A Mad, Wicked Folly (30 page)

A quarter of an hour later I reached the palatial building. Although my father and brother frequented the club
weekly, I had never been inside; women were not allowed
membership. I walked in and stood on the mosaic pavement in the atrium. The Reform Club turned out to be an
ode to masculine sensibility. Tobacco smoke hung heavily
in the air, and the paneled walls were decorated with large,
foreboding portraits of its founding members. The space
was cavernous, with a lead crystal ceiling that let in the
light. A grand staircase led up to a gallery that wrapped
around the central atrium.

A tall and scrawny young footman dressed in a tailcoat
approached me. “May I assist you, miss?”
“I’m looking for my brother, Freddy Darling,” I said. “I
wish to speak with him.”
He drew himself up. “Our club is closed to women,
miss. I will get a message to him, and he can attend you at
your home.”
I glanced past him and noticed a group of men climbing the stairs, so I lifted my skirts and went around the
astonished footman and toward the staircase.
“Miss!” I heard the voice of the now very angry footman behind me. But I ignored him.
As I climbed, I could hear the clink of billiard balls and
the murmur of masculine voices coming from one of the
rooms at the end of the gallery, so I headed there.
There were many gentlemen inside the room. Some
stood with billiard cues in their hands; others sat in leather
chairs by the fire reading newspapers. The acrid smell and
smoke of pipe and cigar tobacco hung in the air like fog.
“Frederick Darling? Is Mr. Darling here?” I called out.
The men turned to stare. The way they looked, you’d think
someone had released a milk cow into their hallowed halls.
“I say!” I heard one of them exclaim. “Where did she
come from?”
One of the newspapers lowered slowly, and the astonished face of my brother was revealed. “Vicky! What are
you doing here?”
“This isn’t done, old chap,” one of the gentlemen near
him said. “Meet your fillies elsewhere.”
“She’s my sister,” Freddy snapped. He stood and came
over, took me by my elbow, and marched me from the
room.
The footman hovered outside. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said.
“She just pushed in.”
“It’s all right, Thomas. I’ll see that she doesn’t stay
long.” The servant left, and Freddy turned to me. “What do
you mean by coming here, Vicky? Actually, why are you
in London at all? You’re meant to be in the country.” Then
he saw my face, and his expression softened. “Oh, no . . .
what’s happened now?”
“I broke my engagement.”
My brother looked alarmed. “Broke your engagement?
Whatever do you mean?”
“Marrying Edmund Carrick-Humphrey would be the
biggest mistake of my life. That marriage contract is but a
gold cage.”
“Vicky, I love you dearly, but you do overdramatize—”
“I can’t have a life where I’m not free!”
“Calm down, Vicky.”
“I can’t calm down!”
“Vicky, an engagement can’t be undone so easily. The
marriage contract is ironclad.”
“How can that be? I’m not married yet!”
“You might as well be. The engagement was announced
formally, so the contract is in full effect. Do you know what
a broken engagement means? There will be stories in the
newspapers and scandal rags. At the very least, it will ruin
your chances to ever marry.”
“Ruin my chances to marry someone who cares about
all that.” Certainly someone like Will would never care
about such social rules.
“That’s as may be. But this might hurt Father’s business,
Vicky.”
“How can you say that? Papa’s company is called
Darling and
Son
Sanitary Company, not
Daughter
! Where
was your sense of familial duty back when you wanted a
life of your own?”
That got him. He looked away and wouldn’t meet my
eye. And then finally he spoke. “So have you thought about
what you will do?” he finally said.
“I want to go to art school.”
“How will you do that? Surely they only accept established artists—”
“I’ve been accepted! The Royal College of Art accepted
my application.”
Fred gaped at me. “How? How did your mange that?”
“I managed it. And on my own.”
“Good God.” Freddy slumped against the wall, rubbed
his forehead, his newspaper held slack against his side.
“Maybe Papa will still give me an allowance, like he’s
given you, so that I may keep my own home and pay my
tuition. I don’t need anything much: just a small flat and
art supplies. I can’t see what’s wrong with that, Freddy;
Papa won’t even notice the money. When Papa sees how
much work I did to get accepted, and how the examiners
were impressed with my work, he’ll see sense. Just like
with the success of your business. I need you there to help
me convince him.”
