her at her ease, to tell her I mean her no harm—but then I remind myself that she is twenty-seven years old and my enemy; and if she is afraid of me, so much the better. I examine her carefully. She’s not beautiful—but has an ordinary pale little face with light brown hair drawn bac
k into a chignon and a fringe of curls along her forehead. She is impeccably dressed, though: dark gray silk, very much as Kitty has described. Two long teardrops of jet shimmer at her ears as she moves a step towards me, then stops. She is not prepared for the sight of me any more than I am for the sight of her. She thinks me old and ugly, no doubt, and is wondering how he could ever have loved me.
There is another silence.
“Please sit down, Mrs. Gibson.” The mother takes charge, motioning me to the best chair in the room; a red plush fireside chair—no doubt the one he sat in. She takes the smaller chair beside it, pulling it close in a confidential manner which I do not altogether like. Miss Ricketts remains standing. She is not so self-possessed as her mother and twiddles nervously at a gold bracelet encircling her wrist. Its design is very familiar and, as I watch her fingers move back and forth, I realize to my horror that it is identical to one he gave to me when we were first married, except hers has a pendant W whereas mine had a D. My throat constricts. How could he have done such a thing? Did he think it didn’t matter? Or had that first bracelet dropped from his mind as a stone into the deep? Now I hardly dare look around, fearing that I shall see a myriad of objects that will betray how intimate they were, my husband and this small and ordinary young woman. I think of the hairbrush, the desk, the armchair I am sitting in—all part of a life they enjoyed and which I did not share. I wish now, most fervently, that I had never come on this fool’s errand. I have seen her; that is sufficient. Now I must make my excuses and leave. But before I can collect myself, the mother speaks. “Forgive our lack of hospitality; we are a little surprised at this visit. We keep ourselves very secluded, as you see. How did you find us? Was it Mr. Golding?”
“My son Eddie,” I say. “He came once to deliver a letter.”
The women exchange glances. “I remember.” Miss Ricketts’s voice is stronger now. “He was a fine-looking boy.”
“And is a fine-looking man.” I am proud of Eddie’s good looks, although I do not think it is this woman’s place to remark upon them.
“Your coloring, I think, ma’am?” Mrs. Ricketts speaks this time.
No doubt she thinks to flatter me, but I won’t be so easily won over. “My coloring once,” I correct her. “Time has rendered me somewhat gray. No one, unfortunately, stays young forever.” I give Miss Ricketts a meaningful look.
There is another awkward silence. Miss Ricketts twiddles the wretched bracelet even more. Her mother suddenly becomes aware of social niceties and rises: “Will you be so good as to take a cup of tea with us, Mrs. Gibson?”
I can do no other than accept. Perhaps she will take some time to make it and I shall be able to make some headway with her daughter. “Please ask the cabman to wait until I am ready,” I tell her. She nods, and as the door closes, I am alone at last with the woman who destroyed my marriage.
She is still standing in the center of the room. I take off my gloves and motion to the chair her mama has vacated, the one that encroaches so intimately upon mine: “Please sit down, Miss Ricketts.” But she declines such proximity and perches instead on a small footstool some distance away. She clasps her hands together firmly around her knees, as if she were a child waiting for a story. But in fact it is she who speaks. “I confess that you have taken me by surprise, Mrs. Gibson. You are—forgive me—the last person I expected to see.”
“I never thought to find myself here, either. But I have been remembering the many years that my husband and I spent together, and I find that you owe me something, Miss Ricketts.”
She looks alarmed. She thinks I mean money; she thinks I am come to dispute her right to what he has left her: the house and the annuity and God knows what else. He has left her too much, of course; Kitty is right. But I will not demean myself by challenging her now. “Oh, don’t fear for your property, Miss Ricketts. That is not what I meant at all. You have a quite different obligation. One that is far more important to me, and which I shall expect you to honor. If you understand the word, that is.”
She flushes. “Mrs. Gibson, I don’t imagine you think well of me. If I were in your position, I wouldn’t think well of me. But I swear to you that I have always behaved honorably. Yes, honorably.” She holds up her head and returns my gaze without a hint of shame.
How can she look at me so brazenly, knowing what she is, what she has done? She may appear small and sweet, but I feel heat rising through my body as I contemplate the harm she has done me, the desolation she has produced with her winsome smile as she tempted my husband with the oldest of tricks and caught him unawares in her nasty net. And now she pretends she is a creature of honor! “How can you have the effrontery to say that?” I cry. “What possible honor is there in your arrangement with my late husband? Did he not set you up here in this—this—house? Did he not come to see you here in secret? Were you not his mistress?”
