London Lodgings

by Claire Rayner

  But somehow it was not entirely. It was hard for her to say quite what her problem was, but it was there. She did not feel ill precisely but she did not feel well either. There were vague pains in her middle that sometimes made her catch her breath and want to bend double, and there were very unpleasant attacks of the flux that made her keep to her room, grateful for the fact that her father had installed one of the new-fangled water closets in the house before his death. These attacks left her weak and sweating and caused Eliza much concern.

  ‘You should talk to Mr Fildes, Mum,’ she said earnestly. ‘It ain’t right to have you ill like this. And it makes me feel bad. I’m as careful as can be to give you food that’s not been spoiled, and it ain’t always easy in this hot weather. I can promise you. So it worries me, I tell you straight.’

  ‘Oh, Eliza, don’t be silly,’ Tilly said. ‘If it were spoiled food we would all be ill, would we not? No, it is just a tiresome thing – it goes away as fast as it comes.’

  And so it did; usually just at the point when she determined she should, after all, ask Mr Fildes to call; and then she would forget about it until it happened again. Jem fretted over her health a good deal, but she told him firmly that was due to his exaggerated feelings for her.

  ‘You really must not let your mind run away with you,’ she said. ‘I am perfectly fit, but sometimes I am more susceptible than most people. It is perhaps a remaining weakness from the illness I had all those years ago, before Duff was born.’

  Even Dorcas took an interest, if only out of irritation. ‘I find it very boring to sit with you at table when you refuse every other dish,’ she told Tilly firmly. ‘It makes me feel as though I’m some sort of glutton, to eat when you refuse. I wish you wouldn’t do it to me!’

  ‘I don’t do it on purpose,’ Tilly retorted. ‘I just have a degree of indigestion. It’s no more than that.’

  ‘Then you should try taking a little brandy. It settles the stomach amazingly.’ Dorcas insisted and poured some for her from the decanter that still stood where Austen Kingsley had left it, all those years before. And to Tilly’s surprise it was comforting and now, when she had an attack of pain, she would let Dorcas pour her a little brandy from the decanter, and eventually would feel better. And so it went on all through the summer.

  In August Dorcas planned to go away to Brighton and take Sophie with her. Duff was bereft at the very idea and when Dorcas offered to take the boy as well, he was incandescent with joy.

  ‘Oh, Mamma, please let me! I couldn’t bear it if you said no. You can’t say no, Mamma, it would be too much! Oh, please, Mamma! Sophie says they play on the beach and paddle in the water and it’s the best sort of fun in the whole world. You must let me go, Mamma – and it’s a train journey too.’

  ‘But Duff, it’s not right that you should live with someone else for so long! I cannot allow it. I know you would like the seaside but –’

  Duff burst into tears – a rare thing for him – and fled from her. He refused to be comforted for the rest of the day. It almost tore her in two; and she felt a deep and powerful hatred for Dorcas for putting her in such a position.

  It was clearly absurd to expect Dorcas to care for both children for a whole month. She was far too casual a mother in Tilly’s estimation to care for her own, let alone two. ‘Indeed,’ Tilly told Jem. ‘If I were not here to take care that Sophie goes to bed at the right time and eats what she should, I don’t know what would happen to her. How can I let Dorcas take Duff away?’

  ‘You can’t,’ Jem said. ‘But you could go as well.’

  ‘I go as – oh, please, Jem, don’t be absurd! I can’t do that! There is the house to run and –’

  ‘Now, let’s think about this,’ Jem said in his usual stolid fashion. ‘Is there anything here Eliza could not do, especially with both you and Mrs Oliver and the children away? She could run the house well enough and take care of the Misses K and F as well as you do. She has Lucy and Kate, after all! I will be here to watch over her, if you wish – I could call most days and be sure all is done as you would like, though I doubt that Eliza would need such supervision.’

  ‘The cost,’ Tilly said a little helplessly but knew that wasn’t really a problem. The savings made by taking Duff away and having Dorcas and Sophie out of the house as well would just cover the costs of seaside lodgings and she had by now also saved a sufficient sum for modest accommodation in Brighton.

