The Widow's Confession

by Sophia Tobin

  Julia had taken off her cloak and had wrapped the little girl in it. She had pulled the veil back from her face, and her profile was haloed by the light from the window. The little girl was silent, her hands moving, her expression absorbed, for Julia was singing to her, her American accent giving the words a kind of lilt that was, to Edmund, both exotic and comforting: this new voice imparting a deeper meaning to the words she sang, a resonance that echoed through him.

  Hush, little baby, don’t you cry,

  Mama will sing you a lullaby.

  Hush, little baby, don’t say a word,

  Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.

  And if that mockingbird won’t sing,

  Mama’s gonna buy you a diamond ring.

  And if that diamond ring turns brass,

  Mama’s gonna buy you a looking glass.

  Suddenly aware of Edmund’s presence, Julia broke off and looked at him, her face flushed. ‘Mr Steele,’ she said. ‘Is all well?’

  Edmund was holding the kettle in one hand and the lid in the other. ‘Miss Mardell,’ he said. He leaned back against the doorway, stared at her, and at the little girl who turned to look at him in babyish wonder. ‘If I live long enough, will you consent to be my wife?’

  ‘Martha,’ said Theo, to the astonished girl who stood in his kitchen doorway. ‘Take Polly upstairs to the second guest room. See that she gets warm and dry, and that she sleeps. You are to stay with her. On no account are you to leave her alone.’

  The two girls glanced at each other, wariness in Martha’s eyes, a tired enmity in Polly’s.

  ‘But the dinner, Mr Hallam,’ said Martha.

  Theo sighed. ‘I do not want dinner,’ he said.

  Martha gave Delphine one long look. ‘Madam?’ she said. Delphine nodded.

  ‘Mrs Beck is here because she helped me with Polly,’ said Theo. He sounded weary. ‘Please, leave us.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she said, and curtseyed before shuffling out and going up the stairs, followed by Polly.

  Delphine looked around the kitchen – at the red and black tiles on the floor, and the blue and white tiles on the wall. Beyond the small window she saw the movement of the evergreens, their waxen leaves shining in the sun. The smell of this room was of mouldering bread, and of beer, and it was small to service such a large house. She supposed this would be the last time she saw it, and she tried to fix it in her memory. At Theo, too, she looked – hungrily, without reservation or embarrassment. Unlike her, he was sitting forwards, bent over the table, slightly hunched, his hands clasped together in front of him. She wondered if he was praying; whether almost every activity he did was a form of prayer. She looked over his head, the hair neatly shorn, the summer light showing the gold in every strand. She did not know what it was that made her want to stay in this room, with him, for as long as she could.

  At last he spoke, his eyes fixed on his hands, on the table. ‘Is it true?’ he said. ‘Did Polly really speak the truth?’

  Delphine’s first impulse was to speak tartly about the confessional, to say that he was at last showing the true Catholic spirit Mr Benedict had suspected. But even as the words rose in her mind, they only had a dull kind of shine to them, and she doubted that she had the energy to carry them off.

  ‘In part, it is true,’ she said. ‘Benedict has spun stories from a few scraps of information. I have lived as I am for so long, because people do not know what is true and what is false. They know only that I am a lost woman. I cannot dispute that.’

  He raised his eyes to her face. They were the piercing blue of the sky; there was nothing veiled about them, and his gaze had an intensity which, though she had seen it before, still had the power to astonish her. ‘What is true and what is false?’ he said.

  I still have a choice, she thought. But she knew she would speak to him; that she could not help but speak to him, and that there was no longer anything to be gained by staying silent.

