The Sealed Letter (22 page)

Shame, then; anger at the confusion and passivity I have displayed over the course of the past month; guilt at the part I have (partly unwittingly) played in the dissolution of a family; terror of the consequences both personal and professional, and of the damage perhaps already done to my most beloved Cause ... I am wracked with all these feelings. And also, I hardly need say, an overwhelming sympathy for your plight; a wish to stand by you in burning affection to the end, like the knights of old; a longing for something I was just beginning to glimpse, a future together. As I write this, these forces are pulling me a dozen different ways, like wild dogs.

I don't know what to do. Truth is the principle I hold most dear, but I seem to have wandered far from its shining beacon. I owe it to myself, I believe, to take stock before going one more step.

Under the present circumstances you'll understand, I hope, that you can't stay at Taviton Street just now. I live in the public eye, and you (as of this morning) have had notoriety thrust upon you; for us to be known to live under the same roof would do nothing but harm to both. Please believe that through these and all trials I remain

Your friend,
Fido

When Helen looks up from the page, the maid's wearing an insolent expression. Can she have read it? No, the red seal was unbroken. "I've packed your things, Mrs. Codrington." Holding up a small valise.

Helen ignores that. "Where's your mistress? Is she in her room?"

"Not at home," comes the answer, a beat too late to be persuasive.

Helen heads for the stairs to the second floor.

Johnson scuttles after her. "She's gone out, I tell you." On the landing she puts a reddened hand on Helen's arm.

Helen regards it as if it were a spider. "I'd advise you not to touch me." The hand withdraws. "Fido?" She rattles the knob of the bedroom door. "Open up this minute."

Not a sound from within.

"She's at the press," says the maid belatedly.

"Fido, how can you abandon me so?" cries Helen, mouth to the wood. "Such a cold, analytical note, like something a man would write!" She waits for an answer. "Haven't you anything useful to do, Johnson?" she snarls out of the corner of her mouth, but the maid doesn't move. Helen turns back to the door. "Fido! You accuse me of exposing you to the winds of scandal, but none of it's been my doing. And what about me? I'm losing everything I treasure. I'm stripped bare to those winds."

A listening sort of silence, from behind the door; Helen just knows Fido is in there, blinking at the window or hunched on her bed, making her little irritating wheeze. (If she didn't devote so much morbid attention to her lungs, Helen believes they might work better.)

"You call this friendship?" she demands. "A door slammed in my face? Well, if you twit me with my words, I can do the same:
As long as I have a home, so do you
—that's what you told me, two days ago!" She slams her fist on the smooth oak. Rage fills her like a gas; she parts her lips and hisses. "You're all for truth, are you? You canting hypocrite! You dare to sit in judgement, when for all your starched manner, you're made of the same stuff as me and the rest of our misbegotten sex." Out of the corner of her eye Helen can see the maid; she wonders how much to let out. "Can you look into your own heart, Fido," she demands in a ragged whisper, "into its shrouded crevices, the secrets you've managed to mislay in the darkness, with your trick of
forgetting
—can you do that, and then condemn me?"

A stiff, high voice comes from inside the room. "Johnson, show the lady out at once."

The maid's skinny fingers close around Helen's arm.

***

October 2, 1864

Dear Few,

I write from Eccleston Square, where I have taken up my solitary residence again in obedience to your insistence that it would sound bad in court if I'd moved to a hotel. I attach the list of particulars you asked for, which runs to some dozen pages. I have tried to be as precise as possible, eschewing what you're pleased to call "feminine vagueness." At the distance of (in some cases) many years I can hardly be expected to recall chapter and verse, especially considering that many of the alleged incidents never took place and that others, though now given a sinister prominence by my husband's counsel, seemed to me too harmless to be committed to memory.

I include also, at your request, my suggestions as to witnesses who may be willing to contradict those of my husband, or speak in more general detraction of his character. NB: To summon my father from Italy would do no good, as he is old and frail (and, I must add in con. dence, rather more a supporter of his distinguished sonin-law than of his own unfortunate daughter).

