Beauty in Thorns

by Kate Forsyth

  So his two friends sent him to Coventry. Not a word would they say to him.

  Gabriel would scribble a note that said ‘Pass the salt, please’ or ‘Is there any more wine?’ and lob it to Janey, who would then give the note to her husband. Topsy would fold his arms and glower and refuse to reply. So Janey would pass the salt or pour the wine, feeling that twist of anxiety in the pit of her stomach once more.

  Lizzie shook her head at Gabriel, and told him to stop being so unkind. He took exception to this, and declared, ‘Topsy needs to learn to take a joke.’

  ‘Gabriel needs to learn to be more respectful,’ Topsy growled under his breath.

  ‘Topsy has to stop taking himself so seriously,’ Gabriel said.

  ‘Gabriel can go home if he doesn’t like it here.’

  ‘Is that any way for a host to speak to his honoured guest? Besides I like it here. I think I’ll hibernate here all winter. All I need is a warm bed and a little honey.’

  Topsy struggled to find a riposte. Gabriel gave a sardonic laugh and passed his glass to Janey to fill.

  Janey begged Topsy to forgive Gabriel, and begged Gabriel to relent and speak to Topsy. Neither paid her any heed at all.

  So things went on for the next day or two, till Topsy rose one morning and went to his wardrobe to get dressed. He pulled on his waistcoat but to his surprise and chagrin, could not do his buttons up. He swore loudly, and danced around in rage till his buttons all popped off.

  ‘I’ve eaten too much!’ he cried. ‘Oh, Janey, I’ve got fat.’

  Janey regarded him seriously for a moment, then rose and came to his side. She drew the waistcoat from his shoulders and showed him the inner lining. The seams had been taken in with large crooked stitches.

  She was filled with trepidation. You’ve gone too far this time, Gabriel, she thought.

  But Topsy began to laugh. Janey laughed too, in surprise and relief.

  ‘Those fellows!’ he cried. ‘You’ve got to love them.’

  Janey’s daughter was born in the midst of January, just before dawn. She came quickly and easily, eager to be out in the world. Topsy had insisted on being present for the birth, and he took the bawling, red-faced mite into his arms with such tenderness it brought tears to Janey’s eyes.

  A fire cast its warm glow over the great bed with its carved posts and the indigo-blue wall-hangings. It gleamed on the brass jug of hot water, and danced in the diamond-paned windows. Janey lay back on her pillows, exhausted, as Topsy carefully washed and wrapped his daughter, then brought her to Janey’s outstretched arms. As she lifted her daughter to her breast, Topsy held them both close.

  This is enough, she told herself. It is all you ever wanted. Be happy.

  Tears ran down her face as she felt her baby’s sweet tug on her nipple. Topsy kissed them away.

  15

  The Best Part of Her

  Spring–Winter 1861

  Lizzie had not felt the baby kick for days.

  She laid her hands on her hard round belly. Hot under her fingers, like a furnace. She lifted up her nightgown to examine the mound. Shape and size of a pumpkin. Marred with silvery stretch marks. Below, the thin sticks of her legs.

  The mound was still. No strange rippling of her skin as the child inside turned over. No sudden shove or pull.

  The doctors had told her not to distress herself. All she could do was wait and hope that all was well.

  Lizzie could not rest. She struggled to a sitting position, trying not to wake Gabriel. Her feet were swollen and sore. It hurt to walk, but she shuffled slowly across to the empty cradle, set by the fireplace. She rocked it lightly with one toe.

  When will you come, little one? We’re waiting for you …

  No tiny flutter of reaching fingers. No sharp prod of a foot.

  Lizzie told herself she was being a fool. Perhaps the baby was just resting, readying itself for the struggle ahead. Maybe there was no room in there for wriggling about.

  She went slowly through to the drawing room. She and Gabriel had decorated it with such gusto. Blue-and-white delft tiles around the fireplace. A fan of peacock feathers on the wall. A Spanish shawl flung over the sofa. Her watercolours, framed and hung like tiny glowing jewels.

  It was beginning to lighten outside. Lizzie stood at the window and looked down at the river. Even this early in the day, it was busy with wherries and steamers. Smoke plumed grey against the dark buildings. The sky was a dirty yellow to the east. Slowly the colour deepened till it was red as a blister.

