Girl in a Blue Dress

by Gaynor Arnold

  So it was Lottie I turned to; Lottie who seemed to combine a pure and loving heart with such easy ways, such liveliness, such ability to create a comfortable atmosphere everywhere around her. As she grew up she made even our parents’ home a pleasant place to be. She cooked and cleaned and sewed for us all, and cared for my brother in a way that almost made my heart break. I see her now, holding him between her knees to comb his hair, or taking his feet upon her lap to lace his boots, or turning him round like a spinning top while she brushed his clothes. She looked after everybody. She mended my old shirts and made new ones frilled in the latest style, and cut up the old dressing-up clothes in order to render them into spectacular waistcoats for me. And she rationed out father’s money in the most delicate way possible, kissing him and making him promise to be ‘a good papa’ as she handed over a florin or two, and thus prevented the worst excesses of his spendthrift temperament. She managed to stay on good terms with every servant we ever had—which was more than poor Mama had ever done—and toiled alongside them in perfect amity. Shrieks and vilifications and the giving of notice were things of the past. And she read—how she read! All my own childhood favourites, then all my schoolbooks. I passed my exercises on to her each day, and helped her to understand the lessons I had so recently learned. And she learned them all—history, geography, arithmetic—quite as quickly as I, but without benefit of teacher, writing everything in the neatest of scripts, sitting by the window with the smoothest of brown hair. I could say that she was remarkably pretty—in fact I would assert it most fervently, except that she was commonly held to resemble Yours Truly. She was certainly well-dressed, making her own gowns and bonnets in a fashion that would not have disgraced a duchess. Above all, she had a natural gift for music. She had the sweetest voice I have ever heard—bar perhaps my own daughter—and the most natural ability to follow a tune. I remember her voice even now, and her bright, bright smile as she lifted her eyes from her sewing to look at me.

  To do myself justice, I always contrived to be a dutiful son. But I found it easier to manage my parents from a distance. As I grew up, I could not anticipate quickly enough my severance from them. My mother was forever bewailing the fact that if only she could get away from the dismal demands of London Town, all her problems would be solved. So, once I was set up at Webster and Potts, earning my own wage and feeling my way as a young man about town, I became determined to bring about her heart’s desire. My father’s widowed sister had for a long time inhabited a small cottage in Dover, and when another became untenanted in the vicinity, I encouraged them to take it, with the agreement that I would underwrite part of the rent myself. Sydney was off to join the Navy, and Lottie (who would not be parted from me) was to stay in London and take in sewing. ‘You cannot support all of us, Fred,’ said Lottie. ‘I will work as hard as I can, so that I can be independent and not ashamed of myself.’ And she did—topping and tailing sheets and shirts, turning cuffs, tacking and hemming every garment imaginable. She cleaned our modest little rooms above the corn chandler’s so that everything seemed to wink at us with cleanliness. And she cooked such capital meals! At the end of my day’s labours, I could walk along the dusty streets knowing I’d climb the stairs to find delicious smells wafting down, and a splendid suet pudding all done up in muslin waiting on the table, or lamb cutlets grilling in the little Dutch oven in the corner of our parlour …

  I think that Lottie, being the dear girl that she was, thought me unduly severe in my attitude to our parents. My wife was the same when I first introduced them to her. Dorothea could not understand why I had not brought them up to London to meet her as soon as we were engaged, and I am sure she must have imagined that I came from a den of barbarians, so silent was I on the topic of parental affection. Although in the general way I was not ashamed of my parents (who were genteel enough as these matters go), I could never trust them as wholeheartedly as I should have liked—as a son should be able to trust his parents. However much money I placed at their disposal, they contrived to use it up. Although I had given tradesmen an absolute veto in allowing them credit, somehow there were always further demands—a bookbinder, a grinder of inks, a haber-dasher—that I had not foreseen. I was under continual hope that my father would find employment, and he always wrote to me in a state of optimism, saying that he was on the point of securing a post to which his capabilities were ‘ideally suited.’ But at some point between the arrival of his letter and the commencement of the employment, something would inevitably Go Wrong, and once again my parents would be relying on my small means to make ends meet.

