by Stef Penney
‘He’s thirty-nine – which, let me tell you, is not that—’
‘He says he is thirty-nine,’ says Flora. ‘And he wears rouge.’
Iris raises her eyebrows, as if she is at the end of her very long tether.
‘It was merely a suggestion, and I’m told, on good authority, that he gives great satisfaction. You don’t want some young boy who doesn’t know one end of a woman from the other. I observe that you can be unkind, sometimes, Flora. It is a fault of youth.’
Flora stares at her in frustration.
‘Well, I observe that you have bruises on your wrist again, Iris, and that is apropos of nothing, also.’
Chapter 38
New York, 40˚42’N, 74˚00’W
October 1896
‘You’ve found a sense of purpose? You seem different. More serious.’
Clara leans back in her chair, squinting through wisps of smoke. They sit in a booth of a restaurant, and the light above their table casts unforgiving shadows. Jakob has not seen her for two years.
‘I’ve been drifting about for too long. I meant to do this sooner – for Frank, as well as myself. Now others are relying on me.’
‘You still feel you need to avenge Frank in some way?’
‘I wouldn’t say “avenge”. But Armitage used Frank’s death to bolster his false claim, and I don’t want his name to be associated with a lie he would have had nothing to do with, had he lived.’
‘You admit that is just your belief.’
‘That’s why I have to prove it beyond doubt. Sooner or later, the truth will come out. More people will go there – eventually, everything will be discovered.’
‘What if Mr Armitage was telling the truth?’
‘Then Frank really is the discoverer of a new island. That too will be beyond doubt.’
‘And what do you want for yourself – rather than for Frank or Aniguin and the others?’
Jakob smiles. ‘I want to do some exploring, it’s true. I want to work on the glaciers there, the sort of work I did in Switzerland. No one has studied glaciers at such latitudes.’
Clara squashes out her cigarette.
‘I hope you manage it. Now, do you want to hear my gossip?’
‘Of course,’ he says, with a small sinking feeling.
‘Well, to begin with’ – she smiles – ‘Anna is engaged to be married.’
‘Really?’ He’s glad to find that he feels genuine pleasure. ‘Who to?’
‘To a very respectable gentleman she met at the spiritualist’s meetings. Mrs Jupp – you remember? Anna went on going after Marion decided it was not seemly to make contact with the spirit of one’s former fiancé when one is engaged to someone else. But she had the temerity to tell us that Frank’s spirit gave her his blessing! Can you believe it? Anyway, that is where Anna met Mr Nathaniel Stafford. He’s a widower; terribly ancient – over fifty – but they seem well suited. He’s artistic, has a great long beard, that sort of thing. He was trying to contact his dead wife.’
‘Goodness . . .’ Jakob laughs. ‘Did she give her blessing too?’
‘I’m sure she did. He has the grace to have a sense of humour, so I’m cautiously optimistic.’
‘I’m delighted to hear it. Your parents must be so pleased.’
‘You cannot imagine. He’s even well off, so that’s a great load off their minds. She’s done better than any of us.’
‘So, with Marion engaged, have you told your parents about Frank’s daughter?’
Clara is silent for a moment. ‘Somehow I’ve never found the right time. I was afraid they’d be angry with me for not telling them earlier. I realise that’s a poor excuse. I’m ashamed.’
‘Don’t be. I could tell them. I could say that I’ve just found out, from Aniguin. You need not have known. I should not have given you that dilemma.’
Clara makes an impatient movement. ‘No. God. It was my decision. Wrong decision.’
‘Now there’s no impediment, I think they should know. I’ll see the girl – next year, I hope – so they should have the chance to . . . send her a message, or whatever they want – don’t you think?’
Clara nods. ‘She must be three years old. I can’t pretend I didn’t know. Perhaps – if you were willing – we could tell them together?’
Jakob is touched by this sign of trust. ‘Yes, if that’s what you would like.’
‘I think I would. You can explain it far better than I.’
‘Will you invite me to lunch, then?’
