What Empty Things Are These

by Crozier, J. L. ;

  How they do use us all.

  At last, my toes were too cold to stay longer. And, in any case, I had written what was in my thoughts and could sleep at last.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  I opened my eyes, with very little inclination to do more.

  In any case, it was still very early. There had, I fancied, been a scattering of feet down the alleyway behind the house that had awoken me, though the runner was gone now. Beyond the curtained window all was thick and quiet with the dark of a coming winter, greying dawn showing indistinct around the curtain’s edge. The furniture of my chamber stood in black shapes hunched and heavy around my bed, yet familiar as sentries. Among my bedclothes, warm from the night’s sleep, I felt myself cupped, safe with the door closed against a world become bewildering in its glories and cruelties. My brows were drawn together as if they had an anxious life of their own; and I recalled, in vague fashion and as if my sleepy imagination was bedded in cloud, those medieval tales of the basilisk—that pitiless, scaly head of mythology turning to expel its poisonous breath upon the innocent. The world, somehow, was first become like Mr Hadley, and then, even worse, like Mr Farquharson…basilisk monsters, both. With a distant, sad interest, I realised a tear was travelling across my cheek into my hair. The world, I thought, like Messrs Hadley and Farquharson, bedecked itself, scented itself, and congratulated itself upon its success, and yet on a fine day would sweep past the huddled urchins of the street, or on a cold and howling day might stop to kick the unfortunate in order to hear their very bones snap.

  I turned toward the window and fancied there must be frost outside, for my breath was faintly misting in the near-dark. I blew gently, as I used to when a girl, and imagined the ragged cloud of my breath merged with the cold stillness of the room.

  And who is Mr Hadley? I wiped away the tear. Is he akin to Mr

  Farquharson, with his every word a falsehood, his home but walls around grim secrets he keeps even from his family?

  These were quelling notions, I felt, as I burrowed more deeply beneath my bedclothes. There was a cold trickle of air blowing in at my feet from some tiny uncovered spot. It was a frightening thing, this world, and I felt myself to be childlike, humiliated by my own ignorance. How much I do not know! And what I did not know loomed dark and solid, all the more as I became aware of it.

  And it was an odd thing that while I had so often in the last few weeks thought of the theatre and the stage as the various dramas had played themselves before me, in fact… In fact, what has happened is that I discover that I have always been on the stage, saying my lines in this predesigned setting, and this has always been make-believe. What is real, what is not make-believe is far from bright and perfect, it brings to the ugly and the cold and miserable no justice, in the end.

  I sought once more for that moment of joy last evening on our arrival home, when The Cornhill Magazine greeted us with my own written piece therein, and my own name printed there, at the head. But even so, beneath my triumph, I believed myself to be a charlatan, pretending a knowledge I did not have and yet seeking to profit by it. The thought stirred confusion as to how I ought to feel, when my authoring brought both shame and pride. I backed away from it.

  I closed my eyes and tried for sleep, which came eventually, but only after thoughts, not quite a memory, of darkness and the giddy swinging of a lamp, a whisk of red skirt and the diminishing thud of running feet, one pair behind the other.

  Later, I woke again and watched through half-closed eyes as Sobriety entered, walked with skirt swinging quick, first to pull open the curtains to the flat light of broad morning, then to lay a cup of tea on the chair next to my bed, and then to the fireplace to scrape a match to the kindling and coal laid last night by Cissy. Sobriety waited, still crouching, until the little licking flame gained strength, and pops and crackles lent dancing energy to the room. I turned onto my side and drew up my knees, like the bundled child that I had been all those mornings of years ago and since, watching a fire being lit in my bedroom to chase away the chill. The bedclothes pulled up over my cheek and ear, I tilted my head to follow Sobriety’s movements.

  She stamps about this morning as if she has found her lost confidence, of a sudden. She is busy and practical as if she had dealt with a question and has put some uncertainty aside.

  Sobriety went to the airing frame and picked it up to set it in front of the fire, to warm the clamminess from chemise and petticoat.

