“Only because she didn’t know what to do with herself in that morbid great house with her husband always away from home. Not that the house need worry her much longer. You know, Alfred was hardly in his grave before Augustus was here demanding money.”
“He should never have brought that man home with him. What was he thinking of? One look at him and you knew that he’d do any blessed thing to keep hisself amused. And Kitty was right at the age to be taken in. Of course, after she got married and there was no going back, the master knew what he’d done. ‘Oh, Bessie,’ he said, ‘I have driven Kitty away. She has done an ill-advised thing, a wrong thing—but it is my fault. I have made her choose. I have forced her from me with a heavy hand when a lighter hand might have saved her.’”
“He admitted it?” I am astonished.
She nods. “Only the once, though. But sometimes he’d go up to her bedroom and stare at it for hours. I don’t think he’d imagined Kitty would ever leave him. Even when she writ to say she was married and never coming back, it was as if he didn’t believe the words on the paper. I can’t tell you how overjoyed he was when Mrs. Alfie brought them together again. But it didn’t last. They was at loggerheads again after a few weeks. I expects she was a bit too forthright about Miss Sissy—or someone else we could name. The master wouldn’t stand for that. Said she had to be respectful, or they could not be under the same roof. She tried, I know, but bending the neck weren’t easy.”
“She’s taken it all very badly. She pretends not to, of course. She pretends she doesn’t care—or that she hates him. But I know her, and I know she feels it deeply.”
“Well, she’s proud, like him. Those two wouldn’t never show weakness. But as God’s my judge, she looked like death itself at the funeral. All that mountain of black! And all those beads clattering away!”
“She had to make a show of it. Even though she knew he would have hated every bit of it. She couldn’t help herself any more than he could with Miss—” I stop. Bessie looks so kindly at me, it makes me want to cry.
“The master was the light of her life. And I always says that the ones who quarrels takes the loss the hardest in the end. It’s regrets, isn’t it? All they didn’t say or do. She’ll feel it more than the rest, mark my words. Even more than Lou, for all her sniveling.”
“All the children miss him. They realize now what emptiness he leaves behind.”
“Well, Mrs. Gibson, the whole country’ll miss him. No more books, no more stories, no more magazine! What will we do every Friday without the Miscellany? And Ambrose Boniface not finished neither.”
I debate whether to tell Bessie about the strange visitation, and Alfred’s peculiar demand in relation to Ambrose Boniface, but there is a familiar impatient jangle of the doorbell. After a brief commotion downstairs, Kitty bounds in, dressed in gray and violet, followed by Augustus in his artistic hat. When she sees Bessie, she stops dead. Then she rushes to embrace her. “Oh, Bessie!”
“Oh, Miss Kitty!” Bessie returns her embrace.
Augustus doffs his hat and stands by the door, awkwardly. He nods at me, as if in tacit recognition of my services concerning his pecuniary difficulties, but says nothing.
Kitty frees herself slowly from Bessie’s embrace and sits down. “We came to take you to Fulham, Mama! We wanted you to come and see our new house. Augustus and I think there is no place to rival it. It is capital! And I know—I simply know, Mama—that we are going to be so happy there. Papa always said—” She stops and catches Augustus’s eye. “I mean, we think that you are happier when you earn your own bread than when you rely on other people’s labors. I spent an entire day writing letters to everyone I know, offering my services as a singing teacher (with elocution an extra) and Augustus has been to the City and got himself the very neatest of offices in the most tucked-away corner, where he can be as industrious as a whole hive of bees. It is all so wonderful. I am so happy!” Her face clouds over. “I mean that I am happy about this chance of a new life. I have not forgotten about Papa, of course, but he always said”—she stops again, looks at Augustus—“rather, we both believe that life must go on.”
“You are right. I think my trip to Fulham will have to wait for another day, though. I am entertaining Bessie, as you see.”
Augustus purses his lips, but says nothing. Bessie was never impressed by his blandishments, and he hasn’t forgotten.
“Would you take a cup of coffee?” I feel I have to offer and am surprised when Augustus accepts. “Thanks, Ma. We’ve been at it like beavers the last few days. I think we deserve a chance to put our feet up.” He sits, but thankfully does not put his feet up. He picks up a book instead and affects to read it.
I ring. Mrs. Wilson comes up, absorbs the instruction concerning coffee as if she is some kind of sponge, and goes down again. Her stiffness is majestic. Kitty, meanwhile, tells us all about her plans, and Bessie gives her warm approval: “You can do anything if you set your mind to it, Kitty. That’s what your father told me when he learnt me to read, and I’ve found it always to be true.”
“Do you really think that’s the case?” I ask. “For example, if I wanted to finish Ambrose Boniface, could I do it?”
Everyone laughs, including Augustus on the sofa. This does not encourage me to go on, but I do so all the same. “No, suppose—just suppose—I took it in my head to do it, do you think I could?”
