An Unspeakable Anguish

by Baird Wells

  While she managed through her toast and tea one bite at a time, Hannah mulled over the state of the house and the man she’d found dwelling there, pistol in hand. She chewed and considered that bit of information with care. Guilt or anguish? Doctor Harter had promoted the former to her parents, peppered between his accusations. She remained unconvinced. She knew first hand that ‘negligence’ was a word most easily spoken from the depths of despair, which had probably made it easy for her parents to repeat it. Hannah nearly wished Harter were right; labeling James Grimshaw a murderer was comfortable compared with acknowledging his suffering as a victim.

  She wondered what it was like, beginning life with a person and expecting to spend it that way, to finish it that way, only to have it torn away at its fullest. The lives of three people, she amended, the realization leaden in her chest. Who could fault him for considering the pistol? She admired that he’d staved it off for so long.

  When the toast had quieted her belly and the tea’s warmth had invigorated her, Hannah unfolded from her chair with a stiff groan and made her way back upstairs. Rather than return to the parlor, she kept going when she reached the landing, her footsteps cushioned by a thick Turkey wool runner which left the house eerily silent. On the next landing she discovered the wicker basket of neglected wash that James had mentioned, all of it belonging to Emily. Hannah left it for now. The parson’s wagon would arrive in the afternoon; the village church could manage the wash better than she. Everything would go to the parish, to be distributed among the village’s needy or sent on to London poorhouses. Unneeded belongings of sad people, passed on to other sad people. Hannah shook her head.

  From the narrow landing, she weighed three doors and wondered which was which and where to begin. Deciding that one room would not be any easier than another, she chose the one to her left and went in.

  Hannah stopped at the threshold, swallowed, and admitted she’d been wrong. High windows at the back wall hinted at morning light, just on the horizon and filtered by heavy clouds. They cast a cold glow into the nursery, chasing shadows to where they pooled deep in each corner. Hand still on the frigid iron knob, she started to turn back before admitting that, now or later, the task would be no simpler.

  The wallpaper was new, crisp ivory printed with china blue in a damask pattern. It provided the lone hint of color in a room of absence. A white wicker cradle skirted in tiers of filmy lawn stood beside a white stone fireplace, perpetually waiting to be occupied and denied its sole reason for existence. Wire hangers hooked the knobs of a dark walnut bureau, displaying two lovingly smocked and embroidered little gowns. A white cushioned rocking chair, white curtains, and even the white bamboo mirror stood free of the black shrouds hung throughout the rest of the house. She supposed a room could hardly be protected from or made free of a spirit that had never resided there.

  She blinked in rapid succession, eyes stinging and a pain in her breast growing to a pressure that crushed until she couldn’t feel her heart beat. For a moment, she believed it had stopped and was grateful, wished it could last just for a breath until she could muster her strength. Then it pounded, first in her ears and then in her chest, and Hannah swallowed against an aching throat and moved to set her candle atop the bureau.

  She sorted one drawer at a time. Linen booties with fleece soles, thick stacks of flannel diapers, and crisp white bloomers with tiny wooden buttons came first. Hannah emptied each in turn and stacked their contents in the cradle’s empty space. She took the first gown from its hanger and folded it. The second one she carried to the rocking chair, and sat and draped it over her lap and the bend of her arm. Cradling it, she wondered how it would feel, frilled sleeves and skirt filled by chubby arms and legs. She could just recall holding Emily as a baby, stiff backed and frightened, wishing the maid would take the fussing thing back. How she longed for such a burden now. She rose from the chair, inflated by a ragged breath, and tucked the gown away with its twin in the cradle so she didn’t have to see it.

  She rushed through taking down the curtains and scooting all the furniture up close to the door for the worker’s convenience, then stepped back out into the hallway. She closed the door and pressed her back to the cool wood, and buried her face in the crook of her arm with a sigh.