  ‘Are you awake?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  Sobriety smiled, pinched and pulled at the clothes to spread them the better on the frame and then left the room, pulling the door to behind her, while not closing it entirely. I heard her on the stairs, a tap-tap-tap, light and fast, that faded and left me with the snapping of the fire and some man outside in the laneway calling in language blurred by distance and masonry. My eyelids drooped.

  There was a slower tramp on the stairs until Sobriety pushed the door open again, with the large water jug held in both hands and a folded towel over her shoulder. She elbowed the door closed and went to pour the hot water—the steam in a sudden cloud—into the flowered basin on the washstand. Sobriety tested the water—overhot as yet, by all accounts—and laid the towel over the back of the other plain chair.

  There was something like satisfaction in the set of Sobriety’s mouth. Or perhaps not satisfaction, exactly. Watching her, I thought more on how to define Sobriety’s aspect. She has the bearing of someone who knows where her path is and where it will take her. Sobriety opened the door to the wardrobe and stood a moment, while I felt loneliness spread and contract, fleetingly, like an opening and closing hand. And worse, for while Sobriety so evidently was settling into newfound certainty, I could not imagine that any observer would think the same of me.

  I knew exactly at what point this firmness, this serenity, this confidence in what was coming, first appeared in Sobriety’s expression.

  We had all three—Sobriety and Cissy and I—been standing outside the courts in the City, waiting for Mr Brent and the landau, its sections of roof in place against the sharpening weather, and blankets folded upon the seats, with Inspector Broadford standing with us and casting his reproving eye at any who might stare at or jostle the small group. He said, ‘Well done, well done,’ to Cissy, who was by then much the happier with her ordeal in court over, and craning with too high an enthusiasm at the bustle of the street and the road. He folded into her hand a sweet in its wrapping.

  ‘Tell no one, now, lest I be accused of bribery.’ We three adults laughed while Cissy’s face fell blank with incomprehension.

  Remarks about the weather done with—for a yellowing fog had lifted itself that morning, which might descend again in the evening if there were a frost—there was a pause among us until Sobriety said to the inspector, ‘There was a girl in the court whom we—’ She glanced at me. ‘—whom we have seen before, and who left, in a hurry it seems—’

  ‘Ah, yes. I did observe that.’ Mr Broadford smiled, not asking more, though he must know where it was we women had come to see the wraith of a girl, and in what circumstances. He waited, head tipped and the crinkles about his eyes speaking of understanding and warmth, most deliberately, I thought. Further, his mouth curved with expectation that was patient of fulfilment.

  Sobriety took breath and looked up full into the inspector’s face and I fancied there was the pause of a very long moment, though in fact there was none. Sobriety did not glance away; she and he looked direct into each other’s eyes, and it was done.

  Then, it was then, that Sobriety’s mind and decision stepped toward him, and he greeted her, with never a word, the conversation continuing all the while about dreadful things, dreadful and strange things, while the speakers came to their private conclusion about themselves. See how the play continues, I thought, while another story unfolds in the wings.

  ‘A man left too, immediately
after the girl, and it did seem to us he may be attached to Mr Farquharson, er, Mr Forster.’ Sobriety had smiled at this confusion brought about by this man with two names.

  ‘Mr F—shall we call the gentleman thus?—has a man by the name of Seamus Spillane, devoted to him and ready, we suspect, at a moment’s notice to do any work asked of him by his employer.’ Inspector Broadford bowed. ‘And it was Mr Spillane who left the court, it is true.’

  ‘And it was he who, with others, silenced the shareholders at Mr…Mr F’s meetings?’

  ‘We believe so.’

  ‘With violence?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  He and Sobriety both nodded, apparently in comfortable agreement. Though the comfort lay in the fact of agreement and not in the subject of that agreement, of course. I understood, while I had felt I should look away from a discourse between them that was so very private, yet had not actually taken place.

