The Sealed Letter (18 page)

Not I.

The very thought of it makes her despise herself, for lack of nerve, parsimony of heart. No, she can't wish that day—not the whole last chaotic month—undone. In the past, Fido's never come quite first for Helen; she's always known that. But now Helen's been shaken awake; she's learned that men's flattery isn't enough to live on. She's come to treasure the one true friend she possesses, the one soul that speaks to her soul. Helen's going to survive these horrors, somehow, and it's Fido who will pull her through. There could be long years of happiness ahead, waiting for them just around the corner.

On impulse she gets out of bed, very softly so as not to disturb the sleeper, and searches in the back of her bureau drawer. She doesn't need a light to find the roll of linen. There's the choker Helen gave her all those years ago, in memory of the beach in Kent where they met in the year 1854: shells, amber drops, mother-of-pearl scattered along the velvet. Fido puts it round her throat now and fastens the clasp. It's tighter than it used to be, but not too tight to bear.

Wheezing a little, she stands beside the bed and pulls the blankets up to Helen's nape, to where the dark hair breaks over pale skin.

***

She wakes to find Helen standing at the window in the grey morning, fully dressed. "My dear—"

"The girls are terrified, I can feel it," says Helen, without turning. "We must find where he's hidden them."

Fido rubs dust from her eyes. "You're in no fit state, my dear. Why not wait till tomorrow, at least?"

"Tomorrow means one more day without my darlings," says Helen in a guttural voice.

She struggles up on the pillows, suppressing a sigh. She's known Helen to travel for weeks—months—without her children. But she supposes it's different when they've been snatched away. After all, what does Fido know of a mother's feelings?

For the best part of the morning, they hunt Nan and Nell all over town. It's a peculiarly mortifying sort of business.

Helen begins by leaving a pleading note for Harry (drafted by Fido, on a writing tablet on her knee in the waiting cab) at his club. The Rag Club—properly, the Army and Navy Club—stands on Pall Mall, a modern, impregnable fortress, with a crossed sword and anchor over the great arch, and the motto,
Unitate Fortior.
The doorkeeper's face is marble; he won't give the ladies any clue as to whether Admiral Codrington is in residence.

Then they try the houses of several of the Codringtons' long-time acquaintances. They're met with soaring eyebrows, startled denials. How can any decent mother possibly mislay two daughters, eleven and twelve? There's nothing like a little mysteriousness to make word spread. Really, thinks Fido with a private groan, Helen may as well put a small advertisement in the
Times
to announce the eruption of her domestic hearth.

At the marble-fronted townhouse of the Bourchiers, Helen sends the driver in with her card bearing a scribbled message, and receives a curt reply that her Ladyship has nothing to communicate to her brother's wife.

Helen falls back into the corner of the growler. "He must have told her. He's probably told everyone by now," she snarls. "Do you think she has my girls locked up in there?"

"It's possible."

"You try, won't you, and this time don't ask for her, just find out from the footman whether the Misses Codrington are staying with their aunt."

"Helen, I—"

"Please! You have a winning face."

Fido burst out laughing. (It must be the strain.) "I've never heard it called that before."

"Strangers like it at once."

"Especially the lower orders, you mean?"

"They assume the worst of mine," says Helen instead of answering.

It's true, Fido thinks; Helen's brand of ostentatious loveliness puts people's backs up. She gets down and goes up to the door; it's starting to rain. By wearing her most benign, parish-visitor expression she manages to extract from the boy in livery the information that the admiral's daughters haven't visited in some weeks.

"Well, at least we know that much," she tells Helen, wiping wet hair out of her eyes.

"We know nothing," Helen corrects her with a groan. "They could be floating in the Thames, as we speak!"

Fido shuts her eyes for a moment, then opens them. "Don't let's give way to melodrama," she says lightly. "No doubt I'm very stupid, but ... what possible motive could Harry have for throwing the girls in the river?"

A silence, and Fido holds her breath: is Helen going to fly into hysterics again?

No: a small, grudging smile. "Their resemblance to their mother?"

"Ah, but they have the Codrington stature. No, it would surely be simpler for him to hire some thug to throw
you
in the river."

