Gwendolen (25 page)

Then Rex looked at me as if to determine whether I was strong enough to hear uncomfortable news, and with a prescience worthy of Mrs Lewes I knew what he was about to say. I thought again of that afternoon at the White House, the last time I saw you, when you told me with embarrassed hesitancy of your intention to marry Mirah Lapidoth. And now Rex wanted me to know he was to marry Beatrix Brackenshaw. He believed they would create a happy life together, which did not mean, he said, that I did not have an enduring place in his affections.

For a moment I was silent, then I sat on the sofa, bent forward, and shed tears I could not check. I do not know why I wept so copiously, for I did not love him in a way that might fulfil his life: had he kissed my neck below the ear I would have recoiled; had he told me, with an equally careful choice of words, that his feelings for me were unchanged, that all the happiness of his life depended on my loving him a little and becoming his wife, I should again have rejected him, though with more kindness, tact and concern for his feelings than on the previous occasion.

He implored me not to cry, spoke my name again and again, reiterated I would always have a place in his heart, I was his cousin, his childhood sweetheart, the love and affection he felt for me could never be excised. And then he said his news brought the chance of good fortune to mamma and my sisters, and that was what he most wanted to tell me about, and was so glad of my invitation because of this opportunity it gave him. He was now legal adviser to Lord Brackenshaw over his estates. He had talked with him and Beatrix and all were agreed that Offendene should, in perpetuity, be a grace-and-favour home for mamma, my sisters and me. Moreover the estate management would be responsible for repairs, renovations and upkeep. A carriage was to be provided, a groom, a gardener to attend the grounds, there were already plans to retile the roof, reframe the windows and redesign the vegetable beds. All of course in consultation with mamma.

Such kindness and honour made me cry the more. I believe Rex would have liked to put his arms around me but feared such an expression might be unwelcome or misconstrued. He walked to the window and waited, with his back to me, until I had calmed. I saw, even though my heart was troubled, what a gift this was to mamma and the girls. Henceforth they would be more than secure, mamma free from any anxiety of financial pinching, my sisters free from pressure to marry or to suffer as governesses in unfamiliar households. If they had aptitudes there would be no impediment to their following them.

I half wondered if Rex was entering into this marriage in order to help me in the only way he could, but I dismissed the thought, for he was too honourable a man to calculate in such a way, or compromise Beatrix's feelings.

I thanked him and asked perhaps rashly if he loved Beatrix Brackenshaw. I said I had heard she was freethinking and high-spirited. ‘There are different ways of loving,' Rex said. He was hopeful they would have a good life together of independent pursuits and shared interests, they saw life from the same point of view and got on well, she was more light-hearted than he, but ambitious in her own right. She was not content merely to be a wife and mother. They had much in common and there were reforms in Society they both wished to strive to achieve.

He laughed when he said had she not sought him out he doubted his courage to have shown an interest in her, for fear of being viewed as avaricious. At first Lord and Lady Brackenshaw were antipathetic to him – he came with no inheritance, was a poor horseman and encouraged their daughter in her wish to be a suffragist, doctor and socialist – but now they accepted and even liked him, for it was clear he would excel in his chosen profession.

As Rex left, he said he hoped he and I might from now on meet easily, for I was too precious and important to him to disappear from his life. I tried to reassure him, but with the same effort as wishing you success in your marriage, for in my heart I cried for my own safety. Again I saw a door that might have opened, and through which I might have gone, close shut as others walked through it into what might be happiness. Again there was direction and purpose for others' lives but not my own.

*

Hans hated to see me sad. He said I was only outside of things if I chose to put myself there, and that he was determined to lure me into the activity of the present and the promise of the future.

One morning in May, soon after breakfast, he visited unannounced and said we were to go shopping together. For what? I asked. For clothes, he replied, after which I must keep the next day free. We went to a store in Aldgate Street where I was fitted out in a blue knickerbocker suit trimmed with gold, and a pair of high-legged boots. As I postured in this rakish costume I felt a glorious sense of freedom and defiance, and Hans agreed I more resembled Hester Stanhope than the Van Dyck duchess.

I could not guess what adventure was planned. I questioned Hans but he gave me no clues. He told me to get a good night's sleep, have only a light breakfast and be ready at eight the following morning. ‘Are we to go to Ashkelon?' I asked. ‘Shall I shave my head? Will there be camels to carry my baggage?' He looked enigmatic and would not be persuaded to enlighten me.

