The Sealed Letter (19 page)

She's fudging a point, Fido wants to say: quite acceptable for the
signore,
yes; not for the Anglo ladies.

"Lax but harmless foreign mores," murmurs Few, writing it down.

"I admit I've been foolish," says Helen with an infectious smile, "rather frivolous in my pastimes, unwise in some of my friendships. I shouldn't have allowed either Mildmay or Anderson so much of my company if I'd imagined that it would provoke malicious tongues."

Fido finds herself almost admiring the sheer gall of her friend. Perhaps Helen should have been a woman of business; she has powers that Fido's never noticed before.

"Admits to lacking the decorum of a British wife," says Few under his breath. "No hard evidence, then?" He looks over his glasses.

Helen hesitates. "What exactly—"

"For instance," says Few, "statements by servants, friends, letters of yours, or received by you, letters of others referring to you, entries in this appointment book your husband took from your desk, testimony by cabmen..."

Helen is sinking back in the leather chair.

And Fido melts into compassion, again, the way a wave at its height collapses into froth. "Helen, would you care for a glass of water? Mr. Few, perhaps—"

He pours each of the ladies a glass, from a decanter on his sideboard. "Mrs. Codrington," he asks, "I wonder would you like to reconsider your plea?"

"My thoughts exactly," says Fido firmly.

Helen's eyes look bruised. Instead of answering, she begins, "My girls—"

The solicitor nods, his face creased with sympathy. "Don't let that be a consideration. I very much fear that, in any case, they won't be coming home."

Helen's salt-blue eyes bulge.

"As long as a paternal parent has not been proved insane," Few explains, "sole guardianship lies with him."

Helen burst out. "There must be exceptions."

"Some," he says dubiously. "Any mother, even if proved adulterous, may petition for access or custody of offspring up to the age of sixteen ... but in practice, the court won't give children above age seven to a mother unless her reputation is unblemished,
and
the father's brutal, drunken, ah, diseased—you take my meaning," he says awkwardly. "Oh, and the poet Shelley, of course, he lost his children for atheism."

"The law's a blockhead," says Fido between her teeth.

He gives her an owlish look. "Whenever the point's come up for discussion in Parliament, Miss Faithfull, there's a lot of sanctimonious talk about the hallowed rights of fatherhood—but many of us suspect that the real reason's a more pragmatic one. If women could shed their husbands without risk of losing their children too, it's feared that an alarming proportion of them would do so!"

Still not a word from Helen: her face is a blank page.

Fido speaks up. "Say for the sake of argument that my friend were to alter her plea to guilty, Mr. Few—might it simplify things, speed them along?"

The solicitor holds up one skeletal finger. "Ah, there's an interesting novelty in the 1857 Act: a wife may admit the charges, but then countercharge. If we could prove that the admiral was in any way culpable in the adultery, he'd have to settle for a separation, and pay her full maintenance."

Fido frowns. "But if you failed to implicate Admiral Codrington, Mr. Few, and my friend had already confessed—"

"You've an acute mind, Miss Faithfull," says Few in that patronizing tone she's often heard from men with whom she's had dealings. "There's a little twist I propose to use: Mrs. Codrington could deny all the acts—to cover her back, as it were—but add that
if they did occur,
her husband was to blame."

Helen yelps with laughter, then covers her mouth. "Excuse me. Isn't that an absurdity?"

"Perhaps in logic, but not in law."

Fido rubs her eyes.
What is this looking-glass world into which we've stepped?

"So, Mrs. Codrington, of what could you accuse your husband? The easiest is mutual guilt," Few points out dryly. "Have you reason to believe that the admiral has, like so many husbands, especially military ones, alas..."

"No," she says with audible reluctance.

"Maids, letters from ladies, that sort of thing?"

Helen shakes her head.

"In that case, what we're looking for are the seas."

Fido stares at him.

"The Five C's, we call them," the old man explains. "Did the admiral
conduce
to misconduct by leaving you lonely and unprotected? Did he
condone
it by tacit forgiveness?"

"Definitely conducement," says Helen crisply before he can go on, "and quite possibly condonement."

"Condonation," Fido corrects her automatically, head spinning.

"So you believe he knew all along, Mrs. Codrington?"

Helen hesitates, pouts elegantly. "He must have done."

