Becoming Belle

by Nuala O'Connor

“Perhaps,” Belle said, thinking what a joyful gift the monkey would make.

  “Come then, miss. You surely know of a boy or girl who would treasure the little fellow. If you do not covet him yourself, that is?” He picked up the monkey and wound him tight again so that the toy frenzied. “Irresistible, I would say. Loosen your purse strings, miss. Go on.”

  Belle looked hard at the man, irked by his persistence. “No, thank you,” she said, and walked away.

  Yes, she did indeed know a small boy who might love that monkey, but thoughts of baby Isidor brought her mind around to Weston again and that would not do at all. Belle upped her pace through the bazaar, eager to regain the street and the comfort of the sunshine.

  A KISS

  The horse giddied when William helped Belle off the mounting block and into the saddle, but a soothing “whoa” from him settled the animal. Belle easily fixed her right leg around the pommel and slipped her left foot into the stirrup. She had ridden at Aldershot, though as she got older Mother had forbidden it, thinking it an unseemly activity for her girls. Belle fixed her skirts, pulling the hem to her ankle, impatient for William to mount his horse that they might leave the stable hands behind and take off along Rotten Row together.

  Belle’s horse flickered its ears and accepted a handful of oats from the groom and a few soft words. The sweet-rotten smell of hay, mingled with manure, rose to Belle’s nose and she breathed deeply, letting it bring her mind home. She watched William mount and thought of her father’s love for horses, his ease with them. It seemed William possessed that same gift. He sauntered away from the Row instead of toward it; Belle nodded to the groom and urged her horse to follow.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, watching the vast rump of William’s horse as it moved ahead, its heavy flounce.

  “We’ll take a quieter path,” he called back, “among the trees.”

  She trailed William into the wood, the gentle bob of her horse’s head lulling her as much as the peace in this secluded part of Hyde Park. There was sporadic birdsong but otherwise a deep stillness among the trees.

  Belle kept her eyes on William’s back. He was a true horseman: he rode with confidence and his body seemed to be at one with his mount’s. He was, she thought, a latter-day centaur and, with practice, she might be his centauress. She thought, too, of the chaste kiss he had delivered, half to her cheek, half to her lips when they met at Conduit Street—her latest lodgings—that morning. Even in the seclusion of the hallway, with no landlady on the prowl, his embrace was reserved. Was he afraid to kiss her more deeply? Did he long to embrace her as she longed to embrace him? Belle was sure he did. But wasn’t it right that they were both cautious? Wasn’t it, in fact, part of the joy of it all?

  William roused her, he made her think of him constantly when they were parted, and this meant a state of apprehensive glee accompanied her by night and by day. His latest sweet words, or the curve of his mouth, loomed in her mind at random moments and made her stomach lurch and reel. Belle found she pondered often what his body would look and feel like. His bare chest—was there hair there? Might his legs be as slender as they appeared through his trousers? Might his arms be as taut? Belle conjured frequently the press of his body against hers, the lingering heat of skin on skin, a night-long entwining. All this anticipation had her wound tight as yarn on a bobbin and she found she liked it very much.

  Belle brought her horse up beside William’s, wanting to be near him. He looked serene when she came alongside and she did not wish to disturb his thoughts, so she didn’t speak but merely observed him. He looked blissful; intoxicated by the measured movement of the animal and the calm in the air. Belle liked the mottle of leaf shade on his upturned face, the way it altered his expression though he remained undisturbed. His blond hair was neat and bounteous. He has aristocratic hair, she thought and this made her smile. They moved forward through the wood together in a cordial quiet, broken only by the soft clop of their horses’ hooves. On they meandered, meeting no one on the pathway, and the equanimity between them was absolute.

  William looked across at Belle, a beatific set to his face. She never felt harried when she was with him, his tranquillity was infectious. She smiled and he returned it.

  “You know, Belle, I shall have the best of stables when I take over Garbally in Galway—the best horses, the finest grooms.”

  “I have no doubt, William.”

