Sons of Fortune (22 page)

Then she looked alarmed. “Here, I can’t go back to Bristol.”

He rose stiffly, dusted his knees, and sat beside her, putting out an arm for her to settle into. “Of course not,” he said. “Now you’re with me.”

He thought of asking her why Mrs. Cornelius’s one slip had so distressed her when what she was now doing, and going to do, had such an opposite effect—but one look at her, so severely exquisite, so flawlessly lovely, and the question foundered in his throat. What did it matter? Who understood motives anyway!

They drove straight to his office then, where he collected some money and left a plausible message for Nora or anyone else who inquired. She wouldn’t expect him home, anyway. The quarrel had bought him a good fortnight, he imagined. His lack of feeling, and even of regret, did not astonish him. There was no room inside him even for astonishment, much less for any more complex feeling. He burst with the sudden realization of all that his life had lacked during these latter years. And now the lack was to be met. It was—marvellous, he told himself again. He kept telling himself.

Still in the same cab they meandered down through the West End, stopping every now and then to buy all they would need to support their role as travellers, man and wife, passing through. Especially she needed a cloak to cover her servant’s clothes. Along Oxford Street they went, down Regent Street, through Regent Circus and Leicester Square, and so by St. Martin’s to the Strand. Their goal was one of the numberless small hotels in the streets south of the Strand, between it and the river. You didn’t even need to hand in a visiting card in most of them.

Impatience did not let them go farther than the first one they tried, a small, clean place in Villiers Street. “Mr. and Mrs. Stenson” he gave as their name.

“See, that’s a bad start,” she said archly when they were alone together.

“Oh?”

“Yes, you be already less of a man than you were when you met with I up in that park.”

“Ho! I’ll show you!”

She tried to think it was wrong, and it felt like the rightest thing she had ever done. She tried to feel shame at her nakedness—or, rather, she tested herself for shame and could find none. All those sermons she and the other Fallen Women had heard on the evils of the flesh—they referred to other situations, sordid situations, not to wonderful and rare moments like this. He wasn’t shamed either, he was marvellous, doing everything so calmly and with such assurance, and so right. She’d do anything for him, and it would be right. This was what bodies were for. You didn’t need words to tell you that. And words that said otherwise were words of the ignorant.

His hands, straying over her, melted everything they touched. Her head and limbs moved only to yield. He could do anything, touch her anywhere, and that part developed a magical sensitivity to him. Five years ago a hundred men had been there and back with her and it had meant nothing; but she only needed to see John looking at her, even at her wrists—or toe-nails—and they tingled. For him she felt peeled. He drowned her. She did not know there was such delight. At its pinnacle it tore her apart, racked her in a delirium of sweetness, left her more whole, more
together
of herself, than she could have believed.

And so it was again in those small hours when even your own name sounds like a comic label and your
real
name is body-arms-and-legs-feeling, and everything tastes slightly of salt, and you are sure you are the only two people in the world. And again—long, slow, lazy again—when dawn said it was the day of rest, and the church bells summoned communicants out of doors.

To John’s surprise Charity sprang from the bed and began to dress.

“I forgot ’twas Sunday,” she said when she had her chemise fastened. “Come on, you’ll be late.”

He stared at her, too astonished to speak.

“Come on!” She was already half dressed.

“To church?”

“’Course to church. We’d be in time for second communion. Come on!”

He laughed, embarrassed. “I don’t,” he said. “I don’t go. I mean, I don’t go to communion.”

She stopped with her bodice half hoisted down over her arms, making him marvel, as he ran his eyes from her elbows down to her petticoats, that fires were left in him to rekindle. “That’s terrible!” she said. “But you got to start sometime. Come on now—up!”

“I will not,” he said, laughing again.

“I can’t go ’lone. Just come and sit by I. No need to go up for the wine and that.” She shrugged into the bodice.

He frowned. “I meant to ask you,” he said. “Why are you talking like that again? They taught you to talk quite respectably these last few years.”

“Dunno,” she said. “Didn’t sound like I no more, I s’pose.”

“I’ll come if you promise to talk properly from now on,” he said. “If I’m going to pass you off here and there as my wife, you can’t talk that ‘low Bristow.’”