But Helen's always assured Fido that Harry hasn't had the least suspicion. Now, it seems, she's picking up every hint the solicitor drops, and telling him exactly what he wants to hear.

Few only nods. "And the more evidence against you his counsel may dig up, the more our side will make the case that any husband of reasonable intelligence must have understood the situation. Did he
connive
with you or Anderson or Mildmay by turning a blind eye?" he asks. "Or even
collude
in the hopes of obtaining an easy divorce?"

Helen's mouth twists.

Fido finds all this sickening. "What's the fifth C?" she snaps, to get it over with.

"Cruelty," says the solicitor.

"How's that defined?" asks Helen.

"Not as broadly here as across the Atlantic—the Americans count anything that makes a wife unhappy," says Few with one of his flashes of wintry wit. "But Judge Wilde generally extends it to include any behaviour that causes the lady illness."

"Mrs. Codrington enjoys very good health," says Fido meanly.

***

In the cab, Fido's anger struggles with her mercy, and by the time they're on the dusty outskirts of Euston, anger has the upper hand. She clears her throat. "May I ask, who is Lieutenant Mildmay?"

Helen's slumped in the far corner.

"Another/n'end
of the family's?"

Helen says, barely audible, "If you like."

"I don't." Fido rubs at a scrape on the back of her hand. "I don't like any of this. It seems to me we've left the truth far behind, and we're adrift in open seas."

"I dare say you're in a huff because I didn't mention Mildmay before."

"A
huff?"
Fido's voice rises to a shriek.

The small trapdoor in the roof opens with a thud. "All right in there, ladies?"

"Perfectly," she barks.

A second passes. "Very good," says the driver, shutting the hatch.

Fido's got her voice under control. "What, may I ask, is the point of playacting at friendship?" She waits. "I urge you to lean on me, I offer you my—all I have, all I am—and in return you keep shutting me out with your fibs and frauds!"

"Oh, Fido," says Helen exhaustedly, "you make it sound so simple."

"Isn't it? Open yourself to me, I say; tell me everything, so I can help you."

Helen's face, when she lifts it, is like a caved-in cliff. "There are limits to your love, like everyone else's."

"You wrong me," says Fido furiously.

"When I glimpsed you on Farringdon Street, last month—what ought I to have said?" Helen's eyes are huge. "That, since the last time we met, unhappiness had changed me in ways that would appall you? That not one, but two successive men had managed to dupe me into trusting them with my heart and drag me into the dirt?"

Fido struggles for words.

"Your life is such a clean, upright thing. You know nothing of getting into disastrous messes." Helen rests her forehead on one fist. "IfI'd told you all that, on Farringdon Street—how could you have resisted casting the first stone?"

Fido is blinded so fast she thinks something has struck her, but it's only tears. "Helen!" She moves to the other side of the vehicle and takes Helen by the shoulders. "I don't mean to pontificate, or play the prude. I want nothing more than to stand by your side, and support you through this terrible passage in your life. To lead you to the other side as fast as possible," she adds, "which is why I wanted you to plead guilty."

Helen's nostrils flare.

"Why not drop all this legalistic feinting, simply admit your mistakes, and beg Harry on your knees to let you see something of the girls?"

"Wasn't it you who told me the law belongs to men?" Helen demands. "What about the double standard? A man's reputation can survive a string of mistresses, but if I admit to one intrigue, let alone two, I'll lose everything. My name, my children, every penny of income..."

"Share mine." That comes out very hoarse. She tries again. "As long as I have a home, so do you."

"Oh, Fido." Helen subsides: shuts her eyes, rests her head on Fido's shoulder as simply as a child.

Fido can feel Helen's hot breath against her throat. "Sh," she says, putting one hand up to the vivid hair. They ride in silence, right to Taviton Street.

***

The next day, Friday, Fido goes straight from the press to meet Helen at Few's chambers for another gruelling session. The solicitor keeps harping on his Five C's.

"Harry wouldn't bring me to parties," offers Helen, "could that count as cruelty?"

Fido has to repress a smile at the idea.

The solicitor pulls at his grey whiskers. "Ah—neglect, perhaps."

"Or if he did come, he'd stand around in a sulk, and go home early on the pretext of having papers to read—abandoning me to whatever escort I could muster," Helen goes on. "Sometimes he wouldn't speak to me for days at a time—thwarted my management of the girls, and the house—confiscated my keys once."

