Tennyson's Gift (17 page)

Lorenzo leaned back in his chair and whistled. ‘Jessie, how old are you again?'

‘I'm eight and you know it.'

‘Where in damnation did you learn to be so worldly?'

‘Ah, cheese it, Pa,' she declared, but she blushed nevertheless. She loved it when Lorenzo told her she was a brat prodigy.

‘But come on, Pa, apply yourself. Say Uncle Orson gave you –'

‘Jessie. I am tired of hypotheticals. It keeps turning out that I'm the most ornery ingrate that ever lived. Shouldn't you be in bed? Let me call for Ada.'

‘But this is just getting interesting.'

‘Well, I honestly think –'

He was just about to tell her what he honestly thought when Ada interrupted.

‘There is a young man to see you, sir.' She pulled a face.

‘Go on.'

‘He says he attended the Freshwater lecture, and would like to purchase a pamphlet. Should I send him away, sir? It's very late. If I were you I'd send him away, but then nobody listens to me of course, because everyone here is so much cleverer than I am.'

Lorenzo ignored the uppity sarcasm. He smiled. It was a visit he had been expecting.

‘Jessie, you must go to bed at once. Ada, bring the young man, and ask for some lamps to be brought. Why, we should have had lamps half an hour ago. What were you thinking?'

It was true. While he and Jessie sat talking, they hardly noticed how the room had darkened, until the only light came reflected from the sea in the moonshine. When the boy came in, the room was still thus dark, even darker, and Lorenzo could hardly see him, but he knew at once who it was.

‘Hello, young man. Is it Herbert, am I right?'

‘That's right, sir,' came Ellen's disguised gruff voice. ‘Herbert it is.'

She edged into the room, where all she could clearly make out was the shape of Lorenzo standing at the window. She began to wish she had not come. Compared to the weedy aesthetes she had grown accustomed to, Lorenzo seemed such a large and manly man; a sixteen-year-old cross-dressed woman alone with such a man was the sort of situation she knew only too well from the stage. It led to all sorts of embarrassing mix-ups. Lorenzo would be suggesting they wrestle soon, and take their tops off.

‘I am sorry to disturb you in the evening, sir,' began Herbert. ‘But I wondered if I could have the benefit of your advice.'

Lorenzo did not reply at once. Perhaps he was waiting for her eyes to become accustomed to the dark. She heard him sniff the air.

Ellen wished the lamps would be lit, but she thought it was going pretty well until Lorenzo took a step closer and she smelled the sandalwood on his hands.

‘May I take your hat?'

‘No, thank you.'

‘Come now.'

‘No. Really.'

‘Herbert, would you really want me to kiss you with it on?'

‘Oh no, sir,' she squeaked.

‘So we should take it off, then.'

‘Oh, sir, I never meant –'

‘You see, I feel attracted to you, Herbert,' he laughed, as he moved towards her again, and reached out to touch the brim of the hat. ‘You have the biggest Organ of Hope – But ah, the lamps are come,' he said good-naturedly, as the servants appeared at the door with oil-lamps, apologizing, curtsying, lighting more fixtures with spills. Ellen felt she had never been so glad to see anybody, but when the room brightened, and she could see Lorenzo plainly, smiling at her and indicating a seat at the table, the thrill of danger did not pass. In fact, she felt a jolt of desire.

‘So tell me why you've come,' said Lorenzo, not waiting for the room to clear. Ellen coughed and thought. Was it really true she had come here for a pamphlet?

Back at Dimbola, over coffee and muffins, Julia decided it was time to confide in Mr Watts. She had conceived the ultimate present for Alfred, a magnificent present which he would appreciate all his life.

‘What sort of present?' asked Il Signor, vaguely interested, picking a buttery muffin from a platter. ‘Can you eat it?'

‘No, you can't eat it,' Julia said. She seemed to find the question amusing. ‘You can't hang it on walls, either.'

Watts had not the energy to guess.

‘What is it?'

‘George! It's what he wants more than anything in the world. It's something that dear Emily could never give him, either. It is the gift of a true friend.' Her eyes flashed with happy tears. ‘You still can't guess?'

Watts shrugged.

‘It's a review, George.'

And she poked him in the ribs.

‘A review? But where? You can't just write him one, you know.'

‘I know that, George. It's in the Westminster Quarterly! Alfred will receive it tomorrow. Sister Sara has used her influence with the greatest critic and editor of the age, and
Enoch Arden
is to be accounted Alfred's most accomplished work to date. A proof-sheet arrived yesterday from town. It is a wonderful review. I wrote it myself. Listen to this –!'

She removed a folded sheet of paper from beneath her shawl, and opened it.

‘It says there never was such a perfect depiction of absence of hope, George!
Enoch Arden's
story is relentless in its poignant tragedy. The reviewer says the poem made him feel utterly despondent from beginning to end! Imagine how such words will comfort Alfred. The reviewer quotes thus:

Despite himself, Watts was impressed. It was the most miserable thing he'd ever heard. ‘There's glory for you,' he said.

‘But Alfred will be so happy!' exclaimed Julia. ‘You and I both know the wicked sting of the critic, George; but as for the critic's fine words, we take them straight to our bosoms as balm!'

Watts masticated his muffin.

‘How will he know it's from you?' he said, with his mouth full.

