The Sealed Letter Part 15

After a few endless minutes, Anderson comes out the front door, and looks where the driver's pointing, to the cab parked outside Number 28. Helen takes a long breath.

He's unsmiling. He gets into the cab and pulls the door shut; he sits beside her, rather than opposite.

That means he wants to be near me. Or, of course, that he can't look me in the eye.

"I did call at Eccleston Square yesterday morning," he starts abruptly, "but of all the confounded luck, I ran into Harry on the doorstep."

"I knew something must have happened!" No response from Anderson. "Yes, he left church early; he wasn't well. Was he-did he seem surprised to learn that you were in London?"

Anderson shrugs.

"Was he ... unfriendly?"

"No. We exchanged photographs."

Photographs? Men are bizarre creatures. Helen examines her small pink nails. Men are bizarre creatures. Helen examines her small pink nails. Don't go on the attack, Don't go on the attack, she reminds herself. "Have you nothing more to say to me," she asks quietly, "after I poured out my very soul in that letter?" she reminds herself. "Have you nothing more to say to me," she asks quietly, "after I poured out my very soul in that letter?"

Anderson clears his throat. "You shouldn't have come here." A silence grows between them; she waits. "You look very lovely today," he adds glumly.

Her mouth twists. Does he think she's a girl, to be fobbed off with compliments? And yet it does gladden her to hear.

"I know I've wounded you," he says.

"Do you, though?"

Anderson takes a small packet out of his pocket, and sets it in her lap.

"What's this?" she asks.

"Some remembrances."

She doesn't need to open it to know what's there. A fob chain she worked herself, rather amateurishly, the Christmas before last; also, cufflinks in the form of stars; also, a coppery coil of her hair.

"The letters are burned already."

"Then burn these too." She s.h.i.+fts her leg, letting the packet drop to the floor of the cab. She thinks of the smell of singed hair.

Anderson bends to pick it up as if humouring a child. "Did you bring the items you wanted to return to me?"

She shakes her head.

"Helen!"

"It flew out of my mind."

"I thought that was the very purpose of this meeting."

"Yours, perhaps," she says through a swollen throat. "Mine was to make you look me in the eye and tell me you no longer feel anything for me."

Anderson lets out a grunt, and then, as she tilts up her face, he seizes it and kisses her, as she knew he would.

Helen presses herself against him. This is her moment: power like sugar on her tongue. After a few minutes she breaks away an inch or two, enough to say, "Can we go inside?"

Anderson shakes his head. "My landlady."

Her stomach sinks.

But he rears up to slide the trapdoor, and calls to the cabman. "The Grosvenor Hotel, if you please."

She flushes to think of how that sounds. Why is it, Why is it, she wonders, she wonders, that we care what faceless strangers think of us? that we care what faceless strangers think of us?

The growler gets held up in a jam at Hyde Park Corner, behind a horse who's collapsed in his traces. The two pa.s.sengers don't speak; Helen bites her tongue so she won't say anything to make Anderson change his mind. Come on, quickly... Come on, quickly...

At the hotel, he registers in the names of Lieutenant and Mrs. Smith. The clerk gives them a dubious tilt of the eyebrow, but it is Helen's maiden name, after all, and she stares right through him.

"No luggage, Lieutenant?"

"I only require accommodation for my wife to rest before an evening engagement," says Anderson frostily.

The room is strikingly ugly. Helen was right, all those times, to refuse this; better a seized embrace in the dim woods of the Cremorne Gardens. In the gla.s.s, in her lilac bodice, she looks raddled; there are harsh lines around the corners of her mouth. How far she's come from Miss Helen Webb Smith of Florence.

Anderson makes no move to lead her to the bed. He paces. This is how it could end, This is how it could end, thinks Helen, thinks Helen, with silence in a nasty rented room. with silence in a nasty rented room. "You may smoke," she tells him. "These curtains aren't worth saving." "You may smoke," she tells him. "These curtains aren't worth saving."

"You don't mind?"

She almost laughs. "How considerate you are of my feelings!"

Anderson lights his cigarette before he answers. "Darling girl, I couldn't be sorrier."

Oh, but you could, you will. "The best thing you can do is forget me." "The best thing you can do is forget me."

She breathes in the spicy scent of tobacco. "That's the advice an executioner gives his victim: don't flinch, don't swerve, so the axe will make a clean stroke."

"Oh, Helen."

"Was it all a chimera? People are always telling me I have an overactive imagination," she says in a voice that comes out high and uneven. "Was our whole story one of my imaginings?" imaginings?"

