Beauty in Thorns

by Kate Forsyth

  On 18th December, Gabriel wrote to her in high agitation, begging her to come and see him. Janey made up some excuse and went to him, though she could not sit still in the hansom cab, constantly checking the road behind to make sure she was not being followed. She was grateful for the lashing rain, which made it easy for her to conceal her face with a veiled hat and her umbrella, as she hurried up the steps to the front door.

  Gabriel had obviously been watching for her, as he opened the door before she had time to knock. Janey expected him to kiss her, and lead her to the bedroom, but instead he grasped hold of her arms tightly. His face was pale, his eyes shadowed, his hands shaking.

  ‘Janey, I need to talk to you.’ He hustled her towards the studio, talking all the while. ‘Charles Howell has made the most extraordinary suggestion. I don’t know what to think of it. You know I’ve been writing again … and thinking of putting together a collection of poems …’

  He opened the door and Janey went in. It gave her a deep secret pleasure to see that the studio walls were now dominated by chalk drawings and watercolours of her face. The pictures of Lizzie had all been put away, and all his other golden-haired beauties as well.

  Gabriel began to pace around the studio. ‘I’ve been hunting about, trying to find copies of some of my old poems … but I buried them, Janey, I buried them all with Lizzie. All my best poems. I’ve been tearing out my hair trying to rewrite them, but it’s no use, it’s been too long. Janey, Janey … Howell suggests I have the coffin dug up … to get my manuscript back.’

  Janey sank down into a chair. ‘What?’

  ‘People are dug up all the time, you know, to move them to a different grave, or to make sure they haven’t been poisoned.’ Gabriel came to a halt before her, his face beseeching.

  ‘Janey, what do you think? Will people condemn me? I mean her no disrespect … but, Janey, my poems!’

  She could only stare at him in horror.

  8

  Love Enough

  Winter 1869

  Georgie was woken very early one morning, by the shrill ring of the doorbell.

  It took her a while to wake up, and find her slippers and robe, and stumble down to the front hall. The doorbell rang insistently the whole time.

  She opened the door to a wintry dawn streaked with red claw marks.

  The poet Robert Browning stood on her doorstep, wrapped in a heavy cloak. Next to him – slump-shouldered, soaked to the skin, shivering with cold – was Ned.

  ‘There was an unfortunate incident,’ Mr Browning said. ‘Madame Zambaco almost drowned. In the canal behind my house.’

  Georgie stared at him blankly, then looked at her husband.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he muttered.

  ‘But … what happened?’

  Mr Browning did not look at Ned. His voice was bland. ‘Perhaps she slipped. Though the police found an empty bottle of laudanum.’

  ‘The police?’

  ‘Yes. There was … some disturbance to the peace.’

  Ned’s clothes dripped onto the doorstep. Pond weed tangled in his hair.

  ‘I am sorry,’ Mr Browning said. ‘If it is any consolation, the police will not be pressing charges.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Georgie said. ‘May I offer you some tea?’

  For the first time she understood why manners had been invented.

  ‘No, thank you. I do not wish to keep my horses standing in this weather.’ He hesitated, then took her hand and squeezed it. ‘I am so very sorry.’

  Georgie drew her husband inside and closed the door behind him. She could feel the tremors racking his body. His lips were blue, and he could not catch his breath. She ran to the linen cupboard and found a blanket to wrap him in, then hustled him to the kitchen, stoking up the fire, putting the kettle on to boil, dragging the hipbath out of the cupboard. She drew off his sodden shoes and socks, and rubbed his ice-white feet with a towel.

  She could not look at him.

  ‘Oh, Georgie,’ he whispered. ‘It was so awful.’

  Focusing on her task, she asked curtly, ‘What happened?’

  ‘I had gone to visit Luke … when I came out, she was waiting for me. Georgie, you know I’d promised not to see her again … you know I’d tried to break things off … but she wouldn’t let me, Georgie, she wouldn’t let me!’

  It was a cry from the heart, like a bewildered child’s.

