17
THE CAB IS STOPPING.
The first thing I notice about the house is that the tree has grown. It was a sapling when we moved in and not much bigger three years later when I left. Now it towers over the house, bare branches almost touching the third-floor windows. The front steps are the same, though—steep and awkward for a woman in skirts, and especially one not in the first flush of youth. I toil up them slowly. I ring the important-looking bell and hear the jangle that I used to hate so much. It meant visitors; it meant having to rouse myself, to make conversation. Even now, my stomach turns over.
An unfamiliar servant answers the door: “Ma’am?”
“Is Miss Millar at home?”
“Who should I say it is?”
“Mrs. Gibson. Mrs. Dorothea Gibson.”
The man blenches slightly. He hesitates, then ushers me in. The big hallway is exactly the same. I catch my breath—Alfred’s cane is still in its place on the hallstand, and so is the spare hairbrush he liked to keep by the looking glass.
“This way, if you please.” The man leads me into the morning room. It has been repainted a dull green, but is otherwise unaltered. A fire roars in the grate. Alfred always liked to keep a good fire. I can see him now, calling out to the servants to bring more coal, more logs: Bank it up high. Let’s have a blaze! And he’d stare into the flames for hours sometimes: Do you see pictures there, Dodo? Pictures of Times Past, or Times that are Yet to Be? And all I’d see was red coals and gray ash.
I look into the garden. It has an abandoned air. The tree house and the swing are still there, but there are no children playing. There are no children in the house now, of course, and in any case it is a cold October. I wander around the room, fingering the ornaments. Things that I had forgotten about: still here. The ship-in-a-bottle that Sydney gave us, a painted plate Lottie and Tom brought back from their honeymoon in Portsmouth, the leather collar from our old dog Master, who was buried in the backyard at Channon Street to the accompaniment of all our sobs. Poor creature, he had to endure having his tail pulled and being dressed up in petticoats and taken for daily rides in Alfie’s little chariot, with Kitty and Louisa pulling the reins; but he was always good tempered and docile. I never knew a dog more ill named, said Alfred. He’d lick the hand of the most villainous burglar that ever lived, and by way of friendship, would no doubt lead him most directly to the silver knives and forks.
There is a footstep at the door. It is the manservant again. “Beg pardon, Mrs. Gibson. My mistake, but I’m afraid Miss Millar is not at home after all.”
I look at him as I imagine Augustus looked at poor Wilson. “Then I’ll wait.” I sit down on the brocade chair that was always Louisa’s favorite. It is rather low, and having put myself there, I wonder if I shall be able to get up without help. But I look around airily, pretending I am entirely at my ease.
The man hesitates. “I think Miss Millar may be some time.”
“I’ll still wait. Thank you.”
“Perhaps I can take a message.” Poor man, he is trying hard.
“No, thank you.”
He withdraws.
I glance around again at all the objects that once constituted my home. Not much is new. It is as if the household had petrified ten years ago and I am back again to that dreadful time when my life moved from dream to nightmare, when I came back from Leamington and found my whole life had changed.
It may be my imagination, but I think I hear whispering in the hallway outside. The door opens. A face I recognize. “Mrs. Brooks!” I try to get up.
“Oh, dear Mrs. Gibson!” Tears start to well in her eyes, course down her cheeks. “Mercer said it was you, but I couldn’t hardly believe it.” We embrace, awkwardly, neither sure of our positions after the passage of years. I have always liked her, but have forgotten how much until now.
“It’s a great loss, the master. I feel for you, I do.”
“Thank you. It was a shock. Even after all these years, you know, I am still his wife.”
“Don’t speak of it! He should never have done it to you. It was cruel—cruel beyond anything. Bessie and I talked it over many a time, begging your pardon. And we felt Mr. Gibson was not quite in his right mind when he done it. And Bessie said she’d never known him in such a state, and she’d known him ever so much longer—known you both, in fact, and she said—”
“Oh, you still see Bessie! How is she?” My heart lifts just to think of her.
