10
T
rying desperately “to melt this puzzling wall of ice” that had sprung up between us since our daughter’s birthday party, Jim decided to treat me to a trip up to London for some shopping and to see that play everyone was raving about,
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,
marveling about how the star, Richard Mansfield, effected the ghastly transformation from gentleman to madman right there on the stage in full view of the audience. It was the sensation of London, playing every night to sold-out houses. It had women screaming and fainting in the aisles. Pregnant women were afraid to go see it lest it leave so great and evil an impression upon their womb that they gave birth to a monster. Edwin had already seen it six times and could talk of nothing else. Every time someone mentioned it he went into rhapsodies. Regardless of where he was, he would leap up and act out scenes; a passing doctor once stopped on a street corner to make sure Edwin was all right and not in need of an immediate escort to the nearest insane asylum.
Still trying to entice me, Jim said we could stay at Flatman’s Hotel, right in the elegant heart of Covent Garden, where all the cotton brokers stopped when they were in London, and I could go shopping and buy whatever I pleased while he attended to “some necessary business.”
This “business” I knew, though her name never crossed either of our lips anymore, involved a visit to Sarah—Mad Sarah or the
real
Mrs. Maybrick, call her what you will; I was tired of the whole maddening muddle. Sometimes it didn’t seem to even matter anymore; I already knew our marriage was a sham. I couldn’t trust Jim anymore. I had tried, with the best intentions, to start anew, and I thought Jim had wanted that too . . . until I saw him with Christina Samuelson.
Jim also wanted to consult a new doctor, a specialist recommended by Michael, about his hands. I should have known it. This wasn’t just a treat for me. Jim shopped for doctors like I did for dresses.
I’d thought at first this thing with his hands was just a nervous habit. Jim was forever fidgeting and rubbing them, complaining about how cold and numb they were. Sometimes the skin sloughed off like a snake’s in long, ugly, flaky yellowish-white strips, and he took to slathering his hands with lotions until he had more bottles lined up in his bathroom than the vainest coquette. Sometimes he actually tried to engage me in conversation, like we were a pair of gossipy girls instead of husband and wife, about the merits of various lotions, soaps, and cold creams.
“Well, Bunny,” he’d begin, “I’ve tried Whitworth and Son’s Blue Lilies Lotion and Laird’s Bloom of Youth White Lilac Cream, and I really must say . . .” After comparing and contrasting those two, he’d be on about Hinds’ Honey and Almond Cream and Halloran’s Milk of Honey until I wanted to smash every bottle of lotion in the house, preferably right over his Indian Princess–blackened head.
He’d seen an advertisement of a giant frog springing out of some river reeds advising a startled baby to take a certain kind of nerve pills—as though the sight of a giant talking frog walking upright on its hind legs going around dispensing medical advice weren’t enough to unnerve anybody, let alone a toddler—and was now popping those like peppermints. He even had a poster of that silly frog hanging up in his study as though it were a Rembrandt.
Jim had confided to me several times that he had a deep abiding fear of paralysis and was afraid this numbness afflicting his hands might be the first sign of its encroachment. Sometimes his hands shook a little, sometimes they shook a lot, and I wondered, as drink will make a drunkard tremble and induce peculiar dreams and fancies, if it might not be due to all the drugs churning around in Jim’s belly and swimming through his veins. He’d made a perfect one-man walking drugstore of himself and it just
couldn’t
be good mixing it all up like that. He’d even started injecting himself; I’d seen the marks. He was actually quite proud of the nimble touch he’d acquired with the syringe, often bragging, “I daresay no doctor could have done better!” Jim had even shown me the beautiful syringe and needle set he’d bought and kept in an elegant silver case with his initials engraved upon it, accented by a dozen dainty diamonds. I feared my husband was courting disaster. And I was too, in my own fashion.
When I mentioned our plans for a London sojourn to Alfred Brierley he smiled and said what a coincidence it was; he was planning a trip up to London himself. He prevailed upon me to meet him, “for a discreet afternoon of delight.” I said yes without a moment’s hesitation. Sarah and Whitechapel were on my mind, and I just couldn’t stop seeing Jim’s hand cupping Christina Samuelson’s peachy-pink breast. Sometimes it felt like it was painted on the undersides of my eyelids, there to torment me every time I closed my eyes. So I proposed Whitechapel as the spot for our tryst.
