The Other Wife

by Juliet Bell

  ‘Come, Jane, we should walk the other way.’

  I wanted to ask why, but these evening walks had become important to me, and I didn’t want anything to spoil these moments.

  ‘You know I never expected to live here like this?’ Edward said as we turned back towards the homestead.

  I was confused. ‘I thought Thornfield was your family home.’

  He nodded. ‘But I have a brother. Three years older. It should all have been his.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Edward shook his head. ‘He made some bad choices. In his love life.’ He laughed, a brief, bitter little laugh. ‘I won’t make that mistake this time.’

  I didn’t say anything about the ‘this time.’ It was clear that he was thinking about Celine, but it was even clearer to me that whatever had been between them was in the past. Now he needed a woman who could be a real mother to his child.

  That night, he came to my bedroom door. He knocked. I wasn’t surprised. He’d never rushed or pressured me, but this was how relationships worked, wasn’t it? And being nervous was normal. It didn’t mean anything.

  I was lying in bed, reading. As the knock sounded a second time, I got out of bed and slipped on my dressing gown, belting it tightly around my waist. When I opened the door, he was there.

  ‘Can I come in?’ he asked.

  I struggled for words, but found none. My mouth was too dry to speak, the beat of my heart too loud. Taking my silence for acceptance, he came into my room, gently closing the door behind him.

  The dim light from my reading lamp softened his features and he looked very handsome. His shirt hung open, revealing the chest that I had touched when I rode on his motorcycle. Images sprang to my mind of his naked body as we stood in the shower, the cool water soothing his burns.

  ‘Edward…’

  His fingers clenched around my shoulders and he pulled me to him, his lips seeking mine with a passion that was new to me. His hands roamed my body, roughly clutching at my breast. I tried to welcome his touch. I really tried.

  ‘Edward… Please.’ I pushed against his chest. His hands tightened around me, his tongue plunged more deeply into my mouth, just for a second, before he stepped back.

  ‘Jane? I thought we wanted the same thing.’

  ‘I do, Edward. But this…this isn’t right.’

  ‘Why…’ Then he shook his head. ‘Those bloody nuns.’

  Maybe that was it. A man and a woman should lie together in marriage. That was what was right. I told myself that that was what was holding me back.

  ‘They taught you that sex was sinful, didn’t they?’

  Sister Mary Gabriel’s lecture wasn’t what he meant, but it was what I thought of as I nodded.

  ‘It’s not a sin. Never. Not between people who care for other, but I understand. I will marry you, Jane.’ His tone was suddenly definite and precise. ‘I can’t imagine a life here without you. You agree that we should get married, don’t you, Jane?’

  It was as if a weight had lifted off me. My real life was finally beginning. This was how things were supposed to be.

  ‘Yes. Yes. I will marry you.’

  He pulled me back into his arms. ‘It’s going to be perfect, Jane. You’ll be a perfect wife for me.’

  I nodded as best I could while pressed against his chest. Silently I swore to myself that he was right. I would be the perfect wife. I would care for Edward, for Thornfield, and for Adele, and I would do my duty as his wife. Once we were married, everything would fall into place.

  He was still talking, his voice muffled against my hair in the tightness of the embrace. ‘Now I have everything I need right here,’ he murmured.

  Chapter 47

  It didn’t make sense. They were bringing deliveries to the house. An extra plane had arrived. Not the mail plane. Betty knew its schedule well. And this plane didn’t deliver guests, as sometimes happened. It just bought boxes. Betty watched as they were unloaded from the ute. Grace wouldn’t answer when she asked what was happening. In fact, Grace didn’t talk to her very much at all recently.

  ‘Lizzybeth!’

  The girl standing in front of her couldn’t be real. Nobody came into her rooms in the daytime. Only Grace. Edward came at night, but Betty didn’t think about that. She closed her eyes and thought about the flames dancing over the cane fields, and her daddy promising to come back for his little firefly. Nobody came to visit. So Adele couldn’t be standing in front of her, clutching a book under her arm with a determined expression on her face.

