Beauty in Thorns

by Kate Forsyth

  Georgie sat down and read her way through, and soon her own cheeks were flushed and her body warm.

  They were love poems.

  On the back of one of the poems, he had written: ‘We two are in the same box and need conceal nothing.’

  Georgie was agitated beyond reason. On the one hand, the poems were such a balm to her bruised heart. She had felt so unloved and so unlovely. And Georgie had always admired Topsy, who she thought had the noble look of a medieval king about him. It was true that he was short and sturdy compared to Ned, but then he was strong and robust and down to earth as well, while Ned was always sickly and in need of support. At times Georgie felt she was more a mother to him than a wife, always running up and down stairs with hot water bottles and camphor oil to rub his thin chest, always reassuring him and being the stalwart one. With Topsy, she could weep a little and be sure of a strong arm about her and a handkerchief with which to blow her nose. And Georgie was only little herself. She had to stand up on her toes to kiss Ned’s cheek, while Topsy’s shoulder was at just the right height for her. Sometimes she longed for Topsy to put his arm about her, and pat her back, and promise to fix whatever was amiss, just for the sheer relief of it.

  Yet it was wrong. So wrong. He was her husband’s best friend. She was married, he was married, for better or for worse.

  It’d serve Ned right, an evil voice whispered inside her. What’s sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander. And why not? Her bed was cold and lonely, Topsy’s bed was cold and lonely. Why should they not take a little warmth and company for themselves?

  She wrote Topsy a note, and called out to a boy to take it for her before she could change her mind. Then she sent the children to her sister’s for the rest of the day. Ned would be gone all afternoon, she knew, meeting Maria somewhere.

  Topsy came straightaway. His hair was combed, his coat was neat, he carried a bunch of snowdrops. Hope and consolation, they meant in the language of flowers.

  Georgie stepped into his arms and raised her face for his kiss. It was strange, to kiss a man other than her husband. He smelt and tasted different. His beard was much rougher, his hands bigger and clumsier. She felt a flare of desire within her, and drew away, the back of her hand pressed to her mouth.

  Topsy said her name. There was such longing in his voice.

  Georgie shook her head, ‘I can’t, I can’t.’

  ‘There’s no sin, if there’s love.’ His voice was desperate.

  ‘I still love him, I still love him, oh God save me, I still love him.’ She dropped on to the couch, rubbing at her lips with the back of her hand. ‘And you still love her, Topsy. You know you do.’

  ‘No. I tried … I wanted to make her happy … I wanted to save her … But I always knew she was not for me. And I have come to admire you so much, Georgie. Your strength. Your courage. Your goodness.’

  ‘Admiration is not love.’

  ‘I spoke badly. My feelings for you … my very deep regard …’

  Georgie gazed up at him. ‘Oh, Topsy, please don’t. You know we can’t do this. No matter how much pain we are in. I can’t bear the thought of losing your friendship … you are like … like a brother to me …’

  He turned away. She could tell she had hurt him. Tremulously, Georgie said, ‘Please forgive me.’

  ‘There is nothing to forgive,’ Topsy said, not looking at her, and went away.

  The year crept past. Georgie had never known such a hard year. It seemed the whole world was at war.

  In July, it was her thirtieth birthday. A few letters from her sisters, a cake she cooked herself, colourful cards scribbled by the children. A month later it was Ned’s turn. Thirty-eight years old. He was trembly and sick all day. Four-year-old Margot wept because there was no money to buy him a present. Georgie did her best, but the world seemed a dark and unforgiving place.

  The next day Topsy came to visit her. He had made her an illuminated book of poems, handwritten and hand-illustrated. Every page was a miracle of beauty. Tiny paintings of lovers and angels and lonely maidens, poems of love and longing, all entwined and wreathed with roses and forget-me-nots and daisies. Many long hours had gone into its making.

  ‘For your birthday,’ he said brusquely. ‘Sorry it’s late.’

