I cannot help laughing; that was such a typical tirade, but there is a truth to it, too. We must have seemed such an ungrateful set of dependants—not one of us earning our bread, not one of us helping to arm ourselves in the battle of life in which he was so vitally engaged.
28
I’VE HAD A VERY PLEASANT EVENING WITH MICHAEL. HE IS the best of companions. We had Wilson’s best recipe for fowl and a bottle of very good wine. (Wilson’s standing with Mr. Collins has improved and she has been able to purchase a fine ham and some splendid cheese, too.) We ate, talked, and laughed as we have always done, putting aside our recent disagreements and resolving to be always comfortable with one another in the future, and never, ever to quarrel.
Now he has gone, I sit on for a while in the armchair. The wind outside is getting up and whistles eerily through the sashes. Strange shadows move on the walls as the curtains shift in the draft from the windows, and the fire flickers in the draft from the chimney. Whether the sounds and shapes unsettle me I cannot say, but I find that I cannot put my mind to my book. My encounter with Miss Ricketts keeps returning to me. Now I am no longer in her presence, it is more difficult to believe that I found her so congenial, and that we shared such intimate remembrances.
Yet it was a relief to find her such a ladylike person with delicate manners. I have no perverse wish to admire my rival; but at the same time I would have hated her to have been vulgar or scheming, as Kitty used to imply. I think that is why I have closed my mind to her all these years. To have discovered that Kitty was right would have immeasurably lessened Alfred in my eyes—and tainted me, too, when I think that he went so readily from me to her. This is not to say that I don’t resent her for her charms, and resent him even more for succumbing to them. If anything, he was the more at fault, being so much older and wiser, and presenting himself to her as a friend and father, yet taking to some extent the liberties of a lover once she had set herself upon the path of no return.
Of course, I cannot help questioning the nature of the chaste affection she insists they shared for almost a decade. No one with a worldly mind would give it a moment’s credence. But I know him well enough to think it may indeed be true, that he would not have caused such dreadful mayhem—wrecking our whole family life, setting us against each other, and dividing friends and foes alike—for the simple allure of pale limbs or perfumed skin. Alfred’s most powerful feelings, I have come to realize, were stirred not by the easy tumble of the bedroom, but by the recollection of a half-glimpsed face in the crowd, the sight of a small, neat figure bent over a workbox in a lighted window, or a child ministering selflessly to a father or brother. Miss Ricketts, though not a child when he met her, was very young and had no father of her own to love her. What began in his head as fatherly may, in time, have become something else. But he would have seen no change. Love, to him, was love. He would never have examined it in more detail or asked himself whether, in pursuit of it, he was hurting others or even deluding himself. In his eyes, only coarse and envious people would misconstrue the noble nature of his affection.
They did misconstrue it, of course, being always ready to believe the worst in humankind, and more than usually gleeful to find fault with a man who set himself up as England’s greatest moralist. Even now, in spite of her protestations, it is hard not to think that there were indeed other, deeper currents running within him; that in the dark part of his soul, when he held her in his arms and kissed her, he was desirous of doing what he would never have admitted—what he never did admit—and what she will never confide. But that is the part of the truth I am sure I shall never know.
What is strongly evident from her account, however, is that in all our last unhappy months together he must have been as distraught as I was, and could have seen a solution no more clearly than I could as he wrote with such agony about Arthur Grayling tormenting himself in the gloom of his green drawing room with his hopeless love for Lillian Dawnay. But whereas I cried and raged and questioned in a lunatic fashion, he became cold and ruthless, trained (as I believe only men can be) on one object, oblivious to any hurt he inflicted on anyone else; while Miss Ricketts, poor child, had no notion of all the storms that were hurtling around our house, of which she was the unknowing center.
And I was not mad. Parcels did arrive, letters were secreted. He did go out to see her every afternoon wearing a flower in his buttonhole and scent on his skin. He thought I had my head in the clouds and didn’t see him, sleek and smiling—whereas the truth was that he did not see me as I stood in my dressing gown, desperate for the slightest word. Day after day, he’d take his cane and set off at speed like a constable of the law, obsessed, possessed, in thrall. Violent as an express train rushing towards a broken bridge. And as unstoppable.
