“Now, would you like to see the garden?”
He followed her down the stairs, running his hand down the banister, feeling the quality of the wood. Everything seemed to be beautifully crafted in the house, the opposite of the cheap repairs in the tenements.
She led him back through the kitchen and scullery and out into the garden, the light making them squint as they emerged.
He walked through the damp grass, breathing in the air, imagining himself and Aidan digging. He thought of the crops of onion and lettuce they’d have come the summer. And the rows and rows of potatoes.
“I’d be in the market for a quick sale, if it suited you,” he said.
“It would,” she answered.
She was standing with her arms folded, her back to the house, watching him survey the garden.
“Everything’s still a mess with my husband’s accounts and that. Would you be interested in a cash sale? I’d discount the price of course.”
For a recently bereaved widow, she looked like a fine woman, he thought. Strong-willed, as though nothing might phase her.
Whatever way she wanted him to pay was fine by him.
He wanted this house. If she asked him to pay her in pennies, he would. Whatever it took. No questions asked.
Chapter 6
William D. Thomas
All of her things lay exactly where she’d left them. A perfume bottle stood with its lid off, its crystal top lying beside it. He had held the lid, worried that the perfume from the bottle would evaporate, that over time he would lose the smell of her to the air of the small dressing room. But he couldn’t bring himself to stopper the bottle. It looked as though she had just stepped away for a moment, to the bathroom to fetch something, out to the hall to talk to Mrs. McHugh.
A powder puff lay in a shower of powder and when he looked closely he saw the mark of her fingertips. He hovered his fingers over the imprints, imagining her hand in his.
He found he missed things that he hadn’t even noticed when she was alive. The scent of her skin. The aroma when she leaned in close to him at night, when he nuzzled her neck before sleep. If he lifted and sniffed her clothes it was there – a smell, her smell, a mix of her perfumes and her sweat.
Now there was no new source of that smell. Only old items that she had once touched or lain in. Items that would soon lose their smell to the air, to the draughts that Mrs. McHugh allowed into the house through her constant window-opening and penchant for dusting. He had told her not to touch his wife’s things, but soon the fresh air, sweeping daily into their house, would take with it all the existing smells of his wife. And the only thing he’d have left would be her perfumes. He had poured some on to a handkerchief and put it under his pillow at night. He woke up every morning clutching it.
He came and sat at her dressing table every day. It was where he felt closest to her, where he could sense her, feel her as though she were still here.
He had put off returning to work for weeks. Going back to work meant coming home to a house where she no longer lived, where she no longer met him on the stairs, or sat in their sitting room with her piece of embroidery or turned over and placed her hand across his stomach, wrapping herself into him at night.
There would be no more luncheons when she dropped by the office, brightening up the panelled walls, cutting his day in half with her smile. There would be no more errands, buying small things to amuse her, listening to her thoughts about how they should decorate the nursery or what they could do in the summer with the baby.
He longed to ride out to the countryside, to roam, away from the town, away from the memories, from the office and the house and the atmosphere that hung low, permeating everything with its sadness, drawing the very breath from his body.
He realised that the thing he missed most was her companionship, her friendship. The conversations they had about everything and nothing. It wasn’t that his wife had been a constant chatterer, a woman who loved nothing more but to prattle on. Her manner was quiet, sometimes reserved, but ever so lovely. The things she said were considered, as though she had time to think about everything, to develop her thoughts and look at all sides. He valued her opinion enormously.
But now she was gone. And he was trying to get used to the emptiness that she left. The chasm in their bed. Only his own male smell when he entered their room.
He had always felt as though there would be great sadness in his life. That he was born into sadness, that things would happen that he had no power over, no control. He carried that sadness around with him, a melancholy.
His mother had always said it about him. “What a forlorn little boy!”
He didn’t know what forlorn meant – he thought it meant bad – as in naughty. But a governess had shown it to him in the dictionary one day.
“It means sad,” she said. “Are you sad, William?”
He’d looked at her and thought for a moment. Naughty wasn’t the same as sad. Was he sad because he was naughty?
“No,” he said, shrugging. But it was a lie. He was a bit sad. Always, he felt a bit sad.
School held no interest for him. It came with sharp slaps and rote learning and once they’d covered the world map and atlas, it was as though there was nothing else the teacher could say to hold his attention. He would have preferred to have been left alone, to curl up in a chair with a book, an adventure story of pirates and gunrunning and smugglers.
There were two things that made him happy and it was always a good day if he got to do one of those. The first was fishing. The best fish could be caught out along the riverbanks, two or three miles from town, where the waters ran wide and deep and were filled with trout and leaping salmon. The day he got a fishing rod for his birthday with bait hooks and a little worm box was the happiest he could ever remember.