  ‘Is she your master, then, as well as your mistress?’ Georgie said coldly.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ he whispered. ‘It is like she has cast a spell on me.’ He shuddered violently. ‘A curse, more like.’

  Georgie stared at him. She imagined Maria, stepping out from the shadows, her pale face stricken. Perhaps she flung herself into his arms, weeping. Perhaps she fell to her knees before him. Perhaps she laughed, and slid her cold hand inside his clothes.

  She turned away, busying herself putting pots of water on to boil for the bath.

  ‘Georgie, I swear. I did not arrange to see her …’

  ‘So how did you end up taking a midnight swim with her in the canal behind Mr Browning’s house?’

  Ned could not meet her gaze. Huddling the blanket around him, he began to tell her in short bursts of words, stopping often to cough. Georgie listened quietly. She imagined the dark deserted street, the woman with her beseeching voice, the fog swirling around them, blurring the gaslights on the street so they seemed to float, dandelion puffs with no stems for support.

  He had walked her home. Georgie thought it was just like him. Too chivalrous for his own good. But Maria had not wanted to go inside. She had begged him to walk on with her, just a little way.

  ‘Are you not cold?’ Ned had asked.

  She nodded. ‘Yes. But I cannot bear to go in yet. I cannot bear to say goodbye.’

  Georgie imagined the woman pressed close to him, trembling. The sweet voice, begging him not to leave her. The clutch of her fingers, the press of cold clinging lips.

  And so they had walked on. Footsteps echoing. Across the railway bridge, the lines gleaming below them. Down the steps to the canal. Along the narrow path. A faint smell of decay, water sucking against invisible bricks.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Ned had whispered.

  Maria had led him onto a small bridge that hung over the canal. Below was a wide dark pool, where two canals met. Willows hung weeping tendrils. The distant yellow fuzz of a gaslight. Otherwise, all was dark. All was quiet. Frost hanging from their mouths.

  ‘Why have we come here?’ Ned asked. Georgie imagined the faintest edge of alarm to his voice.

  ‘I wanted to say goodbye,’ Maria said.

  Ned had fallen silent. Steam hung above the hipbath like fog must have hung above that dark wintry pool.

  ‘What did you say?’ Georgie whispered.

  ‘I said yes.’ Ned’s voice was tired.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes. It had to be goodbye. Forever, I said.’

  Georgie loosened a breath. After a long silence, in which Ned rested his head on the back of the chair and closed his eyes, Georgie asked, ‘So what happened then?’

  ‘She tried to kill herself.’

  Georgie sucked in a sharp breath.

  ‘She had laudanum. Two bottles of it. One for her and one for me. She tried to make me drink it with her. I would not. Oh, Georgie! She was mad with grief. She drank both the bottles, Georgie, one after another. And then she threw herself into the canal.’

  Georgie pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, staring at Ned in horror.

  She imagined the swirling apart of the fog, the surging up of the bitter-cold water. Maria’s skirts billowing out. Water rushing past her face. A gasp of fire.

  Of course Ned had jumped in after her. Of course he had. He could do nothing else. He’d have struggled to drag her ashore. Maria would have been screaming and fighting. Lights kindling in all the houses around. Dogs barking, geese honking. No wonder the police had come running, truncheons drawn.


  Ned and Maria wrestling together on the muddy shore. Clothes wet and clinging. Breaths like plumes of smoke.

  ‘Oh, how awful, how awful,’ Georgie whispered. ‘And Mr Browning? He saw … he heard it all?’

  ‘And Maria’s cousin, Luke. He came running up too. He must’ve followed us … I thought I heard footsteps in the fog.’

  ‘All of London will hear the tale then,’ she said.

  Ned covered his face with his hands.

  Georgie rolled up her sleeve, then bent and tested the temperature of the bath with her elbow. Then she carefully measured in a few drops of camphor oil. ‘You’d best get in. Else you’ll catch your death of cold.’

