Seasons of Love (8 page)

Robert sauntered in during the afternoon, looking very pleased with himself.

‘Oh, I'm so glad you're all right!’ exclaimed Helen. ‘I was worried when you didn't come back!’

He patted her shoulder. ‘You look a lot better today. You should wash your hair more often.

And that dress you were wearing smelled awful.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘Oh, here and there. I ran into a few old friends and we had some drinks. I’m afraid I drank a bit too much, for we cracked on till quite late, so in the end, I slept on their couch. Cabs can cost a lot in London, especially late at night, and it's dangerous to go out on foot alone after dark.’

He went to study his reflection in the mirror and added airily, ‘You'll get used to my staying out overnight sometimes in London, I dare say. It's much safer than walking back through the dark streets.’

She nodded, wrinkling her nose, trying to trace the smell. Was it hair oil? It had a very flowery aroma to it, not the sort of perfume men usually wore. She hoped Robert had only borrowed some from a friend, for she couldn’t like it on him. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘So, wife, I've been busy on our behalf,’ he announced, lounging in the one comfortable chair and looking very smug.

He had not, Helen noticed, even looked at Harry, let alone said anything to him. But it would be no use pointing that out. You couldn't force a man to love his son.

‘I think I've done rather well for us.’ He began to tick the items off on his fingers. ‘First, I've found us some lodgings. Two rooms, so that Master Harry can have his own sleeping place - or I can. Whichever we decide.’

‘How nice!’

He didn’t even notice the sarcasm in her voice. ‘
And
I've found you some work. Same as before. Sewing costumes and all that.’

She stiffened. ‘How kind of you!’ He was supposed to have been looking for work for himself. And what was she to do with Harry while she worked?

He appeared quite unaware of her anger. ‘I thought you'd be pleased. Now you'll be able to hoard your pennies again.’

‘Will I?’ And for how long would she be allowed to keep them? He was avoiding her eyes, which meant he had something to hide.

‘And finally, best of all, I've heard of a couple of chances for me. My friends think it suits me to have lost some weight. It can only be a matter of time before I pick up a good part. With a better theatre company this time. The Marlborough was a bit run-down and Roxanne was well past her best. A more skilful whore than actress, she was.’

Helen dug her fingers into her palms. He was deliberately goading her. In this mood, he was like a boy tormenting a puppy, or pulling the wings off a fly.

‘But you've found nothing definite for yourself?’ she pursued.

‘My dear girl, after only one day back in town? No one is that lucky! You have to meet people. Show yourself around. That sort of thing. Which reminds me, do I have a clean shirt?’

‘Yes.’ She got it out without speaking and when he pulled a face at its wrinkled condition, she set her hands on her hip and looked him straight in the eyes, daring him to say anything.

He didn't. The victory was small, but it gave her some satisfaction.

When she’d packed their things, he summoned a cab to take them across London to their new lodgings. The vehicle smelt of unwashed bodies and mouldy straw, but she didn’t comment on that. Looking out of the window, she was amazed at how many people there were and how the streets went on and on with no greenery to be seen.

As the journey progressed Robert cheered up, for she kept asking questions about the places they passed and he clearly enjoyed the feeling of superiority as he explained them to her.

When she saw the lodgings, she was unstinting in her praise. Here, Robert had done well for them. A pleasant landlady, who picked up Harry for a cuddle. And two rooms as well as use of the small garden. One room was hardly bigger than a cupboard, but it was large enough for Harry, and as it abutted the kitchen chimney, it was warm, too. This proved a godsend, because April blew in cold and windy, coal was expensive and Robert still had no regular work.

Helen, however, had work in plenty, mending and altering the costumes for the New Moon Theatre, a nasty little place which produced melodramas so like each other that the same costumes could be used again and again, as long as they were kept mended, retrimmed from time to time, and altered as necessary to fit the constantly changing leading ladies. To her relief the landlady was happy to mind Harry for a shilling or two more.

