Abigail (42 page)

“A good marriage needs a strong cement,” Victor said. “We are grateful, both Abigail and I.”

Abigail stood abruptly and ran into the house.

Nora leaned forward as if to rise and follow her, but then looked at Victor. Still smiling, he asked, “You will permit me?”

He found her in the drawing room, not weeping but pounding a cushion with her fists. He watched briefly. “Ouch…ooh…ah!” he cried in apparent pain at each blow. She stopped and turned on him. “Judas!” she cried.

“No,” he said evenly. “John the Baptist—if that’s to be your modest metaphor.” He came to her but she shrugged herself away from him.

“You could at least have discussed it with me first,” she said.

“Had you any idea this settlement was in prospect?”

She waved her head vaguely, unwilling to admit it in words. But the gesture was enough for him. “Then
you
could have discussed it with
me
,
for I had no idea at all.”

“But what do we want with all that money? I hate the idea of it. I’ve already got over eighty thousand—all my unspent income over the years. I just shrivel when I think of it. And now you…”

“What does it cost to organize a petition?” he asked, still without a trace of heat. “How much to set up a clinic for working-class women? What’s the price of fighting a dozen law suits, would you say? Is research free nowadays? Is the world drowning in scholarships and endowments? Even twelve thousand a year isn’t going to stretch very far. So cheer up, my darling, we may yet live and die in comparative poverty!”

She laughed then and fell into his outstretched arms. “Oh, Victor…what is it about
that
woman? I’ll always turn back into a child when she’s around!”

“You must think like a politician now, which isn’t as hard as you’d imagine. If you really can turn yourself back into a child, you’re already half-way there. Come down and talk them into giving us twenty thousand a year.”

Again she recoiled, until she saw he was laughing. They began to walk slowly back to the garden. “What was all that?” she asked. “Clinics…petitions…lawsuits…”

He shrugged. “We don’t know what we’re going to do yet. But it could involve all those things.”

“Oh, you think so clearly, darling. I don’t think at all. I just…react to things.”

“Let’s start by taking Frank Griffith’s advice. Next stop: the Reading Room of the British Museum.”

“Yes! Beginning Monday!”

“And ask them to reserve me Karl Marx’s old seat. Just see if we don’t put it to better use.”

“Well!” Nora said, delighted at their return. “In a matter of months, Victor, you have obviously discovered some secret that has eluded our entire family for more than forty years. She not only returns, she brings a winner’s smile with her.”

“Is it patentable?” John asked.

“We have this marvellous, shining new thing,” Victor said solemnly. “It’s called The Future. It’s quite new to Abigail. All I need to do is point her at it and then there’s no holding her back.”

Abigail pretended to kick him.

Mr. Marx?” the Reading Room attendant said dubiously. “Mr. Marx? Oh…Mr.
Marx
!
Oh, yes…of course I remember. Well, fancy you knowing Mr. Marx. How’s he keeping?”

“Whereabouts did he use to sit?” Abigail asked.

“Yes, he came here years and years, you know. Mr. Marx, eh!”

“Which was his favourite corner?” Victor pressed.

“Yes! Years and years. But”—he turned mournful eyes upon them—“he went away, you know. And we never heard what happened to him.”

“Oh, he died,” Abigail said. “Six or seven years ago.”

“Well, well! Old Mr. Marx dead, eh? Dear, dear!”

He couldn’t remember where dear old Mr. Marx had sat. “We get so many in here, you know,” he said.

Victor thought it the funniest little encounter of his life. “I hope the Old Karl was wrong about survival after death,” he said. “I hope he overheard us. It would explain the one thing that always puzzled him—why the Revolution consistently failed to materialize in this country, despite his increasingly querulous predictions of it.”

For weeks that summer they sat there, side by side, reading through Mayhew and Bracebridge, Acton, Mrs. Besant, following up all the references and footnotes, and comparing their findings at the end of each day. As yet they were looking for information rather than theories—at least, they were trying to avoid forming the sort of full-blown theory that might have led them into premature action. Nor did they confine their researches to sexual relationships. They sought any details that might form a background to those relationships: the everyday lives of the poor, their beliefs and attitudes; how news reached them; how opinions were formed among them; how their family relationships were organized; how they budgeted…anything, literally anything, that might later be useful in forming theories. Only then would they be able to think of policies and campaigns of action.

