The Crimson Bed (16 page)

    'I was drunk, Mother,' Fred muttered in shame, 'I won't ever let it happen again, not ever again!'

    'Heavens, man, you'll get drunk again; it is only natural for a young blood about town. Make sure the girls you choose ain't in the household, if you follow my drift. I would worry about you if you didn't sow your oats a little. My brothers are still sowing theirs and they're supposed to be married and sensible men by now.' She smiled, indulgent as ever, and patted her son's arm.

    'Don't dismiss poor Bessie, Mama, it wasn't her fault, it was all mine. I was so drunk. In all fairness, we must help her, mustn't we?'

    'Humph!' his mother snorted, 'I wouldn't be so sure it was your fault – she must have given you some indication she was willing. Oh, I know the wiles of these women. I've heard many a tale from my brothers – tales that would shock you to death. These country girls are all the same, my dear. No, don't upbraid yourself. You were not to be blamed for her wanton behaviour. But yes, yes, we shall help her, don't look so upset. We shall send her to the country somewhere to have the child and she can come back afterwards if you insist upon it. And you will not speak to her again in any way that is not strictly necessary. She must not be allowed to think this sort of behaviour on her part is permissible and forgiven.'

    On her return from the country, Bessie was sent to the Foundling Hospital to have her child adopted. After an unhappy parting from her little daughter, she returned to work again in the kitchen, hoping she might save enough to take the child away some day. Eventually, she managed to find a fellow to marry her and went away to live on the south side of the river. She bore her husband a son and then sent for her bastard daughter and added the child to the growing family.

    Fred had no idea now where his daughter was or what had happened to her, nor did he like to think of the matter. She was safe, she was cared for, he knew that and that was enough for him. He had settled a sum on the child to help with her keep and clothing after she had been reunited with the mother. That was the end of the matter as far as everyone was concerned and he heard no more about it. They had been swallowed up in the maws of the countless streets and alleys by the river.

    Did his mother really think he was so stupid as to tell all this to Ellie, to his beautiful lady, Eleanor? How aghast such a pure, innocent, well brought up girl would be to know that he had even
felt
lust for such a frightful creature as Bessie.

    His mother's unkindly reminder of his shame, coupled with the unpleasant encounter with Lord Percy Dillinger, made Fred even more restless for the wedding day to arrive when he might at last feel secure in his possession of his sweetheart. Ellie must never know, never find out what he had been capable of doing.

Chapter 13

After Christmas had been celebrated and the wedding day drew nearer, Joshua Farnham let Ellie roam his house and said that she could choose any of her mother's things she liked to furnish her new home. The young couple had found a charming little house in Hampstead, near Well Walk where the poet, John Keats, had once lived. It was double-fronted, roomy and had a reasonable piece of tree-shaded garden around it, which she had great plans to improve and fill with arches and roses and little bowers to sit in.

    For the first time Ellie looked about her childhood home as if she was a stranger, intense and wondering, knowing she would never return there now except as a visitor. A wave of uncontrollable nostalgia overcame her and tears sprang to her eyes. This was an era now passed, her merry girlhood. Before her loomed married life fraught with deeps and shallows, high canyons and long tedious plains.

    For a brief moment, a feeling akin to fear troubled her heart. Almost heedlessly, she had allowed Fred to speed her along with his own ardent desire. She had hoped to take the magnificent Crimson Bed and on that bed bear Alfie a long line of Dillingers. When that was not to be, it was as if the fire of desire and longing had left her, ready to be swept along by Fate like some leaf blown into a fast-moving river. However, she was not a person to be foolishly wilful or changeful. She had a steadfast nature, despite her pampered childhood. She had agreed to be Fred's wife and meant to make him a good one. He was a kind and trusting man and to hurt him would be like hurting a child. Was he not just as worthy of the Crimson Bed?

    She walked about the house arm in arm with her father, looking about her at all the many possessions that marked the passage of her parents' life. It was a large, late Georgian town house, the furnishings mainly of the era her parents had married and filled with many curious and interesting objects that they had acquired and collected. She chose a Chinese lacquered chest full of little drawers and one or two beautiful Venetian mirrors with their delicate yet ornate frames. Her father said she might also have the large dining table and Sheraton chairs. 'I will not be entertaining too often now,' said Joshua.' I shall have no need of all this.'

    'You are so kind, Papa.' She smoothed a hand over the soft, glowing rosewood of a piano that had belonged to her mother. In her mind's eye she saw Maria sitting there of an evening, playing moving passages from Chopin, the Polish composer, whom she greatly admired or thrilling pieces by Mozart and other German love songs.

