The Widow’s Secret, page 9
The last year had held many joys for Abigail; James had proved, as she’d hoped and believed, to be a loving and attentive husband, solicitous of her moods and health, expansive in his affection, and grateful for her gentle reign of their domestic sphere.
Their home on Queen Street was a pleasant, welcoming place; every journey from the Americas brought some new treasure to adorn its rooms, and James was forever procuring some new fashion or other, whether it was a Chippendale clock or a cabinet in the latest Chinoiserie style. Abigail laughed that she did not know what to do with such items, and James took her in his arms and swung her around.
“Enjoy them, my dear, just enjoy them. Upon my life, I will give you so much more one day.”
And she did enjoy them. She found herself both pleased and grateful to entertain in these fine rooms, her place in their small society now firmly restored. She was a married woman of means, her husband an up-and-coming merchant who hoped one day to rival the mighty Jeffersons or Gales.
They’d had several dinner parties, attended by some of the best families, and her heart swelled with pride whenever she walked into an assembly room or an evening at the theatre on the arm of her husband. Harrogate had been completely forgotten by everyone, Abigail most of all.
The only faint cloud on the horizon of her happiness was that after a year of marriage, she was still childless.
After the wedding, Abigail had not been prepared for the intimacies between a woman and a man, although Caroline had, on the occasion of her marriage, stammered through a vague explanation the night before as to what happened.
“You might find it a bit shocking, but it is ordained by God. Men have certain needs, my dear. I hope you do not find it too unpleasant…”
Abigail had had no idea what she was talking about, and taking note of her mother’s blushes, she had not dared to ask. Of course, she’d known something went on between a husband and wife; she was not so ignorant or innocent to realize that.
The unfortunate kiss in the pleasure gardens of Harrogate, the whispers of ruination, had informed her of that, along with the vague descriptions found in novels, songs, and plays, and yet she’d had no idea as to its precise nature, and felt apprehensive about discovering it.
The night of her wedding, she and James had stopped at a coaching inn at Keswick and been escorted to the inn’s best chamber. The door shut firmly behind them, he’d taken her in his arms. Abigail had never been as close to him, his solid, strong man’s body pressed to the length of hers as he’d kissed her, so she could breathe in the pleasing scent of his pomade, feel the scratchy wool of his frock coat. It had felt both reassuring and alarming.
“I don’t wish you to be nervous,” he’d assured her, which made Abigail more nervous than if he’d said nothing about it. Already she felt quite overwhelmed by his nearness, the sheer physical presence of him.
But in the end, after some awkwardness and embarrassment and rather determined fumbling on both sides, she’d found it not nearly as unpleasant as her mother had professed, although still quite shocking. To think that all these stiff-faced couples engaged in such intimate acts in the privacy of their bed chambers! Abigail felt as if a great secret had been kept from her, and now she could hardly believe she knew it, she kept it.
She’d shared the thought with James once, and he’d burst out laughing before giving her a smacking kiss right on the lips, there at the dinner table.
“And indeed you do know it, my love!”
Abigail had blushed, embarrassed but also pleased. Over those blissful weeks of their honeymoon, she’d found it all quite wonderful, and she thrilled to how much James seemed to love her. A child would surely be their crowning happiness, the blessed fruit of their joyful union.
And yet, after twelve months of wedded bliss, Abigail was still waiting, her disappointment matched by James’s, which made it all the worse.
So often she wilted beneath his hopeful look, his raised eyebrows, as he asked the question that was so vague as to barely make sense, and yet Abigail always knew what he meant. At least she’d never had to say the words directly, and admit that once again another month had passed without the quickening she longed for.
As the months passed, Abigail had told herself not to worry. Many women did not fall into that blessed state as quickly as all that. It could take a year or more, certainly. Look at her own mother. But that was her very fear: that she would be like her mother, who was barren for years, decades, before Abigail was born. What if she never had a child? What if she couldn’t give James the one thing he surely longed for more than any other?