  She put the idea to Eliza tentatively after some prodding from Jem. While she was not certain at first because Jem had suggested it (Eliza was still disapproving of the lack of propriety in her mistress’s friendship with a shopkeeper, but was slowly becoming accustomed to it), when her much adored Duff threw himself at her, having heard from Sophie, an inveterate eavesdropper, that the possibility was being discussed, she agreed that it was an excellent idea.

  ‘It’ll get rid of that peaky look you got, Mum,’ she said. ‘If you rest easy and take care of yourself, and take some gentle exercise by the sea, you’ll come back as good as new. And as for Master Duff – well – he’ll have as happy a time as a boy can have. So go and have all the rest you can.’

  Tilly capitulated, and took a pair of modestly-priced rooms in a small house in Montpelier Terrace, which was convenient for the sea as well as for Dorcas’s far more expensive lodgings on the front, and not too far from the shops in the town. So on a hot morning in the first week of August she shepherded Duff and a multitude of bags and boxes into the train bound for Brighton. Jem, who had insisted on coming to the station to see them on their way, helped her with it all, and she bade him goodbye there.

  He looked up at her from the platform, his face tilted towards her as she stood at the carriage window looking out, and for the first time she was aware of how dear a face it had become to her. There was none of the excitement she remembered feeling with Frank all those years ago when she had become engaged, but something better. He looked warm and kindly and utterly dependable and on an impulse she leaned through the window and kissed his forehead.

  ‘Dear Jem,’ she said. ‘You are so very good to me. I am grateful.’

  When she lifted her head and looked at him again she was startled. There were tears in his eyes, and she bit her lip as he mopped them away quite unselfconsciously and said, ‘You see? It is just a matter of time, dear Tilly. Soon you will love me half as much as I love you, and that will be enough for me. Goodbye, dearest one. I wish you the happiest of holidays. And don’t be surprised if one Sunday I come to see you both.’

  The train shuddered and there was a loud shriek of whistle and a roar of steam and voices lifted in excitement and he stepped back. ‘Take care, dear Tilly,’ he called and waved as the train dragged itself with majestic slowness out of the station, and she stood and watched him as his figure diminished on the receding platform. He never stopped waving until the train was out of sight.

  Brighton was indeed delightful. The sun shone on a glittering sea and the pebbles on the beach reflected back the glitter with an enthusiasm all their own. Children ran and whooped and wept bitterly when they fell and skinned their knees, donkeys brayed as they trotted along the front pulling governess carts, and fashionable ladies paraded daily in one extraordinary toilette after another.

  Tilly would spend the mornings sitting on a bench on the promenade beneath a parasol, a novel on her lap, but rarely reading. She would watch the children and listen to Dorcas’s desultory chatter on the days when she kept her company (not a great many, in fact, for now that Tilly had joined her and was able to care for Sophie, Dorcas could visit the many new friends she had made, she told Tilly, and would vanish early in the day). It was as agreeable a way to spend time as she could have imagined. She enjoyed watching the children slowly brown until they looked like hot buttered toast, with fine golden hair glinting on their arms and legs, and her own indigestion and flux vanished completely.

  It was not only her physical strength that increased; so did her feelings for Jem. When
he had first declared himself she had of course been flattered and as she now freely admitted to herself, gleeful at having succeeded in fixing a man’s interest when Dorcas had so signally failed. But now it was different. The long evenings spent with him, the tranquil Sunday afternoons, had become important to her. She did more than enjoy his company and friendship now, she realized; she actually needed it. And that made her think a great deal about the future, and sometimes drift into a daydream in which she was no longer Mrs Quentin but had become Mrs Leland.

  But that was dangerous thinking, she told herself. There was plenty of time to let matters run as they chose. She must not hurry them, for that could lead to precipitous actions, which were never wise; and she would look about her for the children and not settle again until she had identified them among the many who played on the pebbles, building stone castles and digging for crabs. Once she had done that she would settle again to her novel and determinedly not think about Jem.