I would appreciate it if you could advance me a sum of five pounds on the maintenance that my husband's solicitor has so far failed to furnish.

Yours sincerely,
Helen Codrington

***

October 2, 1864

Eccleston Square

My still dear Fido—or Madre, as I used to be allowed to call you, in happier times. May I begin with a fervent apology for the abuse I heaped upon you at your house yesterday? It was my rage at a harsh world that spoke, not I, your Little One.

From the address above, you'll see that—having not a soul in the world to harbour me, and caring not at all where I lay my splitting head—I've returned to the empty mausoleum. As Mrs. Nichols is dead set against taking on any of the duties of a lady's maid, I'm reduced to doing everything for myself, to the best of my ability. In any other year, at this turn in the season, I would be seeing to the girls' winter clothes—but no, I must not think of them or I will break down entirely. It strikes me that I resemble some female Crusoe, picking through the detritus of my former life.

Your letter implied that you need time to examine your conscience. It's at this address that you'll find me, then, should that conscience incline you to reach out to one who's always been proud to call herself

Your carina,
Helen

***

October 3

From their mother, for the eyes of Miss Nan Codrington and Miss Nell Codrington only.

Nellikins, Nanling, my sweetest and bestest girls, I write to you every day but I've had no reply. I can't believe that you sweet girls would fail to write back to your poor frantic Mama, who though she might sometimes have been a little snappish, will always love you above all else in the world. So I must conclude that the woman in whose house you're presently confined is playing the censor. (And if you've dared to read thus far, Emily Watson, then know this: God will not let such a trespass on the holy soil of motherhood go unpunished.)

I drive past the house of your imprisonment very often in a growler, girls, hoping for a glimpse of you. If you come to the front and look out the window you might see me waving.

I hope you're bearing up valiantly. You must cling to each other like the pair in "Goblin Market" who saved eachother from the goblin men. Remember, "there is no friend like a sister."

Does your Papa visit often? Why don't you ask him, very prettily, if he might let you see your Mama for half an hour, at a place of his choosing? Five minutes, even, would be of immeasurable comfort to one who went through so many hours (rather days) of agony to bring you both into the world. Do beg him, letting him see how distressed you both are, but without mentioning that the request came from me.

Don't fear for the future, my precious girlies, Mama will be with you very soon. Close your eyes now and feel me wrapping you up in my arms, squeezing so tight that you squeal!

***

Anderson—

I've torn the scales from my eyes. In refusing to so much as acknowledgemy communications, you show not the slightest compunction. What a poor specimen of manhood you are!

Sometimes these nights I fear I'm going mad, but perhaps it's the other way round, and only now am I waking from delusion. Evidently you never cared for me; it was all my invention. I was nothing but an object of your carnal whims, to while away the convenient hour.

My curse on you, and on your line. First cousins ought not to marry, it's said; the crop often goes wrong. Perhaps the new Mrs. Anderson will look elsewhere, the first time you're posted away from her. It would seem only fitting if you ended up wearing the horns yourself. I wish you all the pain I can imagine: disgrace, the terror of poverty, the agony of losing children. When misfortune crushes you, perhaps then you will remember

Helen

***

Fido, where are you? Why won't you answer my letter?

Nobody does. My words seem to evaporate from the page. I've become quite insubstantial, a woman of glass. An untouchable, like those creatures we walked past on street corners in Calcutta. (I read today that a cyclone there has killed seventy thousand; it's a measure of my state that I can feel nothing but a numb blankness.) Sanity seems to give way under my feet like a frayed rope.

This will be my last attempt. If ever you loved me—

Counterclaim

(a claim made by a respondent
to offset a petitioner's claim)

The Pope he leads a happy life,
He has no care nor wedded strife ...
Yet, his is not a family house,
He has no cheery, loving spouse.

