The Sealed Letter Page 8

  Hour after hour, she waits for a reply. The time for calls is almost over. Her husband, who's spent the day down at Deptford ogling some new armour-plated sloop or screw (Helen's always refused to learn these distinctions), comes in for a speechless cup of tea. He studies a report on naval reform; Helen reads the latest installment of Our Mutual Friend, but she keeps forgetting who's who. It feels as he and she are in a honeycomb; walls of wax keep them apart.

  The bell, at last. The maid pops her head in to announce Miss Faithfull, and relief floods through Helen's veins like sugar.

  Harry's face is neutral. "Show her up."

  He's holding out his cup; she registers that he'd like more tea. Why won't the man make himself scarce?

  Fido comes in looking tired. Helen's ribs feel bruised. She gives Fido an apologetic grimace, to say if only we were alone!—but Fido stares back like a stranger.

  Harry stands up to greet the visitor, all unbending six foot five of him. Glimpsing him through Fido's eyes, Helen finds his height almost freakish. Not an aristocratic Norman, no, some older race: he rears up like some implacable, axe-wielding Hun.

  They all sit down and pass round the rolled-up bread and butter. Harry asks after one of Fido's brothers, who's recently been promoted to the rank of captain. Soon they've moved on to her precious Cause. "But you see, Admiral, already a full fifty per cent of British women work for their bread," Fido is telling Harry, "and often at gruelling, repetitive tasks such as chain-making or mining at the pit brow."

  "Ah, poor men's wives and daughters, that's quite another thing," says Harry. "But when it comes to women of the middling or upper orders—"

  She interrupts him. "At our Employment Register, I'm constantly meeting the pathetic dependents of gentlemen whose fortunes have dwindled in the stocks, or who've otherwise failed to make provision."

  "Girls like Nan and Nell?" asks Helen. She can see her husband's shoulders rise, and she almost giggles.

  "Of course your daughters are charmingly accomplished," Fido says hastily. Then, after a moment, she goes on: "But to what profession could they turn their untrained hands if by any chance that dark day came? I suggest that it's no natural incapacity, but only custom and law that would prevent them from working in shops or offices, administering institutions or estates..."

  Harry lets out a huff of breath. "I don't think I'll have much trouble finding my girls husbands."

  My girls, says he, Helen thinks, fuming, as if they sprang from his thigh!

  "Forty-three per cent of Englishwomen over the age of twenty are single," Fido announces.

  The statistic makes him stare.

  "I declare, Fido, you're a regular Blue Book," murmurs Helen.

  "Ah," says Harry, holding up one massive finger, "but if you and your fellow Utopians were to train up well born girls, to render them independent of my sex—if you succeeded in turning single life into a pleasant highway, and marriage just one thorny path opening off it—then why would they marry at all?"

  A pause. Fido chews her lip. "Matrimony is the special and honourable calling of most women, Admiral, but from lack of personal experience, I can hardly discourse on its allure."

  Harry holds her gaze for a moment, then lets out a laugh.

  Helen's been forgetting how much these two liked each other, in the old days. He's always respected her mind more than mine, she thinks, a little rueful.

  "It's been a pleasure, Miss Faithfull. After all this time. Now I'm afraid I have letters to write," he says, rising.

  As soon as the two women are alone, the silence clots like blood. Helen makes herself set down her cup and begin her speech. "The other day at your house, my dearest, in a moment of frailty for which I've been excoriating myself—"

  "It was a long moment."

  Helen's cheeks are flaming; she's lost control of this scene already.

  "Your conscience is your own affair, I suppose." Fido speaks with a rigid throat. "But I'd have expected more of your manners."

  Manners? Is this what it comes down to—an offence against English etiquette? Then she looks hard at Fido—the averted eyes, the compressed lips—and understands. The offence is against friendship. She's hurt that I didn't tell her everything before, she realizes; she can't bear the fact that it was her sofa. On impulse, she falls to her knees.

  "Whatever are you doing?" Fido barks.

