The Gentleman and the Lamplighter (6 page)

This was a different fear—that the Interlude had meaning. He must not encourage the man to think of him as a possible companion. That had been a one-time strange occurrence.

And then Giles realized his arguments about Banks were with himself. He wanted nothing more than to walk down the stairs and out the door to greet the lamplighter. To touch him and pull him into a hug and … the sensation of dropping deep inside his belly told him he grew excited.

The mere thought of a man, one particular man, transformed him. No, he could not allow this, not again. He would not become attached to another man. Perhaps if he were to remove himself from temptation? He could accomplish two tasks with one journey.

Decision made, he had his valet pack his bag and they went to the station that night. He would not stay at Woolver’s house, but there was a tolerable inn not far away.

The next morning he went to call on Mrs. Woolver. She greeted him with a pretty cry of welcome and an embrace. A rather long and close embrace.

He gently disengaged her hands from around his middle—and then held them for a second.

“Your note gave me such hope,” she said.

“Hope?” He dreaded her explanation.

“Come sit with me while I breakfast.” She led him into the familiar breakfast room, which seemed brighter than it had the last time he’d been there, years earlier.

She sat down at the table where she’d already been eating some kippers and eggs. “I thought you’d forgiven me,” she said.

“I’m not sure what—”

“For Oliver’s death, of course.”

He was sitting down as she spoke and the words made him land rather hard on the chair. “What on earth do you mean, ma’am?”

She rolled her eyes and looked the very young woman she really was. She’d been only seventeen when she’d married, and was a young nineteen now. “Each time we’ve met since Oliver’s death, you have acted like I was his murderer.”

“Grief must explain any coolness in my manner. I apologize that you should have thought I blamed you.” He knew he sounded stiff as usual, but really, how could she have come up with such a thought?

“But you don’t forgive me entirely. Because I didn’t make him happy. He wasn’t jolly with me. Not the way he was with you.”

He could only stare at her. “What do you mean?” he said at last.

“When I was very young, I saw the two of you when you visited on holidays. You were laughing together and so happy.”

He didn’t recall seeing her, but he wouldn’t have noticed anyone in Wool’s presence.

“I didn’t particularly long to marry Oliver, but it was an advantageous match for us, as you know. He had a lovely smile, at least when he was with you. And I had no better offers.” She stopped talking to eat another few bites. “I did like being Mrs. Woolver, though Oliver and I were hardly friends or even friendly, once we were married. I told him we should ask you to visit. He said it would be of the worst taste, such a strange remark. He was a stubborn man and refused to talk to me about you.”

Giles tried not to respond but “I’m sorry” slipped out.

“Oh, Oliver was determined to be dreary no matter what I did or said. I could not make him change, and he marched right along until he couldn’t stand himself any longer. That’s what he wrote in a note to me.”

Giles said, “He wrote the same thing to me.”

“Maybe, maybe, if I’d pushed harder, or just invited you to see us despite his strange admonition, he would have been happy again. So if you blame me, well.” She shrugged. “I can see why.”

Wool was gone. And for the first time, Giles could see that under her customary bright air, Mrs. Woolver was hurt. And angry. And worst of all, she seemed to feel real guilt.

He reached over the table and grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “I am sorry that you should think I blamed you. I should have been less chilly in your presence, but I was truly very sad.”
And you weren’t
,
and I resented you,
he didn’t add—because what was the point? “There is only one person to blame for Oliver’s death, and that is Oliver himself. You couldn’t have stopped him. I couldn’t have. He was just a—an unhappy person.”

She sighed and picked up her tea. “Yes, and I’ll wager a part of it was because he loved you and didn’t want to.”

Giles forced himself not to protest or tell her she had to be mistaken. If she would be so honest, he could respond in kind. He said, “I only wish he might have been a different person for your sake.”

“La, at least he left me young and wealthy enough to enjoy my widowhood.”

This was the sort of thing she’d said before, but for the first time he understood why she would want to show strength rather than grief in her circumstances. “Yes,” he said, “in that he was considerate. It was the very least he could do for you.”

