Resurrectionists (61 page)

“Gette,” he said, ushering me in. And his use of Virgil’s name for me undid me. I trembled and began to sob, and the next half hour is all confusion. I know he took Henri and my case from me; I know he led me up the stairs to his rooms and sat me before a fire; I know he gave me brandy, but the smell too keenly reminded me of the previous night’s endeavours and made me cry all the worse; I know that I told him about Virgil’s death and that he drew quite pale with shock; and I know that he held me in his arms and I clung to him like a tiny child and sobbed until my heart felt bruised. But when I remember all this now, it seems to have happened to somebody else. Perhaps it was the dose of laudanum that he gave me to sleep which renders the whole evening as though a dream. Feeling safe in Edward’s good care, I slid between warm covers and, for the first time since Virgil’s death, slept soundly.

It wasn’t until the following morning when I awoke, comfortable and refreshed, that I realised Edward had given me his bed. I stumbled out into the sitting room and found him curled on the floor before the fire. He had opened the bottom drawer of a large chest and filled it with blankets and soft things for Henri to sleep in. The child slept peacefully, but Edward woke the instant I came into the room. His hair was all messed with tossing and turning, and his eyes bleary.

“Gette, did you sleep well?”

I nodded and sank into a chair. “For the first time in forever.”

“I’m glad.” He sat up and stretched his arms over his head, yawned. “I know this is not how one should greet a lady, but your appearance is shocking.”

“I’m hardly a lady.”

“Last night, I thought you a phantom. You are more bone than flesh.”

“I give as much food as I can to Henri. I believe he is too small for his age and I’m desperately worried for him. It means I have sometimes gone without.”

As if he had heard his name, Henri began to grizzle in his drawer. Edward glanced in his direction then turned back to me. “Allow me to make you both some breakfast, and then today we shall buy you new clothes. You look like a beggar.”

I smiled a bitter smile. “Edward, why am I here with you if not to beg?”

“Perhaps you are here with me because I am your friend.”

His kindness touched my heart and I dropped my head to hide my foolish tears.

Edward is not a rich man, but he has no wife or family upon whom to spend his money. So he bought me two new dresses, both black because I insisted upon proper mourning wear. Neither was very expensive, but I felt his generosity was too great. Henri also had new clothes, and he looks not so sick and poorly now he is well-dressed and properly fed. I supposed I should have felt uncomfortable that Edward, while being so charitable, should sleep on the floor to accommodate me, but grief makes people selfish and thoughtless, and so I was.

New Year’s Eve arrived, and brought with it all the fears and uneasiness that the prospect of facing the future can bring. 1795. I would soon be twenty. The end of the century approached, and I tried to imagine how I might feel on the night before the calendar turned and I found myself in the nineteenth century. It seems so impossible, so strangely modern. By then, I shall be nearly twenty-five, and my life, I hope, will be greatly changed. I do not like to think upon it, but these are the thoughts that a New Year can arouse in one.

Edward and I drank wine while Henri slept, his little cheeks smooth, his long eyelashes fanned upon the silken skin. Even the fireworks, somewhere within the city walls, did not wake him. We heard the bell toll midnight and Edward yawned

conspicuously and began to talk about a good night’s sleep. It was time for me to make a decision. There is only one bed in this apartment, and yet there are three bodies. Henri is quite happy and comfortable in his drawer, but I knew Edward could no longer sleep on the floorboards for my comfort. I suppose that I could have chosen the floor –

hardship and I are now quite devoted bedfellows –

but the idea of the warm, soft, clean bed enchanted me. When Edward stood and stretched out his hand to me, I hesitated only a moment before taking it. I think that once you have loved, loved Passionately and Deeply, the physical type of your first love becomes the only physical type you may find

attractive. I knew that Edward was a handsome man –

robust, bright-eyed and smooth-skinned – but I felt no attraction to him. I remembered the time, nearly a year past, when he had almost kissed me. I had felt something then, but it was more the thrill of being desired, rather than the thrill of desire. And now, after all the death and misery to which I have been witness, to be desired seems such a vain and trivial aspiration. Still, I went with Edward, knowing I would not be the first woman to bestow her favour where she felt no longing. He had fed me and clothed me when all else was lost. I owed him.

