The Sealed Letter (31 page)

Contempt

(an intense feeling of disrespect and dislike;
a wilful disregard for authority; an act calculated to hinder
a court, punishable by fine or imprisonment)

A man who should be all head would be as monstrous an anomaly as a woman all heart ... Men have no monopoly of working, nor women of weeping.

Emily Davies,
The Higher Education of Women
(1866)

The following day Harry stands on Langham Place, looking at the brass plaque that says
Ladies' Reading Room.
It sounds so harmless, as if all the inhabitants do is sit around reading poetry or consulting French fashion plates.

A bespectacled little person answers the bell at last, and he expects the sight of a naval officer—six foot five and scowling—to make her falter. But she only tells him that he's early.

"You don't know my business, madam."

"Oh, I beg your pardon, I thought you must be here for the meeting."

"What meeting is that?"

"Why, the Social Science Association; we're to discuss the results of the Cambridge Locals. The girls did remarkably well, considering their lack of training in mathematics," she assures him in her whispery voice. "I do hope you stay, we expect the Earl of Shaftesbury and Mr. Fawcett too."

Harry brushes this off. "You are—if I may?"

"Miss Lewin, sir. Secretary of SPEW."

That means nothing to him. "I wish to speak to someone about Miss Faithfull."

"Ah yes, we've been hoping to hear from any friends of hers," says the secretary with an uneasy smile. "She left no forwarding address when she went off on her travels, which has caused no end of trouble."

Harry clears his throat. As if he gives tuppence for the inconveniencing of this gang of do-gooders! "Who's in charge here?"

Miss Lewin blinks at him.

He racks his memory. "Isn't there a Miss Parkes?"

"She's upstairs," the secretary admits, "but I'll have to enquire..."

When Harry's finally shown into the office, a surprisingly good-looking lady in a loose grey dress offers him a firm handshake. Even standing, she's half his size, but he recognizes her air of command, as surely as if he could count the stripes. "Thank you for seeing me," he says with unwilling courtesy.

"I recognized your name, of course," says Bessie Parkes.

"So does everybody in England, by now," he remarks with some bitterness.

"Do have a seat, Admiral. You have my sincere condolences—"

He inclines his head, oddly gratified, and pulls out the chair. "—though I must also mention, you've set our work back by about ten years."

Harry speaks thickly. "I did not name your friend in my petition. It was she who chose to meddle on my wife's behalf, by embroiling herself in the case and telling the most appalling lie about me. Now I must insist on being told her whereabouts so that she can be served with a subpoena—"

She interrupts him quietly. "You may be surprised to learn how little formal connection Miss Faithfull has, these days, with this establishment."

His eyebrows go up.

"Although formerly a keen worker by our side, for some time she's gone more and more her own way," remarks Miss Parkes sorrowfully. "In my view, her interests lie more in commerce than in reform. She's recently founded her own magazine, quite independent of any of the society's endeavours, and I've been obliged to cancel the Victoria Press's contract to print the
English Woman's Journal.
"

Harry's voice comes out full of gravel. "Do you suppose I give two figs who prints your journal?"

The tiny woman's look quells him. She rises as if to show him out.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Parkes. I'm under some strain," he says, clasping his hands to stop them from shaking.

"I understand." She sits back down, still cool. "I only mention these details to convince you that none of us here has the slightest idea where Miss Faithfull has sequestered herself, since she didn't even have the courtesy to inform us of her departure."

It's not the words so much as the biting tone that convinces Harry. "I was expecting something rather different, when I came here today," he admits.

Miss Parkes flushes a little. "What, a devoted little clutch of hens?" She hesitates. "I imagine you know how it is, Admiral, to serve alongside a comrade of whom one's views have changed."

"I've sailed with men I'd gladly see tossed overboard."

A tiny smile from the lady. Harry's bemused to find himself enjoying this conversation. Apart from William, it seems as if Harry speaks to no adults these days except lawyers in his pay.

"There's an unsoundness in Emily Faithfull; a coarseness in the grain that I hoped might disappear, as she matured, but quite the contrary," she says, gazing into the middle distance. "May I speak quite frankly?"

"Please do."

Bessie Parkes licks her upper lip neatly, like a cat. "I could tell by your expression, as you came into the room, that you're not a believer in our Cause."

He huffs out a half-laugh. "You know—everyone knows, by now—the story of my marriage. Can you imagine it's inclined me to think your sex should be granted even more liberty? Freedom to earn your own money, while squandering that of your husbands? Freedom to roam where you will, abandon your children, leave your households in chaos?"

"Admiral—"

"You and your ilk are bomb-throwers in bonnets," he tells her. "You may fool yourselves that you only mean to redecorate a few rooms, but in the end you'll tear the whole building down."

Harry expects this provocation to put Bessie Parkes into a rage; he's quite looking forward to seeing her throw off the mask. But instead she looks away, and her elegant cheeks are hollow. "With regard to Miss Faithfull ... For most of us, the Cause—the zeal for a new, and better relation between our sex and yours—has demanded the sacrifice of the pleasures of marriage and motherhood. And yes, I assure you, most of us are womanly enough to miss those pleasures."