‘George?'

‘How will Alfred know this is a present?'

‘Oh but he won't! He never will! That's the beauty of it!'

‘That's very selfless of you, Julia.'

‘I know,' she said, thoughtfully. She still wasn't sure she could cope with this aspect of the thing.

‘But now where's your little wife got to?' she asked brightly, changing the mood. ‘Shall we ask her to entertain us with a little dance?'

At this precise moment Ellen scurried back up the lane to Dimbola Lodge, her heart pounding. She ran fast and removed her bothersome hat, so that her golden hair swung loose on her shoulders. She laughed for pleasure. All in all, she was far too preoccupied to notice Mary Ryan standing hooded in the shadows near the hotel, watching her as she passed.

‘He
will
love me!' Ellen said to herself in Mary Ryan's hearing. ‘He will be unable to resist me.'

Ellen was supremely happy. She flicked her hair in the moonlight as she ran. She had solved the problems of everybody. Lorenzo would visit Mr Dodgson in the morning; he would consider Alfred's requirements about the mad children, too. And as for her marital problems with George! Well, Lorenzo had promised some practical help in a theatrical extravaganza. No longer would George yell ‘Remember Westminster!' at the precise moment any intimacy threatened.

For the first time since her marriage, she had been able to discuss this peculiar marital plight with another person, and the depth of Lorenzo's compassion had overwhelmed her. Not once had he suggested that the failure was hers. He said she was brave to come. The relief was as though someone had drilled a hole in her head and let out the accumulated pressure of sixteen years.

‘Perhaps small Caution is a benefit sometimes,' she had said to him, meaning to make a light joke.

‘Oh, it is useful, of course, if you are a hero in a tight spot. But in matters of love it is the source of more trouble than you can imagine,' said Lorenzo. ‘I too have small Caution. And I have Amativeness so massive and bulging that I must rest it on the back of my chair, look, just to obtain relief.'

Ellen gulped. She pictured the back of her husband's head. It was flat, like a wall.

‘I am very grateful for your kindness this evening,' she said. ‘If you will help me with George, help make him love me, help him get over this Westminster thing, I will think well of you for ever.'

Lorenzo shook her hand.

‘But do you think gratitude exists, Mrs Watts? Or is it just a name for obligation? If we are truly grateful to somebody, perhaps we must love them, too? Is that what defines real gratitude, a love of the giver for himself and not the gift?'

‘I don't understand,' said Ellen, worried. She feared his Organ of Amativeness was nudging into the discussion again. ‘But in my experience it is always a good idea to say “That's kind” or “Would you really?”, because people set such store by it. It doesn't take long to say. It doesn't mean anything. But it makes people help you again, or give you more things.'

‘Well, that's certainly a practical attitude, Mrs Watts,' Lorenzo admitted, as he walked her to the door. ‘Perhaps you can show your gratitude to me, by helping me with a little research. If you are
truly
grateful, Mrs Watts, I fear you are going to have to take your hat off to me, sooner or later.' Outside in the shadows Mary Ryan considered what to do. Perhaps the hour was too late for a visit to Mr Fowler now, although she still burned to know her marital fate. She looked upstairs to the rooms, for sign of a light. ‘He
will
love me,' Mrs Watts had said. She must have meant Mr Fowler.

As Mary Ryan watched the building, Lorenzo opened a window and leaned out. At moments like these he wished he smoked cigars. Watching Ellen run back to Dimbola Lodge, he blew a kiss towards her.

‘Ah, Mrs Watts!' he sighed happily. ‘God bless my Organ of Marvellousness, but I'm enjoying this.'

Mary Ryan looked up the road at Mrs Watts, and back to the hotel window, where Lorenzo still watched, with a look of enchantment.

Mr Fowler and Mrs Watts? She shook her head and whistled. For once, only the local exclamation would do.

‘Swap me bob,' she whispered.

Lorenzo Fowler had very much enjoyed his evening of verbal foreplay with young Mr Herbert. As he kept repeating to himself next morning as he dressed at the cheval glass, you hardly expect romantic interest on the Isle of Wight. A man who in another life might have been a top opera singer (with a slightly different cranial arrangement, to include musical ability), he puffed out his chest, stretched out his arms at shoulder level and sang the words as though to a Handel aria –

‘A man!'

‘Hardly!'

‘Expects rrromantic … Interest!'

Pause for orchestral diddle-diddles.

‘On the Isle of Wight!'

A positive thinker at all times, Lorenzo now concluded that life was better than ever. At breakfast he found himself saying grace for the first time in many years. He said it with enormous sincerity, too. ‘Thank you with all the juices of our humble mortal excitable bodies, Lord, for the splendid gift of your lovely, lovely plenty!'

‘Did he take his hat off, Pa?' asked Jessie conversationally, spreading some butter rather badly.

‘Not this time. But I'm sure he will. For me.'

‘How are you supposed to do him properly with his hat on?'

‘Jessie, that's exactly what I said.'

‘I mean, does he think we've never seen scurf?'

Lorenzo smiled and helped her with some jam. He remembered how he had just got his fingers on the tweedy brim of that hat when –

‘Ada offered me bacon again, did I tell you?'

‘No!'

‘She said it could be our little secret.' ‘I hope you reiterated our position on the consumption of flesh?'