Girl in a Blue Dress Page 8

  “Whatever made her do such a thing? You weren’t badly hurt?”

  “Oh, no. It was nothing. Lou wasn’t very strong.” Kitty laughs. “And the knife was blunt. Bessie put ointment on it and bound it up. I still have the mark, though.”

  I am shocked. “Louisa was always such a good child.”

  “Underhand, I’d call her. And very jealous.”

  Ah, poor Lou. She would have seen the way Alfred looked at Kitty, the way he favored her. When they were both on his lap, Louisa would always struggle to get closer, pushing Kitty to one side, snuggling up to his neck, burying her face in his neck cloth, saying, Papa, I do love you so.

  Do you, miss? he’d say. And he’d laugh and rumple Kitty’s hair, saying, And you, Kitty? Do you love me as much as Miss Mouse? And Kitty, in her proud way, would never reply.

  “What will Lou do now?” I ask. “And Fanny? And poor Georgie, away at sea, still? What will they all do with themselves?”

  “Carry on as before, I imagine,” she says tartly.

  “Not in that great house, surely?” Without him there, entertaining the world to supper, what would be the point?

  “Oh, it’s to be sold to pay for the annuities. That’s all laid down. Aunt Sissy has to find somewhere more modest, and lord it over a new set of servants.” She raises her eyebrows at me. “Perhaps she at least will have the sense to go back to Chiswick.”

  I ignore her. “And Lou and Fanny?”

  “They’ll both go with her. Miss Mouse sticks to Sissy like glue.”

  Miss Mouse, his pet name for Louisa. She crept about so quietly, never venturing an opinion of her own. She was Alfred’s incubus—waiting on his every whim, fetching ink and paper, brandy-and-water. “Poor Lou!” I say. “She’ll miss Papa so terribly.”

  “As a doormat misses the shoe.” Kitty’s up again, folding the piece of flannel over the edge of the washstand. “It’s her own fault. She and Sissy deserve each other.”

  “You’re very hard on them.”

  “They are a pair of witches.”

  “You shouldn’t say such things. They are your sister and mine.”

  “Yes, exactly. Weird Sisters. Toil and Trouble.” She croaks and makes a face like an old crone. She makes me laugh.

  “And what about you, Kitty? What will you do with your five thousand pounds?”

  “I don’t have it yet. And I’m not sure I want it. Perhaps I shall distribute it amongst the Poor.”

  I catch her eye in the looking glass. “Does Augustus feel the same?”

  “He feels we should keep it—as a matter of principle.”

  “I’m sure he does. As a matter of principle.”

  She colors. “At least he stands up for me.”

  I begin to see why Alfred put the money in a trust; Sissy will never bow to Augustus’s demands. “Well, we’ll have to wait, won’t we? But is there nothing you would wish to do with it? Nothing you would like to have?”

  She says nothing.

  ALL THIS TALK of money! I have never valued it. Alfred said it was because I was brought up with it and took it for granted, whereas for him it was a constant anxiety. Poverty gets in the blood, he would say. It’s a disease you can’t shake off. He was always generous—ridiculously generous—to friends and strangers alike, but at the same time careful of every penny. All through his life he worked as if the bailiffs were about to threaten at the door. Even when he was earning thousands, keeping a carriage and a houseful of servants, and laying on dinner parties with a dozen courses, he would still check the butcher’s bills to the farthing and make surprise sallies into the kitchen to ensure there was no pilfering from the tea caddy or wine cellar. He kept all the household keys himself on a big brass ring.

  From the outset he had impressed my mother with his knowledge of household matters. “I have to say your young man is a great manager,” she said some months into our engagement. “He has all his expenditure under control. Nothing is unaccounted for. There are economies he has thought of that I would not know myself. Where has he learnt all this?”

  “The School of Life, my dear,” replied my father. “I understand his family fell on hard times when he was young. A very bad business, I understand. Very bad.”