  Lizzie bit her fingernails. Something was wrong. She knew it.

  A sudden hot gush of liquid from between her legs. Her nightgown stained. Puddle spreading dark and bloody across the floor. ‘Gabriel!’ she screamed.

  He came running, hair tousled, his legs bare beneath his nightshirt. He helped her back to bed, passing her a towel to staunch the flow.

  ‘I’ll fetch the doctor,’ he cried, throwing on his clothes.

  ‘Don’t leave me!’

  ‘I’ll call Mrs Birrell. Don’t worry, I won’t be long.’

  The blood continued to ooze out of her. Cramps bent her double. She could only whimper his name. Their landlady Mrs Birrell came and fussed about her, changing the sodden towel, bringing her a fresh one. ‘Cup of tea, love?’ she offered.

  Lizzie shook her head. Both fists balled against her groin. Sharp pain. Sudden relief. Sharp pain again.

  ‘Baby’s coming, I warrant,’ Mrs Birrell said.

  Time passed. Lizzie’s world narrowed to a pinpoint. Tossing on tidal waves. Struggling to catch a breath.

  At last Gabriel returned, with the red-nosed doctor already rolling up his sleeves. He folded down the sheets to cover her hips, then gingerly lifted her stained nightgown, turning his head away so as to preserve Lizzie’s modesty. He put his cold stethoscope against her hot painful stomach. It felt like he was branding her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said at last. ‘There is no heartbeat.’

  ‘No … what? What do you mean?’ Gabriel squeezed Lizzie’s hand so hard it hurt.

  ‘I’m afraid I can hear no heartbeat. It means the child may have died in the womb. We must get it out as fast as we can …’

  Lizzie heard no more. She began to sob. Her belly convulsed. She tried to curl up against the pain. She heard the doctor say something to Gabriel, who then went out, shutting the door behind him. Lizzie called out to him in desperation. He did not return.

  Suddenly the doctor held down her shoulders, pressing her back to the bed. Lizzie struggled to be free. Awful memories of feeding tubes. He pressed a handkerchief over her nose and mouth. Couldn’t breathe. Sweet, pungent smell. Lizzie choked. Her arms and legs felt numb. Fingers tingling. Darkness closing in on her.

  Is this death?

  Agony between her legs. Sharp pincers tearing at her. Lizzie grunted like an animal. She swam to the surface. Lifted eyelids. The doctor bending over her, a hook in his bloody hand. She screamed.

  Once again, the brutish sweet smell, the cloth against her mouth and nose. Choking. Floating. Glints of orange light between the slits of her eyelids. Flashes of images. The doctor, grunting. A sudden gush, a strange lightness in her body. Something small and bloody in his hands.

  ‘My baby?’ she tried to say. ‘Where’s my baby?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ The doctor wrapped the bloody something in a cloth and dropped it in the basin.

  Lizzie shook all over. Rattling bones. Ring of fire.

  The doctor lifted her and gave her laudanum. She gulped it down, holding his hands with her own. The crescents of his fingernails were red. Blood engrained in the wrinkles about his knuckles.

  ‘Try to sleep.’ He turned away, wiping his torture instruments clean with a cloth.

  Lizzie turned her head sideways, trying to see what lay in the basin.

  ‘Was it … was it a girl or a boy?’

  ‘Better not to think of it.’

  ‘Please … let me see … what …’

&nb
sp; She lifted herself up on her elbows. All she could see was a tiny round head, hair dark and damp with blood.

  He took the basin away.

  ‘Tell me …’ Her voice rose to a scream.

  He turned back at the door. ‘Calm yourself. It was a little girl. There was nothing I could do.’

  The door shut behind him. Lizzie drifted. An empty punt on relentless tides. Her body hollowed out. Dimly aware of Gabriel. Fingers clenched on her hand. Tears falling on her wrist. She squeezed shut her eyes. Oh God let it not be true. Let it not be true. Let it not be true.

  But the best part of her was dead.

  The door opened, and Gabriel looked out. He was haggard.

  ‘How is she?’ Georgie whispered.

  He shrugged. ‘Well enough in her body, considering what she went through. She is grieving most bitterly, though, as I’m sure you can imagine.’

  ‘May we see her?’