  It was on one such occasion that it happened. She was not at first able to see the children and alarm lifted in her and she jumped to her feet and walked further along the promenade to seek them; and then at last saw them down the beach near the water’s edge. The sea was tranquil this warm morning, but the tide was coming in and that worried her and she beckoned the children to come closer to the shore, calling to them loudly above the hubbub. At last they heard and obediently came back up the beach to a point she regarded as safe, and she turned to walk back to her seat.

  And stopped short. Standing in her way was a nurse with a Bath chair. She was leaning forwards and listening to her patient, who was wearing a straw hat with a broad brim and was wrapped in a blanket despite the warm sunshine. Tilly stepped aside to allow the nurse to push the chair on its way, but she did not. She straightened up, looked sharply at Tilly and then reached down and set the brake on the back wheels. Then she walked away to lean a little obviously out of hearing, but well within sight, against the railings that lined the promenade.

  ‘I would have known your voice anywhere,’ the figure in the chair said in a hoarse croak. ‘How are you, my dear Tilly?’

  She frowned, startled, and tilting her sunshade to give her less light against which to squint, she tried to identify the face under the hat brim. He lifted his head in response, with what seemed a huge effort, and it was then that she recognized him. The cheeks were sunken and the eyes glittered far too brightly, and she caught her breath and said, ‘Freddy? Freddy? Is it really you? What has happened to you? I cannot believe how dreadful you look!’

  Chapter Thirty

  THE NURSE FUSSED a little at Freddy’s demands but eventually agreed, and went away up the promenade with a disapproving waddle, leaving the chair firmly braked beside Tilly’s bench; and at last they could talk.

  It was clearly very difficult for him, for his voice seemed quite destroyed. He was hoarse in a way that hurt her to listen to it, making her want to cough for him, and it was clear that every breath he drew was an effort. But he was determined to speak and she realized quickly that preventing him from doing so would cause him even more distress than letting him have his way.

  ‘I have prayed and hoped something like this would happen,’ he whispered. ‘Prayed and – and –’ He was interrupted by a spasm of coughing that racked his body and she put out one hand to steady him. He seemed grateful.

  ‘I am sorry about this. It is the condition, you see.’

  ‘The condition –’ she said carefully and he turned his head towards her and managed a smile. It was heartrending to see the shadow of the old transformation to his smile; now the face was so cadaverous and the sockets so pronounced that the smile could only flicker.

  ‘It is not obvious? Consumption – I did not think you could imagine it was anything else.’

  ‘Oh, Freddy, I am so sorry! Should you not be somewhere more suitable for chest complaints? Switzerland, perhaps.’

  ‘It is too late to consider that.’ He rested his chin on his chest for a moment. ‘We did speak of it, but I would not go while Alice still lived.’

  ‘Alice? Oh, no.’

  ‘I’m afraid so. She took ill first. It was Mary. The maid, you remember, who had looked after Alice for so long? She died quite suddenly, coughing blood one night, until – well, she died. And not a month later it started in Alice, though I suspected it had been there long before. I, of course, returned to her as soon as her cousin called for me, and she seemed glad enough to have me there. We were not precisely reconciled, but she allowed me to stand her friend, even if she could no longer regard me as a husband. Not that it was for long. She went down so fast – so very fast. I stayed with her, of course, even though I knew that the disease had touched me too.’ He shook his head, slowly and with difficulty. ‘Our family, such as it was, was afflicted sorely. It does so with consumption, as you well know.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say, Freddy. Only to tell you that I am so, so sorry.’

  ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter any more. I’m so tired, you see, that I just don’t mind any more. At first I was so angry …’ His voice fluttered away like a sigh and they both sat in silence, staring at the light-dancing, restless sea, and then he stirred himself. ‘I went away from Staffordshire where Alice had lived, and came back to London and thought of coming to see you and telling you of Alice’s death, but how could I? I was touched with the disease too, and I knew I was too far gone with it to speak to you of my – to speak to you. If I were not fit to travel to improve my health, as my doctors assured me was the case, how could I be fit to speak to you?’