  Alfred had intimated as much to me, but I didn’t know the details. He was very reticent where his family was concerned, although he’d told me he had a “wonderful” sister, who lived near him in Camden Town, and a “splendid” younger brother, who was in the Navy. His parents, he said, were retired to a cottage near Dover. Yet all through our engagement he never once proposed our going down to see them. He said their accommodation was too cramped to admit our staying, and he was most adamant that they never came up to London. I began to think there was something shameful about his family that he kept them so distant from me. But one day he surprised me by announcing we were going to take tea with his sister Lottie.

  Father took me as far as the Angel in the chaise, and Alfred met us there, promising to have me back at Father’s office by six o’clock. We walked through the crowded streets until we came to an elegant milliner’s shop, with three feathered bonnets in the window. I was so busy admiring them that I failed to notice the figure waiting in the doorway. “Dodo, let me introduce my favorite sister!” Alfred proclaimed, sweeping off his hat in front of a small and energetic figure with a carefully wrapped parcel in her hand.

  “Your only sister,” she added with a laugh, taking my hand in a very ladylike manner. “I am so pleased to meet you, Miss Millar. You are quite as pretty as Fred promised.”

  “And why shouldn’t she be?” interjected Alfred.

  “Because it’s well known that you have an inclination to exaggerate, Fred.” She had bright, laughing eyes like his. She was very well dressed, in the latest fashion, with a fur-trimmed tippet and matching muff. And she was very neat, clean, and finished, exactly as he was.

  As we walked briskly along to her lodgings, she told me what an excellent brother he’d been. “I owe him everything. At one time I could only survive because Fred gave me an allowance. Left to myself, I should have been in a sorry state indeed. At such times you understand why women become desperate enough for anything, don’t you, Miss Millar?”

  I looked at her. I had never thought of women in such desperate situations. I could not believe that a woman as respectable as Lottie had either. I cast a glance at Alfred, but he was stepping out alongside us in his usual jaunty manner, as if in no way surprised by her words. I smiled to myself to think I had ever contemplated running away to London. How foolish I would have been standing on a street corner asking for directions from thieves and vagabonds, or being mistaken for a woman of easy virtue!

  When we arrived at her lodgings—a sloping attic room, with a table, bed, and chest of drawers all neatly arranged, and a canary in a cage—she put down the parcel and took my bonnet from me. “You have not met our parents yet, I believe, Dorothea?”

  “No, indeed. In fact I know hardly anything about them,” I said. “Alfred is most dreadfully secretive on the subject.”

  He frowned a little. “Not secretive. One thing at a time, my love, that is all.”

  “I’m simply a little apprehensive in case they won’t like me.”

  “They’ll like you well enough,” said Lottie, bending to coax a brighter flame from the fire, before setting the kettle on top. “But don’t lend any money to them. Under any circumstances.”

  It was a strange notion, to be thus warned about one’s prospective in-laws. I shrugged my shoulders. “I have no money to lend.”

  Lottie looked sharply at me. Then at Alfred. “So how will you manage, when you are married? I assumed—” She stopped.

  I knew what she had assumed. “Oh, Papa has promised a settlement. Provided we are engaged for a year, of course. I meant that I don’t have any money now.”

  She smiled. “Give our parents no promissory notes, then. They think ahead.”

  “Except when they need to, of course.
Except when it matters.” Alfred’s face had fallen out of its habitual cheeriness into an expression I had not seen before, an expression of deepest gloom. All his jauntiness seemed squeezed out of him, like forcemeat from a bag. I sat on the horsehair sofa next to him, not knowing what to say. Lottie seemed not to notice, or pretended not to notice. She darted around, setting out cups, plates, a loaf of bread and some butter, a jar of jam. Then she unwrapped the parcel and took out a large cake, which she placed neatly on a china plate. Alfred looked at it and some of his cheerfulness returned: “Ah! Seed cake! The very thing!”

  Lottie laughed. “Your favorite. I bought it from Parfitt’s as a special treat. But you shouldn’t keep Dorothea in suspense. Papa wrote to me only last week, saying how delighted they both were that you were engaged, and how they were looking forward to making your sweetheart’s acquaintance. They are enchanted at the mere idea of her.”

  “I am sure they are enchanted, Lottie. But it’s none of their doing and, in the end, they are of no consequence. They will do as I please, this time.”

