The Sealed Letter Read online

  ***

  The following afternoon, Fido should be supervising the printing of the Friend of the People, one of the contracts on which she most relies. But she can't settle. Finally she leaves her most reliable clicker, young Mr. Head, in charge. She sends a boy to hail a growler from the stand and tells the driver, "Eccleston Square, if you please." That's one of the paradoxes of being a lady, it strikes her: it's more respectable for Fido to rattle along in one corner of this four-wheeled growler, which could bear a whole family, than if she took a low-slung hansom meant for two.

  Outside the house on Eccleston Square, an aproned man is scattering fresh gravel and watering it to keep down the dust. When Fido steps down and looks up at the green railings, it's all so much the same as the day she packed her cases to leave that she's gripped by a subtle nausea, and almost wishes she hadn't come. So many things have come rushing back to her in the single day and night since she's found Helen again: they spill out of her memory like coins from a shaken box.

  Mrs. Nichols, the sour-faced housekeeper, greets her by name as if it were only yesterday, and has a maid show her into the dim drawing-room. Apart from the dark panelling, everything looks brand new. Muslin curtains shift above the plant-crammed glass cases built into the windows; the grate is filled with a paper peacock. The wallpaper's green and pink, embossed with a creeping vine pattern. The room seems to Fido to hold three times as much furniture as in the old days, and every high-shelved whatnot or occasional table, every chair leg or handle, is bronzed or scalloped or carved with flowers and animals. She counts ormolu vases, photographs of unfamiliar garden parties, Bengal shawls, gilt-eyed wally dogs. Jardinières cascading with silk ferns, domes of polished wax fruit, a glass globe of silver fish, as well as cages of skylarks and parrots and cockatoos (some stuffed, one—startling her with a shriek—very much alive). "It's all different," she says, spinning round as Helen glides in, wearing a lilac wrapper.

  Her friend grins as she unlocks one of the dozens of drawers on a marquetried chiffonier and produces a tea caddy and sugar basin. "I've only just begun. It'll take me at least a year to prettify this old barracks of a house, but I had to tackle the drawing-room the moment we unpacked. I've been roaming Whiteley's and Swan and Edgar's like a madwoman. Look at this cunning little iron casket, can you guess what it is?"

  Fido opens it, and a glass inkstand pops out.

  "And these are real leaves, electro-plated—whatever that means," says Helen with a giggle. "I'd have everything up-to-date if Harry would only loosen the purse-strings," she adds under her breath.

  Oh dear, thinks Fido, recognizing an old theme.

  The two of them settle against the plump crimson cushions as Mrs. Nichols brings in the tea tray. "I've been playing forfeits upstairs with the girls," Helen explains.

  And here they come, in their white pinafores. Nan and Nell both have their mother's copper hair, brushed back smoothly under black bands, and their father's height, which makes them stand a little awkwardly on the scarlet and emerald Brussels carpet.

  "Darlingissimi, I wonder do you remember Miss Faithfull, who used to live with us before we went to Malta?"

  "I believe so," says one of the girls uncertainly.

  "But we always called you Aunt Fido," says the other.

  "Indeed you did," Fido tells the child with a surge of warmth, "and I'd be honoured if you'd do so again."

  "Nan's a stupendous pianist these days," says Helen, beckoning to the older girl and sliding her arm round the narrow waist as if she's guessed that Fido has no idea which is which, "and very sensitive with a watercolour brush. As for Nell—"

  "I'm much less accomplished," volunteers the younger girl.

  "—but far more moral," adds her sister.

  Fido laughs. "You share your sentences, the way you used to share your toys."

  "Oh, they share everything, even their faults," Helen tells her. "They're a perfect conspiracy."

  Fido scrabbles for a memory. "You both had a craze for spinning tops."

  "We have a collection of thirty-four—" Nell confides.

  "—but we don't play with them anymore, it's beneath our dignity," says Nan.

  This makes their mother yelp with amusement. "These days it's all stereoscope, stereoscope," she says, gesturing to a mahogany and brass device on a tiny table. "Every time I turn around I find them attached to the contraption, which can't be good for their eyes."

