Tennyson's Gift (29 page)

Jessie, jumping into her mother's arms, found that she could administer a little kick in Mrs Watts's pretty little face, which cheered her up immensely, and also brought a smile to Mrs Cameron. No bothersome questions of how, why, or what interfered with her infant joy. Mama was home!

Lorenzo, however, was overwhelmed – a sensation he recognized, and adored. Lydia had overwhelmed Lorenzo from their earliest days as phrenologists together, and had thereafter never left off. Readers of this story may have assumed Lorenzo was a widower; certainly his new friends in Freshwater had jumped to that mistake. But Lydia was not dead, she was merely in the United States, which is not the same. She had travelled home with a few tidying-up missions: to re-organize the national practice of obstetrics, for example.

Lorenzo, who up to now looked pretty energetic in the context of Freshwater Bay, dwindled beside Lydia like a candle set before a furnace. It was Lydia the child took after, not Lorenzo. The song about Lydia, oh Lydia, that encyclo-piddia was not actually written about Lydia Fowler, for she had no tattoos. But in her family, she was nevertheless known as Piddia, for her obvious know-all tendencies.

‘Greet me, Lorry,' she said.

He jumped to his feet, quickly adjusted his beard, and ran to her side. It pained him to do this in front of sweet little Mrs Watts, but it couldn't be helped.

‘Goddess,' he breathed. And taking her by the back of the neck, he kissed her, for a not inconsiderable period, full on the lips, while Jessie looked on proudly.

The others, still damp from the elements, coughed and shuffled disapprovingly, a bit like Wonderland creatures waiting for a Caucus race.

‘Mrs Fowler rowed across the Solent in a rainstorm,' said Julia conversationally, as though the kiss had finished (it hadn't).

‘She has won medals for rowing,' said Jessie, proudly. ‘She is Marblehead champion.'

‘Oh, what's Marblehead?' asked Julia, hoping to fill time while the kiss continued.

‘It's a place,' said Jessie. ‘Near where Uncle Orson lives. We thought he ought to live in Marblehead, really. Because of the name being so apt.'

The kiss shifted a little; it stopped for air. But it did not conclude.

‘We didn't actually know there was a Mrs Fowler,' said Ellen, with an attempted gay laugh.

‘Oh no?'

But the kiss did not stop. Jessie piped up. ‘Did you find Daisy?' The grown-ups hung their heads. In the excitement of Lydia, they had forgotten.

‘Oh, she'll be all right,' Jessie assured them. ‘But if she isn't, she has only herself to blame. I mean, fancy falling for Mr Dodo. Give me typhoid any day.'

The Fowler clinch had now broken, much to the relief of the host nation, but the couple were still not ready for general chat.

Lorenzo went down on one knee. ‘Diana! Juno! Explain!'

‘I found you had left London, and here I am. I have brought five hundred copies of Orson's latest pamphlet. We start lecturing tomorrow.'

‘Oh Ma,' squealed Jessie, ‘we've missed you so much.'

A few minutes later, a message arrived from Farringford, to say that Alfred had returned home to find Daisy safe in her nightie. The worried Bradley family had been calmed. The hunt was off. The only person who did not know this, of course, was Mr Dodgson, who could now not be found himself.

‘Let's ask Ada to find him,' said Jessie. ‘She would love to be out on a night like this. It's exactly her kind of thing. She's awful gloomy, Ma.'

‘Ada?' queried Lydia. She seemed surprised.

‘We engaged Ada Wilson four months ago, just before you left for America, my dear. You surely remember?'

‘But Lorry, I left instructions for the girl to be dismissed.'

‘Why?'

‘I found her writing anonymous letters. I considered her dangerous.'

Lorenzo and Jessie looked at each other, nonplussed.

‘But Ada's a real silly, Ma. She's a misery, but also what you call a nincompoop. Pa says her brain has been fogged by pig and cow.'

‘Let us send for the girl at once,' said Lydia. ‘But let us also consider the evidence. I left you a letter about the wickedness of the girl, secreting it carefully in your dressing table.
You did not receive it.
So the girl
must
be wicked. Did you not read her head, Lorry? She has Destructiveness so big that her ears stick out at an angle, unable to support the arms of spectacles. Her Organ of Gratitude is the size of a wizened pea.'

Lorenzo and Jessie looked at one another. ‘Ada?' ‘Organ of Gratitude?' was the astounded look on both their faces.

‘What sort of anonymous letters?' asked Julia, intrigued.

‘Very threatening, to judge by the one I read. The girl was mad, I think. Mad with a grudge. She actually mentioned pushing some mean old lady in an invalid carriage off a cliff!'

Julia stopped breathing.

‘To whom did she send these anonymous letters?' she asked.

‘To Alfred Tennyson, the Poet Laureate,' said Lydia, almost laughing. ‘So preposterous.'