  I was surprised at the hardness in his face and the hardness in his tone. Then the kettle boiled, the tea was made in the pot, and soon he was tucking in eagerly to seed cake, the smile back on his face. Food always cheered him up. Whenever he wrote about it, it always left him sanguine—flirtatious, even. I remember once when he was writing Miggs’ Tales, he came up behind me and squeezed my waist and kissed my cheek, saying, “I’ve given Old Tuppy the feast of his life. I am sending him on a picnic with the young Wendaways. There’s a baleful, cold-eyed salmon on a silver salver, thirty pickled eggs in a jar, and a snooty footman in attendance!” And I’d laughed, and he’d squeezed me again, saying, “So what have we got for supper then, Dodo? Why don’t we broil some cutlets and eat them in front of the fire, licking the bones as if we were naked savages on the shores of Lake Titicaca!” And I’d asked him if there were really naked savages on the shores of Lake Titicaca, and he’d said he had no idea, but “Have you never played the game of Make Believe?” and I’d shaken my head. And he said, “Oh, Dodo, don’t sit there so perplexed, as if someone has put an onion in your mouth. Imagine it. Imagine you are someone else, someone wildly different.” He could do it himself so beautifully, of course—immerse himself so instantly in a character. I could watch and listen to him for hours. “But it needs two,” he’d say. “You need to come along with me, Dodo. It’s a joint adventure.” So, from the moment we were engaged, I had to set aside my homely ways and learn to experience new things. Starting with all the things Alfred already knew, and seemed to have known all his life. Starting with London.

  As we had walked to meet Lottie, Alfred had been astounded that I did not know my way about the city, that my knowledge of the capital was confined to the Strand, Piccadilly, and Covent Garden, and the high road in and out from Chiswick. “London’s more than that!” he said. “It’s a bran tub, Dodo—full of hidden delights—and sometimes things you don’t expect! Things that pinch your fingers, things whose purpose you can’t work out.” He couldn’t wait to show me all the sights. “Bring Alice with you! We’ll have a capital day!”

  6

  ALICE WAS VERY PLEASED TO BE INVITED TO JOIN Alfred and myself in the jaunt around London. She wore her new felt bonnet and her best wool shawl in his honor and spent hours crimping her hair. We set off from home early in the chaise, and met him at Blackfriars Bridge. “I hope you both have stout boots,” he said as he handed us down. “I can’t have you stopping for sore feet. There is so much to be seen!”

  He was as good as his word. We walked all day, Alice and I sometimes almost running to keep up with his cracking pace. “Come now, ladies, don’t dawdle!” he’d call, if we loitered for a moment to catch our breaths. Suddenly I was seeing the city as he saw it: the Temple and the Inns of Court with their quiet, muffled courtyards; the old city churchyards with tipsy tombstones dating back to the plague; the Thames, so much wider than at Chiswick and so much busier; all the ships docking and unloading at the wharfs and the wherry men rowing back and forth between them; the narrow streets with their beggars, orange-and-nut sellers, pie men, bird sellers, and crossing sweepers—and the even narrower alleys strung with sagging laundry and too filthy to set one’s feet in. He pointed out all the houses where he had ever lived—a surprising number, in a surprising variety of locations. At one time, we passed the gates of the Foundling Hospital, and I said how sad it was for all those young women to give up their babies, and how sad for the children to grow up not knowing their mothers. “Better than the workhouse,” he said, shortly, marching us on. As we passed under the walls of the Fleet Prison, we saw small children going in and out with bottles of beer and plates of food. Alfred stopped and stared at them, his face pale and rigid. Then he turned to me: “Don’t you ever get us into debt, Dodo, or I’ll never forgive you.”

  “No, Alfred,” I said, frightened a little at his emotion, his peremptory tone, the angry tears in his eyes. “I am sure I would never land us in prison, however bad a housekeeper I am.”

  “Papa would never allow it,” said Alice firmly.

  “I would never allow it,” said Alfred, widening his eyes and raising his eyebrows in his Captain Murderer expression.

  “So there is no danger, then,” said Alice, solemnly.

  “You are right, little sweetheart,” he said, laughing. “No danger at all.”

