Mrs. Engels (17 page)

“I'm certain Mr. Bouton is not suggesting otherwise,” says Lenoble.

“
S'il vous plait,
Mr. Engels,” says Pernaudet, “Mr. Bouton was simply being curious. He did not mean to cause offense.”

Frederick bends forward into a bow and takes his drink back up.

“Mr. Bouton,” he says, and salutes the soldier.

“Mr. Engels”—Bouton returns the gesture—“do forgive me if my questions are bold. I have been so long among fighting men whose manners were poor, I am prone to forget myself. I hope you can excuse me.”

“Please, Mr. Bouton,” says Frederick, “there is no need to apologize.”

And, with that, it looks like it's over, the storm blown wide. Frederick sits back and slugs down. Bouton turns his attention to lifting his bandaged leg and carrying it to a new spot on the carpet. Jenny rushes over and puts a cushion under. Ottlick turns to me with a small conversation about the weather in London and how it compares to the outside world.

“It's the only thing,” he says, shaking his head, “the only thing for which this city cannot claim greatness.”

I nod and smile for politeness' sake, but in truth, my interest is what I can see over his shoulder: Bouton and the winds still howling through the ruts on his face.

“There is still one thing I do not understand, Mr. Engels,” he says.

Frederick pulls away from Karl's ear. “What is that, Mr. Bouton?”

“Since my arrival here in London, your role has been explained to me on a number of occasions and by a number of different people, and yet I cannot seem to comprehend it quite.”

“My role?”

“Your role, Mr. Engels, your position in the International, as you call it. If you have left the situation by which you were financing it, what do you do for it now?”

This churns Karl right up. He rises—
creak!
—to stand by Frederick's chair. Slaps a hand onto his shoulder. “Mr. Bouton, please, if I may speak for my colleague. The man you are addressing, and with such ill-manner, if I may say, is our corresponding secretary for Belgium, Italy, Spain—”

Frederick murmurs something.

“And Portugal and Denmark, that's right. This, Mr. Bouton, is none other than the man in charge of coordinating the proletarian struggle
across the Continent.
”

Frederick accepts Karl's tribute with a quick nod.

“It sounds like your secretary does important work, Dr. Marx,” says Bouton.

“I can assure you he does,” says Karl. “Important work and apparently thankless.”

With a proud flick of his head, Karl seizes Frederick's glass and brings it to the drinks tray with his own.

“Have you ever fought, Mr. Engels?” says Bouton.

His back still to the room, Karl slams down his glass. “Indeed he has!” He swings round. “Back in forty-eight he was involved in no less than four important battles against the Prussians. He himself raised the red flag over his hometown. In theory
and
in practice, Mr. Engels is an expert on war. It is not for nothing we call him our General.”

Bouton smiles a conceding smile. “I did not know this history of yours, Mr. Engels, and am most glad to learn it.”

Frederick receives this weak praise with an extravagant whirl of his hand. “Now that you are in London, Mr. Bouton, I hope we shall have many more opportunities to learn about each other.”

Karl gives Frederick his drink and, mumbling quiet oaths to himself, returns to his own seat. He plumps down. Pulls the thighs of his breeches towards himself so that their ends come up over his boots to show a sliver of pale and spotted skin.

“And you, Dr. Marx? Have
you
ever fought?”

The grin comes so quick to my face I've to rush to cover it with my fan. I see it now. Karl has been Bouton's target all along. He's been going through Frederick to find his way to him. A coil in me loosens, and I feel I can start to enjoy myself.

Karl gulps down and wipes his mouth with his sleeve. For a grain of what has already been said, I've seen him drench bodies in bitter slang. This time, though, he manages to keep his temper. “If forty-eight has left us with a lesson, Mr. Bouton, it is the danger of inadequately prepared rebellions. It is my duty as a revolutionary leader to educate the proletariat towards its eventual destiny. Without instruction and guidance there can be no useful action. We all cannot, nor should we all, be soldiers. To the Revolution, as to the new society, we must give according to our abilities.”