“She does very well, thanks to her pension from the master. She comes to see me sometimes. She has a nice little cottage in Putney, and it’s handy for the omnibus. Drops her right at the corner of Park Lane. She misses her old life, though. Especially the children.”
“Poor Bessie. She gave her whole life to us.”
“She was glad to, ma’am. She always says she couldn’t have had a better master and mistress if she’d paid good money for them. She said she had a better life in your service than anywhere else you could mention.”
“I am glad to think so—truly. Putney is not so far. I must go and see her. We can talk about old times.”
“I’m sure she’d be delighted. She’s always telling me such stories—the master dancing in the sea or doing his magic tricks or appearing at windows with a false nose and wig, or singing comical songs as he ran up and down stairs with Kitty under one arm and Alfie in the other …” Her eyes moisten. “I can’t hardly believe I’ll never see him again.”
“No. Nor I.” We lapse into silence, our hands clasped.
She rouses herself. “Have you come to see Miss Millar?”
“I understand she is not at home.”
Mrs. Brooks hesitates. “She has a good deal to do with the sale of the house and all the furniture …”
I look around. “What is happening to the furniture?”
“I think Miss Millar is taking the best pieces for when she moves to a new property. The rest will go to auction, I suppose.”
Auction! How dare she? “But so many of these things are mine! She cannot auction my belongings! Not Master’s collar, Lottie’s vase, the pictures of the children—they must be mine by right! And all the gifts that were inscribed to us both—they have nothing to do with Sissy! I have half a mind to go around the house and simply take things!” I pull myself up from the chair and start to examine all the items. “This!” I say, pointing to the dog collar. “And this, and this!” I see things I know in every nook and cranny.
“Now, Mrs. Gibson, don’t get excited. I am sure she’ll keep back anything you want. She’s already put aside all his notebooks and manuscripts. They are important for posterity, she says.”
“But I want what’s important to me! I don’t care about his blessed manuscripts, and Kitty’s getting all his books anyhow—” I suddenly remember why I am here. Kitty, of course. And Augustus. I calm myself. “I shall wait until she comes back. I am not leaving until I have seen her!”
Mrs. Brooks looks as uncomfortable as the manservant did. Clearly Sissy is somewhere in the house, ear to the door, waiting for me to go. “Would you like some tea?” asks Mrs. Brooks, and I think of Kitty, drinking cup after cup in this very room, then hearing his dying groan through the wall.
“No,” I say. “I’ll take the opportunity to look around.” I realize she cannot stop me. No one can. They cannot lay hands on me and evict me; I can do what I like. “Will you get me a box, Mrs. Brooks?”
“A box?”
“Yes. I’ll need somewhere to put things. My particular things. Sissy clearly has so much to do. It will be a kindness to take some of the work off her hands.”
I make my way out into the hall. Mercer is loitering awkwardly near the hall table, on which there is a silver salver. That’s typical of Sissy’s refinements; we never had a salver all the days we were married. Alfred despised calling cards, wouldn’t have them: Either I know you, and you don’t need to be introduced—or I don’t know you, in which case you can go to the devil! Those who did leave cards would
have been mortified to see them gathering dust in an old rose bowl. One American visitor, chagrined at not being allowed immediate entry to the house when he paid his respects, remarked that up until then he had taken Alfred for one of the century’s Great Men, and that he was disappointed to find that he was “pretty darn unfriendly in person and noticeably lacking in the hospitality he so much celebrated in his books.” Alfred at that point had appeared from his study and announced in a loud voice to no one in particular: “I think there are some travelers to London who are persuaded—by virtue of parting with a dollar or two at some unspecified bookshop at some unspecified date in the past—that they are now entitled to come and stare at me as if I were Windsor Castle or the Houses of Parliament!”
But as I said to him afterward, he was a kind of monument. His image was on all his books. Everybody knew his plaid coats, his velvet collars, his bowler hats worn at a jaunty angle. Even costers and street boys would call out “Hallo, Mr. Gibson! Make way for Mr. Gibson!” as he appeared among them. And for those who couldn’t see him in person—readers as far afield as Edinburgh or Penzance—he was there with them on the page. Every month he wrote to them, his Dear Public. He shared with them the thoughts of his heart, the workings of his mind. He delighted them, he thrilled them, he educated them. It was as if an umbilical cord ran between them.