Anonymous
"The Pope"

He wakes in his rooms at the Rag Club, his head throbbing like a wound. It reminds him of something. Harry hasn't had too much to drink since he was a very young man, but he still recalls that sensation of his veins being clogged with poison. Not that he took anything last night except half a glass of claret with some arid chops. His brother William tried to drag him off to the Haymarket for Orpheus in the Underworld—"take your mind off things for a few hours"—but Harry went to bed instead.

On the bedside table sits a red leather case containing his medals. Apart from clothing, this was all he thought to put in his valise when he left Eccleston Square. Harry opens the case now and examines their worn sheen: the Cross of St. Vladimir, the Legion d'Honneur, the Order of the Redeemer of Greece. And it occurs to him, with a surge of pain in his jaw, that the Allied sovereigns didn't really mean to decorate Midshipman Codrington for his gallantry against the Turks, or for the injuries he suffered at Navarino three days after his nineteenth birthday, but merely as a compliment to Sir Edward. So the most glorious laurels of Harry's career are nothing but his father's leavings.

Perhaps I'll never get another posting.

Enough of that. He snaps the case shut and gets out of bed. In the mirror he considers his beard-shrouded face. Perhaps a trim today, so he won't frighten the girls.
But was alarmed by the resistance of the said Miss Faithfull.
Just one of many phrases from Helen's so-called counterclaim that keep ringing in his head, making him stiff with outrage.

The last eight days have rained down on him like blows from a club. Mrs. Watson's turning up at Eccleston Square, eyes glittering, to present Crocker. The spy's meticulous account of following Helen and
the male party
to the Grosvenor Hotel. The prizing open of Helen's cherry-wood desk; oddly enough, that's the part that still fills Harry with shame to remember, despite all the evidence that spilled from the shattered marquetry: the drafted letter to Anderson, the appointment book. His brief, mortified interview with the girls; their eyes, as stunned as those of rabbits the moment the gun goes off.
(Mama isn't well,
that's the only euphemism that came to mind.
You remember dear Mrs. Watson,
he kept repeating inanely;
you'll be quite comfortable at her house until matters are settled.)
How rapidly he'd packed his case, scuttling out of the house like a cockroach before Helen came home from shopping; he was almost afraid to face the woman who's blighted his life. Then the endless interviews with Bird; the debating of strategy (like some obscure Mediterranean war). Visits to the girls every few days, to play Spillikins or the Ball of Wool. (They've stopped asking whether Mama is better yet.) The shock of reading Helen's counterclaim: neglect, cruelty,
attempted to have connection with the said Miss Faithfull.

A rap at his door. "Nothing just now, thank you," says Harry.

But it opens anyway and his brother puts his face in. William's salt-and-pepper beard is glossy white now; Harry still isn't used to it. "Aren't you dressed yet?"

"Give me ten minutes." He's grateful, of course, he's immensely grateful to William for dropping his duties in Gibraltar the moment he got the telegram to catch a fast packet and stand shoulder to shoulder with Harry through
this ghastly business,
as William keeps calling it—but he finds his brother's company exhausting all the same.

"Thought we'd take the girls to the zoo, what do you say?"

William has the boundless energy of a tourist. They've already brought Nan and Nell to the Museum of Practical Geology and the East India Company Museum (where the Hindu idols in silver and gold reminded Harry of Helen, somehow) and they heard the thousand-strong choir of the Foundling Hospital.

All Harry manages now is a shrug. Each day must be passed, somehow, until the trial finally comes to court. It's not as if any of his former pursuits have the least appeal: reading, taking notes on innovations in warship design, attending lectures on military hygiene, going for long tramps on Hampstead Heath ... These days Harry watches busy people with dyspeptic envy. The silliest bride leaving cards all over town has a momentum to her hours for which he'd pay any money.

An hour later, he's staring into the infinitely weary eyes of a lion. He wishes they hadn't come; the zoo is entirely too public a stage, and he's convinced that every second passerby is giving him a look of sharp recognition.
Those poor mites. What could their father be thinking of, dragging himself and his family through the dirt?
Harry can guess these thoughts, because he would have had them himself, a month ago.

