Dark Angel

by Sally Beauman

Jenna did not stay to hear more. She left the kitchen and returned to her room. She opened her window. She thought she might burn her letter, but in the end she decided to keep it. She put it in the box where she kept all Acland’s letters to her. She counted the letters. Acland did not write very often. There were twelve of them.

  She waited three weeks. In those weeks she was very quiet and very methodical, just as she still was many years later, when I knew her. If she ironed a blouse for Constance, she pressed the iron on the material twenty-five times, no more, no less. Constance’s hair received exactly fifty strokes. Clothes had to be folded in a certain way. She arranged the dresses in the wardrobes by order of function and color.

  I think Jenna was like a child, counting the paving stones and avoiding the cracks. I think she believed that if she could impose order on the small things of the world, the larger things would become ordered too. I think she thought that if the little things of life could be set to rights, the wrong that was Acland’s death could be righted too. I think she believed that if she worked hard, and the evening dresses in the cupboards were always to the right of the day dresses, then Acland would come back. In a sense Jenna waited for this, his impossible return, all her life.

  She let out her skirts another inch in a methodical way. She was sick each morning at the same time. Then, three weeks later, when the sickness stopped and she knew the alteration in her figure must soon show, she wrote to Mr. Solomons and made (as she had promised Acland she would) an orderly appointment, for the following week.

  Jenna was afraid of lawyers. She did not know the difference between a solicitor and a barrister. She expected Mr. Solomons to wear a wig and a black gown. She put him in the pigeonhole in her mind that she reserved for all figures of authority: teachers and policemen and magistrates. When she went to see him she wore her best dress, and she darned her gloves. She expected punishment or—more vaguely—reprimand. She knew what Mr. Solomons would think: He would think she was mercenary.

  In fact, Mr. Solomons proved less fearsome than she had expected. They spent an hour together. Mr. Solomons did not wear a wig; his eyebrows bristled. He gave her quirky looks. His words were windy: There was a problem, he explained, a hitch. Yes, there was a will, and a very fine will it was, since he had drawn it up himself and, without vanity, could say he was a master when it came to wills, even tricky ones.

  However, a will must be proved, and for a will to be proved, there must be a certificate of death. A telegram of the kind sent was not sufficient, unfortunately. This, he explained with another bristling look, was a recurrent problem these days, and a tragic thing, but there it was. There would have to be Communications with the Military Authorities, and although he saw no reason for the matter not to be resolved to the satisfaction of all parties, it would take time.

  “How long?” Jenna said, when she had unraveled all this. She did not like to ask (it sounded mercenary again), but she had to ask. Her mind had begun on sums again. How long to live on seventy pounds? Where to live? She could not have told Mr. Solomons about the baby, for even though he did not wear a wig, he was a lawyer and a man, but the anxiety was making her hot and muddled again. Christmas, she thought, Christmas. That, more or less, was when her baby would be born.

  “By Christmas?” she said, before she could stop herself.

  “Goodness me, no.” Mr. Solomons gave her a quaint look. “The law is a very cautious kind of animal—a very sluggish animal, if you take my meaning. Take the normal period of probate: Well, we should be thinking even then of a twelvemonth. In a case such as this, longer. A year and a half. Possibly two years. If I shake a stick at them, perhaps we might fine it down a bit. But more than a year, I’d say. That’s the long and short of it.”

  Jenna walked home. She saved the omnibus fare and walked the three miles, looking straight ahead, one foot in front of the other. The sun shone. Acland was dead. Seventy pounds was no use to an unemployable servant with an illegitimate baby.

  Back in her attic room she took off her best dress and her best hat and her darned gloves, and wrote a letter to Jack Hennessy. One page; no blots. It was easy to write, so much easier than the letter to Acland. When she read it through, she saw why this was: It was because it contained nothing but lies.

  Jack Hennessy’s regiment was being re-formed—a common occurrence then, when the losses at the Somme alone were so heavy. He was retraining in Yorkshire, and from Yorkshire he sent a reply, by return of post. It was a letter full of crossings-out and misspellings, but he replied as Jenna had hoped he would. He would stand by her. They would marry.