Anderson shakes his heavy lion's head. "Fact is, there comes a time in every fellow's life when he begins to think of settling down."

"What for?"

"A home," he offers uneasily, "an heir. My cousin Gwen's a splendid girl-"

She holds up her hand. "I didn't come to this establishment, at considerable risk, to hear you sing the praises of your brand-new fiancee. fiancee." She p.r.o.nounces the word like a curl of sulphurous fumes.

"All I wanted to say was, I don't deceive myself that she'll ever be to me what you've been."

A small pleasure, a wild strawberry swallowed as the cliff crumbles under her. Helen makes her mind up: she's not here to punish this man-satisfying though that would be-but to keep hold of him. "Marry her, then, but save your secret heart for me." She meant to say it in a seductive whisper, but it comes out like a command.

He looks away, and it strikes her like a brick to the head that she's lost the game.

"You and I," says Anderson, "-it started to go awry the day you left Malta."

What, if you can't have me twice a week, in a comfortable gondola, is it too much bother? But she keeps her mouth clamped shut. But she keeps her mouth clamped shut.

"You know we'd have been found out sooner or later. People notice things. Even your numbskull husband couldn't have kept his head in the sand forever."

This is an argument that won't be won with words, it strikes Helen. But she has other weapons.

"Give me a cigarette," stretching out her hand. "Have I shocked you?" she asks, when he doesn't move. "Do you think me fast?" fast?"

The absurdity strikes him too, and they both smile. He lights a cigarette and she draws on it without coughing; the smoke leaves a bitter sc.r.a.pe in her throat.

"I've never seen a woman do that before."

"Really? Fido smokes like a longsh.o.r.eman."

He blinks. "Your friend Fido?"

"Oh, I'm not sure she'd answer to that name," says Helen, as flippantly as she can. "She's cast me off for the egregious falsehoods egregious falsehoods I told her for your sake. No, I've not a friend in the world anymore." I told her for your sake. No, I've not a friend in the world anymore."

Anderson kisses her, more roughly this time, with his tongue. "Do you like the taste?" she asks, when she can catch a breath.

"Hm. Rather like kissing a longsh.o.r.eman."

She laughs.

Anderson's eyes widen, and he plunges his face into the curve of her bodice, his arms thras.h.i.+ng about in her layers of diaphanous silk. Some women find this animal quality in men off-putting, Helen reflects as she slides down the slippery upholstered sofa. But we're all beasts of the field, after all. But we're all beasts of the field, after all.

Oh, how could she have ever learned to do without the hot weight of this man, his strong movements on her, inside her? She finds herself thinking of her husband, his long white limbs, their torpor; Harry never seized her this way, even on their wedding night; never looked into her eyes with such desperation. She feels a choking rage, now, at the admiral in Eccleston Square, newspaper erect like a s.h.i.+eld, swallowing his heartburn as he waits for her to come home.

But no, she mustn't spoil this moment by letting herself think of dried-out cutlets and old arguments. Helen banishes everything else from her head, brings herself back to this squeaking sofa, this glorious, writhing conjunction. It will be all right, It will be all right, she tells herself, shouting into the void, she tells herself, shouting into the void, everything will be well now, because this man wants me, will always want me: no marriage can put a stop to this. Not mine, not his. everything will be well now, because this man wants me, will always want me: no marriage can put a stop to this. Not mine, not his. Bone and scalding flesh, the grapple of muscle, every thrust a pledge, signed and sealed. Bone and scalding flesh, the grapple of muscle, every thrust a pledge, signed and sealed.

Desertion (abandonment; withdrawing support or help despite allegiance or responsibility) If a lady be pressed by her friend to remove her shawl and bonnet, it can be done if it will not interfere with subsequent arrangements ... During these visits, the manners should be easy and cheerful, and the subjects of conversation such as may be readily terminated.

Isabella Beeton, Household Management (i86i) (i86i) It's an animal that eats up gold," groans Emily Davies, sitting in Fido's office at the Victoria Press the next day. "I so long to be done with it, I'd be happy to pay the costs of winding it up myself."

"Miss Parkes is always complaining the Journal's Journal's destroyed her health," says Fido, "yet she won't surrender the reins to anyone with fresh ideas. Surely Madame Bodichon won't be willing to supply the gold forever?" destroyed her health," says Fido, "yet she won't surrender the reins to anyone with fresh ideas. Surely Madame Bodichon won't be willing to supply the gold forever?"