  “When Garbally’s mine, I mean to work with the stewards and bailiffs every day. I’ll have a firm hand in managing my own estate.” William pulled on the reins to stop his horse, so Belle did the same. “I don’t want to play my life away, Belle. I want to work, but it’s in Ireland that I mean to do it.”

  Belle’s horse staggered backward and she rubbed its neck to settle it. “I understand, William. Ireland has your heart, you’ve told me.”

  “I will inherit Garbally, by dint of being the eldest. But the day is far-off that the estate becomes mine, unless Papa gives it up and lets me take over sooner. Before his . . . well, before he passes on, that is.” He frowned. “If I can find ways to please him, he might do that, give it to me so that he is free of it. The work of the estate, I mean. It’s a younger man’s job.”

  Belle smiled; William was thinking of the future and it gladdened her. He clearly told her these things to include her, to ensure that she saw that his fate was tied to hers. A welcome thought. His company was effortless: she felt fully like herself and didn’t need to worry about how he was going to act, or about how she should comport herself. Being around Weston she often felt as if she were waiting for a cannon to fire. Viscount Dunlo was different; his inherent serenity made Belle serene, and it was a welcome feeling. And here he was telling her how life would look in the years to come.

  They walked on.

  “Do you ever think about Africa, William,” Belle asked, “about what it might be like to be there? Do you regret not joining the regiment?”

  “I honestly can’t say that I do. My father likes to scheme—I never expressed an interest in army life, but he saw it as the place for me. I went along with it though I didn’t want to. I would never make a soldier. Then you were before me, Belle, and I couldn’t leave London. Anyway, I’d prefer to decide my own destiny, as much as I can.”

  “Quite.”

  “Let’s stop here a moment,” William said.

  He dismounted, looped his reins around a branch and came to stand below Belle. He looked up at her, then slipped his hand under her gown and up her leg. He reached into the end of her drawers and found the top of her stocking, where he hooked his fingers under her garter and caressed the bare skin. Belle felt a welcome lurch between her thighs and she sighed. So his blood really did run as hot as her own; Belle lowered her face to his and kissed his forehead. William pulled his hand from under her skirts and grabbed her by the waist; Belle swung her leg over the pommel and let William lift her clear of the saddle and into his embrace. He slid her down his body until she gained the ground and he snugged his arms hard around her. Belle tilted her head and his mouth found hers. His tongue was large, soft, liquid, and she plunged into the kiss with a fervor to match his. Belle’s insides dived and swooped and she wished that they could stay forever under the birches and limes of Hyde Park, her tongue wrapped around William’s. This was what she had been waiting for.

  AN ABSENCE

  Every night William came to bed with Belle in her room in Conduit Street. Not the flesh and heft of him but the dream of him, the man she conjured in her fancies. He lay beside her under the covers and his reticence and timidity fell away; he was again the man who had kissed her among the trees in Hyde Park. In these invented reveries, Belle’s own nature was altered, too: she didn’t try constantly to entertain or worry if she looked her best or not. She and William became natural together, two bodies free with each other.

  Here she had William kiss her full on the lips, his tongue
flicking against hers. There she had him unlace her corset and take her breasts to his mouth. Belle swooned under the weight of these fantasies; she loved them, though they often kept her from sleep. She had had daydreams before, about some of the soldiers at Aldershot, but these thoughts seemed to have their own life: they played out inside her head like dramas, every movement accounted for. In these reveries she did things that she had never thought of before, performed acts that were new to her, and it was all a mighty pleasure.

  She would drift in and out of slumber and wake with thoughts of William. He would make a proper husband, of that Belle was sure. She adored him, and with him she might reassert herself in the world—erase her indiscretions. It was a warming scene to imagine them wed. But was it impossible? The aristocracy did things in certain ways; they stood by their codes. But they were marrying millers’ daughters by the dozen lately. Why not a military man’s daughter, if it came to it?

  Belle let her fantasies flow. She imagined how William’s hands might feel cupping her behind or caressing the insides of her thighs. Sometimes, when she fell asleep, William walked through her dreams beside her. He was open and courteous, but also passionate and wild. When he came to Belle unbidden in that way, she woke content and churned up. If Flo—returned for the time being—was snoring on the other side of the curtain that divided their bedroom, Belle would slip her fingers between her legs and work them swiftly until she gasped with pleasure.