  The letter was also full of arrangements, which surprised Jenna, who had expected confusion and reproach. No reproach—not a word of it. Hennessy told her he had found her a place to lodge, with Arthur Tubbs’s mother—did she remember Arthur Tubbs, his good friend, now a corporal doing very well in supplies, who used to valet for Freddie? Mrs. Tubbs would be glad of the extra rent. As a soldier’s wife, Jenna would receive an allowance of seventeen shillings a week; Mrs. Tubbs would accept six. Jenna would share a room with the eldest Tubbs girl, whose name was Florrie.

  He had a wedding ring. He could get leave for the marriage, but it had to be arranged quickly before he returned to France. Arthur said a special license was required, since there was not time for the full banns, and so a five-pound note was enclosed with the letter. A special license cost three guineas.

  This blotchy epistle ended, as all Hennessy’s letters did, You are my own Jen, and I send my love to you. Jenna unfolded the large fine tissue which was the five-pound note. She looked at it for a long time. She read the letter once, twice, then again.

  She was puzzled by the references to Arthur Tubbs; he and Hennessy might be in the same regiment, but it had never occurred to her that he and Arthur were good friends. Yes, it was the references to Arthur, she told herself, that made the letter seem so odd.

  She read it a fourth time: lodgings, and banns, and special licenses. Her mind felt fuddled and hot. She did not know which church to go to; she had no idea where special licenses might be obtained, and Jack Hennessy did not tell her.

  In the end, knowing she would need help, she was methodical once more. She considered Lady Callendar, who lay in her bedroom with the blinds lowered. She considered the housekeeper. She considered Constance. She considered Jane Conyngham, who was a nurse and who had always been kind to her, from that very first night when she dressed her hair for the party for the comet.

  It was to Jane Conyngham that she finally wrote. She made an appointment to meet her at Guy’s Hospital.

  On the way there (she took an omnibus that time, and sat in the sun on the open top deck), she took out Jack Hennessy’s letter and read it again. She knew then why the letter was odd. It was not the references to Arthur Tubbs that were so strange; it was something else.

  No reproach, no questions—and not one single mention of the baby.

  A week later Jane Conyngham presented Constance with a fait accompli. Jenna had left Park Street (Jane herself had spirited her away in a hansom). She was lodged south of the river, with Mrs. Tubbs, who lived in a small terrace house beyond Waterloo Station. The marriage to Jack Hennessy was arranged, and would take place the next day in a church (also south of the river) with which Jane had charitable connections. Jenna was expecting Hennessy’s child, and that child would be born around Christmas.

  Once Jenna was married it would be permissible for Constance to visit her, and Gwen had agreed to this, since Jenna had always been such a loyal and irreproachable servant. Jane hoped that Constance would do this, as she understood Constance would be concerned for her, and Jane herself might not be available, for she had decided—almost decided—that she would leave Guy’s Hospital, and nurse in France.

  Constance listened to this long explanation in silence. She watched Jane, who—on this occasion—spoke clearly and concisely and did not once break off or hide her face with her hands. Even when she mentioned the baby, Jane nei
ther blushed nor faltered. She spoke (although Constance did not realize this) in the new way she was learning at the hospital: dispassionate, firm, and succinct. She did not judge Jenna; she emphasized the love between Jenna and Hennessy, the length of their attachment, and making no attempt to condemn her conduct (which surprised Constance very much), she seemed even to imply that Jenna’s behavior was understandable, in time of war.

  In fact, Jane spoke in this new and astonishing way for one very simple reason. She understood Jenna, because—and she was certain of this—Jenna was no different from herself. When Jane had learned the news of Acland’s death (it had been brought her, by Freddie, at the hospital) she had thought two things. The first was when Freddie began, and said he brought bad news. Then Jane had heard a clear voice in her mind, and that voice had said: Please. Let it be Boy. Not Acland. The second had come later, when she prepared for bed that night in her neat room at the nurse’s hostel. She had looked down at that narrow bed, with its coarse sheets and hospital blankets, and she had known that if ever the impossible had happened, and Acland had come to her and taken her to bed, she would have gone willingly, without question or hesitation. He had never approached her; she had never done so. The gap filled her with a wild regret.