  My aunt at Dover wrote to me frequently, admonishing me for having conceived such extravagant parents. ‘I am advised, dear Fred, that your allowances to them are regrettably meagre, and the extent of their debt is beginning to cast a shadow over Innocent Members of the family—members such as Myself, to whom shopkeepers’ eyebrows are now raised at the prospect of even a yard of ribbon or the smallest of lace collars being purchased without the immediate exchange of—how shall I put it?—cash. For the honour of the Gibson Name, and the sanity of your Ever-loving Aunt, please endeavour to ensure my Brother and his Wife are, in future, properly provided for.’

  At this time, my father was forty-four years of age. I was nineteen.

  I close the notebook. I cannot face reading on. I am dismayed that he kept all this from me. In spite of all his intimate knowledge of the very poorest of the poor, I had never thought that Edward Cleverly and James Bartram were based on his own experiences. Rather I’d thought that such knowledge had come from the conversations he struck up with beggars and crossing boys on his nighttime walks, and his tireless work with Miss Brougham in the slums. I was aware, of course, that he had known a measure of hardship and debt in his earlier life—he had talked obliquely of such things before we were married—but I confess that I never understood, in those days, what hardship and debt really meant. I imagined some sort of momentary discomfort, like having a little less cake or sugar, or not lighting the fire until the evening, or making do with one candle to read by. I’d think of Lottie in her little garret room, with its plain and simple air, and later, of our own humble days with Mrs. Quinn. I could not begin to conceive that Alfred, with his cheerful spirits and fine clothes and manners, had suffered more than a temporary embarrassment. I thought him, as my mama would have said, a member of the “genteel poor,” a little stretched—no more. I could not conceive that he had once lived inside a prison or had been set to rough work at the tender age of eight. I can hardly endure to think of such a thing. Eight! I imagine my own self at that age: dressed in white muslin with a taffeta sash around my waist, playing in the garden in Chiswick; Alice still in small clothes; Sissy a babe in arms; Papa pushing me in the air on a swing; Mama supervising my amateur stitches on a sampler; the servants always in order, food always provided. My mind would have been easy, unquestioning; the world would have finished at the garden’s end, and there would never be any reason to know what lay beyond. The only ragamuffins I ever saw were the gypsies passing by in the road outside, jangling their tins, or the chimney sweep’s boy with his scabbed feet and elbows as he sat in the kitchen with a tankard of beer and a sour smell that made me wrinkle my nose.

  I suppose Alfred would have given off a sour smell, too, if I had met him while out walking as a child. But I hope I would not have spoken to him as Arabella Chalmers did to poor Ned Chester, casting proud eyes on him and asking, Must I be forced to consort with a boy who has broken fingernails and drops his aitches as if they were live coals? Someone said it to him, though. And Alfred remembered the slight. Yet all our married life he kept these wounds from me, showing the scars only in his books. Did he not trust me? I wonder. Did he think I would love him less? That I would be ashamed of him? Sometimes I think he knew me so little.

  By the same token, I never knew that his feelings for Lottie ran so deep. He always liked to joke about his “favorite sister” when she was indeed his only one, but I did not real
ize what a true favorite she really was. I’d always thought it uncanny to see them together, so alike with their bright dark eyes, glossy hair, and natty clothes, so in tune with each other’s humor and imaginings that they would sometimes finish each other’s sentences—but where he was full of high spirits, she was calm. She, too, was clever and had read hundreds of books—but she wore her cleverness lightly, whereas Alfred, I must admit, liked to show off his. I often used to think she might have made a writer, too, had she had time to pursue the art. She wrote such wonderful letters, so observant, so funny—almost as if it were Alfred speaking. And I remember how she would sing simple carols and ballads to us at Christmas—and her voice was so haunting that we would all be in tears, and Alfred would rush to her and take her in his arms, saying she was the very best sister in the world.