  For a second, Helen doubts her strategy—and then decides that too much is better than too little. "Begging your pardon most humbly and sorrowfully," she answers, very low. Like some scolded dog, she lays her head on Fido's navy-blue skirt. "You do right to cast coals," she whispers. "But let me just say that the thing was not ... premeditated."

  A pause. "Really?"

  Aha, thinks Helen: she wants nothing more than to forgive me. She's been longing to let herself take me back! She sits on her heels, wipes one dry eye.

  "Get up, Little One. Come sit by me. I blame myself, in some ways," says Fido into her handkerchief.

  Helen stares: whatever can she mean?

  "After all, it was I who urged you to make the decisive break," says Fido in a low whisper. "Perhaps I was naive; perhaps my ignorance of the other sex blinded me to the dangers. When a battle-hardened veteran sees all he longs for about to be snatched away—"

  She thinks it was all Anderson. She's as gullible as a child, on certain subjects, Helen marvels. She starts nodding. "He was very fierce..."

  Fido seizes her by the wrist. "And I was stupid enough to leave you alone with him, in my own drawing-room. My darling—did he hurt you?"

  "No, no." Helen's gone too far. What, does Fido know so little of men that she thinks them all savages? Helen looks into her satin lap. How much can she risk admitting? "Perhaps it's not the male heart that's your blind spot, Fido, but the female." A pause. "When I said I meant to put a stop to this passion: it was not just his passion I meant."

  A terrible silence. Her friend's plump cheeks cave in. Has Helen blundered? "I've always needed you to protect me from my weaker self," she pleads, "but never more than now."

  "Oh my poor girl." Fido wraps her in a hard embrace.

  Helen's head is crushed against her friend's ribs; she smells ink. She feels weirdly at peace.

  "If you've surrendered your heart to this man ... then I won't bother with stern platitudes, after the fact. But you must see that you've lost your way," says Fido, pulling back and fixing Helen with her doggish brown eyes. "It's not a question of conventional morality, so much as truth. Authenticity. Self-respect, as I've said before."

  Helen isn't listening; she's preparing her next line. "Sometimes I fear my feelings for him will master me," she says in a tiny voice. "That he'll drag me from my husband, my children, even..."

  "Don't say it! Don't even speak those terrible words. My love is as strong as his," says Fido, "and I mean to save you."

  The woman looks magnificent, Helen observes curiously; those plain features are transfigured. "Oh Fido, you're all that stands between me and the pit!" The two are silent, for a few moments, and their hands knot together like the roots of trees.

  Fido clears her throat. "On a horridly practical note ... what if there were to be an accident?"

  Thinking of crashed cabs or falls from balconies, Helen is bewildered, but then she understands her friend's awkward tone. She almost giggles. "Ah, no, set your mind at rest," she murmurs. How revolted Fido would be to learn of my sponges and douches!

  "Well, at any rate, you mustn't see him again; don't you feel that?" asks Fido fondly. "I imagine it's like giving up opium; they say 'cold turkey' is best."

  Helen sits bolt upright. This isn't how the conversation is meant to go; her elaborations have led her astray. "On the contrary," she improvises, "if I were to cut Anderson off now—that would be the most dangerous thing I could do. Why, it could make him desperate enough to tell my husband."

  "He wouldn't dare!"

  "Can I risk it?"

  Fido writhes. "You could deny everyth
ing, if it came to that."

  Oho, thinks Helen with silent mirth, what price truth now?

  "What proof could Anderson—"

  "Letters," Helen interrupts, squirming, "gifts: a locket of my hair." Her friend covers her mouth. "Worse and worse."

  "No, I must teach him how to give me up, step by step, little by little," insists Helen.

  "But delay is so dangerous..."

  "You mean we might be discovered?"

  "Spiritually dangerous," snaps Fido. "Corroding your very self, day by day."

  Helen resists the impulse to roll her eyes. "You must help me," she says. "Help us both."

  "Both?" cries Fido, disgustedly.

  "Anderson means me no harm."

  "How can you say that? The blackguard's already treated you like a..." She doesn't say the word. "In my drawing-room!"

  "Half the fault was mine," Helen reminds her. "You must be our friend now."