  Ned nodded, and struggled out of his clothes. He was thin and white, his chest sunken. Georgie felt nothing, seeing his nakedness. She helped him into the bath, then moved around mechanically, hanging the blanket by the fire to dry, wringing out his wet trousers. She was moving as if in a dream, hardly able to comprehend what Ned had told her. It was like something out of a melodramatic novel. Not the sort of thing real people did. Every now and again she would shiver, and have to swallow hard. Flashes of angry words lit up her brain, but then darkness and dullness descended again.

  When Ned was clean and warm, she dressed him in his pyjamas like he was a child, and put him to bed.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, the words he had been repeating again and again like some kind of incantation.

  She put a hot-water bottle at his back, numbly, automatically, looking after her husband as she had done so many times before.

  Then Ned said, as if wanting to hurt her, ‘You’re so strong, so capable. You must understand … she’s not like that … she’s so sensitive … so easily hurt … oh, God, what if she tries to kill herself again! I should not have left her.’

  ‘Her family will care for her.’

  ‘But the scandal! What if they shun her? What if they turn her out?’

  ‘She has money enough to put herself up in the most expensive hotel in London. Stop fretting over stupid things. Go to sleep.’

  He closed his eyes and seemed to sleep, his breathing a little easier. Georgie locked herself away, to cry in private.

  The day jerked forward in steel cogs and ratchets. Georgie could not lie in bed, curled around her pain. The children had to be fed, the bread had to be set to rise, she had to wash Ned’s clothes. The smell of them sickened her.

  Mid-afternoon, Topsy came. He put his arms about her and she laid her head on his shoulder and cried. It was such a comfort to have him there. At last she drew away and groped for a handkerchief, only to have him mop her face with his own, as if she were a child.

  ‘You heard the news then?’ she asked dully. ‘I suppose it’s all over London.’

  He nodded, looking uncomfortable. ‘Afraid so, old chap.’

  Tears welled up again. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just … so … so …’

  She did not know the word she wanted. Hurtful. Humiliating. Cruel.

  ‘I know how you feel,’ he said, patting her shoulder gently. She thought of the rumours about Janey and Gabriel, and blushed in chagrin and apologised again.

  ‘How is he?’ Topsy asked.

  ‘Not well in mind or body. I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘He should leave London for a while, till it all blows over.’

  Georgie thought about Johnny and Effie Millais. That scandal had never blown over. Even though they had moved back to London, things were not easy for such a scandal-smirched woman. The Queen refused to receive her, and without the Queen’s approval, polite society was closed to her. Effie’s life centred on her children and her husband, and those few friends who refused to bow and scrape to convention.

  ‘May I see him?’ Topsy asked.

  Georgie nodded and took him upstairs to where Ned lay in his bed, the curtains drawn. He was wheezing painfully.

  Georgie did not go in. She did not want to see him or talk to him.

  After a long time, Topsy came downstairs, looking troubled. ‘I think he needs to get away from her for a while.’

  Georgie felt the tears well up again. She knew Topsy meant that her husband was still ensnared by his lover.

  ‘I’ve told him that we’ll go away together,’ Topsy said, taking Georgie’s hand and squeezing it. ‘He’s in no state to travel alone. He’s always wanted to go to Rome. We’ll go there. It’ll be a distraction to him, and maybe he’ll be inspired and get some work done.’

  Topsy knew that it had been months since Ned had finished any work, and that Georgie spent her evenings frowning over their debts.

  She tried to smile. Topsy was their truest friend, she thought, and the kindest and most generous soul she had ever known. It broke her heart that Janey could hurt him so.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, showing him to the door. ‘I’ll pack a bag for him.’

  Although it was only four o’clock in the afternoon, it was growing dark outside. Rain lashed against the windows. Georgie lit the oil-lamps and stirred up the fire, then went to draw the curtains.

  A woman in a dark hooded cloak was standing out on the pavement, staring up at the house. Georgie’s heart thumped unpleasantly hard. She crept out on to the landing where no lights had been kindled, and peered out.

  It was Maria Zambaco, of course. Her face as white as bone. Wet hair snaking.

  Maria stumbled to the front door and began to bang on it with her hands. ‘Ned!’ she called. ‘Let me in! Please!’