  But poor Lottie had little enough time in her life for writing or singing. She was always busy caring for others. I’d marveled at her energy and cheerfulness as Tom became such a dreadful shadow of himself. Lottie was forever running upstairs attending to him and then running downstairs again, seeing to the fat boy and shock-headed girl who were supposed to be minding the shop, but were always to be found in the backyard chasing each other around the pump or frightening the pigeons, and never noticing when the bell rang. And then, when anyone else might think of resting, Lottie would be ministering to Tom’s aged parents who, in spite of their frailty, seemed set fair to outlive their son. If all that was not enough, between times she would travel down to Dover in the coach to carry out Alfred’s requests concerning their own parents. Alfred himself visited them as little as he could: “If I go, there will be quarrels, I know it! Please take fifty guineas and do what you can to restrain them. They love to see you, Lottie dear—whereas I—well, in their eyes I am an ogre, an ingrate, the worst son in the world, a Croesus who keeps his own parents in penury! And for my part, I am beyond speaking to them without wild words forming in my throat. You, by comparison, are a Dove of Peace!” And Lottie would smile and say: “All it needs is a little patience, Fred.” And he’d reply, “That is a commodity I am always short of when it comes to Mr. and Mrs. G.! Merely to see them, to hear their voices, makes me feel as if I am in the grasp of an Indian python and it is squeezing the life out of me! After such a squeezing I swear I return to London as flat as a shirt from a mangle—and am no good for anything!”

  In spite of Alfred’s penchant for letter writing, it was Lottie, I remember, who wrote regularly to Sydney, who followed his career in the Navy, who sent him presents of new linen and bottles of lavender hair oil, and who went down to Chatham or Portsmouth whenever his ship was in dock. In many ways I felt Sydney was her child, and nothing seemed to delight her more than receiving a letter from him, unless it were the chance to enjoy his company for a few days while he was on leave. I remember the first time she brought him to our house, resplendent in his uniform and blushing pink as a girl. “This is your Uncle Sydney,” she’d said to Kitty, and Kitty had stared at Sydney’s legs in their white breeches, before moving her eyes up to the brass buttons on his coat, and holding out her little fists and shrieking with glee as he picked her up.

  Alfred was fond of Sydney, too, of course. He’d call him the Muffin Man (shortened to Muffin or even Muff) and delighted in telling how, as a child, he’d had a propensity to eat anything he could manage to cram in his mouth, including an entire copy of The Times and two pairs of pigskin gloves; and how he had enjoyed sitting in the dark for hours on end with a mad old recluse of a woman who’d once lived next door, holding her skein of wool while she knitted a long scarf that was never finished; and how his face was forever dirty, however often you mopped it with a dishcloth. Sydney was discomforted at such stories and always tried to change the subject, to praise our house, or our children, or even myself. “Well, you’ve done well for yourself, Fred! This is a far cry from Brigg Lane. I’m tempted to leave the Navy and try my hand at writing, too, if this is the result!” And Alfred had laughed and said, “It’s damned hard work, Muffin, I’d have you know! You try writing three thousand words before breakfast! It’s worse than climbing the rigging in a storm!”

  “And what would you know about that?”

  “Oh, nothing at all! But I can imagine it—and that, my dear Sydney, is why I am the One and Only and you are All at Sea.”

