The Crimson Bed (31 page)

Fred had gone to see Markham in order to negotiate the purchase of his latest picture of Jessaline as lonely Ruth in the cornfields of Boaz. It was a fine picture, full of colour and detail as the sun sank behind the now emptied and deserted fields and Ruth, a hand on her aching back, bent to glean the corn that had fallen.

    'I will send it to be framed tomorrow. I think your buyer likes nice, elaborate frames. A gold one with a golden mount maybe? Or a white mount, what d'you think? I'm quite pleased with the sunset effect... almost Turneresque. Ruskin would be proud of me. Though I suppose Hunt would have gone all the way to Jerusalem to capture the light in a field there,' said Markham with a smile as he showed it to Fred.

    'Yes, well, Hunt... he never compromises on anything.'

    'He is a bit much, in my opinion. Frankly, I don't care for his work a good deal. There is always something peculiarly wooden in his figures or maybe it's the didactic theme that so irritates. D'you like my little Ruth?'

    'I like her very well.'

    'Who is this mysterious buyer of yours, Thorpe?'

    'Mysterious,' was the evasive reply, 'and likes to remain so.'

    Jessaline, who was dressing herself behind the screen, came forth at this remark, pulling on her little jacket.

    ' 'T'ain't no mystery. Take no notice of Georgie Porgie,' she said, 'it's my friend Sue what buys my pictures. She's making a collection and says they'll be worth even more one day when Oldham sells 'em on up north.'

    'Well, I care not who buys them or who sells them on so long as I get paid now,' said Markham with a laugh, 'the ways of dealers and agents in art are beyond me. I paint. That's all I care to do and am glad people want to buy the results.'

    When they were out of the house, Fred took Jessaline aside roughly and said, 'What's this about Oldham and Sue Witherspoon? What's their connection? Tell me!'

    Jessie looked surprised by his tone and manner and shook her arm free with a pout of her pretty lips.

    'Let go of me! What you in such a paddy for! Tommie, she calls him. One of 'er fancy men, he is. 'E certainly takes care of 'er, I can tell you. And me,' she added with a little giggle.

    'Jessie! What are you saying?' Fred was angrier than he had been in years.

    'It's all right. I don't mean 'e does anyfink wrong,' said Jessaline, alarmed by his expression. 'Don't get upset, Georgie. Gawd, you're so protective! No, nuffink like that. Proper gent to me... but 'e does give me money sometimes and says 'e'll introduce me to some artists 'e knows in Paris one day. Imagine that! Going to Paris and meeting artists there. No, 'e's Sue's bloke. She and 'im mean to go into business someday, she says.'

    'How long has she known this man?'

    'Dunno. A long time, I reckon. I seen 'im around when we lived in Pomfrey Street but she never brought men back to our rooms. She went to a place she knew in Soho with 'em. She said she wanted her own pad to do business and not be bothered by the bully boys and all the rest. Always goes 'er own way, does Sue. She's got a place in Suvvark now which suits 'er for the minute. But she talks of going to Sin John's Wood and says someone is going to set 'er up there nicely.'

    'Oldham, I suppose?'

    'Maybe. Dun'ask me. I mind my own business where Sue's concerned. She don't like no nosiness.'

    Impatient with his questions, Jessaline, always easily distracted, let her attention wander and Fred left further interrogation for another day. He put Jessaline into a cab and sent it on its way. He needed to walk and think over these latest revelations. So Sue and Oldham were busy scheming and making love behind his back. He had never for a moment supposed that Sue was faithful to him alone. She was a scheming bitch whose mind was on nothing but money. However, all the same, the knowledge that she was busy with her paramour, Oldham, perhaps as soon as he, Fred, had left her bed, cut deep and rankled. He had felt somehow special and important to her. What a fool he was. Dimly he began to realise that she and Oldham had seemed to have some understanding from the start. T
hey
had led him into this; it was all a conspiracy.

    He took a cab and went straight to Sue's lodgings. Racing up the stairs he knocked furiously at her door. Too bad if she was in bed with some fellow. He would make a scene and force her confession.

