Girl in a Blue Dress

by Gaynor Arnold

  I was learning a lot, too—how to shop and how to cook. He’d propel me around the markets, showing me how to avoid bad meat and rotten fruit, and the costers who’d palm the small change. His quick eye would see some bargain item—candle snuffers, sugar tongs—and in a flash, they were ours. I made many errors as I struggled to learn, but he’d shrug them off with a laugh: Try not to set the food alight next time, Dodo—that is a shade more done than I care for! Not so much fat in the pan, perhaps! He liked to see me with my apron on, though, poring over recipes with smudges of flour on my cheek, or sitting and mending by the fire. This is happiness, he would say, leaning back in the chair and surveying the whole scene with those bright eyes of his.

  But he was not content with Mrs. Quinn’s for long. His weekly stories—Adventures of a Young Man with No Means—had attracted much attention; he had a play in rehearsal about a comic servant and his master, which I thought very funny; and he was about to start some new stories—Miggs’ Tales—for a monthly magazine. “Another fifty pounds a year!” he crowed. “We must find a better class of lodging, now—more befitting to the One and Only, don’t you think?”

  So after only three months of marriage, we were piling all our belongings—our brass bedstead, our chest of drawers, his desk and chair, my piano, and a small Turkish rug—on a cart, and setting off for the superior delights of Wellard Street. Emmie cried bitter tears as she waved us off from Mrs. Quinn’s doorstep: “Don’t forget me, sir! Don’t forget me, will you?” Her thin little form was shaking with grief. And Alfred, his own eyes streaming, called back: “Never fear, little Emmie. The whole world will remember you!”

  No sooner had we moved, than Miggs’ Tales became the most talked-about serial ever. Yet although the monthly numbers were sold out, and Alfred’s name was on the lips of half of London, he was afraid it might not last. “Fame is fickle,” he said. “I cannot rely on my writing alone. I have to have a steady income.” So he continued to work on newspaper articles—rising at six—before taking himself to Webster and Potts at half past eight, and then writing the next number of Miggs in the evening: “I shall dissolve into ink, at this rate, Dodo—starting at my fingers and liquefying slowly until you have to catch me in a bucket and carry me around with you, like Isabella and her basil pot!” But he did not liquefy; rather he seemed to sparkle with energy. He would sometimes come home as late as ten o’clock, saying he’d been at his wanderings in the City, as far as Deptford or Greenwich or out on the Old Kent Road. “What for?” I’d ask. And he’d look at me with astonishment. “What for? For the love of it, Dodo. To see the sights, to meet the people, to suck it all in.” He had a new tale in mind already. The wandering of a poor orphan girl, born in the work house, sent out as a maid-of-all-work to a grim old spinster.

  “Emmie?” I’d asked him excitedly when he told me of it. “Is this the story of our little Emmie?”

  “Emmie as she might have been,” he’d replied. “Emmie who will find her mother and come into a fortune! Emmie who will become a lady at last!”

  “But isn’t that most unlikely?” I replied.

  He paused for a moment. “Is it? I find life is remarkable for its unlikely qualities; the way fortunes can change in an instant. The tide of the river flows in and out, Dodo. At some point the in becomes the out; the out, in. Thus the poorest child can become rich and famous; and the most abandoned, neglected, and friendless urchin can discover himself to be a prince. That is the great thing, my love. See what has happened to Yours Truly in but a few months!”

  I pointed out that he was not a bit like Emmie—that to my knowledge he had not been abandoned, neglected, and left friendless; that he had had family and education and people who loved him.

  A shadow passed over his face. Then he brightened. “Of course you are right, Dodo. And above all I have you, dearest. The very sweetest pussycat of a wife. The very dearest, softest little woman in the world!” And he lifted me off my feet and whirled me into the bedroom and threw me down on the bed.

  I protested: “Alfred! The supper will be even more ruined than it is now.”

  “Hang the supper!” he said, taking off his jacket and unbuttoning his waistcoat. “I have a tastier morsel here!”