She leaped on him then and kissed him. “Oh John, oh John! I do love you so!”

He imprisoned her with a hug. “Stay and prove it,” he challenged. “I shan’t let you go.”

She put her lips to his ear and said in a voice that made him tingle—but in her thickest Bristol accent: “Theese dursn’t hinder I, sinna, else I’ll tell they gov’ment geezers on ’ee!”

He pushed her away, smiling. “Very well! You win,” he said.

And to make sure she won, she pulled the sheets off as she stood again.

“Couldn’t do nothin’ with that wheesh li’l twig anyway!” she sneered.

He looked down and nodded glumly. “And you think a reminder of my religious duty is going to help?”

When they were on their way to St. Mary-le-Strand he returned to the theme. “How can you pass the night as you’ve just passed it and go straight to the Lord’s Supper?” he asked.

“It isn’t the worst He has to forgive I—me—for,” she said.

“You mean”—he chuckled at her simplicity—“if forgiveness hasn’t become a habit with Him by now, it never will.”

“Yes,” she answered, not seeing that he was being flippant. “Anyway, what about you? Do you think it was wrong? I mean a big wrong? A real sin?”

“Well—two commandments down and only eight to go. And when we get back to the hotel, this being the sabbath, we’ll make it three, no doubt.”

“I’m serious,” she said. “Last night was the happiest I ever spent. If it was a big sin—well, that’s a funny sort of Father to His children. That’s all I can say. And I’ll leave it all to be explained on Judgement Day.”

But she must have gone on thinking about it during the service, for on their way back she said, “You don’t believe in God at all, do you? You’re worse than me—going and not believing.”

Her hand rested lightly in the crook of his elbow; he squeezed it with his other hand. “I was laying a line in Anatolia last year with Christian labour—Eastern Christians. And we couldn’t make them understand they had to get rid of all the topsoil—that you can’t lay a line on topsoil. I tried everything. Then my general manager, Mr. Flynn—you may know him. I think he has called on Mr. Thornton in Bristol?”

“That little Irishman?”

“That’s him.”

“Oh, I liked him.”

“Everyone likes Mr. Flynn—except the lazy and the incompetent! Anyway, he had a word with their priest. And the priest told them it was a mortal sin to leave any topsoil beneath a railway line. And, by heavens, never in twenty years have I seen a working so free of topsoil! So of course I believe in God.”

“Oh, that’s all right then,” she said, as if he had just lifted a burden from her.

They drove out to Richmond for lunch, where he was fairly sure of not being recognized. Then in the afternoon he took her over to St. John’s Wood, where one of the properties acquired in the settlement the previous year stood empty awaiting sale. Hamilton Cottage, it was called, and it marked the dead end of Hamilton Place.

It was a more imposing building than the name implied, worth at least four servants. It must have been built in Regency days, when this was all still countryside—the open fields of Portland Down.

It had been recently remodelled to give it a more cluttered frontage, a tower at one end, and broad windows in late Gothic style.

“Like it?” he asked her.

She looked at the house as she had gazed at everything that day—with a tourist’s eyes. “Why?” she asked.

“Would it suit you?”

She looked at him and her eyes shone. She looked back at the house. After a time she took the breath she had forgotten when his question hit her. “Could you get me a position there?” she asked, only half believing still.

“A very good position,” he said solemnly. “The best.”

“Go on! Scullery maid more likely.”

“Better,” he promised.

“Housemaid?”

“Better.”

“
Lady’s
maid?” She bounced up and down in excitement.

“Better.” He persisted.

She frowned. Her horizon had no better to lady’s maid. “What?”

“Mistress!” he said and burst into laughter.

Slowly she grasped what he was saying and her puzzlement turned to laughter too—delighted, fearful laughter. “Missy!” she giggled. “Me! Your missy! Well!” Then she looked back at the house, no longer with a tourist’s eyes. “My! I couldn’t do that. Not there. ’Tis too big.”

“Try it,” he said encouragingly. “If it doesn’t work, you can move to somewhere smaller. But I’ve seen you, my darling, dealing with women and the other servants at the Refuge; you’ve got the makings of a lady who could manage a place like that. And when children come along you’ll be glad of a bigger house with a nice garden.”