  "But it's marvellous, Mama. Things seem so very real."

  "It's so much better than the old magic lantern at the Allens'."

  "When I look at the Stereo View from a Precipice, I feel as though I'm going to topple in," adds Nan.

  "Topple off to the schoolroom now, if you please, so Mama can talk to her friend."

  Nan leans into the visitor's ear on her way out. "Are you going to live upstairs again, Aunt Fido?"

  She jumps. "No, my dear," she says, too heartily, "but we'll see a great deal of each other, I hope."

  The girls sketch a simultaneous curtsy, and the maid closes the doors behind them.

  It's oddly difficult to be alone with Helen, Fido finds. She hears herself swallow.

  Helen's smile is tight. "When I spotted you on Farringdon Street, yesterday, you looked so—so changed, I hardly dared hail you."

  "Older and fatter, you mean."

  "No, no. I believe it's that you don't curl your hair anymore, and it's cut to your shoulders. And the shorter skirts."

  Dowdy, Fido translates. "Yes, we working women tend to follow the country style," she says. "Nothing that will catch in machinery or trail in the dirt."

  "Harry would never stand for an uncorseted wife," remarks Helen.

  Is there a little envy in her tone? A pause. It's harder to keep the conversational plates spinning here than it was on the street. The pouring of tea takes up half a minute, then Fido launches into an enthusiastic précis of The Notting Hill Mystery.

  "Well," says Helen, leaning back on the cushions, "I'm relieved you still have at least two relaxing habits in your ever-so-strenuous way of life. Novels and cigarettes."

  "How did you—"

  A giggle. "Yesterday, when I held your hand in the Underground, my fingers smelled of Turkish tobacco afterward."

  "Mock all you like," says Fido, sheepish. There's no rational reason why a woman shouldn't smoke, especially if she finds it beneficial to her health—but somehow Fido prefers to do it in the privacy of her bedroom. "As for my strenuous way of life, I must tell you, work has been a revelation to me. What is it Mrs. Browning says?" She strains to remember. "Yes, that work is worth more in itself than whatever we work to get."

  One slim eyebrow soars. "Hadn't you ever worked hard before you started going in for your rights?"

  "Oh, Latin lessons with my father, sewing clothes for parish children," says Fido with a wave of the hand, "but nothing meaningful. When I happened across a copy of the English Woman's Journal and discovered the Cause..." She pronounces the word with an odd bashfulness. "I marched into 19 Langham Place, introduced myself to Miss Bessie Parkes, said 'Put me to any use at all.' Oh, the thrill of spending one's energies on something that really matters—" She breaks off, belatedly aware of the insult.

  Helen's smile is feline.

  Fido almost stammers. "What I meant is—for those of us without pressing duties, children to educate, and households to run, and—"

  "Come, come, don't we know each other too well for cant? Mrs. Lawless gives the girls their lessons, and I handed my keys to Mrs. Nichols years ago. I pass my days reading, shopping, and yawning," says Helen easily. "London's so dead, off-season." She scans the drawing-room. "I'm thinking of having gaslight put in; I believe I could talk Harry into it, in the spirit of scientific progress."

  "Think again," Fido advises her. "I find it more trouble than it's worth. It leaks, stinks of sulphur, blackens the ceiling, and it's far too hot in the summer."

  "Mm," says Helen, "but so marvellously bright! Move with the times, i
sn't that the watchword for you moderns?"

  "Only real progress," says Fido, a little uncomfortable with the teasing, "not experiment for its own sake."

  "I'd call running one's own publishing house experimental. It must feel peculiar, to earn one's bread."

  Fido grins at her. "I'll tell you what, my dear—if one gets paid for one's work, one knows somebody wants it. And one gains a power to do real good in the world. The first time I ever brought a cheque to the bank, and saw it cashed into hard golden sovereigns ... Perhaps you should try it," she adds slyly.

  Helen only giggles. "I wonder, did you read about Madame Genviève last week?"

  "I don't know the lady."

  "Nor I: a tightrope walker, as well as wife and mother," she explains. "Madame Genviève was performing blindfolded at a fête in Birmingham when she toppled to her death. It turns out she was unbalanced—"

  "Mentally?"