  * * *

  —

  William had not come to the Corinthian Club the night before, after the show in the Empire. It was the first time since they had met two months ago, in May, that he failed to seek out her company. He had not come, though Belle was certain she had spotted him from the Empire’s stage; surely she could not have mistaken his boyish quiff or that lavish mouth? But of course she might have; the dim theater and her paces through several dances skewed her view of the audience. If he was at the Empire, he did not look for her at the club later.

  Belle peered across the bedroom; the curtain wavered, making her believe Flo was awake. It was not altogether convenient that her sister was staying—she had had another row with Seymour—but there was pleasure in having her there, too. They were as familiar as a cradle song with each other’s foibles and frailties.

  Belle coughed, then trilled a few notes. Flo did not answer with a matching tune.

  “Still in the land of feather and flip, dearest, or are you woken?” Belle said.

  Her sister groaned. “I’m asleep.”

  “Was William in the audience last night, do you think?”

  Flo grunted and the bedsprings sang. “William who?”

  “You know very well who—William Le Poer Trench. My Viscount Dunlo.”

  “Your viscount?” Flo snorted, and Belle tamped down the itch to cross the room and pinch her sister.

  “Was he there, Flo?”

  “How the blazes would I know? Half of London turns up to see the Sisters Bilton twirl a leg.”

  “And the other half don’t know what they’re missing.” Belle laughed and Flo grabbed the curtain aside to look over at her sister and cackle along with her. It was like old times, when they had first shared digs in Pottery Lane, two sinless girls with an appetite for city luster.

  Flo yawned and kicked her legs. “Isabel, I don’t know what you see in that William. He’s so quiet. Dreary Dunlo.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t raise a breeze around my ears about him, Flo. You don’t know him as I do. He’s a darling.”

  “Oh but he’s oppressively genial. That kind of behavior galls me to my bones.”

  Belle didn’t like to hear her sister criticize William; it made her uneasy. It also filled her with a desire to take him in her arms and soothe him, as if he knew what was being said and she could protect him from it. “He let his regiment sail to Africa without him. For me!”

  “I know that, Isabel. The Pall Mall Gazette knows it, too, and every one of London’s rumormongers besides.”

  “I’ll thank you, Flo, to call me Belle as everyone else now does. I’ve had it up to my oxters with Isabel. I hear mother’s voice when you say it: Is-a-bel!”

  “As you like, Belle. Belle! You astonish me the way you invent yourself anew for every situation. As if each time something happens, the life you were made for is about to begin.” Flo rolled her arms forward and veed her hands under her chin. “Destiny!”

  “I refashion myself for destiny—is that it, Flo?”

  “Yes. And it’s a skill to be proud of, for sure.”

  How easily her sister took Isabel apart and put her back together again. “And what do you think lies in wait for me, Flo?”

  “A whole pile of hoity men with scads of bread and honey. Just imagine it—men with money dripping from their pockets like melted ice.”

  Belle snorted. “I’ve had my fill of flashy men, truly.”

  “So you want a steady one?”

  “Maybe.”

  “And is your Irish viscount that?”

  Belle rolled onto her side. “It’s your turn to take the chamber pots down to the privy,” she said. “Mind you don’t spill anything.”

  “At least Dunlo is a blue blood, unlike your ‘Baron Loando.’”

  “Must Weston be a continual topic of conversation? It seems the man is more present in his absence than he ever was when I knew him.” She tutted; Weston was a burr in her skin. William would have to know of him at some point she supposed. He would have to know of baby Isidor. But not yet. Not yet.

  Flo got up and pissed lavishly into her pot; Belle groaned, not wanting to leave the warm embrace of her bed, but she rose and did the same. Flo took the chamber pots, one atop the other, and left the room. Belle went across the bedroom to where the canary’s cage stood on its stand and pulled off the scarf she used to cover it at night. Pritchard sat on a perch in one of the cage’s turrets, as still as a figure in a tableau vivant; his yellow feathers made a blazing contrast to the blue of the cage.

