Beauty in Thorns

by Kate Forsyth

  It would be wonderful if she arrived at Gabriel’s place and he swept her into his arms and said, ‘Bother what they all say! Let’s get leg-shackled.’

  But Lizzie knew it would not happen.

  She sighed. If only Gabriel could have the same kind of success as Johnny Millais. But somehow he never seemed to finish a painting, or publish a poem. Mr Ruskin had championed both Millais and Holman Hunt, but paid little attention to Gabriel, who had failed to get anything ready in time for the Royal Academy exhibition again that year.

  She walked on towards Blackfriars, where Gabriel and his brother William had taken rooms together. Though William paid for the apartment, he was rarely there. Lizzie could only hope he would be absent again that evening. Although she had not yet met Gabriel’s brother, she was sure that he disapproved of her too.

  It was frightening being out alone at night. The gas-lamps only made the shadows deeper, and the fog muffled sounds so she could not tell if the drunken singing and unsteady footsteps she heard were close or far away. A cat yowled eerily somewhere in the darkness.

  As she approached Blackfriars Bridge, Lizzie’s steps slowed. She was beginning to regret the impulse that had driven her out into the night. Her mother would never forgive her for her defiance, and her father would feel shamed in the eyes of his congregation, having a daughter who chose not to live under his protection. They would all think that Lizzie was a fallen woman, and expect her to end up on the streets.

  The buttresses of the bridge were all carved to look like pulpits, a nod to the monastery that had once stood here on the banks of the River Thames. She could not look at them as she passed by, feeling as if preachers stood there, glowering down at her and finding her wanting.

  Gabriel’s rooms were in an apartment block in Chatham Place, looking down on to the Thames. She could see a light shining out of his windows, and felt both a giddying relief that he was home and sharp anxiety that he would turn her away.

  He loves me, she reminded herself. It’s only because he fears he cannot be married and still be free to do his art. If I can just show him that he need not be afraid … that I too have an artist’s soul …

  Gabriel was surprised to see her, but he opened wide the door and let her in. His small apartment was crowded with old furniture draped with Persian shawls, and lay-figures in strange postures. Books and papers were piled higgledy-piggledy everywhere, and paint-mottled blue shirts lay tangled with a gold-embroidered robe.

  ‘Gugs, what are you doing here? What’s wrong?’

  She told him, hands clasped in desperate hope.

  ‘You must stay here with me, dear heart,’ he said at once. But the next moment her spirits were once again dashed as he said, ‘But it wouldn’t do for you to stay for more than one night. Where do you plan to go?’

  ‘Oh, Gabriel, why can’t I just stay with you?’

  He looked uncomfortable. ‘Whatever would my landlady think? She’d be horrified. And it took me so long to find these rooms, I don’t want to lose them.’

  She turned away, taking off her bonnet and laying it on the table. ‘Of course not. Whatever would you do then?’

  He did not notice the faint trace of sarcasm in her voice.

  ‘And the thing is, Gug, I’ve got a party of fellows coming over tomorrow night for a pipe or two and a chinwag. You won’t want to be here for that, I know. So we’ll need to find somewhere for you to stay fast.’

  Lizzie said tonelessly, ‘My aunt may let me stay a while. She and her husband have always been kind to me, and they know what Ma can be like.’

  ‘That sounds like a good plan,’ Gabriel said, pleased. He came and took off her damp coat, kissing the back of her neck and then drawing the pins out of her hair so it fell heavily down her back.

  ‘But for now, you’re all mine,’ he whispered. ‘And we have the whole night together. Let’s leave tomorrow to look after itself.’

  6

  Grimm Tales

  Autumn 1853

  The sound of knocking on the front door roused Georgie from her book of fairytales.

  She waited a moment, expecting the cook to respond, but there was no plod of feet and grumble of complaint, only a new round of vigorous banging.

  ‘I wonder who it could be?’ Georgie asked.

  ‘We aren’t expecting anyone, are we?’ Carrie sat up, clutching the cloth soaked in camphorated oil that had been folded across her chest.

  Georgie jumped up and ran down the hall, unbolting the door and opening it wide.

  Ted Jones stood on the doorstep, a pile of books in his arms. He wore a pair of narrow purple velvet trousers, and a soft collar with a floppy scarf.