  Sun beamed through sheer floral drapes when she opened the bedroom door, light trying its best to burn through the clouds and warm the outside world. Victory was still uncertain, judging by a pale shaft that tiptoed through a space in the curtains. Hopeful, she blew out her candle, now just a nub, and abandoned taper and stick atop the mantle. The main rooms of the house had been clean on her arrival the night before, a warning sign which had prompted her to study James and eventually discover the pistol. He had left the house in a state for a man settling affairs, except that his wife had not been dead long enough for so much detachment. By all accounts, few though they were, he was devoted and deep of heart. No such person swept the floor and dusted the mantle strictly from fussiness or boredom hard on the heels of tragedy.

  If the parlor had been a warning, Hannah thought the bedchamber was doubly so. Each item on Emily’s vanity was set just so; silver mirror, sandalwood comb, ribbons, and face cream were arranged in neat lines. There was no dust, not even atop the mirror frame. The wood floor, where it revealed itself from the edge of a thick wool carpet, gleamed as though it had been scrubbed and swept. Sprigged lavender bed curtains were draped and tied back neatly. The bed itself, the altar of so much marital bliss and now sorrow, was made up with layers of ruffled shams, pressed sheets, and quilts trimmed by yards of eyelet.

  The room’s tidy, shrine-like appearance was undermined by a charred wad of torn bedding, now just white strips edged with ash gray and horrible rust. A dressing gown hung stiff over the back of Emily’s vanity chair, creases and crumples fixed in it from washing and air drying, and though patches of the soft white lawn were vigorously scrubbed to fraying, dried blood clung tenaciously despite the work. James had put a madman’s effort into breathing Emily back into the room, clothes and belongings, and had scrubbed himself out of it in the process.

  Hannah took on the room in the same fashion as she had the nursery, one shelf or drawer at a time. A wardrobe, the one on Emily’s side of the bed guessing by items on the table, proved that whatever income was afforded a country doctor, James had spared no expense where his wife was concerned. None of the hat or dress boxes contained the latest London fashions, but each item was pretty and well made. She saw no great quantity of silk or velvet, but there was plenty of satin braid, feathers, and mother of pearl buttons. She grasped the last hatbox in a stack and pulled, and was nearly struck in the face when it came down lighter than she’d expected. Prying back the pink and white striped lid, she discovered why. A bundle of letters was nestled in crumpled tissue and bound with a length of ivory ribbon. She rested her hand on them, considering. She should put them aside, send them back to James. And she would, but what was the hurry? Carrying them with her to the bed, Hannah admitted the guilt she felt had little to do with reading her sister’s private correspondence, and almost everything to do with her ignorance of Emily’s life and husband.

  She counted fourteen letters in all, and thumbing through, only two were from Emily to her husband. The remaining twelve were from James. They had been read countless times before, until envelope flaps were thin and almost creased through, corners dog-eared and paper frayed to a fuzzy border. She chose one at random, slipped out a single sheet of inexpensive bone-colored paper and began to read.

  My Sparrow,

  What a black mood I am in today, and how sorely I wish you were here to cast it off. Though, were you here I could never feel so in the first instant. Mrs. Gilliam’s baby is not coming today or even tonight, but close enough that, should I leave this evening, I will only be called back tomorrow or the next day.

  As to your worry, there is less reason for you to question making me happy, than for me to question my own worthiness. You have said that mo
ney has no bearing on your happiness, but I fear a day when cold rooms and worn boots cause you regret. Not that I doubt your love for me; we have passed our first year because of it. Your beautiful, stubborn persistence is what wore me down from the very beginning. And I hope I have given you proof for a lifetime of my love for you. If your greatest reason to fret is our difference in age, and whether you paid too much for flannel, then I wish you would not fret at all. I certainly don’t.

  Hannah’s eyes fell to the next line and she bit her lip and blushed. James's stays in the village were a hardship in more ways than one. An answer to something Emily had apparently written previously proved that he was not alone in his frustration.