  AFTER ONLY SIX months in Wellard Street we were on the move again. Miggs’ Tales and Little Amy were running simultaneously. We had doubled our income and were beginning to mix in literary circles. We needed an entire house this time, and one, moreover, in a respectable area. He came back one day saying he had found exactly such a house in Channon Street. “Room for your whole family and mine to come and stay, Dodo—and a study where I can be most furiously busy and hide from them all.” The house was indeed large—or at least very tall. It had three storys and a basement. Best of all it had a nice flushing water closet of which he was inordinately proud. “We’ll have the whole thing repainted,” he said, pulling me up the steep stairs and around the empty rooms. “Bright colors,” he said. “None of your drabs!” He ordered the latest creamware dinner service, he bought velvet curtains, bookcases, a new sofa, three new tables, candlesticks, and looking glasses galore. To celebrate, we had a watercolor of us both done by his very new best friend Charley Evans, which cost us five guineas, and which we hung over the mantel in pride of place. I thought we looked very well together and almost cried with the wonder of it all.

  It was at that juncture that Alice came to live with us. Kitty was on the way then, and Mama felt I needed a reliable companion during my confinement. I was delighted, of course. I loved both my sisters, and Sissy had always amused me with her stubborn determination and sharp-eyed view of the world and its inhabitants, but I had always favored Alice’s gentle companionship, and I now looked forward to the time we would spend together. For her part, Alice was only too pleased to come and be helpful to me—and moreover to be in London, to enjoy the theaters and meet all the influential people we had begun to know. Alfred had been quick to make friendships, and a host of writers, painters, and actors—including the famous Mr. Macready himself—came to our house and crammed into our first-floor drawing room, talking and laughing and drinking brandy-and-water. O’Rourke was a regular visitor, too, and always remembered to say something nice to me as I sat in the corner with my sewing. Alice was an asset at these times. Whereas I did not always know what to say when the men were talking of the Reform Act, the Poor Laws, and so forth, Alice would ask some innocent question, and they would all stop and be kind to her, and explain in simple terms what they were talking about. “Parliament’s a shop of old fools, anyway,” said someone, once. “We need a young person to sort it all out. A fresh vision. Let’s hope the young Queen will do it!” And Alfred said he was sure the young Queen would do it—and he was quite in love with her already for being about to do it. And he lifted Alice upon the piano stool and they all laughed and held up their glasses, toasting The Young Queen! until Alice blushed to her very roots.

  Alfred adored Alice. He could never praise her enough: She is so sweet and grave, Dodo. I could not wish for a better or more graceful spirit in the house. Much as I agreed, the words cut my heart a little as I wondered where my own grace and goodness had disappeared to, that he should admire them so much in her. Then, when she came to comb my hair and I caught sight of us both next to each other in the glass, I could see why: Alice was beautiful and dainty, with a cool, steady gaze—whereas I had become rather fleshy in my face and figure. When I looked at Alice, I could not but wish that I were fifteen again—or even nineteen and able to dance hornpipes around the parlor with a Certain Person until my feet ached.

  The truth was that I did not welcome the child I was carrying. It had come too soon. It was changing me into a mother before I had had proper time to be a wife. It was transforming me from a girl into a woman. Sometimes I did not think Alfred liked me so well as a woman. He did not like to see me retch, or sweat, or toil up the stairs with my gown kirtled up and panting with shortness of breath. He would look away and laugh, talking of my
interesting condition as if I had grown stout of my own accord, as an act of contrariness, as if he had nothing to do with it. Only O’Rourke took my part: Dodo, you’re a grand sight. Like a ship in full sail. Isn’t she, Alfred? And Alfred would say that if I walked into the bedstead one more time, we’d have a shipwreck, and then, heave-ho me hearties, it’ll be hard to get her afloat again!

  Of course, he worried continually about having another mouth to feed, saying he was working flat out as it was, and at this rate he was liable to drop down dead, pen in hand, before the child saw the light of day. I felt he almost blamed me for having allowed it. But what could I have done? “It’s not my fault, Alfred,” I said one day. “It is the way of life. I couldn’t prevent the baby, could I? Unless I prevented you too.” I could not help my voice quivering.

  “It is too late, now, anyhow,” he said crossly. “But perhaps we should use caution in the future.”

  “Caution?”

