It was the
grandest
store in Liverpool, a great big glossy new department store crammed with every conceivable luxury. I’d buy ready-made dresses, or fine fabrics I’d send straight to Mrs. Osborne, my dressmaker, furs, shoes, handbags, hats, fans, gloves, and jewelry, corsets and other undergarments, silk stockings, robes and nightgowns, parasols, perfumes, scented soaps, pretty little knickknacks like china pug dogs and soapstone Chinese dragons, vases, books, candy, pastries, sheet music, furniture, curtains, carpets, lamps, picture frames, fine china, crystal, newfangled gadgets for the kitchen to bewilder the cook, and clothes and toys for Bobo, even when he was far too young for them. I would find myself buying him marbles when I knew perfectly well that a baby that age would surely swallow them, and hoops to run after when he was barely walking, hobbyhorses he couldn’t yet straddle, and plaid knickerbocker, Zouave, and velvet suits à la Little Lord Fauntleroy, and wide-brimmed straw hats with grosgrain streamers to set off the long curls I planned to cultivate like prize-winning roses on his dear little head when he was still in the cradle. And, if that doesn’t beat all, one day I even bought a fully equipped dollhouse and not one but
three
gilt-edged porcelain tea sets painted with cabbage roses—the toy department had it with the roses done in pink, blue, or yellow and I just couldn’t decide which—for a daughter I didn’t even have and, as far as I knew then, might never have. I bought silk and velvet neckties and dressing gowns for Jim and Edwin, and even Michael in my never-ending quest to make him like me. Once I even bought him an elephant foot umbrella stand and a stuffed aardvark (I was trying to make him smile).
I’d end up spending the best part of the day shopping, so I’d have to rush to get home in time to welcome Jim. When I unpacked all my parcels my bedroom was awash with so much tissue paper and boxes you could hardly see the carpet.
Deep in my heart, it worried me. Shopping was becoming like a drug I reached for at the least little twinge of boredom or loneliness. I was as dependent on it as Jim was on his arsenic. It filled and gave me something to show for all the empty hours. The smiling faces of the salesclerks were such a welcome change from all the disapproving frowns of the people who filled my life now. I often sat, chin in hands, on the side of my bed, staring down at my purchases spread out on the floor before me. Sometimes I’d feel
so disgusted
with myself I’d vow that tomorrow I would take them
all
back and
never
do this again. I had my books, and my embroidery, to occupy me, and I might even take up china painting again, or maybe I could find some sort of ladies charitable society that would truly welcome my help. But somehow, no matter how good my intentions were, my resolve always crumpled and I managed to talk myself out of it. I
always
found a reason to keep everything I bought; I never returned a single thing.
Every month the bills got higher and I’d find myself a nervous wreck, prostrate with worry, sick headaches, and a sour stomach, worrying what Jim would say, but he never said a word about any of it except to comment on how pretty I looked in my new finery or how thoughtful a gift I’d chosen. He even said the elephant foot umbrella stand I’d given Michael was “charmingly exotic as well as utilitarian” and the stuffed aardvark was “the perfect conversation piece every parlor requires” and that he was the luckiest man in the world, to have such a beautiful wife who always chose such nice things for him, his family, and friends.
I loved him so, and every day I kept vowing I would do better, that I would make myself into a wife worthy of him. I kept promising “tomorrow” and every day when that tomorrow actually came I said “tomorrow” again and went on just the same, wallowing in bed until half past noon and spending money like it was water and gallivanting around to dime museums, freak and magic shows, and melodramas with the irresponsible, irresistibly charming Edwin. My metamorphosis into that perfect wife was as much a failure as one of my brother-in-law’s magic tricks.
6
B
obo was just taking his first steps when I found myself pregnant again. One moment I was standing there with my arms outstretched, my son toddling toward me in a rose satin gown trimmed with blue rosettes. The next I was flat on my back, staring dizzily up at the spinning ceiling, trying to see it through a starry haze.
Jim was adamant. I’d dallied too long and we simply
must
engage a nanny. Now that I was expecting again I couldn’t possibly take care of myself and Bobo too.
