by Anna Jacobs
A small private ceremony was arranged to remedy this omission and make a Christian of the boy, as Mr Hendry joked. But that raised the vexing question of who would stand as godparents.
Just as Helen had given up hope of finding anyone, Roxanne turned up again in her life, a plumper, richly-dressed Roxanne, who spoke warmly of her Jack and seemed not to miss the theatre at all. She’d had come to invite them to take tea with her.
‘Will you stand as godmother to Harry?’ Helen asked on the first visit. ‘The poor boy hasn’t yet been christened.’
‘Me?’ Roxanne gave one of her hearty laughs. ‘What the devil do I know about being a godmother?’
‘You know a lot about being kind and that's what matters.’ Helen tried to think of some way of persuading Roxanne, because her worst fear in the world was that something would happen to her and then, she was sure, Robert would abandon Harry without a second thought.
It took Helen a while to persuade her friend, but in the end, Roxanne agreed and even promised that if anything ever happened to Helen, she would look after the boy.
Paul Hendry volunteered to act as godfather, seeing Helen's shame and despair at being unable to produce one, so the formalities were more or less attended to. If only Robert had attended the ceremony, thought Helen wistfully, it would have been quite perfect, for dear Harry was so good, not crying at all when the man splashed water on his head. He simply laughed and tried to reach the water in the font himself, all the while observing everything with his bright little eyes.
Afterwards, Roxanne took her and the Hendrys out for a meal at a respectable inn and bought a bottle of good red wine with which to toast the boy's health.
As she was leaving, Roxanne looked at Helen. ‘How about you and Harry coming over to tea sometimes? Got to keep an eye on him now, haven't I?’
‘Oh, Roxanne, I'd love that.’
‘Good. I'll send Jack's carriage to pick you up on Monday. Can't have my precious godson walking all that way and tiring himself out, can I?’ Though it was Helen getting tired that worried her, for her friend was thinner, seeming nervous and slightly on edge all the time, as if waiting for something bad to happen.
Autumn came and Robert still hadn’t found regular work in the theatre. Nor was he doing well in other ways. His luck had deserted him utterly, he complained, and he became very morose, staying away from home more and more, then reappearing looking gaunt and dirty. He would eat up all the food Helen had, as if he hadn’t fed for days, then sleep for a while and change his linen, before vanishing again. He had completely stopped making love to her, to her great relief.
Harry stayed at the other side of the room when his father was around, staring wide-eyed at the strange man, who snarled at him to be quiet if he so much as opened his mouth.
Helen now left most of her savings in Roxanne's care, for she’d lost money a few times.
Once, when the theatre was closed for redecorating, that had left her and Harry without much food for a day or two, because Robert stayed at home and she didn’t dare get out her hidden money.
Mostly, however, she managed to support herself and her son by her needle and her flair for designing costumes. Seamstresses were ten a penny, the manager of the New Moon Theatre told his owners, but Mrs Perriman knew what was needed on stage and could make a bit of cloth go a long way, changing a gown completely with only a few touches of trimming. That was why he paid her the princely sum of fifteen shillings a week. She’d saved them all a lot of money with those costumes and was worth more than fifteen shillings, if she only knew it, but thank goodness she didn't.
One day Robert came back and told Helen curtly that they'd have to move. ‘I can no longer afford such luxurious rooms.’
She stared at him in puzzlement. ‘But it's very cheap here - and besides - I usually pay the rent, not you!’
‘Well, I help out sometimes, don't I?’
‘Not very often.’
‘Well, it'll be less often from now on.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
He began to look shifty. ‘I mean, I've got a few debts. I can't afford to help you any more.
And,’ he didn't meet her eyes, ‘you'll need to move so that I’ll know you're all right.’
‘We'll be all right here on our own. I'd much rather stay here.’
‘Well, as it turns out, you'll have to move, for your own safety. And the boy's.’