  He smiled down at her. ‘Hello, Miss Georgie.’

  ‘Mr Jones,’ she answered shyly. ‘I’m sorry, but everyone’s out. There’s just me and Carrie at home.’

  He looked disappointed. ‘That’s a shame.’

  ‘You can come in and wait, if you like. We could have some tea.’

  His face changed at once, joyously. ‘That would be lovely, thank you.’ He followed her back down the hall and into the drawing-room. It was overcrowded with furniture – a chaise-longue, two fat red chairs, a battered piano with decently clad legs, and a great many crookedly sewn samplers with texts from the Bible all over the wall.

  Carrie was lying on the couch, and she struggled to sit up and put her feet to the floor.

  ‘Don’t get up, Miss Carrie,’ Ted said. ‘You stay just as you are.’

  She lay down again gratefully. The exertion had cost her strength, and she began to cough, hiding her mouth behind her handkerchief.

  ‘I’m so sorry you’re not any better.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

  ‘It’s a great worry,’ Georgie said. ‘We all thought she’d be hale and hearty by summer.’

  ‘I’m sure I’ll soon be well again,’ Carrie said. ‘It’s just that my chest hurts so much when I breathe.’ Her voice was raspy.

  ‘It’s my job to look after her while Mama is out,’ Georgie said. ‘I have to give her camphor on a sugar lump every twenty minutes, and rub her chest with turpentine and camphor oil.’

  ‘That explains the strong smell in the room,’ Ted said.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind it,’ Georgie said anxiously. ‘It’s good for Carrie, it helps her breathe.’

  ‘I don’t mind one bit. I’ve had a chesty cough myself. It will help clear it for me.’

  ‘I’ll just ask for some tea. You can entertain Carrie for me while I’m gone.’ Georgie ran to the kitchen to cajole a pot of tea and some oatcakes from the cook, then returned to find Ted drawing a quick caricature of Carrie with her feet in a steaming mustard-bath, a poultice on her head, and camphor fumes emanating from her. As Georgie came in, he swiftly added a little drawing of her in her pinafore, her arms piled high with boxes and bottles of remedies, a harried expression on her face.

  ‘Oh no, that’s not me at all,’ Georgie said. ‘I’m very happy to look after Carrie. I’ve been reading stories to her.’

  ‘What stories?’ Ted asked, presenting the sketch to Carrie with a little bow.

  ‘I got a new book of fairytales for my birthday.’

  ‘It was your birthday? I’m sorry I missed it. How old are you now? Twenty-seven?’

  ‘Thirteen.’ Georgie blushed, even though she knew he was teasing her.

  ‘A perfectly wonderful age. I often wish I was still thirteen. What stories were you given?’

  ‘Grimm tales from Germany. Look, aren’t they beautiful?’ Georgie picked up the leather-bound book, opening the pages to show Ted its delicate black-and-white drawings. ‘This is my favourite story, the one about the princess who sleeps for a hundred years. Do you remember when we heard the poem?’

  ‘I do,’ Ted answered, gazing down at the drawing of the sleeping princess surrounded by roses, the prince leaning in to kiss her. ‘What a jolly sketch. I wonder who did it.’ He looked at the title page. ‘A chap called Wehner
t. I’ve never heard of him. I like the way the rose briars make a window frame.’

  ‘So do I,’ Georgie said.

  The cook came bustling in with the tea tray, and Georgie busied herself playing mother. As she passed Ted a cup and saucer, he said, ‘Will you read me the story? I only know it from the poem. Carrie, you won’t mind hearing the story again, will you?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘I love hearing them. Georgie reads so well.’

  ‘I like to do all the different voices,’ Georgie explained, and began to read. ‘“In olden times there lived a King and a Queen, who lamented day by day that they had no children …”’

  Ted leant his chin in his hand and watched her, his eyes dreamy. When she came to the passage when the frog in the queen’s bath told her that her wish would be fulfilled, Georgie put on a deep bullfrog’s voice, and Ted laughed in delight. Half a page later, she reached the scene where the slighted fairy arrived at the feast, in a rage because she had not been invited. Georgie said, in the cracked voice of a malevolent old woman: ‘“The Princess shall prick herself with a spindle on her fifteenth birthday and die!”’

