Poor child. I remember having the same thought as I lay night after night in my bedroom at Chiswick, imagining Alfred’s knock at my window, and his determined arms carrying me off in spite of my faintest of complaints. “But,” I say relentlessly, “you agreed in the end?”
She moves the toe of her dainty shoe along the pattern of the carpet. “What else could I do? I felt as if I were in a box set and the walls were closing in on me, and there were no exits. I couldn’t let him go on being so dreadfully unhappy. Do you understand?”
“Oh, yes. Oh, yes.” I could never suffer Alfred to be unhappy either.
“So I wrote and agreed, and he rushed round next day with a linnet in a cage, and kissed me on the cheeks most prodigiously and shook Mama’s hand, and said he would never, ever break our trust in him. Three weeks later we were here.”
“Only you and your mama?”
“He didn’t want servants. Although in the end he agreed to our hiring a girl for the mornings. ‘Someone young,’ he said. ‘And make sure she can’t read; I don’t want her putting two and two together. And she’s to call me Mr. O’Rourke.’”
I draw my breath in sharply: “O’Rourke?”
“That was the name on the lease and all the bills. I think someone of that name had arranged it for him.”
I feel I have been struck in the face. I can hardly trust myself to speak. The thought that Michael might have known of this house, that he might have been complicit in renting it for Alfred—that he paid the bills and saw to all the comforts that she has had and were denied to me; that he could have deceived me all these years, sympathizing and pretending ignorance of this secret life—fills me with horror. It’s the worst kind of betrayal. Worse even than Alfred’s, in a way. I feel I am going to pass out. I fumble for my smelling salts and inhale as hard as I can. Miss Ricketts frowns. She is clearly puzzled at my distress over a simple name.
“Did he ever come here?” I say faintly. “O’Rourke, I mean? Did he actually pay the rent? Did he collect the bills?” I see O’Rourke acting the same dutiful messenger between Miss Ricketts and Alfred as he did between Alfred and me; and Alfred thinking it as neat and symmetrical a piece of business as the identical bracelets.
“No one came here,” she says. “Apart from your son, that one time. Certainly no one called O’Rourke. And no one else paid the rent; Alfred gave money directly to Mama. To be honest, I didn’t think O’Rourke was a real person at all; simply Alfred in disguise.”
“Oh, O’Rourke was real enough,” I say. “O’Rourke was his best friend—and I thought he was mine, too. If he knew about this place, he has been lying to me for years.” I think of Michael affecting ignorance of her whereabouts—Peckham or somewhere—it might have been Timbuktu for all we knew. Can he really have been so duplicitous?
She sees how agitated I am and tries to soothe me. “Don’t think ill of your friend,” she says. “Alfred always liked to use names he knew; it was part of his play-acting. He used to say that when he was in the country, he was a different person entirely, dressing in a loose-fitting coat and a ridiculous broad-brimmed hat pulled down over his eyes, saying he looked the picture of a regular Oirish oncle. He’d do the accent too.”
Her words comfort me a little. I tell myself that she is right, that it was simply a sly joke on Alfred’s part. I think back to O’Rourke’s protestations of ignorance, his anger at Alfred’s behavior, his fury, his despair. He would have had to be as good an actor as Alfred to have maintained such a compendium of lies all this time. And O’Rourke has always been transparent as the day, which would have made it all the more amusing to Alfred as he strolled around incognito, thinking how at variance his Irish alter ego was with Michael’s own irreproachable life. I want to believe Miss Ricketts; I want to believe her so much. But somewhere in my mind I am not entirely at peace. The more I hear of Alfred’s wretched dealings with this girl, the more I see how easily he bent the most resistant person to his will.
I put away the smelling salts and put on a bright face. “I interrupted—forgive me. You were telling me about how you moved here—you and your mama and the hired girl.”
She looks doubtful, but continues: “Yes. And the whole house was ready for us.” She waves her hand around. “New wallpaper, rugs, curtains, looking glasses, all the furniture in place, the cupboards full of china and new linen. I complained he had left us nothing to do, that women in general like to arrange their own homes. He said he was sorry but he thought it would be a surprise.”
He always thought that. He always expected me to be delighted when he presented me with a new home, even though I was perfectly satisfied with the old one. “Well, Miss Ricketts, for your information, I have lived in seven different houses with my husband, and he furnished every one of them without my help.”
She looks surprised. “I have to admit he’d done it perfectly. And he was most particular about showing us his own room in the attic with its single bed and trouser press, saying that it would suit him when he needed a bolt-hole. But generally, he said, he had to get back home for seven sharp ‘to preside over the cruet for an hour or so.’ I felt reassured, as though some … tension … had been broken.”
“He’d got his way, hadn’t he?”