Helen giggles. "Harry would hate to spend the money."

"When he could do the job himself, you mean? An excellent point."

"Of course, you may be driven to such lengths yourself, Fido, before he gets a chance."

"Very likely. If you annoy me, I dare say these arms have force enough to manhandle you over Westminster Bridge," says Fido, holding them out to examine them in their tight brown sleeves. "If we're to live together, no doubt you'll discover all sorts of brutish qualities in me."

But the moment of humour has gone by; Helen's staring out the window at the Bourchiers' house again. Fido pulls out her watch, and tuts. "I really ought to be at the press by now," she tells Helen. "I must arrange a meeting with Mr. Gunning, about the finances of my new magazine."

Helen's face falls. "You wouldn't leave me, today of all days?"

"My dear, it would only be for an hour, two at most—"

But Helen clings to Fido's brown skirt, her face contorted, and Fido gives in; pats her hand.

The rain's heavier now, so she has the cabman rein in his horse by a London Umbrella Company stand so she can hire one for the afternoon. Then she gives him the next address on Helen's list of acquaintances.

After two more dead-ends, Helen turns from the streaky window and says, "I'm a fool not to think of it before: he must have tracked down the Watsons!"

At first the name means nothing to Fido. Then she says, "Your friends in Malta?"

"His"
says Helen, scathing. "When the reverend lost his post, they came back to London. I can just see Harry turning to them for this kind of trick. The husband's a cipher, but the wife would be capable of anything."

In the directory Fido's been carrying around in her bag, she does find a Reverend Joshua Watson in the farthest fringes of Bayswater.

At the house, Helen sends in her card, and after a moment a greying middle-aged lady comes out to the carriage, under a faded umbrella.

"Is that her?" Fido asks, and in response Helen squeezes her wrist tight enough to hurt.

Helen leans out the window and begins without preamble. "You have them, don't you? Give them to me!"

Fido's cheeks go hot. "Please excuse my friend—" she begins.

But then she registers the minute smile on the face of the clergyman's wife, and a tiny glance up at the house.
They're here!

"Mrs. Codrington. The girls' father—their sole legal guardian," Mrs. Watson spells out, a word at a time, "has indeed honoured my husband and self by entrusting them to our care for the moment. In the admittedly unlikely case that you have any true feeling for them—"

"How dare you," cries Helen.

"For the sake of little Anne and Ellen, I suggest you give over making a scene in the public street."

"Nan," she spits, "they're called Nan and Nell."

The little smile broadens. "My husband and I have formed a policy of using their proper Christian names, to help them make a fresh start."

"They're mine!"

"As a point of law," says Mrs. Watson with her head on one side, "it's only a woman's virtue that induces her husband to leave his children in her custody. Technically speaking, children are a sort of gift a man gives his wife, you see, which he can withdraw at any time."

"Lying hag!"

Fido is shaken by the statement, but she knows the facts are true.

"You've gone astray, Mrs. Codrington," remarks Mrs. Watson in a sort of joyful sing-song. "You've done dreadful things."

"I'll do something worse, you bitch, if you don't bring down my children," says Helen, lunging at her through the open window. The older woman jerks away from the cab.

"For shame!" Fido's appalled by the language as much as the violence.

But Helen's scanning the upper storey. What comes out of her mouth is like the cry of a gull. "There they are!"

Mrs. Watson turns to look up at the rain-smeared window; frowning, she makes a banishing gesture. But two blank faces stare down at the scene.

"Nell! Nan! Mama is here," Helen shrieks out the window.

Fido pulls Helen back onto the seat. "This is doing no good," she pleads in her ear.

"I don't know you, madam," Mrs. Watson remarks to Fido.

"Emily Faithfull," she says reluctantly, after a second.

"Ah yes, I'm familiar with the name." Very knowing.

Fido stares at her. Familiar with it from the press? From Helen's reminiscences, while she was in Malta?

"I wonder that you continue to associate with this person."

"That is the nature of friendship," she says thickly.

"I, too, was taken in by her, for a little while, Miss Faithfull," says Mrs. Watson with a ghastly benevolence. "You're clearly still caught in her coils."