She gaped at him, one hand at her throat. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You heard me. I meant what I said. You'll be safer elsewhere.’ He gave a short bark of laughter. ‘Oh, you're so naive! I owe money, you fool. There are some people who wouldn't scruple to try to get you to pay up. They might even take your possessions in lieu. Or your body. You'd fetch quite a bit as a whore if they dressed you up, pretty and ladylike.’
She looked at him in horror, tears filling her eyes.
‘Don't look at me like that, you silly bitch! It's only a temporary setback. And I came to warn you, didn't I? I didn't leave you to face things on your own.’
She guessed that was only because she might come in useful again one day. After all, her quarter's income would be due in another month.
He spoke more persuasively. ‘Look, I'll help you to move, find a cheaper room. That's all I can do for you at the moment. When I come back - ’
She pushed him away. ‘You’re leaving us?’ So it had come.
‘Not exactly,’ he said soothingly, as if she was a child.
‘What do you mean by that? Either you're leaving us or you're not! It seems quite straightforward to me.’
‘I don't know what I mean. I can't read the future, can I? Things will improve again, then maybe I'll be able to come back. I'll let you have something for the boy when I can, too. So I'm not exactly leaving you.’
She turned away from him and went over to stand by the window, staring out blindly at the grey sky and the whipping clouds. It would rain soon. Which seemed appropriate to her mood.
‘Just take your things and go. I'll find us somewhere else to live.’
He shrugged. ‘I'll send for them this evening, then. You can pack my trunk. I'm no hand at that sort of thing. Leave word at that damned church where you're going. If - when things get better, I'll come and see you, let you have some money. For the boy's sake.’
‘And that's the only reason I'll take it - for the boy. Go away! Leave us alone! I want nothing more from you, Robert Perriman.’
He scowled at her. ‘It'd have been different if I'd been able to get a proper job in the theatre.
We'd have been all right then. This is all Roxanne’s fault.’
‘What on earth has she done?’
‘Got rid of me then sold the company that I made successful.’
‘It wasn’t her fault at all. You'd have found some other excuse to leave us. You prefer your gambling to your wife and son.’
Silence lay between them, thick with the ice of unspoken recrimination. ‘Please go, before Harry wakes up,’ she prompted at last. And didn’t start to weep until her husband’s footsteps had faded into the distance.
With Mrs Hendry's help, she found herself another room, a much smaller one in a house without a garden, but at least it was in a respectable street and it cost only half of what the other rooms had cost, so she could manage it quite nicely from her wages.
When she got back from looking at the lodgings, she found that Robert's things had gone, and so had another of her little hoards - also Harry's silver spoon. That upset her most of all, but she didn’t allow herself to give in to her grief until the child was fast asleep.
A week later she saw the spoon for sale in the window of a pawnbroker's shop, so she took out some of her savings and bought it back again. She knew it was a foolish extravagance, but it was the only thing the child had to prove that, on her side at least, he came of gentle stock.
But she left the spoon with Roxanne afterwards, for safety.
One day, when the manager
was paying out the wages, he shook his head when she went to collect her earnings. ‘Didn't your husband tell you? He came and picked your money up yesterday. Hey! Are you all right?’
She felt quite frozen with shock.
‘He didn't tell you, did he?’ the woman next to her said sympathetically. ‘Buggers aren't they, husbands? What did you give it to him for, Percy? She’s the one who bloody earned it.’
Helen waited till the others had gone, then begged the manager not to give her husband any more money. But he and Robert were cronies and every now and then he did so, for old times'
sake.
‘Why did you do it?’ she would plead. ‘How am I to feed my son if you don't give me the money I've earned?’
‘Oh, you seem to manage. It's just once in a while. I wouldn't do it too often. I know you need the money. But surely you don't want poor old Robert to starve?’
In the end, Roxanne found out about this and, after raging at Helen for not asking for help sooner, she spoke to her Jack about the problem. He went and saw the theatre manager, and he also traced and spoke to Robert.