He stares at her.

"But in some few cases, especially if the individuals lack any real religious faith, something ... goes awry," says Bessie Parkes, her mouth twisting. "Spinsterhood is a sort of spiked armour that such women as Fido Faithfull wear with relish. What's been revealed in court about the lengths to which she's gone in thralldom to your wife—" She shivers.

"If you knew her hiding place," Harry asks, "I wonder would you tell me?"

A painful smile. "I must admit, I'm glad I don't." Harry bows, and thanks her for her time.

***

The next day comes the first bad fog of October. The sky begins to darken at eleven that morning, and lights glimmer in windows. His cuffs are tinged with black by the afternoon.

A bell rings in his room—the latest innovation; the senior members are up in arms, complaining it makes them feel like footmen—and Harry goes downstairs, to find the head porter waiting for him in the marble hall, under the tapestry of Diana and Actaeon. "A lady insists on speaking to you, sir."

"I've left clear instructions—"

"Not your wife," the porter corrects him in a whisper. "This person wanted to come in, but I explained our strict rule against ladies, except on our annual Ladies' Day. She's waiting in a cab outside."

Could it be Mrs. Watson? "You might have let her stand inside, on such a day," snaps Harry.

"Mustn't set a precedent, Admiral."

Harry hurries out. The air's thickly yellow, almost green at the edges, and reeks of coal; it burns his lungs. Coatless, he's shuddering with cold by the time he looks in the cab window.

Fido looks back at him with her big brown eyes.

He straightens up in shock.

She clears her throat. "I understand you called at Langham Place, looking for me."

He finds himself helplessly matching her civil tone. "That's correct. I'm afraid I can't ask you into the club—"

"Rules," she says, nodding.

He throws a glance up and down Pall Mall. There's really nowhere a man and a woman of their class can go to speak to each other in private. "Would you—will you join me?" She says it squeamishly.

Harry thinks how it would sound in court.
The petitioner and the hostile witness, glimpsed sitting close together in intimate tête-à-tête in a hansom. ..
But everything sounds sordid to him nowadays; his imagination is contaminated. He opens the door and gets in.

Their knees almost touch. Harry busies himself unfolding and tugging at the leather door, until they're at least partially enclosed.

"Why do you persecute me?" Fido bursts out.

Harry stares at her in the dim. "Well, I like that!"

"This
sealed letter
your brother produced in court," she says. "Have you been plotting my destruction, all these years?"

He leans his elbows on his knees, till his face is only inches from hers. "You're the one who accused me of behaving like some crazed ape."

A sob escapes from her throat. "I was a guest in your house; I was only a girl. Can you look in your heart and deny, deny that you at least tried..."

"It must be your lack of experience of my sex that deludes you as to the brutishness of our appetites." He leans away, to study her more scientifically. "The fact is, not in my wildest dreams, not even if delirious or demented would I ever consider carnal relations with you."

She turns away, curling into herself with mortification.

His breathing is heavy. He knows he's being cruel, but she deserves it, and it may do her good. After a moment, he says, more gently, "But I rather think you're sincere in your belief that something of the sort happened."

"Of course I'm sincere!"

"Then you're a sad dupe. The story has Helen's dirty ingerprints all over it."

Fido stares at him.

He's getting somewhere, now. "However did she manage to convince you?"

She speaks in a small, hoarse voice. "I know what you're doing. You're taking advantage of my confusion as to what took place."

"Why on earth would you be confused?"

"I'd taken a syrup, for my asthma..."

"Ah," Harry groans. He sees it all now. Such simple stuff out of which Helen weaves her schemes.

"When I woke up you were just going out the door," she insists. "Can you look me in the eyes and swear to me that you never got into the bed, even—"

"Of course I can," he roars. "And in return, I ask you to trust what you do remember: in all the years you shared my home, I never did you any harm, did I?"

Fido only blinks.

"Wake up! Hasn't the witch deceived you, over and over?"

After a long moment, Fido shakes her head. "I grant you, Helen does exaggerate, sometimes. She sees things as if by limelight—"

"She lies," he corrects her, flatly, "with a monomaniacal disdain for the truth. She makes things up like a child who hardly knows the difference."

"You're hardly a neutral judge of her character."

He lets out a sort of laugh. "You're in thrall to her. I was too, once, so I recognize the symptoms. You mistake her firework displays for true feeling. Believe me," Harry says hoarsely, "you'll recover in the end, and regret it took you so long."

The moment teeters. Then Fido speaks coolly. "To business. This document your brother waved about—exactly what does it contain, may I ask?"

He almost admires her for standing her ground. He feels a surge of improvisatory brilliance. "Oh, you needn't trouble yourself about that, Miss Faithfull," he says, reverting to the formal. "It's in your power to keep it permanently sealed."