  "Literally," Helen corrects her, "by being in the last month of a delicate condition."

  Fido winces.

  "So perhaps nature has set some bounds to female ambition?"

  "That's a ghoulish anecdote, Helen, not a reasoned argument." She cackles.

  "I always felt like a cow, in the final months. It was hard enough to walk upstairs, let alone along a high wire."

  "Come, come," says Fido, straight-faced, "what of the pride of giving life to a new soul?"

  "Speaks one who's never tried it," cries Helen, poking her in the arm. "All I remember is the smell of the chloroform, and the curious sensation of skyrockets going off in my head. After that it's simply messy and confining," she tells Fido, "and I could never summon any tendre for them till the first few months were over. A newborn's frightful when undressed: swollen head, skinny limbs, and that terrible froglike action."

  All Fido can do is laugh.

  "But tell me more about this Reform Firm, isn't that what you call yourselves?"

  "You're well informed." Fido is gratified that Helen would take such an interest in the Cause.

  "Oh, the papers from home were full of you and your comrades at Langham Place: your English Woman's Journal and Married Women's Property Bill, your Victoria Press..."

  "Then I'm sure you've read as much in the way of mockery as praise. The Reform Firm is what our enemies dubbed us—but like the Quakers, we've embraced the title, to take the sting out of it."

  "So is this Miss Parkes the boss of the Firm?"

  Fido shakes her head. "We're an informal knot of fellows," she explains, "each working on a variety of schemes to improve the lot of women. For instance, after that dreadful shipwreck last year in which all the female passengers drowned, we managed to persuade Marylebone Baths to open for women's classes one day a week."

  Helen is clearly not interested in swimming classes. "Come, there's always a leader."

  "Well, Madame Bodichon—Bar Smith, as was—could be called our guiding angel," says Fido, "as she ran and funded the first campaigns. But she's married a wild Algerian doctor and spends most of the year there."

  "How sensible of her," says Helen wryly.

  "Miss Bessie Parkes is Madame's chief acolyte and dearest friend, and set up the English Woman's Journal, and edited it till her health obliged her to resign the job to Miss Davies—a new comrade, but awfully capable—so yes, I dare say Miss Parkes could be considered first among equals" Fido admits. "My own efforts have focused on the press and SPEW—the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women—"

  "What an unfortunate acronym," cries Helen.

  "Isn't it! But five years ago, when we founded it in a surge of zeal, that seemed a trivial consideration."

  "Tell me, which of these ladies—" Helen breaks off. "You're all ladies, I suppose?"

  The question makes Fido uncomfortable. "By education, if not by birth. Miss Boucherett rides to hounds, whereas Miss Craig's a glover's daughter," she says a little defiantly.

  "But what I want to know is, which of them is your real friend?"

  Fido doesn't know how to answer.

  "Who's supplanted me?"

  For all its mocking tone, the question hits Fido like a crowbar. "Helen! You should know me better than to think I'd sacrifice old attachments for new."

  Helen's face blooms, dazzles. "How it relieves me to hear you say that."

  "There are certainly bonds of affection between us all at Langham Place, but—Isa Craig is very sympathetic, for instance, but I don't know that I could count her as a real friend. And since the death of Miss Procter—"

  "You knew the poet, personally?" asks Helen, audibly impressed. "Adelaide was our hardest worker, and our wittiest," says Fido sadly. "Since that loss, old ties have frayed somewhat, and differences loom larger. But our work still unites us," she adds, afraid she's giving the wrong impression. "There's a great spirit of love at bottom."

  Helen snorts. "I've run charity bazaars with women I'd happily see dead at my feet. But carina," she laughs, resting her fingertips on the brown satin of Fido's skirt, "if you haven't found one true intimate among the whole coven—that's a crying shame. You've such a genius for friendship, such an adhesive disposition—"

  When I was young, thinks Fido with a stab. Perhaps it's rusted up.

  "I had a sort of friend, in Malta," volunteers Helen.

  "A sort of friend?"