  She looked through it, speechless. Phrases leapt out at her. Strong are thine arms O love, and strong, Thine heart to live and love and long, But thou art wed to grief and wrong: Live then and long, though hope is dead!

  ‘Is all hope dead?’ he asked, very low.

  Georgie rose and went to him, and kissed his bearded cheek.

  ‘I cannot love you that way,’ she said. ‘Will you be content with what love I can give you? I promise that it’s deep and true … even if it’s not the kind of love you want.’

  ‘Any kind of love is good,’ he said huskily, and squeezed her hand in his.

  Janey knew she could not deceive her husband anymore.

  Topsy was such a good man. It would have been easier if he had been unkind. But all he had ever wanted to do was make her happy.

  She waited till Christmas was over and the New Year begun, not wishing to mar the festive season with anger. A dozen times a day she went to speak to him, then her courage failed her and she would turn away, the words unspoken.

  Then Topsy began to talk about travelling to Iceland. He had been learning Old Norse and translating and rewriting some of the tales for The Earthly Paradise. She went to him one evening, when the children were tucked up in bed, and said, ‘You should go. To Iceland, I mean.’

  He laid down his pen and looked at her. ‘Should I?’ he asked mildly.

  She nodded. ‘You have always wanted to go. And you will do a better job of the new poem if you go.’

  ‘What will you do when I am gone?’

  ‘We could find a house in the country. Spend the summer there. We’ve all been so sick. It would do us such good.’

  ‘You mean, you and the girls?’

  Her heart quailed within her. She nodded.

  Now is the time to tell him, she thought. Tell him now.

  But she could not.

  A long charged silence. Topsy did not look at her, but down at the paper on which he was writing.

  ‘A house in the country would be expensive,’ he said at last. ‘Perhaps we should ask someone to share the cost with us.’

  She was dismayed. ‘But … who?’

  Topsy still did not look at her. ‘I’m sure Gabriel would be glad of a summer holiday.’

  Her breath caught. She stared at him in disbelief.

  ‘I will write to him and suggest it.’ Topsy drew a piece of paper towards him and began to write.

  ‘You … you know?’ she faltered.

  He hesitated, his pen spreading a blotch of ink on the paper, then laid his pen down and turned to her, taking both her hands.

  ‘I cannot make you love me, Janey. I know that. It seems to me that no-one has the right to force someone else to love them, or say that they do, out of fear, or because they are beholden … it seems to cheapen the idea of love somehow. And I don’t want to think of you coming to me because you think you have to … because we are married. It is your heart, your body. You’ve a right to do with them as you wish.’

  She was startled by his words, and then moved and somehow thrilled. It was as if he had had a vision of the world as it should be, where men and women were both free to determine their own fates.

  ‘I’ve been thinking that love comes in many guises,’ he went on, talking as much to himself as to her. ‘I had thought that love was like it was in the old poems, a knight laying his arms at the feet of a fair maiden and swearing to be ever faithful to her.’

  Janey thought of Topsy and the armour he had designed, and the paintings of courtly love he had tried to paint, and smiled, returning the squeeze of his hand. ‘That’s one kind of love,’ she managed to say. ‘But there are others.’

  ‘Yes. So I think. So I want to try to be happy with
whatever love you can give me and I can give you, and not go around hurting each other and being unkind. Can we do that?’

  ‘We can try,’ she said tremulously.

  ‘It’ll be hard, I think,’ he went on. ‘There have been times when I just wanted to give Gabriel a punch in the nose. But I know you loved him first. And, really, why would you choose me when you could have him?’

  She blushed and did not know how to answer him.

  ‘Can you try not to let the whole world know?’ he asked, not looking at her. ‘A man does have his pride.’

  Janey found herself able to move again. She stepped forward and bent, putting her arms about his neck and kissing him on his bearded cheek.

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

  Kelmscott Manor was an old grey stone house upon the Thames, surrounded by gardens and meadows and steep-roofed barns. Topsy had found it in an estate agent’s catalogue, and both he and Janey had fallen in love with it at first sight.