“And the International? What does
it
do? Does it have an army?”

“Our Association constitutes nothing more than the bond between the most advanced workingmen in the various countries of the civilized world.”

“A bond?” says Bouton. “Does the bond
do
anything?”

“Its task is to infuse workers' groups with socialist theory and a revolutionary temper.”

“You mean its task is to sell your books.”

Lenoble and Ottlick both fling their arms out in objection. “Monsieur Bouton,
s'il vous plait.
We are guests in Dr. Marx's home!”

Bouton ignores them. “Don't you think, Dr. Marx, that the workers would be moved more easily by appeals to direct action than by learned treatises about labor and capital?”

Uproar. Everyone on their feet, shouting and flailing about. Everyone except Bouton, of course. And me. You won't find
me
up there bawling over politics.

Karl raises up to calm the waters. “
Bitte, bitte, bitte,
” he says, and now when he has quiet and everyone is sitting again, “You know, Mr. Bouton, you are right. Ideas can accomplish absolutely nothing. Ideas never lead beyond the established situation. They only lead beyond the
ideas
of the established situation. To become real, ideas require men to apply practical force. However—and
this
is the vital point—force must be organized by the new idea. Force without the new idea is wasted.”

Bouton folds his arms across and frowns. “You speak of action, Dr. Marx, but what action is your organization taking? I am sorry but I cannot believe it to be merely a coincidence that your headquarters are in the only country in Europe determined
not
to revolt.”

Again, chaos. Again, everyone up and shouting. This time, though, Karl follows Bouton's lead and stays in his seat. Screened by the dancing bodies and the curtain of blue smoke, he digs his elbows into his lap and lets his head fall into his hands, reaches his fingers into his brush and scratches his scalp.

“Will the cursed peace in this country ever end?”

When things have settled, Karl leaves for the cellar to choose something to fill the empty jugs with. He plods out, followed by Frederick, and now by Lenoble, Boyer, Ottlick, and Pumps. Jenny rings for Nim and helps her bring some things downstairs. On the way, she tries to collect my eye, but I look down and sit tight. I spend enough time in my own kitchen.

I'm left with Bouton and Pernaudet. Huddled like plotters on the couch, they talk in low voices in the French. I clear my throat.

“Don't you think it gives a queer air to a place, having so many people who don't want to be in it?”

They look confused.

“London, I mean.”

“Oh, London.”

“Why did you choose London, gents, if it displeases you so much?”

“This was the only place. It was either here or Switzerland.”

“I see. And Switzerland?”

They shake their heads as if to say, “You think here is peaceful?”

I use a stray napkin to rub the paint off the lip of my glass. “I've come to believe emigration can't be healthful for a person,” I says.

The two men nod, wistful.

“You know, Madame Lizzie,” Bouton says after a time, “you have the aspect of someone who has seen trouble and had to fight it.”

“That I've done my share of fighting can't be gainsaid. By nobody it can't.”

“You're not the same as these people”—he nods towards the door—“my advice to you is, go softly and do not lose yourself among them.”

I begin to protest.

“We all have our reasons for being somewhere, do we not, Madame Lizzie? In France there is war. An order out on our heads. We cannot return, not if we want to live. This is our excuse. But you, Madame Lizzie, what is yours?”

“My excuse?”

“Go easy, Bouton,” says Pernaudet, and mutters something in the French.

Bouton dismisses him. “Yes, Madame Lizzie, what is your reason for being here, away from where you belong? You must have one. We all do. If we did not, we would be back there,
n'est-ce pas
?”

“I've no place to be going back to, Mr. Bouton. This is my home. Is that what you call a reason?”

“No.”

“Bouton!”

“Please leave him, Mr. Pernaudet. Though he tries, Mr. Bouton doesn't offend.”

Pernaudet bows.

Bouton smiles. “Do
you
like it here, Mrs. Burns? In London. In these houses?”

