The Corset, page 8
‘I’m sorry, Naomi, I’m so sorry.’ Apologies tumbled from my mouth. ‘I never meant …’
Naomi’s eyes rolled back. White filled the space beneath her lashes. There was a prolonged, rattling wheeze. Then she went still.
Ma’s sob ripped through the house. The adults moved around me, crying, praying, trying to restore life, but they fell into the background.
All I could see was the side of Naomi’s neck, the marks resembling fingerprints. They changed colour, became bloodless and grey. Trembling, I stretched out my hand.
My fingertips fitted exactly.
11
Dorothea
Spring is in full force! I do so love this season with its gentle, lemon light and the sense that all the world is awakening from a bad dream. The winter slush is gone, and it is too early for summer dust. One can actually walk, actually breathe.
Pink blossom rains down as Tilda and I stroll through the botanical gardens towards our usual bench. No snowdrops or crocuses line the paths, but a host of daffodils, as Mr Wordsworth would have it, sway in the breeze. Deftly, I reach down and pluck a bloom from the grass. Its petals resemble butter.
‘You’re not meant to do that, miss,’ Tilda tuts.
‘Oh, hush. It is not for me.’
I am thinking of my poor women, locked away from the soft pastel colours of nature and the trill of the birds. They have an exercise yard, certainly, but it will be a number of years before the saplings planted around the walls peek their heads over the top. For now it is eternal winter.
Tilda and I sit down on the white iron bench. The sun has failed utterly to warm it; cold bars press through my skirts against my thighs.
‘It won’t be good for you, miss,’ Tilda says, with her usual expression of doom. ‘It’s not warm enough to sit out for long periods, yet.’
She is correct – now I have stopped moving, I do feel a chill in the air. The sun, though bright, is weak and watery. But you cannot give in to Tilda, so I simply reply, ‘Bosh.’
A nursemaid and three different spaniels pass us by the time David finally arrives, short of breath. He does not wear his uniform on a Sunday – although I understand that, in London, some unfortunate policemen must.
‘Constable Hodges. What a pleasant surprise.’
He wears a dun-coloured suit, the waistcoat checked through with lines of green and red. It freshens his face. Without the tall police-hat he appears shorter, less stern.
‘Miss Truelove!’ He raises a brown bowler, gifting me with a brief glimpse of the hair beneath; not oiled and greased like so many of our young men, but natural with a light wave. The colour is unremarkable – I would liken it to the coat of a hedge mouse – yet it suits his complexion. ‘Fancy a young lady like you sitting about on a damp spring day! I wonder your maid doesn’t scold you for it.’
Tilda looks very much as if she might scold him.
‘Oh, the scolds have been plentiful, sir. You have missed them, I am afraid.’ I smile up at him. Sunlight touches his cheek and he looks quite heavenly standing there, beneath the blossom. I do not mind these little charades that have become indispensable to our meetings: the affected surprise and fictions concocted to place us at the scene together. It grants me time to simply look and feel how superior he is to other men. Of all those prominent in my life, he is the only one I can truly esteem. That is of the utmost importance in a husband. I know only too well how it smarts to be under the dominion of a man I cannot fully respect.
‘Have I? Well, I hope you’ll grant me the liberty of scolding along with her. Look at that sky!’ It does appear to be turning; the pale blue colour has bled out, leaving a remnant like milk. ‘At least allow me to escort you to the temperate house. What would I do if you caught cold? Your father should never forgive me.’
Tilda sniffs and I swallow a chuckle. A cold is the very least thing Papa has to forgive.
With my hand placed lightly upon David’s arm, we walk side by side to the great glass structure at the centre of the botanical gardens, Tilda trailing at our heels. Dirt from the path marks the hem of my new printed-cotton dress. Petals settle in the brim of David’s hat. We do not mind a jot. All that matters are his muscles, hot and tight beneath my palm, and the way our steps match, left and right, left and right, the same stride, a pair born in time with one another.
Were I now to glimpse that vagrant, the one who took off with my reticule, I would bless him. Without his crime, my love and I should never have met.