Now, in June, another month was passing with the tell-tale sign of her childlessness, and as she gazed out at The Fair Lady ready to sail, Abigail’s stomach cramped in an all-too-familiar pattern. Once again James would ask in his gentle, hinting way, and once again she would have to tell him she was not with child. She would watch the disappointment cloud his eyes before he smiled with gay determination and took her in his arms.
“There is plenty of time, my dear,” he would say. “Let us not worry about something only God can provide.”
And Abigail would feel even worse. If only God could provide it, why was He not doing so? He had blessed her so much already, she felt guilty for wanting more, even as she battled a sense of resentment that she did not yet possess it.
In any case, James did not ask one of his vague, blushing questions. After they’d seen the ship off he’d retired to his study in the downstairs of their townhouse adjoining the warehouse where he kept all his shipping stock, seeming a bit distracted, no doubt by all that rested on the ship’s voyage.
Although he had not spoken of it directly, Abigail sensed that the fortunes of The Fair Lady were important – more so even than those of The Pearl, which was still in dock looking for investors. After the acquisition of a wife and a house with all its many accompanying expenses, Abigail feared the purchase of a second ship threatened to overstretch her husband’s finances, although she never asked, and James certainly never offered such information. He was far too assured, too proud and determined, to suggest any concerns or fears to her.
Abigail might possess the keys to the household and manage its accounts, but the realm of her husband’s business, its mysterious mutterings of ports and profits, customs and taxes, was not one she took any part in, and James made sure of it.
“You must not trouble yourself over such things, my dear,” he’d say when she, so rarely, ventured to ask.
With the excitement of the ship’s sailing over, Abigail went to the back parlour to meet with Cook and see about the arrangements for their evening meal, a pleasing habit she’d got into after her marriage.
She’d learned to be mistress of a household in the last year, taking on its responsibilities with a certain, expectant relish; it was so satisfying and pleasant to decide the meals, to manage their three servants, to ensure Jensen polished their few precious pieces of silver to a pleasing shine, and to inspect their stores of linen and lace, checking for rents or tears.
As a married woman, the needlework she’d once found so tedious suddenly became, if not exactly interesting, then at least pleasingly worthwhile. Instead of a pointless pillowcase, she sewed her husband’s shirts, surely a satisfying enterprise! Instead of taking tea with her mother’s insipid friends, she’d made her own friends, managing the tea table with elegance and alacrity, furthering her husband’s social interests over the passing of porcelain cups.
It was a wife’s work and she exulted in it.
Now, however, with cramps banding her stomach, she felt a weary discontent settle over her like a cold, unwelcome cloak. Another disappointment. How many more would there be? Abigail had never considered herself particularly maternal; she had very little experience of infants, and in any case she would almost certainly engage a nurse to take care of their child when – oh, please let it be when and not if – it came.
And yet her arms ached to hold that solid, mewling bundle, to present it to her husband, the only true gift she could give him. A child. A son. Or even a daughter. Someone.
“I was thinking to serve yesterday’s mutton,” Mrs Greaves, her cook, said, startling Abigail out of her melancholy, circling thoughts. “Unless you were minded to something a bit fancier? There’s clear soup as well, and a game pie.”
“That all sounds perfectly adequate.” Abigail gave her a fleeting smile. “Thank you, Cook.” She watched the woman leave, feeling adrift in a way she had not since her marriage had begun.
Why this month, above all others, should hit her hardest, Abigail did not know. Perhaps because it had been a full year since their wedding; perhaps because her namesake, The Fair Lady, had sailed today. James had produced his child, in timber and iron; she needed to produce hers. Theirs. And she could not.
“Oh my dear,” Caroline said when Abigail worked up the courage to ask her mother about it a few weeks later, during one of their frequent morning visits. Her kindly face was wreathed in both wrinkles and sympathy. “It has not been as long as all that, surely. Just one year.”