Helen never found out what Jack said, what threat he used to stop Robert preying on her, but it was effective and after that, her wages weren’t touched again. But the manager seemed disapproving, somehow, as if she was denying a natural law, and would slap the money down on the table with a sarcastic, ‘There it is! Every penny.’
She began to wonder how long he would keep her on at the New Moon now. She was worried about a lot of things.
From then on, Helen managed well enough. Without Robert to feed, her money went a lot further.
She never cared what she ate herself, having been brought up simply to clear her plate, whatever it contained. Harry was too small to eat a lot and she made his clothes from scraps of material she picked up cheaply. She was even saving a little money, just in case she fell ill, or Harry needed something.
One day, perhaps, she would have enough to set up a shop, or maybe keep lodgings for gentlemen. Her ambitions for herself went no higher.
If Robert leaves you in peace, said the sharp little voice in her head. If he doesn't turn up again.
Well, if he does, I'll have nothing to do with him, she told that little voice.
Hah! it replied.
Chapter 6
Helen celebrated her nineteenth birthday with Roxanne, and a few weeks later, in March 1838, she celebrated Harry's second birthday. Her life was hard, but not unpleasant, she decided that morning when taking stock. And she not only had her son but a good friend in Roxanne. That was more than she'd ever had before.
She’d heard nothing further from Robert since the day he left and he never sent her any money.
Not that she had expected him to. She didn’t try to find him. All she wanted was for him to leave her in peace, so that she could bring up her son decently - if not to be a gentleman, then at least to be an honest person.
But in July of that year, soon after the new young queen was crowned, Helen's peace came to an abrupt end. She and Harry came home laughing together one sunny evening, after a walk round some nearby public gardens, to find a figure collapsed across the doorway of the house in which they now lodged.
‘Robert!’
He was thin and haggard, with hectic spots of colour in his cheeks. She hesitated, then went to help him into a sitting position.
‘There you are at last!’ he said in a husky whisper, coughing and spluttering as he tried to get the words out. ‘Where the hell have you been at this hour of the day? That damned dragon of a landlady wouldn't let me into your room.’
‘We’ve been out for our walk.’ She waited for him to look at his son, but he didn’t.
He began to cough, long hacking scrapes of sound that made her throat contract in sympathy.
‘What's the matter, Robert?’ she asked when he stopped. ‘Why have you returned to me?’ She knew something must be the matter to bring him back.
‘Been ill. Still am. If you - won't help me - it's the workhouse,’ he rasped, fighting against the need to cough.
She closed her eyes for a moment, but knew she couldn’t turn him away. Roxanne would call her a fool, but she could not, she just could not turn away a sick man. This skeletal figure was the father of her son. Her husband.
‘We'd better get you inside, then. You go up first, Harry, and open the door.’ She supported Robert up the stairs, amazed at how light he felt. She must have grown since they got married, too, for he was now the same height as she was. Quite a small man, in fact. Why had she not realised that before?
Climbing the stairs took all Robert's energy and when they got into her room, he collapsed on the bed without a word of thanks for her help, lying there gasping for breath. And he still hadn’t even looked at his son. That hurt her most of all. She made him a warm drink, helped him sip it and soon he fell into a light doze.
Harry waited until Robert’s eyes had closed to speak, for he knew, from the time he spent with her at the theatre, that he mustn’t interrupt his mother when she was with other people. ‘Who's the man?’ he asked then, in a piercing whisper.
‘He's your father. He's not well, so he must sleep now. You sit quietly by the fire and play with your doggie, darling.’ She'd made the toy herself and it was the boy's favourite, for he loved all animals. One day, if things went well, she would get him a real dog, but not until they had a house of their own and a garden for it to play in.