He led me to the bed and sat me down. Stood before me and loosened his cravat, removed his waistcoat, then sat beside me.

“How I wish you would have let me buy you a blue dress, Gette,” he said, tenderly loosening my hair from its bonds. “It would have shown up the colour of your eyes.”

“I am in mourning, Edward,” I replied.

He leaned in, laid a gentle kiss upon my neck. I felt nothing. Nothing. I had deliberately blocked up the passages to feeling. It was the only way to protect myself. His hands wandered to my breasts, his fingers slipping inside my bodice. I started to tremble, but not with desire. With revulsion. He felt me shake and he turned his face up to mine, fixed me within his gaze. Without knowing why, I began to cry.

“Gette?” he said.

“I’m sorry, Edward.”

He pulled away from me. “Do not be sorry. We can sleep here next to one another and we need not touch. Unless you need the comfort of my arms in the coldest part of the night.”

“Thank you,” I said, though it was probably more a whisper. My throat had closed over and I could barely speak.

I stripped down to my chemise and slid between the covers, let the heavy material fall over me. Edward lay beside me, turned to me, touching my hair. I fell asleep like that.

Last night, Edward did not press me, and yet we slept again in the same bed, like brother and sister. I do not know how long this can continue, but if I spent time contemplating it I should be more miserable than I am already. I know Edward dearly wants me – I can see it in his gaze, I could feel it in the chaste goodbye kiss he pressed to my cheek this morning before he went downstairs to work. Who am I to refuse him?

What else do I have to exchange for my keep? It is not as though I am a virgin and must save my maidenhead for the man I shall marry. I have loved and my love is gone. He shall not come again. What matters it if I lie with another now? Edward has been good and kind to me and to Henri. Perhaps in the future he may marry me and be Henri’s father.

I cannot bear the thought. Forgive me my ingratitude. Wednesday, 7th January 1795

How I hate to depend upon generosity. Edward will not let me help him with anything. He has a maid come three times a week to the apartment,

and all is to be left to her. He says I must concentrate solely on regaining my health and taking care of the infant, and that he will not hear any protests otherwise. But the more I take from him, the more I feel that I owe. The situation is rapidly becoming unbearable, and only the remembrance of my

husband, not yet two weeks in his watery grave, stops me from surrendering my body to Edward. The loss is so fresh that to give myself to Edward would amount to a gross disloyalty. Yet he expects it, I know he does. He has not pressed me, but I see he is waiting patiently, knowing that soon my own conscience will send me into his embrace.

I cannot despise Edward, in spite of his

expectations. He is so good to us, so solicitous of Henri, giving him cordials and the like to help him become stronger and fatter. Edward is also the first rational adult with whom I have spoken for many months. Virgil, towards the end, was half out of his wits with laudanum, Henri is just an infant, and we never had friends in Solgreve. So it is nice to have somebody to listen, to offer sympathy, to be rational and responsible. I need it.

Last night, we sat at the table finishing our supper. I was feeding a reluctant Henri some mashed pumpkin –

how quickly he has become fussy over food, when scarce a week ago there was nothing for him to eat –

and Edward began to ask about the future.

“What do you think you’ll do, Gette, when you’re recovered?”

I had barely given it a thought. He misread my confusion.

“I do not mean that I intend to remove you from my apartment any time soon,” he said quickly. Then, with a self-conscious laugh, “I hope I didn’t give you that impression.”

“No, no,” I replied. “Only I haven’t thought much about the future. It seems so bleak and cold.”

“Spring will come again,” Edward said, slicing some cheese and folding it in bread. “It may not seem so at the moment, but it will. Perhaps you will remarry. Have you written yet to your parents? Do they know of your latest misfortune?”

I felt my breath trapped in my lungs. He didn’t know. Of course he didn’t, I had told no-one.

“Gette?”

“My parents are dead,” I said, pretending to concentrate very hard on feeding Henri.

“Dead? Then you have an inheritance?”

I shook my head. “They were traitors to the revolution. The government of France took their property.”

“Gette, I’m sorry. I had no idea. How much loss you’ve had to bear, you poor, poor child.” He reached a hand across the table, but I did not respond. Henri took a breath and, for reasons only known to him, began to cry loudly.