She threw her head back and laughed, and then suddenly she was crying. She rose from the table and fled the room. He wondered if he should follow. No, he didn’t have the right to share her sorrow.

Instead he left word that he would go for a walk and return in an hour. As he walked through the pleasant lanes, he thought about Wool, but for once he considered the cost of that marriage to Mrs. Woolver. The harm that had come to her because of Wool’s secrets and a lack of passion—too little emotion. Wool rejected love.

Giles had thought strength meant staying firm and rejecting emotional entanglements, but perhaps he’d been mistaken. Or as John Banks might put it, utterly hopelessly stupidly dead wrong. Quite the opposite of right.

When Giles returned to Mrs. Woolver, bearing flowers he’d found in a shop in the village, she greeted him again. This time less fulsomely, but with more warmth. She sniffed the flowers and thanked him, adding, “Forgive my outbursts, or I should say, all of my outbursts.”

“There is nothing to forgive. We all mourn in our own way.”

“Bah, Giles Fullerton. I wanted to hate you, but you’ve always been so calm and reasonable and even kind, when I know you were itching to hurt me—”

“No. Not you. I think … Oliver.” He was grateful that he’d been actor enough to hide his resentment of her—most of it at any rate. “I was angry with him. Yes, and I still am.”

“Yes, what a rotter Oliver was. Terrible to both of us.” She sighed. “I shall find a man who does nothing but smile from sunup to sundown and all night long. He will prove a fine remedy and I shall marry him and live happily ever after.”

He laughed. “I wish you luck with your search.” And it suddenly occurred to him that he’d met such a man.

What a pity that he and John Banks did not even venture into the same circles. Although such a happy-ever-after could not take place even if they did meet up from time to time.

Why not?

Giles smiled to himself at the silly question.
Because that is not the way the world works.

***

The next day was the one before Mrs. Woolver’s house party, and he came to say good-bye before her guests appeared. He was glad she was determined to be jolly, but he still didn’t feel ready to witness a party in Wool’s own house.

She must have suspected his reasons, for she didn’t push him to stay and accepted his weak excuses of appointments in the city. Before he took his leave, he and Wool’s widow went for a walk around the grounds that she had redesigned—changes, he couldn’t help noticing, that were for the better.

She asked his advice about improvements to a southern-facing garden. “It’s charming as it is,” he said.

He gazed past her at the spot where he’d once kissed Wool. Just under that tree. Oh, Wool, such a stupid sad waste.

Mrs. Woolver laughed. “Well, I shall change the garden anyhow and add a summer house. I consult with you purely as a formality, of course. I know you’ll let me to do whatever I wish. You made that clear at that first meeting at the lawyer’s office. I knew then that at the very least, Oliver had left me in good hands.”

He thought back to that nightmare of a day when he’d learned he must interact with Wool’s widow on a regular basis. He’d been motivated by indifference to her and a fear of having to travel to this very spot, Wool’s family home, the place laden with memories.

He stopped staring at the tree and, after a silent apology to her, he said, “You have always been sensible. Why would I interfere?”

***

After their walk, she gave him tea. Giles refused her last perfunctory request to him to stay for the ball. “But I hope I shall see you when you come to town,” he told her. He’d said such things before, but now he spoke the words truthfully.

“We will talk about Oliver.”

“Perhaps. I hope we will talk more about you and your gardens and your cheerful swain—your gentleman who will always smile at you,” he said.

“I do believe that it was sorrow that made you so grim with me,” she said. “I’m glad you’re happy again.”

Hardly that, he thought automatically. To be happy when Wool was still dead seemed … wrong.

***

But as the train drew into London, he felt the surge of energy that felt like the essence of spring and growth and possibilities, a lightening of the heart and a brush of excitement.

He stopped at the lamp in front of his house, which had already been lit.

Mr. Banks. John Banks, he thought, and that thrum of excitement turned into something he found difficult to ignore.

Yet when he went to bed that night, he slept well, better than he had for months, years perhaps.

He woke to daylight—and no burning lamp.