  ‘How did you get in here?’

  ‘I worked you out.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Adele padded past her and into the sitting room. ‘Working out is what I do with Jane when there’s a hard problem in my maths book.’

  Betty didn’t understand.

  ‘So I worked you out like that. Grace said you’d gone, but I thought about it and I watched the plane coming every time and you didn’t go on the plane. And Grace keeps making up trays of food and they’re not for her because she’s always eating biscuits in the kitchen, so I knew she was hiding something.’ The girl paused. ‘I thought it might be a puppy.’

  Betty’s head was spinning a bit from the girl’s long speech. Adele looked bigger and taller than the last time Betty had spoken to her, but she still talked like the same little girl, with ideas rushing and falling over each other in her excitement. Betty didn’t know what to respond to first. ‘I’m not a puppy.’

  ‘So I waited ‘til she’d just brought a tray down and then Peggy came and asked her for something so she didn’t shut the door properly. Will you do my reading book with me? Jane says I have to practice every day. I’m supposed to practice on my own but it’s better when there’s someone to listen to me and tell me I’m doing well.’

  Betty glanced towards the stairwell. The door was unlocked. She could go. She could take Adele with her right now and go.

  ‘It’s my favourite book. It’s called Seven Little Australians and I’ve read it dozens of times. I’m at the part where they are sending Judy to boarding school. Mummy said I should go to boarding school, but I said no.’

  Betty sat down next to Adele. ‘Would you like to come away with me?’

  The girl crinkled her nose. ‘I’ve got to do my reading practice.’

  ‘You could bring that with you.’

  ‘Would Jane come with us?’

  Betty shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  Adele looked at the floor. ‘I’ve got maths and piano with her this afternoon.’

  The little girl opened her book. ‘In the next bit, Judy runs away from boarding school and finds her way home. But she gets sick.’

  It wouldn’t be fair anyway, would it? To take Adele away without a plan for where to go, and they’d be leaving Jane behind. The plan that had shone so brightly for a few moments faded. Betty let the child read aloud to her for a few pages. It was soothing, her voice constant, but for the odd stumble over a word, reminding Betty that she wasn’t alone. At the end of the chapter, she plucked the book out of Adele’s hand. ‘Darling, what are all the deliveries for?’

  The little girl grinned. ‘For the party.’

  ‘What party?’

  ‘The party because Daddy’s getting married to Jane.’ The sound of the ute pulling up outside made Adele jump. ‘That’ll be her coming back. I have to go now.’

  Betty barely registered Adele darting away. Jane was marrying Edward? That made no sense. Edward had a wife. Betty was his wife. Wasn’t she? She remembered a white dress. And the church and the people. Something had gone wrong that day. Something to do with Edward’s brother. She wasn’t sure about that now, but she did remember the white dress. And the long veil.

  The party must be for… Betty couldn’t think of anything… for something else.

  A thought nibbled at the back of her mind. Edward’s hand on that woman’s arm. The way he’d started coming to her again at night. Taking what he neede
d but nothing more. Something had changed for him, something she wasn’t part of. He still needed her body but he didn’t need anything else.

  Grace brought her lunch tray. Betty ate slowly, thinking things through. Adele had come in to see her when Grace had left the door open. She’d sneaked out before when Grace was distracted by the fire. So Grace might forget to close the door properly if something else happened.

  Betty waited until she heard the household coming up the stairs to bed. As usual she could see the light still on in the kitchen below her. She padded down the stairs and banged on the door. It opened a crack. ‘What are you doing up?’

  ‘I’ve got a headache.’

  ‘I’ll bring you an aspirin. Go back upstairs.’

  Betty nodded and did as she was told. Then she hurried into the bathroom, and closed the door, running the tap to make it sound like she was washing before bed. She listened for Grace’s steps on the landing. ‘Can you leave it by the bed?’ she called.

