Loretta Proctor

by The Crimson Bed

  ‘If it wasn’t for her bad breeding, I would have made use of her in the nursery. She has a real knack with children and they absolutely adore her,’ he said, ‘but Bella won’t hear of having her here permanently, knowing her background.’

  Fred felt a sense of comfort from this good deed and it went a long way to cheering him in his present state of loneliness. He had recently received a letter from Ellie who was still in Hertfordshire. Joshua, her father, had joined her there, which secretly pleased Fred for he felt that someone was keeping an eye on Ellie. Foolish of him, he knew, but he couldn’t help it. Ellie’s account was mainly full of the children, their pretty doings and miserable ailments. She enjoyed Charlotte’s company and reported in detail the outings they made to local beauty spots and how they had been entertained at the beautiful Derbyshire country estate of the Pendleton family.

  ‘I don’t like Jack Pendleton much,’ she wrote. ‘Oh, he’s a good looking, fine figure of a fellow and I think he cares about Lottie in his off-hand way but he is totally absorbed by farming and outdoor pursuits while Lottie prefers to read and play the piano. I’m not sure they are at all compatible. On the other hand, maybe she will enjoy the peace and quiet of being left to run her home in her own fashion. Let us wish them well at any rate. Father is in fine spirits and enjoying the change of air. I suspect he enjoys leaving his crosspatch of a sister in Oxford for a while also. Though he would never ever say anything so disloyal! Come and see us soon, dearest. The children miss you and ask after you. You could probably do with a change of air yourself and Hertfordshire is a lovely county.’

  Fred however still had a good deal of business to attend to in London and much as he admired Oreton Hall and missed his wife and children, he had no great wish to be there. Rather, he wished they would return home and be with him in their own cosy little house in Hampstead. It was selfish of him. The children and Joshua also were all benefiting from their stay in the country.

  His mother made much of his wife’s prolonged stay from home and made it clear that it was time Ellie returned.

  ‘I realise that the Dillingers have had their share of misfortune of late but it seems to me a wife’s place is with her husband,’ she remarked one evening at dinner.

  ‘Ellie is happy at Oreton Hall, Mama. It was her childhood home in a sense; she spent many summers there with the family. After all, Lord Dillinger is her godfather.’

  ‘Hmm,’ sniffed Beatrice, ‘that may be so. However, she is not a child any more but a wife and I feel she deserts you far too often.’

  Privately Fred thought so too but he made no comment. Fanning the flames of his mother’s gossiping tongue was never a good idea. Besides, Ellie was to return within a fortnight and then all would be well. He looked forward to seeing them with all his heart and soul.

  Fred needed to call in on Farley Millbank over a business matter one afternoon. He found the artist painting in his studio at the back of the house. Jessaline was sitting for him that day. Over by the window, watching the proceedings, was seated another woman. This woman was a good deal older than Jessie, perhaps in her late twenties and she had an air of affluence and well-mannered elegance. Fred wondered who the visitor might be.

  ‘This is my dear friend, Susan Witherspoon,’ said Jessie by way of introduction, ‘Sue, this is my dear, dear Georgie-Porgie.’

  She still called him by that nickname though by now she knew what his real name was. It was a little joke between them.

  Mrs Witherspoon rose and bowed to Fred who looked at her appreciatively. She was a fair-haired, good-looking woman, had a pleasing and ample figure, and on the surface seemed refined. However as she spoke, he detected the twang of some Cockney dialect beneath the surface. Her striking blue eyes had a hard, cold stare; her thin mouth drawn in a straight line looked as if it seldom smiled. She was very proper but almost too much so as if constantly striving to make a good impression.

  Raising her head now, she stared Fred directly in the eye and he felt a certain sense of discomfort and surprise at this bold look. The thin straight line of the mouth now moved a trifle at the corners into a little smile. It was not a smile of friendliness or greeting. Rather, an amused, knowing look that sent a slight shiver down his spine.

  I wonder if she is the friend Jessie mentioned, he mused. I am almost sure she is. Why do I feel as if I couldn’t trust this woman? She doesn’t have Jessie’s open-ness and sweetness.