The disappointment made him smile. But he also made certain to be watching that afternoon. The shambling figure that came around the corner was not his Mr. Banks, however.

Worried, Giles left the house and walked out to the man, a tall, gaunt man of about fifty. “Good evening,” he said. “You’re not the usual lamplighter, are you?”

“I am now.” He was missing any number of teeth so the words came out in a slur. “Mr. Banks don’t want this round.”

Now the disappointment he felt didn’t make Giles smile. He stared at the man, who stared back. “You all right, sir?” the lamplighter asked.

The same words Banks had used.

“Yes, I am fine.” He fished a coin from his waistcoat pocket and handed it to the new man. “I’m fine. Thank you.” He turned and walked away.

“Thank
you
, sir,” the lamplighter called to his back as Giles made his way back across the road to his house.

***

Giles pretended this abandonment by John Banks didn’t hurt. No, indeed, they had shown each other a kind of tenderness and pleasure and he would cherish it and not resent Banks leaving his old path by Giles’s house.

But why? Banks must have done it because of him, Giles. Why else would he leave his route? He wished he could talk to him, find out what was wrong.

Giles’s eagerness turned into restlessness and he knew, without a doubt, that all of that lifting of heart as he’d come back to London, all of the secret happy anticipation, had been about Banks, that he had looked forward to seeing the lamplighter again. His appetite had been about the flesh, but also the words. He wanted to tell Banks about Wool and Mrs. Wool and the remedy of a smiling man.

He went for a walk and discovered he’d ventured into a less familiar part of the city, a neighborhood with small, cramped ancient houses—just down the lane from where Banks lived.

Enough.

This kind of behavior would not do. He turned about and decided to attend to his responsibilities. He knew he must soon go into the country—his family did not own as much land as Wool had, but the books were in shambles because his father had no interest in that sort of thing and counted on Giles to check the sums and expenses.

He’d neglected his father too long and would send him a letter and a gift. Perhaps a book. His absentminded father—absent in his imaginary travels—enjoyed descriptive guides to countries he’d never visit, and Giles had an agent to track down such books. Perhaps he could look for a book on his own. And this area where he restlessly walked was not far from some good shops.

He considered going to Hatchards on Piccadilly but decided to go to Holywell Street, the dingy old Elizabethan way near the Strand.

Not far from Opera Comique, he noted. They’d talked about the Gilbert and Sullivan there and, yes, now he remembered the name of the bookstore where sometimes John Banks, lamplighter, might be found.

It took a few tries but he found the shop with Abrams stenciled in neat gold script on the window by the door.

Shelves of books reached floor to ceiling along every wall, with some freestanding shelves also forming a maze. There seemed some vague organization to the whole arrangement. He made his way around a table that held stacks of Bibles on one side and Darwin’s
On the Origin of Species
on the other. Mr. Abrams clearly enjoyed controversy or had a sense of humor.

He walked about the shop for a time until a stout lady of about forty with salt-and-pepper hair approached him. She had pretty brown eyes but otherwise was rather plain, or perhaps she didn’t make any attempt to make herself attractive. “Are you looking for any particular title?” she asked.

“I am looking for travel guides.”

She pursed her lips. “We have a few. Come along and I’ll show you.”

As he followed her, he found the courage to say, “I wonder if Mr. Banks is available.”

She glanced over her shoulder at him. Her face, lit with a sudden smile, became close to beautiful. “What? Oh, goodness! You are here about the play? Because Mr. Abrams, my husband, is the man you actually want. Banks and Abrams sounded better, my husband thought, so his name went first, but Mr. Banks isn’t really the man in charge.”

He picked out the words that seemed important. “The play?”

“Oh dear, I can tell by your confusion that you’re not the man we’re waiting for. I thought you might be because we’ve been hoping he’d stop by today. He said he would if he had time.” She stopped in front of a shelf and waved a hand. “Here you go, sir. We have a few guides to foreign lands, but if you need one for London or other English cities, they’re on another shelf.”

“You’re expecting someone to come here to talk about a play? And Mr. Banks helped to write it?”