Gwendolen (7 page)

Mamma sat in speechless misery in the carriage. She wept. I chastised her for her tears and told her to remember the troubles in her own life and leave me to be miserable if that was what I chose.

*

Back home I packed. Nothing had prepared me for this reversal. I felt locked out of my own life. I hated causing mamma pain. At dawn she accompanied me to the railway station. I was running away; I was not running to anything or anyone. At the station I watched the carriage turn back to Offendene with mamma in it. When Mr Grandcourt called no one was at home.

*

Alone in the Ladies' Carriage on the train to Dover my thoughts raced as the landscape slipped by, taking with it my plans and expectations. Lush, I suspected, had schemed for Mrs Glasher to lie in wait for me at the Whispering Stones. Later I learned I was right. I sensed his loathing of me.

I pondered Mrs Glasher's letter, her threats and hatred. She was chasing me away and I was resentful. Perhaps Grandcourt ought to have married her, but how could it be my fault that he had not? She said she was young and happy when she met him, but what of Colonel Glasher and their son? Where were they when she was young and happy with Grandcourt? She implied I held her happiness and that of her children's fortune in my power. But arrangements and matters of the heart between her and Grandcourt ought not to have involved me. Why should the onus of correct behaviour be mine? Grandcourt pursued me. In Society's terms she was his mistress and he wanted me as his wife. She was urging me to put her wishes above his choice and my own self-interest. She implied that were I to refuse Grandcourt he would marry her, but there was no certainty of that. They had had nine years to establish their feelings for each other and make plans. Colonel Glasher was now dead, so there was no obstruction to legitimizing their union other than Grandcourt's reluctance. I had hardly pushed my way into his view. She did not speak well of him or want good for him. It seemed she hated him for robbing her of her youth. She wanted his money and status for their son.

I was not in love with Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt, though if, as seemed inevitable, I had to marry I wanted to marry well, please uncle and above all provide for mamma. But I again realised, as I sat alone on my desperate journey of escape, that I knew almost nothing about him. Why had he not told me of Mrs Glasher and their four children? What else might there be about his past and present to alarm me? He was vain about how he appeared in Society, he would sooner marry me than a woman no longer beautiful, but perhaps his concern was for himself alone. Would he act as he pleased whatever vows he made, whatever contract he signed? How, I wondered, would he treat me when I showed signs of wear?

The countryside flattened; the dividing sea approached. I did not know what choice to make, where to turn for help or whom to trust. I would be damned if I married Grandcourt, damned if I did not. I wanted to make this journey to escape the muddle that troubled and tormented me, and take me to a resolution.

*

That was how, on that September afternoon, I found myself at the mercy of the roulette wheel, hoping for luck to bring me wealth and set me free. Such was the turmoil of my life when I met your gaze. Your gaze that seared into me and that I see now.

Mamma knew only of my distress and reversal of plan, she did not know my confusion's cause. Uncle interpreted my flurried departure as a coquettish flounce, designed to tease the interest of my admirer. Grandcourt saw my leaving as a challenge. Had events not followed in the way they did he would probably have forgotten me before autumn was through and pursued an alternative quarry. But accompanied by Lush he set off for Homburg in slow pursuit of me. In his bored, languid manner he stopped for a few days' yachting in the Baltic, then to gamble in Baden Baden, and reached Homburg five days after I had left. There he met with Sir Hugo, the Mallinger family and you. From you he learned I had received disturbing news, you did not know what, and gone home to Pennicote. From Lush you learned that Grandcourt had been on the point of marrying me but I had run off without explanation. I do not know what you made of all you saw and heard.

*

I had lurched from one disaster to the next. No one was at Wancester station to meet me when I returned from Homburg to face our bankrupt future. Alone in the waiting room I felt defined by the dirty paint, the dusty decanter of water, the poster calling on us all to repent and find Jesus, and the melancholy lanes and fields outside. A sullen porter with a cast in one eye ignored me. I was a woman without status or prospect. Mamma, my sisters and I had no money and no home. I could not think what we would do: wander abroad perhaps – out of the eye of social scorn.