  Built in the late 1500s, the old part of the house had a low-ceilinged hall with stone-flagged floors and a vast fireplace, furnished with heavy oak chairs and table. The kitchen was dark and medieval-looking too, with a deep inglenook fireplace and deep-set window seats.

  A small room to the right was full of light and air, however, with a wonderful stone fireplace decorated by a shield suspended by carved swags of apples and leaves. I’ll paint this white, Janey thought. As white and pure as snow. It’ll be my room, where I can read and sew and be at peace.

  She smiled at the thought of it. There was so little peace and quiet at Queen Square, with every room papered over with Topsy’s heavy intricate designs, and the constant banging and clanging and shouting of the workmen.

  Upstairs were two bedrooms, separated by the stairwell. One of these rooms led into another long room, lit with big windows on three sides with views out onto the garden and the dovecote. Gabriel can use this as his studio, Janey thought happily but did not say.

  A steep ladder led up into quaint garrets tucked into the strong timbers of the roof. Janey felt sure the girls would love to sleep up there, their little beds tucked under sloping rafters that almost touched the floor.

  At the end of the garden was a stone outhouse topped with a steep slate roof, concealing a three-seater privy. An ancient mulberry tree was propped up on sticks in a garden protected by yew hedges and foaming with flowers.

  ‘So shall we take it?’ Topsy asked.

  ‘Oh, yes, please,’ Janey exclaimed, clasping his arm with both hands.

  He smiled and put one of his big, square, calloused hands over hers.

  It is strange, Janey thought, how comfortable we are with each other now.

  Yet she saw that Topsy was hiding his hurt deep within, and she was sorry for it, even in the midst of her delight.

  In early July, Janey and the two girls moved into the house, Topsy making sure they were settled before heading back to London to prepare for his trek to Iceland. Janey had hired a governess for the girls, for she was determined they would receive the education that she had been denied.

  Topsy wrote to Janey: ‘How beautiful the place looked last Monday: I grudged going away so; but I am very happy to think of you all happy there, and the children and you getting well.’ He ended the letter, ‘Please, dear Janey, be well and happy.’

  Indeed, she was blessed to be married to such a man.

  Ten days later, Gabriel arrived, bringing a few servants to help run the house, the trap filled with tightly wrapped canvases and boxes of paints and brushes and pencils. Janey showed him around the walled garden proudly, the girls running and skipping about them, and then they walked along the placid green stream, overhung with willows. When the girls were busy skipping pebbles across the water, Gabriel and Janey stole a kiss behind a tree.

  ‘We shall have to be careful,’ she whispered, resting lightly in his arms.

  ‘I have never wanted to be less careful in my life,’ he answered, and kissed her again.

  It was an enchanted summer. Gabriel painted in the long, airy studio during the day, while Janey busied herself putting the house in order or reading in the garden. The two girls sat in the white panelled room and worked with their governess in the mornings, chewing the ends of their pens and staring out the window at the sunlit garden, listening to the blackbirds carolling and feasting among the gooseberries. At last they were released from their lessons, and able to run out to the farm to see the doe-eyed cows in their byres and the workers bringing in the hay, building a great golden tower in the yard. Jenny and May loved to climb up to the high gabled roof of the barn, and sit astride the ridge and gaze out across their kingdom. The sisters became so agile they would chase each other across the roofs and gables, tiled with overlapping grey slates as orderly and beautiful as fish scales. One day May found herself stuck, and Janey had to call the farmhands to find their longest ladders and help her down.

  Gabriel had brought the whole set of Waverley novels down with him, and the girls devoured them greedily, managing to finish one a day. At night, they read Shakespeare aloud to each other, the girls acting out their favourite scenes.

  One evening, after exploring a long way down the stream, the girls rode home on the hay wagon, lying under a sky the colour of marigolds. As the sun set, a great murmuration of starlings wheeled over the vast sky.