“I know.” Abigail tried for a brave smile but feared she had failed. “It only feels it, month after month. And Mr Fenton is so eager for happy news, as am I.”
“Yes, of course,” Caroline murmured, looking away, a faint blush tainting her cheeks. “It can be so difficult.”
“How did you…” Abigail trailed off, unsure of how to broach such a delicate subject with her mother. She wanted reassurance, but what did Caroline have to give her? In any case, her mother did not like to talk of such intimate things. But Abigail longed for some comforting word.
“We must trust it to God, Abigail,” Caroline said a bit severely. “There is nothing else to be done. It is entirely out of your hands.”
“I know.” But why, she wondered, did they only trust to God the things they had to? “Anyway,” she said bracingly, “Mr Fenton has not asked about it overmuch. He is quite distracted with his business of late.”
“There has been no news yet of The Fair Lady, surely?”
Abigail shook her head. “No, it is still at sea, and will be for some weeks.”
“Of course, his distraction is understandable,” Caroline murmured. “What with the loss of tobacco. I’m sure there are many who are feeling it sorely.”
“What?” Abigail sat forward in her chair, tea sloshing over her saucer. “What do you mean?”
“It’s all going to Glasgow now,” Caroline explained patiently. “Surely you have heard the talk? The Martins have given it up entirely. Soon, I daresay, there won’t be any coming into Whitehaven at all.”
“But…” Abigail felt discomfited by information her mother had known and she had not. Of course she’d been aware of the loss of trade, had heard the vague murmurs, but James had assured her it didn’t matter – that there was enough for his enterprise – and she had believed him.
“But if he cannot trade tobacco, what will he do?” she said, mostly to herself, and Caroline gave an elegant shrug of her shoulders.
“That is his business, surely? I’m sure he does not wish you to trouble yourself over it.”
“Yes, but…” Abigail hesitated. Of course, her mother would not involve herself in business matters. No gently bred woman did; it was, in these modern times, a sign of her esteemed place in society for her not to do so, but to ensconce herself in her home and concern herself with all its simple, domestic matters. Besides, her mother did not know about the winds of fortune that buffeted the shipping merchants of the town.
Abigail’s father was in wool, selling it in Cumberland and Yorkshire; he dealt in trundling carts to the worsted market in Rochdale, and stacks of oily fleeces in the warehouse adjoined to their home. To her he was the faint smell of lanolin mixed with cigar smoke. He’d invested in the Tamworths’ shipping venture, true, but only once and reluctantly at that, for Abigail’s sake alone.
“He’ll have to find something else,” Caroline said, as if it were of little importance. “Sugar or rum or spices – there is so much to be had, Abigail. Really, there is no end to the profits a man with an eye to the market could make. You should not trouble yourself. Your husband would not wish you to do so. He has two good ships. That is all that matters.”
Abigail nodded slowly, knowing her mother was right, just as she knew she would worry, because wasn’t that a wife’s duty?
And, she was realizing, there was so much she did not understand. She did not understand why the tobacco was going to Glasgow rather than Whitehaven; she did not understand why The Fair Lady had set sail for the Americas if that was the case. She did not know what James would do if he could not procure the plant that had been the basis of all his trade, but she felt a gnawing fear in her stomach that she could not push away as she returned home and then, after a moment’s hesitation, tapped on the door of her husband’s study.
“Yes?” James’s voice was brusque, and fighting a wave of trepidation she’d never felt before with her husband, Abigail entered the room.
“My dear!” James rose from his desk of deep mahogany inlaid with hand-tooled leather, a look of surprise on his face. “Is anything amiss?”
“No, not at all.” Abigail forced a smile. “I only wondered how you were. You’ve seemed a bit distracted of late, and my mother has spoken of…” Too late Abigail trailed off, realizing James would not be happy to know he had been talked about.
“Oh?” A playful smile curved his mouth as he took her hand and led her to one of the chairs by the fireplace where he welcomed potential investors. “What did your mother speak of?”