‘I’ll find us something to eat, shall I?’ she asked a few minutes later, realising she’d been sitting worrying about what Robert’s return would mean. She tried to keep a cheerful tone in her voice, though she felt sick and apprehensive. Somehow she knew that this didn’t bode well for her and her son.
Grimly she did her evening chores, then set about preparing a makeshift bed on the floor for herself and Harry. Luckily the child thought this great fun, and rolled about on the bed with his toy dog until he fell asleep.
Helen woke Robert, fed him a little bread and milk, and then lay down on the floor beside Harry.
But the worrying continued, thoughts going round and round in her head in the darkness. She would not share a bed with Robert again, she decided as the long hours dragged past. She had no love left for him now. She wondered if he would try to force her, but she didn't think she would have much to fear physically from this husk of a man. And anyway, he only wanted her body after a winning streak. Not when he was losing.
She was bitterly sorry he’d come back into their lives. She’d not have cared if she’d never seen him again.
It was a week before Robert was fit to talk about the future. After his initial collapse, he did nothing but sleep and eat. Sometimes he lay watching Helen with a look of puzzlement on his face; at other times, he watched his son, with the same faintly puzzled air, as if he couldn’t believe the sturdy little boy with the honey-coloured curls and rosy cheeks was his.
Harry scowled across the room whenever he noticed ‘the man’ staring, and avoided going near him.
Helen looked after her husband as well as she could but refused to miss her work in order to stay with him, or to leave Harry alone with him at any time.
‘You must manage as best you can during the day,’ she told Robert coldly the first morning. ‘If I don't go and earn some money, we'll all starve.’
He nodded, seeing the sense in that, and snuggled down under the covers. ‘Y're a good wife,’ he breathed as his eyes closed.
But she didn't feel like a good wife.
Roxanne scolded her furiously when she found out from Harry that Helen had allowed Robert to come back into her life. ‘Have you run completely mad?’ she demanded. ‘He left you to fend for yourself. He even stole the child's christening spoon! Not to mention your wages, until my Jack put a stop to that. You've had no word from him for nearly eighteen months! Turn him out, for heaven's sake! Let him fend for himself! Best of all, run away. Go somewhere he'll never find you. I’ll help you do that.’
Helen was very tempted to accept this offer, but something held her back and eventually she sighed and said, ‘I can't.’
‘Of course you can.’
‘No. He's still my husband, you see. I vowed in church to take him for better or for worse.’ Well, she knew she must have made those vows, but she didn’t remember the actual wedding ceremony.
She gave her friend the ghost of a smile. ‘Blame the way I was brought up, Roxanne love. I can't lightly dismiss my sacred vows, even if he does.’
‘There's nothing sacred about vows made to Robert Perriman! You have to think of the boy now.
Throw the scoundrel out. Or come and live here with me for a few weeks till he’s gone.’
But Helen still shook her head. ‘No. I can't do that. I gave my solemn word, in church. I find I can't break that word now, however much my common sense tells me it would be the best thing to do.’
‘He'll just sponge off you until he's better, then he'll vanish again, probably taking everything you own with him.’
For a second time Helen shook her head. ‘I don't think he will get better, Roxanne. Or not for long. He has - I'm almost sure of it - developed consumption. I've seen the disease many times. I had a lot of practice at visiting the sick when I lived with my parents. Robert's more ill than he realises.’
‘If he's that ill, think about Harry! You don't want the boy to fall ill, too, do you? Get rid of Robert for the child’s sake, at least, even if you won't do it for yourself! Please, love!’
But underneath her quiet exterior, Helen remained stubbornly convinced about where her duty lay. ‘Harry never goes near his father. He doesn't like him. And Robert - well, he just lies there quietly and does as I ask. If he ever tried to hurt the boy, I would leave him. I think he realises that.
But he doesn't do anything.’ She sighed again. ‘He's so thin and tired. You’d hardly recognise him.’
Roxanne just sniffed and told her again she was quite mad.
The next day Robert said abruptly, ‘They say it's consumption.’