  ‘All right.’

  She only had a few seconds. She rushed out of the bathroom, closing the door as quietly as she could behind her, and darted down the stairs, straight through the kitchen and out into the night. As soon as she was outside she pressed herself back against the wall in case Grace realised she wasn’t in the bathroom and looked outside for her, but a few minutes later she heard the woman come back down the stairs and pull the door to her prison closed.

  Where would the wedding things be? They could be in one of the bedrooms, she supposed, clothes and things. But where would they hold an actual wedding? She smiled as she remembered. Thornfield had a ballroom. An actual ballroom like in a costume drama on the TV. It was all closed up, but if you were going to get married here, that would be the place. She let herself back into the house through the big front door and stood for a second in the silent hallway. The ballroom was to the right, underneath Adele’s room, and the room where she guessed the soon-to-be second Mrs Rochester would be sleeping.

  The ballroom door was ajar. That door was never open. She pushed it as gently as she could, praying that it wouldn’t creak loudly enough to give her away.

  She was right. The room was laid out for a wedding. She hunted for the final clue. It was right there on the table next to the door. A pile of neat little cards. Order of Service for the wedding of Edward Rochester and Jane Eyre.

  Betty supressed the scream that was trying to come out of her – not of jealousy, not of hurt, but of rage. She had to stop this. He couldn’t own another person. He couldn’t pick another person up and then get tired of them and lock them away somewhere. She had to take this wedding apart so completely that it would be impossible to put it back together again.

  She worked quickly and methodically. It would look like she’d been in a frenzy to anyone who saw the aftermath, but actually she was perfectly calm. She didn’t stop, until every piece of wedding paraphernalia had been destroyed. She pulled the ribbons from the chairs and left them on the floor. She tore the neat little cards into a thousand pieces and threw them across the room. She pulled down the white tulle banner at the front of the room and trampled it.

  And then she went upstairs. The best thing to do, the thing that would properly put a stop to all this, would be to wake the woman and tell her. Betty went towards Adele’s room. This corridor was the mirror of her own, but without the big solid door that imprisoned her. There was just an empty corridor. She knew which was Adele’s room. Just past that door was another room; exactly like the room that Grace used. That would be Jane Eyre’s room, she guessed. Adele and herself both penned in by their attendants.

  Betty pushed the door open. The woman was fast asleep on the bed. And then she saw it. The long white dress, with the perfect white veil, so very like the veil she’d worn that day in the church. She ran her fingers over the fabric. Without really knowing what she was doing, she lifted this veil down and draped it over her own head. Now she was the bride. But she had already done that. Hadn’t she? This woman was going to take her place. Or maybe Betty could take the bride’s place at this second wedding. She shook her head. It was very confusing.

  Footsteps on the landing startled her. She tried to take a glimpse out of the room without being seen, but she was too slow. Grace’s mouth widened in horror. ‘Elizabeth!’ she whispered.

  Betty stood stock still. Grace extended a finger, beckoning her into the hallway. Betty inched towards the door.

  ‘What are you doing with that?’

  Betty’s arms wrapped instinctively around her prize. ‘Mine.’

  ‘It’s not yours. It’s Jane’s.’

  ‘I’m Mrs Rochester,’ she hissed. ‘It’s all mine.’

  Grace narrowed her eyes. ‘Where else have you been?’

  Betty looked at the floor. ‘Nowhere.’

  ‘Well, back to bed with you, then.’

  Betty followed Grace back to her room. She was tired. And she’d done what she’d set out to do, hadn’t she? Jane couldn’t marry him without her flowers and her ribbons and her pretty veil, so everything would be all right now.

  ‘You need to give me the veil now.’

  Betty wrapped the delicate lace around her fingers. ‘Mine.’

  Grace yawned heavily. ‘What if you look after it until the morning? And then give it back to me.’

  Betty shrugged.

  ‘But you have to look after it very carefully.’

  Betty didn’t reply. Grace locked the big door and went away.

