Girl in a Blue Dress Page 4

  “Not at all! You were ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’! Wasn’t she, Mr. Millar?”

  Papa frowned. “She was my usual lovely Dodo. The kindest, sweetest girl in the world. And not to be trifled with. Now, Dodo, we must be on our way.” He took me by the arm. “Mr. Gibson, I give you good night.”

  “WELL?” KITTY SAYS. “You do not answer my question. Was Papa not an adventurer?”

  “Not at all,” I say. “He was merely poor. And my father was simply trying to protect me, knowing I’d had a soft upbringing and hardly knew how to manage my ribbon allowance, let alone feed a whole family. But all fathers suspect their daughters’ lovers, I imagine. Including yours.” I turn and smile at her.

  “Oh, Mama, I am sure you are right. Augustus has many good qualities, believe me.” She comes and plants a kiss on my cheek. Gyp wakes and shakes himself. I ease him down upon the rug and suddenly Kitty is taking his place, depositing herself and her heavy complement of petticoats upon my lap, clasping her arms around my neck, laying her cheek next to mine. I have so longed to be close to her, I hardly dare to move. We sit, silent, watching the coals flame and fall until it is quite dark outside and Wilson comes in to light the lamps. She starts when she sees us thus entwined.

  “Sorry, madam. I didn’t realize Mrs. Norris was still here. Beg pardon, miss.” She stands, a little flustered—two grown women embracing on a chair.

  “That’s all right.” Kitty gets up, smoothes down her skirts. “I’ve decided to stay the night.”

  “Yes, miss—madam. And will you be wanting supper?”

  “What culinary delights can you tempt me with?”

  “I don’t know about curinaly. But there’s cold mutton and potatoes. And I’ve done some soup.”

  Kitty pulls a face. “I suppose that will do. Have you any wine, Mama?”

  That’s Augustus’s influence. But I don’t generally keep wine. Apart from the tonic variety Dr. Phelps prescribed after Ada was born. “No,” I say. “You’ll have to make do with water.”

  “There’s a flagon of stout in the kitchen, miss, if you’re so inclined.” Wilson’s lighting the lamps, and at last it feels as though the long day’s almost over.

  “Very well, I’ll have some of that.” Kitty turns to me, suddenly alert. “They had hot punch at the house, to warm us up. It was not a patch on Papa’s, though.” She looks around in a distracted way. “It’s a pity we can’t make some now.”

  I feel cheered at the thought. “Maybe we could. It’s not difficult. Oranges, lemon, brandy …”

  “But you have no brandy, Mama.”

  “No.”

  “And no oranges neither,” adds Wilson, on her way out. “I’d have got some if I’d a known we was having special treats.” She shuts the door, pointedly.

  Kitty laughs, rolls her eyes, and mimics Wilson’s voice and manner: “If I’d a known we was having special treats, I’d a gorn and laid down and died.”

  I put my fingers on my lips. Wilson is a good creature and I don’t want her offended. But Kitty is so sharp in her observations I cannot help but laugh. “You could have written characters, you know. You have his talent for it.”

  “Could I? He never thought so. He never encouraged me.”

  “That’s not true. He was always proud of what you wrote. He’d bring things for me to look at. He’d say, That child’s a marvel! An Infant Phenomenon!”

  “Babyish stories and poems! Silly little plays. Nothing as I grew older.”

  “And were there things you wrote as you grew older?”

  She colors. “No.” She was too busy rebelling to spend time with her pen. “But he stopped me doing everything I wanted to. I could have been an actress. But he said the theater wasn’t a life for a lady. While all the time he was—”

  “Let’s have supper,” I say, pushing myself up from the chair. “And go to bed early. We are both tired out.”

  KITTY MAKES A good supper and downs the glass of stout that Wilson brings her. Then she asks me to play for her, and I do—although she is the better pianist. All those lessons, that endless practicing! She stands behind me now, her hands on my shoulders, and we sing the old favorites, all the choruses from Christmases past when we were all together. When we retire, she is so exhausted she can hardly undress herself. I help her off with her clothes as if she were a child—although when she was a child it was somewhat simpler. Now she has such layers and accoutrements, such panels and streamers!

  “Don’t you think you’ve overreached yourself with all this … extravagance? Your skirt has enough petticoats to stand up on its own.”