I’M VERY COLD suddenly. The fire is out and the lamps are so low I can hardly see the furniture. Where is Wilson? I wonder. Why has she not come to help me to bed? I try to get up from the chair, but my limbs feel as though they do not belong to me. And where is Gyp? I call to him but there is no answering bark. Something stirs near the door; I am sure that it is not Gyp. “Wilson?” I say in a whisper. Then the darkness seems to mold itself into a shape and there is a man standing in front of me, a dark man with some sort of beard and a hat pulled low over his forehead. I am so frightened I cannot call out. I think it must be one of the ruffians that frequent Hyde Park, and I get ready to offer all my jewels and silk dresses. But as he steps from the shadows, I see that he doesn’t have the air of a ruffian. He is wearing a rather fine suit with a gold watch chain dangling from his satin-sprigged waistcoat. I stare at the watch and the waistcoat. I know them both intimately. And when the man sweeps off his hat with a bold gesture, I know him too.
“Alfred?”
“The very same! I am glad my lady-wife has not forgotten me after all these years. I confess that Yours Truly is somewhat less handsome than of yore. A little thinner; a little more worn.” He smiles a radiant smile as if there has never been a moment’s coldness between us.
“Forgotten you! Oh, Alfred, how could you think that? You were my whole life!” I try to stretch out and touch him, but I find I cannot move. Is this a dream? Is he a ghost? He looks so real, so corporeal, so like himself.
“Infinitely obliged. Compliments are always welcome, especially from the Once-Adored.” He takes his watch from his waistcoat pocket, looks at it, and then spins it back into place. “However, circumstances are pressing and time is short. I am under strict curtailment. Deadlines, my dear, always deadlines. There are Obligations, you know, even in the Place Above.”
“What do you mean?” I say, unable to take my eyes off him. His beard is speckled with gray and his hair is thinner. But he has the same mesmerizing eyes.
He laughs. “Oh, you wouldn’t believe the timetabling in Heaven, Dodo! The Almighty is a stickler to the second—and if I run over my time, I am doomed to the Fiery Furnace forever.” He speaks cheerfully, as if this would be no hardship.
“Well, you never run over your time, Alfred. You are always most exact.”
“That is, of course, true. I am obliged to you again. But to business. Unfinished business. Unfinished manuscript, to be precise. Ambrose Boniface, to be even more precise. I have to confess myself mortified to have left it in such a state. I have let my Public down. The only time that I have done so.”
“Save one, Alfred.”
“Ah, yes. A long time ago. A matter of some pain, now dissolved into the ether. But to the present point. Ambrose Boniface needs concluding. And you, Dodo, will be the one to see to it.”
“I?” I burst out into nervous laughter. “Oh, Alfred, how? I cannot write!”
“On the contrary, I think you can. After all, who else has copied out so many of my crabbed manuscripts? Who else has read my books with such attention? Who else can quote whole passages verbatim? Who else knows every inch of my style? No, no, there is no gainsaying it! You are the very person! There can be no doubt, no argey-bargeyment!” H
is eyes twinkle.
“But you said I had no imagination, Alfred!”
“Oh, you don’t believe everything I say, do you? I’m a storyteller. We are, as a species, notoriously unreliable.”
“But how did you intend to finish it, Alfred? You have left no clue.”
“It is a Mystery, after all.” He laughs.
“Yes, but what is the answer to the mystery? Everyone wants to know. Did Ambrose kill Mary Kincaid? Does he die, too? Have you left notes? How am I to do it?” I feel all the anxiety and confusion he invariably raised in me.
“Oh, you’ll find the answer if you look hard. I’ve every confidence in you, Dodo. You always understood me—even when you didn’t think you did. Now I’m afraid that in order not to turn into a roast dinner for some undeserving demons who are even now sharpening their forks, I must be gone immediately. Forgive all impoliteness arising from circumstances of a novel nature (no pun intended). Good-bye, my dear. Yours Truly relies on you, as ever.” He flings his hands in the air—and is gone in a cloud of glittering smoke, leaving behind only a faint scent of lavender.