“Sh, sh, little one,” I said, dropping the spoon and putting him on my shoulder. “Don’t cry, don’t cry.”

Edward waited while Henri screamed his lungs out, then by degrees fell to whimpering and then sleepy snuffles.

“And Virgil had nothing to leave you, I

suppose?” he asked.

“No.”

“Georgette, how did he die?”

“He grew ill. You know how prone he was to illness.”

“I see. The way you spoke on the evening you arrived, I assumed he had died suddenly.”

“It was sudden. It was a shock.”

“And Flood had nothing to do with it?”

“Flood? Why would he?” No force in the

universe was going to draw from me the secret I knew about Solgreve. I especially was not going to reveal it to Edward, who would have reason to develop a terrible guilt for the small part he may have played in it.

“Flood was a sinister man,” he said.

“Flood was nothing more than an old fool,” I replied, keeping my voice even. “I shall be glad never to return to Solgreve.” And then I remembered my wedding band. You see, Diary, how haphazard my memory has become. My own wedding band – it had slipped down a corridor in my mind and been forgotten. I gasped.

“What is it?” Edward asked.

“I have just remembered. I pawned my wedding band for the money to come to York. I intended to find work or borrow some money to return for it.”

“I shall lend you the money.”

“No, Edward, you have already done so much.”

“I shall
give
you the money,” he said imperiously.

“You must have your ring. What else do you have to remember your marriage by?”

I felt helpless and desolate, and tears once more pricked at my eyes. I stood and took Henri to his drawer.

Edward called after me, “Gette, be not so proud. Let me help you.”

“I do not wish to think of it now,” I said. So here I am, faced with the choice. To leave my wedding ring in a shop in Solgreve, perhaps never to see it again. Or to let Edward give me the money and admit finally that I can no longer remain chaste in his bed at nights. I tell myself the ring is not important. But it is important, desperately so. And then, if my marriage was so sacred that I must retrieve the ring, it must also be too sacred a bond for me to abuse it by lying with Edward so soon after I have been widowed. Perhaps you think me an idiot, Diary. Perhaps you think that I should merely take money from Edward for as long as he is fool enough to give it to me, but many months past I led him to believe that I desired him. And it is that belief which convinces him his patience will reward him, and I must take responsibility for it.

Sunday, 11th January 1795.

Where to begin?

I am in Whitby. I am alone.

There, that is a start. Now I shall try to pull threads of sense from the confusion and write this down, for I have reached the nadir of my affliction and must understand it in order to continue drawing breath.

Last night Henri lay upon a rug in front of the fire, amusing Edward and me with his smiles and gurgles and attempts to roll over. I noticed at one point Edward’s firm hand pressed into Henri’s side, as he leaned over to kiss him, and I felt the first glimmer of what might be an appreciation for Edward as a man, not just as a friend. At that moment, Edward looked up and his eyes met mine, and I suppose he saw affirmation there. And so the evening’s outcome had been decided. After Henri slept – my dear, dear Henri – Edward poured me a glass of wine and we sat up by the fire, talking in quiet voices in the dark so we did not wake the baby. We spoke of Virgil, and our tears fell freely. We spoke of his passion and his gentle humour, we remembered things he had said and done, we admired lines of his poetry and laughed at his vain weaknesses. Hours passed in this manner, and at the other side of this reminiscing I felt a little more reconciled to my loss. Do not mistake me: the pain was still very great, I remain raw with grief, and I still cannot believe that I will not see my husband again. But talking about him brought me a sneaking joy, a pride that I had known and loved the best of all men. It helped me think of approaching the future, of living my life always steeped in his memory, trying to find some small happiness because Virgil would have wanted me to find it, I know he would have.

When our conversation had stilled and it could be avoided no longer, Edward rose from his chair and knelt before me. I put my arms around his shoulders and he pressed his head into my belly. I stroked his hair and closed my eyes and, because we had been so much involved with memories of Virgil, I imagined it was Virgil’s hair I was stroking. And then, it wasn’t so bad. Edward’s touch became Virgil’s touch in my imagination, and his fingers as they pushed into my sides no longer made me shudder with distaste. Perfectly normal for my husband to touch me in that manner. Perfectly normal for my husband to kiss my lips, gently at first then with more force, his tongue moving into my mouth, his hands pushing my head back against the chair.