  The skirt indeed does stand up unaided, as if there were a third person in the room, standing guard near the grate. I lay the veil and the bonnet on my ottoman and try to collapse the skirt so it can dry before Wilson takes a brush to it tomorrow. There’s mud up to six inches all around the hem; the funeral carriages must have churned it up. I finger the dead, dull crepe. It’s ugly, and it’s made Kitty ugly—a thing he’d never have wanted. Black extinguishes the spirit, he’d say. It makes women into walking mausoleums.

  Kitty doesn’t counter my remark; she’s almost asleep on her feet. I struggle with the hooks of her corset, and as my fingers touch her spine I realize how thin she is. Even as a girl, I was never thin. A buxom beauty, he called me when we were first married. He said my body was the softest in the world. But now there is far too much of it. Kitty, by contrast, looks half-starved.

  She falls into bed as if insensible. I remove my own clothing slowly, but without help. I keep my laces loose, so the matter is accomplished easily enough. I find myself eager for the sheets, for the presence of another human being. For the first time in ten years my bedfellow will be someone other than Gyp. I am aware of a need I have not admitted to myself that almost overwhelms me as Kitty turns and snuggles deep into my bosom. She says, “Mama, you are so vast, I shall get lost in you,” and goes to sleep in an instant. But even in sleep she stays tense, brittle. From time to time she twitches and gives a moan, just like her father. Who had also said he wished to lose himself in me.

  3

  THE DOORBELL RINGS AT NINE O’CLOCK. NO ONE respectable calls this early. I am dressed and having my breakfast, but Kitty is still asleep. I hear a voice on the stair; it is Augustus.

  “Hallo, Ma. Kit here?” he says in his unceremonious way as he pushes through the door, hat in hand. He is still in evening clothes, but looks rabbity and stained.

  “Good morning, Augustus. Yes, of course she is. Where else does she have to go?”

  “She hasn’t been home all night.”

  “No. And neither have you. I daresay it’s only now that you are aware of her absence.”

  “I was away from home, yes. She knew that.” He throws down his opera hat, picks a plum from the bowl on the table, and bites into it. “But it don’t do to leave the servants in the dark. I was called for, you know.”

  “How inconvenient.” I cannot believe that I once thought him handsome. In the morning light his long whiskers are sparse and gingery and he smells of tobacco smoke and whisky.

  “It was actually, Ma. Very inconvenient.”

  “May I remind you that Kitty’s father was buried yesterday? She needed human company last night. As did I.”

  He has the goodness to be taken aback. “Well, yes. Sorry. My condolences and all that. But you can’t say you’re a normal sort of widow-woman. Any more than she is a normal daughter. You both hated the Great Man when he was alive.” He sits down opposite me in Kitty’s place and starts to help himself to tea and toast.

  “I certainly did not. And I think you’ll find Kitty didn’t either.”

  “Well, she made a good show of it. Anyway, I went to the Abbey, didn’t I? Kept up appearances. Didn’t let the home contingent have it all their own way. And what a fracas that was! All that shouting and sobbing. Enough to give a man a headache for weeks. And then they went and put O’Rourke and Alfie in the carriage with her, and stuffed me in wit
h some strange ladies at the back. Mind you—”

  “I don’t want to hear.”

  “No.” He laughs. “Anyway, she’s wanted now. Lawyers and such.”

  “She’s asleep.”

  “Then be so good as to get her up, Ma.” He mimes the action, as if I am stupid and don’t understand English. The reek of whisky is intense across the table. His eyes are bloodshot and unreliable.

  “There’s no hurry, Augustus. I don’t believe he’s left her anything. Except perhaps his books.”

  “There must be a fortune somewhere, Ma. All that beavering away as if his life depended on it. And she’s his eldest.”

  “And I’m his wife. But he cut us both out, if you recall.”

  “Well,” he says, tucking into the remaining kipper, “he may have cut you in again. He always was a rum cove.”

  RUM. THAT’S WHAT my father had thought, although he put it more genteelly. Headlong, he said. Unstable. On the carriage ride home from Stepney that fateful night he’d admonished me for having made a spectacle of myself. “You surprise me, Dodo. Setting your cap at that poor young man.”

  “I only invited him to supper, Papa.”

  “That is not quite all, Dodo.” He looked at me sternly.

  “Heavens! What else did she do?” Mama looked up from cradling my sleeping sisters. “Nothing unladylike, I hope, Dodo.”

