by Vanessa Tait
But when she stepped in further she saw it was her husband, not Jenny, hunched in the bottom of her dresser, which was odd because he usually hated to slouch, his face stuck down into something. Rebecca could not see what, his body obscured it. There was something so private in the shape of him that she did not greet him, did not make a sound.
But – what was he doing? Rebecca bent forward until her whalebone pressed into the soft part of her belly … and there past his shoulder, beneath his face … were her shoes. He had his face buried in one of them, the ones she had worn on the day of the opening. The little pale buttons had been wrenched open and his palm was pressed against the sole.
She gasped a little, before she could remember not to. But Alexander did not hear. His own breathing must have taken up all of his ears. In, and out. In and out.
She had discovered him in the act of – what? Something private, but … in her room, with her shoe, not that … thing, that other girl’s shoe. P’raps it meant he had come back to her! That the marriage would be tolerable after all.
Rebecca crept back downstairs to the parlour and sat on the sofa, turning page after page of The English Woman’s Journal. The articles passed by her eyes in a blur: ‘Married Women’s Property Act … recipe for blancmange … poem for summer’. Even the Journal did not advocate divorce.
Five minutes passed, then ten. When he came down there was nothing in her husband’s face to suggest that he had just been in her closet. His lips were not twitching, his hair was oiled and combed. ‘You are awake. Are you feeling refreshed?’ he said.
‘Yes – quite. How long have I been asleep?’ She would visit the kitchen and tell Mrs Bunclarke to cook Alexander’s favourite dish, if it was not too late to send Jenny to the butcher. And bread, if the baker had any, to put in the Potatoes à l’Allemande. Oh, and apples, for they had nearly run out!
‘Long enough,’ he said. ‘Were you tired?’
‘I was plagued with bad dreams last night.’ Gabriel, of course, but turned to clockwork and falling apart in her hands.
‘As I thought, for the salts were just the same as always. But what are you doing with that?’ He pointed to the periodical.
‘Oh, this?’ Rebecca flushed. ‘I borrowed it from the library.’
‘The library ought not to keep such things. It is full of sedition and ideas that will foment public unrest. Look here, I will tear it up for the fire, to save Jenny the trouble.’
‘Do not tear it!’ But it was too late. The whole thing was quickly up in flames. Now Rebecca would have to explain the periodical’s disappearance to the librarian, who had only let her take it as a favour. Best to buy a new one herself.
And after all, the evening had gone off tolerably well. The candle-light was flickering just as it ought, sending light skittering over the table and over her husband’s face. Alexander had pushed his chair back from the table, just as he ought, and was leaning back with his hands laced behind his head. Conversation, which had not been much, had died away, just as it ought.
Though the haunch of venison had been perhaps a little short at the fire. Rebecca had put Mr Francatelli’s cook book straight into Mrs Bunclarke’s hands but the recipe called for four hours on a spit and it had not started turning until past teatime. Rebecca only had a few forkfuls. The potatoes were a little sour, too much vinegar to them, but the Charlotte of Pears was good. Rebecca spooned the cream onto her plate and peeled off two of the syrupy sponge fingers pressed around the sides. Alexander, who had drunk several glasses of wine, only cut himself a small slice, dissecting two of the fingers in half and eating them in four sharp bites.
Rebecca too had had several glasses of wine. She hoped her husband might be looking at her as she ate, the candlelight seemed to suggest it, and the sponge fingers as she put them forward-facing into her mouth seemed to suggest it too, but he was staring at the guttering candle, drumming his own fingers lightly on the table.
Rebecca let the cooked flesh of the pear fall apart in her mouth. ‘Shall we go up?’ she said.
Alexander frowned, looked at the clock. It was his custom to go up at ten o’clock.
‘Only, I am a little tired,’ she hurried on. ‘Not tired, so much as, perhaps the effects of the wine …’
He nodded then, looked back at the clock and nodded again. ‘If you are weary then very well. Let us go.’