  I stretched in my bed and encountered again that trickling cold that made me draw myself together again. Or should I say, I amended in sudden realisation, the agreement is there that there shall be an agreement. Ah yes.

  But there, yesterday on the street—where the world was at its busiest point of the afternoon and folk pushed into the crowd until their backs receded from view amid the noisy, coloured chaos, and faces had a hardened distraction that was sometimes, I could see, almost a desperation to get done what must be done in the day—I had had another realisation.

  ‘But that girl, Inspector…’ Both the inspector and Sobriety turned their now complacent faces to me.

  ‘Oh yes. My own man did think to pursue Mr Spillane, ma’am.’ Mr Broadford chuckled, turning his head to Sobriety to share the joke. ‘And although Mr Spillane is apparently adept at spotting a pursuer, much to the chagrin of my man, I must say, it did mean that he was—that is to say, Mr Spillane was—diverted from any more vicious purpose and obliged to turn his feet elsewhere.’ He beamed at Sobriety. ‘And the young woman did scamper off alone.’

  He and Sobriety each wore a smile of reassurance, the echo of the other, now that the inspector turned his face back to me.

  ‘And we must also wonder at how complicated has become this nest of acquaintanceships,’ he said, and I saw that he too pondered Mr Farquharson’s recognition of the girl.

  The relief was such that we were almost festive with it. It made us all chatter, babble almost, in a most uncharacteristic fashion. Sobriety—so unlike her! So pink about the cheeks!—then took the conversation to other things, to Cissy’s impossible growth lately that had made Cook search out garments that might fit her niece if cut down and refashioned, to the tales that Cook would tell over tea leaves, to—inevitably—the impending visit by me to the spiritualist Madame Drew. Mr Broadford here raised his eyebrows and I assured him I had no desire to fly about and cause flashes of light, only to placate poor dear Mrs Courtney, my sister-in-law. We all smiled at this.

  When I took my turn with Mr Hadley, I spoke in my mind to him: Mr George Hadley, your wives are leaving you.

  Then I remembered Mrs Charles.

  He lay there helpless in his bed, he who had been monster to my mouse. I thought to myself how it had not been long since—

  perhaps two or three months only—when he had come home and to my bedchamber, pulled back my sheet and pushed my legs apart to receive him, and I had smelt a woman’s scent still on his shirt and cheek, faint as he grunted into my ear. Did Mrs Charles reach there to kiss him goodnight, as he, the gentleman, bent his face to her? Was I used thus in her stead? Were we, Sobriety and I, used thus in her stead?

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Three letters lay in a line on Mr Hadley’s bed, and I regarded them. I rubbed the skin on my brow and reached for the cup of coffee by my little writing box, sipped and placed it down.

  The first contained a cheque for my published piece of writing, and signed by Mr Thackaray himself. This and the letter that accompanied it lay unfolded so that I might revisit them. And I had already done so twice this morning.

  Next to these was a note on Gwendolyn’s writing paper—so very much her own, with its printed rosettes upon the paper and the sealing wax on the envelope, and her monogram impressed upon it; letters from her announced their sender before ever the subject of the letter were known. Gwendolyn’s note was to the point.

  Your family is distressed and perplexed at reading the piece that bears your name in a magazine. Harry was, besides, unable to discern a clear response from you to our request for information about your financial circumstances. This is all most alarming, and I am certain you will understand, on sober reflection, that good sense must prevail. You will meet with us and discuss what is to be done, at my home Sunday week at 3.

  How little sense there was in this, since Gwendolyn could not claim the power to undo my very public writing. In thinking so, I put my hand to my mouth, for I had never before, not in all my life, deliberately done what I knew my family would not like.

  And I did know this, I did. And look where I have put myself.

  I must now defend this little hill that I had reached, and a spurt of laughter something like a smothered shriek escaped through my fingers. Perhaps I had evaded any direct thought of my family in my taking up of the pen thus, for money, in order to put myself in this very position so that there could be no retreat and I must defend what I had already done.