Freddy said nothing, and I became frightened he
would say no. “For just a moment, see yourself in my place,
Fred,” I pleaded. “You left of your own accord. What if you
were forced to work in Papa’s business? Could you do that,
knowing your heart was not in it? Knowing your whole life
that your heart was elsewhere?”
“I couldn’t.”
“Then don’t I deserve the same chance at happiness?”
Freddy regarded me for a moment, looking unsure. It
was clear that Freddy was wrestling with himself, trying to
find a way around my reasoning, and then he pushed himself away from the wall. “All right. I’ll see what I can do.
But breaking your engagement means more than a scandal, Victoria. It means the end to Darling and Son. Father
has much to lose, including his pride. I wouldn’t count on
an easy time of it.”

T HAD BEGUN
to rain, and the day had grown cold
and dreary, so Freddy took me home in a hansom cab.
He would come back in the morning when our parents arrived home.
By the time we arrived in Berkeley Square, fog had

purled in, and the streetlamps were lit. More ominously,
the lights inside my father’s study were on.
“They’re home,” I said. My stomach flipped over.
“What the devil?” Freddy leaned past me to look. “I
thought they weren’t due home until morning.”
Not many country houses had telephones, but the
Carrick-Humphrey manor did. It would have been nothing for Edmund’s father to pick up the blasted thing. In my
imagination I could hear Sir Henry’s voice, reduced to a
tinny rattle through the earpiece, as he relayed the story
of my broken engagement to my horrified father. “What
if . . .” I swallowed, feeling sick with nerves. “What if Sir
Henry telephoned Papa? You know what he’s like when
he’s angry, Fred. There’ll be no talking to him.”
“There’s nothing for it.” Freddy stepped out of the cab.
“Well, let’s gird our loins and face the lion in his den.”
We went inside and, as suspected, found our parents in
my father’s study. We stood there in the doorway; Freddy
held my hand tightly. Papa was sitting by the fire, a glass of
port in his hand. He looked haggard. The wrinkles round
his eyes seemed deeper. My mother sat on the settee; her
eyes were red, as if she had been crying. Our parents did
not greet us, and my heart sank. I knew then that they had
already heard.
I saw Sophie standing near the window. I tried to catch
her eye, but she wouldn’t meet my gaze.
“Your mother and I arrived home to find an urgent
message from Sir Henry waiting for us,” Papa said, getting
right to the point. Although his voice was calm, his words
were tinged with anger. “I rang him, and he told me that
you ended the engagement with his son because he would
not let you go to art school. Is this true?”
I drew myself up tall. I needed all the bravery I possessed. “Yes.”
My mother sucked in her breath.
“Please, Papa, listen to me,” I pleaded. “There’s more to
the story than that.”
He barked out a short laugh. “Sir Henry tells me that
you’ve been accepted to this school already. I had forbidden you to draw, yet you defied me! Your willful behavior
continued, and under my nose!”
Freddy stepped forward, put a hand on his shoulder.
“Steady on, Father! Hear her out.”
“We found a suffrage badge in your art satchel,
Victoria,” Mamma said. “And drawings of women at that
riot where the Pankhurst woman was arrested were in
your sketchbook. You were there?”
“You went through my satchel?” I cried.
“I’m sorry, Miss Darling,” Sophie said. “They stopped
me as soon as I arrived home and went through your
things.”
“Be quiet, Cumberbunch,” Mamma told her, taking on
that imperial tone she always used with the servants.
Sophie pressed her mouth closed. She looked at me, her
eyes desperate.
“Explain this.” Father fumbled for something alongside
his chair. He held up my art satchel and dumped it upside
down. My sketchbook tumbled out, accompanied by a cascade of WSPU leaflets, charcoal pencils, conté crayons, and
the
deeds not words
pin. “Every secret you harbor is in
this bag.” He threw down my satchel and snatched up my
sketchbook. He turned to a page and held it out. I stared at
my nude drawing of Will. His face was half covered under
my father’s thumb. “This . . . filth . . . this muck. Sir Henry
said you’ve been meeting a man at his home in Chelsea and
saw him . . . unclothed. Had a sordid dalliance with him,
too! Who is he?”
I could not breathe. I could not speak. My knees sagged
and I sat down on the footstool.
“Cumberbunch!” my mother said. “You are her chaperone. Surely you knew about this?”
“I did,” she said boldly, stepping forward. “It . . . it’s
not right for you to stop her from drawing and the like.