Her mouth fell open. “Children!”

“You must have thought of it. If not, you’d better start now.”

She looked at the house again. He saw her breathe in deeply, squaring up to the idea of it. A new doubt troubled her. “If we’re not married…” she began.

“Don’t worry about the neighbours. Most of them are mistresses. You look at the carriages drawn up outside the houses as we go back—you’ll see the livery and badges of half the peerage. All quite open. This is the part of London for that.”

“Not—not
houses
!”
she said, horrified at the thought she might have come full circle.

“Not that sort. The very opposite. I’d wager this is the last district in London where they’d permit houses of that kind to open.”

She looked puzzled still.

“I promise you,” he said. “You’ll find a respectability here that Mrs. Thornton herself would be forced to admire.”

Of course! she thought. If the government was looking to see if John was fit to be a peer, then it would be easier to persuade them he was fit if he already had a missy out here with all the other peers! She could help him. How right she had been to come to him!

“Come on!” he said. “I’ll show you how a little twig can miraculously grow into a mighty branch all in half a day!”

On their way back to the hotel and the promised breaking of the third commandment, he said, “About Mrs. Thornton. You must write to her—or she won’t rest until she’s found you.”

“What can I say!” She sighed hopelessly.

“Tell her you had the chance to marry well and that you seized it. Very respectable and worthy man. Low church. Dress it out a bit to please her. But say he’d never understand if he knew your past. Had to run away. Keep it quiet. It all fits, you see.” A thought struck him. “Your train fare to London. How did you get that?”

“I had to take it.”

“Did they owe you wages?”

“I never had wages. It would be a temptation, they said. But I was never left wanting,” she added, thinking her lack of wages made them sound mean.

“I’ll give you two pounds to send with the letter. Say your husband’s quite prosperous but very careful; and you’ll send what you can from time to time, and you’ll keep writing.” And when Charity still looked dubious, he said: “You won’t hurt her so much if you do that.”

“She’ll still think I’ve deceived them.”

“She’ll think worse if you do nothing.”

***

On Monday he asked Flynn about Hamilton Cottage.

“Sold!” Flynn said happily. “Stood on the books long enough!” Then he saw John’s disappointment. “Why?” he asked, less jocular.

“Signed, sealed, and delivered?”

“No. Only the contract’s signed.”

“Who to?”

“Fellow called Banks. Nobody.”

“Tear it up, then.”

“Do what, sir?”

“A house—purchase contract has no legal force. You know that.”

“I do indeed. What I don’t know is…”

“I won’t beat about the bush with you, Flynn. Known you too long and respect your discretion too much.”

“Oh yes?” Flynn looked at him guardedly.

“I seem to have acquired a mistress.”

Flynn’s surprise lasted the merest moment. “Good man yourself!” he said.

“When I left the luncheon in Holborn last Saturday, nothing was further from my thoughts—well, in a practical sense. I mean, we all have our fancies, I suppose.”

Flynn leaned his head to one side and smiled, allowing no confession on his part.

“And now it’s Monday and we’ve already settled her allowance and expenses—and we’ve set our sights on Hamilton Cottage.”

Smiling but wordless, Flynn left the office, returning moments later with a handful of torn paper, which he gave to John.

“Good man yourself, Flynn,” John said. “Now listen. I am about to suffer a relapse. I am going to Cheltenham spa and if I don’t like it there, I shall go on to Malvern. Nobody—you know what I mean?—nobody is to try to follow me there, to either place. You alone will know that I am in fact either at Hamilton Cottage or the Padbury Family Hotel in Villiers Street. Understood?”

Flynn nodded.

“Now,” John continued, “draw up a new contract. Let’s say—what are you smiling at?”

“I was just after thinking—Hamilton Cottage, Lady Hamilton, Emma—what she was. It’s an appropriate name.”

John chuckled. “Anyway, as I was saying. Let’s say her father’s buying it, as a gift for her. I want her name in the deeds. She’ll take the name of Stevenson.”

Flynn looked at him sharply.

“Go on,” John said. “It’s common enough. And I want the children to bear my name.”

Flynn shrugged. “And what’s her father’s name—the man who’s supposed to be making this gift of the house?”