  She should stop reading there. The words were private, and not Emily’s; their author was very much alive. Maybe that was part of her fascination. She had met the man, had weighed him with a woman’s eye, and hadn’t managed to put him entirely from her thoughts.

  She read every letter, each line, and laughed and swore and dabbed away tears as a silent partner in a happy, if unfortunate, marriage. When she had finished, Hannah bundled the letters back together and tied the ribbon. She rolled onto her side, sank into the quilts. In the space of an hour Hannah had become acquainted with a stranger, loved her, and lost her all over again. Too tender and weary for more of the day, she buried her face in her arms and gave in to sleep.

  .

  CHAPTER THREE

  Whitechapel, London – October 12th, 1882

  He would have to sell the house.

  James hunched behind his rickety desk and peered at the stack of bills, starkly illuminated by a shaft of light from a narrow window set high above. They must all be debts; he never received personal letters in the mail anymore.

  Harry had been good to let him stay at Millford for most of the year. Somewhere around April, though, Harry’s situation had changed, and like many great friendships, a woman had come between them. Eliza Gordon-Crowley Tate did not want guests on the estate in her post-honeymoon period, particularly not sad ones who dampened the marital glow.

  James had been forced to seek work, which was tough because all his life’s experience was comprised of treating patients, which was something he had no intention of doing again. The search had brought him here, to Lofton & Dooney’s Procurement Laboratory. He spent eight and a half hours a day between white tile walls, clammy from basement moisture and reeking with the tarry odor of carbolic acid disinfectant. He worked alone, a slit of a window his only link to the outside world, which suited him perfectly. Days passed, several hundred in fact, marked by the movement of light on the wall and little else. Time not spent there was dedicated to the pub, or his awful lodgings which were tolerable only thanks to drunken stretches of fitful sleep.

  Lofton & Dooney had begun nearly seventy-five years earlier as a procurer of ‘Waterloo teeth’, forming dentures of teeth ripped from the battlefield’s dead and mostly dead. When their questionable source of stock generated public outcry, the business had been restructured to sell prosthetic limbs and paraffin eyes until society caught up a bit with science and morals with medicine. Now they procured cadavers for colleges and medical institutions, whole or by the organ.

  It was James's job to carve them up, or to identify the deceased’s fatal affliction so that it could be matched to a request. The work was methodical, mindless, and solitary, as perfect as employment could be. He left each evening no emptier than when he’d arrived that morning, having passed a day at his labor and with decent wages in his pockets.

  Unfortunately, the coin only jingled as far as Garvey’s Pub at Crofton Street, or the wine merchant’s at Cheapside. Lodgings, meals at Garvey’s, and new footwear every couple of weeks to replace his putrid, fluid saturated, over-scrubbed boots came from whatever wages were left over. That was usually nothing, at this point, which meant he couldn’t pay his taxes.

  Sighing, he got up and untied his apron, tossing it into a hamper with the others to be sent out to laundry. It was a soiled white heap that helped him mark the days of the week. It would be painful, parting with the house in Meadowcroft. It had belonged to his family for more than a hundred years. That wasn’t the only reason, the true reason it hurt, and James knew he would never go back, no matter what memories the house held. He would send the details ‘round to the paper on Friday: ‘House and contents, as-is. Inquire at Shore’s off Bond Street’. The attorney would see to the rest.

  He screwed open the tap, first hot and then cold until it was just bearable, and scrubbed with a cake of fierce lye soap. Usually he took his time at the end of the day, not eager to rush out into teeming London traffic. This evening he was tired, more so than usual, and willing to tolerate the crush to start home.

  James trudged up to the ground floor on worn wooden treads that creaked with the threat of rot and stepped out into the street. Streams of people flowed serpentine around one another as they hurried to conclude their business ahead of a crisp autumn day’s waning light. Gentlemen in stovepipe beaver hats and ladies draped in skirts of brown silk or dirty, rumpled calico; match girls and flower girls; baker’s boys and butchers weaving rickety, empty handcarts through the crowd; they all moved together while living worlds apart.