  Betty went to her treasures and pulled out her matches. She carried her matches and her veil to the bathroom, and dropped the veil into the bath. She wasn’t being silly. She didn’t want to burn the whole place down. Just this one thing. So nobody could be a bride. So nobody had to be Mrs Rochester anymore. She dropped a match into the bath. The veil burned beautifully.

  Chapter 48

  Thornfield’s ballroom was the perfect place for a wedding. Soft light poured in through the big glass doors that opened onto the shaded courtyard that was filled with the deep greens of the potted plants, and the bright colours of bougainvillea. The room itself had wooden floors polished to a rich golden shine, and pale lemon walls that beautifully framed the red roses that Edward had had flown in for the wedding. Grace and I had draped white tulle to create a wedding bower at one end of the room, and tied red ribbons on the chairs to match the roses. We had dotted red and white candles around the room, and made it beautiful for today’s very private ceremony.

  But it wasn’t beautiful anymore.

  During the night, someone had come into the room that I had so lovingly prepared, and they had destroyed it.

  The chairs had been knocked aside, the pretty red ribbons torn off to lie like pools of blood on the floor. The roses too had been destroyed; their petals were strewn everywhere. The white tulle bower was now just a heap of torn fabric. The long tapered candles had been broken and tossed like rag dolls onto the floor.

  ‘Who could have done this to me?’

  Edward was brisk but definite. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t about you. It was probably those ungrateful bastards who think this is their land.’

  I shook my head. The stockmen wouldn’t do this. I’d heard all the talk about land rights and I read the papers, but the protests were all peaceful and non-destructive. Besides, this wasn’t about politics or land. This was something else. This was personal. Someone was trying to ruin our wedding. But who? There were no visitors at Thornfield. My only wedding attendants would be Adele and Grace, and Max Hardy would stand beside Edward, who had refused to invite his brother or any of his old friends. This was his new start, he’d said. He didn’t want reminders of his old life. The Aboriginal stockmen and their families were going to watch the ceremony, and Edward was providing a lunch for them by the river bank.

  Edward and I were supposed to have a meal with Adele and Max in the courtyard, which had been decorated to match the ballroom. I caught my breath and rushed to the big French doors. The courtyard was untouched.
Whoever had done this had only paid attention to the decorations inside the house.

  From overhead came the sound of the engine. The plane was arriving with the celebrant who was to marry us. I wiped the tears from my face. Edward turned me gently away from the worst of the devastation, and led me out of the ballroom.

  ‘Look, what’s done is done, but it’s our wedding day.’ There was a determination in his tone that I remembered from the night he proposed. ‘We are going to be married today, so you need to go and get ready.’

  His confidence calmed me a little. This was what I had chosen – what we had chosen – we shouldn’t be distracted by vandalism, however heinous.

  ‘Max and I will sort everything out down here. You go with Grace.’

  I wasn’t so sure, but the determined look on his face meant I was not going to argue. With Grace by my side, I headed back upstairs. I quickly combed my hair into a soft bun, and let Grace weave a handful of tiny fresh flowers though the strands. Then I applied a touch of the makeup that I so seldom wore. Then I reached for the beautiful white dress hanging on the door of my wardrobe. As Grace fastened me in, Adele ran into the room.

  ‘You look pretty.’

  She was almost right.

  There had been no time to go to the city to shop. I had chosen my wedding dress from a catalogue. It had come on the mail plane just a few days ago. The puffed sleeves and gathered waist made my figure look more womanly than I had ever felt.

  ‘You look very pretty too, Adele.’ My pupil was to be my flower girl, and her pale yellow dress was another of the catalogue’s best offerings.

  Her smile warmed my heart.

  ‘Adele, will you help me put my veil on?’

  The little girl squealed in delight.

  I turned to look for it, but it wasn’t hanging from the wardrobe as I expected.

  ‘Grace, where’s my veil?’

  She hesitated. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps you left it downstairs?’