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Beauty in Thorns

Page 18

by Kate Forsyth


  ‘You must try,’ he told her. ‘If I lose you, I shall go mad.’

  After that, Lizzie tried hard to eat. She forced herself to chew and swallow, she forced herself to breathe deep and stop the food gushing up again within her. She could not bear Gabriel to ever be far from her side. She was afraid the dark demon would slither back inside her again, choking her, killing her.

  One day Lizzie was strong enough to lift herself while Gabriel arranged pillows behind her. Then she found the strength to rise from her bed and walk a few steps to the wash-basin, holding on to the furniture all the way. A few days later she managed to brush her own hair, though the effort exhausted her.

  One day she was well enough to rise and dress herself and come down the stairs, eating in the dining-room with all the other lodgers. It was hard, every step of it and every bite of it. But she did it.

  Afterwards Gabriel helped her out into the courtyard, where yellow dandelions were growing between the cracks in the pavement.

  He took her hand. ‘We can be married tomorrow, if you like. If you’re well enough.’

  A tremulous smile curved her lips. ‘I’m well enough now. Thanks to you.’

  He squeezed her hand, and they sat in silence, listening to the seagulls cry, feeling the sun warm on their limbs.

  11

  Mrs Jones

  Summer 1860

  ‘I really don’t mind what day we have the wedding,’ Georgie said.

  Ned walked up and down their carpet, his hands deep in his pockets. ‘But is it a good omen, or a bad omen?’

  ‘A good omen,’ she said at once. ‘Four years to the day that we got engaged.’

  ‘But it is also the day Beatrice died. Surely that’s a bad omen?’

  ‘Beatrice died heaven knows how long ago. Five hundred years ago!’

  ‘Five hundred and seventy,’ he corrected her.

  ‘People die every day,’ she said rather desperately. ‘Hundreds of them. And if we don’t take that date, it might be another month before we can get another.’

  Ned shook his head. ‘I don’t think it’s a good omen.’

  ‘If we get married now, we can go to Paris and see Gabriel,’ she said. ‘Paris in June is meant to be lovely.’

  The mention of Gabriel swayed him, as she knew it would. Ned pondered a long moment, then nodded solemnly. ‘Very well then. June the ninth it is.’

  Georgie flew up to embrace him, but grew shy as soon as her hands touched him and only squeezed his arms lightly.

  As the day of the wedding came closer Ned became more tense and white. It troubled Georgie, these strange fits and starts that came over him. It was as if the nerves of his body and the strings of his soul were strung more tightly than anyone else, always just a tremor away from breaking.

  The day before the wedding he went out walking for hours, and was caught in a sudden downpour. He came home late, wet through, and the next day he was feverish. Valiantly he went through with the service, pausing often to blow his nose.

  I am Mrs Jones now, Georgie thought in a daze. She looked at him, standing beside her in his new suit, his hand trembling as he signed his name in the register. Tonight he will make me his wife.

  Her stomach clenched. Georgie had no idea what that meant. Her mother had only wept and told her that she must submit to her husband’s demands, no matter how much it hurt. Georgie could not imagine Ned hurting her. He was the gentlest man alive. But still she feared what lay ahead. She had heard rumours from some of the other girls in their congregation. Talk of deflowering, breaking and entering, blood.

  After the wedding, Georgie and Ned caught a train to Chester. The plan was to spend the night there and attend service at the cathedral the next day, before heading to Paris to join Gabriel and Lizzie. Georgie was curious indeed to meet the red-headed beauty, whose face was so familiar to her from the many hundreds of drawings and paintings in Gabriel’s studio.

  She had imagined walking Chester’s winding cobblestoned streets hand in hand with Ned, dining somewhere lit with candles, and returning to their hotel to lie in each other’s arms, discovering together whatever it was husbands and wives do.

  The reality was very different. Ned was hoarse and shivering by the time they reached their hotel, and Georgie spent the night doing her best to nurse him. The innkeeper’s wife was displeased to be roused with requests for camphor and mustard compresses, and Georgie was too shy to ring for her again when Ned became quite delirious. He kept shouting out strange things, and Georgie could only try to soothe and comfort him, snatching a few minutes’ sleep herself when she could.