  "Yours, only yours."

  "His too, if you would be mine. Our confessor. Our saviour."

  Fido's face twists like a sail in the wind. Helen, watching, can see the moment of surrender. "Anything I can do which is consistent with—"

  "Bless you, bless you," Helen interrupts, pressing her mouth to Fido's fiery cheek.

  ***

  September 15

  Destroy after opening

  Little One,

  As promised I have forwarded yours of yesterday to the person in question, and enclose one in reply. You'll see I'm not using my own seal on the envelope, for discretion's sake.

  I loathe these sneaking measures, but having weighed them in my heart I believe they can be justified for the sake of a greater good, i.e., preserving you—and your whole family—from disaster. For all / I've said in critique of marriage, the fact remains that when you accepted your husband fifteen years ago, you set sail in this particular vessel, and your whole future depends on averting a shipwreck.

  It still seems to me that further encounters with the person in question will only lead him to maintain false hopes, but I give way: the breach is yours to accomplish, the safest way you can manage (and after all, what do I know of the opaque workings of the male heart?). His imminent departure from these shores will I trust ring down the curtain on this dangerous drama, and tho' I realize you will suffer, when he is gone, I can promise you all the consolation stored up in my heart.

  I have not slept at all well since you entrusted your awful story to me, but sleep, my dearest, is the least I'd sacrifice to a friendship I thought extinct but which a merciful and mysterious providence has seen fit to return to us, like bread that was cast on the waters. I am at your back: remember that. Don't say you're "unworthy," my sweet girl; it brings tears to my eyes. Your heart is a wayward one, but there's no evil in it. Besides, when has "worthiness" ever been the criterion for friendship? The love of women is like the pull of magnets. Since the first day I met you on that beach in Kent, I've belonged to you, and always will.

  If as you say it's absolutely imperative for you two to meet in a safe place, then I relent: I have told him to come to my house at half past five tomorrow (the sixteenth) and will expect you half an hour earlier. I need hardly say that I will remain in the room throughout, and I trust you not to allow him to take any further advantage of my hospitality.

  Yours as ever—

  ***

  In Fido's austere drawing-room at Taviton Street, Helen avoids the sofa's associations and picks an old straight-legged chair near the fire.

  Fido draws her own chair closer. "Prepare yourself, my darling. You must be very strong."

  "Oh yes?" says Helen, irked by Fido's sepulchral tone, and wondering why there's no cake on the tea table.

  "You believe you know this man, for whom you've risked ruin?"

  Ruin, echoes Helen scornfully in her head; really, she's read too many potboilers.

  "Well. I took it on myself to make enquiries among my Scottish relations, for any insight into Anderson's character, and this morning I received some alarming information."

  Helen smiles. "What have the detectives discovered, that he once lost a hundred pounds at cards?"

  Fido's eyes rebuke her. "He's been linked to one of his cousins."

  Helen waits. "Linked?"

  "With a view to marriage."

  The word makes her mouth curl up. "Whose view? Every eligible bachelor home on leave has the old hens of his family plotting to marry him off."

  Fido shakes her head. "My informants were quite specific. This cousin, if you can believe it, has been linked formerly with the colonel's brother."

  She's enjoying this, thinks Helen with a vast irritation, but she laughs. "That coda seems to explode the story entirely. So this girl makes eyes at his brother one summer, and Anderson the next, and means equally little on both occasions."

  Fido sits back, sucking her lips. "Very well, if you don't tremble at having placed yourself in the shopsoiled hands of the kind of man who dallies with prospective brides—"

  "I have no need to look as far as Scotland for imaginary bogeys," snaps Helen. "What makes me tremble is his imminent return to Malta, abandoning me to several more decades of misery with a corpse of a husband."

  Water erupts in Fido's cocoa-brown eyes. "I didn't mean—" She puts a hand on Helen's magenta overskirt.

  A distant doorbell: thank God.

  Colonel Anderson is announced. He's only a little awkward. Fido, very much on her dignity, gives him a cup of coffee.

  Helen considers various possible tones and plumps for light satire. "Well, Colonel, you're very good to spare us an afternoon before you take an express train north again. The Scotch climate must have special charms."