At the top of the stairs Alexander stopped and turned to her. His lips were even fuller in the gloom, like a woman’s. He leaned forward. Rebecca thought he was going to kiss her, and she pursed her own lips in readiness, but as he came near he turned his face to the side. There was a faint abrasion from the day’s growth on his own cheek as he turned, enough to make her shiver.
‘Goodnight then,’ he said.
‘Goodnight?’ she said, on the in-breath.
‘The wine,’ he said, ‘was making you drowsy.’
‘I find I am not so tired, now that I have left the table!’ In her confusion she looked down at her shoes. She had meant to save this for the bedroom, but he had forced her hand. She pulled up the hem of her dress and pointed her foot.
Her cheeks burned – he would dismiss her, tell her to stop.
But Alexander followed her gaze and looked down. ‘You complained of those shoes. I thought you would not wear them again.’
‘I find I am used to them now, they are so soft and the shape they make of my foot is so pleasing. Do you not think?’ Her breath caught in her throat. Seeing his look she grew bolder and pointed the shoe up at him.
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Alexander, his eyes fixed on her foot, his turn to flush. ‘I always thought it.’ They stood in the middle of the corridor that led away in each direction to their rooms, between the two gaslights.
Rebecca remembers what followed as a kind of dream. They both turn away from his bedroom and towards hers and he lays her down on her bed. The satin coverlet is slippery under her fingers.
‘Oh, Alexander!’ she cries out, as he draws off her stockings. She has the time to throw her arms behind her head, her forearms pressed up against the chill silk of the bed hangings. She closes her eyes. She fancies she might resemble a painting, done in rich brushstrokes, though she can’t recall the name of the painter.
Finally her feet are bare and her toes, one by one, are being fanned out. Alexander is kissing them. He takes the smallest toe into his mouth – a damp cave – and sucks on it rhythmically. Her leg tingles and she felt a twinge higher up, between her legs.
He moves onto the next toe. A cave with an animal in it, with a mouth that sucks. She has not realized before that her toe and her neck are connected by a nerve that runs all the way up her body. Thank God she has plunged her feet this morning into a bowl of cold water and rubbed her heel smooth with a pumice stone.
The next toe. The tip of his tongue darts over the length of it. The electric sensation crosses over to ticklishness and she tries to pull her foot away, but he grips the middle of her foot with both hands.
‘My darling! Will you not come further up?’ She tries to tug him upwards so that she can kiss him, but he moves onto the next toe, exploring the nail of it (thank God she had filed it not three days before!) and fluttering up and down its length. And then – even in the rhythmic fluttering moistness and excitement Rebecca can sense a doggedness, a need to finish the sequence – the last, the biggest toe.
He tongues the pad, she worries for a moment about its toughness, but he takes the whole toe into his mouth like the others. Rebecca squirms, the toe is too big, too wet, and the rest of the toes still damp. There is a draught where the window does not push up to the frame.
‘Should we get under the covers, dearest?’
He makes some indefinable reply, even though the toe has popped out of his mouth, but now his lips are crushed into the thin skin of her ankle.
She props herself up on her elbows and looks down, hoping to encourage him upwards. But he is already naked from the waist down! She had not noticed him go aw
ay from her and come back, but there are his trousers, folded on the back of the chair. He is two people now: one very proper in a shirt and waistcoat, the other, from his buttocks downwards, covered only in a sprouting of dark hair. She tries to haul him up again but again he resists.
Rebecca stares up at the folds that made up the canopy of her bed. A spider had made her web across the corner of it, too high for Jenny to get to. The button in the middle of it reminds her of the crown of Alexander’s head, with its thick hair spiralling out. The thought of it makes her dizzy and she turns her head.
‘Dearest!’ she cries again. At her feet Alexander is increasing the pressure of his mouth and fingers and – some other part of his flesh. He has moved up the bed a little and the weight of his body bears down on her calves. He begins to thrust, as if he were going to make love to her – but – he was in the wrong place, she cannot move him – and then – he gives a gasp – Rebecca feels her ankle become not damp from his kisses, but wet, wet all down one side.