  Nevertheless, he felt an odd, compulsive attraction as he looked at her. In some way she appealed to him though he had no idea why a woman who was possibly a harlot should do so.

  As he sat and chatted to Millbank, Fred noticed that Mrs Witherspoon kept glancing at him. She seemed to be watching him as much as the progress of the painting and Fred felt awkward as well as puzzled. Why, he wondered, was she so interested in him? Was she attracted to him? The idea was flattering as well as alarming. He glanced over now and then and almost invariably caught her eye.

  After a while, during a pause in order that the model might rest a little, she arose and announced that she had to leave.

  ‘Oh, Sue… wait with me till I’ve done,’ said Jessaline, pouting a little.

  ‘I have business, my dear. I really must attend to it. I will see you later in the day.’

  ‘You never said anyfink about it before,’ said the young lady, put out by her friend’s desertion.

  Mrs Witherspoon made no reply but politely bid everyone adieu and the maid saw her out. Fred felt a strange sense of relief at her departure as if a snake had slithered away just as he felt it was going to flick forth its forked tongue and bite him.

  After another ten minutes conversation, he also took his leave.

  ‘Be good, Jessie,’ he said with a smile, dropping a guinea into her purse which lay with her shawl on one side.

  She smiled at him with affection. ‘I always am good, ain’t, I, Mr Millbank, sir?’

  Millbank smiled as he daubed at his picture in which Jessie was dressed up as a mediaeval lady reading a letter.

  ‘She is very good. And a very patient sitter.’

  Fred nodded, pleased with the result of his experiment in rescuing fallen women.

  He set off down the steps of the house and into the street, meaning to walk along to the Royal Academy and see some paintings there. As he set off down the road, a voice called his name from an old hansom cab that was standing and waiting a little way down the street.

  Surprised, he turned and saw Sue Witherspoon leaning out and calling to him.

  His heart stopped for a moment and he felt that he wanted to hurry on but he could not ignore a woman, even one of such dubious standing as this one. He paused and lifted his hat.

  ‘Did you call me, Madam?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Thorpe. I did. May I not offer you a lift somewhere?’

  ‘Very kind of you, ma’am, but I plan to walk to the Royal Academy. ‘

  ‘My dear sir, it’s on my way. Please let me take you. I waited for you because there is something I wish to say.’

  Something drew him to look intently into those calm blue eyes and then enter the cab. She moved over on the seat, pulling her voluminous skirts out of his way, and knocked on the roof to urge on the cabman. The horse began to canter off and she sat back and regarded Fred, who was squeezed in beside her, with a faint smile and a cool steadfastness.

  ‘I waited for you, Mr Thorpe,’ she said, ‘hoping you might be coming soon because I wanted to thank you personally for having helped young Jessie so much. She sings your praises and never ceases to tell me that you are her saviour and how all your friends are such “gennulmen”! You have helped my dear little friend and I am very grateful.’

  ‘It is my pleasure, Mrs Witherspoon. She seemed so young, sweet, and vulnerable that I couldn’t help but give her some hope. That’s to say rather than the life she would otherwise have led.’

  Mrs Witherspoon gave him a sarcastic smile, ‘Indeed, such a life!’ she murmured and he felt a sense of mock
ery in her reply. He remembered then that she probably led the same life from which he hoped he had rescued Jessie. That is, if she was the same person whom Jessie had described as helping her on the road to prostitution. Suddenly he wondered what on earth he was doing riding in a cab in close proximity with such a woman. The cabman seemed to take a delight in dashing his horse between omnibuses, wagons and carts as if he had the Devil after him, which sent Mrs Witherspoon into Fred’s arms as often as not.

  A herd of cows heading for some farm or market now advanced towards them, urged on by the drovers’ cries. The noise of their lowing and the shouts of other cabbies and the general hubbub was quite deafening. Fred wished he had never been such a fool as to accept this hair-raising lift in a cab with an unknown and very dubious woman. A peaceful walk along the back streets would have been infinitely preferable to this bedlam.