  ‘But I am your friend, Freddy! Of course you should have come to me. I might never have known of your distress had there not been this fortunate meeting.’

  ‘It is what I prayed for,’ he said simply, his voice seeming stronger for a moment. ‘I could not come to you, it would not have been right. But if providence sent you to me – ah, then, it would be permissible to speak to you. That was what I believed. And I was right to do so, wasn’t I? For here you are.’

  ‘Here I am,’ she said, and reached beneath the rug to take his hand. It was hot and moist and breathtakingly thin and she held it close but lightly for fear of hurting those sticklike bones.

  ‘I have never stopped thinking about you, Tilly,’ he said. ‘I yearned – oh, you will never know how much – to know of you and how you were and what had happened to you.’

  ‘Oh, as to that, I can tell you very shortly,’ she said. ‘I lead a quiet and insignificant life and –’

  ‘Never insignificant. To me you are all the significance there is.’

  She let that pass, feeling her face flush and glad of the shadow thrown by her parasol. ‘You must not say so.’

  ‘I tried to ask the tenants who took our house after we left how you were, but they would not speak to me. They were Alice’s tenants, you see, in law, not mine, and she had told them tales of me that – well, it matters not a whit now.’

  Again he stopped for some time, clearly marshalling his strength, and then began again, ‘But they have left the house now.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It has been empty for some time. I did wonder why.’

  ‘I kept hoping for a while that perhaps I could return and live there myself. To see you and watch you and – well, it is not to be. I have been here in Brighton in the care of a doctor who is supposed to have answers to consumption, but he has not. I believe the time left to me is to be measured in days rather than weeks, or at best weeks rather than months.’

  ‘Oh, please don’t say so, Freddy.’

  ‘I was always a realist and so, I believe, are you, Tilly. It is a foul disease and no chooser of its victims. It has its grip on me, and I must be ready for its final tightening. Please don’t be distressed. Now I have found you again I feel – oh, so much better.’

  She looked at him and shook her head. ‘But why, Freddy? Why should that make any difference?’

  ‘I learned to love you so quickly,’ he said. ‘It
was only a short time, wasn’t it, that we spent together? But your gentleness and – and your good sense – slipped into my heart and stayed there. They are there still.’

  She laughed in spite of her anxiety about him. ‘Oh, dear! I cannot believe all this. It is so absurd. I am a widow, a plain and ordinary enough person and yet first Jem and now you – I really cannot –’ And again she shook her head.

  ‘Jem?’ His voice sharpened slightly in spite of its weakness, and she bit her lip at her own stupid tactlessness.

  ‘He is but a friend, Freddy. Truly. He is a shopkeeper in Brompton who – well, he has a tendresse for me, I can’t deny that. I have told him he is my friend and no more – although –’

  ‘Although you are coming to like him well,’ he said a little oddly, and she thought for a moment and then nodded.

  ‘I could not lie on such a matter to you – not when you have – well, yes. In the past months his company has become very agreeable to me.’

  He smiled, a faint ghost again of the old look. ‘Well, I am glad to hear it. I am jealous of course and there is some of the old anger in me again, but I am glad you have him. I shall feel the happier knowing you are in good hands.’

  ‘I am in my own hands, Freddy,’ she said with a sudden edge to her voice. ‘I have been these many years now. I have run my house, and reared my small boy and –’

  ‘Oh, forgive me. I did not ask after his welfare. That beautiful baby. I can never forget how I first saw him – in your garden.’

  She reddened again, ‘You must not remind me of that day. I continue to be embarrassed.’

  ‘You should not be. A mother and her baby is a beautiful sight.’

  ‘Well, he is not a baby now.’ She turned her head purposefully to look down the beach to the children who were clearly in her sight and busy about the building of the most massive of pebble boats. Sophie, her gown pulled up to her brown knees, was sitting in it in a very imperious manner as Duff toiled away at the side, shoring up the walls which persisted in collapsing. ‘There he is. The two in the pebble boats – by the breakwater. The girl is the child of my tenant. The boy is mine – you see?’