  "Quite a bit older; the wife of a local clergyman. The Watsons had a French governess for their wards, you see, and invited Nell and Nan over there to share lessons, which seemed harmless," says Helen bleakly. "We were all great mates till she began to turn Harry against me."

  Fido's eyebrows shoot up. "Surely he didn't—he wasn't—"

  "Oh, her attractions weren't of that kind," says Helen, "but she gained a strange ascendancy over him. Prigs are the worst of women; all that prudery hides a lust for power."

  It strikes Fido that this is her chance to enquire into the state of the Codrington marriage. She wonders if the admiral is downstairs in his study. Has Harry been told she's in the house, for the first time since the day he—regretfully, impeccably—asked her to leave?

  But she's hesitated too long, and Helen's rattling on again. "Well, my dear, if you really haven't one kindred spirit among this gang of black and midnight hags—then I intend to reinstate myself at once."

  They're both grinning at her cheek. "There are no hags at Langham Place," Fido tells her. "Bessie Parkes, for one, is so small-boned and lovely that I feel like a bull beside her. In fact, there was a comical incident last spring when some Swedish professor called and mistook me for Miss Parkes; he described her in his travel memoir as an independent, strapping female who went outside and called a cab for herself—much to Bessie's horror!"

  When Helen has stopped laughing, she remarks, "Reading about your career, in Malta—I used to wonder if you might end up marrying some earnest reformer, a lecturer on hygiene or some such. Or a vicar perhaps, like your sisters."

  Fido smiles slightly. "You know, the old maid of today is not an object of pity."

  "I've never pitied you for an instant."

  "Independence, a home of one's own, travel..." She marks them off on her fingers. "Liberty's been a better husband to many of us than love."

  "I've not a word to say against the single life," Helen protests, "I just can't quite imagine how it's done. But you'll hear no hymns to matrimony from me," she adds darkly.

  There, the subject's been laid squarely on the table. Fido speaks before she can lose her nerve. "Are you ... may I ask, are you and your husband any happier, these days?"

  A small grimace. "Mi ritrovaiper una selva oscura," recites Helen. "That's the only tag from Dante I can recall from all the Signora's lessons."

  "You've ... woken in a dark wood?" Fido translates.

  "And once married folk have strayed into the dark wood, one doesn't hear that they generally find their way out."

  "I'm so very sorry." Not surprised, though, she realizes; not surprised at all.

  "Well at least Harry a
nd I both behave rather better than in the era when you had to put up with scenes over the breakfast table," says Helen. "Somehow we've acquired the knack of getting through the days. The years, rather! Separate lives, separate rooms, separate friends..."

  All Fido can think to say is, "I'm sure he still cares for you, in his stiff way."

  "Huh! Everything you know about marriage comes out of a book."

  Fido stares at her. "That's not true. I've talked to many wives. They often speak of marriage pragmatically, as an occupation with its own duties and satisfactions. Some tell me a husband can be managed quite easily, as he wants only to be treated with deference, as master in his own house."

  "So I should pacify Harry, just as I'd soothe one of the girls if she had a stomachache, or nag a forgetful maid, or tot up a budget for coals and lamp oil?" Helen's tone is withering.

  "It's nothing more than tact. Forbearance. A hidden power."

  "You try it!" Helen rubs the back of her neck. Then, in a chastened tone, "Did living with us for all those years scare you off the whole business?"

  "Oh no," Fido assures her. "I'm afraid I've simply never felt that interest in a man that the poet calls 'woman's whole existence.' Solitude suits me," she adds. Is this true? she wonders suddenly. She thinks of solitude within a marriage, like a hearth that gives off cold instead of light. "But it mustn't be thought that my views on the advancement of women mean that I've lost faith in marriage," she goes on confusedly.

  "Well, that makes one of us."

  "Helen!" In the silence, she scrabbles for an analogy. "One may have a single bad dinner on a Sunday, without deciding to scrap the whole institution of Sunday dinner."

  "I've been choking down this particular dinner for fifteen years," says Helen under her breath.

  "Marriage is still the bedrock of society," Fido tells her, almost pleadingly. "If founded on self-respect and freedom—"

  "Aye, if," Helen interrupts. "There's the rub."