I cannot keep the tears out of my voice, but she flinches at the word, as if I have spat at her: “Mrs. Gibson, I understand your feelings—”
“Do you, indeed? You are bold to presume that. Very bold.”
She colors again, and speaks quickly. “Well, of course no one can truly know the feelings of another. But I can at least explain myself, if only—if only—you will allow me to.”
Explanation: that is what I have told myself I wanted from today’s encounter. The Truth, in Kitty’s words. But seeing Miss Ricketts with her genteel ways and air of innocence, now I am not so sure. What she has to say may be even more unwelcome than ignorance. I am torn; I half-raise my hand as if to prevent her speaking; yet I let it drop. I have come this far; it would be foolish to retreat now. “Very well,” I say. “Explain, then—if you can.”
She avoids my gaze and says nothing; she has no defense. I knew it, of course. How could it be otherwise? There is no excuse, no explanation of her conduct that can be construed in any honorable way. She smoothes the dark gray silk of her skirt in neat, regular movements as if she is playing for time, casting around for a persuasive tale that will satisfy the idiot wife. “It is not a simple story,” she says at last. Her voice is quiet, as it has been throughout our conversation, but there is a note of steel within that surprises me. She is certainly no child. “Whatever I did, I did by choice, Mrs. Gibson. And I did it for love. I did it for a man I cared for deeply and mourn today quite as much as you do.”
I had forgotten that she, too, might be full of sadness; that she, too, might miss him, and wake every day heavy lidded with grief. Even so, she has no right to compare herself with me. “I cannot blame you for loving him,” I say. “Everyone who knew Alfred came to love him, after all. But your love was greedy, Miss Ricketts; you usurped the position that was rightfully mine. Did you not consider how your so-called love injured me?”
“Please.” She holds up her hand as grandly as if she were the Queen of Egypt. “I said I would explain. Pray do not judge before you have heard me out.”
If I am to gain anything, I must let her speak, though it is difficult to endure. No doubt she has the skills to present a convincing case, but I need no jury to tell me what is clear as glass. Before she can speak, however, the mother chooses to make her entrance with the tea tray. She bustles about, setting out the cups, saucers, and spoons, but, catching (I think) some meaningful expression in her daughter’s eye, puts down the teapot and moves to the door. “Will you excuse me, Mrs. Gibson? We’ve no maid today, and I have things to attend to in the kitchen.”
Miss Ricketts approaches and pours the tea. Her hand is so small and fragile that I wonder she can lift the pot, but she fills two cups with perfect precision. The tea is a clear golden color and has an excellent taste; clearly Alfred has seen to the stocking of these particular cupboards. She then hands me slices of seed cake, cut thin and prettily arranged on a scalloped plate, but I decline. I’ve never really liked caraway and there is no longer any reason to pretend. We drink in silence for a while, and I wonder who will speak first. Then she turns towards me suddenly. “I am ho
nored at your visit, Mrs. Gibson. I would not have expected such condescension—such acknowledgment, even. The world judges harshly in these matters.”
I cannot trust myself to speak. I merely nod. I have judged her as harshly as anybody, and wished her dead and drowned and driven to Kingdom Come on many occasions, but now she is in front of me, so sweet faced and gentle, I am finding it increasingly hard to be hostile. It is part of her cleverness, no doubt, to win me over. But I will not be won: “We live in the world, Miss Ricketts. We must pay the penalties if we do not abide by its rules. But I have not come to berate you for your sins. That is God’s prerogative.”
She takes a deep breath, looking at me steadily the while. “Indeed it is. Yet I believe in my heart that there is nothing I need to be ashamed of. Your husband was a good man, and Mama and I were honored to be his friends.”
Surely she will not try to maintain with me the pious fiction he promulgated for his Public. “Oh, I think a little more than friendship was involved, was it not?” I say, sarcastically.
“As I have already said, Mrs. Gibson, I came to love him. And he, I believe, came to care for me, too. From the very outset he singled me out for notice.”
From the outset. Indeed, I can see it—the flirtation, the gallantry, the whole panoply of effects directed at this one young recipient. “Oh, yes,” I say. “Young ladies were two-a-penny throughout our married life. But they all faded or fell from grace sooner or later. You seem to have made a more lasting impression. I wonder why that should be?” As if, of course, I didn’t know.
She raises her eyebrows. “It’s a question I have often asked myself. I am quite an ordinary person, you know. I never dreamt that such a great man as Alfred Gibson could ever come to care for me. And indeed, when it happened, I cannot wholeheartedly say I welcomed it.”
Girl in a Blue Dress Page 36