The second thing that brought him joy was the port and the large ships that came in. He had a special viewing spot just beyond the quays, where he could scramble up Sycamore Hill and watch them being guided in by the pilot. He wrote down all the names of the ships in a little notebook and if he could see their cargo – wood piled high on deck, coal, large container boxes or rods of iron and steel – he’d make a note of that too.
On the days when he got to fish or to watch the ships, he would return home feeling lighter. On the days when he didn’t get to do those things, he would find himself sitting in his room, looking out the window onto the street, watching the moving heads sail by below.
Why couldn’t he be happy like everyone else, he thought. Why couldn’t he go about whistling and having not a care in the world, like other people seemed to be able to?
His mother took him to doctors, who examined him and said he was of sound mind but did appear to be suffering from melancholy and recommended vigorous baths and plenty of fresh air. He took concoctions of syrups and solutions, poured from dark-brown bottles. They made him feel woozy and eventually he shook his head and refused to take any more. One doctor suggested having his adenoids removed but his mother dismissed the idea. William often wondered if he should have got them taken out, as if coughing those red bloody lumps into a bowl would have been like spitting out his sadness.
His father had no time for his demeanour. “Snap out of it, boy!” he’d often roar, sending him scuttling out of his way. So, he learned to smile. Smiling was what adults looked for in him. If he smiled they seemed satisfied with him.
Smiling was easy, if you just concentrated on your mouth and pulled up the corners and showed your teeth. He looked in the mirror one day and watched himself doing it, concentrating on forcing his grimace into a proper smile. But his eyes gave him away – there was no light, no shine, no real smile, no matter how hard he tried.
He was a forlorn little boy. With no light to his eyes at all.
When news came through that their father had been found dead in his cabin on the way back from Calais, William and Marcus found themselves in charge of a thriving import-export business overnight. While William c
omforted their mother and sorted out their father’s financial matters, Marcus returned to sea, wild with anger that their beloved father had been taken from them.
They were surprised to find that their father had left the house at Laurence Street to William. Marcus remarked that their father understood that William was unlikely to go anywhere, that he’d always remain at home, working, happy to see out his days in the town he’d been born in.
“Oh, shut up,” William had replied. “You know it’s so that I’ll look after Mother. While you gallivant around the world. At least I have the decency to be here for her. Which is more than can be said for you.”
“Always the doting son, weren’t you, William?” said Marcus, in a low, barely audible voice.
“Say what you like,” said William. “But we all know that it’ll be me who stays to look after her while you float about, not giving a damn about anyone else, just like Father.”
“Floating about is what built this business, you absolute fool!” said Marcus.
“And I don’t intend to let it go by the wayside now,” said William.
Two weeks later, when Marcus had returned to sea and their mother had managed to come downstairs for breakfast, William went to the offices of a landlord who owned a number of buildings along the quays and put a deposit down on a much larger office than the one they were in, negotiating the hire of mahogany desks, comfortable padded chairs and filing cabinets.
He hired a man to paint a sign above the office Thomas Brothers Shipping Company Ltd. and opened the expanded business the next day. He spent the following months writing letters to every customer they’d ever dealt with and a year later, on the anniversary of their father’s death, his accountant declared that they had doubled turnover.
“I’m very proud of you, son,” his mother told him, as she lay on her bed, her breathing laboured with the fluid that had built up on her lungs and made her sound as though she were drowning.
“Thank you, Mother,” he answered.
He wondered whether he should get a telegram to Marcus, to tell him that their mother was ill, gravely ill, and he should cut his business trip short to come home. As he thought about how he would write the telegram, his mother’s words and the ease with which she expressed her feelings towards him rang in his ears. He was glad that she told him she was proud. But he wished that just once his father had been able to say the same thing.
His fingers traced along Anna’s dressing table, over brushes and powder, rouge and small bottles of cream. In a drawer he found soft underwear, scattered messily, a tangle of lace and silk. He opened another drawer and poked through the containers.
He knew nothing of women’s ways, of their maidservants and the magic they could work. His mother was a beautiful woman, but his father didn’t like fuss and she seemed to spend most of her time making herself looking presentable rather than glamorous.
They were at the Christmas ball the night he met Anna, one of the rare occasions that his father had taken their mother. She stood by his side, her face pink, their father drunk and loud.
William had gone to his mother, to talk, to try and occupy her, to ease her of her embarrassment. He hoped as the night wore on, as more gins and vodkas and bitters were downed, that their father would blend in a bit more.
No one notices when everyone is drunk.
Anna had appeared, smiling, her tiny frame wrapped in a red silk gown.
“Anna Winchester,” said his mother, introducing them. “You remember Mr. and Mrs. Winchester, don’t you, William?”
Winchester. No. He couldn’t remember. Did they make galoshes? Or Wellington boots?
“Of course you do,” said his mother. “We used to visit them, in the country, when you were small. They moved away then, to Bath.”
A flash of running through a maze. Of getting lost. Of peering into a pond with large white and orange carp. Of a little blonde girl chasing him.