THE ROOM IS suddenly brighter. The fire is burning, the lamps are lit, and the room is warm again. Gyp is on my lap and I hear Wilson on the stairs coming to put me to bed.
“Oh, Wilson!” I cry, as she opens the door. “I have had such a strange experience! Alfred was here, in this room, right in front of me.” My blood is racing through my head, my heart is pounding, my whole body in a state of collapse.
She stares at me. “You’ve had a dream, you mean?”
She pulls me up short. How could it have been anything else? But it was all so real that I am loath to believe it was purely a product of my imagination; the same imagination in which I was once allegedly so deficient. “No,” I say, a little less confidently, “he was really here, Wilson. In this very room, standing right there where you are now—although a kind of spirit, I suppose.”
She stares at me. “Well, I don’t believe in spirits and such-like; it’s not Christian. All them mediums and whatnot, trying to cross the divide—preying on people who should know better! Mr. Gibson is gone from us, God rest his soul, and he’ll never come back this side of Judgment Day.” Seeing my shocked countenance, she stops and softens a little: “Dear madam, don’t you see? You wanted to see him so much, you imagined him back. Now isn’t that the truth?”
“Is it? Then why am I so cold?” I ask her. “Feel my hands: they’re frozen.”
She takes them in her warm, work-worn ones. “So they are. I’ll give that fire a poke.”
“It doesn’t need poking.” I point at the jumping flames. “Look! It was almost completely out a minute ago.” As if the force of his spirit had blown it out. As if it had blown the lamps out, too. “And Alfred was as real as you, I swear. He looked older, but it was still him, Wilson—still definitely him. I could even smell the scent he always used.”
She gives a big sniff. “Well, I can’t smell nothing now. You’ve had too much going on today, that’s your trouble. Gallivanting here and there, and entertaining till all hours. You need some proper sleep.”
She tries to bring me down to earth, but I can’t let it go. “He said the oddest things,” I tell her. “He said Heaven was run to a timetable!”
She bends to see to the fire. “Well, that would have been his idea of Heaven, wouldn’t it? Everything orderly and organized.”
I wonder whether to tell her. I can’t stop myself from doing so. “The funniest thing of all is that he asked me to finish his book for him.” I turn Gyp off my lap and get up.
She looks at me, twisting around from her position at the grate, poker in hand. “Why is that funny?”
“Well, Alfred was a literary genius. And I have never written anything in my life—except letters!”
“I’ve heard it said that you write very nice letters. And you must have picked up some ideas from him over the years.”
“Oh, Wilson, there’s more to it than that.”
“I daresay. But you never knows till you try. After all, young Mrs. Alfred does it, and lots of other young ladies do it—and older ones too, such as Miss Baskerville. Why not you?” She pauses. “But did Mr. Gibson’s so-called spirit tell you how it all ended? Because I’m blowed if I can guess.”
“He said that I’d find the answer if I looked hard.”
“Looked hard? Is that all he said after coming back from the Dead?” Wilson stands with her hands on her hips, looking solid and sensible—and I realize how foolish I must seem. As in the old days, when the servants would whisper about me: Poor Mrs. Gibson. Lost her senses. Quite mad. She’s right, I have imagined it. Yet of all the encounters I could have imagined, this one is the most strange, the least like anything I should have wished for. Alfred was so odd and matter-of-fact. I never had a chance to say any of the things that have been in my mind. I didn’t ask him about Miss Ricketts, I didn’t ask him about Alice or Sissy or the children. I didn’t ask if he was sorry for what he did to me. I allowed him to overwhelm me all over again.
I start to cry. “Oh, Wilson, for a moment I was so happy to think he’d come back to see me!”
“That’s natural enough.” She looks at me kindly. “Believe he was really here, then. Believe it was him come back. Where’s the harm?” She picks up the lamp and takes me gently by the arm. “Come on, Mrs. Gibson dear, it’s time for bed.”