  Finally, he said, he had a surprise. He took us to a small terrace of somewhat plain houses giving straight upon the street. Rather dirty and rather noisy, I thought. Carts clattered by continuously and there were barricades and scaffolds at the end of the street where the new railway was being dug. I wondered why he had brought us there. “It’s to be our new home,” he said, which I thought rather premature. He seemed very pleased with it all, though, as he propelled me up a flight of six steep steps and began to knock on the brown door with a black iron knocker. “Mrs. Quinn is an excellent woman,” he whispered. “Although she does have more than the usual complement of chins and the very slightest odor of snuff. But she’ll see to the linen and provide a girl to sweep and clean for only two pence a day. I think you’ll find her kindness itself.”

  “Mr. Gibbs!” cried out the woman who answered the door. “What an elevating surprise! And is this your lovely fiancée? Mrs. Gibbs-that-will-be? Come in, dear happy couple and other young lady, please do.” And we went in, and stood like soldiers in a little square passageway until Mrs. Quinn moved her considerable bulk into the parlor and released the space for us to do the same. “What an honor, my lady, to be offering lodgings to such as yourself,” she said, curtsying in the middle of the room, so we had to spread to the edges along with some stiff-backed chairs and ebony whatnots. “Will you be so condescending as to take some tea?”

  Alfred gave a slight nod in my direction, and I accepted her offer with a bow.

  “EMMIE!” Mrs. Quinn bellowed, without moving from her spot in the center of the room.

  A tiny girl of about eight appeared in the doorway. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Tea,” said Mrs. Quinn.

  “Yes, ma’am.” The girl curtsied, disappeared.

  “And some of that Madeira cake as is in the meat safe, if you please!”

  Emmie reappeared. “Yes, ma’am.” Curtsied again. Disappeared again.

  “Emmie’ll be doing your washing,” said Mrs. Quinn, confidentially. “She’s a good girl. Very quick. I got her from the Foundling Hospital.”

  “She’s very young,” I commented.

  “Twelve or so, it’s reckoned. But strong. You’d be surprised at how strong.”

  She was one of the frailest children I had ever seen. And she looked nowhere near twelve. I glanced at Alfred. He was writing something in his pocket-book. He looked up and smiled: “I’m sure she’ll be of great use to us. To both Mrs. Gibson-to-be and myself.”

  I SEE KITTY has cooled down now and is preparing to go, pulling on the gloves with the cut jet buttons. “It’s not
that I want the money, Mama. It’s that I don’t see why they should have it. It’s unfair. Well, Bessie of course, I don’t mind that. And Uncle Muffin. And Wilson. But why not Michael? Why not Augustus even? They were both his friends.”

  “Yes, they were. But they crossed him. He never forgave that.”

  “It’s ridiculous, after all this time.”

  “He had a long memory.”

  “A very partial memory.”

  “Yes. Don’t you think I know that, Kitty dear?”

  “Of course.” She comes over and puts her arms around my neck—the second time in two days. “I am a selfish creature, aren’t I? When I think what you’ve had to put up with.”

  “Oh, don’t feel sorry for me, Kitty. I consider myself lucky. Lucky to have known him. Lucky to have been loved by him. And I was loved by him, no matter what anyone says.”

  “Oh, at the beginning, no doubt. You must have seemed a fairy princess, with your blue eyes and your golden hair and your idyllic life, tucked away in the country in the prettiest house that ever was. I’m not surprised he wanted to own you—”

  What is the child on about now? “I was not for sale, Kitty! It was an equal bargain. I loved him as much as he loved me.”

  “Rather more, I think.” Kitty makes a wry face.

  “I cannot weigh and balance these things, nor do I wish to. But I know he might have married any number of young women. Yet it was me he proposed to. And me he married. Even though it made for difficulties. Even though Mama and Papa did not approve.”

  “I thought they liked him.”

  “They did. They couldn’t help it. He made Mama laugh, and Papa was very taken with his plays and stories. But they thought he was not serious enough for marriage. He seemed so boyish to them. Once he knocked at our front door wearing a sailor suit and carrying a parrot in a cage, pretending he had that moment walked off HMS Trafalgar and was looking for lodgings for the night.”

  Kitty can’t help a smile—although she has heard this story many times before.