  Henry, he knew, would have seen it as an adventure and been amused by it. Fred felt she was all he disliked in a woman. Those mocking blue eyes held him, stirred something within and troubled him deeply. Silence fell between them. Mrs Witherspoon looked at the passing scene with a thoughtful expression.

  ‘Do you and Jessie share the same lodgings?’ Fred asked.

  ‘Not any longer. I have moved out. Jessie can fend for herself now. I have lodgings at 41, Cresswell St.’ Changing the subject suddenly, she leant towards him and he inhaled the faint perfume of her hair. ‘Mr Thorpe, I hope to have a little birthday celebration for Jessie… she is motherless now, poor thing. I look on myself as her mother substitute, you know. Would some of you kind gentlemen have any objection to attending such a celebration?’

  ‘It is very kind of you, Mrs Witherspoon – I cannot speak for the others but I don’t think I can. Business you know… ‘ Fred trailed away lamely.

  She smiled and nodded as if to show she was not surprised by his reply.

  ‘I understand you deal in art, sell pictures, Mr Thorpe?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Will these pictures with Jessie sell well?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Farley Millbank is always a popular artist. He knows how to please his public, rather like Millais. They will sell easily.’

  ‘I would like you to buy them for me. It would be a good investment.’

  ‘If you wish,’ he said dubiously.

  ‘Oh, I have the wherewithal, Mr. Thorpe, I assure you. Mr Millbank would have no objection, surely?’

  ‘I don’t see why he would.’

  ‘And our Jessie will be famous then, forever young and beautiful, captured on canvas.’

  Fred looked at her in surprise. He would not have expected such a sensitive remark from her.

  ‘That’s well put,’ he said. ‘Yes, all these women will be goddesses forever, all of them. Future generations will look on their faces and see their beauty.’

  ‘While their mortal flesh lies a-rotting. How strange a thought!’

  The cab at last threaded its way into Trafalgar Square where the Royal Academy now shared premises with the National Gallery and Fred asked to alight.

  ‘Oh, of course, you wished to go to the Academy,’ said Mrs Witherspoon. ‘I often visit it myself for I love to see the pictures. Do you plan to see anything in particular?’

  ‘No, I’ll just wander around a little.’

  Fred paid the cabman and told him to take the lady wherever she now intended to go.

  ‘I thank you, sir,’ she said and held out a gloved hand. He took it and bowed a little while she smiled and inclined her head in farewell.

  ‘I hope we will meet again, sir,’ she said, ‘remember to make an offer to Mr. Millbank for his pictures of Jessie. I want them all and will pay handsomely.’

  ‘I will speak to him,’ Fred said and watched the cab roll away.

  He turned and entered the Academy a thoughtful and troubled man.

  Chapter 24

  Later in the year, Fred decided to go back to Manchester and Birmingham where the wealthier and keener patrons now abounded. Apart from Henry’s work, for which he already had many interested patrons, he also took along the paintings of a friend called Walter Markham whose work was mediocre but sold well – appealing, in Fred’s opinion, to a general lack of public taste. Amongst the usual banality of pretty children and biblical scenes was one of Markham’s better watercolours, a deserted but evocative seaside scene near Bamborough which Fred sold to an interested buyer in Leeds, having procured the rights to make prints from it which he felt sure would make him a nice fat profit.

  During his stay in Leeds he met up again with Thomas Oldham. Fred was polite but distant. Oldham, however, ignored this and, as if determined to win his young friend round again, behaved with the utmost charm and dignity. It was not long before his stronger personality managed to capture once more the trusting younger man.

  On their return to London together by train, Oldham proposed a night out on the town.

  ‘Come, my dear fellow, we have just concluded a few very remunerative deals. Should we not be allowed to celebrate a little?’

