The Strange Adventures of H

by Sarah Burton

  There was one thing I had decided upon, however, which I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, would make everyone who loved me happy, and that was to marry Jasper. The fact that Janey, who was as dear as a sister to me, had married without telling me made me realise how tyrannical my love had become. I knew she and Thomas and Mary would stay with me, but I had to set her free, free to make a proper home and perhaps have more children, and she would not see me live alone. Also Godfrey could stop worrying about me, as I knew he did. (Jasper of course, would be, as he had said, the happiest man alive.) My adventure with Charlie, I now saw, was the clearest warning that I had to get out of the old game; that I simply didn’t have the right kind of heart for it anymore.

  As I dressed I decided to write at once to my remaining lovers and regretfully inform them of my coming marriage, and also to Jasper to accept his proposal. I wondered for a moment whether I should write to him first, and be assured he really did intend to go through with it, before I burned my boats, and it was as I was thus deliberating that I felt in my pocket the letter Mrs Snags had given me the day before. In all my grief at believing Janey gone, and then my joy at discovering her not gone, I had completely forgot it. I had not even noticed it was in Godfrey’s hand.

  My dearest H,

  I write in haste to beg you not to interfere in any way with your friend’s wedding tomorrow.

  Of course, I reasoned, Mrs Snags had said the letter arrived the night before yesterday and I had gone out so early in the morning she could not give it to me.

  I do not have time to explain fully now but I have been so concerned about you and what you might do that I told Frederick about Sylvia’s reappearance and he immediately declared his intention of putting the facts concerning her before your friend’s family. However I need to know your friend’s address, or failing that, when and where the marriage is to take place, so please send this information at once.

  This explained why they had arrived at the church as if in a play, quite at the eleventh hour, having presumably had to find these things out themselves.

  I would come in person, but I am sorry to say that your aunt has suffered a relapse and seems to be sinking fast. I entreat and beg you to consider coming to see her as soon as you can, as it may be, I fear, your last chance.

  Etc. etc.,

  Godfrey.

  Poor Aunt Madge. I wished desperately to see her, and comfort her, yet also wished desperately for her not to see me. At last I understood the expression on Godfrey’s face that had puzzled me as he left the church the day before – it had seemed a kind of questioning look, meaning: would I go? What flim-flam he had told Frederick in order to explain how he knew about Sylvia’s relationship to our family, I could not begin to imagine, but guessed with a sinking feeling that he must have mentioned my existence and involvement somewhere along the line as even I could not think of a good enough lie to cover that one.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Janey, seeing my face as she scooped up Mary, “Someone nicked your trunk?” This was a tart reference to some rather uncomfortable exchanges the evening before when it dawned on Janey that I had suspected her of making off with our money.

  “Don’t Janey. My aunt is dying. Godfrey thinks I should go to her.”

  Janey put her free arm around me and Mary put her little arm round my neck, and laid her head on my shoulder and said “aunt”. Janey and I looked at each other in astonishment and then laughed (and as usual I wept a little). It was her very first word.

  70

  As the carriage turned into the street where my aunt and Godfrey lived, I realised how very ill she must be, for the road outside had been laid with rushes, to dull the noise of traffic for her comfort. By the time I was standing on the doorstep I was trembling from head to toe. The door opened to reveal Reg Potter, who asked my name, before his face lit up with surprise and delight.

  “Miss H! Come in, come in! Mr Godfrey hoped you might come. Well I can barely credit it, after all these years! What a fine-looking lady you’ve grown into. If you don’t mind me saying,” he added hastily. And we stood staring at each other for a moment, and then he said, “It is so very good to see you again, Miss, albeit on such a sad occasion. Or is it missus now?” And then Ted appeared and we greeted each other all over again.

  “You’ll want to see Mr Godfrey first, I suppose,” said Ted, and they took me into a great room, where Godfrey sat at a desk and a dark young man stood beside him.