Helen soon found out that the theatre also acted as a place of encounter for a better class of prostitute than those who haunted the street corners. The actresses themselves were much in demand with the patrons, but when she complained of that to Robert, he stared at her as if she had lost her wits.

‘What the hell does that matter? You earn your money honestly, don't you? No one's asking
you
to go a-whoring.’ He tittered as if the mere idea of anyone paying for her services was ludicrous in the extreme.

‘But - ’

‘Anyway, you're not that much better than them, if it comes to that.’

She gasped, so shocked at this accusation that she couldn’t speak for a moment.

‘After all, you used your body to trap me, didn't you? I shouldn't be surprised if you didn't fool me about being a virgin, too!’

Tears filled her eyes. ‘You know better than that.’

After a long silence, he said, ‘Well, you must just mind your own business at the theatre and let others mind theirs. Unless you want to earn a bit of real money for yourself the same way?’

She turned white and drew herself up. ‘I'd kill myself first.’

‘Pity. There's more money to be earned on your back than by plying your needle.’

She knew then that if she’d agreed to do it, he’d have let her.

Later, as she tried to understand her changing feelings towards him, she decided it was this conversation which wiped away the last traces of her love for him. But she was still tied to him, however much her morals were offended.
For better, for worse,
she’d promised.

Anyway, she knew too little about London, and she and Harry would be vulnerable without a male to protect them.

Helen had to work long hours at the theatre and when the landlady was busy, she took Harry with her because she didn’t trust Robert to look after his son. In fact, he only came home nowadays for the occasional meal and she began to worry that he was on the verge of leaving them for good.

He slept at the lodgings two or three nights a week, made love to his wife if he had been lucky at the gaming tables and had nothing better to do, and changed his linen there regularly, getting angry if there wasn’t a clean shirt always waiting for him.

He was out gambling nearly every night, and wasn’t even trying to find a job in the theatre, but luckily for her, he seemed to be doing quite well. Every now and then he would toss her a coin, even a whole guinea sometimes, and say mockingly, ‘Here you are, wife, for you and the boy.’

A few weeks passed, then he began to do less well and the coins became few and far between.

Some weeks he didn't even give her enough to pay the rent. She came home from the theatre with a tired, grizzling Harry one day to find her belongings scattered all over the room and her workbox lining slashed to ribbons.

Robert had taken the coins which she’d deliberately left in there and a couple more she’d sewn into her spare petticoat, but that was all he’d found.

She smiled grimly as she began to tidy up.
You'll never take my last penny again, Robert
Perriman,
she thought grimly.
If you won't think of your son, then I must.

She said nothing to him about the incident when he came home again two days later, and he didn't mention it either.

When she felt she could face her friend again, Helen wrote to Roxanne through the lawyer, delivering the letter to his rooms herself one afternoon when they had no work for her at the theatre. She enjoyed the walk across the city.

Harry tottered along beside her on unsteady legs and from time to time she picked him up and carried him on her hip. She talked to him and he tried to form sounds in reply. They both enjoyed themselves very much indeed. He’d learned to be quiet inside the theatre, and to play with the toy dog she’d sewn for him, but out of doors she encouraged him to talk and run about as much as he liked.

On the way back she bought them both a hot potato from a street vendor and then, on a sudden impulse, called in at a little church near their lodgings to pray for a few moments. She hadn’t been to church for a long time and was feeling guilty about it.

A lady was arranging a very small bunch of flowers on the altar, and when Harry went over to watch her, thumb in his mouth, she began to talk to him and then to Helen. She was a plump woman, plainly dressed, with kind eyes and a ready smile.

‘Are you new to the area, my dear?’

‘We've been here for three months now. We have lodgings nearby. I - I haven't been to church for a while.’

‘That’s a pity. I think you’d enjoy my husband’s sermons. He’s beginning to be well thought in the district.’ She stared at Helen when she spoke, obviously assessing her status.

‘I'm sure my husband would welcome you into our congregation.’

‘Would he? Even though my husband is an actor?’ asked Helen. Her own father would not have welcomed an actor's family into his church.