"Papa," says Nell, tugging at his sleeve, "I wish you'd bring us to the zoo
every
week."

Something in the child's tone pricks him; the show of happiness, the insistence on what a delightful father he is. Do she and Nan fear that they might lose him too, at a moment's notice, as they have their mother, without so much as a farewell kiss? They haven't asked whether she's dead, it occurs to him now.

"That's slang," Nan corrects her little sister. "It's the Zoological Gardens."

Harry read once—where?—that nymphomania is a congenital trait. These girls seem wholesome in every pore, and yet he watches the pair of coppery heads closely, alert to every vocal echo, every charming turn of the chin that reminds him of their mother.

A chill breeze blows across Regent's Park. William sniffs, makes a face, and suggests moving on to somewhere less odoriferous. Nell is delighted by this new word.

An elephant comes lumbering across the grass towards them, beside its keeper; William buys the girls some bags of buns to feed it. They scream with pleasure as the creature nuzzles their palms with its trunk. It's a bizarre limb, up close, Harry thinks; it has the rude look of a hairy snake.

When he turns his head, he sees his brother regarding him curiously. "D'you suppose you'll miss her, at all, when it's over?" William asks under his breath.

He manages a huff of laughter. "You can still ask that, after all you've learned in Bird's office? The gondola, the pier, the hotels..."

"Well, the details were exotic," concedes William.

"The details?" Harry stares at his brother. "You mean to say you'd guessed the main point?"

"What, that the woman's ... that she doesn't play by the rules?" murmurs William, his eyes on his nieces as they pat the elephant. "It's been known in the family for years, my dear fellow."

This idea staggers Harry. "So my humiliation's been the stuff of sneers and gossip?"

"Steady on. No one's broached the subject; that's not our way. It's just an atmosphere I'm describing, and I could be wrong," says William unconvincingly. "But there's always been something in our sisters' tone, when they use her name."

"You knew it yourself. However did—"

A slight shrug. "Always easier to spot these things from a distance. The way Helen carries herself, perhaps. The way she treats you."

Harry wouldn't have thought it was possible to feel even more of an idiot, but he does. "Why, may I ask, did no one say a word to me?"

"Speaking for myself—I had no facts," says William gruffly, "only a general impression. I dare say I assumed you didn't want to hear it. That you two had come to some sort of terms."

Nan, letting the elephant pluck a bun from her palm, casts an anxious glance over her shoulder at her father, who manages a wave and a rictus of cheer. When she's turned back to the animal, he lets his jaw drop into his hand. The edges the barber shaved two days ago are as rough as limestone. "Is it possible that I knew, without knowing I knew?"

"Now you're splitting hairs, old boy," says William.

"A moment ago," says Harry, puzzling it out—"why did you ask me if I'll miss her?"

An odd little smile. "I fear I might, if I were you."

The governor's wife, social sovereign of Gibraltar, is a plump, serene matron who's never given William a moment's worry. Harry speaks bleakly. "The best of Helen—her youthfulness, her merriment—was lost to me a long time ago. Living with her in recent years has been a penitential exercise. What's there to miss?"

A slight shrug. "I dare say you'll find out."

Pacing down the Bird Walk ten minutes later, looking for parrots in the trees, Harry asks the girls, "Are you enjoying yourselves at Mrs. Watson's?" Then instantly regrets it.

His daughters look at each other like mute conspirators.

"I know, of course, that things must feel rather up in the air..."

Nan waits for him to trail off before she speaks. "She is a kind lady."

"I still don't see why they aren't with Jane," mutters his brother by his side. "Surely these things are best kept within the family?"

Harry waves that away. It was all done in such a hurry, after the smashed desk gave up its secrets; he can barely remember his reasoning, and it would only upset the girls to change their lodging at this point, besides.

"We were wondering..." starts Nell.

Nan's eyes fix on hers. "Might we come home? When..."

"When the divorce is over," finishes Nell.

Harry stares at her. "Where did you pick up that word?"

