Resurrectionists (12 page)

I looked at my gloved hands as they lay in my lap, and thought that perhaps I was the most naive girl in the universe. Of course: love. And on my brief acquaintance with Charlotte, I had no doubt that her expressions of love would omit very little.

“In any case,” he continued, “it allows us a chance to be alone.”

I nodded shyly, cursing myself for being shy. I knew I was to go home in less than a week, and our time together was so very precious.

He loosened my hair a little, and entwined a single finger in a stray golden curl. My heart lurched as he leaned in and kissed the fortunate curl delicately, then dropped it on my cheek. His breath seemed very close.

“Gette, look at me,” he said softly, his fingertips gently tilting my chin so that my gaze might meet his. In the dark, his eyes were almost black. But not sinister: feeling, tender.

“Do you know that I love you?” he asked.

I smiled. My heart fluttered madly.

“For I know that you love me,” he said, and before I could open my lips to tell him,
yes, yes, I do love you
with all my heart and more
, his own mouth had pressed against mine. Yes, he kissed me! And what an upheaval it created in my body. My skin seemed to be turned to liquid, my stomach seemed to become quite hollow, my brain seemed to buzz , and my lips – as though independent of my thoughts and my fears –

pressed hungrily against his and opened without protest to the insistence of his tongue. I had no idea that a kiss could wreak such chaos. I have seen Papa kiss Mama, but their kisses seem such a tidy affair. Virgil’s kiss was all body, all moisture, all hot
hot
blood, all pounding heart and wild thoughts. It was all I could do not to surrender to him completely, as I suspected somewhere close by Charlotte was

surrendering to Edward.

We kissed and kissed. I had no idea it was an activity one could involve oneself in for such a long time! I was intoxicated by his mouth, and every time he pulled away I would reach for him again. Finally, Edward and Charlotte emerged from their hiding place (and yes, her clothes were in disarray and he appeared quite flustered) and the four of us resumed our conversation. But by this stage I was becoming almost frantic with worry. I was certain that by now Mama had woken and that the house was in uproar because I was nowhere to be found. I couldn’t relax for imagining what would happen if I didn’t return home soon.

Charlotte and Edward stayed in St James’s Park. For all I know they are still there now, though I can hear rain dripping off the eaves and suspect that the damp could discourage even their passion. Virgil accompanied me back to Aunt Hattie’s, and of course nobody was awake when I came home. The house was not ablaze with lights and worry. I crept in as easily as I had crept out, and now, somehow, I am supposed to sleep. But two thoughts conspire to keep me awake. The first is the memory of Virgil’s lips, and how thrilling and hot and delirious it feels when they are upon mine. The second is the knowledge that in only a handful of days, I must return to France without him. Friday, 13 September 1793

I am so excessively tired that I can barely hold up my poor head. And yet, Diary, I have to relate the most recent Episode in the tale of Virgil and Georgette, for I fear it will soon come to its tragic close. I watched at my window after all had gone to bed this evening. A gusty wind had arisen, and the window panes all rattled. Windy nights always make me unsettled and, truth be told, I would rather have stayed in my warm room and burrowed down very low under my covers. But of course I was aware, too, of how little time Virgil and I have remaining to us. Just when I thought that perhaps he would not come tonight, he and Charlotte and Edward rounded the corner and waited for me in the street.

Once away from the house, Virgil pressed me in his arms and called me his “pretty, pretty thing.” He seemed quite delirious with joy to see me, and was in very high spirits indeed. I expected that we would go once again to the park, but instead we started in a different direction.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To the churchyard,” Charlotte replied, and I think I heard something of a challenge in her voice, as though she expected me to protest and say I was too scared to go near a churchyard after dark. And while, perhaps, that may have been my response under normal circumstances, I was not going to allow Charlotte to feel superior to me, when she was all but a whore, and I was a nobleman’s daughter. I grasped Virgil’s hand in mine and set my heart against childish superstition.