“It is of no account,” Abigail said quickly. “I only wondered – is everything well?”
A frown puckered James’s forehead but he kept his smile. “Well? Why should it not all be well?”
“Of course, of course.” One thing Abigail had learned in a twelvemonth of marriage was that her husband did not like to be questioned or doubted, and after a few uncomfortable conversations she’d stopped doing either. He was hurt by any suggestion that he could not make provision, and she didn’t want to seem as if she feared that now. In any case, she didn’t.
She was merely… concerned, and a bit curious, perhaps. She wanted to share in his worry along with his joy. “I am sure it is all well,” she told him as she touched the back of his hand lightly. “My mother spoke of the tobacco trade; that is all,” she explained as lightly as she could. “And how so much of it is going to Glasgow now. I wondered why.”
“Your mother was speaking of such things?” James sounded surprised, and not entirely pleased. “How surprising. But yes, she is correct in the main – I expect tobacco will fall off completely in the next few years, thanks to the tobacco lords.” He made a face. “They are attempting to have the whole of the market for themselves. I have heard talk of their own warehouses in the Americas, filled with hogsheads of the stuff, ready to export.” He shrugged, just as her mother had, and Abigail stared at him in perplexity. He had just sent a ship off to the Americas for tobacco.
“Are you not concerned?”
“I believe there should still be some left for one small ship.” He smiled. “But when The Pearl is ready to sail, I might make other arrangements.”
“Other arrangements? But what will you do? Will you trade in sugar?”
He shrugged again. “Perhaps. I am considering all the possible endeavours I might undertake. The world is a marvellous place, my dear. There is so much to be had – to be discovered, to be traded, to be enjoyed.” He reached for her hands and drew her up from her chair, their short interview clearly at an end. “But it is not something you need trouble yourself over, not even for a moment. What does it matter what is in the hold of my ships? The important thing, surely, is that they are mine.”
“Yes,” Abigail said, longing to be reassured. “Yes.”
“Look what Mr Jefferson has had back from his last voyage,” James said with an impish smile. He took a small wooden figurine off his desk and handed it to Abigail, who examined it cautiously.
“What is it?”
“A figure of a woman from Africa. Quite heathenish, isn’t it? Most extraordinary. You would not see the like anywhere in Europe, of course.”
The figurine was only a few inches high, the wood smooth and dark, and honed to a velvety softness. It was of a naked woman, a drooping, round-bodied figure, knees drawn up, shoulders and head bowed. The figure’s small face seemed to Abigail both placid and dejected. It looked utterly foreign, rather indecent, its nakedness riper and more obvious than any Abigail had seen, of Greek statues and the like. This was a woman – a full-bodied, heavy-breasted woman.
“It was made in Africa?” she asked. She knew nothing of the place except that it was far away and hot and dark, mysterious and impenetrable, or so it was described.
“Oh, surely not. It was found there, but it was most likely made in the East, in one of the Arab countries, and they traded it. The Africans could never make anything even of this quality, or really anything at all, at least of note. They are like dumb creatures. You may keep it, if you like.”
Abigail was not sure she wanted to keep it. She glanced down again at the figurine of the woman with its overlarge head, full, drooping breasts and rounded belly, embarrassed by it even as she felt a strange little tug of fascination. Was the woman meant to be with child? Her belly was so round, with her legs drawn up, her chin lowered towards her knees. Abigail could not discern whether the position was abject or reverent.
“Thank you,” she murmured, and she slipped the strange figurine into her apron pocket, felt its small, solid weight against her hip every time she moved, pressing against her. She could not decide whether she liked it there or not.
CHAPTER NINE
Rachel
“Come in, come in!”
Rachel gave a slightly tense smile as Jane’s husband Andrew beckoned her into the old vicarage. She’d shown up for dinner after driving home from her mum’s, and had found herself both looking forward to and dreading the evening in equal measure.