  Then, when it was time for the twelfth fairy to try to avert the curse, Georgie affected a high, sweet voice: ‘“She shall not die, but fall into a sleep of a hundred years.”’

  On she went through the story, acting out all the parts with aplomb. When she had finished she gave a little bow, and Ted and Carrie both clapped.

  ‘Well done,’ Ted said. ‘You do read beautifully.’

  ‘It’s a wonderful book to read aloud,’ Georgie said. ‘Much better than The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes.’

  ‘I have made a new friend at Oxford,’ Ted said. ‘He loves to read aloud too. He has been reading me The Lady of Shalott.’

  ‘What is his name?’ Georgie asked.

  ‘William Morris, but we all call him Topsy because he has such a head of triumphant black curls, just like the little girl in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I met him during my first week at Oxford, though I’d seen him the year before when we did our matriculation. We sat next to each other, and I remember him because he was so quick to answer all his questions, and so decisive in the way he threw down his pen and folded his paper.’

  ‘Are you enjoying Oxford, Mr Jones?’ Carrie asked.

  ‘You mustn’t call me Mr Jones. That sounds like a grocer. Call me Ted. Everyone does.’

  Carrie went pink. Georgie said, ‘Mama would not like us to be over-familiar, Mr Jones.’

  ‘Then let us cut the difference. How about you call me Mr Edward?’ he answered.

  ‘Very well. If you are sure. So, can you tell us about Oxford, Mr Edward?’ Georgie said, greatly daring. ‘Is it very wonderful?’

  ‘I thought it would be, but I was sadly disappointed at first. Maybe I was homesick. I had such dreams of changing the world. I wanted to found a Brotherhood of Galahad. You know, to live by the rules of chivalry. But all the fellows at Oxford were only interested in rugby and rowing and drinking and, well, in girls. I was utterly wretched. If it had not been for Topsy I’d have been in despair. But things are better now. We have somewhere jolly to stay, and we’ve got the old Birmingham set there, who all like poetry and art and the stuff I like …’

  As he spoke, Georgie encouraged him with little smiles and murmurs of encouragement, and he began to talk more easily, his eyes glowing, his hands sketching in the air.

  Then the front door banged open, and in came the rest of the family with a great roar of conversation, and a lot of boot stamping and door slamming. They had been to a prayer meeting, and were all hot and thirsty. Mr Macdonald retired to his study, and Mrs Macdonald to her bed, but the children all crowded into the drawing-room, talking nineteen to the dozen. More tea was called for, and oatcakes, and Ted found himself mobbed by small girls wanting him to read them stories.

  Georgie wished them all to the Devil.

  The train snorted steam. A long shrill whistle.

  Georgie peered out the window, searching for Ted’s face, but all she could see was great clouds of smoke. She yanked up the window, and put her head out, unmindful of smuts. At last she saw him, thin, eager, waving his handkerchief enthusiastically. She waved back, and his face lit up in that sudden sweet smile that never failed to wrench her heart.

  The train jerked into motion. She kept waving, kept smiling, leaning so far out of the window she was in danger of falling. Then the station dissolved into the black, swirling smoke, and she fell back into her seat, pressing her gloved hands to her eyes.

  Her mother sat opposite her, lips moving in silent prayer, her hands gripping her carpet bag. Carrie was propped up on cushions, coughing into her handkerchief. Alice held Edith on her lap, holding her firmly against the sudden jolt as the train began to move. Freddy had his head craned out the window, Louie struggling to see past him. Agnes had her face pressed against her mother’s sleeve. She was weeping quietly.

  Georgie was close to weeping herself. The Macdonalds were moving to London. Mr Macdonald had been given the Seventh London circuit. It meant another new start, another new congregation, another severing of ties to friends and familiar places.

  It had been an exhausting month. Mrs Macdonald had had a Spasm, and spent days in bed with smelling salts and her Bible. Mr Macdonald’s thousands of books all had to be dusted and packed up, and all their furniture sent off in a bullock cart. Many tears had been shed, mostly by the girls, but also privately and shamefacedly by Freddy, who had made many friends at his Birmingham school.