  Yes, I make sense of it now, his curious distaste for his parents, his enduring love for his sister, the vital energy, born of those early deprivations, which propelled him forward. But I wonder why he chose to tell his secret now, and in this way. I riffle through the notebook again. I can see that the narrative goes on for only another half-dozen pages, as if he lost heart and gave up. “Writing his life” was someone else’s idea, of course; someone whose suggestions he was at pains to indulge: his Jenny Wren. It’s a sweet, inconsequential name, and I can’t help thinking of her flitting about the room, chirping away—then coming and sitting at his feet, laying her head in his lap, perhaps; stroking his beard; playing with his watch chain; feeding him little bits of seed cake and sips of Madeira wine; kissing his cheek, his lips—

  No, this is madness. I must not think of this. What good does it do me to torture myself with these scenes? For the last ten years I have done my best to ignore her existence, and I have largely succeeded—in spite of Kitty’s insistence on mentioning her.

  I put the book back into my pocket. The dark has come suddenly and it’s impossible to read by the firelight alone. But the wretched Miss Ricketts is not so easily set aside, and I can’t help wishing that Lord Royston’s Daughter had never been written; and that he and she had never met in the playing of it. I regret even more idling my time away in Leamington, playing cards with Colonel Jibbins and Mrs. Badger while, night after night, the foundations of my marriage were being carefully undermined. What an innocent I was! With what amusement I read Alfred’s accounts of his rehearsals—the Thespian young ladies, the Thespian Mama, the crises with the scenery which fell down and nearly carried off our juvenile lead; the inefficiency of the property manager who has a propensity for losing every prop he is responsible for—so that we are forever reading from ghostly scrolls in place of real letters, and I am obliged to shoot the villain Murdock using only the first two fingers of my right hand. How little did I suspect any subterfuge as I laughed so heartily at his words! Nor did I suspect Alfred’s fond feelings for one particular Thespian young lady whose courage and tenacity he praised to the skies. She had recently lost her own father, he wrote, yet trod the boards “like a veritable trouper.” I suspected nothing. She was only seventeen, after all, and in spite of Alfred’s romantic susceptibility to very young ladies, I could not imagine he would have chosen to fasten on a newly orphaned child, however much of a trouper. I had been jealous without cause on so many other occasions, and had been chided by him so often for “seeing things where there was nothing to see,” that my guard was down the one time I needed it.

  Of course, I cannot help but wonder what there was about Miss Ricketts that made him willing to risk everything to pursue her. It seems she was (and is) neither wonderfully clever nor wonderfully beautiful—although I can’t judge, for I have never seen her. But she must have had some remarkable virtues to have tempted him away from everything that touched him most deeply—wife, children, the sanctity of home and hearth, and the admiration of the Public to whom he was almost a god. Of course I can hear Kitty’s sarcastic voice admonishing me. Are you green, Mama? She was young and pretty; he was middle-aged and wealthy. What more do you need to know? Sometimes, I confess, it is easier to think it was her slender body that delighted him—and her unlined face. After all, what treasures of mind or spirit would a young woman of that age have been able to offer a man so famous, so talented, so widely read? Yet I know it would not have stood easily with him to take advantage of any woman, however low in society; to have blighted her life and then passed carelessly on. Alfred did not pass on, moreover. That was Miss Ricketts’s good fortune. And my trag
edy.

  WILSON HAS DECIDED it is teatime. She bustles in with the tray and lights the lamp, then pokes the dying fire so that the yellow flames break through the ashes. “I’ve made some of That There Darjeeling for you to taste,” she says. “It looked a bit of a funny color to me—but I expect you know more than me about such niceties. And I’ve been and got you a nice Chelsea bun. They was selling at two a penny—”

  “Not stale buns again!” Wilson can’t resist a bargain.

  “They’re hardly stale at all. And I’ve took the stones out of the damson jam so you don’t go breaking your teeth.”

  She cajoles me as one would a child. But there is something comforting in it and I don’t object. There is something in me that likes to be told what to do. It must be all those years of practice with Alfred. I let her pour me a cup of tea.

  “What are you going to do with That Box?” She nods at the tea chest.

  “I’ll sort it out as soon as I have time.”

  “A body can’t hardly get through with the tray. It’s right in the way.”

  “Well, we can’t move it, Wilson. It’s too heavy.”