  ‘It is true that I was – am – disgraced,’ she said, ‘and through a connection with a man. What the world supposes to be that connection, is false.’ She did not like the note of justification she heard in her voice, and paused to consider her words. ‘Mr Benedict heard of it because I sold a painting in London, and I considered it mine to sell. It was necessary for me to do so, to support myself and my cousin. She knows nothing of this, and I would ask you not to mention it to her. It was an Old Master, and the dealer was suspicious of me – a woman, not apparently wealthy, owning such a thing. I told him its provenance, in the strictest confidence, which he has broken. If my father finds out I have sold the painting, he will be disappointed, but as for stealing it . . . that is not the case. It is from my family; it was given to me by my aunt, when I left. If they wished to seek it they would have done so, long ago. They have always had track of me, through my agent in London. I am given a small income, but as the years pass, it is not always enough, for they will not increase it. I have broken no law. They have always known where I was.’ Her voice cracked on the last word and she bit her lip; she had not expected emotion to creep up on her, to overtake her so quickly, choking up her voice. Her distant family, the people she had tried to think of as dead, were suddenly so real that they seemed to stand in the corners of the room. I have gone from stone to sand in a moment, she thought. She willed herself not to cry.

  ‘You were never married,’ he said, with a finality that indicated it was not a question. ‘Did you live with a man, as though you were?’

  ‘No. But why that should matter to you, I do not know.’

  ‘You have lived a lie. What is your real name? I presume the one you have given me is false?’

  She met his gaze with her own. ‘I will not tell you. You speak to me as though you are my judge, but you have no such exalted place. Look to your own soul.’

  She saw the flicker of doubt in his eyes, and knew she had hit some inner nerve; knew also that she had pressed on that point of doubt she had always seen in him. She had not wished to wound him, but she had tired of his merciless questioning, seeing in it one weak individual finding strength in pushing down another. Once, they had been equal adversaries, over Alba – though she had not known, at the time, that he was battling for the young woman’s soul. But now he had seen a way of triumphing over her, and had taken it, and she despised him for it.

  He pushed his chair away from the table, but did not stand. ‘When I think,’ he said, ‘of the way in which you singled out Miss Albertine, and spent so much time with her, trying to influence her.’

  ‘Do you suspect me of trying to drag her into some kind of wickedness?’ she said. She was angry, but she did not believe it wholly; saw the strain in his countenance, the movement of his lips pressed together. He was unsure and uncertain. He was, she thought, trying to play a part; following the urgings of the God he had read of and been schooled in – a God that, she guessed, had no direct words with his heart.

  ‘If you intend only to insult me then I will not speak to you of it any more,’ she said. She got up, quickly, and he sprang up, too; stood in the doorway. She took a step back, astonished.

  ‘Tell me your name,’ he said hoarsely.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not under duress.’

  ‘Do you not understand?’ he said. ‘The truth is important, it is central to everything. I must know the truth about you. What is that, even?’ He gestured to the choker of woven hair she wore. He shook his head angrily. ‘It is the same colour—’

  ‘—as Alba’s,’ she said. ‘Yes. But it is not Alba’s hair. It is mine. As it was when I was a woman of twenty. I wear it because I mourn for myself, for what I once was, and for every part of the life I left behind.’

  She picked up her bonnet. Felt, beneath her fingers, the tight weaving of the Parisian bonnet-makers, the smoothness that money can buy. It was an old bonnet, growing frayed through use. ‘You know the truth of me,’ she said. ‘If I did not tell everything about me, that is not a lie. Is it really Alba you are angry about
? Is it really my effect on her, or on someone else? I have never played a part – not like you, no. Not like you.’

  She moved to go past him; he put his arm up to bar the door. She touched it; sprang back from it as though it was charged. ‘Let me through,’ she said. ‘Let me out.’

  ‘I will not,’ he said. ‘You have ruined everything. You are an agent of corruption. The devil lives in your words.’ The quiet certainty of his voice cut through her. Their summer seemed to splinter like a mirror hit with a hammer. There was, it seemed, no way of escaping the darkness of New York and its judgement. Their sunlit days here had been merely an illusion.

  ‘Nothing has been the same since you came here,’ said Theo. ‘This quiet place, where I thought I would be safe – you have turned everything upside down. I have tortured myself over a whore.’