“WOULD YOU OBTAIN a box for Mrs. Gibson?” Mrs. Brooks says to Mercer.
“A box?”
“Yes. To put things in. A large one.”
He departs in a stately way, as if merely to acknowledge the existence of “a box” is to demean himself.
“Where’s the portrait of us?” I ask Mrs. Brooks. “The one by Mr. Evans.”
She demurs. “Which one is that? This house is so full of pictures. The master had a new one of himself every year.”
“There’s only one of us both together, Mrs. Brooks. Surely you know it. It used to hang in the dining room.” I open the door to the dining room. It’s not there. Over the mantel, there is a landscape by Landseer instead, and next to it an oil portrait of Alfred and another of Louisa and Kitty when they were young. I glance at the great mahogany table, set with silver candlesticks—the scene of so many of my failures as a hostess, my failures of wit and grace and beauty, my failures of organization, my failure to keep awake—Dodo Dumpling doing her best to embarrass her husband. I don’t want anything to remind me of that time. I don’t want the silver or the glass. I don’t want the candelabra. I don’t want the landscape with its dull-looking cattle on a purple mountain against a muddy sky. I don’t even want the portrait of Alfred. He looks strange, worn, old; he is not as I remember him. “Maybe the study?” I suggest.
Mrs. Brooks hesitates. “We mustn’t go in there. Miss Millar says—”
“Well, she’s Not At Home, is she? Where’s the harm?”
I open the door. A faint smell of tobacco greets me and I can see him again in his green buttoned armchair, reading the newspaper, legs crossed, cigar in hand. He never smoked while he worked, he didn’t like the way the smoke got into his brain, but he liked to have a cigar with his brandy after supper. His black velvet smoking jacket, with its satin collar and cuffs, is still hanging on its hook.
The room is immaculate. The blind is half-raised. The desk is dusted, his pens and quills neatly aligned along the top. His inkwell full. The blotter new. A sheaf of clean paper stacked on the left-hand side, a pile of finished pages on the other. All as if he is about to come in and write. I feel a lump in my throat so painful that my whole face aches. I go to the desk; I caress the polished rosewood of the chair and the worn leather surface of the desk, stained with patterns of ink. My fingers brush the edges of the manuscript. It seems to be a chapter from The Death of Ambrose Boniface and is much crossed out and written over. I turn to the last page. It is creased and covered in blots; but it’s in his characteristic hand:
‘Your Honour won’t mind me saying as it’s more than a little uncommon for a fine genleman such as yourself to express an interest in the melancholy details of a calling such as mine. Was there anything Your Honour was pertickly wanting to know?’
Ambrose places his hand upon the coffin Mr. Slattery is currently engaged upon. ‘How heavy, would you say?’
‘Now, that’s a question not often asked. May I be so bold as to enquire whether Your Honour is referring to this pertickler harticle?’
‘Are they much of a muchness?’
‘That would depend. Empty, do you mean? Or with the party concerned?’
‘Let us say, with the party concerned.’
Mr. Slattery puts down his plane. ‘Well now, that would depend on the size of said party, and whether said party is a man or a woman. Or again, a child.’
Ambrose shudders. ‘Not a child. A woman, say?’
‘And again, before I gives you your answer, I should have to enquire as to the general construction of the aforesaid party—whether it would be a delicate young indiwidual with bones as light as a songbird, or a more buxom personage who has enjoyed the benefits of good living, if you takes my drift.’
‘Say a young woman,’ Ambrose replies quietly. ‘Say of a delicate construction.’
Mr. Slattery nods, and begins to make a reckoning in his head, and taking an extremely short stub of a pencil from behind his ear, jots down some figures on his apron, upon which there are already written so many other calculations, that it resembles the arithmetic book of a particularly untidy child. ‘Brass handles, I’m assuming?’