  Winged too with wind it is, and winnowings of birds, Gabriel wrote. As if the last day’s hour in rings of strenuous flight must die …

  His book of poetry had been received well, with glowing reviews written by Topsy and Algy Swinburne helping the first print run of a thousand copies sell out within the month. He was determined to put together another volume, and kept a notebook and pencil in his pocket at all times, in case inspiration should strike.

  Janey found her health and strength returning, and was able to walk miles through the countryside with Gabriel, admiring the wildflowers twining in the hedgerows and the thatched farm buildings dozing in the sun. Only a field away was the Thames, lazily wending its way through golden and bronze fields. They walked along its shores, talking or in companionable silence, taking care not to touch each other where anyone else could see.

  Sometimes they lay in the punt on the stream, concealed by willow leaves, kissing and whispering.

  Sometimes, they made love in the furrows of the rye fields, with no sound but the rustling wind and their exultant cries.

  Gabriel wrote poems on scraps of paper, and drew dozens of sketches of Janey. He painted her with the winding river and the old gabled house in the background, willow boughs in her hands.

  Beauty like hers is genius, he wrote.

  It could not last. The summer must come to an end, her husband must return from his adventures, she and Gabriel must go back to their own lives.

  He wrote her one last poem, called ‘Severed Selves’:

  Two glances which together would rejoice

  In love, now lost like stars beyond dark trees;

  Two hands apart whose touch alone gives ease,

  Two bosoms which, heart-shrined with mutual flame,

  Would, meeting in one clasp, be made the same;

  Two souls, the shores wave-mocked of sundering seas …

  11

  Proserpina

  Summer–Autumn 1872

  All year Janey dreamed of returning to Kelmscott Manor.

  The thought of it sustained her through another malicious London winter, racked with illness and longing.

  One day in early June, Topsy came into the drawing room where she lay on her couch, working on an embroidered wall-hanging for the Firm. He was in a state, flushed and panting from having run up the stairs.

  ‘Janey, I’ve just heard from William Rossetti … such dreadful news … Gabriel has gone mad.’

  Janey slid the needle through the cloth and laid it down. ‘What has he done now? Bought another wombat?’

  ‘It’s not a joke, Janey. He’s completely unhinged. He thinks there’s
some kind of conspiracy against him, that spies surround him and plot to kill him.’

  Janey could only stare at her husband as he paced around the room.

  ‘His brother William has spent the past few days with him, trying to calm him. But he’s out of control.’

  Janey stood up, her embroidery falling unheeded to the floor. ‘I need to go to him.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s wise. They’re calling the doctors.’

  ‘He’ll want me. I need to be there.’ Feverishly, she began to hunt around for her hat.

  ‘They don’t want you there.’

  ‘What? Who?’

  ‘William Rossetti and William Bell Scott. They’ve asked specifically that I keep you away until the doctors have seen him.’

  Janey sat down limply, staring at him. ‘But … why?’

  He did not answer.

  Colour began to burn up her cheeks. ‘They blame me? They think …’ Looking away from him, she said faintly, ‘They know?’

  ‘I hope not,’ Topsy said. ‘But it seems so.’

  Janey felt sick. She imagined the gossip, the sideways looks, the snubs. ‘But he’ll want me … he’ll need me.’

  Topsy sat down beside her, taking one of her hands. ‘Janey. They’re talking of putting him in an asylum.’

  ‘An asylum? You mean … a madhouse?’ When Topsy nodded, she said incredulously, ‘Is he truly that mad?’

  ‘I don’t know. I hope not.’

  ‘I know he’d been troubled by that review in the paper … and all the scandal that followed. He’d not been sleeping well, he said.’

  ‘William says he is taking this new drug … it’s called chloral … it’s meant to help him sleep. But William thinks it is making things worse. That, and the whisky.’

  Janey frowned. Gabriel had mentioned the chloral to her. It was the only way he could get any rest, he said.

  Gabriel had been wild and strange these past few months.