"They're speculating and joking about me in every coffee-house in London," she says, gesturing so violently she slaps the pleated leather door.

"Speculations and jokes will blow away like chaff," Harry tells her. "If you appear as my witness on the twenty-third—"

"Your
witness?" Fido's voice is shrill.

He manages a smile. "Now you're back in London, my wife's side will serve you with a subpoena and compel you to appear, on pain of being charged with contempt of court."

"I know that."

"But only your conscience can instruct you what to say. As two rational beings—let's put an end to all this awfulness, shall we?"

She doesn't answer.

"Tell the truth, and your reputation will be restored." He means it to have the ring of a sermon, but somehow it sounds more like Mephistopheles offering a bargain.

Not a word from the woman.

"Would you really testify for Helen, after the ruthless way she's treated you? To drop you the minute we left for Malta, then pick you up again on her return, like some handkerchief or umbrella—"

Another vehement shake of the head. "There, you don't know what you're talking about. There was a ridiculous misunderstanding, letters gone astray—"

Harry feels a vast impatience. "I always liked you, Fido, and considered you a sensible person," he tells her. "But when it comes to Helen you're a perfect idiot. Letters gone astray, indeed! I remember Helen slitting open one of yours, at the breakfast table in Valetta, and casting it aside with a snide remark about spinsters having too much time on their hands."

The cab is choked with silence. He waits. With this last detail he's broken her, he's sure of it: in a moment she'll start to weep, she'll beg his forgiveness...

Instead she tugs at the leather door, as a signal that the interview is over.

Charge

(an accusation of wrongdoing;
a sudden attack; a price)

Friendships are not always lasting—particularly those that become inordinately violent, and where both parties, by their excessive intimacy, put themselves too much into each other's power.

Eliza Leslie,
Miss Leslie's Behavior Book
(1853)

Helen lets her head roll back against the raised velvet edge of the sofa. "I've nothing more to say."

Few taps his fingertips on his knees, one of many tiny, irritating tics she's come to notice in her solicitor. "Mrs. Codrington—"

"It's bunkum," she bursts out. "Some conjuror's trick. Must I tell you for the thousandth time, I don't know what's in this
sealed letter,
and I don't care?"

"I believe you ought to care. You must have some idea what was going through your husband's mind—"

"That noble organ has always been opaque to me. How should I know what fantastical tosh Harry might have scribbled down on a piece of paper, seven years ago? The things I heard about myself, over those two endless days in court—" she's almost shouting "—do you think there's anything left that can make me blanch?"

The solicitor says nothing.

"In the end, they didn't open the wretched document, did they? So let's consider the subject closed."

Helen's eyes are clamped shut. She knows that's not how trials work. She may not be an expert in the law, but she's come to realize, already, that just as the hearing of a petition for divorce involves probing into every corner of the past, so the words said in court—every epithet, petty fact or grandiloquent piece of rhetoric—become in turn the object of enquiry, and are repeated ad nauseam in the popular press. Barristers quote and question each other and the witnesses; not a slip of the tongue goes unpunished. Nothing, once said, can be taken back, and no subject can be closed. It's an endless, sickening spiral of language.

"I raise the matter again for a particular reason," says Few quietly. "Miss Faithfull's back."

A jolt goes up Helen's spine, and her eyes open.

"Today I received a short note from her to apologize for her absence. She tells me she's ready to testify, when your case resumes on Tuesday."

Relief flows over her like a fur cloak against her shoulders. "Why, that's marvellous!"

"I hope so."

His guarded tone sets her teeth on edge. "Few," she says, puffing up her plaid-silk skirt, "you lack confidence; I'm surprised you've ever won a case."

His grizzled eyebrows go up. "Didn't you tell me you left Miss Faithfull's house under duress?"

"Ah, but she'll be true to me, though, now it's come to it."

"I thought she resented being press-ganged into appearing as your witness."

Helen laughs. "Men don't understand the first thing about friendship."

"Female friendship, you mean?"

"It's the only kind. The dry, straightforward, temporary alliances among your sex hardly count. Women can fly at each other like cats," she tells him, "and yet deep down, hidden, there's a bottomless well of love."

"I'll take your word for it, Mrs. Codrington."

When he's gone home, Helen goes from room to room of the dusty house, turning out the lamps. She makes it up one flight of stairs before the tears come rolling down her face.

She swabs a tear off her bodice before it can leave a mark on the silk. She sinks down, crouching on the thickly carpeted step.
Oh Fido.

Helen should have known her friend was coming back. Ought never to have sneered at or abused her, to her plain and honest face or behind her sturdy back. Never should have dragged her into these treacherous waters in the first place. In four days' time the vicar's youngest daughter, a shining light of the Reform movement and renowned example of the heights a modern woman can reach, is going to step into the witness box and commit perjury—and all for the sake of Helen Codrington. For the sake of a most flawed, grubby specimen of humanity.
A worm,
thinks Helen with a sort of guilty relish.

Oh Fido, I never should have doubted your love.