"I doubt it," says Emily Davies. "In her last, she tells me that Miss Parkes has always had an exaggerated view of the Journals Journals influence. But you know their long friends.h.i.+p..." influence. But you know their long friends.h.i.+p..."

There is a pause, now, which stretches into awkwardness. It's up to Fido to speak. "I asked you to call on me this afternoon, Miss Davies, because-well, perhaps you've guessed." She finds this woman's small face unreadable. "The other day at the meeting, when I spoke of a first-cla.s.s magazine which would combine the progress of women with other vital topics of the day, you seemed ... interested. Was I mistaken?"

"You weren't." Emily Davies's eyes narrow. "But if it's not to be a new format for the English Woman's Journal, English Woman's Journal, wouldn't such a magazine const.i.tute a rival publication?" wouldn't such a magazine const.i.tute a rival publication?"

"No," Fido insists, her voice shaking with excitement, "because it would appeal to quite a different, broader audience. What I'm thinking of is an entertaining monthly, on the Fraser's Fraser's or or Macmillan's Macmillan's model, which will inoculate readers-without their feeling so much as a p.r.i.c.k!-with advanced ideas on the relations between the s.e.xes." (She's spent the weekend mulling over this plan, in an attempt-only partly successful-to keep her mind off Helen.) model, which will inoculate readers-without their feeling so much as a p.r.i.c.k!-with advanced ideas on the relations between the s.e.xes." (She's spent the weekend mulling over this plan, in an attempt-only partly successful-to keep her mind off Helen.) "Would you be the publisher?"

"Indeed I would. I have some capital, and a good chance of securing an investment partner, a Mr. Gunning; you must meet him. You'd be the sole editor-unenc.u.mbered by a committee," she adds wryly, remembering how Emily Davies once painstakingly cut down a rambling article of Arnold's from thirty pages to twenty, before Bessie Parkes could inform her of the Journals Journals policy of never editing the prose of a distinguished man. "How do you like the sound of the policy of never editing the prose of a distinguished man. "How do you like the sound of the Victoria Magazine?" Victoria Magazine?"

"Very much indeed," says Emily Davies, with a precise, doll-like smile.

For a quarter of an hour they throw themselves into the details: topics, writers, artists, rates per page. They'll save money on an office by using the premises of the Victoria Press. "What ought our motto to be?" asks Emily Davies.

"Liberty! Let every woman do that which is right in her own eyes," Fido improvises.

"I must insist on a contract; there's too much slapdash informality in the Woman Movement."

"What would you say to one hundred pounds per annum?"

"Payment in addition for any articles I write?"

"Five s.h.i.+llings a page," offers Fido.

They're grinning at each other like children when the boy knocks to say Mrs. Codrington is asking for the proprietor.

Fido's throat locks. Without a word she stands and goes to the door of her office.

"If you have another visitor-"

"No no, do excuse me, if you please, Miss Davies, I'll only be a-"

Helen's rus.h.i.+ng across the workroom to seize her by both wrists. "Fido!"

Flora Parsons, for one, is smirking over her composing desk.

Abstractions and judgements fall to dust: this is Helen. "My dear," whispers Fido, trying to steer her away from the office where Emily Davies sits, "this is neither the time nor the place..."

Helen won't move a step. There's something askew about her jacket. "He-" she chokes. The tears are coursing in sheets down her face, into her lace collar.

Fido hisses in her ear. "Whatever the colonel might have-"

"Not him," Helen wails.

Before Fido can stop her, she's swept through the door marked Proprietor. Proprietor. Fido hurries after. Emily Davies is on her feet, sliding her notes into her pocketbook. Fido makes a rapid calculation of status; Helen, for all her dishevelment, comes out ahead by a nose. "Mrs. Codrington-may I present Miss Davies?" Fido hurries after. Emily Davies is on her feet, sliding her notes into her pocketbook. Fido makes a rapid calculation of status; Helen, for all her dishevelment, comes out ahead by a nose. "Mrs. Codrington-may I present Miss Davies?"

"Delighted," says Emily Davies, holding out her hand, but Helen stands like Niobe, her face eroded with tears.

Wildly, Fido says, "My colleague and I were just discussing the possibility of a collaborative venture."

Helen tries to speak, makes a dreadful gulping.

"Another time," Emily Davies murmurs, edging towards the door.

"He's taken Nan and Nell," Helen bursts out. "And my desk, he's smashed open my writing desk."