  His temperature soared so high, Georgie asked the innkeeper to send for a doctor the following day. Then she ran around the hotel room, packing away any signs of their wedding finery. She got out her sewing basket and sat by the fire, darning Ned’s socks and hoping the doctor would not tease them about being an old married couple. The doctor was fat and fussy. He frowned over Ned, and asked a great many questions that Georgie found hard to answer. At last he pronounced gloomily that Mr Jones must on no account attempt the rigours of a journey to Paris, and would be best at home in his own bed.

  Georgie gasped a little when the doctor told her how much she had to pay him, and counted out the coins with fingers that trembled. Then she sat down and wrote to Gabriel to tell him they would not be coming to Paris.

  There’s plenty of time for Paris, she told herself stoutly, but wept a few quiet tears that night, once again sitting up in the chair so Ned could sleep more comfortably in the narrow hotel bed.

  The next few days were difficult. Ned was so sick, and Georgie felt very young and alone. She wished there was someone to help her. She had never been on her own before, and felt sure the innkeeper knew she was only nineteen and had no notion of how much to pay for their food and drink. Ned’s purse was frighteningly thin. She bought only what she must, and wondered how she was to get her husband home to London when she had barely enough for the train fare.

  ‘It’s not much of a honeymoon for you,’ Ned croaked.

  ‘That’s all right,’ Georgie lied.

  At last he was well enough to travel, well wrapped up against the rain that lashed the windows. It was a struggle getting to the station with all their bags, but there was not enough money for a hansom cab. Georgie did her best.

  At last they made it safely to Russell Square. It was only a few rooms, with nothing but a few sticks of old furniture. Topsy had taken everything he owned when he had married Janey. There were no chairs to sit on. Georgie had to stand to drink her tea.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Georgie,’ Ned said, coughing into his handkerchief. ‘It’s not much of a home for you.’

  ‘It’s the only home I want.’

  She was busy for a while, unpacking their clothes, putting them in neat piles on the floor because there was no wardrobe. Eventually there was nothing else to do but change shyly into her nightgown, her back to Ned who was already in bed, dressed in his night-shirt. The springs creaked loudly as she climbed in, and the mattress was hard and lumpy.

  She blew out the candle, then lay still, her body stretched out flat, her arms by her side like a tin soldier’s.

  ‘I’m sorry I’ve been so sick,’ Ned said.

  She murmured something.

  ‘And that we didn’t make it to Paris.’

  She nodded.

  He put out one cold hand and touched her arm. She turned towards him, her stomach fluttering with nerves. Clumsily they kissed. His beard was scratchy. She turned her face away. Hesitantly he lifted the hem of her nightgown. Georgie shrank back, shy and flustered. She had no idea why he would want to touch her up there. After a while, she forced her knees to relax and let him steal his hand higher. It was hard not to squeak and flinch. They gave each other shy pecks on the cheek and neck. He slid her nightgown higher, bunching it under her armpits, and positioned himself above her. Georgie put her hands on his shoulders. Something hard pushed between her legs. She felt uneasy and a
little frightened. Ned put down his hand. She gasped in surprise. It hurt. He tried to push it deeper. She could hardly breathe with his weight on top of her. She craned her neck sideways. He kissed her cheek and groaned, rocking back and forth. The bed springs squealed rustily. Georgie could feel him digging inside her. Then suddenly he stiffened. His hips jerked. Then he collapsed on her neck, panting.

  She lay still. The secret place between her legs felt sore and bruised.

  Ned rolled off her. ‘Oh, my,’ he said. He lay next to her, his breath coming unevenly. ‘So that’s why …’

  After a while, he gave her a shy pat in the darkness. ‘That was lovely,’ he whispered.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered back.

  The next time did not hurt so much, though Georgie found it hard to have anyone touch her in such forbidden places.

  As the days passed, she dared to slide her hands up under his nightshirt to touch the smooth bare skin of his back. Once, lying beneath him, she felt a kind of strange sensation pass through her, like a thrum along a wire.

