Listen to the Moon (24 page)

She thought of John confiding his jealousy of the Dymond boys, even though on St. Clement’s Day—the memory was almost distant now—he’d said he lacked the impulse to confide in anyone. Even the most standoffish people sometimes wanted someone to listen to them.

“Thea, may I speak to you for a moment on a personal matter?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Let’s sit down.” Sukey found a dry spot of floor and lowered herself to it. “You’ve been unhappy, I think.”

Thea shrugged, sitting down and fussing at a bit of dirt on her apron.

“I haven’t wanted to speak to you about this, because I didn’t want to embarrass you. But I know that Mr. Perkins, who held Mr. Toogood’s position before he did—he hurt you, didn’t he?”

Thea looked at her lap, acutely uncomfortable. Sukey almost stopped talking. But what could be worse than this silence? Tact was a fine thing, no doubt, but she’d never had a gift for it.

“You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of,” she said. “It weren’t your fault. ’Tweren’t any of your faults, excepting his. My last mistress, she wasn’t very kind to me. And I never wanted to talk about it, because I felt…I felt as if I deserved it. Sometimes I thought she didn’t treat me any worse than I deserved, so what did I have to complain about? And sometimes I thought I deserved it because I didn’t complain, I didn’t do anything to stop it. It’s easy to feel small and stupid and ashamed and as if you should have known what to do. But it’s never your fault when people are cruel to you. It’s always theirs.” John had said that to her, and she believed him. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“He didn’t
hurt
me,” Thea mumbled. “He just touched me. It could have been a lot worse.”

Sukey nodded. “How do you feel about what happened?”

Thea shrugged.

“Was I right when I said you were sad?”

Thea hugged her knees. “I don’t know why I’m so sad.” Her voice was soft and fierce. “He’s gone, and he barely touched me, and you and Mr. Toogood are nice and there’s nothing to be so sad about. But I can’t stop.”

Sukey blinked back tears. “I’m sorry. That sounds hard.” After a long silence, she said, “You could talk to Mrs. Khaleel and Molly, if you wanted to. They might understand what happened better than I do, since they were here.”

Thea made a doubtful face. “I don’t think they want to talk about it.”

“They feel bad, like you do. Maybe they aren’t sure you want to either. From the outside, it’s hard to tell the difference between not wanting to talk and being nervous about it.”

“Have you ever been sad and not able to stop?”

“Not like that. Not so I couldn’t work. But do you know Mrs. Piper? Her daughter Betsy works at the Honey Moon.”

Thea nodded. “I’ve seen her in church. She wears that hat with the stars embroidered on it.”

“My mum told me she was that sad once. After Betsy’s little sister was born. They had the doctor in and everything. He said it was called melancholy. And she’s better now.”

“Did the doctor give her medicine?”

Sukey tried to remember. “Well, he said her circulation was sluggish and her blood thick, so he bled her. But she’d been sad longer than you. He said in the early stages, light foods, exercise and cheerful conversation help more than anything else.”

Thea rolled her eyes.

“You haven’t been going out much, even on Saturdays,” Sukey pointed out. “You didn’t go to the servants’ ball.”

Thea picked at her apron some more. Then she mumbled something.

“Beg pardon?”

“I didn’t want everyone to look at me,” she said loudly.

“Everyone? Or mostly men?”

“Men.”

“Do you think you’d feel safer if you went in to town with me?”

Thea’s eyes narrowed. “You always spend Saturdays alone. You say it’s your time away from all of us. I don’t want your pity.”

“It’s not pity when people like you. Anyway, I don’t always spend Saturdays alone. I stayed here this Saturday with John, didn’t I? And the Saturday before, I came home early.”

Thea snickered. “I know. You’re loud.”

Sukey blushed and played her trump card. “It’s not pity, because I want something in exchange.”

“What?”

“Mr. Toogood told me you like bloodthirsty songs. I collect songs, and I thought you might teach me some of your best ones.”

“Hmm. I expect I could do that.” Thea’s mouth curved slyly. “Do you know ‘Thomas the Rhymer’? There are
rivers
made of blood in that one.”