Nevertheless, there were certain facts, right from the beginning, that could not be blinked. Prostitutes were overwhelmingly drawn from the working class. Their clients were overwhelmingly married, middle-class men with families. And some female trades were so poorly paid that even eighteen hours work a day (if it could be got) yielded less than the barest subsistence; the term “lacemaker” or “shirt seamstress” was an absolutely reliable synonym for “whore.”

Yet none of the (admittedly middle-class) writers they read dared to come out and say openly that poverty on the one side and surplus wealth on the other was the overwhelming cause of prostitution—or, as Abigail preferred to call it, the murder of love. They said it in one paragraph and withdrew it in the next. They spoke of “natural” lasciviousness among lower-class females and “natural” purity among ladies—as if the human race were two separate species; then they remembered they were supposed to be scientists and that such talk was nonsense, so they withdrew that, too.

“They tie themselves in knots,” Abigail said.

“Yes!” Victor grinned with relish. “It must mean we’re close to an important truth.”

She held up her left hand. “Money,” she said. She held up her right. “Poverty.” She shook her left. “Lust.” She shook her right. “The mechanical ability to satisfy it.” She stopped.

“Go on,” he said.

“I can’t. There’s something missing. They make a circle, but it’s too small. Too neat. We need something more—something that makes the circle bigger.
Love!
We must make love fit, somehow. The circle must include love.” She beat her head. “Oh, the answer’s in there somewhere! It’s in my life. I’ve
lived
this problem. But I still can’t…put it together.” She gave up and laughed. “I must go and see Annie.”

He looked at her in surprise. “About
this
?
It would be like asking a foundry worker how he explains the present demand for pig iron.”

“An ex-foundry worker, I hope. No. Maybe she’ll jog my memory. No, it isn’t even that. I just want to see her again. I’ve put it off and put it off.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps because she didn’t answer my letters. I don’t know how much she’s changed. Perhaps I’m afraid of meeting young William…knowing Annie’s view of men. But I must see her. It’s so easy to put it off from day to day.”

A further two weeks went by before she visited Annie, and even then it was more a matter of opportunity than intention. One Sunday she went to early evensong at Westminster Abbey and then, finding herself at a loose end, she remembered that Annie’s place, in Pimlico, was only a gentle walk away.

Annie was alone in the house. Beneath the superficial changes she had not altered a jot. She was greyer and more lined, but she still had that fine-boned face and those flashing dark eyes. She was overjoyed at seeing her Abbie again…sorry she hadn’t never answered all them letters…and William was out kicking a ball down the old gardens…and wouldn’t she come in, only it would soon be time to start the dinner…and not to mind that glass of port too much…she only took one a week, on Sunday afternoons.

It was Annie’s new life in one disjointed sentence.

“Well, gel. You look bonny! How’s the old Teatro? And how’s Celia and…Whos’s’name—Julius Caesar!” She laughed at herself and clapped her hands.

A warmth Abigail had forgotten suddenly came crowding back—a special, near-Annie warmth. She was glad now that Annie had never written. Annie-in-print could never be the equal of the real Annie. Letters would have changed Abigail’s memory and made this meeting harder. Instead, here was Annie, same as ever, making it the easiest thing in the world.

She told Annie of all that had happened since she and Pepe had left them in Rome, but merely said she and Victor had come back to England to write. At length she asked if Annie—or William—ever saw Pepe these days.

“He’s nothing to you now, is he, me old love?” Annie asked.

Abigail shook her head.

“I wouldn’t deceive you.” Annie laughed. “No point…you’d find out soon enough. Pepe comes here every Sat’day night and Sunday. He’s out with young William now, kicking a football. He worships that boy. You’d be proud o’ them together, gel. Straight!”

“Is he happy?”

“He’s still making money. Still eating, breathing, sleeping, and dancing the four-leg frolic, isn’t he. You don’t get no complaints out of him!” She stood to put on the kettle. “They’ll be home soon.” It began to sing almost at once. While she set out the cups and a cake she said, “He carried your name a long time, but he’s over it now.” She stared shrewdly at Abigail. “Want to know how it started? Him and me?”

“Only…I mean, not if you…” Abigail laughed. “Oh yes, of course I do!”