  “H!” Godfrey jumped up and embraced me. “Be good fellows and fetch some tea would you?” he said to the Potters, who disappeared.

  “Joe!” I exclaimed, suddenly recognising him. His prettiness not quite gone, he promised to be a very handsome young man.

  He recited, smiling, in a clear strong voice:

  “Fair stood the wind for France

  When we our sails advance,

  Nor now to prove our chance,

  Longer will tarry.”

  “Well remembered, Joe! My, how you have grown. Shouldn’t you be at school… or something?”

  Joe kissed me, smiling bashfully.

  “Joe and school didn’t quite agree,” said Godfrey, and I remembered he never was a very apt pupil. “Freddie has been tutoring him at home.”

  “Ah, yes, Frederick,” I said, all my discomfort returning. “What have you told him? And Aunt Madge? What does she know?”

  “H, it is a long story and I fear we do not have much time. Go up and see her, and we will talk over tea after. She knows nothing and is not expecting you, as I could not be sure you would come, at the last.”

  Godfrey led me up the magnificent staircase that I remembered admiring the last time I was there, when Godfrey had been so poor he had been selling his furniture to feed himself. He led me along a broad corridor, opened the door at the end of it, and bade me go in. He remained outside. The room was quite dark, though I could see Aunt Madge lying in bed, apparently asleep, looking much smaller than I remembered her, and Frederick sitting beside her. Seeing me, he got up. He looked older, sadder than I had noticed at the church.

  “H!” he exclaimed, but quietly. “This is a surprise indeed,” though he did not look surprised. “She will be so glad to see you,” he said to me, but his own face expressed no gladness. “You need to speak up, as she is quite deaf.” He beckoned me to sit by the bed, and then had gone out before I realised I had not said anything to him at all.

  I did not wish to wake her, so sat reading her dear face for a time, revelling in every old detail and noting every new. Eventually she stirred, and I took her small hand in my own.

  “Aunt Madge?” I said.

  “Who’s there?” she asked in a small quavering voice. “Who’s there?”

  “It is H,” I said. “Your niece, H?”

  “Who?” she asked.

  I repeated what I had said, louder.

  “Good girl,” she smiled, a beatific smile, but her eyes remained closed. “You have been gone a long time. Did you get the message?”

  I had no idea what the message might be.

  “The message? What about, Aunt?”

  “The ribbon.”

  “The ribbon?”

  “For Evelyn’s bonnet,” she chuckled. “She should have pink, not green. Pink is more gay.”

  “Yes,” I said, and unsuccessfully fought back tears.

  She must have heard me snivelling, for she said softly: “Don’t cry, H. It will all be the same in a hundred years.”

  “I love you, Aunt,” I said and kissed her hands.

  “Good girl,” she said, though her voice was getting weaker. “It is good to love.”

  She slipped back into sleep, and once I had satisfied myself that her breaths were regular, I made my way back downstairs.

  I found Godfrey and Joe in the drawing room.

  “She is asleep,” I said.

  “Did she know you?” asked Godfrey.

  “I think so, but she was not making sense. She seemed comforted, anyway.”
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  Godfrey sighed and poured me a dish of tea.

  “It is increasingly the way. I think it is the draught the doctor gives her, for the pain. She rambles in her thoughts, but sometimes she is quite lucid.” He cleared his throat. “It will not be long now, H. Will you stay, to the end?”

  71

  I immediately sent word to Janey not to expect me back, perhaps for a few days. Besides making myself useful here, I considered the newlyweds might be grateful to pass their honeymoon without me playing the gooseberry. Frederick had gone out on a business matter, giving us an opportunity to speak freely and I begged Godfrey to tell me what Frederick and the Potters knew of my history since I had left Cheapside, so I should not put my foot in it.