Dodgson trudged up the lane toward Farringford, unaware that deep within that lifeless house, Alfred was reading ‘The Three Voices', and hopping on both legs at once. Which was ironic really, because Dodgson was currently reciting to himself the Tennyson original, and recognizing for the first time the full force of the argument for self-slaughter.

Alfred, on the other hand, could hardly believe his eyes. All the deep philosophy of the poem was mocked here, transformed into nonsensical bantering. He had never been so insulted – not by George Gilfillan, not by anybody. The hero in the Dodgson poem doesn't even know what the Voice is talking about!

Gifts may pass away? Well, this gift certainly would. Alfred thundered so loud when he read this sacrilege that Emily was forced to come downstairs to investigate. She found two giggling children (one of them not her own), and her lord in apoplexy, holding a brown magazine which looked, at first glance, similar to the
Westminster.

‘Is the review less good than you first imagined, Alfred? I knew you would find cause to hate it before long.'

Alfred folded the magazine and pushed it inside his coat pocket. He would not allow anyone else to see this monstrous thing; Lionel should certainly not keep it; the child would delight too much in learning the poem by rote.

‘Dodgson is in Freshwater, my love,' he blurted. ‘Damn the man.'

‘The Oxford photographist?' ‘The very same.'

‘Oh.' Emily had never told Alfred of the letter from Dodgson. She had thereby saved a week of relative peace.

‘He's been here for several days,' said Lionel, helpfully. ‘In fact, he's been here long enough for Daisy to fall in love with him, plan an elopement, and then think better of it.'

‘Lionel!' said everybody together – including Daisy, who kicked him.

‘He ruined the dinner at Julia's this evening,' said Alfred. ‘I didn't get my apple pie – twice!'

‘Poor Alfred.'

‘Scoundrel,' spat Alfred.

‘Scoundrel,' agreed his dear, weary wife.

‘Photographist.'

‘Scoundrel.'

‘If he comes near me, I shan't be responsible for my actions, Emily. Do you know, he even wrote a parody of “The Two Voices”?'

‘No!'

Back at Dimbola, they sent to the Albion for Ada Wilson, but received the reply that she had packed and gone, immediately after Lydia's luggage had been delivered to the rooms. Vanished, they said.

Jessie and Lorenzo did not wish to believe it, but the evidence was mounting. The child now recollected how Ada had always hidden behind the bathing machines when Lionel Tennyson was on the beach; she had also pumped Jessie for every detail of their afternoon at Farringford. Mrs Cameron thought about her own sweet-tempered maids, and thanked the almighty for her good fortune. Mary Ryan might be disaffected, but she was not (as yet, anyway) murderously insane.

‘But what can she have against the Tennysons?' was what they all pondered. Yes, sometimes Tennyson's poetry was a bit depressing, but you didn't
have
to read it.

Jessie shrugged. She was just glad the girl had left them. ‘Mama, did you mention Ada's Organ of Gratitude just now?'

‘Wizened,' said her mother. ‘Pitiful.'

Jessie knew she must pluck up the courage to ask. ‘Where is it?'

‘It's in the lobes of the ear, Jessie.'

All around the room, people fingered their ear-lobes thoughtfully.

‘Who found it?' said Lorenzo, trying to sound casual.

‘I did. Are you pleased? Brother Orson said it was the discovery of the age, especially since almost nobody has got one.'

Around the room, people stopped bothering.

‘But what are we doing about Ada? Do you think she is positively dangerous?'

Dodgson was just about to find out, when he noticed on the road ahead of him a woman in a dark cloak hurrying in the same direction.

‘Madam,' he cried, and scampered to catch up.

The woman stopped and turned, and he soon arrived at her side. He recognized her from the beach, but he didn't know her name.

‘I am going as far as F-F—Farringford,' he volunteered. ‘May I –?'

She looked at him as if he were mad. ‘I can find my own way to Farringford, thank you.'

There was something very odd about her, he thought. She sounded much too well educated to be a maid, but he was sure that's what she was.

‘Do you have business at Farringford, so late at night?' he asked.

‘I do.'

‘So they are expecting you?'

The woman shrieked with laughter. ‘No!'

‘Are you familiar with the temper of Mr Tennyson?'

‘I know his wife much better.'

‘To tell you the truth,' said Dodgson, ‘I am a little fr-fr—'

‘Friendless?'

Dodgson shrugged thoughtfully; ‘friendless' wasn't far off the mark, but it wasn't what he was trying to say. He waved his hands.

‘Frisky?'

He shook his head, but not vehemently. He put his fingers in his mouth.

‘Frost-bitten?'

‘Frightened.'

Which really he was right to be, because once they were announced at the door – Mr Dodgson and Miss Wilson – they discovered a less than welcoming group of Tennysons sitting in the semi-dark.

‘Miss Wilson?' repeated a puzzled Emily, as the couple approached.

‘She's the governess who made Hallam and me learn “The Two Voices”, mother,' hissed Lionel. ‘She left when you didn't pay her.' And then, spotting Dodgson, his eyes lit up.

‘Stay there,' he told Daisy.