  “The sun against the sky,” Belle murmured and tapped on one of the roof finials to rouse the bird, but he didn’t move. “Pritchard,” she coaxed. “Pritch, Pritch, Pritch. Pritchy, my love.” She poked her finger through the bars, but he did not react. “My goodness, are you altogether well? If you’ve gone and died on me, I’ll be thoroughly goosed.”

  Belle opened the cage door and peered at her little friend. Pritchard turned his one eye to her and immediately began the rising warble that Belle loved so much. His song alternated between rolls, flutes and bells and it stirred her as much as any orchestra. She stood, eyes closed, and listened to the canary sing, letting her heart soar to the whirl of his crisp, ever-changing tunes. Today will be a good day, Belle thought, hoping that by willing it so, she would make it come to pass.

  AN EXCURSION

  In the smoky hut on the edge of Heathfield, Sara sat in a low chair feeding baby Isidor, cradling his downy head in the curve of her elbow. She rocked him to and fro, humming a lullaby and gazing at his puckered face. Her old father, her husband and her flock of children slept around her in the dawn light.

  That same July morning, Belle stepped onto a train at Victoria Station and sat alone in her compartment, plucking sleep crystals from her eyes and yawning. She was impatient for the porter’s whistle to blow and to feel the rumble of the tracks vibrate through her. Smuts from the engine decorated her beryl-green bodice and she pawed at them with her glove and sighed. This outfit had cost fifteen pounds, half a week’s earnings; perhaps she should have worn something less fine.

  The wind wheedled its way through the birch and pine groves that crowded the slopes around Heathfield and it sent the sails of Mutton Hall windmill spinning ever faster. Thatch rippled on the huts that were falling into disrepair and everything was being blown about. Belle stepped from the coach, unbending her limbs one at a time to pull the stiffness from them.
She was impatient, wanting this part of her day to be over. A soft wind rippled through her clothes and scattered brittle leaves around her skirts. Surely leaf fall had not begun so early? Were the seasons now different a mere sixty miles outside London?

  Belle had found the journey tiring, first the stuffiness of the train, then the constant jolting of the coach wheels. She stepped into the roadway and stretched her back and feet with a grunt, then walked on, past the trees that slunk nearby in whispering groups. A mole burrowed out of a mound ahead of her and Belle stopped to watch his myopic snufflings.

  “Hello, Mr. Moldiwarp,” she said, enjoying the chance to use her father’s word. “Do you search for worms?”

  Belle was glad it wasn’t the season for wearing her moleskin cape in case the animal could sniff out his own kin, dead and all. The mole dipped behind his hill and Belle lost sight of him. She smiled to remember that her father used to hang a mole paw around their necks to ease pain when they were unwell as children. Mr. Mole did not need to know about the paw, so eerily like a tiny human hand. Father was always so vigilant of his girls’ well-being.

  Belle kicked through the leaves on the springy path that led to the cottage. She wore a wool wrap against the wind and her hair was rolled in loose coils under a small felt kepi. Bassano had joked that the hat made her look like a soldier and he made her pose for him in it. Belle walked through the village, noticing how the low light filtered through the trees that lined the path. She stopped to run her fingers along the metallic bark of a birch, to feel its lines and knots. The trees reminded her of mourners standing in stillness, their branches like hands brought together in prayer. A trio of roots that bulged up through the pathway told her that she was near her destination. One root looked to her like a stern, reclining man; another a lean, writhing woman and the last a stork, its beak parted as if to deliver a message.

  A leaf skeleton, a rude visitor from winter, skittled at her feet like a pup eager to play. She plucked it from the ground and examined the filigreed chambers that spread across it in an intricate map. She looked through it to filter the trees around her and then stowed it in her bag; she would show it to William if he came to the club later, as he surely would, having been unusually absent the night before. William had told her of the beautiful trees on his family’s land in Galway—there was a circle of oaks he delighted in, that he vowed to show her one day soon.