  “I do not know what the Potters guess,” said Godfrey, “but I have only recently told them that you and I are old friends, that you have had a very unhappy time since you left the family and that you did not like to talk about it. They were amazed to learn that you were the little painted lady who got Aunt Madge out of the house during the fire, and then both affected to have guessed as much, of course. They were outraged to hear of Sylvia’s tricks and delighted we were able to prevent her entrapping an innocent young man. She had made quite a nuisance of herself to your aunt some while back, as I think you know; in fact, that was the beginning of her ill health. So, as I say, I do not know what they surmise, but they have only ever spoken well of you. From what I know of them they are clever enough to come to their own conclusions, and good enough not to trouble themselves about it, above being most glad to learn you were alive and well.”

  This was a relief, for though the Potters were merely servants in the greater scheme of things, they had been good friends to me and Evelyn, indeed, had been the last to abandon us at Cheapside, and were devoted to my aunt, and their opinion mattered very much to me.

  “And Frederick?” I asked, dreading this answer far more. “What does he know?”

  Godfrey and Joe looked at each other.

  “Well, H, you know I vowed I would never tell Frederick all your story,” began Godfrey, “and was only forced to admit to your existence and to our friendship when I had to warn him about Sylvia’s skulduggery, as it was clear I had no independent way of knowing of her previous connection to your other cousin. At that time I simply told him I was bound by a solemn promise not to give him any further details of you, or your whereabouts.”

  “And you have not told him since?” I asked.

  “No,” said Godfrey.

  I did not feel as glad to hear this news as I had expected. I think I had half-hoped that Godfrey would have at least prepared the ground for me in some way, although this would have meant him breaking his word to me.

  “So am I to understand he knows nothing?” I asked.

  Godfrey and Joe looked at each other again.

  “He knows everything, H,” said Godfrey.

  “But you said you had not told him!” I exclaimed.

  “I did not tell him!” insisted Godfrey.

  “I told him,” said Joe, quietly.

  I stared at Joe.

  “Why? And what… ”

  “I saw the awful difficulty Godfrey was in, because of his promise to you, and Frederick was becoming angry and fearful of what had happened to you, and wanted very much to find you again. He could tell I knew something, and saw I refused to tell, but then he said Godfrey was bound by his word of honour as a gentleman, but I was bound by the greater ties of kinship, for I was in fact Aunt Madge’s stepson, for my father and his mother were married, and that made us brothers. And even if we weren’t brothers by blood, you were cousin to us both, and he begged me as I loved you, and as I loved him, to tell him everything. And so I did.”

  I looked at Godfrey as if to ask whether ‘everything’ actually meant ‘everything’, and he shrugged and nodded, as if it probably did, and looked at me, pursing his lips. We all fell quiet for a while, considering the new state of things.

  “How did he take it?” I asked, at last.

  Godfrey and Joe looked at each other again; their tacit alliance was beginning to irritate me and I felt excluded.

  “He has not spoken of it since,” said Joe uncomfortably.

  “There has been very little time,” Godfrey said kindly. “We were trying to find out where this accursed wedding was occurring, and Aunt Madge has been so ill… ”

  “He does not wish to speak of it,” I said. “And I cannot blame him.” I sighed. “And neither do I blame you, Joe. I had put you both in a hard place. The chickens have finally come home to roost.”

  I sipped my tea and found it had gone cold.

  72

  Frederick seemed to avoid my company as far as possible over the next three days and barely spoke to me. The four of us took turns to sit by Aunt Madge so she was never alone, and when it was neither my shift nor his, he always found some business to occupy himself, whether it was tutoring Joe or tending to some domestic or legal matter. Though Godfrey said he had hardly got a word out of him either, and that Frederick’s spirits were greatly depressed by his mother’s condition, I felt Godfrey was finding excuses. I saw this was Frederick’s way of dealing with me, and respected it.

  I was cheered by a letter from home, that is to say when I had eventually deciphered it, for it was clearly penned by Thomas, whose grasp of the written word proved only slightly stronger than Janey’s.

  DEAR H.

  All is well here Mary has had a cold and asks for her ant that is to say yr. self. Missus snaggs says what cheer.