While Fido's been distracted, Helen has got the door open and jumped down into the street. "Open the window, darlings," she roars up at the white faces. But they don't seem to hear her.

"Won't you be Christian enough to let her have just a moment with her children?" Fido asks Mrs. Watson. "If you please, she's terribly distressed."

"Indeed she is, and it might do the girls incalculable harm to be put through such an encounter with a foul-mouthed hysteric."

"One moment," says Fido furiously, "one embrace."

"The time for embracing is over," intones Mrs. Watson.

Then the faces are gone from the window, and Helen lets out a long, shrill wail.

Fido steps out into the rain, to take Helen by the wet sleeves and pull her back into the cab. "Taviton Street," she calls to the driver.

***

The solicitor's name is Few, "But my clients are many," he mentions. The ladies stare at him. "Just a little joke," he says regretfully. Another pause. He smoothes down his chalk-white hair. "Now, to the purpose, Mrs. Codrington. The admiral will of course be liable for an allowance to maintain you until the trial—and for my fees, should you win."

Helen holds up her hand. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Mr. Few," she says with a self-possession that staggers Fido. "It's been two days now since my husband walked out; his temper must have cooled. Why don't you propose to this Mr. Bird that the two of you draw up a deed of private separation? I could live very quietly and economically with the girls, or even on my own, so long as I was allowed to see a good deal of them."

The elderly solicitor blinks at her.

Live quietly and economically with me at Taviton Street,
says Fido loudly in her head. She's glimpsing new possibilities:
We could both be mothers to Nell and Nan.

"I'm afraid it's too late for any such measure," says Few, shaking his head as if marvelling at female ignorance. "The admiral wants a divorce not simply
à mensâ et thoro,
that is, a separation from bed and board, but
à vinculo matrimonii,
from the bond of wedlock itself. Had he simply wanted to reside apart from you, he'd hardly have filed a petition yesterday stating that he believes you
guilty of misconduct with
—" he puts on his glasses to read it "
—one Colonel David Anderson."

Helen's cheeks are pink. Fido wonders suddenly: is she imagining herself and Anderson as Lancelot and Guinevere, accused before the world? But such cases aren't decided by single combat in these civilized times. It's not the man's prowess that will save the lady or fail to, but the facts, the arguments, the oiled machine of the law.
So Harry's filed his petition already,
thinks Fido with dread. What does that mean? She wishes she knew more of the law. Does Few mean that it's too late for Helen to make a full confession of adultery and come to some arrangement with Harry as to her future?

"
That in Malta Anderson frequently and habitually did visit her and commit the act in question with her during the years 1862, 1863, and 1864"
Few recites, eyes on the page.
"Also that in Malta, one Lieutenant Herbert Alexander St. John Mildmay frequently and habitually did visit her and commit the act in question with her during the years 1860, 1861, and 1862"

Fido sits bolt upright. Who on earth is this Lieutenant Mildmay?

Helen doesn't meet her eyes. Fido answers her own question. So the golden colonel wasn't the first man to whom Helen succumbed, then.
Later: I'll get the whole story from her later.
Fido feels sick to her stomach, and looks at the floor.

"Unlike Mildmay," Few remarks, "Anderson is a named co-respondent to the petition, and as such the admiral's entitled to ask damages of him, though so far he's not done so. Anderson's solicitor tells me his client is presently in Scotland, and that the intended plea is not guilty."

"As is mine," says Helen hastily. "That—" she gestures at the statement of charges as if at a brimming sewer, "that can all be demolished."

"I'm relieved to hear it." The old solicitor's tone is so habitually dry, Fido can't tell if he's being sardonic. He looks back at his client.

"Mr. Few—I'm in a dreadful state today."

"I understand, and I hate to press a lady. But some hints, some beginnings—"

Helen stares out the window as if for inspiration, then takes a long breath. "Things are so very different beyond these shores! I was raised in India, you see. And in Florence, where I spent the last years of girlhood, it's quite acceptable for a married lady to have an acknowledged escort, don't you know: a
cicisbeo.
"