  “Well, I cannot afford to keep half London under my roof. Unless I write all day and far into the night. Which I am already damned near to doing.” As if to prove it, he picked up his pen and started to scribble in a furious manner.

  “We are only talking of one tiny baby, Alfred.”

  “Thin end of the wedge. Soon we’ll have dozens of ’em—crawling all over the carpet, cramming themselves into cupboards, climbing the chimneys, and lying about under gooseberry bushes. And all demanding silver spoons in their mouths.” He laughed, shortly.

  “What can I do?” I asked.

  “I don’t know! Speak to your mother.” He went on writing.

  “My mother! What could I possibly say to her?”

  “Then talk to my mother, if you prefer.”

  “Is it my business, then? Do I have to deny you? To deny myself …” My efforts to stop crying made me shudder so much I wondered if the baby could feel my distress through my flesh and bones.

  Alfred stopped his frantic scribbling, dashed his pen down, and put his head in his hands. Then he rushed over to me and flung himself at my feet in a movement so sudden that I nearly toppled over. “I am sorry, Dodo. Please forgive me. I am a man distraught. I have taken on so much. The rent, the furniture, the servants. I am so afraid—in case I lose everything I am striving to build. Everything I—we—might be about to enjoy. I know it is not your fault, but you don’t know what poverty can bring people to. You don’t know what terrible sights I have seen around me, Dodo. And the children of the poor—such little wretches! Such half-starved, half-clothed wretches! God save us from ever bringing a child to that kind of life!”

  I looked down on him with surprise. “But we are so far from that, Alfred. How could that happen? You will never let us down. You are the One and Only. You will be an even greater success. I am as sure of that as of anything in the world. You have a great gift. Your readers love every word you write.”

  His head rested against the unborn child. Tears flowed down his cheeks. “You are right; I am morbid. I need you to keep me steady. I love you more than anything. When I am cross and peevish, remember that.” He put his hand on my stomach. “And I love this Little One too. God bless her.”

  He always said Kitty would be a girl.

  I DON’T REMEMBER much of my confinement, except the pain, and a fat nurse who smelt of liquor when she bent over me to change the sheets. “You’ll be all right, dearie,” she said. “I’ve seen many a lying-in and you’re a strong ’un, with many more to come in the future, I don’t wonder, if we’re all spared, that is. But as I says to all my ladies, ‘Who knows what the future holds? We are not privy to the secrets of the Lord. We shall know His Mind only at the End,’ I says. ‘At the Final Trump.’ But in the meantime we must make the best of things. Take comfort where we can.” And she swigged at a little bottle she had in her pocket.

  “Make her go away,” I asked Alfred when he appeared through the mists at the bottom of the bed, resplendent in a purple waistcoat.

  “Who, my love?” he inquired. “Not our little girl, I hope? Not our little Kitty.”

  “Kitty?”

  He held up the white swaddled bundle. The baby seemed ugly, with very dark hair; I found it hard to be interested in her. But he seemed delighted. “She is like a little kitten. All soft and furry with her eyes closed tight.” He brought his head close to hers, and nuzzled her as a woman might.

  “But we decided on Mary if it were a girl,” I said faintly. I was almost too tired to care. But we had decided on Mary. He couldn’t change that.

  He bent and put his free arm around my shoulders, bringing the child close. She opened one eye and stared at me. He said, “But don’t you think Mary is such a very plain name? And Kitty suits her so much better.”

  I had no opinion; I could hardly see her. But I nodded my head, and he smiled. So Kitty it was. His entirely. His from the start.

  “The midwife,” I said when my next wave of strength came back. “Make her go. Let me have Alice.”

  He frowned. “Alice cannot manage on her own, dearest. She is too young, too delicate. Now don’t be selfish, Dodo. Mrs. Pratt is very experienced. She comes with the best of testimonials from the very best bedsides in London, and will have you up and about in no time.”

  I did not want to be up and about. I wanted to lie in bed forever, not to have to make any effort at all. I started to weep, rolling about on the pillow, not caring how I looked or who saw me.

  “Now, now, you’ll feel better when you have a fresh nightgown and your hair done, when you look pretty again. To be honest, my sweet, you do not look your best.”