Magnolia buds tremble on the trees flanking the approach to the temperate house. With a few more days of sun, I wager they will blow. The purple tulips in the parterre are still pursed and tight-lipped – they shall take more coaxing, yet. Behind the parterre gleams the house itself, shaped like the upturned hull of a ship. Wood and copper do not hold it together; the materials are lighter: panes of glass and white iron. What with the clouded windows, one could almost fancy it a ghost ship.
David opens the door with his free arm. Steam rushes out to touch me, warmer than flesh.
Inside, all lies green and enchanted. Palms tower up to the iron arches of the ceiling. I smell them, moist and wonderfully fresh. Shorter specimens squat in clay pots, these darker in colour with a strange, chipped sort of trunk that puts me in mind of a pineapple.
About half a dozen couples dawdle in our jungle: some sweethearts with a chaperone, others ladies conversing with friends. None of my acquaintance. I note with pleasure that not one amongst the walkers regards our entrance with any interest. This is our world, apart from society, a place warm and secret.
We take the path to the right, where the broad leaves of what I believe is a banana plant brush over our shoulders as we walk. Once or twice, I detect a short exhalation of breath at my back; I can only imagine the vegetation flipped off me, straight into Tilda’s face.
‘How are you keeping?’ David asks me. ‘It feels an age since I saw you last.’
‘It has been an age. And not the Golden Age, either.’
Concern in his deep blue eyes. ‘Trouble?’
‘Not trouble precisely. Only … vexations. I have been to the prison but rarely, and I do not progress in my studies at all.’
‘Really? I thought the girl, that Butterham, would keep you occupied for months.’
Months? Lord, I believe I would need years to untangle her soul to my satisfaction. When I think of Ruth, my mind is as knotted and thick as that tarred rope I found her picking, the very first day. ‘She does interest me, without a doubt. But I had hoped to meet with a child a little less … mad.’
He laughs. ‘You did? Dotty, I don’t think a person can commit a crime like hers, without being a trifle mad.’
‘I had not thought of that. Perhaps you are right. But I have mapped the heads of such prisoners before. Mrs Smith, Mrs Wren … I expected, after reading your papers, the opportunity to measure the skull of someone truly … evil. Evil in its infant state.’
David blows out his breath. ‘Well, I would say it is a blessing that you didn’t find it.’
‘Not so! Imagine if we could devise a system to detect, scientifically, without a doubt, all evil propensities in the young. What steps we might take, what work you might be saved.’
He muses on this. Somewhere in the depths of the temperate house, moisture drips. ‘You know me, Dotty, I’m not a man of natural philosophy. I don’t like the idea of our character being written in our skulls. Somehow, it takes away the notion that we might have a choice.’ He clears his throat. ‘But tell me, what do you find in the Butterham girl, if not evil? Is she truly mad?’
Perhaps mad is unfair. ‘Hopelessly ignorant,’ I amend. ‘Do you know, she told me that she killed her sister with the strangling angel?’
He blinks. ‘You mean diphtheria?’
‘Yes! A well-known disease. Plenty of babies succumb to it. But Ruth’s neighbour called it by the common parlance of “the strangling angel” and the foolish girl thinks – she truly believes – that she summoned this angel to kill her sister.’
I see him trying not to smile. ‘Oh dear. Whatever did she summon it with? Magic words?’
‘A needle and thread.’
This time he cannot help it, he really does grin. ‘Good lord. Maybe you’ll be moving her to Bedlam, after all.’
‘If I am not institutionalised first, myself! This week has sent me half-distracted with flower orders and matching napery. We are entertaining, you see, for my birthday.’ His mouth tightens. ‘Oh my dearest, do not look cross. You know I shall not enjoy it, not a straw, without you there.’
‘You wouldn’t want me in your drawing room,’ he says quietly. ‘Amongst all that lot. I’d look ridiculous.’
‘Ridiculous! On the contrary, you would make them appear foolish, with all their silly bow ties and silk trousers. You would expose the whole affair as the inane frippery it really is. You know that I avoid society wherever I can.’