The sickness that had dogged me in the early days of my first pregnancy, usually passing by mid-afternoon, this time was unrelenting. I couldn’t keep a thing down and began to lose flesh. Dr. Hopper ordered me to bed, and I rarely left it, rising only sometimes, for a few hours, in the late afternoon or evening.
Once again, Mrs. Briggs reigned supreme at Battlecrease House. Jim entrusted her with finding us the perfect nanny. Mrs. Briggs was to handle the whole thing; I wasn’t even permitted to sit in when she was interviewing the applicants.
She
was to have
first and final
say about the woman who would take care of
my
children! No matter how much I wept and raged about it, Jim stubbornly refused to see it my way. “Children need discipline, Florie, not sugarplums ten times a day,” he said.
The nanny Mrs. Briggs chose for us was Alice Yapp, an innkeeper’s horsey-faced spinster daughter from the aptly named Nag’s Head. She
still
figures in my nightmares, staring at me with big fishy eyes swimming behind the thick lenses of her steel-rimmed spectacles, hair the color of horse chestnuts scraped back in a severe bun to fully reveal a face as friendly as a hatchet. I wouldn’t have been surprised to awaken in the night and find her standing over my bed with an ax. We
hated
each other at first sight. I
begged
Jim to dismiss her, to find someone sweet to look after our children, but he and Mrs. Briggs were in complete accord that “children need structure and discipline, and that’s what nannies are for.” The moment Nanny Yapp took Bobo in her arms, I started to lose him. She contradicted me at every turn, pouring her always politely worded grievances into Mrs. Briggs’s all too willing ear and worming her way into the good graces of the whole household staff; she was after all one of them and I was the outsider. We were like chess players trying to outmaneuver each other, and the children—
my
children—were the poor little pawns.
Why does the miracle of birth have to be so horrid? I felt so ugly and ungainly as I tottered around, swollen, half-sick, fearing I’d spew all the time, embarrassed by the blemishes erupting on my face, feeling like the pimple on my nose was drawing stares like a big pink and red bull’s-eye, and hating the way my clothes chafed but feeling slatternly whenever I dared flout propriety and venture out of my room in my robe. Even though the spring weather was quite mild, I felt stiflingly hot. I was sweating like a field hand, even though I’d done absolutely nothing. I’d lie in bed in my chemise, sucking on hard ginger candies to quell the nausea and plying a palmetto fan, feeling unable to breathe with fear whenever I thought about the ordeal that awaited me. I was
terrified
of the pain to come, afraid that this time I might not survive it.
Sometimes I’d force myself to rise and put on one of my silk Watteau dresses and go to the nursery to see Bobo. I’d go in, with a book in hand, ready to read to him, only to find Nanny Yapp already sitting beside him with a book that she had chosen herself, always something serious and morally edifying, with not a bit of fun in it. She disdained the picture books I bought for him as “frivolous” and was equally disapproving of
Little Lord Fauntleroy,
which I just
loved
reading to him, especially when he was old enough to wear the suits it inspired.
With his long ebony curls and white lace collars set against velvets in shades of garnet, cinnamon, licorice, plum, tawny, and chocolate to set off his coffee-bean-brown eyes, he was downright breathtaking. You never saw a child more beautiful, he could melt
any
heart, he was
so sweet,
and he just
loved
to cuddle and kiss.
The trouble was Nanny Yapp had no sense of fun and not one nurturing bone in her body.
On the rare days when I felt well enough to sit on the floor with Bobo and spread his little dresses out, getting ready to play dress-up with my beautiful living doll, Nanny Yapp would stop me as soon as I’d put the first one on him. “
Now
that the business of dressing is
done,
it’s time to move on to other things,” she’d decisively declare, and pick him up and take him away from me. When I tried to insist I wanted to change his clothes, she’d give me a withering stare and say, “We must learn to make up our minds, to make a decision and stick to it. We must remember that we lead by example, and we don’t want this young man to grow up to be a vain, changeable, and indecisive clotheshorse who will be late to the office every morning because of the time he wastes dithering over which necktie to wear, now do we?”