  Georgie ran down to the front door and bolted it shut. The door was shaking with the force of Maria’s blows. ‘Let me in, let me in!’

  She then knelt and lifted the letter-flap with her fingers, putting her mouth to the gap and screaming Ned’s name.

  Georgie ran to the drawing-room and checked all the windows were locked and the curtains drawn. The skivvy had come out of the kitchen, a rolling-pin clenched in her hand. ‘Shall I call for the police, ma’am?’ she asked in a shaking voice.

  ‘No, no. Run up to the nursery, will you, Sadie? Make sure the children are safe and then lock yourself in with them. Sing them some nursery rhymes so they cannot hear her.’

  ‘No nursery rhyme will drown out that racket,’ Sadie said sourly, but did as she had been asked.

  Georgie went, slowly and painfully, into Ned’s room.

  He was standing at the window, staring down at Maria who was now clinging to the iron railings, calling up to the house in a piteous, broken voice.

  ‘She’ll be so cold,’ he whispered. ‘She should not be out in this weather.’

  ‘No,’ Georgie answered. ‘She should go home. Home to her children.’

  ‘Could we not ask her in? Let her get warm?’

  ‘I don’t want her in my house,’ Georgie said.

  He looked at her wonderingly. ‘But … Georgie … how can you be so unkind? She’s hurting … she’s sick …’

  ‘I don’t want her in my house,’ she repeated. ‘Ned, can you not see how unkind you are being to me? You are my husband, the father of my children …’

  ‘I never wanted all this to happen. But she’s right … love cannot be denied.’

  Georgie laughed. It startled her as much as it startled him.

  She went rapidly out of the room, trying to control her unseemly mirth, trying to find a place where she could be still and quiet and try to make sense of what she was feeling. She wanted to smash something, she wanted to make Ned look at her and see her pain and know what he had done.

  Outside the rain was lashing the windows, the wind was rattling the frames. It was bitterly cold.

  Once again the knocking came. Georgie ran to the front door and stood before it, barring it from Ned, who had come running down the stairs.

  ‘When did you get so heartless?’ Ned whispered.

  ‘When you broke my heart,’ she answered.

  His shoulders slumped. ‘I never meant to.’

  Georgie did not speak. She listened with all her strength. She heard heartbroken s
obbing, and a soft scrabbling sound at the base of the door. At last it died away. She went to the window, and saw the hunched figure stumble away into the darkness. Georgie went to her own room, and lay on her bed, huddled under the counterpane. Her eyes were dry and hot. She did not know how to go on living. It was as if her soul had been scooped out, and only the empty husk remained.

  She heard Margot calling, ‘Mama! Mama! Where are you?’

  Georgie sat up, pressed her cold hands to her hot cheeks, and called, ‘In here, littley!’

  Then Margot’s arms were about her neck and her soft lips were pressed against her face, and Georgie knew that, somehow, she had to find the strength to go on.

  Topsy and Ned only made it as far as Dover.

  Then Ned was so overcome, Topsy had to bring him home again.

  Rosalind Howard and her husband came to see Georgie, bringing her some money in case she needed it. Their thoughtfulness cut her to the heart. Georgie lied and said that Ned was not there. She knew he wanted to see no-one.

  As she showed her guests out, Georgie saw that Ned’s coat and hat were hanging in the hallway as usual, and that her friends would know she had lied to them. This troubled her almost more than anything. She sat down and wrote Rosalind a letter: ‘Forgive my reserve, but I am greatly obliged to show it in times of trouble or I should break down … I am now able to tell you that he is home again, having been too weak to face the journey …’

  Ned was laid low for many weeks. Georgie nursed him stoically.

  When he was out of danger, Georgie took the children and went to Oxford. She stayed for a month, spending her days reading and writing and walking in the park, thinking.

  The laws of England said that a woman could only divorce a man if she could prove that he had not only been unfaithful to her, but that he had also committed incest or rape or sodomy or bestiality, or that he had deserted her for more than two years without due cause, or that his cruelty to her had endangered her life.