This time,
I vowed, revenge, if it ever really could be, really would be sweet.
When I stepped out of the cab, I entered an alien world, one where sorrow towered over me like a giant and pressed its great weight down fully upon my shoulders. It staggered me. Tears pricked my eyes and caught in my throat. Everywhere I looked there was ugliness and squalor. I took it into my lungs every time I drew breath—raw sewage, rank flesh, rotten vegetables. Dirty, raggedy, stick-skinny children with hands outstretched and eyes full of need, and women with haunted eyes and haggard faces, some with blackened eyes or toting baskets full of sad, pathetic flowers or matchboxes they were hoping to sell, instantly surrounded me, hands thrust out, begging. I’d never known the world could be like this—so ugly and full of hunger and naked need for just the bare necessities. I couldn’t even imagine Jim living and loving here. How could he, how could
anyone,
bear it?
A shower of pennies hit the ground and they all dived down just as a hand closed around my arm, yanking me from their yearning midst, and I found myself walking hurriedly away beside Alfred Brierley. We fell seamlessly into step together, as though we had been walking together all our lives. To my shame, I instantly forgot all about those sad, hungry-eyed people.
He took me to a hotel, a drab little place, with a man who looked at us with knowing eyes as he snatched the coins up with fingers greasy from the fish-and-chips that he was loath to relinquish even long enough to pocket his fee. The smell of the grease and fish and his unwashed body almost made me gag. I hung back, feeling hot with shame, like I was glowing like a red-hot coal through my black veil as Alfred arranged about the room. I glanced down at my black silk dress, appliquéd and embroidered with scarlet silk poppies, and feared I had chosen rather brazenly, unwisely, and all too well.
Jezebel! Harlot!
I fancied those poppies screaming, pointing their embroidered foliage, which suddenly seemed to look, from this angle, more like Hell flames, up at me like accusing fingers. Some of the poppies on my bodice seemed to form themselves into the letter
A
like Hester Prynne’s elaborately embroidered badge of shame.
Stop it, stop it
now,
Florie!
I wanted to slap myself.
You’re imagining things! It’s like seeing shapes in the clouds, nothing more!
I trembled and, suddenly shy, I hesitated, as Alfred led me up the well-worn, rickety stairs. I suddenly felt like I was mounting the steps of a scaffold. I kept thinking about Hester Prynne, standing in the marketplace, the scarlet letter flaming on her bodice, proclaiming her sin to all.
“Darling—” Just that one tender word and a gentle tug at my hand was enough to get my feet moving again. In that moment, I would have followed him anywhere.
He opened a door. We didn’t stop to look around or make small talk. He led me straight to the bed. He lifted my veil. I flinched and lowered my eyes, so ashamed I couldn’t even look at him. I was half-afraid I’d never be able to face myself in the mirror again, that this burning shame would never leave me. But then I felt his fingers beneath my chin, so lovingly, so gently, tilting it up, to make me look at him.
“Darling”—there was that sweet, sweet word again, and I was
drowning
in those crystal-blue eyes, hot and cold all at the same time, my heart dancing madly, whirling like a dervish inside my breast—“must you tantalize me so?” he whispered. And then he kissed me. In that instant I forgot
everything.
The whole world could have perished and starved, the whole city could have been in flames outside, but as long as I was in his arms it didn’t matter.
We fell onto the bed, kissing hungrily, tugging at each other’s clothes. Soon they were scattered carelessly upon the dirty floor and we were all naked need and greed, giggling and wiggling like eels, bucking and thrusting on that squeaky, shaky little bed. I was half-afraid either we were going to bang the headboard through the wall or else the whole bed was going to collapse under us and maybe even fall through the floor.
The second time was softer, slower, exquisite in every way. Passionate, yet so very peaceful. In his arms I felt safe, fulfilled in a way I hadn’t been in a very long time. I had taken the precaution of inserting a sponge before I left Flatman’s, so I wasn’t worried about conceiving and could surrender myself entirely to pleasure. His touches were so tender,
so beautiful,
they made me ache and cry.