Ribbons and roses and lace also had a way of disappearing from Bobo’s little dresses; Nanny Yapp didn’t deny she cut them off, as she was of the firm opinion that his wardrobe was “unsuitably ornate for his gender now that he is getting older, madame. If you persist in dressing him in this manner, when he is old enough to walk in the park and play with the other boys they will be certain to tease him.”
I thought it very mean-spirited of her to spoil my pleasure. If she caught me giving Bobo bonbons, or the sugar cubes I used to slip into his little mouth every time I saw him, she’d scold
me,
saying children should not have sweets between meals, desserts were for afterward, and that “dietary discipline” was “essential to a child’s healthy and proper upbringing.” She accused
me
of teaching him unhealthy habits and said if I kept on he’d grow up to be one of those languid persons who thought nothing of lounging around all day with a box of bonbons. He would ruin his teeth, his figure, and eventually his health, she insisted, if I persisted in encouraging this bad habit. She gave me such a scalding look I half-suspected she thought I’d be sneaking him brandy and cigars next or taking him off to opium dens when we were supposed to be visiting the zoological gardens!
If I dallied overlong bathing Bobo, loving the feel of his smooth, baby-soft skin, marveling that this gorgeous creature had actually come out of my body, that Jim and I had made this little angel, she’d stand at my shoulder and stare at me as though I were a criminal.
“You will encourage him to evil tendencies, ma’am,” she’d say, and briskly roll up her sleeves and take the washcloth away from me and proceed to scrub Bobo as though he were a greasy skillet in the kitchen sink instead of a beautiful little being with angel-soft skin and feelings. She was equally disapproving when, after his bath, I wanted to rub my pink rose-scented lotion into his skin, to ensure it would stay sweet smelling and soft. But Nanny Yapp thought this would breed “indolent and effete habits” in him.
The lovely pastel-colored perfumed soaps I always bought for Bobo also had a way of disappearing. I was certain that woman took them for her own use; when I got close to her my nostrils often caught an expensive whiff of roses and lavender not in keeping with her salary. I had already noticed that there was lace and ribbons trimming her petticoats beneath her plain uniforms and aprons, snipped, I suspected, from my son’s wardrobe. But Jim refused to be drawn into it. He was seemingly deaf to my every complaint about that wretched woman.
I almost died bringing my daughter, Gladys Evelyn, into the world. Outside it was the most beautiful July day you ever saw, all blue skies and butterball-yellow sun, but it was absolute
Hell
inside my bedroom. I could
feel
the demons’ claws tearing at my innards. I felt like my spread legs were each tied to a wild horse and I was being torn apart by them. I bled and bled and screamed and screamed. When I felt my flesh burning and tearing, I wished I were dead; it seemed the
only
way to escape the agony. Every time I felt the child writhe inside me, I thought my last breath was going out with my scream.
This time Mrs. Briggs didn’t dare come in, only stuck her head around the door to tell me that such carrying on was unseemly; after all, women had babies every day. Suffice it to say the names I called her were unmentionable then and still are now in polite society. I think we were both surprised; I never even realized I knew such words. The crude brutality of childbirth must have dredged them up out of some long-forgotten memory of when I’d overheard the conversation of sailors. Then it was all over. I fainted with relief. Everything went black for me before I could even hold my daughter in my arms. Dr. Hopper had to stab a lancet into the sole of my foot to shock me back to my senses. I still shudder and feel sick and light-headed at the memory of that terrible remorseless pain. No one should ever have to suffer so!
Afterward, I developed such a fear of childbirth I could hardly bear for Jim to touch me. Terror flooded every part of me when, smiling over Bobo’s and Gladys’s dark heads, he jokingly declared that now all we needed was a pair of golden ones to match mine and our little family would be complete.
Like some poor shell-shocked solider boy, I’d find myself reliving the worst agonies of childbirth in moments when I should have been experiencing only the most exquisite pleasure. I consulted with Mama and began to make some discreet attempts at contraception, experimenting with different methods, praying each time I would not bungle it and find myself expecting again.