We approached the churchyard in the dark. The tombstones stood ghostly grey beyond the gates. All around, the trees tossed their branches this way and that in the wind. I thought at first that we would have to climb over the wrought iron, and I was prepared to do so if Charlotte did, but they all seemed to know that the gates would be unlocked and proceeded through them and towards the mound where most of the graves lay. Clearly, they had been here many times before. It hurt to know that the three of them had shared this adventure without me in the past, or perhaps even shared it with another girl in my place. And it hurt even more to know that when I had gone, they would probably still come here, and Virgil would recover from his broken heart and find someone new, while for the rest of my life I would be thinking only of him. I was growing despondent by the time Virgil pulled me down to sit next to him on a grassy patch between two graves. Charlotte and Edward daringly sat on a grave nearby, and were within seconds indulging in a passionate embrace directly in front of us.

“Not love tonight,” Virgil said, fumbling in his coat pocket for something. “Poetry, remember? If you weren’t so interested in making love you’d be a better poet, Edward.”

Edward all but dropped Charlotte and turned angrily on Virgil. “And when have you talked of anything but love since you met your French wench?”

“How dare you so infamously defame her?” Virgil demanded.

Charlotte intervened. “Stop it. What nonsense you pair go on with. Stop arguing. You know you’ll only be cooing over each other again in a few hours, so stop it.”

They apologised to each other, and everybody seemed to forget how monstrously I had been insulted. Virgil and Edward had now each produced a

notebook, and were deciding between them who would read first. In the end, it was Edward who read first, and thereafter they took turns. I cannot express to you my delight at hearing them read their own works. And it is no bias on my part, but rather plain commonsense, to say that Virgil’s work was far superior to his friend’s. I only wish that I could remember some of the lines well enough to write them down here, but Virgil insists he will make me a copy of all his best poems for me to keep forever. I could tell by the smug look on Charlotte’s face that she thought Edward’s writing superior, but that could only be Vanity, for if she had ears (which I have seen she does) there could be no doubt that Virgil was an infinitely better poet.

“How delightful!” I exclaimed when all were finished and the little books were safely tucked away in pockets. “Have either of you published anything?”

“Virgil and I are working on publishing a collection between us,” Edward said, putting his arm around Charlotte’s waist. He leaned with his back against a tombstone, and his legs stretched out before him as though completely oblivious to the poor soul who lay beneath him.

“Yes, Gette, we shall be wealthy men before long, you shall see,” Virgil told me, excited eyes sparkling in the moonlight.

“You had better hope for wealth, Virgil, as you refuse to learn any other vocation,” Edward said, laughing.

“I cannot squander my time so casually as you,”

Virgil shot back.

“Squander?”

“Learning to be an apothecary like your father. A poet must think always upon art, philosophy, the sublime. Not pills and potions.”

“My father has a noble trade, and I should be proud to learn his business. After all, our poetry has paid for nothing yet.”

“But it will,” Virgil declared emphatically. “I know that it will.”

“Enough!” Charlotte cried, and then did the most spectacularly shocking thing. She climbed across Edward’s lap. That is, she put a knee either side of him and sat there, facing him, her bosom close to his face. Edward responded by laughing and burying his nose right between her breasts. I glanced away quickly.

“It’s true, Gette,” Virgil said softly, ignoring the other two completely. “I know your mother must think I’m a ne’er-do-well, and not a fit suitor for such a wealthy young woman as yourself, but I shall make a fortune, I promise. My poetry is good – you can hear that for yourself – and I am certain it is better than other work that is published daily. I shall earn enough for a grand house in the countryside, and then I shall have you by me always.”

I gazed into his eyes, feeling my own well with tears. To be by him always was what I wanted more than anything in the world. “Virgil, we have only a few days.”

“But you’ll write to me? You’ll stay true to me?”

His voice was earnest, almost desperate. “By the time you come back next year I may be wealthy and your mother will gladly allow me to call.”

“I fear that things will have changed too much within that year, Virgil.” I was thinking now about Papa’s cousin and how Mama’s disdain for my own choice may lead her to recommend a swift marriage for me.