*

Eventually a dirty old barouche was brought from the railway inn. Squashed in the back of it, with my two large trunks, I felt hatred for Grandcourt, his deceit that had led me to this impasse, and for men in general, including you. Had you not watched me with such disapproval I might again have won at the tables.

At Offendene, mamma and my sisters waited in the porch to greet me. Mamma wept as I kissed her. Fresh lines of sorrow had etched into her face. I tried to console her and lift her mood, conscious that any strength she might have must be drawn from me. I assured her I would make things come right. ‘I will be something, I will do something,' I promised, for in my heart I thought my charm or luck, or some benevolent spirit, would shape our destiny.

Mamma and I spent the day alone together, our food brought to us on trays. Misfortune did not seem so evident in the large friendly house and in each other's loving company. In our black and yellow bedroom I did not mention Grandcourt and she dared not ask. We did not mention our problems until evening came. I then said I felt sure Lord Brackenshaw would let us stay on for a while rent-free at Offendene.

Mamma countered he was in Scotland and knew nothing about us and anyway neither she nor my uncle would ask favours of him. Moreover, even if he agreed, we had no money to pay bills or the servants, nor did we have money to travel abroad. Uncle intended to adapt to penury: keep no carriage, buy no new clothes, eat no meat for breakfast, subscribe to no periodicals and tutor his sons himself. It all sounded utterly dismal. As for mamma and me, Alice, Bertha, Fanny, Isabel, we were all to move to Sawyer's Cottage and make do with basic furnishings gleaned from the rectory.

I knew Sawyer's Cottage. Mr Partridge, an exciseman, had died there. I knew its scrubby cabbage patch, steep narrow staircase, four tiny bedrooms, two cramped parlours with green and yellow wallpaper. Mamma said she and the girls might earn a pittance wage by sewing. ‘Sewing what?' I asked. ‘A tablecloth border for the Ladies' Charity at Wancester? A communion cloth for Pennicote church?'

I could not bear her choked-back tears. We must go to law, I said, to recover our fortune such as it had been. This Lassman, this land agent who so carelessly speculated with and lost our money by investing in mines and risky dealings, must be held accountable. Mamma said we had no money to go to law and anyway there was no law for people who are ruined.

She had discussed my fate with uncle. I was to be a governess or teacher. Uncle knew of two possible openings: I could live with a bishop's family, a Dr Mompert, and teach French and music to his three dismal daughters, or teach the dull narrow curriculum for girls in a school for a wage of £80 a year.

I vowed to mamma I would not see her cooped in Sawyer's Cottage, that I would not be dictated to by uncle or anyone, or sink so low as to be a governess. I would sooner emigrate. I assured her my determination would prevail, I would devise a rescue plan, I had talent I could employ that had not yet been tapped or recognised. And to provide in the short term, I had pieces of jewellery to sell.

*

I went to my desk and without reflection wrote a note to Herr Klesmer. I urgently requested him to call next day. I said unfortunate family circumstances of a very serious nature obliged me to turn for advice to his great knowledge and judgement.

I dispatched this to Quetcham Hall. I wince even now at the thought of its arrival. I was not good at anticipating how my actions affected others or at considering their point of view. It did not occur to me that Herr Klesmer might be in an agitated state, immersed in problems of his own.

The night my note arrived, Catherine Arrowpoint, in a heated exchange with her parents, had declared to them that she loved Klesmer and intended to marry him. Her parents forbade it. They expected her, their only child, to marry in accordance with their wealth and status. Her husband must be a man connected to the institutions of England, of good family and in line for a peerage. Grandcourt would suit. Klesmer, the music teacher in their paid employ, a foreigner and, worse, a Jew, though perhaps a first-rate musician, was not the right sort.

Klesmer was summoned and told that Catherine would be disinherited were he to marry her. Neither he nor she viewed that as much of a threat. He told them it was not in the power of them or their fortune to confer anything on him he valued. He had earned success as a musician, would change his career for no other, had enough money to support Catherine and sought no alteration to his life but her lifelong companionship.

Mr Arrowpoint threatened him with a duel and ordered him to leave the house. My note arrived in the middle of all this.