* * *

John heard an unfamiliar voice singing in the laundry room. Did one of the girls have a visitor? Mr. Summers didn’t permit it. He would have to get rid of her, and quickly.

He’d done some work that morning, but he’d tired himself out and was back in bed now, trying to catch up on accounts. He heaved himself up and opened the door. “He made fiddle pegs of her long finger bones,”
the voice caroled, sounding a little self-conscious.

Mrs. Khaleel poked her head out of the kitchen. Seeing him, she smiled brilliantly, as if to say,
Isn’t this wonderful?
John blinked, puzzled.

Mr. Summers peered around the hallway corner, saw them and smiled as well, putting a finger to his lips.

“Sing it again,” Sukey said. “I want to learn the words.”

“I could write them down for you,” the voice said.

For a moment John was so shocked he couldn’t move. It was Thea.

“Mm-mm,” Sukey said sternly. “I learn better hearing it. You promised. Sing.”

Sukey had made her sing again, when John had despaired of helping her. Maybe she was a fairy after all.

He felt a pang of guilt, that he’d despaired. That he hadn’t been the one to talk to Thea. He had told Sukey he lacked the impulse to confide in others, but perhaps what he lacked was the ability to invite confidences. He’d confided in Sukey much further than she had in him—than anyone ever had.

Was he doomed, like his father, to work alone in the butler’s pantry while his wife was surrounded by her friends?

Good Lord, illness made him maudlin! He was glad for Thea. That was the main point. He wasn’t foolish enough to suppose that one song would banish months of inveterate misery. But it was a beginning.

* * *

A lovely week followed. Sukey remained determined on showering him with wifely care and affection, leaving him little notes and sprays of holly. Thea began bringing hot shaving water to the butler’s pantry, and John was sure Sukey had put her up to it. It was extra labor for Thea, for nothing, when he had always been content to use cold—but it was such a luxury not to shiver and worry about slicing off gooseflesh that he couldn’t countermand the order.

And twice they dined alone in their room, conversing with surprising ease. John found himself nearly chattering away, as if he’d been storing up thoughts apurpose to spread out before her now.

He told her about Plumtree teaching him to take out blackberry stains when he was six years old, his struggles with Nick Dymond’s dreadful smoking chimney at Oxford, scandalous house parties and the bleak months after Mr. Dymond came back from Spain.

And she told him about Mrs. Humphrey’s lodgers and learning new songs from peddlers and her friends’ misadventures in love. She didn’t talk much about her childhood, he noticed, but he remembered that a marriage blossomed at its own pace and didn’t pry.

And at night they began coupling again, now he was recovered from his cold. Some of the urgency was gone, the newness and wonder, but in its place came familiarity. John had always liked his lovers, and had known some of them a long time. But there was something about bedding his wife—no, about bedding
Sukey
—that seemed entirely different. Surely he would have remembered this comfort, this ease and surety. Not the kind that came from a friendly tumble, but from
knowing
her. From sharing with her in joy and care.

Trust, he supposed, was one word to describe it. But that didn’t seem right. Intimacy, then? Affection?

One night it was very late and they were both tired, and they looked into each other’s bleary eyes and laughed a little and went to sleep without anything more than a kiss. John lay in the dark, exhausted and fuzzy-brained, and felt terribly happy. They didn’t have to couple tonight. Because they both knew there would be tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that.

There was another word men used to describe their feelings for their wives. After his slip of the tongue at the servants’ ball, John had not allowed himself to use it, out of some obscure sense of propriety.

He did not think the quality of his sentiments needed to change for the word to be apt. Yet there must be some reasonable interval of time, some duration of feeling, before the thing was named, even in the privacy of one’s own mind. One ought not to risk a mistake. Her father had said he loved her and her mother, and later he had left them.

Besides…

The surety and ease in bed, the confidence that she would accept his touch, and not laugh at him—it didn’t extend to this. She wouldn’t laugh, but she might be dismayed. She might draw back. She might say it was too soon, and she would be right.

They had married shortly before Christmas. Lady Day would be plenty of time to contemplate saying the word aloud.

John could only imagine how Sukey would laugh if she knew he was ordering his declarations by quarter days. He smiled in spite of himself.