  The first of these thoughts made Jane ashamed; the second did not. There lay all the carefully constructed morality of her life, smashed at her feet. Small shards; she could look down on them and see them; she could trample them underfoot until they were nothing more than the finest dust.

  Gone. She did not need them anymore; she was a nurse. She had loved Acland. She had cut her hair. She had new morals of her own, and because she had made them, patched them together from the dictates of her heart and the compassion of her mind, they had authority. No, she could not judge Jenna—she even admired Jenna. Love ought to be given when it could, for time was so short.

  So Jane spoke to Constance in her new way. Her hands rested in her lap. Her eyes did not waver. Constance heard her out.

  Constance, of course, did not know why Jane spoke in this way. She saw that she had, in the past, underestimated Jane, and she felt for her a new and wary respect. She also felt angry. She felt angry that Jane should be deceived. (Constance, that little spy, knew the baby was not Jack Hennessy’s.) She felt angry that Jenna, who had had Acland, should now settle for a husband like Hennessy. She felt angry with Hennessy, who had carried her father’s stretcher back to Winterscombe; Hennessy, who was so large, so massed, and so threatening—she had always hated him! She felt angry that Jane, who had once loved Acland and perhaps loved him still, should speak in this calm, cool way. She felt angry with the sun, which continued to shine, and the traffic of the city, which continued to flow.

  Constance listened to Jane, and her anger mounted. She told herself they did not deserve Acland, any of them, and only she mourned him truly, so she was jagged with grief, and pain sprang out from her fingertips, from each hair on her head, like lightning.

  Constance was afraid of these rages of hers. She could control them better than she did as a child, but she could not always control them well enough. They were like an epilepsy with her: They made her jerk and twitch and flinch. Her hands would not lie still; her feet moved—she could hear her heels drumming. She could smell burning, and taste bile.

  Only I understand; only I was worthy of him, Constance cried to herself in her angry egoism, and, because she failed to quell this rebellion of her hands and her hair and her heels, she then behaved very badly. She behaved in a way Jane never forgot.

  The explanations regarding Jenna were over. Jane and Constance sat alone in the Park Street drawing room; there was a hush in the house.

  Then Boy came into the room. Boy had been granted a week’s compassionate leave; he was due to return to France the following day. He was wearing uniform. He came into the room; in his hands was a large, black, leather-bound volume. This volume bore Acland’s name upon it in gold letters, and the dates of his birth and of his death. In it were pasted the letters of condolence that Gwen and Denton had received on the loss of their son. His parents were constructing a memorial to Acland—such volumes were commonplace then. Boy, who had just left Gwen’s room, had promised her to paste in the most recent letters. They, too, were there in his hands, a batch of black-edged envelopes.

  When Boy came in, Constance rose to her feet. She inquired what time it was, for her watch was always slow, and—on being told it was almost three—began to edge toward the door. Boy did not greet her; he regarded her, Jane thought, in a hangdog way, his head slightly bent, his eyes averted.

  Without warning, Constance sprang at him. To Jane’s consternation she snatched the black album from his hands. She threw it upon the floor; the binding broke; black-edged letters scattered. Constance’s face was as white as wax; there were two brilliant round spots of red in her cheeks.

  “Oh, why must you read that thing? I hate it. It’s morbid. This whole house is morbid. You can’t breathe in this house—and Acland would loathe it every bit as much as I do. Leave them, Francis—”

  Boy had bent toward the scattered letters. When Constance spoke his name, he flinched; he remained bent, hand still extended.

  “Oh, for God’s sake—do you think a lot of pious letters will bring your brother back? I’ve read them and I know—none of them write about Acland as he was. He’s dull and sensible and painstaking and honorable when they write—all the things they think he ought to have been, all the things he never was! Those letters are lies, and your brother is dead. It’s over. It’s done with. I can’t breathe here. I’m going out.” She slammed the door behind her.

  Boy lifted one hand to his face, as if Constance had struck him. Then he began, in a quiet way, to pick up the letters.