Rebecca pushes herself up again. Her heart falls away. ‘Are you? Have you … oh dearest!’
Rebecca rubs her ankle on the sheet. Her husband stands up. Tomorrow she would have to change the sheet, or tell Jenny to do it, though she would wonder why, having just been changed yesterday.
CHAPTER 14
The next morning she felt the effects of the wine she had drunk. Her mouth was dry and even though she had been asleep for many hours she felt as if she had not slept enough.
When she came to the dining room Alexander was already at breakfast, eating a kipper. The smell of it made her turn her face away. But Alexander was in a good mood. ‘How are you feeling today, wife? Are you hungry?’
‘I think p’raps the wine was too strong, last night. I think a draught would cure it.’
‘Have you plans for today?’
Alexander quite often wanted to know her day’s activities. He usually received a litany of chores and reading lists, when most often she had spent her time with her new friend. But today, because she was distracted by the dryness of her mouth and the throbbing at her temples, she said: ‘I am going to see Evangeline.’
‘Evangeline?’
Rebecca blinked. ‘I did not mean Evangeline. I was only thinking of her. I meant to say Mrs Bishop.’
‘Evangeline?’ Alexander carefully placed his knife and fork together. ‘How do you know her?’
‘We met at the opening of the pharmacy.’
‘But I sent you home.’
Rebecca screwed her eyes shut and shook her head. ‘I mean, we met on the street, at a later date. She was on her way to the pharmacy, and she said she knew you, and we struck … we struck up an acquaintance.’
‘An acquaintance?’
‘Only of the mildest kind! Not any kind of friendship.’
Alexander started to tap the nail of his longest finger on the table. ‘So I am to believe that you met her once on the street, and then?’
‘And then nothing!’
‘But I told you not to talk to her. Did I not?’ Tap tap went his nail on the wood. ‘And yet you have disobeyed me.’
Sweat trickled down Rebecca’s ribcage. It was past time for her medicine. She would have liked to ask him for it. ‘I will not see her again.’ Though the thought of that was terrible.
‘We should have opened the pharmacy quietly, with no fuss, I told John as much. But he had to have fanfare!’ Alexander pushed back his chair. ‘Everything you say leads me to believe that you are lying. I think you have seen her more than once. Even visited her rooms. Have you?’
‘No, no, I have not. I swear it!’
‘Let us call Jenny, then, shall we? To ask her how you have spent your time these last few weeks.’
‘There is no need, you will embarrass her!’
But Alexander had already set the bell jangling and Jenny must have been close by for she opened the door almost at once.
‘Ah Jenny,’ he said, very low and even, although a muscle jumped in his cheek. ‘How has Mrs Palmer been amusing herself these last few weeks?’
Jenny looked at Rebecca. She shifted her weight from one foot to another. ‘I don’t know, sir. I don’t know her movements.’
‘But has she been out, say?’
‘Out?’
‘Of the house?’
Jenny looked at Rebecca again, a flush spreading up her cheeks. ‘No, she has been inside, sir, in her room. Reading.’
‘And you are sure?’
‘Yes, sir, I am sure.’
‘Why do you colour, then?’
Jenny put her hand up to her cheek. ‘I – I do not know.’
‘She colours, husband, because you make her colour!’
‘She colours because she is lying, because you told her to lie. I can see it in her face, plain—’ He laughed. ‘Plain as day, I was going to say, but I ought to have left off at plain.’
Rebecca stepped forward to put her hand on Jenny’s sleeve.
‘Well, you two make a fine pair – and with Evangeline it makes three.’ He shook his head. ‘Women cannot be trusted. I have always said so. Two liars under my roof, but you have made a mistake, Jenny, for it is I who pay your wages.’ He shook his head again. ‘You are dismissed.’
Jenny said nothing, but put her hand before her mouth.
‘Pack your bags.’