‘I will, but I haven’t finished the social circular.’ She pauses and gives him a beady look. ‘Lucille is married.’
‘Oh! I am glad.’
‘Surprised?’
‘No; why should I be?’
‘It was rather sudden. She’d only known him a few weeks. They’ve moved to Buffalo, where he practises law.’
‘Well . . . You’ve met him?’
‘No. For some time past, we weren’t as close as we once were.’
She smiles, lifting her chin and her eyebrows – an expression of finality.
‘I’d like to offer her my sincere congratulations,’ he says, after a somewhat awkward pause.
‘I don’t know if that’s a good idea.’
Jakob swallows, looks away from her. ‘I was, and am, very sorry for the distress I caused. Perhaps I understand now what I did . . . better than before.’
‘Oh? You have been wounded in the heart, at last? About time.’
He laughs. ‘Thank you for your sympathy.’
‘Was this when you were in Switzerland?’
He hesitates. ‘In part. I thought she felt the same as I did – was certain of it – but . . . apparently not. There were complications. She was married.’
‘Oh.’
Clara cannot suppress the flicker of intelligence in her eyes, and he thinks, She knows.
‘Did she give you to think she would leave her husband?’
‘I don’t know that we thought that far.’
He cannot begin to describe his affair with Flora. Planning hardly entered into it. To stave off further questions, he leans back and smiles.
‘What about you? You’ve always been so mysterious.’
‘Ha!’
‘It’s not impertinent to ask, is it? We’ve known each other for years. I can’t believe you haven’t had offers.’
‘Oh, I was born to be an old maid.’
Jakob looks at her sceptically. Clara lights another cigarette and sucks in the smoke. She looks around her, smoothes the hair under her jauntily angled hat.
‘Are you going to stare until I answer? Well, I did meet someone, of whom I thought, I have arrived. I’ve come home, because you’re my home.’ She smiles, but he can tell she is strongly moved. ‘Do you know what I mean?’
He nods. ‘I think I do. What happened?’
‘Well, clearly’ – she spreads her hands, taking refuge in sarcasm – ‘they preferred somebody else.’
Jakob leans forward and touches her on the hand. ‘Then he was a fool. May I be impertinent now and ask who it was?’
Clara takes a deep breath and lets it out in a jerky sigh. ‘Oh, I don’t think I can tell you.’
He bows his head, then something extraordinary occurs to him, and he looks at her, wonderingly. She reads the look on his face.
‘It’s not you! God! Men are so vain.’
Her tone is so outraged that, even in his mortification, Jakob has to laugh.
‘I . . . Sorry. Of course . . . Ha! It’s just that I always wondered, myself, what might have happened if, instead of Lucille finding me in the beer cellar that night, it had been you.’
Clara stares at him, her eyes very large and brilliant. ‘Did you? But you see . . . it was Lucille.’
‘I know, but
if it hadn’t been . . . if you’d been there—’
‘No, I mean, it was Lucille. The person who was my home: it was Lucille.’
Jakob is struck dumb. He remembers – cringing – incidents from the past, trying to fit them into this extraordinary new pattern. He is deeply embarrassed, not so much out of shock, although he is shocked, but because the revelation makes his actions appear, in retrospect, so idiotic.
‘I’ve shocked you.’
Clara looks at him with an expression he cannot judge.
‘No . . . I mean, I’m surprised. I had no idea.’
‘No one was meant to have any idea.’
‘No, but I don’t quite understand. In that case, why was she so upset by what I did?’
‘Lucille never agreed that she was really like me. She wanted things I couldn’t give her: family; a kind of respectability.’ She shrugs. ‘I hope she finds that now.’
‘Lord, you must have hated me.’ He laughs nervously, but thinks back to his blind, priapic blundering. What a conceited fool he’d been . . .
Clara shakes her head. ‘I didn’t hate you. What you did was not so unreasonable . . . It was just too hard to see you together. I thought you might marry; it was horrible. I would have lost you both. You’re part of Frank – the only part I have left. That sounds wrong . . . I don’t mean that I don’t value you for yourself, because I do. I do.’