This was everything I had been longing for all my life, but because I was married to Jim it was accounted a sin and would be quite the scandal if it was ever discovered. Just like Hester Prynne, I would be ruined in society’s eyes, judged by a bunch of hypocrites who were, in reality, just as guilty as me. In the Currant Jelly Set, while the children played innocently at musical chairs their parents played musical beds. Everyone knew but pretended not to, and as long as there was no scandal, no courtrooms or damning articles in the penny press, feigned ignorance was a veil for bliss. The
real
sin was ripping the veil away.
When at last Alfred and I had to leave, I turned to him impulsively as he was standing behind me, fastening my dress, and took both his hands in mine. “Will it always be like this?” I asked.
“Always,” he promised, and kissed me again.
“Promise me”—I clung to him—“that we shall never lose the wonder of it! That every time shall be as perfect as this!”
“I promise,” he said.
I took his hand and laid his palm on my chest. “Here is my heart, beloved. Feel it beating, just for you, the one it belongs to now.”
He moved his hand to cup my breast, then pulled down the dress he had only half-finished fastening. He knelt and began to suckle like a starveling baby, while I grasped his hair, wrapping my fingers in those curly coppery gilt strands. I threw back my head, sighed, and shut my eyes, lost again in ecstasy.
Why did I not remember, when I looked so deep into his eyes, that blue can be such a cold color? Why did I not notice that while I was saying so much, he was saying so little? I was a fool; I saw only the charmer and missed the snake entirely.
When we returned to Flatman’s Hotel, daring to linger, touching hands, for one last discreet kiss in the corridor, before going, alone, to our respective rooms, I discovered that Jim hadn’t returned yet. I had been so worried that he would be there, lying on the sofa, waiting for me. I wasn’t ready to face him.
He’ll never know,
I kept reassuring myself. And what if he did? Did I really even care anymore? It was just a case of the goose paying the gander back in kind! But no, it was
more
than that. I had found someone kind to love me, someone who truly was the man I had taken Jim for only to discover, after our marriage, that I had been mistaken. Alfred truly was a gentle man. I could not, for the life of me, imagine him raising his voice or his hand to me.
I went and stood before the mirror; I wanted to see if my sin showed. Would I forevermore divine scarlet
A
s spelled out in the capillaries of my blushing cheeks? I had gone from being Daisy Miller to Madame Bovary in one afternoon, and there was no turning back, and the truth is, I didn’t want to.
I kept watching the clock and waiting for Jim. Restlessly I walked the floor, butterflies in my belly, too nervous to sit still or even try to eat. Finally, I decided to call for a maid to help me get dressed. The tickets were already bought, they were right there, lying on the mantel, and I had a magnificent new dress of port-wine red velvet trimmed with tufts of dyed-red ostrich feathers, rolled velvet roses, and crystal beads that I’d bought especially for this occasion. The moment I saw it, it made me think of the theater, all that gold leaf and crimson plush velvet, and the roses tossed up onstage to the actors and actresses when they took their final bow. And Jim had given me a necklace and earrings of heart-shaped garnets shimmering dark as red wine in golden cups and a pair of matching clips for my hair to wear with them.
It would be a shame to waste such a spectacular gown and those tickets and Jim had carried on so about this being a special treat for me, so why should I miss it just because he wasn’t here to escort me? Unless he was lying dead in a gutter somewhere there really was no reason why Jim couldn’t have sent a message if he was unavoidably detained. The tickets were just lying there, so why shouldn’t I go, with or without him? After all, there was another man who would be only too glad to squire me anywhere I wanted to go, and I rather relished the thought of holding tight to Mr. Brierley’s hand when the man on the stage became a monster.
I waited as long as I dared. But Jim never came. So I draped my long train over my arm, picked up my fan of dyed-red ostrich feathers, and went to the Lyceum with Alfred Brierley. We had a
grand
time; the play was every bit as exciting and terrifying as everyone said it was. I loved that the frights upon the stage provided a respectable excuse for me to hold my lover’s hand. After all, there were women down in the seats below clinging to strangers or fainting into their laps, so a little hand grasping with an old family friend was nothing at all in comparison. Afterward, in the cab, Alfred and I kissed and held each other tight all the way back to the hotel. He suckled my breast and guided my hand to ease inside his trousers. We smiled and giggled like naughty children making mischief behind the teacher’s back, but I daresay the savvy old coachman up on his box was well accustomed to such shenanigans.