“Like it or nay, it's where I find myself, and it's where I'll live myself out.”

“Such a pity.”

“Bouton!”

“Please, Mr. Pernaudet, I don't wish to be handled with kidskin. Mr. Bouton, I've been to Ireland only once, on a holiday with Frederick, but I still call myself Irish, and I will till the last of my breaths. Can you understand that?”

He curls his lip down. “No.”

I laugh. “All right, then, can you understand this: was I to take myself off tomorrow, back to Ireland, or wheresoever, Mr. Engels's house would fall right down.”

“No house for the Internationals?” he says. “My God, Madame Lizzie, where would we all be then?”

Where?
Nowhere is where.

A body must be where her money is made.

February

XV. The Necessary Course

The Revolution has happened. In my parlor.

Chairs overturned. Empty bottles on the chimneypiece. Half-full glasses among the plants in the pots. Fag ends in the necks of the lamps. The clod from someone's pipe stuck onto Jenny's horse painting, right where its bit ought be. And on the sofa, head to foot and snoring, their clothes screwed tight about them, morning wood standing up in their breeches: men I don't recognize.

Another fancy evening for the comrades. Another night spent with cotton in my ears and a chair against the door. And now another day spent with yesterday's smoke clogging up my bad lung?

Nay. There's something wrong in this. I must get out. I must breathe the outside air, else I'll be stuck here suffering in my heart the agonies of a caged animal till death and salvation overtake me.

I'll talk to Frederick, is what I'll do. Unload my mind on him. And by my tone he'll know I've neither leisure nor energy for debate. I'll say the house is a problem I want no more business with. Give me a job, I'll say. A proper purpose. I can no longer be happy living in a wife's constraints. Put me to good use, send me out to do what I'm fit for. No matter how mean the task, I'll perform it, as long as it brings me a distance from this place. And there's this to be said too: outside in the world I'll keep a good spirit, and will weather the severe judgments my public actions will draw down on me, for if there's any justice, there's another world with no politics biding for me above.

XVI. A Public Woman

“You must give me something to do.”

He's lying in his shirt from last night, a cloth folded over his eyes, an arm folded over the cloth. “
Ach,
” he moans, and turns his face away from me as if from a flood of unwanted light, “there is so
much
to do. So much.”

“I need to get out of this house.”

“Well, go. Who's stopping you?”

“The mess you left downstairs, is what.”

“Leave that to the maids if you must.”

“Have no fear. I won't be lifting a finger to it.”

“Good.” Keeping the cloth in place with an unsteady hand, he rolls over onto his side. “Now, if you don't mind, Lizzie, this head I have needs more rest.”

They call him a genius. They point to his articles and tell me his mind is mighty, crushing, and I won't gainsay it, if it's down there in black and white. Me, I can only know what I know, and that's the man, the meat and bones of him.

“You must give me something to do. Something useful. I won't lie idle like this any longer.”

“Go visit Jenny.”

“Oh, aye, the cure for all my ills.”

He sighs, flops onto his back again, lifts the corner of the cloth, peeps out from under it. “What's the matter with you, Lizzie? You said you didn't want any more active duties. You were very clear about that when we came to London.”

“I know what I said. And I'm not asking to command a battalion. I just want something to get me abroad of this god-forsaken shit-sty!”

He gives me the best thing he can find this early and in his condition. I'm to go to a convent in Hampstead, the Sisters of Providence, and plead a case for Edward Dalby, a comrade from Manchester whose wife has just died, leaving him with three young children he can't keep. The convent has refused his application because he's been unable to prove a stable income. I'm to meet with whoever will see me, Mother Theodore if possible, and convince her that Dalby's associates—and I can only suppose that means Frederick alone—will cover the cost of the girls' education. He gives me a letter, some money for the cab, and a further sum in case I need to pay anyone off.

“Now that I think of it,” he says, “you're probably the best man for the case. I don't know why I didn't put you on it before.”