A half-hearted incline of the head. Of course he does not like to picture me there, herded about amongst eligible gentlemen, with my father pulling their strings like so many marionettes. I do not like to picture it, particularly the famed Sir Thomas Biggleswade. I have an intuition that this particular tick will be hard to shake off.
‘Still … Won’t it be nice, for you, to have a party, Dotty?’
‘I daresay I could glean some enjoyment, were it not for a certain woman who has received an invitation.’
‘Mrs Pearce.’ David’s voice is so full of sympathy, it is like an embrace.
‘I could not avoid it. Papa will have her there.’
‘My poor Dotty.’ He pauses for a moment, running his fingers along the leaves of a plant. ‘Why not …’ I stop walking too, and look him in the face. ‘Why not leave it behind? After all these years being mistress in that house, you couldn’t bear to make way for another woman. I know it. Not even if your father picked a paragon of virtue.’
‘I expect not.’
‘Well, then! Let him marry who he likes, and good luck to him. We can be far away, in a home of our own, before they even read the banns. Never mind the money. We’ll get by.’
Noble soul! He is everything that I wish I could be. No doubt he would be able to do it: forget and forgive all that has passed. But to think of that awful woman as mistress in my mother’s house raises feelings so bitter and unchristian that I am sure they would sour our lives, wherever we might turn.
‘I think, my dearest, that is precisely what he wishes: to move me out of my home and put his paramour in my place.’ I catch Tilda’s beady eye, hovering between green spines. ‘Should they have children, I would be cut out of my inheritance on his side.’
‘And so? What is that, to us?’
‘Little, I suppose. But how would Mama rest easy?’ A cloud of steam drifts up into the leaf canopy. My imagination paints it as her spirit, wandering, lost. ‘It is her house. Papa’s fortune is primarily her money. Imagine it all settled on Mrs Pearce and her spawn!’
‘Your mother would want you to be happy, Dotty.’ I gaze into his earnest young face, beaded with sweat in the heat, and realise he will never have troubles like mine. Such a clear-cut, worthy skull. Whereas my own … ‘I think your mother would ask you, as I often do, what exactly it is you are waiting for.’
I take a breath to speak, but I cannot put the answer into words. In short, I am waiting for a miracle. To find a way to marry the man of my own choice without forgoing all the comforts of the station I was born to. To remain at once David’s wife and Mama’s daughter. It does not seem just that I must decide between my love and my birthright.
‘You are correct,’ I admit. ‘The time is approaching. I should set a date …’
Tilda steps abruptly out from behind the plant. Her cheeks are flush, though not in a pleasant way. She looks like a rhubarb.
‘Pardon me, miss. I think it’s time you were getting home.’
12
Ruth
The house descended into a sepulchre. Curtains shut out the light, clocks were stopped at the minute of Naomi’s last wheezing breath. I couldn’t cry. I was too numb for that. My heart didn’t seem to beat at all.
Now, at night, the flashes came with greater intensity. Not just the blood of Naomi’s birth but the awful struggle of her death. I saw her choked face. Sometimes it was mine. Sometimes my fingers were around her neck and I was sobbing, begging for someone to stop me. But if I cried out in my sleep, my parents didn’t come with reassurance. Their own sorrow absorbed them as they sat up to keep watch with the corpse, and I was left alone to stare at the empty crib. Only the corset embraced me. Refused to let me go.
There was no money saved against a funeral. We feared Naomi would end up in the common pit until Mrs Simmons set up a subscription to bury her in the churchyard. ‘I’m so ashamed,’ Pa kept saying, ‘I can’t even bury my own daughter,’ as if that were the hallmark of every good parent.
On the day of Naomi’s funeral, the callous sun shone with all its might. Ma tottered out of the house on Pa’s arm, wearing a weeping veil that brushed her hips as she walked. Every step cost her effort. For me it was different. I stood beside my parents, ready to walk to the church, and my mind was cold.
The little handcart trundled out, bearing poor Naomi bound up in her shroud, the wheels maliciously cheerful on the cobbles.