  They will have to surround me and starve me into submission. I smiled. And yet, they cannot.

  In truth, they could do very little, I supposed, and yet the familiar marching of discordant instruments began again in my blood, for I was afraid of my family, and they would be ranged all together against me. They would try to prevent my continuing with the writing, and my receiving payment from it, and I would say no—yes, I would simply say that, and repeat it, and pay no heed to what might be expressed to me.

  I sighed. What might happen next at this meeting was lost in shadows in my mind, gesticulating shadows that wore first a lacy cap of the old school (Gwendolyn) and then a heavy topcoat (Harry), and crouched as if to hiss into my face, and thereafter barked in muffled sentences—muffled because I could not yet imagine what might be said at this unimaginable meeting. See, I fear them yet. I passed a cold hand across hot cheeks.

  The third letter was from Toby. He enquired after his father’s health and mine. He had enjoyed himself at his friend’s house and he was applying himself to his schoolwork. It was a dutiful letter, although he did spend some time writing of Phillip’s pony, how tall and its colour, and how he had ridden it for quite a long time. I pictured my boy, but at first could place him in imagination no closer to me than the other side of the room, with his hands folded before him or in his pockets, his gaze passing over and beyond me, perhaps on its way to something or someone who better held his affection. Then my mind took up the picture of my Toby a-gallop on the pony, with his eyes wide and his breath coming in gasps and his cheeks whipped hectic by wind. But soon into my imagination there flooded a sense of his small boy’s loneliness, of the lost boy’s wondering what he must do or be, now or next, to be seen to have done his duty either as son or man, to be seen to deserve affection.

  I returned to Mr Thackaray’s letter and cheque, by way of comfort. This was not complicated, at least. Except, and here I smiled a little, that his invitation to attend his office and discuss my work was addressed to Mr A. Hadley Esq., and I would perhaps surprise him by not being a gentleman.

  I folded my letters into their envelopes, and finished my coffee before opening the writing box and pulling forth pen, ink and the sheaf of papers on which my tale of Tristram James had been begun.

  The novelist, Mr A. Hadley, Esq., at work, I thought. I chuckled, though it came a little shaky still.

  Cissy stood in the hallway, waiting to open the Hadley front door and then close it behind Sobriety and me. We were, as a favour to Mrs Courtney a
nd reluctantly—most reluctantly—to attend a gathering at Madame Drew’s establishment. Sobriety, already bonneted and wrapped against the cold, stood with my bonnet in her hand and my shawl over her arm. I, however, was now bent over the dish of visiting cards, which stood on its little stand in the hallway. I sifted

  through the cards with one gloved finger—I would remove those that had been there longest when we returned, I decided—and then stopped to pick out another. It had been given me, and I had placed it there. I knew exactly when. So long ago; before the exultation of sparkling lights and dance music; before my education in evil worldliness.

  ‘Good heavens! How very peculiar!’ It was Mr Farquharson’s card I showed to Sobriety.

  ‘Madame Drew is his neighbour! This is most strange! How very droll!’

  I went to drop the card back into the dish, thought better of it and instead tore it in two. I considered a moment and reached in for Mrs Charles’s cards, and tore them in two as well. I placed all these shreds in Cissy’s hand and turned to face Sobriety, who set the bonnet on my head and drew together the ribbons at my chin.

  ‘If Madame Drew has chosen that neighbourhood for its respectability, she must be disappointed.’

  Sobriety laughed.

  In the carriage we fell silent, listening to the steady ticking of hooves, the creaking leathers and chink of metals, watching how the black shadows moved across our space as we passed streetlamps or, where there were no streetlamps, filled our space like oil, thicker than the dark night outside. I felt my earlier mood settle back over me. I was waiting for news, I realised, with a dread I knew to be unfair. And yet it was there, and I struggled against a sense that this news would finally tip up my world, overturn it utterly like the ill-made vessel that it was, and all that I knew would fall out and bob around like debris, pointless and aimless, to sink dwindling into the depths or float away out of reach.