I woke several times in the night, wondering what awaited me. Perhaps Julian had talked to Hans about my hope to perform in a trapeze act. Perhaps I would herald Juliette's entrance by shaking a tambourine or dancing with a troupe. This might be the start of my theatre career.

*

In the morning I put on this daring garb, coiled back my hair and thought I looked like Androgyne. I again fancied I would have my hair cut into a bob like the suffragists, and felt mischievous delight at what Uncle Henry and Mrs Arrowpoint might say.

Hans laughed when he saw me. His clothes were not dissimilar to mine.

‘Where
are
we going?' I asked, but he continued to look inscrutable and would not tell me.

We took a carriage to the rebuilt Alexandra Palace in north London. I had not been to that part of town before. We alighted in a field near the Palace and I was introduced to Captain Lucas, a military man with a bushy moustache and a loud voice. ‘Ah, my parachutists,' he boomed.

Parachutists. My excitement was intense. Was I to fly and outdo Julian on his trapeze and high wire? The Captain stood by a huge basket, which ten men held anchored to the ground, and supervised the slow filling with gas of a vast golden balloon. ‘You are pioneers,' he said to Hans and me. He told us there had been ascents in hot-air balloons for the past hundred years, along with jumps using parachutes with rigid frames, but that he had revolutionised parachute design. His inspiration, he said, was the flying squirrel and the dispersal of winged seeds, and he was working to perfect the design of a trapeze bar and sling. Twenty volunteers had so far jumped from his balloon and the only injuries were a broken ankle and a grazed forehead. His eldest volunteer had been a postman aged seventy-two. I was the first woman.

‘Is she adequate to it?' Captain Lucas asked Hans, as if I were not there. Hans told him I was stronger than himself: an archeress, a horsewoman, a swimmer. ‘This will be more thrilling than any of that,' the Captain said. ‘This will be the most exciting event of your life.'

As if explaining an everyday affair he said we were to rise two thousand feet in this odd contraption then jump from it with parachutes which would waft us down to earth. First he showed me how to fall. ‘Never land standing up,' he said. ‘You'll break your ankles and damage your knees and back.' The moment my feet brushed the ground I was to roll on to my back. I practised. It was not difficult, for I had learned to fall from a horse.

Captain Lucas showed me how to work the parachute which hung from the balloon. Attached to it was a trapeze bar with cords and a sling of webbing about six inches wide. I was to step astride the sling and as I jumped and held the bar above my head, the webbing would rise up between my legs and take my body weight. ‘You must keep a firm hold on the bar to balance yourself,' he said.

A crowd gathered to watch the spectacle. The golden balloon, as it filled with gas, swayed in the breeze and pulled at the ropes that tethered it. The tops of the limp parachutes were tied to the balloon's netting with cocoa string, which, we were told, would snap under the weight of our falling bodies. The released parachutes would then stream and fill with air.

Hans and I were to be carried up with Captain Lucas and another instructor, a burly, much-tattooed man, in the huge basket suspended under the balloon. As the balloon went up, we were to sit on the basket's rim, our legs dangling over the side, the webbing of the parachute between them, one hand holding the trapeze bar, the other holding the supporting ropes. When we were high enough in the sky, and at Captain Lucas's command, we must jump forward from the basket. He said we would probably land a mile or so from where we took off, depending on the strength and direction of the wind. A pony and trap would pick us up and take us back to the Palace. I was to jump first.

We perched on the edge of the basket. Captain Lucas gave the order for the men holding it to release their grip. Onlookers cheered and waved hats, hands and parasols. There was no feeling of upward movement. It seemed as if we were still and unmoving while the earth and all those on it fell away. There was a strange silence. I saw the world as if I were a bird. It was as if my life were beginning. The landscape formed beneath me, a patchwork of fields and lanes; the crowd dispersed and became little figures who crawled away. I saw Lilliputian dolls' houses, and specks that were animals. Captain Lucas pointed to my destination, a small green square which I supposed was a field.