    The little maid opened the door and seeing him, she let him in at once. He gave the girl sixpence and told her to take herself off somewhere. She obliged with alacrity, afraid of his angry looks.

    Sue came out now. She was dressed in a loose gown and her

hair was still around her shoulders, a brush in her hands. She looked especially attractive but her charms had palled for him.

    'What on earth are you doing here at this time of day?' she said, not looking too pleased. 'I've said to you not to just come when it suits you. I do have other things to do, you know.'

    'Yes, like fucking Thomas Oldham!'

    She stared at him for a moment and then resumed brushing her hair.

    'Yes, I do as it happens,' she said equably, 'what's it to you?'

    Fred came up to her; seizing the brush from her hand, he threw it aside. He pulled her towards him angrily and shook her so hard that she screamed.

    'It's a betrayal, that's what it is!' he shouted. 'You and Oldham... you're cooking something up between you. I feel it, I know it, Sue.'

    'You bastard! Let me go! You can't scare me. Don't you start getting nasty now. There's plenty you don't know, plenty, and you won't be so cocky once you've heard what I have to say, either. So you sit down and just listen to me.'

    He refused to sit beside her as she sank onto the sofa but strode angrily about the room. She sat and regarded him with a faint smile upon her face that disconcerted him.

    'Sit here, my dear,' she said, 'I don't know what you're getting all upset about. Tommie is just a customer like you. Don't tell me you're jealous of a whore?'

    'Jealous of
you
? Jealous? I don't give a damn about you. I'm not in love with you if that's your impression. But something in this whole thing strikes me as planned.' said Fred, pacing up and down. 'I have woken up to the fact that I am a fool and that it just isn't worth it. It isn't worth it.'

    'Give up your little tickles, eh? Easy as that? You'll come running in a week's time, you wait and see. Can't let it alone, my fine gent, can you? Oh, your nice lady may be very pretty, very fine but she doesn't know how to fuck you like Sue does. Now how would she know anything about all that?'

    Fred hesitated. It was true. He needed this woman but no, it wasn't worth it. He had to be rid of this dark side of himself, find some other way out.

    She rose now and came over to him, her loose gown falling aside to reveal her nakedness beneath. His breath caught as her hand moved expertly over his body and for a moment he almost gave in to her. Then the memory came to him of his children, of Ellie smiling at him that morning and even more maddening, of Thomas Oldham receiving these self-same attentions. He pushed her away so roughly that she stumbled and almost fell.

    'I don't mean to come and see you ever again... you can have Thomas Oldham. Let him buy Jessie's pictures for you as he means to help you make a profit by them.'

    Sue pulled her gown about her again and her eyes blazed at him.

    'Oh, now we're getting at the problem. It's the angry dealer scared he's being cheated, is that it?'

    'No, that is not the problem. I don't give a damn what you do with the pictures, either of you. They're second rate rubbish anyway, but they will sell, because people are second rate and rubbishy these days. I have let myself down and all my ideals. But no more. Never again. This is goodbye, Sue.'

    'Is it, now?' she said. Her face turned very hard in that moment and she looked ugly and bitter. Fred recoiled a little.

    'Is it?' she repeated. 'No, not so easy, my fine sir with your fine conscience. Now maybe is the time to let you into a little secret or two. You don't remember me, do you? You don't remember Bessie and her daughter either. No, that's all buried and forgotten and paid off, isn't it?'

    He stared at her and felt almost faint. Bessie! What on earth had Bessie to do with it? And how did this wretched woman know about his past like this?

    Sue stood, hands on her hips and smiled at him with an air of satisfaction.

    'Now that gave you a surprise, didn't it?'

    'Who are you?' he asked. 'Who the hell are you? How do you know these things?'

    'You were a right young sprig, my dear, as fond of the wine bottle then, I recall, as you are now. I remember you coming along to the kitchen one night and you had your eye on that slattern Bessie for some reason. She was such a stupid girl. She could have made something of all that but went whinging to the mistress and then to you. She should have come to you straight off and got more out of it. As for me, I left you to it, humping that squalling idiot on the floor. But I remembered and said not a word. I just kept my eye on what happened and stored it away for when it might come in useful. It's a habit I've kept up all my life and mighty profitable it's turned out to be, too.'