  ‘It’s so unfair,’ he had cried. ‘Why must we always be moving?’

  ‘I must go to the people to minister to their needs,’ his father had said. ‘Is it too much to ask that we sacrifice our own comfort in the godly harvest of souls? The Reverend John Wesley rode more than two hundred and fifty miles on horseback, and gave sermons in fields and brickyards and prisons. Always he resolved to be more lowly. Should I do any less?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ Freddy had muttered, abashed.

  That afternoon, while packing up her father’s study, Alice had found an old envelope containing one of Mr Macdonald’s most precious relics. A dusty lock of Charles Wesley’s hair. With a shrill laugh, she had cast it into the fire. ‘See! A hair of the dog that bit us!’

  Then she had gripped Georgie’s hand and sworn her to silence, shocked at what she had done. They could only hope their father would believe the sacred lock of hair lost in the move.

  Georgie’s parents had had to decide what to do about Harry. Eventually he had been left behind in Birmingham to continue his studies there, living in lodgings. The cook and parlour-maid had been laid off, after refusing to travel to London. The rocking-horse had been given away.

  Ted Jones had come up from Oxford to say goodbye. He had drawn a caricature of himself as a tall, thin, disconsolate figure, waving a handkerchief and weeping, as the Macdonalds charged off happily towards the capital, depicted as a cloud of smog out of which a few landmarks peeked. He had given it to Georgie, then taken her hand and said, in his solemn way, that he hoped he would see her again soon. Georgie thought it unlikely. He lived in Birmingham and attended university in Oxford. Whatever would bring him to London?

  The train gained speed, rattling along the railway lines. Through the dirty window, Georgie saw glimpses of smoke-stacks and steel-mills, windows glaring red. Tears filled her eyes. She bent her hands down over her eyes, not wanting anyone to see. The train raced into a long dark tunnel.

  Silently she grieved at the leaving of him.

  7

  The Shadowed Wood

  Spring 1854

  Gabriel and Lizzie wandered along the beach. The sea was the most extraordinary range of colours. Cobalt teal, Lizzie thought. Turquoise. Cerulean blue. Ultramarine.

  Such wonderful words for blue.

  ‘Just breathe that sea air!’ Gabriel said. ‘It must be helping you. Do you feel you need to go to the infirmary?’

  She shook her head. Lizzie
hated doctors. They tapped her chest and listened to her breathing, felt her pulse, looked at her tongue, then stared at her with frowning eyes. They were always concerned by how thin she was, and thought that perhaps she too had consumption, the disease that had killed her brother. They asked her to cough, and cough again. They asked her if she was hot and feverish at nights. Lizzie told them she was cold all the time. One doctor told her that she had early signs of tuberculosis, which skewered her with terror. Another said she had curvature of the spine, which was a puzzle as Lizzie’s mother had always insisted on perfect posture. All said she needed to be fed up on beef tea and calf’s-foot jelly, the very thought of which made her gag.

  So Gabriel had paid for her to come to Hastings, though Lizzie thought it a sad waste of time. She would much rather be in London, painting.

  ‘Really, I’m feeling fine. Particularly now that you are here.’ Lizzie pressed Gabriel’s arm.

  It had been a difficult few months for him. First his grandfather had died, and then his father. Professor Rossetti’s death had not been a shock. He had been ill for a long time. Lizzie thought that Gabriel was more relieved than grieved. His father had not been an amiable patient, and had scolded Gabriel constantly for his failure to make something of his gifts.

  Lizzie unfastened her bonnet and swung it from one hand. Long tendrils of red-gold hair blew about her face. ‘You look like Botticelli’s Venus,’ Gabriel told her. ‘Except with far too many clothes on.’

  Laughing, he drew her profile in the sand with the tip of his walking stick, hair twining out like honeysuckle. A wave rushed up and foamed over the top of one of his shoes. When the wave retreated, it had wiped the sand clean like a child’s school slate. ‘Here lies one whose name was writ in water,’ Gabriel quoted. He shook his damp foot. ‘My shoes are not made for walking on the beach. Do you feel strong enough to walk up on to the hill? I’ve heard you can see for miles from up there, even all the way to France on a clear day.’