  The gold moustache wobbles; a half-smile. "Not sure I catch your drift, Mrs. C."

  "Oh, was I misinformed? Haven't the dowagers of the Anderson line taken to matchmaking?"

  He relaxes into a laugh. (It's this face she loves, Helen realizes: a lad's loose grin.) "What can I say? It would be cruel to stop up their mouths."

  Something in her unwinds. "But spare a thought for the poor coz who may be getting her hopes up."

  "She's a very sensible sort, I wouldn't worry," says Anderson, leaving his chair and sitting down beside Helen, so close that his knee touches hers, through the layers of silk and linen and steel-framed crinoline.

  Fido has moved to the round table and is looking through the Times. Her broad shoulders speak volumes.

  "Look here, in all earnest," says Anderson under his breath, "I want to speak to you alone."

  "You always want that," Helen murmurs silkily.

  "Couldn't you persuade your faithful hound to allow us a momentary tête-à-tête?"

  Helen raises her eyes to heaven. "I've had to swear to her that I'm cutting you off by degrees, like an opium habit."

  Anderson tugs at his moustache. "How's Harry, these days?"

  She makes a face. "An inert, brooding spider. He implies I'm a gadabout; complains I'm spending too much on modernizing the house."

  "What a dashed bore." He slips his hand over hers. "But I suppose a husband must hold the reins."

  Helen prickles. "You speak like my late mother. Must he hold the reins even when he's knuckleheadedly wrong?"

  "That's neither here nor there, I'm afraid. A lieutenant may be wiser than his major, but the chain of command still applies," says Anderson.

  She pulls her fingertips out of his grasp. She glances at the round table, and meets their hostess's reproachful eyes. Fido has pulled out her watch and taps it solemnly. Helen puts on a tragedy face, looks into her lap.

  "This is absurd, we can't do anything here," says Anderson in a very low growl.

  "We can talk."

  "Not at ease. I'll tell you what: why don't I head off, and wait around the corner on Gordon Street, then in ten minutes you have a cab called and pick me up?"

  "Because—" She hesitates. And changes her mind as quick as a blink, because why does the woman always have to be the
careful one? And given the risks Helen's already run, is running now, for this man's sake, why hold back?

  Anderson doesn't wait for her yes. "Miss Faithfull—" He rises to his feet.

  "Look crushed," she breathes.

  His face falls obediently. "I'm going to take my leave now," he says in hollow tones.

  "Very well, Colonel," says Fido, rising like some stern but not ungentle schoolmistress.

  "You've been immensely kind. I can't..." Anderson breaks off there, to Helen's relief. (He doesn't share her talents for invention.)

  Fido rings for his coat, cane, and hat, and walks him to the stairs.

  When she comes back into the room, Helen's arranged herself in a frail position on the sofa, face in one hand. Fido sits down beside her, very quietly, and asks "Is it—by any chance—over?"

  "I tried," says Helen through her fingers. "I marshalled all my arguments. I gave him no hope. But the insane persistence of the man—"

  "He must be eaten up with love for you," says Fido in a choked tone.

  She nods. "I don't know why."

  "Oh Helen..."

  After a minute, she adds, "Little by little, he will realize I mean what I say. You must bear with me, Fido. Keep on being my rock."

  The woman's solid arms wrap around her, and for a moment Helen feels dizzy, because both versions are true: in the back of her head she's laughing at the spinster's naïveté, and yet she'd like nothing better than for Fido to sort out her life for her, somehow. Helen's acting and she's sincere, at the very same moment; she wants to summon a cab and rush around the corner to join her lover, and she wants to stay here all evening, rocked like a baby in these strong arms. "I'd better go," she says at last, rousing herself, pressing the back of her hands to her eyes. "Harry likes dinner at seven on the dot," she adds. "He claims, a quarter-hour later and he's afflicted by heartburn!"

  When Anderson climbs into the cab on Gordon Street, the warm September breeze rushes against their faces. He reaches out with one hand to draw the pleated leather curtains that close off the front of the hansom.