“But apart from my leaving the theater behind, nothing changed. Alfred would visit two or three times a week, for the afternoon, and he always found something to busy himself with—laying the fire, broiling chops, shelling peas, moving the furniture around. Once, he picked up a bonnet I was trimming and took a tablecloth for a skirt, and pretended to audition for the part of Maria Marten, and did it as well as I could (or better) so that Mama and I burst into a fit of clapping, and the girl stood in the doorway with her mouth open, till he winked at her and she fell backwards against the umbrella stand and all the brollies rolled around on the floor. And then he took to going around the house with a hammer, looking for stray nails to knock in, or pictures that needed rehanging. He’d make himself a paper cap and whistle the most cheerful of tunes, as if it had been his lifelong occupation, and as if he was most perfectly at home. Although sometimes it felt unreal—Marie Antoinette playing at shepherdesses.”
I could draw the veil now, with them in chaste domesticity; I do not need to know more. Yet some demon drives me on. “Yet all this was supposed to help his writing,” I say. “Did he not write, after all?”
“Oh, yes. He used the room at the front—where you sat at first.”
“Ah, yes.” Such an intimate room, with its intimate desk and its intimate chair by the fire. A veritable nest of domestic bliss, with its very own little housekeeper bird.
“And I’d take in some sewing, or a book to read, and he’d scratch away, muttering to himself, laughing aloud sometimes. And when he had finished, he’d read out what he had written.”
“And you’d sit on his lap, then, would you? And ruffle his hair and give him a kiss?”
She colors, and I know I have hit home. “Only as a daughter might,” she says.
“But you must have realized where things were tending,” I say. “That one thing would lead to another? That he would eventually assert his rights as a man?”
“I am not foolish, Mrs. Gibson. But he had promised on his life. And the longer he kept his promise, the more I loved and respected him. After all, it would have been easy for him to take advantage of me.”
“Force was never Alfred’s way. He always had more subtle methods of seduction.”
She gets up and walks around, her face suffused with angry blood. It makes me think of Kitty’s furious perambulations, but Miss Ricketts is graceful and makes no sound as she pads across the carpet. “You may call it seduction, Mrs. Gibson, but that’s an ill word.” Her voice quivers.
“Maybe. But it was an ill thing he did. However he clothed it, whatever he said to justify his actions—he wanted you, and he got you. There you were—living in his house, sitting on his lap, kissing him. The world may rightly draw its own conclusions.”
“What else am I to think? He was a man, with a man’s passion, as I knew only too well. I was with child almost every year of our marriage. Do you expect me to believe that he was chaste with you?”
“It is difficult to explain,” she says. “So easy to mock or misconstrue. I fear to tell you even now, lest you should laugh at me—or him.” She turns to look out of the window, as if unable to look me in the face.
“I think, given the circumstances, that the last thing I would do is laugh.”
“Very well.” She comes to sit down again. She draws a deep breath. “We’d thought, Mama and I, that having made so much effort to install us here, he would always be visiting. But we hadn’t realized what calls he had on his time. Every Thursday, that wretched magazine had to be at the printers’, and every Wednesday, he’d be agitated because the contributions were too long or too short or late or unsuitable for the readers—or the illustrations were wrong and no time to put them right. He’d pull his hair about and say he supposed he’d have to do it all himself, as usual. Sometimes he had to dash back from some public dinner or reading to see to it, bringing the proofs with him, and sitting up all night till they were done. He’d arrive at our door at four in the morning and collapse on the sofa, asking only for a brandy-and-water, saying he was going to give it all up and live in the wilds of Siberia: The Public asks too much! It’s killing me! He used to hold up his inky fingers and joke: Look at my lifeblood ebbing away!”
I cannot help smiling. It was always thus.
“Of course, we never knew when to expect him; and so had always to be in a state of readiness. Sometimes he came by cab, mostly by train. Once or twice, when he was in a nervous state, I’ve known him walk all the way from London. Usually he went back to town on the last train, bundled up in that ridiculous coat, but he liked to sleep here if he could, to sit and talk with Mama and myself until the fire was nearly out. He said he always felt so comfortable with us—and that he dreaded going back to Park House, where he was forever on the go—stretched this way and that like so much India rubber.” She pauses. I wait, noting that the sun has shifted around and is making her dishevelled hair into a gleaming halo.
“This particular wet night—I suppose we’d been living here about a year—he complained he was exhausted with traveling and dining and talking and laughing, and would absent himself from the family hearth—they think I’m in Ross-on-Wye. So he took the book he had been reading from, and bade us both good night. He kissed me as he always did—but he seemed almost unable to release me, holding me in his embrace for a long time. He said, low so that Mama did not catch: ‘I wish I didn’t have to part from you. I should love your face to be the last thing I see when I sleep and the first thing when I wake.’ Then he went upstairs, his back bowed.
“I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t get the words out of my mind as I went around helping Mama lock the doors, damp down the fires, and rake out the boiler. And when I tried to undress, I found myself trembling, and I went on trembling as I put on my nightgown and lay down on the bed. I lay there a long while, thinking. Thinking of what was the right thing to do. I was trying to listen to my heart, Mrs. Gibson. That is what he always said: Listen to your heart. I pictured him in the room above me, lying there alone. Such a good, kind man; but with no one in the world to hold him close. And I kept thinking of how sad and old he’d looked, and the little time we might have together.”