“Don’t be absurd. No one can finish it.” Kitty knits her brow.
“Well,” says Bessie, “it’d be very difficult. You’d have to know what happens.”
“Do you know what happens?” Augustus puts in slyly, as Wilson brings up another tray. “Wilkie or one of the others would give their heart’s blood for a clue.”
I shake my head: “He didn’t say.”
“What do you mean, didn’t say? How could he discuss it with you? You never spoke to each other.” Kitty is quick to see my error.
“Your mother had a vision,” Wilson announces.
“Vision? What do you mean?” Kitty looks crossly at me. I look crossly at Wilson, but she has put down the coffee and is on her way back to the kitchen. I shall have words with her later.
“It was only a dream,” I say. “A silly dream. Wilson should never have mentioned it.”
“Oh, do tell us!” Augustus helps himself to coffee and leans back, stirring. “Did Alfred come back from the grave? Did he ask you to finish Boniface for him?”
“Well, what if he did?”
“Oh, splendid!” Augustus sips his coffee with a smile. “The Great Man keeps us all up to the mark, even in Limbo. You will have an occupation for six months at least.”
“You cannot be serious, Mama. Simply because you dreamt something …” Kitty has become rather red in the face.
“You think I am incapable?”
“I never said that. But you are not practiced. And if you don’t know the answer to the mystery, how can you hope to attempt it?”
“Your father seemed to think I would find it out somehow. He at least had confidence in me.”
“I should have thought he would have asked me—not that I believe in this vision in the slightest. Why would he have asked you, of all people? He wouldn’t even let us mention your name when he was alive!”
I see now why she is so red in the face; she is jealous. Even of a dream, even of a vision she doesn’t believe in.
“Rub it in, Kit! That’s right.” Augustus speaks without raising his eyes from the book. “Make your poor ma feel her humble position.”
“But it’s absurd! Mama had some foolish dream, and she’s behaving as if it’s the Oracle at Delphi! I mean, I could finish the book if I cared to.”
“And do you care to, my sweet?” Augustus raises his eyes, now.
“I shan’t waste my time in attempting to do what should never be done. No one should finish it. No one knows Papa’s mind. Anyway, you know full well how busy we shall both be.”
“Ah, yes.” He closes the book. “My pat
h in life, No one so true should share it.”
She glares at him. “I don’t know what you mean by that!”
“Only Shakespeare, my love, only the Bard.” His face is inscrutable. I wonder how much he has really changed, whether this new amenability is nothing but surface.
Kitty may be wondering, too, as she rounds on me. “And has it not occurred to you that you are still doing his dirty work? If you want to write, why not try something for yourself? Are you content to be his echo?” She starts to cut up a bun as if she were cutting me up instead.
I want to tell her that even to be his echo would be a great honor. But before I can say anything, Augustus chimes in: “Don’t throw a fit, Kitty my love. I reckon your sainted mother could accomplish the matter better than you imagine. Ma has always seen more than she lets on. I wouldn’t be surprised if she hasn’t worked the whole thing out already.”
“There you are!” says Bessie. “Listen to your husband, Kitty. No one knew better than your mother what your father was thinking.”
Augustus gets up. “What an endorsement! We’ll all look forward to your literary debut, Ma. Now come, my love, we have an appointment with Pickford’s.”
Kitty allows him, reluctantly, to steer her to the door. “Goodbye, Mama. Good-bye, Bessie.” Then she turns and addresses me. “If you really mean to do it—I daresay the singing lessons won’t occupy all my day. I could help a little.”
“Thank you. I’ll remember.” And they are gone.
I sit down and sigh. “Oh, dear, Bessie, I am afraid that I am hoist with my own petard, but I couldn’t let Kitty best me yet again! Not in front of Augustus. Of course I shall never take it on. It’s absurd. The plot so far is too complicated.”
“It’s always reminded me of that Crabtree case. In the paper.”
I laugh. “Are you still reading those Penny Dreadfuls?” Bessie was always an enthusiast for the court proceedings at Bow Street and the Bailey, and would read out the reports of trials, the more bloodthirsty the better. Sometimes Alfred would purloin a copy from her and read it out, doing all the different voices in the middle of the kitchen. Even John the coachman would laugh.
She nods.
“And what, pray, is the Crabtree case?”
“Surely you remember. Me and Mrs. Brooks followed it for weeks. It was about this young woman down in Chatham who disappeared suddenlike, and it were thought as her sweetheart had made away with her, on account of as she had broke off their engagement only the day before, because he were jealous, you see—real, right, raging jealous, and she couldn’t abide it no longer. He’d been seen going up to her house and the neighbors had heard voices raised, and seen him coming out with blood on his coat. Of course he denied he had so much as touched her. He said that he’d gone to the house to make her change her mind, but that they’d argued and he’d told her that if he couldn’t have her, nobody else would—being angry and all that but never meaning to harm a hair of her head. He said that when he left her, she were alive and well and that the blood was from his own self, chopping wood that very morning. Nobody believed him, but they could never find her body, so he was let go.”