Anna Winchester.
“How do you do?” he said, and he took her hand to kiss it.
“You certainly have grown,” she said, smiling.
She remembered him too. But he could barely remember her – just the house – and the gardens. And the freedom as he ran and ran.
“Your hair is sparkling,” he said, smiling, and she touched a diamond slide above her ear and laughed.
“Very festive, isn’t it?” she said.
He felt nervous talking to her, she was such a beauty. But he liked that he had met her before, that she had seen him as a child. He felt his impression had already been made.
“Would you like to dance?” he asked as the band struck up a waltz.
“Yes,” she said and held out her hand.
He led her to the floor where couples were beginning to move around, gripped tight.
He saw his mother’s face as they walked away, surprised that he was so forward, that he had the courage to ask this beautiful woman to dance.
“And what has brought you all the way to Drogheda at Christmas, Miss Winchester?” he asked as they counted out their one, two, three steps.
“My father has retired,” she said. “Ireland is our home. He sold up his business in Bath and we’ve come back to Swinford Hall.”
Rifles. The family manufactured rifles, now he remembered.
“Do you remember me,” he said. “From when we were children?”
“Of course,” she said. “You were the cry baby, I remember.”
He looked at her, horrified, and saw the laughter in her eyes.
“I prefer the term ‘sensitive’,” he said jokingly.
She smelled of musk, a deep expensive perfume.
“You were quiet,” she said. “Gentle. Not like that brother of yours – he was always trying to kick me or play tricks on me. Is he here?”
“Yes,” he said. “He hasn’t changed much. He’s dancing – over there.”
She looked to where Marcus was waltzing with an attractive brunette.
“I hope he’s not trying to kick her,” she joked.
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” he said, his face serene. Then he laughed too.
He could feel tiny beads of sweat forming between his fingers.
“I would love to visit Swinford again,” he said.
“Of course you should. Bring your mother – she and my mother can reminisce.”
“I should very much like that,” he said, thinking of how they might escape alone, if their mothers were occupied gossiping.
She looked at him then, taking in his features and he felt a shiver the length of his spine.
If he could marry this woman there and then, he would.
“You’re like a ...” his voice trailed off.
“What?” she asked, stopping dancing.
He wanted to say “a Christmas angel”, but he couldn’t get the words out. He couldn’t say it.
“What?” she asked again, her face breaking into a smile now.
The waltz was finished and the band began a festive hymn, “Joy to the World”.
He shook his head and walked her back to his mother, his hand cupping her elbow gently.
A Christmas hymn for his Christmas angel.
His fingers touched something metal in the drawer and he drew it out to look at it. It was the diamond slide she’d worn in her hair, the night they met. The diamonds sparkled now again, glittering, catching the light.
Chapter 7
The Nanny
She waited three weeks before making the journey back to the workhouse. There was something about the place that called her.
She left the nursery and walked down the stairs, meeting Mrs. McHugh on her way up.
“Enjoy your half-day,” said the housekeeper as they passed.
She said nothing and walked down the rest of the stairs without looking back, though she was aware that the housekeeper had stopped on the stairs and was watching her.
She closed the front door with a bang.
Mrs. McHugh was a blustering old foo
l. She reminded her of the workhouse tutor, the one who used to rod them for not knowing the Catechism off by heart. The woman was a self-righteous prig.
She had the same way of talking down to her too. Standing there, hand on hip, her head cocked, all high and mighty. Who did she think she was? For a housekeeper in a small townhouse she had an awfully high opinion of herself.
Still, she was settling in well. She liked her bedroom on the first floor, giving her a vantage point over Laurence Street and West Street, a fine place for taking everything in.
She wondered how long Mr. Thomas planned on grieving. She might ask him to accompany her on an evening walk or even to the theatre soon, saying that she very much wanted to go but did not want to go unchaperoned.
She thought about Mrs. McHugh’s face, watching the two of them leave Number 43, together. What a sight that would be!
Still, he was very soft, Mr. Thomas. His grief for his wife was great. She needed to give him more time, get to know him slowly.
She thought about his body, about what lay beneath those fine clothes he wore. She wondered what he liked, where he was ticklish, what part of his skin she should stroke first? All men were flesh and blood. Beneath that rich cloth, that silk and satin, that cologne and coiffure and expense, they all responded the same, when you knew how to touch them, when you found that spot. You just had to go looking.
She walked up the back way, up the steep hill, feeling her legs grow tired on the incline.
There were people making their way to and from small cottages which dotted the sides of the road. Some were merely hovels, thrown together to offer a vague protection from the elements. Wisps of weak smoke poked their way from the holes in the grassy roofs. There were old men and women inside, huddled under rags, others more able-bodied sitting outside with their begging bowls. They were just steps away from the workhouse and their poverty made her throat thicken. The sight of them made her sick.
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