We followed behind. Summer was upon us, bringing with it the river stink and another smell from Naomi’s cart: ripe and low, like rotting meat.
I roasted in my one good gown, which I’d dyed black for mourning. Beneath it, my corset squeezed, trapping its own layer of heat. I deserved to swelter. But poor Naomi didn’t deserve that pauper’s burial, her corpse bumping over cobbles as dust curled up from the wheels of the cart. If only the charitable subscription had stretched as far as a coffin! But death is an expensive business, miss, as I’m sure you know.
Under a sky of hard, glazed blue, we entered the churchyard. Posturing angels and death’s heads loomed over us, half-devoured by lichen. The place was a mess of bracken, moss and nettles. We approached a rectangular grave, fresh cut and pitifully small, like a privy pit.
It wasn’t that long ago we’d gathered in the chapel for her christening. Now the minister looked pained, his voice husky as he said, ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.’
Ma remained frozen until she heard the hollow pat of Naomi’s body meeting the soil. Then she folded in half. Pa held her, his sobs drowning her own, and I wanted to be anywhere, with anyone, rather than there in that horrendous tableau.
The vicar intoned his ancient words. He spoke of God’s kindness to children. Now, I thought. Now someone will look at me and realise what I’ve done. They’ll hear my heart pounding.
But no one did. God didn’t strike me down. Soil tumbled upon Naomi, even a clump from my own hand, and still nothing happened. The vicar blessed me, just like the rest, and sent me home to love and serve the Lord.
Our house looked tired and grey when we came in from outside: a place buried in silt. Shadows crept out from under the chairs, spreading across the floor towards the kitchen. There, flies droned over my abandoned tubs of lye and dirty clouts.
There would be plates to clean, as well as the laundry. I hadn’t been able to keep up with it all. After Naomi’s death, my first menses had arrived – the mark of Cain, I thought – leaving me with even more to wash. Odours of sweet blood, dirt and grease mingled together; our home was marinating in the scent of death.
Ma was no help – her eyes were worse than ever. I watched her grope her way across the room to collapse in the comfortable chair.
Pa went straight to the box where I’d packed up Naomi’s things. He looked smaller, somehow, hunched over her binder, barracoats and shirts. Every item he turned over in his hands drained him, took something else from his face. Soon I would be able to fold him up and pack him away too, there was so little substance to him.
At last he settled on the plain cap I’d made, still waxy from her scalp. He tucked it under his waistcoat, next to his heart, and shut the box.
How quiet the house was. No baby crying, no clocks ticking; only the buzz of flies, on and on, the lullaby of decay.
Pa lifted his morose eyes to me, but I had nothing to offer. He wet his lips. ‘I … I don’t know how to occupy myself, now.’
‘You could paint, couldn’t you? Or do you not do that, any longer?’ We both flinched from the venom in Ma’s voice. I’d never heard her speak like that – but then I’d never seen her look like that either: ugly, her pretty features contorted by grief.
‘Jemima, how can I possibly set my mind to work? Our little girl—’
‘We still have a daughter,’ she snapped. ‘One I would very much like to keep alive, if it’s not inconvenient to you.’
The atmosphere had shifted, quick as a blink, from despair to rage. Pa glared at her, his chest rising and falling beneath his black waistcoat.
‘So that’s your conclusion, is it? You’ve decided Naomi’s death was my fault?’
‘Don’t say her name!’ Ma screeched. ‘Don’t you dare say her name.’
Silent accusations ate their rapacious way through the air. I longed to tell Ma and Pa the truth, to stop them hurting each other, but my lips refused to part.
‘There’s no guarantee that a physician would have been able to save her,’ Pa said at last. ‘You heard Mrs Simmons talk about her husband. He saw many children who—’
‘She would have had a chance,’ Ma cut him off. ‘Naomi wouldn’t have been so weak and sickly if we could afford to feed her properly, to keep the place warm. God above! When I think of her skinny little arms! It would have been kinder to put her in the workhouse!’
‘Well, perhaps I would have been able to paint superior pictures if my studio wasn’t full of women’s frippery.’
‘I had to sew up there.’