  The owl has been and frets for an anser we have not told him of yr. werabouts he is mity cast down but Jany thinks he wil live.

  Hoping yr. sad trail will soon be over and yr. ant will RIP.

  Love from yr. friends Jany Thomas Mary xxx

  Old Dr Rookham attended my aunt daily, prescribing ever greater doses of tincture of opium, and though he greeted me most courteously he never asked me any questions, which made me think he had been primed not to. I learned from Godfrey that Mr Fluke still lived and had been to say his goodbye to his dear old dinner companion Aunt Madge.

  Aunt Madge drifted in and out of consciousness and usually confined her conversation with me to urgent millinery matters, to be conveyed to Evelyn; but on the last day, when she was weaker, yet more clear in her mind than I had seen her, she spoke of her dead husbands.

  “I have often wondered,” she said thoughtfully, her eyes closed as usual, so I had just believed her asleep, “which of my husbands will be my husband in the life after this.”

  “That’s a good question,” I said. “But I do not know that you should worry yourself about it now.”

  “Oh, I’m not worrying. Just wondering.”

  I was about to ask whether she had a preference but stopped myself just in time.

  “I should like to see my parents again,” she said. “But will I be a child? They were younger than I am now when they died. How will it all work?”

  “I don’t know, Aunt,” I said, feeling most unequal to the theological turn her thoughts had taken.

  “Will Roger be there?” she asked.

  Roger. At one time the name would have made me shudder. Now all that mattered was that Aunt Madge was not troubled, if it could be helped.

  “I should think so,” I said lightly. “Leading them all a merry dance, I expect.”

  She chuckled softly.

  “And Evelyn,” I said.

  “No, not Evelyn,” she chided me. “She is just gone out to buy lace.” She fell silent for a while. “You never knew my first husband, did you, my dear?”

  I said I thought he had died when I was young, if not before I was born.

  “Cecil. A good man. He really wanted to marry your mother, but our father said as I was the eldest, it had to be me or neither of us. He did not want to be left with an old maid on the shelf, he said. I was nineteen years of age! Old maid indeed. But he settled for me and was a good enough husband. He gave me my dear boys. He di
ed in the wars of course, poor Cecil. But Harry! He was a husband and a half!” she chuckled again, in a way which for a moment recalled clear as day the old, unbuttoned Aunt Madge, who would hoik up her skirts before the fire to warm her legs, or sit with her feet on the mantelpiece, unbending herself with me and my sister after some play, or dinner.

  “Would you fetch me a book from the library, dear?” she asked suddenly.

  “Of course, Aunt,” I said, surprised for I had not yet seen her open her eyes, let alone attempt to read. But strange fancies sometimes took her, and we humoured them to soothe her. “Which book?”

  “No matter,” she sighed, seeming to change her mind, as she often did.

  I picked up my sewing again.

  “Why do you not fetch it, H?” she asked.

  “Sorry Aunt. I thought you said it did not matter.”

  She smiled slightly.

  “I meant it does not matter which book you bring. Mind it is an old one, though.”

  I returned a few moments later with a well-worn book of poetry I remembered from Cheapside. She took it in her hands and, still not opening her eyes, held it to her face, opened it, and inhaled deeply. She repeated this several times and appeared to derive great satisfaction from so doing.

  “It’s almost gone. But it’s still there,” she said weakly. “It smells of him.”

  She let the book fall out of her hands onto the counterpane. I took her hand in one of mine and the book in the other and sniffed it experimentally. Very faintly I detected the once familiar scent of cinnamon and cloves. When I looked up again, I saw those glittering clear grey eyes looking at me. I felt I should call the others at once, as I sensed the end was nigh, but was torn as I did not wish her to pass away alone, while I was gone. Should I stay or should I go? Should I call to them, or would that alarm her? Death seemed as mercilessly full of dilemmas as life. Finally, I managed to stretch out to reach the bell-pull without letting go her hand.