When I am undressed and combed, she turns to me: “Would you like some of your medicine? A small spoonful to calm you down?”
I think that wretched mixture will be the death of me. “No, Wilson. I’ve done with it. Throw it out. I’ll need all my faculties if I am to finish Boniface.”
“You’ll try, then?”
I smile. “Well, you never say no to Alfred.”
29
I HAVE SLEPT WELL AND HAD NO FURTHER DREAMS OR VISITATIONS, and now the idea of Alfred coming and telling me to finish Ambrose Boniface seems laughable. I really cannot think took the matter seriously.
“It’s nice to have a bit of peace and quiet,” Wilson observes, when she has cleared away the breakfast things. “Although it’s nice to have company too, I suppose. When it’s family.”
“More than nice. I can’t tell you how wonderful it has been to see my children again.”
“Mr. Edward has turned out a fine young man.” She blushes as I catch her eye. “And Mr. Alfred, too, of course—though not quite so handsome. And the little girl is very lively—the spit of Miss Kitty—although I reckon her mother has got her measure.” She pauses. “I suppose they’ll be coming and going quite a bit now?”
“I hope so. Oh, Wilson, I really can’t believe that I have got my family back.”
She picks up the tray. “I suppose you’ve forgot about That There Box being emptied.” She glares at the tea chest I brought back from the old house.
“Oh, Heavens, what a bully you are! All in good time. I really should look at the letters first.” The carpetbag is overflowing, but I shall take a leaf out of Alfred’s book and answer them all in date order. So when Wilson has finished laying the dust and has gone down to bundle up the laundry, I set about it. I open them all and set them in piles on the table. Most of them are from acquaintances rather than friends, and they repeat the same tired old phrases of condolence that Alfred hated so much. On the other hand, my old school-friend Jenny Lockhart takes the opportunity to write several pages about her own husband, who has never loved her and never done anything to please her—and I feel that her situation over thirty dismal years is worse than mine has ever been. Miss Brougham writes too:
I fear my charitable work has lost its greatest champion. There was no one quite like your husband and there never will be again. When we worked together, I always felt in such sure and energetic hands. He had such ideas! He would not be put down on any account, and could lift the spirits of the most curmudgeonly opponent! Somehow he managed to make the impossible, possible! And above all, he made me laugh! I am sure you have h
ad occasion, through these last ten years, to miss all that good humour. Even I, a solitary spinster, am aware that once you have known a good man—even if he is a difficult man—it is hard to live without him.
Miss Brougham is such a dear lady—and always saw the good in Alfred. I hope now that the embarrassment between us is over, we may renew our acquaintance. I feel full of energy and set to with a will.
Then I come across another letter. The writing is unfamiliar and rather childish.
Dear Mrs. Gibson,
Forgive me for not writing before but you know I am not much of a one with a pen. This letter is being writ for me by my brothers child aged ten who is with me in Putney learning how to be a ladys maid or at least a parler maid. She is a very good pupil and very quick and I am hoping she will get a good situation when she gets a bit older although she could never hope to have one as good as mine. I think I had the best situation a servant could ever have and I thank the Lord every day for bringing me to you. First let me say how much I cried when I heard the dredful news. I think I was nearly struck dumb. I could not believe it. I know we all has to go when our time comes but I didnt think the Masters time would have come so early, even though he worked as hard as seven men and was always on the go. The news boys in the street was shouting it out at the top of there voices saying Alfred Gibson dead, Alfred Gibson dead and everybody was coming out of there houses and saying is it true? And I could feel my heart beating fit to burst. And everybody was crying, even the little children as didnt really know who he was but knew his name like we all did.
Oh Mrs. Gibson how you must be feeling so sad without him even though you were not with him in these last ten years. I know how much you loved him, no one better and I dont think your feelings changed even though he said his did, which I dont reckon is true. Mrs. Brooks and I discussed it many a time and we think he was not fair to you and should not have done what he done and in such a crule way.
Girl in a Blue Dress Page 42
