The Dark Clue (49 page)

‘Yes.'

‘Come along, then.'

She went ahead of me, and the man came behind, pushing me out into the hall and up the stairs. When we reached the landing we paused for a moment, and I heard the woman unlocking a door and opening it.

‘Now, Lu,' she said gently. ‘You know what is expected of you?'

There was no answer, as far as I could tell; but the woman must have been satisfied, for I was promptly thrust forward again. All at once, the light outside the hood seemed brighter. I was conscious of the smell of cheap scent and cheap coals – and then, suddenly, of a shrill squeal, half surprised and half amused, which made me fear for my safety – for there was something uncontrolled, even mad, about it.

‘We'll come for you in a little while,' whispered the woman, close to my ear. And then I heard the door closing behind me, and the key being turned again from the outside.

The squealing continued for a few moments, but all the time
subsiding into giggles, like a pot going off the boil, until at length it had become no more than a kind of breathless, bubbling trill. Then I heard – or rather felt – her approaching; smelt the violet cachou on her breath, and the
eau de Cologne
on her skin, and beneath them both, like a half-buried secret, a rank hint of animal heat. She said nothing; but as she touched my icy fingers she winced, and put them to her lips, and rubbed them to restore the circulation, before finally turning her attention to untying them. As she fiddled clumsily with the knots, I could not but reflect that we had never met – never seen each other's faces – never even heard each other speak; and yet that I was closer to her than I have been to any woman save Laura in my adult life.

She at last managed to free my hands, and then quickly plucked the hood from my head. I blinked; for even the light of the gas-lamp was enough to dazzle me after so long in darkness. She seemed to emerge, in consequence, through a kind of fuzzy mist: first a squat, rather full figure in a low-cut blue dress; then a wide, pale face, puffy from drink or tiredness; deep-set blue eyes and a bright red mouth; the thick brown ringlets untidily pinned up behind her head. She had one hand on the bed – which was not the mean object I should have expected, but a four-poster hung with a dirty chintz curtain. She caught me looking at it, and smiled with a quite uncoquettish frankness, and then shook her head and laughed, as if my presence there still bemused her.

‘You got anything to drink?' she said. Her speech was slow and slurred.

I had, of course; but was unsure whether I should own to it. It seemed churlish to deny her; and yet had not the woman downstairs said she was a drunkard, and must be prevented from tippling? She must correctly have interpreted this hesitation as meaning ‘yes'; for she immediately said, ‘You ‘ave, ain't you?' and began rifling through my pockets with the frantic single-mindedness of a dog digging up a bone. When she plucked out Marian's reticule she held it up for an instant like an exhibit in a court case, laughing ‘You're a sly one, ain't you?'; and then flung it to one side and resumed her search. Within a matter of seconds she had found the flask, unscrewed the cap and sucked it dry, running her tongue around the little nozzle to catch any stray drops that might have escaped her.

‘Nothing more?' she said, before she had had time to catch her breath again.

‘That's enough,' I said, conscious even as I did so of a jarring note of priggishness in my voice.

She looked at me curiously, focusing her eyes with some difficulty.

‘What's your name?'

‘Did they not tell you?'

She seemed surprised that I should ask, and shook her head emphatically – until it seemed to make her dizzy, and she stopped abruptly

‘Jenkinson,' I said.

She drew in her breath sharply; and then her confused expression slowly cleared.

‘Ah, I gets it,' she said. ‘You likes the same.'

She picked up the hood and the ropes from where she had dropped them on the floor, and dangled them before me. I could not begin to guess her meaning, and merely stared stupidly back at her.

“Ere you are, then,' she said impatiently. ‘Take ‘em.'

I did so, and stood holding them helplessly. She turned towards the wall opposite me, where a round looking-glass in a rosewood frame hung above a small chair. Then slowly, without a word, she started to unhook her dress.