  There was no way past him, and the noise grew loud in Delphine’s mind. She took a step back. The thought crossed her mind that she would take a knife, and run it through him, as though he was that first man and every man since who had judged her and taken away her freedom. For the silence of her mother, and the complicity of every friend and relation she had known in her whole life. One ring for each of them, worn on her fingers, fingers loaded with gold enamelled over with black. But she felt tired; and she knew there was only one way out of the room without violence. It was the truth.

  ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘If you must know it. Despite it all, Mr Hallam, I am a virgin. As pure as every one of those little girls found on the beach. My name is Amy.’

  She had shocked him; he dropped his arm. She went past him, quickly, down the hall, out of the front door into the bright, cruel sunshine that blinded her, pulling the door shut behind her with all her strength. The door slammed shut so hard that the knocker rattled against it, but she did not look back; she had broken into a run towards Victory Cottage, running as if he might follow her.

  Theo stood in the darkness of the hallway, a few steps from the door, now shut. His left hand hung at his side, but his right was raised slightly, the fingers curved round. He stared at it for a moment, this hand which seemingly did not belong to him. The hand that had reached out as she left, reached out to take her right arm and turn her round to him, and take her face, so that he might kiss her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Let me tell you what I wore, each day, apart from my dresses: grey, lavender, black – all of hard-wearing, itchy stuff. Neither full mourning nor half-mourning, but in flux day by day.

  On the little finger of my right hand, a ring bearing a monogram of my grandfather’s initials.

  On the third finger of my right hand, a ring enclosing beneath rock crystal the entwined hair of my grandfather and grandmother.

  On the second finger of my left hand, a black enamelled mourning ring enclosing the hair of my parents, tied in a love knot.

  On the third finger of my left hand, a gold band enamelled in white, with forget-me-nots picked out in gold. The interior engraved with my real name. A mourning ring for a virgin, or one unmarried.

  Around my neck, a choker made of woven hair, the last remnant of who I once was.

  Alba had said that Miss Waring thought me over-indulgent in my mourning. Perhaps she saw my face, and thought it too should have been plain and unornamented, that my gaze should not have been searching for something, as clearly it was – though at the time I thought myself stringent in my carriage and expressions. It was a fair question, though. Why did I still mourn? Why did I still wear those rings, that choker, those dark uncomfortable dresses? Because I was driven to remember. I thought, I must keep the wound open. It was only by grieving, and hating, and memorializing, that I remembered who I was. And I could do it in a way that the world did not question. For all of my coolness, I wore my wounds openly, I showed the world that I had known suffering. And I built my walls, hopeful that no one would ever break them down.

  Now? Now I wish to be happy. And to be happy, one must choose to live with the past. I must find a place inside my mind for it; a dark corner, where it can sleep.

  Victory Cottage was silent as Delphine entered; in her fumbling urgency it took her more than one turn of the handle to get the front door open.

  She went first to the parlour and found Edmund and Julia there, with Polly’s child sleeping in Julia’s arms. The light was already greying in the room; Julia placed a finger to her lips as Delphine sank into the chair. Her face was white, and as Edmund approached her he saw the shock there. He leaned over her.

  ‘Something has happened,’ she said in a whisper.

  They heard the front door rattle in its frame – someone clumsily trying to open it. Delphine covered her face and turned away. ‘Not him,’ she said. It was such a gesture of vulnerability that Edmund stepped out into the hallway swiftly, wondering what he would face. He went to the door and yanked it open.

  A woman stood there; her face was faintly familiar. ‘I’ve come for the little one,’ she said, and curtseyed belatedly. ‘Martha sent word that she was here. I’m Mrs Gorsey, Polly’s mother.’

  ‘One moment,’ he said, and went back into the parlour. Julia was already on her feet, carrying the little girl out into the hallway. The child held her arms out at the sight of her grandmother.

  ‘We can keep her here for a while, if you wish,’ said Julia, with such a note of pleading in her voice that it pained Edmund.

  The woman shook her head. ‘Best with family,’ she said, and received the child into her arms. The little girl looked over her grandmother’s shoulder as the woman walked down the path, and raised a chubby little hand as though to say goodbye. Edmund watched Julia – but she only smiled and waved back, as one would to a child on the beach. She had done it in a practised manner; turned away and smiled brightly. From what she had told him, he guessed that she had known many goodbyes, and become accustomed to it.