“Goodness!”
“But he knew the truth and it tormented him night and day. He knew that the girl must have run away, and hidden herself for fear of him. He knew he had lost her through his fault, through his own jealousy and rage—”
“How do you know he felt this, Bessie? Were you privy to his thoughts?”
“No, but it come out later. Three years to the day, he comes home to find her sitting by his fireside, large as life. She’d been hiding as he thought, traveling and working wherever she could, waiting to see if he would change his ways.”
“And had he?”
“Oh, yes, mum. In spite of everything, he’d worked hard and never complained. And warned other young men not to do as he had done, but to be trustful in love, and not lose their most precious jewel through pride and anger.”
“So he and his sweetheart were reconciled?”
“Oh, yes. And married.”
“And lived happily ever after?”
“Yes.” She laughs. “It was just like one of Mr. Gibson’s stories. Mrs. Brooks and I both thought so.”
“Indeed.” Worthless man saved by a young girl’s love. “So you think that is the clue to Boniface? That Mary Kincaid is not dead after all? Simply biding her time?”
“Well, me and Mrs. Brooks thought the master would never kill Mary this soon. He thought too much of her—you can tell. But of course it’s a different story, and Ambrose is a gentleman, and I’m probably wrong.”
No, I think she may be right. Alfred believed above all in the power of redemption. It will do no harm to see how he might have used this idea. It’s not a new one, after all. I think of Hermione in The Winter’s Tale. And Alma coming back from exile to love and care for Lord Royston at the last. I look at Bessie. “Perhaps you have been sent on purpose to encourage me.”
“I would do anything for you, Mrs. Gibson. I feel so bad for letting you down before.”
“You didn’t, Bessie. You never let me down. And you never let the children down.”
Her eyes brighten. “It’s kind of you to say so, but I wouldn’t want you to think I stayed because I preferred him to you, you know. It was only—well, it was the children. And I’d never known no other life. And he said that he’d got a respectable person to look after you, and that there was no need to worry, but he’d be glad if we didn’t bring up the matter again.”
“Please don’t blame yourself, Bessie. I know how hard it was to go against his will. I gave in, don’t forget. I left my house and my children. Why shouldn’t you have given in, too?”
She shakes her head. “I let you down. I stood there in that kitchen doorway and let you go away all on your own. It nearly broke my heart.”
“Oh, Bessie!” I grasp her dear form and we both start to weep.
Wilson reappears as from nowhere. I see her over Bessie’s shoulder, face implacable. “It’s time for Mrs. Gibson to take a rest, Miss Jorkins,” she says. “She had no end of excitement yesterday and nearly caught her death of cold.”
Bessie springs away in alarm. “Oh, my! I didn’t realize.” She picks up her bonnet. “I’ll be off straightaway.”
“But come again. Come regularly! Promise me that.”
“I will.” She puts her bonnet back on and shakes my hand, and is herded downstairs by Wilson, as if she is a very troublesome sheep and Wilson a sheepdog of impeccable breeding.
“I suppose you’ve got more plans for gallivanting,” Wilson says, when she returns.
“No, Wilson. For the foreseeable future, I shall stay at home.”
She gives a smile of satisfaction.
STAY HOME I shall, but I do not plan to go back to my old, idle ways. I almost feel I have Alfred’s blood running through my veins. I go to the little desk and pull a sheaf of paper towards me. I take up my pen. I hold it high up so I don’t dirty my fingers. I dip it in the ink. And I start to write.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I WOULD LIKE TO THANK the members of Tindal Street Fiction Group for their encouraging response to the initial chapters; and Barbara Holland in particular for reading the whole manuscript when it was finished. Thanks very especially to Alan Mahar for his original interest in the book and for continuing to have faith in it. Thanks also to Emma Hargrave and Penny Rendall for their helpful suggestions, and to John Lucas for his appreciative critique of the final manuscript.
Last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank my family for putting up with my continual ramblings about Dickens, women, and nineteenth-century life—and my husband, Nicholas, in particular for listening to it all with a convincing expression of intelligent interest.
GAYNOR ARNOLD was born in Cardiff, Wales. She is married, with two grown children, and lives in Birmingham, England. Girl in a Blue Dress is her first novel.
Copyright © 2008 by Gaynor Arnold
&nb
sp; First published in the United Kingdom in 2008 by Tindal Street Press
Cloth edition published in Canada in 2009 by McClelland & Stewart
Emblem edition published in Canada in 2010
Emblem is an imprint of McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
Emblem and colophon are registered trademarks of McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher—or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Arnold, Gaynor
Girl in a blue dress / Gaynor Arnold.
eISBN: 978-0-7710-0789-7
1. Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870—Fiction.
2. Dickens, Catherine, 1815-1879—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6101.R68G57 2010 823′.92 C2009-907114-2
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.
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