I could not move. I thought I should faint. And yet some part of me – the Walter Hartright that the world saw, and that until two months ago I had always supposed myself to be – would still not accept that this was desire, but clung doggedly to the notion that I was there for some perfectly respectable purpose – much as a shipwrecked sailor clings to some pitiful fragment of his smashed boat, in the hope that it will keep him from being swept away. I did not avert my eyes as she let the dress drop to the floor and stepped out of it – I could not; but I tried to persuade myself (God! what madness!) that I was looking simply in order to try to establish her age. From her broad plump hips and thighs, and the slight slackness of the skin on her arms, I guessed between thirty and thirty-five. Though I could barely speak, I said:

‘How old were you when Turner came here?'

She did not turn, but her eyes found my reflection in the glass.

“Oo?'

The other Mr. Jenkinson.'

‘Oh, must've be twelve or thirteen when ‘e first ‘ad me. ‘E come reg'lar after that.'

‘For how long?'

She shrugged. ‘Five, six years?'

‘And how old are you now?'

She giggled; and then unpinned her hair, and shook it free, so that it tumbled down her back. “Ere, you want to talk, or what?'

I tried to say something.

I could not.

She unlaced her corset and pulled it away, as a sculptor may remove a mould; and then drew her chemise over her head, and laid both on the chair. All she was wearing now was a pair of grubby stockings. She pulled at one of the garters.

‘On or off?' When I did not reply she brusquely repeated the gesture. ‘Hm?'

‘What did …? What did
he …?'

‘Oh, it were all one to ‘im. Weren't my legs as fussed ‘im. On or off?'

‘Off.'

She bent down and took them off as matter-of-factly as if I had asked her to remove a tea tray.

‘There,' she said, flinging them on the chair. As she did so I saw the bounce of her heavy breast, and glimpsed the thicket of darker hair beneath her belly. She appeared entirely unselfconscious, as if she felt no shame in her nakedness, and no pride either.

But to me …

To me it was a miracle.

I had never seen a woman undress before.

She threw herself on the bed and lay there, turning her head from side to side, gently rolling her hips so that her legs fell open.

‘Come on,' she said.

And then I knew the depth of my own folly. The folly of thinking I might see another life – imagine another life – but not cross the threshold into living it.

The folly of denying my own fate.

For I had not chosen this. I had resisted, indeed, as I have been resisting for months. But fate had overruled me, and delivered me here.

No-one I knew had seen me.

This woman did not know my name.

I was free.

She watched me approach, but then, as I drew near, laid an arm across her face. I sat beside her, uncertain what to do.

Put it on, then,' she said.

She removed her arm, but kept her eyes closed.

Put it on,' she repeated.

I slipped the hood over her head. She stretched out her arms in a parody of crucifixion, blindly adjusting them until each wrist was lying against one of the bed-posts.

The meaning was plain enough. I tied one hand with the rope. She did not murmur. For the other I used one of her stockings.

I stared at her. She could not stare back. She had no eyes.

There was so much of her. Such an ocean of skin – as still now as cream, and as smooth, save where it was creased and printed with the stamp of her corset.

Not my wife. Not a woman I knew. Just woman.

I took off my clothes slowly, looking at her the whole time. Why hurry? I did not need to entice her, or persuade her, or ask her permission. She could not escape me. She was entirely within my power.

When I entered her she sighed, and yielded up a cry that seemed extorted from her against her will.

And when I had done she shuddered, and whispered:

‘You're more of a man than ‘e was. You want to do it again? Or you going to untie me?'

I did not sleep when she did. I have never been more awake. I got up and listened at the door. I heard nothing, except a distant noise of snoring. My captor must have drunk too much at the public, and passed out in a stupor.

I went to the window. The cloud had cleared, and there was a moon. I could see a steep roof, with what appeared to be an outhouse or shed below it, from which – I thought – I could easily enough reach the ground. The snow lay thick everywhere. It would, I thought, break my fall, and muffle the sound of it.

I had no fear. I knew I must trust my fate.