The fear was
so
great, I had trouble relaxing; I was tense and awkward where I had once been so fun loving and free. I no longer initiated our love play; most of the time I just lay there and left it all to Jim, and I know he missed the naked adventuress who loved to let down her golden hair and cast off her inhibitions with her clothes, and the naughty banter that always accompanied our mutual explorations. I would have complained of headaches, only he always had some remedy ready to dose me.
When we made love, if I’d managed to discreetly slip into my bathroom before I’d always be worrying that the little sponge or one of the French womb veils Mama sent me from Paris I’d inserted might slip or that Jim’s nose might catch a suspicious whiff of lemon juice or vinegar or the little string meant to make retrieval easier might dangle or catch on his finger and give me away. On the nights when I’d been unable to prepare myself, I worried that the cuddling afterward, which I adored so, would delay me from douching with the mixture of warm water, lemon juice, vinegar, and carbolic acid I always used and give Jim’s seed a better chance to take root. A couple of times I was so tired, and the warm weight of Jim’s body so comforting and sweet, that I was lulled off into sleep and missed my chance and was in absolute terror until my courses came. Once, when they were late and I was terrified of what that might mean, I tried to bring them on with a foaming douche of nitric acid while Jim was at work. I don’t know how I got through that without screaming the house down. I nearly bit my lip clean through and had to make up a tale about tripping on the stairs to explain the bloody marks my teeth left.
I felt doubly bad for deceiving Jim, for not openly telling him what I was doing and why. But men so seldom understand these things. They take that verse in the Bible to heart about women being meant to bring forth offspring in pain, without being able to fathom just how bad that pain actually is. They think we weak, delicate things make overmuch of it, that we, wanting sympathy and presents, and to loll around in bed afterward being waited on hand and foot for a fortnight, greatly exaggerate. I wanted to tell him the truth, but I was so afraid of how he’d react. I wanted to believe he would understand and be content with the two children we had, but another part of me was afraid of the anger I knew lurked inside him, that my confession might bring the violence out. He might even forbid me privacy in my bathroom to make sure I never attempted the like again, and I just couldn’t bear the thought of May, Mrs. Briggs, or—God forbid!—Nanny Yapp standing there scrutinizing me at moments that should have been absolutely private.
It was such a difficult position to be in; I loved my husband and for him to hold and kiss and touch and caress me all over, his lips and fingers bringing me to the pinnacle of pleasure, but inviting him to do so only opened the door to more. Every time I opened my legs to him, I felt more and more fear and less and less pleasure. I wanted to hold on, I wanted it to stay, I didn’t want to lose the intimate joys of our marriage, but the fear was ripping it all away. I just could
not
forget the pain, and that it had almost killed me, and that this pleasure was the prelude to that pain. Jim and I were always superstitious about threes, the third time being the charm, and I was certain that if I was brought to childbed again it would be the end of me.
The horrors of her birth seemed to also have left a mark on Gladys. She was a sickly little mite and gave Dr. Hopper a deal of trouble trying to coax her into staying in this world where she belonged. Dark-haired like Bobo, but with my violet-blue eyes, poor little Gladys wasn’t blessed with even a smidgen of her brother’s beauty. She was a plain, poorly little thing. I dearly hoped Mama would be proven right when she predicted that Gladys was probably just a late bloomer: “No daughter o’ yours could
ever
be anythin’ but beautiful, Florie!”
Nanny Yapp seemed to take the same instant dislike to my daughter as she had to me and was apt to neglect her in the nursery. Time and again, I’d hear my daughter
screaming
at night and rush in only to find her unattended, in a pitch-dark room. I’d turn on the light, take my daughter in my arms, comfort her, then roust that woman out of bed, rip the covers off her, and demand to know what she was about ignoring my child, leaving her to scream her throat raw in the dark. The poor little mite couldn’t speak yet; crying was the
only
way she had to make herself heard and let us know if anything was wrong.