‘Pack my bags, sir?’
‘Do not punish Jenny, she has done nothing wrong. It is me. Only me!’ cried Rebecca, gripping Jenny harder.
‘And you call lying nothing, do you? I suppose you may, as you lie to me so easily.’
‘Please, sir, I have nowhere else to go!’ Without a reference, she could get no other position. Except, as Lionel said, on the streets.
‘You had best pack now, if you are to be gone before luncheon.’
‘But where will I go?’
‘Let her stay! I will not see Evangeline again, I swear it!’
‘No, you will not.’
Rebecca bit down on her lip and pressed her fingertips to the corner of her eyes. She must not cry, not in front of Jenny. But Jenny herself was crying, she bit her lips to stop them trembling but she could not stop the tears which overflowed her eyes and fell down her cheeks.
Rebecca turned to her husband. ‘Will you let Jenny—’ Stay, she would have finished, but something flew past her ear and landed on her cheek with such a noise that she staggered backwards.
Her face had split in two. She cried out, or Jenny did. She put her hand to her cheek and fell against the wall. The noise was still an explosion in her ear.
Jenny ran to her. ‘Are you all right, madam?’
Alexander said: ‘Have you learned not to lie, do you think? Or do you need another one? ’Tis nothing that a boy does not learn at school, when he is ten years old. But women are like children, so p’raps after all, you may learn something.’
Rebecca said nothing, only backed towards the door. Alexander turned to Jenny. ‘You’d best pack now, if you are to leave before luncheon,’ he said once more.
The bell sounded. The boy had come to carry Jenny’s case to the station, already! Rebecca started up, she must say goodbye, properly if she could. She went into the hall and looked upwards. The sound of Jenny’s crying from behind her closed door came down to her in muffled staccato.
But it was not a boy; it was a man of fifty at least, with a dirty apron tied round his waist.
‘I came to the right house, then? There is nought wrong with this door as I can see.’
Alexander came out of his study. ‘The lock on it has grown sticky,’ he said. ‘It needs replacing. I want it taken out and a new one put in. What have you got?’
‘At the stall there’s more,’ said the man uncertainly, looking towards the stairs.
‘One of these will do,’ said Alexander, picking up a lock. ‘Whichever you think best.’ The spots had died away from his cheek, he spoke calmly.
Alexander bent over to inspect the contents of the man’s bag. R
ebecca could only see the back of his jacket pulled smooth. A carapace. And she, a weak thing, scrabbling for purchase. ‘What’s this?’ she said. ‘I did not notice the lock grown sticky.’
The locksmith held up a heavy black lock. ‘This will fit your door, and I’ve a key for it here.’ The creases of his face, she noticed, were filled in with pale specks that were not dust but iron filings.
‘There must be some mistake,’ she said.
The man looked at Alexander. ‘I was called,’ he said.
‘By me, to fit a new lock,’ said Alexander.
‘But we’ve no need!’ Rebecca said stupidly.
The locksmith scratched his cheek. The barrel of the lock dangled from his other hand.
‘I shall keep the key for it, to prevent you from going out,’ said Alexander.
The locksmith took a step back. ‘I don’t know—’ he said.
‘If you will not do it, I shall get someone who will,’ said Alexander.
Rebecca wanted her medicine. Alexander must know he was late with it; he was always so particular about the time and the dose. ‘I ought never to have visited Evangeline without telling you, I understand that now! I have learned my lesson. But won’t you listen?’
‘Listen to what, wife?’ Alexander rubbed his chin with his hand as if he were someone who had every intention of being reasonable.
‘It is impossible! I think you mean to punish me, and I am punished.’ Rebecca put her own hand to her cheek. It felt as if it had been held to a fire.
The locksmith stood and gaped at them.
‘A wife’s first and every thought should be with her husband. Not against him, not deliberately defying him,’ said Alexander.
‘Yes, yes! But this – how will the tradesmen get in?’
‘Round the back as they always do.’