We floated on, above the clouds and upward into heaven. The air was light and pure. Here was my escape from the earth, my happiness. Captain Lucas said we were over two thousand feet high and told me to be ready to jump. ‘Now!' he said; then ‘Go!' I gripped the trapeze bar with both hands and flung myself down, exhilarated, fearless, not knowing if the parachute was going to open. I heard the canopy of the parachute break from the balloon. There was a rush of air. I plummeted so fast and far my breath was knocked out of me. The sling tightened between my legs, I held the trapeze bar tightly with both hands and it pulled at my arms and then I saw the silken dome of the canopy of the parachute stretch over me, billowing in a gentle breeze.

*

I was suspended in clear warm air high above the land. Above the symmetry of roads and farms, the shadows of trees on wooded hills, I felt such freedom. I was flying high. I laughed and shouted and thought how you would deplore it, how mamma would be alarmed, how uncle would preach a sermon, and Grandcourt not rescue me no matter if I nearly died. My heart for this eternal moment was not pressed small. My unbounded future was everywhere and everything. The fixed receipt for my happiness was not determined by a husband's permission, or Society's approval. I need not care about the wheel of fortune, nor strive to win the golden arrow or the silver star. It did not matter that I could not be the best of women or make ‘my people' glad that I was born. I did not have to act like Rachel, sing like Jenny Lind, compose like Klesmer or write like Mrs Lewes. Humiliation and disappointment evaporated. I was above time or place, achievement or failure. I was in my element. Life and death seemed to blow with the wind. I looked down and saw the curve of the world, the patch of green which was my irrelevant destination. I did not want to hurry to reach it. I wanted to stay poised in the air, to float for ever, to circle the globe, never to land, not because of fear of broken bones and dislocated shoulders, like poor Rex tumbling from Primrose, but so that would never this wonderment end. I had told Rex I wanted to go to the North Pole, ride steeplechase, dress like a man, and be Queen of the East like Hester Stanhope. I should have told him I wanted to parachute-jump from a hot-air balloon. I was not Lady of the Bow but Queen of the Skies. I was Gwendolen.

*

How long it was before the earth drifted back to greet me, and houses and trees took on familiar proportions I do not know. The elected field approached slowly, then with a final rush. The grass rose up and as it touched my feet I circled on to my back: no broken bones, no pain. I undid the belt, stepped out of the sling, breathed the scent of grass and saw the parachute lying beside me. I looked up and there was Hans gliding down, and high above him in the sky the seemingly tiny balloon sailing on its way.

Hans and I laughed and hugged. He said he found floating down to earth strange and beautiful and it made him understand abstraction and the severance of the new world from the old and that he would not paint in the same way again. I said I dared do anything now. People ran from the lanes to greet us. We were birds that had descended from the sky, from the realm of the rainbow and the sun. Wasn't I scared? Did my mother know? Where was my husband? they asked. Hans and I were driven to the Palace in the pony and trap, given hot tea and scones, and interviewed for
The Graphic
. ‘Are you beginning to see how wide and full of possibilities the world is?' Hans asked me, and I thanked him and agreed I was.

*

And so I moved on. I forgot I was a widow except in haunting dreams. I woke to feelings of relief that Grandcourt was forever gone. My unrequited love for you merged with new preoccupations. I wore the turquoise necklace as allegiance to a memory but not with a sense of hope.

The here and now were not much changed. What had changed was my acceptance of it. I still could not much care for the formal social round: my self-belief remained fragile, so did my ability to trust the love of anyone but mamma. Hans partnered me at dances and dinner parties. I am not sure I would have been invited unaccompanied. My dance card was always full; had it been empty I might have felt the same.

The Mallingers gave musical soirées and held dances at the Abbey: they now wanted suitors for their girls. Klesmer, when he saw me, invariably told me I was lovely. I felt by thus describing me he was telling me I was quite without talent or interest, except as a valued painting to adorn a wall. Catherine was expecting their child: a little genius no doubt. Lord Brackenshaw was disappointed I now declined to hunt, and said he feared the modern generation was losing its vim and verve. Anna and my aunt and uncle stayed at Park Lane when in town to visit Rex. Anna was evidently in love with Hans, and I met this observation with unequivocal hope for them both. My aunt did not revise her opinion of me: I was a threat to the male of the species, a spoiled child and probably a heretic. Uncle made no further mention of my marriage or his encouragement of it, and dropped his paternal manner towards me. Rex's move into the Brackenshaw dynasty meant meat for breakfast for him, and a pedigree companion for Primrose.