  Delphine was still sitting in the same place. Julia sat down beside her and Edmund went to stand by the empty fireplace, feeling that he was intruding as he watched Delphine wipe a tear away with her thumb.

  ‘Dearest,’ said Julia after a moment, ‘what has happened?’

  Delphine looked at her. ‘He knows,’ she said, ‘Mr Hallam.’ Her eyes glanced regretfully at Edmund. ‘There is no need to go, Mr Steele. I am sure he will tell you everything. You need only cross the street and walk up the drive, and you will have a full and colourful version of my character painted for you.’

  ‘I think I may make my own judgement,’ said Edmund and, alarmed at her pallor, he went quietly from the room to find something for her to drink.

  Julia leaned towards Delphine, took her face in her hands. ‘You look terrible, my darling – worse even than that day.’ They sat in pregnant silence as Edmund returned with Madeira, neither he nor Julia wanting to ask what had happened, only knowing that it must have been something of great violence.

  ‘We must leave this place,’ Delphine said. ‘I never want to see him – or anyone else from our party – again.’

  ‘I do not believe that,’ said Julia bravely.

  ‘Then you must learn to listen better.’ Delphine took the glass Edmund offered her, drinking it down in one mouthful. She caught his gaze with her own as she put it on the table beside her. ‘He has insulted me,’ she said. The clock ticked in the silence she let fall. ‘I never thought to hear such words from his lips. I think I held him sacred, until this moment.’ She wiped another tear away. ‘I have been a fool.’ She looked at Julia. ‘You must forgive me for letting you down,’ she said. ‘He knows who we are – and he is wild with anger. I do not know what he will do – who he will tell. I am sorry, but we must begin again.’

  ‘Do not say you are sorry,’ said Julia. ‘I cannot bear it.’

  ‘He has hurt me,’ whispered Delphine, and she caught Edmund’s glance again. ‘I felt it so much I almost wanted to kill him.’

  Julia looked from one to the other. ‘Do not speak so intemperately. There is a man here who will defe
nd you,’ she said, ‘who will be family to you, as soon as God allows.’ She had one arm wrapped around her body, the other hand pressed to the mark on her face. She looked at Edmund.

  Delphine’s gaze flickered between them. ‘Oh,’ she said, a gentle smile flaring up on her face, in such contrast to the grief that it was almost ghoulish. ‘Tell me.’

  Edmund swallowed; he would not have chosen this moment to tell her. It seemed insensitive, and yet Julia’s strained gaze was unwavering. ‘Your cousin has done me the honour of agreeing to become my wife,’ he said.

  Delphine nodded. ‘I am glad,’ she said.

  Julia sprang to her, held her tightly. ‘So you see,’ she said, ‘Edmund will defend you. He will right all the wrongs Mr Hallam has done – won’t you, dear?’

  Edmund was shaken by the novelty of the word. He nodded.

  Delphine pulled away from her. ‘There is nothing Mr Steele can do,’ she said.

  ‘But there must be,’ said Julia, a scratch of vulnerability in her voice.

  Delphine shook her head. ‘Whatever connection lay between Mr Hallam and me,’ and her face showed her astonishment, that her mind had been a stranger even to herself, in this sudden recognition of the store of feeling which lay beneath the surface of each ‘good morning’ and ‘good evening’ exchanged between her and Theo. ‘Whatever that connection,’ she went on, ‘though we were hardly aware of it, either of us, it is now broken.’ She looked up at Edmund, and he saw in the shadows beginning under her eyes, the exhaustion of extreme emotion. ‘You do not need to defend me. I do not doubt that you are a gentleman, and loyal to my cousin – but you have no debt to me. There is nothing to be done.’ She reached across and poured herself another glass of Madeira. ‘I have fought worse battles than this,’ she said, and at her words Julia picked up the decanter and hurried from the room. Delphine watched her. ‘You should go after her,’ she said.