The Regency (18 page)

‘You have not married again,' Héloïse pointed out.

Roberta looked a little pink. 'That's different,' she said, but
declined to elaborate. 'Well, now, would you like to go up to
the schoolroom and see Bobbie? And then we can ask Peter —
Mr Firth if he knows of a suitable young woman to be
Fanny's governess.’

 
When Lucy reached Upper Grosvenor Street, Danby Wiske
left her, promising to call for her later to escort her to Mrs Edgecumbe's ball, and Lucy climbed to her own room, and
dismissed her maid with an absent wave of the hand. Alone at last, she sat down at her writing-desk, leaned her elbows upon
it and dropped her face in her hands.

She felt so tired all the time. Things had been easier to bear
since she had followed Brummell's advice. She kept herself
busy, put on an air of lively amusement, and sometimes it
even worked, insofar as it stopped her actively grieving for a
while. But at the end of it, she felt empty and worn. When the
whirligig of activity stopped and she fell to earth again like a
leaf that has been caught up briefly by a breeze, all the sorrow
came back to her unabated, and she stared at her life as at
some enormous exhausting task that she could never finish.

Nothing fed her. In Weston's arms, she had given and
received some vital nourishment of the soul which she could
get nowhere else. It was no use to tell her she was fortunate to
have friends and family who cared about her; she knew that
with her mind, but it assuaged nothing in her heart. Useless
also to tell her that time would heal her. If healing meant for
getting him, she did not want to be healed. In bed at night, in
the long, drifting time before sleep claimed her, she would seek him out, rifle through her treasured store of memories
for his face, his voice, for the touch and the smell of him, for
what it had felt like to be with him; and already he was
becoming harder to find. Her love for him was the only thing
by which she could make sense of her life. If she lost that, she
lost herself.

Restlessly she got up and paced about the room, and then,
on an impulse, reached into her desk-drawer and drew out a
small key. Her fingers found it without looking: she had
handled it many times before. She looked at it for a long
time, as though it were something dangerous lying on her
palm; and then, coming to a decision, she closed her fingers
about it, and went out of the room.

She walked briskly along the drugget towards the backstairs, past a startled housemaid with an armful of sheets,
who pressed herself against the wall to give her mistress way,
and climbed to the top of the house. A daytime quiet hung
over everything; the sounds of the house were muffled by
distance, and not even the ticking of a clock penetrated this
remote place. Here, on a small landing, there were three
doors leading to the attics: in two the junior servants had
their sleeping-quarters; the third was a box-room. She opened
the third door and went in.

It was hot and airless under the slates. Sunshine poured in
through the skylight, illuminating the dust-motes which hung
motionless in the undisturbed air. The room smelled dry and
unused, and there was no sound except for a blue-black fly which buzzed and bumped monotonously against the
window-glass. Boxes were stacked neatly around the sides —
Hicks was too good a butler to allow disorder even in an
unfrequented attic — and it took her a while to find the one
she wanted. When she located it, she set her hands to the
rings and dragged it clear, into the middle of the floor space.

It was a heavy oak sea-chest, strongly bound, and with the name burned deep into the lid:
CAPT.J.R.WESTON.
Lucy stood
and looked down at it for a long time, the key pressed pain
fully into her palm by her clenched fingers. A story from her
childhood came back to her, of some inquisitive female who
had opened a box and let out all the troubles of the world. Of
course, one part of her mind mused, it would be a female who
was blamed for that!
The buzzing of the fly attracted her attention, and she
glanced up. How had it come to be up here in the first place?
Suddenly she could not bear its imprisonment, its hopeless
frustration, as it butted itself interminably against the glass.
The window-pole was by the door, and she grasped it
irritably, caught the ring in the hook, and jerked the window
open. At once cooler air seemed to flood the room, shaking
the still dust into movement, and the fly shot upwards
through the gap and disappeared into the baked blue sky
above.

His sea-chest. It had been brought to her, along with his
cabin furniture, by her brother-in-law, Captain Haworth,
when he had returned after Trafalgar. The cabin furniture
she had sold, placing the money so realised with the rest of his
small fortune in the Funds for his son. The chest she had
ordered to be put in the attic, and there it had been ever
since, moving from number ten to number twelve with the
rest of the boxes, without her ever having set eyes on it, let
alone examined its contents.

She was doubtful now if it were the right thing to do. How
could it help her? Would it make things worse? But then, how
could they be worse? Perhaps inside there was something that would remind her of him permanently and vividly, so that she
should never lose him, so that he would not dislimn and slip
away from her stubbornly-alive mind. Life drew her on, like a
resistless tide, further and further from the place where he
had stopped for ever. Perhaps in the chest there was some
thing that would carry her back to that place, to be with him.