  He stepped out into the fray and held some space for himself, drawing up to touch those around him as little as possible and not meeting anyone’s eyes. His feet scraped over cobblestones in a half effort while he kept his mind empty of any serious thought. He stayed just so until the crossing at Mark and Scarborough Streets demanded that he pay attention. He would have to time his dart and dodge between racing hansom cabs and relentless draft horses which always pressed ahead regardless of human obstacles. He leaned out, past the lamppost and other pedestrians, glancing east and west.

  It happened so fast. A man slammed him at a dead run without thought for pedestrians or traffic, his elbow catching James beneath a shoulder blade and tipping him up onto the balls of his feet and to the curb. James turned and tried for a swing at his assailant, to shove the man back and keep from being thrown, but his arm wrenched back in the momentum.

  Their chaos spilled over and caught the young lady beside him, a petite thing over-bundled in a swath of teal silk skirts. She was thrown shrieking out into the roadway and the cutting lines of traffic. The runner glanced back but didn’t stop to help, just raced off.

  A woman screamed and a man bellowed some unintelligible curse. The girl flailed, buried in petticoats and rigid from a corset strapped to her undeveloped frame. Time dragged for everyone, James thought, save him and the helpless child. Everyone around him gasped, cried out, but no one moved to help her.

  He didn’t spare a look or even think. James leaped from the curb and grabbed her bodice, hauling her into the middle of the road as a passing stage flew through the space she’d just occupied. He pressed her flat to his side and held a breath when the stage coach’s lamp hanger bumped his hat. A wagon trailing close behind drew up, its driver strangling the reins and gentling his team. James grasped the sobbing girl’s arm, swung, and heaved her ahead of him back up onto the sidewalk.

  A woman in blue brocade and sapphires fell to her knees and hugged the girl, who was no more than twelve, bawling. A man stepped behind them wearing a tall hat and fine knee-length wool coat, his silver brow turned down in grave tune with his mustache. He tossed his lacquered walking stick to his other hand and reached for James's. “My gratitude, sir! Truly, my gratitude. To whom are we indebted?” he bellowed over the roar of the street.

  “James Grimshaw, sir,” he mumbled, mind still out in the street and struggling to grasp that they were now beyond danger.

  James shook a proffered hand and swallowed while a crowd gathered and began to applaud. The gentleman reached into his coat, produced a bank book and snapped out a note which he extended like a king. “Not that I could put a price on my daughter,” he said, stroking her silky blonde curls while she stared up at James with wide, red-rimmed eyes, “but your bravery deserves
a reward.”

  “No,” he said, hating the taste of his pride. “I cannot accept it.” He could, very easily. James wasn’t certain why he didn’t; perhaps because he already knew how it would be spent.

  “Dinner!” the lady insisted with a hint of Russia in her self-conscious pauses as she clutched her daughter, pleading up at him. “Please, you must allow us some gratitude.”

  He couldn’t be rude, now; he’d given them his name before an entire crowd. Despite his preference for solitude, he had to admit that something other than Garvey’s greasy black pies and lukewarm ale did sound tempting. And they probably wouldn’t speak much; they didn’t seem like the sort. Finally, James nodded, accepting that he was stepping into a social noose. “Dinner. That would be more than agreeable. Thank you.”

  “Sir Simon Webster.” The gentleman held out his card, and James claimed it, slipping it into his breast pocket.

  “Doctor James Grimshaw,” he amended, and reached out to help the lady up.

  She clutched at his hand and babbled her thanks, and then pressed her trembling daughter forward to curtsy. James agreed to call on Saturday, while backing away from them a step at a time, until he was sufficiently far to turn his back and hurry off down Mark Street to the rum-soaked oblivion awaiting him.

  .