“The day we come back from Italy, it was. Our first day in London. Know where? Only one place, wasn’t there? Old time’s sake. We was both desperate for you—and that’s the top and tail of it. It wasn’t me he took there, it was you. And he was the closest I’d ever known to you…I mean, he’d
been
there. You can’t explain it really, except that we both kept talking about you.”

“I hope you both got over it soon.”

“Oh, yeah! Now? Well, you seen them old beggars under the railway arches? Huddled together when it’s cold? Well, it’s a bit like that.” She laughed again and mock-slit her own throat. “Bleedin’ liar! Tell you the truth, I quite like it again. I like old Pepe, too—he’s a good ’un for a laugh and I’m fond of a good laugh myself.”

“Tell me about William,” Abigail said.

But suddenly there was William, glowing and breathless in the doorway. And Pepe behind him.

“Hello, Abbie,” he said. “I heard you were back. I ran into Frank Griffith. He’s waiting to hear from you.”

“Hello, Pepe. Annie’s been telling me all the news.”

They kissed cheek to cheek and then he presented William—a handsome, curly-headed boy, tall for a ten-year-old. He had her chin and chiselled mouth, though not so strongly that a stranger might remark on it; but no one could fail to discern Pepe’s eyes in him.

She talked with him for a while about school, where he was best at sums and composition. And art? It was not so interesting now as formerly. And outside school? He liked football best, and best of all with Daddy. Pepe threw out his chest and beamed. Also he liked reading. And what was his favourite book? With a shy smile that won her heart, he confessed it was
The Land of That’ll-do.

“Ooh, he’d keep the butter hard today!” Annie said. “Just look at them boots! They might as well be shammy leather the way he goes through them.”

After tea, Abigail said she ought to go. Pepe walked her up to Victoria, where she’d be sure to get a cab.

“Daddy?” Abigail asked when they were on their way.

“Did Annie not tell you we were married? Five years ago now.”

Abigail laughed. How typical of Annie that was! And how infuriating it would be if a man behaved like that!

“You only come Saturdays and Sundays, though?”

“It’s easier. For us both. I love her, you know. I didn’t when we married—I did that to protect my interest in, and access to, William. But I do now. I thought you’d marry César, from what Annie said.”

“Me? Play fifth violinist? No, thank you. He and Celia were meant for each other. They’re both very happy.”

“I love her, but I couldn’t live all the time with her. Put it down to my early training!”

She chuckled and took his arm, which had been tentatively on offer all the way. “I’m glad,” she said. “For both of you.”

“When are you going to write something for us?”

“I don’t think you’d like what I want to write, Pepe.”

“Frank Griffith told me. I have two quite intellectual women’s mags now, you know.
Rational Woman
and
Adult Marriage.
I’ll send you round some back numbers. Also books. We’re just printing
The Consequences of Sexual Ignorance
by Warne. Solid university stuff. And I’m trying to get together an
Encyclopedia of Sexual Knowledge—
Ellis is doing me a prospectus for that. Things are changing in England, you see.”

“Yes. I had no idea.”

“Have you another book in you, Abbie?”

“Well—I still have
Into a Narrow Circle.
I hope!”

“Yes. I wasn’t going to mention it unless you did. But I think you could probably look at it again. Try and rework it with just a little humour, eh? It was rather unrelentingly high-minded, don’t you know.”

She laughed. “Yes, Pepe dear. I do know. I know exactly what you mean.”

***

“The strange thing,” she said to Victor when she came back, “I didn’t want to talk about all the things that once were so important—all those feelings. I didn’t even want to say things like, ‘Isn’t it funny how they’ve vanished!’ I’m sure we could have talked about it without embarrassment. But I didn’t even want to.” Suddenly she felt forlorn.

She threw her arms around Victor and hugged him, unable to speak.

He stroked her back and her hair until she grew calm again. “And of course,” he said then, “you didn’t talk to Annie about…our work.”

She shook her head.

“What next?”

“I think I must go and talk to Aunt Arabella. She’s spent forty years rescuing girls from the streets in Bristol. She must have reached some conclusions.”

“May I come too, or would it be indelicate?”

“Of course it wouldn’t. No one can stay bashful for forty years. She’s a hardened warrior after your own heart, I’d say. And Frances still has masses of notes to typewrite and file; we’ll give her in-tray a rest and go to Bristol. Anyway, I want to show you off to everybody. I’ll write to Bristol tonight.”