  “No, Mama. I simply spoke to him about his plays.”

  “She encouraged his propensity to extravagance, Esther. You know, the smiles, the glances, the kissing of hands, the going down on one knee and so forth. The whole panoply of effects.”

  Mama laughed. “He is very dashing, Oliver. He rather takes one off-guard. But there is no harm in him.”

  “On the contrary, the young man is full of his own importance and may believe he has a chance with our daughter. It is unfair of her to encourage him.”

  I had to speak out. “But he does have a chance with me, Papa! He is the most brilliant and clever man I have ever met! But I fear he is too fascinating to be bothered with a simpleton such as me!”

  “Dodo! What has come over you?” Papa’s voice was sharp in a way I had never heard before.

  “She’s in love,” said Alice, opening one eye, then falling asleep again.

  The carriage jolted on, and we all sat as if stunned.

  AND NOW AUGUSTUS gets up, cramming the remains of toast into his mouth. He looks more petulant than ever, his lips sensuous and weak as they close over the food. “Where is she?”

  “Don’t disturb her, Augustus. She’s tired.”

  “Thank you, Ma, but I’ll do as I damn well please with regard to my own wife.” He never spares with his oaths, even in front of me. He starts for the door.

  I am horrified. “That is my bedroom. You cannot go in there.”

  “You fetch her, then.” He stands aside, watching me belligerently.

  “Let me finish my breakfast at least.”

  “I’m a busy man, Ma.”

  “Are you?”

  The question annoys him, and he whirls round. He meets Wilson coming in with fresh tea and collides with her. The pot nearly empties itself on him. For half a second I hope he is scalded, but he has sidestepped nimbly and the tea spills on the hearthrug instead. He mutters, “Why don’t you damned servants look where you’re going?”

  “I believe I was looking, sir. I believe it was you as turned suddenly. It’s easily done.” She puts the pot on the table and bends to attend to the stain. “But you’re all right. It’ll come off with a rough rag and a bit of elbow grease.”

  “This is a madhouse. I’ll take Kitty and go.” His hand is on the doorknob of the bedroom.

  “No.” I get up. “I’ll wake her. Please sit down.”

  I cross the room in front of Wilson, who has risen from the rug, her face a little pink. “Well,” she says, “this is the first time we’ve seen Mr. Norris in I don’t know how long, isn’t it, madam? But I’m glad to see he’s made himself at home.” She starts to clear his plate. It’s carelessly piled with the kipper carcass, the stone from the plum, the crusts from the toast. She looks at it with distaste. “Shall I re-lay the place?”

  “I doubt Mrs. Norris will be breakfasting. Mr. Norris is in a hurry.”

  “Yes, madam. Then I’ll come back and see to that stain before it sets.” She sails off.

  “That’s more insolence than I would take in my house.” Augustus slumps into the armchair, his long black legs stretching over half the hearthrug.

  “But it’s not your house, and Wilson is an excellent woman.”

  He takes out a cheroot. Then he looks at my expression and puts it back again: “I see you don’t care for tobacco smoke, Ma.”

  “Indeed not.”

  “The Great Original was partial though, was he not? I seem to remember that. In the good old days when we were bosom pals.” He smiles sarcastically.

  “He knew the time and place. And it wasn’t at nine o’clock in the morning in someone else’s breakfast room.”

  He laughs. It’s true, of course, that he and Alfred were once friends. An unlikely coupling: Alfred already at the height of his powers, famous and well esteemed, a family man and doer of good works; Augustus a young man about town with more money than sense, no interest at all in literature and certainly none in good works. He had other interests though. It was he who introduced Alfred to the Turkish baths, to the smoking clubs, to the Chinese opium houses. Alfred was tickled: Such a marvelous propensity they all have for lying about and doing nothing in particular. But the novelty soon palled. Alfred could never be idle for long.

  I open the bedroom door. Kitty is lying as I left her, her hair spread over the pillow. She’ll never wear a nightcap. Alfred wouldn’t either. And he’d undo mine as soon as we were in bed. And my nightgown: Come, Dodo, don’t be all trussed up like a Christmas turkey. Let me feel your hair. Let me feel your skin. Let us be in a state of nature.