“But how can I live?” he asked. “How can I live if you are not to return?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

Charlotte let out a squeal of laughter across from us. Edward had loosened her dress and stays, and freed one of her breasts. His mouth closed over the nipple and she threw her head back in delight. I purposefully rearranged myself so that my back was turned to them and I could not see them any more. The wind gusted in the tree branches around us, and I shivered with cold and with revulsion. Why must Charlotte cheapen herself so? In doing so, she cheapens Love.

“We could run away,” Virgil said, so quietly that at first I could not hear him.

“Pardon?”

“We could run away. Together.”

I am not a fool. I know that Virgil had little money of his own, that running away would cut me off from my family, from the luxury to which I was accustomed. But I imagined us, living humbly together, a rural life perhaps. I could milk cows for him. I could make bread for him. As long as we are together, surely that is all that matters.

“Virgil, I don’t know if it would be wise,” I said, for although my imagination was in love with the idea, I needed for him to sway my reason.

Instead, he nodded. “Perhaps you are right. I couldn’t take you away from the elegance and comfort that is due to you. Come, let me walk you back to your aunt’s.”

He stood and helped me to my feet.

“I’m taking Gette home,” Virgil said to Edward and Charlotte.

I dared a glance over my shoulder at them. Her breast was covered now, but I could see his hand moving under her skirts. “Good evening,” she said to me with that smug, knowing look.

“We may see you again tomorrow night,” Edward said, smiling up at me.

“Good evening,” I said, trying to sound frosty and wishing I wasn’t so interested in just which exact location he was placing his hand.

And so here I am at home again. Virgil did not kiss me last night, and I am sorry for that. All was too serious for kisses, but still I wished to experience that feeling again. And, God forgive me, I have not been able to stop thinking about Charlotte and Edward, and imagining in a guilty way if Virgil and I will ever do those same things. I know it is wrong, and in fact I am almost too ashamed to write it down. But if we were married it would not be wrong.

But alas, we are not destined to marry, are we?

Who could have guessed, little book, that at such a short acquaintance you would become the repository of such tearful speculations? I am thankful to be so tired, for otherwise all these thoughts crowding my mind would keep me awake until dawn I am certain. Sunday, 15 September 1793

I cannot write for very long because my life is about to change forever. I shall explain as quickly as my pen can keep up. Yesterday, Virgil sent me a letter in his own beautiful hand, with a few new and sublime lines of poetry enclosed. Mama saw me receive it and press it to my bosom, and followed me upstairs later to demand to read it. I had to refuse. You see, in the letter he outlined his plan for elopement, and addressed my concerns about how we would live. He and Edward sometimes do work for a certain Doctor in a village some miles from York in the North Country. Virgil proposes for us to escape to this village, where he will earn enough money to support us for as long as it takes to have his poems published, which he assures me is but a few months away at the longest! Edward’s great-uncle owns a cottage up there in which we might live for a nominal rent.

When Mama pressed me to give her the letter, I threw it into the fire though I would have dearly loved to keep it. We had such a great quarrel as to make Aunt Hattie come upstairs and intervene. Mama is now determined that we will return to Lyon tomorrow at first light. But, and my pen shakes as I admit this, I shall not be here tomorrow morning. It is nearly the appointed hour. I must pack you safely among my things. I can scarcely believe it, but by the next time I write it will be from my new abode on the Yorkshire coast. And I shall be Mrs. Virgil Marley.

Maisie placed the little book in her lap and leaned back in her chair. Her eyes were aching from the effort of deciphering the old writing and she needed a break. She had only read half of it, but she was hungry. She tucked the pages back in the iron box and placed it in an empty space on her grandmother’s bookshelf. Maybe tomorrow night she would finish it off. It would be good to have a break from the television; when she was alone she always watched too much. She went to the kitchen and thought about the diary as she wolfed down a Pot Noodle. A French aristocrat and an eighteenth-century dandy eloping to Solgreve. How fascinating; better than Jane Austen. By comparison her life was positively dull. No need for her to elope with Adrian; her parents would probably be more excited than she if they married. She rinsed her fork and threw her rubbish away. Time to think of other things, mundane things. She needed a shower. She needed company and it was still a day and a half away. She went to the back door and called Tabby, who was sniffing around at the base of the old oak tree. Had the tree been there when Georgette lived in the cottage? How different had it been then?