‘I’m sorry that, well . . . for everything. Most of all, I’m sorry you didn’t get what you wanted.’
Clara takes the hand he holds out to her. He feels he has passed some kind of test.
‘I always thought I could tell you, and you’d be nice.’ She puts her other hand over his. ‘I, too, am sorry you did not get what you wanted.’
At her parents’ house, they break the news of Frank’s daughter to Mr Urbino. Jakob is at pains to explain (once Clara is out of the room) that Frank was far more chaste than the rest of them, was overcome with feelings of foreboding, feared he might not return, etc. Mr Urbino listens with apparent calm.
When he congratulates Anna on her forthcoming marriage, he thinks she seems a different person from the tragic mourner of two years ago: more mature, clearly happy. There is a lunch, with much laughter. Looking around the table, Jakob thinks, They have survived. They prosper. They have come to terms with Frank’s death – far better than I.
.
When Jakob returns to Brooklyn that evening, with the satisfaction that one thing, at least, has been resolved, he finds a letter waiting for him. It is in an unknown hand, from Mount Olivet Hospital. It tells him that, early this morning, a little before dawn, Ayakou fell into a state of unconsciousness. By ten o’clock, he was dead.
Chapter 39
London, 51˚31’N, 0˚7’W
October 1896
‘Isobel Kirkpatrick, with the fair hair? A lecturer?’
‘That surprises you?’
Mark leans back in his chair, assessing whether Flora is teasing him.
They are sitting in a cafe near the museum. It is a habit they have fallen into, after discussing the progress he is making with the mummies. They can talk about their university past now, without rancour. Flora enjoys these meetings; she realises she has missed this – the easy rapport with someone her own age, in front of whom she does not have to act.
‘In Manchester. She’s one of the youngest female lecturers in the country.’
‘I thought she didn’t have to earn a living! Don’t look at me like that! I say, “Good for her.” Do you still see her?’
‘Rarely. We write. Poppy, too, but she’s a doctor’s wife in the country, and he doesn’t find me a respectable friend, I don’t think. I miss them.’
‘Hmm. I don’t miss those fellows. Certainly not Herbert and Oliver. Tom Outram was the only one who was worth anything. He wrote to my father, you know, trying to find out why I left – offering to help. You and he were the only ones who bothered. I wonder what he’s doing now.’
‘He went to South Africa, I believe. He wanted to go into the law, but was discouraged, because of the stammer.’
‘Pity. He was clever. But it was hard to tell, since he could hardly get a word out.’ He smiles sympathetically. ‘Few of us have fulfilled our promise, then. I except you, of course.’
‘You’re a lecturer, Mark!’
‘At the polytechnic.’
‘How many lecturers there come from the East End?’
‘That’s what you mean: I’ve done well for someone like me.’
Flora doesn’t bother to reply. He is still morbidly sensitive, but she is no longer afraid of his moods.
‘The pay is terrible. It’s hardly enough to maintain a family on, let alone . . .’
He falls silent. He discourages mention of his family. She has assumed it is not a happy home, or is that wishful thinking?
Then, over the pot of tea, he makes an impassioned declaration: his marriage is over; they live apart, each blaming and resenting the other.
‘Seeing you brings it all back. How different things could have been. The worst part is I know it was all my fault.’
For a terrible moment, she thinks he might cry.
‘Mark, please . . .’
‘You were the best part of my life.’
‘What about your children?’ she says, after a pause.
He snorts. ‘It’s only Samuel I care about, not the twins. I wanted to do the right thing – but I ended up hating her for it. And she will poison him against me.’
‘He will make up his own mind.’
But Mark has decided not to be consoled – a mood she remembers without regret. She thinks, Thank God; if we had married, it would have been a disaster, for both of us.
‘Being with you was a glimpse of a better life, but I knew, even then, it wasn’t for the likes of me.’
‘For heaven’s sake, that is morbid self-pity. If you don’t stop, I’m leaving.’