“I must have slipped your mind,” I says, taking another sovereign from the box, this one for my trouble.

Mother Theodore is big. Big in a fashion I didn't think nuns were allowed to be big.

“What can I do for you, Mrs. Burns?” she says.

I hear her and would like to answer, but I'm frozen in wonder at how a hole in the face so small could be responsible for what hangs around it.

“Mrs. Burns?”

I shift in my seat, pull my eyes down to my lap. “Sister, may I speak to you plain?”

“Please do.”

“I'm not sure why I'm here.” I look up.

She purses. Leans herself forward onto the creaking desk. “Well, Mrs. Burns, when I find myself in a moment without a purpose, I like to eliminate from my mind those things that rest beyond the reach of my powers. Would I be right in saying you haven't come here with the flickerings of a vocation?”

I can't but smile. Her eyes—alive among the stone statues and the faded pictures of the sacred subjects—catch mine, and for a moment we're two simple lasses twinkling at each other, two lasses weary of the continual calls on us to clean up other people's messes. I've come biding for a fight, but now I feel a change happen within me: a smoothing, a softening.

“You'd be right there, Sister. You won't fit me into a habit.”

“Well then, Mrs. Burns, tell me, what
might
your intentions be in coming here today?”

“My husband has sent me in the belief that I can do something to further one of his causes.”

“Your husband? I may live behind high walls, Mrs. Burns, but I am not deaf to the local voices.”

“We're not so particular about the ceremony.”

“But you live together as man and wife?”

“We do.”

“I see. Go on.”

“He thinks that because I'm Catholic by breeding I'd have—what'll I say?—an influence that he, being only a Calvin, would not.”

“An influence? Over what?”

“Over the matter at hand.”

“And what matter is that?”

“I think he's sent you a letter about it.” I take his latest letter from my reticule.

She waves it away. “He has done more than that, Mrs. Burns. He has also come to see us, in person. And, as you probably already know, we have had to refuse his request.”

“I do know that, Sister, and I think what Mr. Engels would like—”

“I am very aware of what Mr. Engels would like. What interests me right now is what
you
would like.”

“I'd like what he wants.”

“And I would like you to speak for yourself.”

She joins her hands on the desk. The cross she's wearing—gold with green brilliants—gives me license to stay on the surge of her bust for longer than is proper.

“All right. I'm here to help a man, Edward Dalby. My husband will have told you all about him already. Do you want to hear it again?”

“I want to hear it from you, yes. That is why you have come, is it not?”

“If that's what you want, Sister.”

“It is.”

I arrange my face to a sober expression, business-like. “Mr. Dalby is a piano maker living in Manchester, and one of the soundest of bodies I know. He borrows from nobody, except in the extremes of need, and he has such a conscience that always pays back. I'm not going to lie to you, Sister, he's a Communist and has different ideas, but he's desperate. He's lost his wife to the consumption and has been turned out of his trade for his politics. He has three little girls, Sister. Gorgeous wee things. He feels he can't bring them up at home in a proper manner, and has asked Frederick—Mr. Engels—to find places for them.”

“And you think the Convent of the Sisters of Providence might be a suitable place?”

“My husband seems to think so.”

“Do you think so?”

I shrug. “I don't know, Sister. I haven't thought long on it.”

She clears her throat. Lays her hands flat on the desk, the pork of the fingers spreading. It looks like she's about to push herself up, but instead she sighs and joins her hands again. “I take it you do not have children of your own, Mrs. Burns.”

“I don't, Sister.”

“And Mr. Engels?”

“Nay, not him either.”

The pause is so long and deep I can hear my lie echo about in it. Enough of the fibs and the fiction. The time for hiding is past.

“Well, Sister, the truth be known, he has one of his own. A bastard. I know it sounds peculiar.”

“Peculiar? Nothing that happens in the world is peculiar, Mrs. Burns. It is simply what happens.”