  He nodded. ‘Please, come in. I know I do not have to ask you to be gentle with her.’

  Georgie went through into the apartment, followed by Ned. Tense and white, he clenched his hat in both hands. Georgie smiled at him reassuringly, even as she pressed her own hands protectively over her swelling abdomen. Ned found any illness or death difficult. It brought back unhappy memories of his father’s grief that had blighted his whole childhood. He was both overjoyed at the idea of becoming a father himself and terrified that his wife would be torn from him in the same way his mother had been.

  Georgie thought that their baby may have been conceived in mid-January, at a time when she and Ned were down at Red House celebrating the christening of baby Jane Alice Morris, called Jenny to differentiate her from her mother. It had been a source of secret delight to Georgie, falling pregnant so close in time to Janey and Lizzie. She had imagined them all sitting together, dandling their babes on their laps, sharing the challenges and the joys.

  Yet now Lizzie was cut out of that picture. Janey’s joy, Georgie’s anticipation, could not help but hurt her. Georgie had dressed in a loose dress, and wrapped a shawl about her, in the hope of concealing her changing shape. Yet she feared Lizzie’s gaze would see straight past her poor camouflage to the secret she carried within her.

  Gabriel showed them into the bedroom. It was untidy and smelt unpleasant. Georgie wondered if it was the lingering smell of the Thames outside, or something else.

  Lizzie sat in a low chair by the fireplace, the cradle on the floor beside her. Her hands were folded in her lap, her eyes distant. She was humming a soft lullaby under her breath.

  ‘Lizzie, my dear,’ Ned began, his voice hoarse with emotion.

  ‘Hush, Ned, you’ll waken it!’ Lizzie cried, looking up with something wild and desperate in her eyes.

  Georgie could not speak. A hard lump in her throat.

  ‘Lizzie, you know there is no baby there.’ Gabriel put his hands on her shoulders. ‘The baby died. You know that.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Lizzie looked back down at the empty cradle. ‘I know.’

  She did not speak again. Ned and Gabriel made desultory conversation over her head, repeating what the doctor had said and what arrangements had been made. Awkwardly Georgie knelt beside Lizzie, taking one thin cold hand in hers.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she managed to say.

  ‘Yes,’ Lizzie replied.

  Her gaze returned to the empty cradle. She rocked it slightly with one foot.

  ‘Can I make some tea?’ Georgie asked in desperation.

  ‘Mrs Birrell will bring us up some,’ Gabriel said, escaping from the room with what seemed like relief.

  Ned and Georgie were left alone with Lizzie, who softly began to hum, rocking the cradle back and forth. Their gazes met over her head. Ned lifted up his eyes in a gesture of exasperation. He thought she was being overly dramatic. But Georgie felt as shaken and fearful as she had when her own sister Carrie had died. There was something so eerie and unsettling about the frail young woman, rocking a cold cradle and singing a lullaby to nothingness.

  A month or so later Emma Brown came to visit in a state of high distress. She and Bruno had offered to look after Lizzie for a while, to allow Gabriel to try to get some work done. Lizzie had walked out, though, finding her way back to Blackfriars on her own.

  ‘She just up and left without a word,’ Emma told Georgie indignantly. ‘I can tell you, we feared the worst! Finding her bed empty like that.’

  ‘Maybe it was hard for her … seeing your little ones running around so happily,’ Georgie ventured.

  ‘Well, yes, maybe … but she could have told us she was leaving … Bruno spent an anxious hour or so searching for her.’

  ‘I’m sure Lizzie didn’t mean to cause you any trouble.’

  ‘In a way it’s a relief she’s gone. She just sat, staring into space. It made us all most uncomfortable.’

  Georgie leant forward to pat Emma’s plump hands, clasping and unclasping themselves in her distress. ‘You did your best,’ she said soothingly.

  ‘Yes, I did. And I feel sorry for her, I really do. But to run off like that … without a word.’ Emma bit her lip. ‘It’s frightening,’ she whispered.

  Georgie knew what she meant. ‘Time heals all wounds,’ she said, without conviction.

  But Emma nodded and smiled, and rose to put on her hat. ‘So I told her! But she did not seem to like me telling her so.’