* * *

Sukey, on her way to airing out the guest rooms, was stopped by the sound of crying. It was coming from Thea and Molly’s room. Drawing near and peering through the keyhole to see if she ought to go in, she saw Thea, her face in Molly’s lap, weeping as if her heart would break. “I felt better yesterday,” she sobbed. “And today it’s as bad as ever.”

Molly smoothed a hand over her hair. “Convalescents have good days and bad days. Everyone knows that.”

Sukey crept away, hoping Molly was right.

* * *

John left Molly’s father’s lodgings with a wretched, crawling sort of feeling. The man had agreed to think about the workhouse. He had wept, in fact, at the idea of distressing his daughter. He had been very, very drunk, at two in the afternoon. John hoped he would remember the conversation, so that John didn’t have to have it again.

Next he had knocked at the door of the neighbor who put bread in Molly’s father’s cupboard and, after some discussion, arranged with her that her husband would look in on the man each night, just to be sure he still breathed.

He stopped at the circulating library to get the first two volumes of a new novel before heading back home for a quiet evening. But as he passed through Market Square, he saw Sukey at a table by the window of a pub, sitting with…with Thea? When she loved her half-holiday of freedom from the vicarage so much? She was an angel.

He almost went on, not wanting to interrupt them, but he wanted too much to hear her voice, even for a moment. It was getting so her presence made all right with the world.

Earlier this afternoon he’d introduced her to Plumtree. She’d stayed half an hour, in which space she and Plumtree had thoroughly charmed one another, and then she’d left.

And John had been shaken to discover he was—not less at ease, precisely, after she’d gone. But he had felt, all at once, almost in a false position, as if he wore a favorite suit that still fit but no longer hung quite right. As if the man he was with Plumtree was himself, but not all of himself.

He felt more at home with Sukey than with a man he’d known all his life, who was as good as family.

That, he realized with a start, was marriage.
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife.
Sukey was his family now. He went inside.

“John,” she said a little warily. She and Thea were sprawled about, shawls and bonnets in cozy disarray, nursing the dregs of coffee cups as if they meant to do it all afternoon.

“I borrowed these from the library.” He showed her the volumes. “I’m on my way home to read them.”

She smiled, evidently relieved he wasn’t staying as well as pleased he was enjoying her gift. He nearly left at once—but he said, “Would you consider coming home early?”

Thea made an amused sound. Sukey blushed and, to judge from the girl’s reaction, kicked her under the table.

His ears burned. “I meant nothing untoward.”

Sukey hesitated, licking her lip uncertainly. “I would be delighted to spend a quiet evening at home with you,” she said at last with great dignity. Thea giggled at the word “quiet”.

John was too pleased to be much embarrassed. “I shall expect you at half past six?”

She nodded.

He arrived home, thinking to mull some cider for them, and found the door locked and a note from Mr. Summers on the hall table.
Gone to use Lord Wheatcroft’s library. Will likely stay for supper.
He had the house entirely to himself for the next several hours. The sad visit to Molly’s father still clung to his skin.

Honest labor cleared the mind and the heart. John had an idea.

* * *

As half-holidays went, Sukey had had very little of it to herself. She’d spent a nice half-hour with John and his friend Mr. Plumtree, a good-humored man with a tongue sharper than her own. She’d paid her usual visit to her mother, and then she’d stopped at the vicarage to collect Thea.

She’d feared regretting her kindness, but it had been a very pleasant afternoon after all, Thea being perfectly content to sit in the window at the Robin Hood without talking much, nursing a cup of coffee and watching the world go by. Now here they were, throwing snowballs at each other on their way home, two precious hours earlier than usual. She ought to regret it, but she didn’t. John was waiting for her.

“Race you,” she told Thea, and they fetched up at the back door with a thump, laughing and gasping and covered in snow.

John opened it in his shirtsleeves. “You’re early.”

“We can come back later,” she teased, and he tugged her inside and held her tight against him as he locked the door.

“Can I borrow your book?” Thea asked, kicking off her pattens. “You won’t be reading it, right?”

“It’s on the kitchen table.”