"Steady on, old boy," says William.

"Is it a bad word?" Nan gnaws her lip.

He struggles to find an answer.

"Is it slang?"

"It's the sort of grown-up trouble that little heads don't need to fuss about," their uncle tells them.

Harry sets his teeth together, hard.

"It was on a sign," Nell confesses. "A newsboy's sign. It said
Codrington Divorce, Four Full Pages."

"It was the
Telegraph,
she wanted to buy a copy," says Nan, looking at her patent shoes.

"To look at those funny little messages Mama used to read aloud. I thought she might have written us a message," Nell admits, "but Nan said I was a nincompoop."

He can tell she's on the brink of tears.
There's that brute Codrington making his children cry in the park! Neglect. Cruelty. Attempted violation of a. ..
"Oh my sweet girlies," he says, squatting down and crushing them both to his chest. "You're cold. Are you cold? Hail a cab, won't you?" he asks William, "the girls are freezing."

On impulse, he stops the cab at a toy shop on Marylebone High Street. The first few things his daughters pick out are so cheap they irritate him: a cardboard castle, a tiny jointed doll. "That's childish," Nan scolds Nell.

"What's this splendid instrument?" says William like some showman, laying his hand on a brass machine that calls itself, in elaborate script,
The Zoetrope, Wheel of Life.

"The very latest thing, General," the clerk tells him, rushing to wind up the handle. "No home without a zoetrope!"

"What, you're claiming every house in England has one?" asks William.

The clerk falters. "It's just a slogan, sir."

As Harry peers through the slot, a red devil somersaults through a hoop. Unnerved, Harry jerks away, then puts his face back to the cold brass eyepiece. A series of images on a rotating drum, that's all, but how it tricks the eye. Persistence of vision, that's the scientific phrase. "Look, girls," he orders. "Watch the fellow jump."

They bend, taking turns; they are enthusiastic, but not quite as much as he would have hoped. Always something forced about the girls' smiles, these days. "We'll take it," he proclaims.

"Really, Papa?"

"It's for us?"

"Yes indeed. You can wrap up half a dozen of those image drums—" he tells the clerk.

"Lucky, lucky girls," says the fellow fawningly.

But they seem loath to choose. William suggests a couple waltzing round a dance floor and a waiter falling downstairs. Harry picks a stork beating its wings, a tree shaking in the wind, monkeys exchanging top hats in an endless loop.

"May we bring it home?" asks Nell in a small voice, as they stand waiting for another cab.

Harry realizes he never did answer the original question. "Best to keep it at the Watsons' for now, darling. But very soon we'll be back at Eccleston Square."

"Yes, but ... will it be like before?" asks Nan.

William looks away. "No," Harry tells her as gently as he can, "not like before. You'll understand when you're older." But he doubts that.

***

It happens the moment Harry stops the cab on Pall Mall. He's alone, at least, having dropped the girls at Mrs. Watson's and William at his tailor's on Jermyn Street: that's a small mercy. He's distracted, fumbling for a third shilling. When she comes running at the cab he doesn't recognize her at first.

His wife, in black like a widow; like some chalk-faced, brass-headed simulacrum of the girl he fell in love with all those years ago in the Tuscan spring. "Drive on," he calls to the cabman, but his voice comes out as faint as a mouse's. Helen seizes the door handle. He holds it shut from the inside, averting his eyes. "Drive on, I say!" That's better, louder, but Helen's clinging to the door, pressing her face to the window: her sea-glass eyes, her pointed nose and distorted lips.
Making a public spectacle,
he thinks with a surge of loathing so pure it reminds him of desire.

He lets go of the handle, so the door swings open taking Helen with it; she staggers backwards, her skirt flapping like some great bloated raven.

When Harry steps out she speaks, one word, but it comes out so strangely he doesn't understand her. "I beg your pardon?" Then the politeness strikes him as absurd. He has nothing to say to this stranger, this lurid character from a spy's reports. He veers away from her, towards the pillars of the Rag Club.