With abrupt decision, she knelt on the dusty, bare boards,
and pushed the key into the lock. The ward caught, the
tumbler resisted for a moment, and then fell with a heavy
click, which sounded too loud in the stillness. She paused and
listened a moment, as if guiltily; and then set her hands to the
lid and lifted it.

On top lay his best uniform coat; the dark blue cloth was
stained from sea-water, but the lace and epaulettes were
bright and untarnished, for they were real bullion. Weston, with no-one but himself to support, had allowed himself to
enjoy a modest luxury, and spent all his pay on his food, his
clothes, and his comfort. No second-best for him; no pinch
beck or poor-man's gilt. She stroked the heavy fringe with a finger, and it felt warm to the touch; then she lifted the coat in both arms — it was heavy — and held it to her chest, and
closed her eyes, trying to imagine him inside it, his arms going
round her, holding her warm and safe.

It was no use. The coat smelled musty — it had been put
away damp, probably, for it was notoriously difficult to dry clothes which had been impregnated with salt spray. He was
not there. She put it aside.

His dress-sword, and sword-belt. Lucy laid the scabbard
across her knees and drew the sword half-way out. In her
mind she heard Weston's words:
Never draw steel under deck
or roof — it's bad luck.
It was a handsome weapon, made by
Roberts and Parfitt of Jermyn Street; fine dark blue steel,
with a scrolled line inlaid in gold down the spine. There were
seed-pearls set in the guard, and the hilt and pommel were of
fine blue enamel inlaid with gold in the pattern of a medusa-
head, commemorating the fact that the first ship into which
he had been commissioned as lieutenant had been the
Medusa.

A sword was a valuable thing, a personal thing to pass on to
a man's son. She began to rock a little back and forth, with
out being aware that she was doing it. One day Thomas
would be glad to have it; perhaps to wear it, though gentle
men wore swords less and less now, in these civilised times.
Still, there were some formal occasions, and a sword was
a
sword. Weston's sword for Weston's son. She laid it aside, and reached into the box again.

His books — navigation manuals, historical works, a few
essays and novels, collections of poetry; his cabin silver —
candlesticks, vases, comfit dishes, a silver cigar-box she had
given him, the Christmas of 1802, engraved with his name.
She lifted them out, handled them, held them to her, looking
for him, not finding him. A miniature of her, a copy of a
portrait done at the time of her marriage, made by some artist
unknown. She hadn't known he had that. It had been hand
somely framed in silver, but the glass was cracked. She laid it
aside, and rocked a little more.

A flat pokerwork box when opened revealed a collection of
her letters to him, worn and dirty along the folds from frequent
handling. A sailor far from home, even a busy captain, reads
his letters again and again for comfort. Poor, cold letters,
these were: she was no correspondent. Where were the words
of love and longing he had a right to expect? The letter
she had sent announcing Thomas's birth — how slight, how
formal, how lacking in everything she wanted to say to him!
She whimpered, putting them aside.

Shirts, silk shirts — this one neatly darned by his servant.
A nightgown with embroidery round the yoke — where had
that come from? Silk stockings, white china silk discoloured
at the toe and heel from use, some darned by the same, neat
hand. His hairbrushes, his manicure set and scissors, his
silver-handled toothbrush and silver pot of tooth powder, the
crystal bottle of bay rum with the silver stopper. His Bible
and Prayer Book with the matching binding, and the double
gold clasps to keep the sea-damp from the pages. A white silk
scarf, her first gift to him, so long ago.

Almost done now. Her hands, groping blindly in the
depths, came up with a pair of shoes. Good black leather,
well-worn but well-dressed, with gold buckles, heavy and
solid. She held them one in each hand, appalled, and the tears
began to pour from her eyes. These were no virgin shoes: they
were worn to the shape of his feet, softened and moulded by
the living flesh which had thrust unthinkingly into them
morning after morning, and tramped the holystoned deck,
bearing him about his business. They were infinitely pathetic,
those shoes. She turned them round and round in her hands,
and the tears flowed unchecked, for here was the essence of
his death, in this reminder of the frail and fallible flesh which
had housed the man she loved, and which had perished, leav
ing her utterly bereft. She clutched them against her chest,
sobbing now, pressed them absurdly to her cheek, as the pain
of it welled up in her, and she knew her loss, absolute and
eternal. He was gone for ever. She would never see him again.