‘What difference does that make? Our Lord wasn’t too proud to associate with Mary Magdalene! And an actor isn’t dishonest in his occupation, however much some people disapprove of the theatre.’

Tears filled Helen's eyes. ‘I'm no Mary Magdalene! Just a foolish parson’s daughter who ran off to marry an actor and was disowned by her family!’

The woman made a soothing sound and shook her head in sympathy.

Helen suddenly realised why her son was quiet and dived to stop him. ‘No, Harry! No!

Naughty!’ Gently she disentangled the remains of some flowers from his chubby little fingers.

‘I'm so sorry! He doesn't understand. Let me see if I can do something with these.’

Deftly her fingers rearranged the flowers, thanks to the old skills acquired during the years of helping her mother to decorate the church with whatever they could find in the woods or the parsonage garden.

‘My dear, they look beautiful! Much better than I can ever manage! I wonder - would you like to help me with the flowers now and then? I’d be very grateful.’

‘Oh, I’d love to!’

After that, to Robert's loudly-expressed amusement, Helen took her son to church on Sundays and helped arrange the flowers on the altar every Thursday if she could manage it.

Sometimes she would take a cup of tea with Mrs Hendry and perhaps chat with the parson when he had time to spare from his busy parish.

Helen even confided in her new friends the dreadful fact that Harry had not been christened.

Robert had no interest whatsoever in religion, no belief in anything but the urgency of his own needs. He’d refused to bother about his son's christening and she had been too embarrassed by his attitude to go and see a clergyman on her own.

A small private ceremony was arranged to remedy this omission and
make a
Christian of
the boy
, as Mr Hendry joked. But that raised the vexing question of who would stand as godparents.

Just as Helen had given up hope of finding anyone, Roxanne turned up again in her life, a plumper, richly-dressed Roxanne, who spoke warmly of her Jack and seemed not to miss the theatre at all. She’d had come to invite them to take tea with her.

‘Will you stand as godmother to Harry?’ Helen asked on the first visit. ‘The poor boy hasn’t yet been christened.’

‘Me?’ Roxanne gave one of her hearty laughs. ‘What the devil do I know about being a godmother?’

‘You know a lot about being kind and that's what matters.’ Helen tried to think of some way of persuading Roxanne, because her worst fear in the world was that something would happen to her and then, she was sure, Robert would abandon Harry without a second thought.

It took Helen a while to persuade her friend, but in the end, Roxanne agreed and even promised that if anything ever happened to Helen, she would look after the boy.

Paul Hendry volunteered to act as godfather, seeing Helen's shame and despair at being unable to produce one, so the formalities were more or less attended to. If only Robert had attended the ceremony, thought Helen wistfully, it would have been quite perfect, for dear Harry was so good, not crying at all when the man splashed water on his head. He simply laughed and tried to reach the water in the font himself, all the while observing everything with his bright little eyes.

Afterwards, Roxanne took her and the Hendrys out for a meal at a respectable inn and bought a bottle of good red wine with which to toast the boy's health.

As she was leaving, Roxanne looked at Helen. ‘How about you and Harry coming over to tea sometimes? Got to keep an eye on him now, haven't I?’

‘Oh, Roxanne, I'd love that.’

‘Good. I'll send Jack's carriage to pick you up on Monday. Can't have my precious godson walking all that way and tiring himself out, can I?’ Though it was Helen getting tired that worried her, for her friend was thinner, seeming nervous and slightly on edge all the time, as if waiting for something bad to happen.

Autumn came and Robert still hadn’t found regular work in the theatre. Nor was he doing well in other ways. His luck had deserted him utterly, he complained, and he became very morose, staying away from home more and more, then reappearing looking gaunt and dirty. He would eat up all the food Helen had, as if he hadn’t fed for days, then sleep for a while and change his linen, before vanishing again. He had completely stopped making love to her, to her great relief.

Harry stayed at the other side of the room when his father was around, staring wide-eyed at the strange man, who snarled at him to be quiet if he so much as opened his mouth.

Helen now left most of her savings in Roxanne's care, for she’d lost money a few times.