Ambrose nods.
‘And memorial plate, ditto?’
Nods again.
‘And I’m a-reckoning on elm. Your oak would be heavier, of course. A deal heavier. Not more of a weight than four men could easily carry, though; one at each corner as per the usual arrangement. Is that what Your Honour was thinking?’ Mr. Slattery has a strange wrinkled face, like a knowing old baby. And when he looks at Ambrose, it’s as if he reads his thoughts.
The young man looks away. ‘Yes, indeed. The exact arrangement. Four men. One at each corner.’ Ambrose pauses. ‘Or maybe—could two men lift it?’
‘Two would do it, sir. Although popular prejudice is against two, on account of how the carrying is hawkward—if you sees my meaning.’ Mr. Slattery holds up his apron to show the results of his reckonings, then after five seconds lets it drop.
‘Much obliged. Much obliged. It’s an idle interest of mine.’
‘No pertickler person in mind, then? No deceased young party of a delicate construction already a-lying on the cold sheets?’ Mr. Slattery is drearily waggish.
Ambrose smiles. ‘No such person in the world.’
‘What a singular young genleman Your Honour is! I’d say Your Honour has the temperament to be in the funerary line yourself.’
‘And what temperament is that, if I may ask?’
‘Cool, sir. Werry cool.’
And Mr. Slattery takes up his plane once more and the fresh white shavings fall to the floor at his feet, as if it is snowing. Layer on layer. Snow on snow. Mr. Slattery does not succumb to the prevailing wintriness, however. He works until beads of sweat cling to his forehead. He whistles as he works, but sotto voce, out of respect for the anticipated occupying parties.
Ambrose watches him. Watches the working of the wood, the smoothing of the pieces, the dovetailing of the joints, the tapping in of the nails, the fitting of the lid. He can see her in his mind’s eye, being lifted, being laid down. White. White as ice. White as the silken dress around her. His in death, if not in life …
A wild line trails off the paper.
I can hardly bear it. I look at it for a long time, then put it down. My fingers encounter a little notebook. I pick it up. It is in his own peculiar shorthand. I turn the pages at random, hardly seeing them.
“What on earth are you doing here, Dodo?” Her voice makes my stomach turn over. I whip round hastily, pocketing the notebook. She is standing in the doorway, the man Mercer behind her. She looks remarkably the
same, her figure still neat, her face still clear and pretty. She is wearing a dark frock with a white collar and long paper cuffs. She has a workmanlike apron on.
“Oh, Sissy!” I say, affecting surprise. “They told me you were not at home.”
“I am not seeing callers.” She wrings her hands, but her look is defiant.
“I am hardly a caller.”
“Indeed! You might well say that! But why are you here? And in this room?” She looks around distractedly. “The servants have strict instructions—”
I feel my anger rising. “But I am not a servant, Sissy. I was once mistress of this house—”
“That was ten years ago, Dodo—and I am in charge now. You cannot simply walk in as if nothing has happened.” She hurries to the desk and neatens the already neat pile of paper, her eyes checking over all the items in her sharp-eyed way—but failing to notice the missing notebook. She turns to me and speaks in a low voice: “What is this visit all about? Why have you asked for a box? You cannot take any of his writing things, you know—they must stay exactly as they are.”
“I don’t want his writing things, Sissy! I want my property! I won’t let you put them up for auction, for the world and his wife to pick over.”
She flushes. “Who is talking of auctions? Have you seen an advertisement of such an event? No, you haven’t, because there will be no such thing. We’ll find a home for everything between us. The girls and I shall need to furnish a new house, Alfie and Caroline have asked for Alfred’s wardrobe and some looking glasses, and Eddie wants to keep his own dressing table and bed, so I doubt there will be anything to spare—”
“I hardly need furniture, Sissy. Not in a small apartment with three rooms and a basement kitchen. But I have a right to the smaller objects—the pictures of the children, the gifts we were given in America, the presentations that were made to us in towns all over England. And where is Charley’s portrait of us both?”
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