Fido recognizes that as a story from the old days, at Eccleston Square; to the best of her recollection, what actually happened was that Helen hurled the whole bunch of keys at her husband's feet. This rewriting of the past leaves a bad taste in Fido's mouth. But the law is unjust to women, she reminds herself. Helen's a reluctant player, after all, in a game in which the odds are stacked against her.

"Oh, and of course the detestable Mrs. Watson, in Malta," says Helen, brightening. "He cruelly neglected me for her."

Few prompts her. "You suspected—"

"Nothing of that sort; I believe the aged reverend was always in the room, though perhaps not always fully conscious," quips Helen. "But Harry certainly let himself be turned against me; she poured all manner of poison in his ear."

"Hm, possible alienation of affections," mutters Few, scribbling. "Now, Mrs. Codrington—as to nocturnal arrangements, if I may?"

She looks at him blankly, then at Fido.

"Has your husband ever been, shall we say, inconsiderate?" asks the solicitor with a fatherly expression. "While you were in a delicate condition, perhaps? Or even ... I hate to ask, but juries look very sympathetically on wives who've been subjected to anything, ah, degrading. In military circles, it's not entirely unknown—"

Fido can't stand much more of this; she interrupts him huskily. "The Codringtons have kept separate rooms for many years. Before leaving for Malta, in fact."

A pause. Surely Helen's not going to deny this? Then she nods.

"At the admiral's behest?" Few asks.

"Well, mine, originally," concedes Helen. "But on various occasions I've done my best to be reconciled to him."

That's the first Fido's heard of it.

"Once after a party I went into his room, and he grabbed my arm and thrust me out!"

This story rings true, somehow; Fido can just imagine Helen, tipsy and giggling, tiptoeing into her husband's austere bedroom.

"Excellent," murmurs Few, "refusal of marital rights, coupled with a degree of violence. So it's the admiral's fault, then, that you haven't been blessed with any more children?"

Helen examines her smooth fingernails. "Harry certainly feels no sorrow on the subject," she says, instead of answering the question. "I've heard him joking to friends that two is an ample sufficiency. But the feelings of a woman, and a mother..." She lets the sentence trail away.

Fido is longing for this interview to be over.

"Mr. Few," Helen asks suddenly, "what if a husband, simply to exercise his tyranny, casts his wife's dearest friend out of the house?"

His eyes swivel to Fido, whose cheeks are scalding. "This is many, many years ago," Fido murmurs to the solicitor. "I was more or less residing with the family here in London from '54 to '57, at which point..."

"That last summer," says Helen with a shudder.

"There was a crisis—between the spouses," says Fido, too loudly, her voice reverberating in the narrow chambers, "and the upshot was that Ha—the admiral suggested I leave. The reason he gave was one I considered perfectly proper: that no third party ought to be obliged to witness such scenes." She adds this stonily, not looking at Helen. She won't be a party to this fantasy of Harry as some vicious, arbitrary Nero.

"Promising," murmurs Few over his notes.

Helen leans towards her. "Fido dear," she objects in a whisper, "how can you report it with such Christian mildness when he—while you were living under our very roof—" she pauses, staring at her.

Fido raises her eyebrows.

"Mr. Few, perhaps that's enough for today?" Helen asks abruptly.

The old man blinks. "Certainly, Mrs. Codrington, I do apologize for tiring you." He rings for their wraps.

There's a branch of the Aerated Bread Company just across the street. "I was quite desperate for some tiffin," remarks Helen, leaning over the little table towards Fido. "I do like these new tea shops; however did we manage in the days when there was nowhere ladies could go for a bite to eat without a breach of etiquette?" She stirs another lump of sugar into her cup. "Have you ever lunched at Verey's in the Strand?"

Fido shakes her head. She feels as limp as if the meeting in the law chambers lasted a week.

"Have an iced fancy."

She ignores the plate. This woman bewilders her. One moment howling like a banshee at being separated from her babies, the next, nibbling cakes. Helen is fallen: that odd word always makes Fido think of a wormy apple. But where are the hollow eyes, creeping walk, feverish delirium of fallen women in novels? (The women that other women such as Fido, in their strength and wisdom and passionate sisterhood, are described as bending down to lift from the gutter.) Clearly adultery need not be a fatal condition. Helen sits here as pertly elegant as ever, sipping her tea.