My mouth is dry. I do not know how I am sitting here so quietly. But she holds me with her words and I cannot interrupt her.
“So when I was sure that Mama was asleep, I put on my shawl and slippers, and went up the stairs to his door. I stood outside a long time, until I almost froze in the cold drafts. I lifted my hand so many times, then brought it down again. Finally I knocked, and heard his voice, rather weary, but a little surprised: ‘Yes? Who is it?’ And I went in. He was still in his shirtsleeves, sitting over a dying fire, reading by the light of the lamp. He didn’t say a word. Nor did I. He looked at me so long that I thought I had done a terrible thing and shamed both myself and him. Then he got up and …” She twiddles her bracelet. Her color is very high. “And he said, ‘Have you come to stay with me tonight?’ And I nodded. And he said, ‘You are an Angel,’ and kissed me on the forehead, so very, very sweetly that my heart nearly broke for love of him. And I lay down on the bed, and he covered me over and lay down beside me.”
She stops, and we are both silent for a while. I can hear the ticking of a clock that I have not noticed before.
She raises her eyes: “Now what do you think of me?”
I think of her in her white nightgown. And I think of Alice laid out chastely on the bed, and the last words on the manuscript of Ambrose Boniface.
27
THE AFTERNOON LIGHT IS ALREADY FADING WHEN I make my way back along the garden path to the cab. The cabman sits patiently, a rug across his knees, a muffler wound up high around his neck. I apologize for keeping him waiting, but he says his newspaper keeps him happy, “and the orse ain’t complained yet.”
I climb in and we clatter off. As we pass the gap in the holly hedge where the gate stands, I catch a glimpse of Miss Ricketts and her mother standing at the blue front door, staring stiffly ahead as if posed for a photograph. I wonder what they are making of my visit. For my part, I am in a state of incredulity. Miss Ricketts is everything I am not, and I am everything she is not—and yet I feel we understand each other.
We turn the corner sharply, and they are gone. Back into their strange half-life, with only each other for company. And I reflect that they are quite as cut off from society as I, and have been in that unhappy state almost as long. For more than eight years they have received no letters except his letters, divulged nothing of their whereabouts to friend or acquaintance, and have been obliged to tell untruths to those they live among in order to keep their identities secret. “Ladies brought their cards as soon as we moved in,” Miss Ricketts told me. “But we could not return the compliment. We dared not cultivate the slightest acquaintance for fear of being found out. So to avoid the reputation of rudeness, we had to write saying that we were both in poor health and unable to go into society—which of course restricted us more.” Whereas it seemed that Alfred, in his slouch hat and voluminous coat, was considered an amusing eccentric as he tramped about the lanes.
Miss Ricketts had no option but to wait upon the hours and times of his desire, the moment of arrival that would send her into a flurry. So, in a way, she has passed the intervening years much as I have done, spinning out small domestic tasks to fill the hours of daylight. She sewed as I sewed; and she read as I read. She had extra occupations, though. Her education had been scanty, and Alfred had set about improving her mind and conversation, giving her the benefit of his very particular learning methods. Nevertheless, I doubt a young lady of her age wished to spend every day with her nose in a book, however engaging her teacher. If she had improved her conversation, with whom should she speak? If she sewed herself exceptionally fine clothes, to whom should she show them off?
Of course, she had her consolations. She could look forward to some purpose in her solitude—the anticipation of seeing him. As I know only too well, anticipation of happiness can sometimes be as gratifying as its consummation. Even during the first months of my separation, every footstep on the pavement would have me racing to the window, and every ring of the doorbell would set my heart beating as fast as a bird’s. But as the months went by without even a word, I gradually had to relinquish my hopes of seeing him again. It was not easy to do so, and I am not sure whether I ever managed it entirely; however, I did stop waking with that thought in my mind, imagining what he was doing every hour of the day, and whether his journey would by chance take him past my door. I tried to tell myself instead that I was fortunate in my neglect; that now I needed have no fear that he would arrive
and his gimlet eye start to anatomize the cushions, or the curtains, or the state of the fireplace; that now, at last, my life was my own. But truth to tell, I would have given anything to see him walk with his jaunty step up to my front door and rap out a cheerful rhythm with his silver-topped cane.
But even while I envy her the hope of his presence, in other ways she is to be pitied. After all, I can look back on so many happy memories; whereas what little life Miss Ricketts had known was snatched from her, as she was forced to trade the bright lights of the stage and the adulation of the audience for a life of solitary confinement. And did he really hold off from her as she implied? Perhaps she spares my feelings; perhaps she merely defends his honor, or her own. In the end, I find it does not matter; that there is no purpose in asking myself did they do this, or that? What she has told me is what I always suspected in my heart: that he was drawn to her for the purity of her spirit; that he would have seen in this small friendless girl his own younger self, battered and put upon by the world; that he would have loved her for her struggle, and the way she kept herself gracious and true in spite of it all. And that he would have drawn strength from her admiration, and been flattered by her affection. It must have been an irresistible combination.
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