  Otherwise, she enjoyed being a wife. It was like playing with a big doll’s house. Someone gave her a piano for a wedding present, and she was able to sing whatever songs she liked. Ned slowly recovered his health, and was able to draw and paint again. She read to him most days, keeping him company in the studio, and when he was busy, she practised drawing in her sketchbook. One day she asked their skivvy to stand and pose for a while so she could draw her. There was no-one to frown at her and tell her such pastimes were a waste of time.

  They were very poor, but Georgie was used to that.

  One afternoon in late June, Ned told Georgie that Topsy had invited them all over for supper. ‘You’d like to go, wouldn’t you? He’s been on his honeymoon for so long.’

  She smiled at him. ‘Of course. When does he want us?’

  ‘We could go tonight, if you liked.’

  ‘That would be nice. I’d like to see her. His wife, I mean.’

  A shadow passed over Ned’s face. Most people would not have noticed. But Georgie had set herself to learn the language of her husband’s expressions as others learned Latin.

  ‘I believe she is very beautiful,’ she said hesitantly.

  Ned nodded. ‘There’s something about her. It’s not beauty, exactly. That is easily admired and forgotten. Something about her is … haunting.’

  Georgie’s heart sank.

  She dressed with more than usual care. But what was the use? Her clothes were cut for economy, not style. And only Ned had ever called her beautiful.

  Topsy and Mrs Topsy – as Ned insisted on calling them – had settled into lodgings on Great Ormond Street, only ten minutes from Ned’s rooms on Russell Square. Georgie and Ned were able to walk there, through the sunset streets.

  Topsy bounced up to greet them with his usual exuberance, diving straight into a discussion about stained glass and flying buttresses and gothic arches. His wife, meanwhile, rose to her feet. Georgie had to lift her eyes as if she was about to greet a bishop.

  Mrs Morris was extraordinarily tall – taller than many men – but slender and pliant as a willow stem. Her hair was black but without any gloss, and so thick and corrugated it could not be confined in smooth bands, but rose out from her face like a dark aureole.

  Her skin was a smooth olive, and the bones of her face were both strong and yet somehow delicate, formed in a way that seemed utterly un-English. With that face and that hair, her eyes should have been black. Instead they were harebell-blue. Framed by heavy dark brows, they looked unearthly and full of sorrow.

  Her most striking feature was her mouth. Full-lipped and red, it looked sulky in rest. Yet as Janey stepped forward and offered her hand to Georgie, she smiled shyly. Suddenly her whole face was transformed.

  Then, in an instant, the light was gone. Her mouth fell again into its heavy sensuality.

  Georgie wanted badly to see her smile again. She tried – through various attempts at winsomeness and jocularity – but failed. Janey’s smiles were even more rare than her voice. Georgie had never met such a silent woman. She seemed to have no store of small talk, no understanding of the need to bat conversation back and forth like a shuttlecock. Mostly she listened, with an expression of intense concentration, turning her face from one speaker to another, her hands clasped tightly in her lap.

  Georgie found herself wanting badly for Janey to look at her, to smile at her, to answer her in some way. She understood absolutely how Topsy had fallen so madly in love with her.

  Georgie felt herself a poor dab of a thing against such wild beauty.

  Yet, as they rose to leave, Janey came and took her hand and bent down to say, in a soft voice full of a country burr that she tried to hide, ‘I am so pleased to meet you. I do hope we can be friends. Please do no’ mind me. ’Tis all so new an’ strange. All this, I mean.’

  Her hand made a helpless gesture. Suddenly Georgie felt like she was much more than just one year older, and not the country mouse she had always imagined herself to be. She took Janey’s hand and pressed it between her own. ‘I would be so happy to be friends. My husband loves yours so much, I feel that I must love you too. Will you call on me? And may I call on you?’

  ‘I would like that,’ Janey said. Her lips suddenly curved and Georgie received the smile she had looked for all night. ‘Thank you.’

  Georgie went out into the smoggy summer night in a strange daze of happiness. In the hansom cab, Ned drew her close. ‘I find her terrifying,’ he confessed. ‘She is such an Amazon.’

  Georgie shook her head. ‘She’s very tall,’ she admitted, ‘but not an Amazon. I think she’s the one who is afraid. You must be very kind to her, Ned.’

  ‘I will then,’ he answered, as if he was not the kindest of men.