  I screamed at him: “If I’m a fright, it’s your fault—all yours! I never wanted this baby! I don’t want her now! Take her away!”

  “They gets like this, sir.” Mrs. Pratt pushed her way forward, taking the baby from him. “It’s something that afflicts’em all, drab or duchess. Hysteria first, then melancholy. And general hatred of the male person. It’s soon over, but I suggest you keeps away for a bit. Let Us As Knows take charge.”

  “No.” I clung to him, my eyes on a level with the shiny stuff of his waistcoat. I could see the purple silk was shot with red. It danced in my face. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I said. Don’t leave me, Alfred.”

  “I think, dear, maybe I should. You are overwrought. You need to rest. I’ll see you tomorrow, when perhaps you will be more your old self. In the meantime, I have a Number to finish. My readers won’t thank me if it’s not done.”

  “You are always thinking of them! More than of me! I hate your readers!”

  “They are our bread-and-butter, Dodo. Without them, where would we be?”

  Then he peeled my fingers away from his and kissed me on the forehead. His sweet, fresh smell enveloped me, calmed me a little. “Well done, Dodo,” he whispered. “Well done.”

  “ARE YOU READY for the light now?” Wilson has come in again with the taper. She thinks it’s unnatural to sit in the dark. I’ll have to humor her, or she’ll interrupt me all night.

  “Yes, do,” I say.

  “It’s not good for you to brood, you know.”

  “I’m not brooding.”

  “What else do you call it, then? Don’t tell me you’re not thinking of him?” She bends to light the taper and starts to go around the lamps.

  “I’m thinking about when Kitty was born.”

  “Ah.” She stops a moment, then blows out the taper quickly.

  “Do you have children, Wilson?” It occurs to me I have never asked her that. All these years and I have never known. But on the other hand, she has never said.

  “Yes, madam. Or, rather I did. The Good Lord saw fit to take him.”

  “Oh. I’m very sorry. Very sorry, indeed.” I pause, wondering if I can intrude. “How old, may I ask?”

  “Ten, madam.”

  Ten. A little man, almost. “That must have been hard.”

  “Yes, madam. It was. The hardest thing ever.”

  “I lost children, too, you
know.”

  “I know.”

  Yes. Of course she knows. Everything about us has been public knowledge. He shared our life with them all—his Public—as if they were our intimates; so that Miss Booth and Mr. and Mrs. Smiley think they can write to me as if they know me.

  “What was his name?” I look at Wilson again. I see her differently: a young wife, a gentle mother tending her only child.

  “David. Mr. Wilson and I called him Davie.”

  She has never before mentioned Mr. Wilson, although O’Rourke told me when he hired her that she was a widow of impeccable credentials.

  “What was it?”

  “The consumption, madam.”

  “Yes. My little Ada, too …” I stop. After all these years, I cannot say her name without feeling overcome.

  “I know. Mr. Gibson wrote about it so lovingly. It helped Percy and me so much. And when he wrote about little Tom Welby—you remember, the tide going out? And his soul going with it? Well, Mr. Wilson and I read it over and over. It was as good as the Bible, madam.”

  “He would have been glad to hear you say that. All he ever wanted was to touch people’s hearts.”

  “And he did. He was a Great Man.”

  “Yes. I thought you felt otherwise, though, Mrs. Wilson.”

  “Well, I couldn’t help seeing what he did to you. I cannot admire him for that, indeed not. But for his writing … yes, that was different.”

  I look at her firm, sensible face. “You knew what had happened between us? Before you came here?”

  “Mr. O’Rourke asked if I knew how to keep my counsel. He said, ‘There is a well-known man and wife who have decided to live apart,’ he said. ‘They want it done without scandal. The wife needs a reliable servant. It will be a position of trust with a pension for life, dependent on that trust being unbroken.’ It was a very good situation and I agreed to the terms immediately. Then I asked if I could be so bold as to inquire who the lady was. And he replied, ‘It is a Mrs. Gibson.’ I was so taken aback, it was like a thunderbolt. I asked him if he meant the famous Mrs. Gibson, the wife of Alfred Gibson the great writer? ‘Surely not?’ I said.”