Apparently, so as not to disappoint me, he stayed on at Quetcham as a most unwelcome guest for another day. At Offendene I set the scene for his arrival. I coiled my hair and, to look demure, dressed in black with no jewellery. I strewed music sheets on top of the piano and instructed mamma I wished to receive Herr Klesmer alone.

He was shown into the drawing room. I was direct. I told him of our loss and my need to provide for mamma to save her from true hardship. I informed him of my plan to study acting and go on the stage. I asked for his help. I said I accepted my voice alone was not good enough for me to succeed professionally, but if I combined it with acting I could perhaps perform like the dramatic soprano Giulia Grisi for whom both Rossini and Donizetti had written.

*

I am embarrassed to remember this. I was young and I aspired to stardom and to save mamma, who looked to me for sunlight. I was her best-loved daughter. I did not know the meaning of talent, how exceptional it is, how it cannot be plucked from the air. I did not know of the gulf between aspiration and achievement, or of the essential of hard work.

*

Klesmer put his hat and gloves on the piano and folded his arms. He spoke in a deliberate manner. He again told me I was beautiful. I had, he said, been brought up in ease. I knew nothing of the demands of an artist's life, of inward vocation, subduing mind and body to unbroken discipline and of thinking not of celebrity but of excellence, of the work required to achieve any sort of recognition, the disappointments that needed to be endured, the uncertainty of any chance of praise. He said for a long while I should expect to earn nothing and get no engagement.

All of which was merely a gentle preamble. Was I too old, I asked, to set out on such a path, too wanting in talent? Yes, he replied. My voice would never have counted for much, but had I been trained years previously I might have found some minor outlet as a public singer. Seeing me blanch with pain he then compounded his insults by commending my personal charm.

Only because my plight was desperate did I persist. Might I find engagement at a theatre and study singing at the same time? I asked. No, Klesmer said. It could not be done. ‘Glaring insignificance' was one of his phrases. I could not pitch my voice; I did not know how to move about a stage. However hard I tried, whatever efforts and sacrifices I made, I would never achieve more than mediocrity. I would have to pay a manager to employ me. My beauty, he said, would surely find me a husband, but such beauty had nothing to do with art, it was a substitute when nothing more commanding was to be found.

I had sought Herr Klesmer's help. I received an exercise in humiliation. He tossed aside my questioning ambition. I had no money, family connections or friends to help me. I wanted to achieve independence and recognition. I had been encouraged to view my beauty as a gift, a work of art in itself, and my singing voice as its accompaniment. Klesmer made both seem meretricious.

He then told me of his intended marriage to Catherine Arrowpoint and of how exceptional she was. If I still wanted, after hearing these truths about myself, to try my luck in London they would support me financially. That was the final laceration. I vowed never again to ask anyone in authority for their opinion of me.

I congratulated him on his engagement to marry, said, ‘If I take the wrong road it will not be because of your flattery,' then thanked him for his kindness, his offer of hospitality and his time. He gave me his card, said, ‘God forbid that you should take any road but one where you will find happiness,' kissed my hand and left.

My hopes receded with the sound of coach wheels on the gravel. I had wanted King Klesmer, messenger from the god of Art, to admire something in me, but I was too old, mediocre and vainglorious. I was a fantasist, a spoiled girl with a beautiful face and no talent who would earn no money and merit no applause. The acclaim accorded me thus far was from people who knew nothing of quality.

Sawyer's Cottage, the bleak railway waiting room, the governess's room at the top of the Bishop's house, the death's head in the wainscot, the woman at the Whispering Stones, their curse was upon me.

Mamma came into the room when she saw Klesmer had gone and observed my tears and brittle mood. I told her I accepted Sawyer's Cottage and being governess to the Bishop's daughters. I resolved to try not to care, to try to bear it all. I thought I had reached the depth of my own misery. I was wrong.

*

The next ordeal was with uncle and aunt. They and my cousins faced financial devastation with a fortitude to shame me. They took to penury with Christian zeal and embraced sacrifice and austerity. Aunt sorted depressing window coverings for Sawyer's Cottage from the rectory storeroom. Uncle endlessly boasted of no meat for breakfast. Rex, even while working for a fellowship, arranged both to tutor his brothers and to take pupils.