She loves it. She helped the suffragettes with art for their
mural, that’s all. She did everything else you asked. She
was even a success with the king! She wasn’t doing anything wrong or hurting anybody—”
“That is none of your business,” my mother snapped.
“Our rules for our daughter were laid out for you when
I hired you. It’s not for you to say what she should or
shouldn’t do.”
“Leave her be, Mamma. It’s not her fault,” I said.
“You are dismissed, Cumberbunch,” Mamma said.
“Pack your things and leave in the morning.”
Sophie wrenched her spectacles off and rubbed her
eyes with the back of her sleeve. Her face looked so different without them, vulnerable and naked.
“That’s not fair, Mamma! Sophie didn’t do anything!” I
said.
“And that is exactly why
Sophie
must leave. She should
have come to me directly this nonsense began. Utter
betrayal. Now I see what the true reason was behind Joan
Hollingberry’s marriage to that unsuitable man. It was you,
wasn’t it? You encouraged it, and now you’ve ruined my
daughter. And if you think you’ll get a character reference
from me, Cumberbunch, you are sorely mistaken.”
“You can’t do that to her!” I said. “If you punish her for
my behavior, I’ll never forgive you—”
“You wouldn’t have been able to get up to this mischief
without her help.”
“Enough of this!” my father said. “That will be all,
Cumberbunch.”
Sophie bobbed her head. “I’m ever so sorry, Miss
Darling,” she whispered, and then dashed from the room.
“This isn’t right!” I said, but my parents ignored me.
“Freddy, please tell them.”
But no one listened to me.
“I cannot believe this.” Papa’s voice rose. “I cannot!
How did I lose control over my entire household?”
“Papa, please let me tell you,” I said, hoping that he’d
listen, hoping that I could reach through his anger and convince him. “I’ve been accepted into the RCA. Let me tell
you what I plan to do—”
He rapped his fist against the mantelpiece. He shook
the sketchbook at me. “This is over, do you hear me? You
will forget these silly notions of yours!” And then, before I
could blink, he cast my book into the fire.
“No!” I fell to my knees at the hearth and reached into
the fireplace.
“Vicky, stop!” Freddy dropped beside me, grabbed my
shoulders.
I reached in to drag the sketchbook out, my fingers
blistering as the flames licked round them. But I was too
late. The book caught fire, and I could only watch as the
flames engulfed the pages and the undraped drawing of
Will turned to cinders. Rage began to bubble up inside of
me then. It was like a spring that had lain quiet for a very
long time, just waiting for the right pressure to give way
and turn into a geyser. I stood up.
“You don’t care about me, do you, Papa? You don’t know
anything about me, who I am, or what I love!” I shouted at
him. “I’m nothing to you. You only care about your business! You have never been a father to me and you’re never
going to be!”
My father covered the short distance to me in two long
steps. He raised his hand and slapped me across the face so
hard that my head snapped to one side.
“George!” Mamma cried out.
I pressed my hand to my cheek. My father had never
raised a hand to me in the whole of my life. I didn’t know
what was worse, the pain or the humiliation.
Papa stared at his hand, stricken, as if he couldn’t
quite believe what he had done. Then he turned on his
heel and left the room. A moment later I heard the front
door slam.
Freddy came to me and pulled my hand away. I saw my
reflection in the mirror over the fireplace, and there was a
red hand-shaped mark on my face. I saw my mother in the
mirror, too, her eyes wide with disbelief.
Freddy began to pace the room, shoving his hands
through his hair so many times that it stood up in a tangle. “What a terrible, terrible mess this is. My God,” he kept
muttering over and over.
I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t make any words
come out.
“What shall we do, Frederick?” Mamma asked, once
again turning to a man for help. My mother couldn’t rely
on herself, even in a crisis. In that moment, I think I hated
Mamma for her weakness.
Freddy stopped pacing. “She’ll come to my house. Let
things settle for a bit.” Freddy pulled the bell sash. Emma
came in, looking scared. “Can you please pack a valise for
Miss Darling? Go with her, Vicky.”
The pain in my heart was astonishing in its intensity.
Just drawing breath took effort. My legs felt leaden, but
somehow they carried me out of the room. I did not weep.
The tears could not come. I wanted only to crawl into bed
and sleep. And when we reached Freddy’s house, that was
exactly what I did.