    The past rose before him like some horrible miasma of pain, regret and shame. He cast his head down and groaned.

    'Yes, you may well be upset. Bessie had your child, didn't she? And she got herself a bloke and took the kid away from the Foundling Hospital and went off with her. But I kept in touch with her and when the kid was about seven, I took her off with me into service at a place in Marybone. And we've been together ever since. Well, you've guessed it, haven't you?'

    'Are you saying... what
are
you saying? That Jessaline... ?'

    'Is y
our
daughter, my dear. But
she
doesn't know it. Only I know it.'

Chapter 28

Fred sat down heavily on a chair and stared into space. Sue regarded him with a little smile of pleasure and triumph on her face.

    'I've so looked forward to telling you this some day,' she said, 'and here you are, let yourself in for it. No, my smart gent, you aren't leaving me that easy. You may not want to fuck me any more, for which I can only be grateful as you're no fun at all, but you won't stop buying me pictures; any pictures I want, I shall have. Or else your missus will know of it all. And if she doesn't care, then maybe the rest of the world may. Tommie and me, we'll tell all society you've been having your own daughter. You could end up in prison. Jess will do anything I say and she'll swear blind you have.'

    'No-one will believe such a thing! God, how terrible! Thankfully I
didn't
make love to her,' he added in a faint whisper.

    'Oh, they'll believe it all right. Mud sticks, don't it? They'll tittle and tattle as they do, these fine ladies, having nothing better to pass their time, and it will spread through all the posh drawing rooms. They'll look at you like you were a pariah.'

    'Why do you want to ruin me like this – what have I ever done to you?'

    'I hate your sort, that's why. You people that are full of fine talk and pictures and being noble and all that when your hearts are black as the sewers. Who are you to set yourselves up to preach to us common folk? Like that Mr. Ruskin... he's a fine one for sure, who couldn't even make it with his own wife, or anything else from all accounts, but likes to tell us "common" folks what we should do and not do.'

    'How can you speak so when he has begun a Working Men's College and cares for people by trying to bring something finer into their lives? Must everyone be brought to your disgusting, mercenary level?' Fred said angrily.

    'Men like him don't understand or give a toss for working men. They've never worked in their lives. Real work, I mean, toiling till their shoulders ache and their mouths are dry, doing dangerous stuff on roads and bridges and in sewers, building ships. Because a man who works like this goes to the pub for a few drinks afterwards, the dear souls throw up their hands in horror. They don't know what a day's real honest toil is and how little you get at the end of it. There they sit in their smart, fancy houses, writing their meaningless, selfish stuff, fretting over their poems and pictures like your Mr Rossetti and Mr Hunt and the likes. I hate you all!'

    He was silenced by her bitterness. She had her reasons and they arose from her own degradation as far as he was concerned. He was little moved by her diatribe. All he knew was that she was saying Jessaline was his daughter and it must be so. She knew all the facts about Bessie and his dishonourable conduct with her, even about the Foundling Institute. He tried to think of Jessaline as his child and wondered what he should do. Should he speak to Ellie and confess everything? That seemed the best course. Then if he threw himself upon her kindness and forgiveness, to hell with the rest of the world and its opinions, he could weather it as Ruskin had weathered the comments and judgements of society over his impotent marriage. He had after all done nothing that any other man before had not done and was still doing. Men tampered with their servants all the time by most accounts. Surely, no one would believe he had tampered with Jessaline and if they did, they would think he had done so in ignorance. Or would they?

    'You'll not browbeat me, Mrs Witherspoon,' he said grimly, 'Thankfully, Jessie doesn't know anything about the fact that you think I'm her father.'

    'Oh, don't worry, you're her father all right. And you owe her, don't you? She's been cheated of her place in society. Can you not find some way to better her future besides modelling for some stupid artist here and there? Can't you settle a sum on her? I don't ask for myself. I ask for her. She's young and she needs to be taken care of and you have a duty to perform to your own child.'