  I bend over her. “Kitty?” She sleeps on. I can hardly bear to wake her. In fact I won’t wake her. I sit on the coverlet and watch her sleep instead. I don’t know how much time passes, but next thing the doorknob is rattling and Augustus is in the room. He is too tall, too hard, too black against the fans and feathers, the pressed flowers, the heaps of letters done up in ribbon. No man has set foot in here, until now. Only Alfred, in his silver frame on the mantelpiece, has even gazed on it.

  “You haven’t made much progress, Ma. Looks as if all those things he said about you were true.” Augustus leans against the wardrobe, grinning.

  “Kitty needs to sleep.”

  “She can sleep some other time. I need her elsewhere. And I’m her husband.”

  “You remember that now?”

  “Come, come, Ma. Let’s not quarrel. One quarrelsome parent is more than enough.” He moves to the bed, bends over Kitty.

  “Wake up, Kit. It’s your Ever-loving.” He shakes her, quite hard, his arm dark against the sheets.

  I close my eyes. I don’t like to see him touching her. I am not a prude—I couldn’t have been married to Alfred and been a prude—but there is something coarse about Augustus that makes me anxious for my child. I suspect he may go further than is right; he may even be brutal. God forbid that it is true—but I fear Alfred knew a good deal more about his erstwhile friend than he ever said. Of course I don’t blame Kitty for wanting to be passionately loved, and prepared to act rashly in pursuit of it. In that one thing we are not so different. Indeed, when I stood in that hot dressing room with all those candles burning around me, and Alfred smiling at me, I felt as though my whole body was alight with joy. I was so excited I could hardly think. Only the thought of never seeing Alfred again—or seeing him only too late when he was promised to another—could have made me speak in such a forward fashion.

  But a supper invitation was one thing; the prospect of anything else was out of the question. My rash admission of admiration had put my parents on their mettle, and when they saw how enra
ptured I was at the prospect of the visit (and I could not conceal my joy; I carried a smile on my face that nothing could diminish) they made it clear that I could neither encourage nor accept the attentions of this amusing but unsuitable young man. Of course, I agreed to do and say nothing untoward. I would have agreed to almost anything as long as I could see Alfred Gibson again.

  We were all sitting in the garden when he appeared at the gate. He seemed even brighter, even more wonderful than before. He was wearing a yellow waistcoat, a cherry-colored top coat, and trousers of a very neat cut. He had also acquired a silver-topped cane. He advanced up the path and made a low bow, holding his hat over his heart. We all smiled, and Mama graciously indicated the chair where he should sit next to her. But before he could do anything, Sissy, in her peremptory way, began tugging at his hand, trying to pull him down upon the grass: “Play that game again! Play that game!” This time he would not be enticed. He withstood her efforts laughingly, then, throwing down his hat and cane, grasped her suddenly to his waist and made her stand with her feet on his. “Hold tight!” he shouted, as he began to dance with her around the lawn. Sissy gripped his arms and grew redder and redder as she strove to keep her little slippered feet attached to his fast-stepping, shiny boots.

  “Slower!” she demanded between breaths. “Mis–ter Gib–son, slower, please!”

  “Impossible!” he shouted, taking a wide turn at the walnut tree. “There is only one pace for a waltz, and it is FAST!” He whirled her around so wildly that her legs and feet swung out from his body like the sails of a windmill before he brought her to a sudden stop. She stood for a moment, then cried, “Again!” and tried to scramble back on his feet.

  “No, Miss Cecilia, you must not be selfish. I think it is Miss Alice’s turn.” He held out his hand to Alice, who was sitting quietly in a wicker chair, pretending to read a book. She shook her head.

  He smiled. “No, indeed. Miss Alice is too grown up by half for such roughness. Miss Alice wants a proper dance. A Military Two-step, I think? Allow me.” And he approached her respectfully, bowed, and took her gently by both hands, and before she knew it she was two-stepping down the garden path with him as he called out instructions—Turn, step, side forward, back! Excellent! At the end of the path they stopped. He bowed again, and kissed her hand, very nicely, so that Alice blushed. She was only my twelve-year-old sister, but I was jealous. I let my eyes fall, concentrating on my needlework, working the line of green satin-stitch to fill the oval shape of a leaf. In seconds he was back again, but I could not meet his troublesome laughing eyes, not with my mother and father chaperoning my every look. I could see only his boots as he stood before me, and the first six inches of those neatly fitting trousers: “And what is your pleasure, Miss Millar?”