It's only now I've said it that I understand how hard it was to say. Burning in the face, I turn away. Through the window bars, a courtyard. And through the windows on the opposite wall, classrooms. Though my sight doesn't stretch that far, I see in my mind neat rows of identical girls, each repeating the same dree task over and over. It's mean and silly of me, but I can't help thinking of the mill.

“Mrs. Burns?”

“Aye, Sister?”

“Would you like a glass of water?” She gestures to the jug on the sideboard. I shake my head. She looks down at a page on the desk. “Tell me, Mrs. Burns, is he a Catholic, this Mr. Dalby?”

“Sister, if I may?” I nod towards the water, for I've decided on it after all.

“Please do.” She doesn't move.

I get up and serve myself. “You're asking if he's a Catholic?” I says when I'm quenched and sat again. She nods. “Let me tell you something, Sister. I had a friend once. A Jew.”

“Oh?”

“He used to go round saying he didn't want anything to do with his religion, and true enough, he knew how to buy a beck of pork as well as the next. But I noticed one thing about him.”

“And what was that?”

“He didn't work on a Saturday. And he always washed his hands before his meals. And he never used the same knife to cut his meat as he used to spread his butter.”

“I'm not sure I gather your meaning, Mrs. Burns.”

“All right, then. Look at me.” I lean back on the chair to show myself full glory. “I don't go to Mass. I don't deny it. But if I'm passing a chapel, I'll drop into it, to bless myself or have myself a prayer. And I'll do it even when I've money in my pocket and have naught particular to ask for.”

“Mrs. Burns, are you saying I should look on Mr. Dalby as a Catholic even if, with his political actions, he works for the destruction of the Church?”

“You'd get to raise his children in the faith. That'd be your gain.”

She laughs, and for a moment the bleeding heart of Christ and the mournful Mary and the Savior bearing the cross and the adoration of the Shepherds and Pope Pius (may he live another hundred years) appear to laugh along with her. “You make an interesting argument, Mrs. Burns.”

She gets up—wood and leather groaning—and goes to fill a glass of her own from the jug. Sends it down like a whiskey. “You do understand we're not a charity,” she says, coming back to her chair. “The fee for boarding is thirteen pounds for the first year and twelve pounds for subsequent years, excluding uniform, travel, and summer holidays. Is it your, um, home-friend who would pay the sum? Thirteen times three makes thirty-nine pounds per year.”

“Aye, Frederick'd pay.”

“That's a lot of money, Mrs. Burns.”

“Aye, a fair amount.”

“It would feed five poor families for twice that length of time.”

“It would, you're right.”

“Give it to any of the workhouses and it would improve the lives of hundreds.”

“I can't disown it, Sister, but such charity doesn't interest me. Dalby is a friend.”

“And, you know, there are cheaper schools than this one.”

“But this is close to our home. We could keep an eye.”

“And you would not miss it? The money, I mean?”

“We wouldn't go without. Enough passes through our hands.”

“And his child? Mr. Engels's child?”

“Is grown. Has a family and an income of his own.”

A long silence that is relieved, final, by the knock on the door.

“Mrs. Burns, I do apologize, but this is my next appointment.” She heaves herself up. I gather my things. She brings me to the threshold. Here she wavers. “It is my turn to speak plainly, Mrs. Burns.”

“Of course, Sister.”

“We are not a charity, as I say, but we do have expenses. Roofs that leak. Walls that need painting. You understand.”

“I do.”

“The fees do not always cover all the costs. There are always holes to fill.”

“I know that well.”

“I cannot guarantee anything, but making a contribution to the Order would certainly strengthen your case.”

It would be easy to say I've naught about me. It would be easy to say I'll drop back during the week or have Frederick send something in the post. It'd be easy to keep it all for my own ends. But instead I open my purse and pass her the coins, including the one I've taken for myself. I close her fingers over the money.

“You know what, Sister? It's yours. I wish you joy of it.”