‘Go! Back to Kensington. ’Twas ever thus, was it not?’
‘“It” is what you choose it to be! I chose my life, and it’s far from perfect, but I’m not going to moan about it.’
‘Yes, I know . . . You’re right.’
His mood switches with alarming suddenness. He smiles at her with what looks like tender affection.
‘I’m sorry, Flora, to be such a bore. We shouldn’t have met again; despite the mess with Edie, I was bumping along all right, until then.’
‘I’m glad we did.’
‘Are you, really?’
He looks at her so beseechingly that Flora puts her hand on his arm and nods. He puts his hand over hers, crushing it in his grip.
He says, in a different voice – low, passionate, ‘You must know I’ve always loved you, Flora. Even when I left . . . when I could only read about you, I always loved you.’
Flora does not really believe this. She thinks it the sort of wild declamation to which he has always been prone. She imagines, for a moment, believing him. The truth is, she wants to believe him, because there are times when even a counterfeit passion is better than none.
She finds that it is easier to commit adultery a second time. She is no longer shocked by her depravity; that is a given. And she can tell herself that, because she did not plan this, it is not really her responsibility. Perhaps it is also easier because she is not in love. What she feels for Mark is a mixture of nostalgia, pity, affection – and she is attracted to him; she always had been.
A few days after the scene in the cafe, she goes to his rooms – he has moved out of his marital home and taken lodgings in Bloomsbury. A dingy semi-basement, but, with entrances both front and back, it has the advantage of being discreet.
The first time they are in his bed, she has to hold him back and ask, in an embarrassed whisper, whether he ‘has anything’. He mutters that he doesn’t. (
Why not, since we arranged this the day before yesterday? she thinks, with prophetic irritation.) He is so downcast that she agrees to his withdrawing. But he pulls out almost as soon as he has come in. He apologises, saying it has been a long time . . . He has not, despite everything, had much experience! She reassures him that it doesn’t matter. He seems overwhelmingly happy to be with her. And it is so sweet to be lying next to a warm, naked body, to be caressed and kissed, and told she is beautiful, that, at first, she believes she is happy too.
Their meetings settle into a pattern. Once a week, she goes to his lodgings. She has to revise her unconscious assumption that all men (Freddie excepted) would touch her in more or less the same way. Mark may labour earnestly (and properly armoured, which helps prolong matters), but no matter how long he goes on, she does not approach the finish. It is not unpleasant – far from it; it is very nice, but . . .
Mark does not seem to be aware of this. When she hints at her lack of fulfilment (‘Perhaps . . .’ she says, taking his hand and guiding it between her legs), he is at first puzzled, then sulky.
‘Why do you not come to it in the natural way?’ he asks. ‘To resist, as you do . . . it’s unwomanly. If you were just less wilful . . .’
Flora is momentarily speechless. ‘I’m not resisting! It just . . . It doesn’t . . .’
She remembers Freddie, with a terrible coldness. Is there something wrong with her? Jakob didn’t think so, she thinks, with a surge of despairing longing.
‘Perhaps it’s the, er, the preservative?’ Mark says, looking at it anxiously. ‘It isn’t healthy, really, for man or woman. It impedes a true union.’
Flora does not think it is the preservative – and is certainly not prepared to try without – but does not know what else to say. He has changed more than she realised. Where did their empirical experiments go? Where his curiosity, his thirst for truth?
‘Or maybe you don’t love me enough.’
‘Oh, Mark . . .’ She strokes his face, and kisses him.
.
She kisses him because she cannot tell him that he is right. She feels affection for him, but she remembers what it was like to love him, and that is not what she feels now. And she remembers what she felt with Jakob, and that is different again. Once the truth is dead, how can it hurt to bury it again and again? The next time they meet, she allows herself to demonstrate more pleasure than she in fact feels, and this gives him so much happiness that she wonders why she didn’t do it sooner. Her feeling is one of relief, and pleasure at giving him pleasure. What harm can such a small falsehood do?