  A few weeks later, Georgie was glad to hear that Lizzie had gone down to stay with Janey at Red House. The fresh sweet-scented air and nourishing home-cooked food were just what she needed. Georgie wished that she could go down too. But she and Ned had just moved into new lodgings at 62 Great Russell Street, right opposite the British Museum. She had much to do putting her house in order, and preparing the nursery.

  Besides, she and Ned had their own worries. One of his most generous patrons had died suddenly, and the trustees of his estate were demanding that Ned and Gabriel and Bruno all pay back the money he had advanced them against future paintings. It was quite a large sum, which Ned and Georgie simply did not have. Luckily for Ned, he was getting some commissions from the decorating firm that he and Topsy and Gabriel had started together with a few other friends. Gabriel, however, owed a huge amount. Six-hundred-and-eighty guineas. He could never pay back such a sum. His only hope was to convince the trustees to wait for the paintings he still had to paint. He had to work like a maniac to even hope to fulfil the commissions, plus he went back to teaching at the Men’s Working Club in order to earn a little to live on.

  Then Georgie heard that Lizzie had fled Red House too. Janey was with child once more, and the sight of her glowing happiness had simply been too much for Lizzie to bear. Georgie’s heart ached for her. But there was nothing anyone could do. Lizzie had to find her own way through.

  The summer passed and cooler days arrived, much to Georgie’s relief. She was only small, and the child within seemed much too large and heavy. The ache in her lower back grew fiercer every day, and she found it hard to sit and work at her wood carving or to meet any of her sisters for tea.

  She could not help being jittery about what was to come. Lizzie’s grief was too raw and recent to forget. She knew Ned was apprehensive too. He joked that he was afraid they’d give birth to a little monster. Georgie knew he was trying to hide his very real fear.

  The midwife reassured her. ‘I’ll be there for you,’ she promised. ‘Nothing will go wrong.’

  One morning in early October, the ache in Georgie’s back grew so fierce that she could only lie on her bed and clench her teeth together. Ned was painting in the little front room he fondly called his studio. The discomfort moved through her in ever-increasing waves. Feeling a sudden surge of panic, she tried to get up. Her legs wobbled alarmingly. She could only manage to walk by hanging on to one piece of furniture after another.

  It’s too soon. It can’t be time yet. I’m not ready!

  Her only thought was to get to Ned. Another ripple of pain. Georgie called to Ned. She h
eard his footsteps rushing towards her. Pain sharp as a shard. She groaned out loud.

  ‘Georgie? What’s wrong? Is the baby coming? I’ll go and get the midwife.’ He caught up his coat and ran out the door, bare headed.

  Georgie was left alone. She hung on to the table with all her strength. The pain was too much. She fell to her knees. The next few minutes were all a blur. Then her baby came out with a slither. He was blue. Georgie lifted him to her shoulder, patting him frantically. A moment later, a high, thin wail. Georgie collapsed with relief. She clutched the tiny thing close. He cried and cried. She tried to suckle him, sitting on the floor in the hallway, but did not know how. His hungry mouth slurped at the skin of her breast but could not latch on to the nipple.

  Another sharp ripple of pain. Georgie tensed. What was happening? Another baby? Was she having twins? She had to lie the screaming baby down as her body bent and convulsed. Then something else slipped from her. Georgie bent to see, then recoiled in horror. Something red and fleshly and deformed had slithered out of her. Then a sliding pool of blood. Great gulps of sobs. Georgie looked around for help, but she was all alone. The baby was screaming, blue and naked on the floor. She picked him up and wrapped him tightly in her shawl and brought him once more to her breast. This time she succeeded in getting the nipple into his mouth. He sucked strongly. All Georgie felt was a giddy relief at the silence.

  At last the door opened and Ned rushed in. Mrs Wheeler the midwife was beside him, a basket in her hand. Ned took one look at Georgie, her skirts smeared with blood, and fell to the floor in a dead faint. Mrs Wheeler dropped to the floor beside him and began to chafe his hands. She drew a bottle of smelling salts out of her basket and waved it under his nose. At last Ned began to stir and moan.

  ‘Do you think,’ Georgie said, ‘you could take a look at me?’

  Georgie sat, tears sliding down her cheeks and dropping on to the downy head of the baby she suckled at her breast. She could hear the roar of laughter and conversation from the studio. It was hard to sit here alone, feeding her baby, so cut off from life.