  “She’s broken the spine,” he said.

  “Boy, she didn’t mean it.” Jane bent to help him. “She’s upset. She grieves, too, you know, in her way.”

  “I could try to stick it, I suppose. I don’t know if it will hold.” Boy straightened. “It will hurt Mama. She ordered this specially.”

  “Boy, leave it for now. Look—it’s such a fine day. Why don’t we go for a walk? We could go to the park. It would do us both good. I don’t have to be back at the hospital yet—”

  “All right.” Boy continued to finger the album. He ran his thumb along the spine; he bent the torn leather forward, then back; he traced the gold letters of his brother’s name.

  “It won’t mend.” He shook his head—his new mannerism, which Jane found mildly irritating—as if he had water lodged in his ear. He set the album down on a side table.

  “She shouldn’t have done that. It was a wicked thing to do. I hate her when she’s like that—”

  “Boy—”

  “All right. As you say. It is a fine day. Perhaps a walk in the park.”

  So, that afternoon in July (a time of year when, in peacetime, the Cavendish family would have avoided London) Constance walked in her direction, Jane and Boy in theirs.

  Less than a mile apart. It was very hot. The air in the city was sticky and tight, as if the streets were a kettle, and the sky a lid.

  Constance walked to Albany. She pretended to herself, at first, that she did not. She pretended to walk to Smythson’s for Gwen’s writing paper, a promised errand. Then she pretended she needed to examine the shop windows of the Burlington Arcade, and indeed she examined those windows with close attention, though she saw nothing of what they contained.

  Then, in a casual way, a strolling way, her small handbag and her small parcel swinging from her wrist, she walked the short distance from the arcade to Albany itself. She looked up at that discreet and desirable building—a smart address. She wondered on which floor Montague Stern kept his rooms, whether he was still there, at half past three; whether he overlooked the place where she waited.

  She could always walk in. She could inquire. She could leave a note. A lady might not be expected to do any of these things, but she could do them.
Prudence? Reputation? She cared nothing for them. She could go in. She could stay here.

  She swung her little handbag back and forth; she let the minutes tick by.

  Constance had seen Montague Stern on several occasions since that day at Maud’s, for he visited Park Street no less than three times a week. When he visited, and they met, Stern gave no sign of remembering what had taken place. The embrace, his note: they might never have happened.

  It occurred to Constance that he might have put the matter from his mind; perhaps he was merely being discreet. On the other hand he might intend to pique her curiosity and her vanity. Which?

  To meet, or not to meet? The decision was left with her, apparently. Constance swung her bag; she scanned bricks, glass.

  She would not go in; she would leave no message. With a defiant air Constance turned and retraced her steps.

  The air felt fresher; she increased her pace. Back toward Park Street, and Gwen, and a house where she could not breathe. Her home. As she approached it, she glimpsed the figures of Boy and Jane in the distance. They were arm in arm; Jane carried a parasol. They turned into the park.

  Inside the house, Constance repented. She fetched glue, cardboard, a tube of Steenie’s paints. She repaired the album for Acland. She strengthened the new join with the cardboard. She glued the spine back into place. She touched up the edges with the paint, so the frays in the leather should not show.

  She tested her handiwork. The album was heavy, and the strain on the damaged spine considerable. Even so, she thought it might hold, for she had deft hands and had done the work well.

  In the park they made for the Serpentine. There was a breeze there; the light was soft; people rowed on the water. After a while Boy led them toward a seat in the shade of a plane tree, and they sat down. Boy continued to gaze at the rowboats; he seemed morose and preoccupied, certainly disinclined for speech, but Jane did not mind this. It gave her time to prepare herself.

  There were many things she would have liked to explain to Boy; some of them were small things, perhaps stupid things. She would have liked to tell him why she cut her hair, and how her hair made her feel brave. She would have liked to tell him about that mannerism with her hands, how she had noted it and decided to cure it. She would have liked to tell him about the boy Tom, who had recovered and returned home. She would have liked, above all, to make him understand what it had meant to her to be a nurse, and how—because of that, and because Acland was dead—she had decided: She was going to change her life.