  Fred considered the matter. Ellie had gone off with the children to stay once more at Oreton Hall where arrangements were now being made for Charlotte’s marriage to Jack Pendleton. He had agreed to join them later in the month when the wedding was due to take place. Wedding arrangements and fluttering women and their clothes and household considerations were likely to be very boring and without the supportive male company of Joshua Farnham, his father-in-law, he would feel out of it all. He was therefore alone once more in the house but, hating his own company, spent his evenings either at his club, his parents’ home, or round at Henry Winstone’s place. The latter was seldom a cheerful experience; the two men sitting drinking whisky till the small hours in a mutual state of maudlin selfpity over their sense of desertion. Oldham, however, was a cheerful sort of fellow and would surely be more amusing company. So Fred agreed to join Oldham for dinner at his club.

  After a very agreeable supper, Oldham suggested they took a cab to the Holborn casino and amuse themselves with a little flutter or two. Fred demurred, for he was not a gambling man.

  ‘It’s too late, I suppose, to go to a theatre,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, yes, they won’t let us in now. And you don’t strike me as a music hall man or we could have gone along to the Orlando, so I suppose we might as well go for a stroll and see where our feet will take us,’ replied Oldham with a smile.

  ‘Do you really like music halls? They seem the haunt of some rather sordid people.’

  Oldham laughed a trifle mockingly and said, ‘You are far too dainty, sir. Of course, the music hall is entertaining. No need to wear a tailcoat, no need to worry about etiquette and other people’s opinions. The atmosphere is free and easy and men and women sit down together and sing, drink, laugh and enjoy themselves. None of this false culture one gets in so-called smart society. Give me a jolly nigger song any day to sing along with rather than those screeching, over-sized females at the opera.’

  ‘Frankly,’ said Fred firmly, ‘I prefer to see people elegantly dressed and courteous when out together. Courtesy doesn’t need to be overbearing niceties and elaborate forms. It should be gentle and natural and spring from a caring for one’s fellow men and women. I don’t expect I would find much courtesy or elegance in a music hall and so, Mr Oldham, I prefer to keep away. Half the pleasure of going out of an evening is to make oneself smart, to meet pleasant and interesting people of culture, not to hear men and women sing bawdy songs.’

  ‘Well, sir, if that is your opinion, we certainly won’t go there together. I see we have different tastes in many things.’

  ‘We do indeed. I think we must leave it at that. You are a single man, Mr Oldham, and may indulge yourself in any way you like. I have a wife and family to consider and care for and this naturally affects my attitudes and turns my interests in a different direction. I don’t mean to be critical of your own tastes in any way, you understand.’

  ‘Oh, I fully understand, my dea
r Mr Thorpe, I fully understand.’

  As always, there was that slight mocking tone that made Fred feel angry inside. Oldham always seemed to make him feel that those things he held most dear were plebeian, boring or even ridiculous. Perhaps they were to this free and easy fellow but they were happiness to Fred. He loved his little family, he loved Ellie. What could this cold, wifeless, mercenary man know of those simple family joys? What then did such a fellow live for and what real happiness could he derive from his bachelor freedoms? Whores by the dozen, perhaps, with all the fear of infection that they might bring; the freedom to come and go as he pleased and be beholden to no one, have no one to consider but himself and his tawdry desires.

  He made no comment but privately wondered if Oldham was really the gentleman he pretended to be. However, they were out for the night now and must make the best of one another’s company.

  Luckily, the weather was fine that evening and the two men strolled alongside the river till they reached the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens from whence issued loud music and the sound of laughter, loud voices, shouts and screams of delight.

  ‘Oh, come on, let’s go on in and find some pleasant partner with whom we might dance and drink a little,’ said Oldham, ‘I feel the need of some female company, don’t you?’

  ‘Not especially.’

  ‘My dear fellow, what a wet-blanket you are! You have sent your lady wife away to Hertfordshire and here you are with a pleasant meal inside you, some dry weather by way of a change and the night is young, as they say. Can you not let your hair down like any other man now and then? Where’s the harm in it? Your lady will never know and more than likely, from my experience of women, won’t really care. She will be busy cooing over her children and talking endless baby talk.’

  ‘Ellie isn’t that sort of woman – she is highly intelligent and interesting,’ said Fred, annoyed.