  Georgie rested her hand against her hot cheek. She wished with all her heart that she were lovely enough to haunt a man’s imagination. Yet it was impossible to hate Janey. She did not have any of the arrogance of the beautiful, carrying herself as if hunched about some old wound. Georgie, who barely reached her shoulder, wanted to protect her and look after her, as if Janey were a shy child.

  That night she dreamt of Janey. She saw her as a giantess, barefoot, standing on a tiny isle in the midst of a dark surging ocean. Her hair was black and billowing as thunderclouds. She held something small cradled in her hands. She bent her head over it, weeping.

  Georgie wanted to know what she wept over.

  But she could not see.

  ‘What in heaven’s name is the Wombat’s Lair?’ Georgie asked, hanging over Ned’s shoulder as he read a note written in Gabriel’s distinctive scrawl.

  ‘A most dark and holy place,’ Ned said solemnly. ‘It is a sign of the high regard that you are held in by Gabriel that he proposes that you should be initiated into its mysteries.’

  ‘Will Lizzie be there?’

  ‘We can only hope.’

  Georgie had never been to the zoo. She smelt it first – a whiff of something like a cow-byre multiplied by thousands – and then heard it – shrieks and bellows and strange wild jungle cries.

  She squeezed Ned’s arm in excitement. ‘What was that?’

  ‘A baboon,’ he said.

  ‘Really?’

  He laughed. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

  The zoo was crowded with people out to enjoy the summer sunshine. The women’s skirts were all so huge it was hard to find a way between them. Many were vividly coloured in mauve, purple or magenta, the shocking new colour so popular that season. Georgie gazed in amazement. As always, she was wearing a simple home-made frock of some dark, cheap material that would wear well. Her only decoration was a white linen collar. She could not help indignantly calculating just how much each gown and beribboned bonnet must have cost, and how many of the needy poor it might have fed.

  They wandered about happily, waiting for the others. Ned suddenly stiffened. ‘Georgie, look!’

  ‘What is it?’ She turned, realising his
eyes were dancing with mischief.

  ‘Look what’s in the enclosure.’

  She looked, and fell at once into laughter. ‘Camels!’

  ‘I shall have to write and tell Mrs Sampson I have finally seen some camels,’ Ned said solemnly. ‘She will be pleased.’

  Then they saw Gabriel, walking arm in arm with a tall slender woman with loosely pinned hair the colour of flames. He introduced her proudly as his wife, Lizzie. Her face was beautifully modelled, with a straight nose and broad cheekbones, and her skin was pale and dusted with tiny golden freckles. Her eyes were deeply hooded, and her agate-grey eyes wonderfully luminous.

  Murmuring a polite greeting, Lizzie smiled and held out her hand to Georgie. It was delicate, long-fingered and cold.

  ‘Look at us, all growned up and married,’ Gabriel said. ‘Come on, there are Bruno and Emma.’

  Lizzie and Emma were evidently old friends, for they greeted each other with delight, kissing each other’s cheeks and talking excitedly.

  ‘To the Wombat Lair!’ Gabriel shouted, raising high his walking stick.

  ‘He just loves wombats,’ Lizzie said in explanation to Georgie. ‘He thinks they are the drollest creatures alive.’

  ‘They make me miss Topsy,’ Ned said sadly.

  ‘Are he and Janey not coming?’ Georgie asked in surprise. ‘I thought we would see them here.’

  ‘Topsy is too busy building his palace to associate with the likes of us,’ Gabriel said over his shoulder.

  The wombats were just as funny as Gabriel had promised. He calmly climbed the railing, and stuck his walking stick through to scratch the wombat’s furry back. It made small grunts of pleasure, and waggled its furry behind back and forth.

  The other great attraction was the giraffes. Georgie had never seen creatures like them. ‘I wonder for what purpose God created them?’ she asked.

  ‘To amaze us,’ Gabriel said. ‘Or in case we need to reach anything really, really high. One would have been useful in the debating hall, wouldn’t it, Ned? To hand us up sandwiches and soda bottles. Or we could have stuck a paintbrush in its mouth, and got it to help poor old Tops. I’m sure a giraffe would have done a better job of painting all those sunflowers.’

 

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