I quietly dressed, put a sovereign on the pillow, and cracked open the casement. It was too small for me to get through fully clothed, so I had to remove my coat and drop it out before me. For a moment it snagged on a broken gutter, but then its own weight freed it and it fell on to the lower roof. And it was as well it did – for when I landed on it, I felt a sharp grazing pain, and found that beneath the snow the whole surface was covered with pieces of broken glass, which had doubtless been put there to stop boys climbing on it. The coat was badly torn, but the reticule and my flask were undamaged, and I sustained no more than a few scratches.

Trust your fate, and no harm will come to you.

I dropped down, and found myself in a little alley behind a row of houses. At the end I could see a line of rickety buildings thrown into silhouette by the moonlight. I made my way towards them, and emerged into a mean street of wharves and taverns and warehouses. I had no idea where I was, or which way I should take; but it seemed slightly lighter and more open towards the left, so I struck out in that direction. And once again fate rewarded me; for after a few minutes I came out in a main road, and almost immediately spied a cab.

The driver hesitated a moment when he saw the state of my clothes, but the sight of my purse soon convinced him.

‘What street is that?' I asked him, pointing to the way I had just come.

‘New Gravel Lane, sir.'

So I have been in Wapping, where Turner went. I have known the freedom he knew. I have partaken of his power.

LIII

Letter from Laura Hartright to Walter Hartright,
14th December, 185–

Limmeridge,
Thursday

My darling Walter,

You bad boy! Did you not promise you would write every day? Or has dining with Sir Charles Eastlake quite turned your head, and made you forget your poor family altogether!

We are well, save that we miss you so much. Would it were Christmas already – for that will bring us the best present of all.

Your loving wife,

Laura

LIV

From the diary of Marian Halcombe, 14th December, 185-

An odd postscript to yesterday, which I was too tired and upset to note down before I went to bed:

I spent most of the day writing my journal, and resting. About six, having not heard Walter enter the house, I returned to his studio, to ask whether he would be coming in to dinner. I think I took him by surprise; for he was engrossed in writing himself, but stopped as soon as he heard me, and stood before the table, as if he were hiding something from my gaze. He was wilder-eyed and more dishevelled than ever, having plainly neither slept nor changed his clothes since the morning.

‘Are you unwell?' I said.

He shook his head. As he did so, the light caught his cheek, and I saw that the bruise there had grown into an ugly swelling.

‘Oh, you are! You're injured!' I cried, moving towards him impulsively.

He shook his head again, and put out his hands to keep me from him. Perhaps he was merely being delicate, for he smelt vile, and might have been trying to spare me the stale fishy sweetness that clung to him like a fog, and still lingers in my nose as I write these words; but from the way he flinched, and the
coldness in his eyes, it was difficult to avoid the impression that his motive was to protect not me, but himself.

Of course I was hurt. But worse – far worse: I suddenly caught myself calculating the distance between here and the house, and wondering whether Davidson would hear me if I cried out, and come to my aid. I have grown used, these last few months, to feeling I could not completely trust Walter, or guess what was in his mind. But never before have I doubted my own safety with him.

What did I fear he might be capable of doing?

I cannot bring myself to write – to think it, even.

My judgement must have been disordered by anxiety. And lack of sleep. And a night of terrible imaginings.

As I backed away he reached behind him and then moved quickly in front of the painting I had seen that morning. His aim, presumably, was to prevent me from seeing it; but he succeeded only in drawing my attention to it, for it was far too big for him to conceal. It was quite unlike anything I have known Walter attempt before, with none of his customary care and sweetness and faithful attention to detail. The paint seemed to have been flung against the canvas, where it hung in great pools and drips as thick as icicles – as if the artist's job were merely to get it out of the pot, and he had no obligation to do anything with it once it was there. I can only assume he was trying for a Turnerish effect, for there was a jagged red smear in the middle, surrounded by black – but it entirely lacked Turner's lucidity and brilliance. The red wasn't red enough; the black wasn't black enough; they bled into each other around the edges, and suggested no natural object or effect I have ever seen in my life.