    'I'd like to have Mama's piano. May I? If only I could, play as well as she did! Oh, Papa, I suppose I have taken all these things for granted, they have always been a part of my life. Will you not miss them if I take them with me?'

    'No, no, my dear, what need have I for all this furniture? I shall see them in your own home where they belong. Now y
ou
are to be the young bride as once your mother was when I first brought her here. Your life is to begin, mine nears its end. I am considering renting out the house here and finding myself some chambers nearer Temple Bar until I decide to take myself off to the countryside somewhere. I have a fancy to go to Oxford and be close to my sister Eliza some day.'

    'Don't dream of going yet, Papa, will you? You must be grandfather some time, remember, and I shall need you close to perform that role.'

    He smiled, delighted with the prospect of little ones. It had always saddened him that he and Maria had been unable to bear more children.

    They came now to Maria's room. It had been left exactly as it was on the day she died. The pink patterned cambric dressing gown still lay folded over the back of a chair. The small white handkerchief she had last used lay on the table by a now dried up jug of water. Beside it was the glass from which she had sipped a few drops for her parched throat.

    Ellie knew how much her father still missed his beloved wife. Now it was he who had taken to visiting Maria's room and he would sometimes sit there as if feeling her strong presence about him. It seemed to comfort him in some way.

    'She is in that room... she is still there for me,' he used to say.

    Ellie had felt this to be just his fancy but entering the room now and looking about her at her mother's things again was a strange experience. She gazed around at all the small, intimate objects, still in their usual places; the hand mirror left lying upwards on the dressing table as if it had just been put down, the brush with a few of those long dark hairs still clinging to it. She turned the mirror over, took the hairs from the brush, and decided she would one day weave them into a locket with the hair of her first baby.

    There was a daguerreotype on the dressing table taken just before Maria's illness. In it, Ellie was standing next to her mother who was seated elegantly upon a chair and they both stared into the camera with serious expressions. Her mother looked just as she had always done, apparently fit and well. Yet just a short while after that, her terrible illness had overtaken her and she had died.

    It was an uncanny feeling. It was as if her mother had just walked out of the room and might come in again at any moment. Ellie felt tears come to her eyes as she looked around.

    'I
must
take the bed, Papa,' said Ellie. 'I have to take the Crimson Bed.'

    Joshua looked at the bed. His face registered his feelings. Ellie knew that he had seldom slept on it. It had always been by polite invitation that he had dared venture into this inner sanctum of Maria's. Perhaps the bed had seemed like a barrier between them. He had spent so many long terrible nights seated by it while she was dying. She knew he would be glad to see it out of the house.

    'You really want it? It is so huge. Will it fit your new home?'

    'Oh yes, I know just where it is to go. I have to have it. Mama said it must never have strangers in it.'

    'Did she, indeed? Well, it is a Templeton treasure. Take it by all means, if you really want it. I should have supposed it was far too old fashioned for a modern young woman's taste.'

    'But I am old-fashioned,' said Ellie with a smile, 'Fred and I are mediaeval at heart.'

    Joshua laughed. 'Yes, you are both Pre-Raphaelites. Knights, damsels, poetry and chivalry. One day you'll both find life isn't a dream-like existence at all. It has a cruel way of crashing though our hopes and fancies.'

    'We will make it a dream then, we will live in our dream. Fred abhors anything ugly and cruel. He will always keep the dream alive.'

    'I hope so, dear child. For your sake, I hope so.'

Ellie sat at her dressing table and looked at herself in the mirror. Mulhall, her maid, was arranging her dark hair in plaited coils on which she set a wreath of bridal orange blossoms. They were made of wax with little seed pearls interwoven amongst the leaves. She would have preferred real blossoms but it was too early in the year for that.

    She took up a small leather-covered box from the table and opened it again, admiring the beautiful earrings and necklace of diamonds and sapphires. These were a wedding gift from Fred – 'something new' for the bride – and she was to wear them to the wedding, he had said. They were truly beautiful, just the sort of
parure
she would have picked for herself. Fred had a knack for finding little gifts as if he knew instinctively what would suit and delight her.

    The maid smiled at her in the mirror and said, 'How lovely you will look, Miss Ellie... a beautiful bride.'

'Thank you, Mulhall.'

    Mulhall, who had been both her own maid and her mother's before her, was to come with Ellie, as she suited her very well. Miss Adelaide Perrin had been found another post. She was a good, kind woman but Ellie, soon to be Mrs Thorpe, no longer required such a companion. However, Ellie was a loyal soul to those who had cared for her since her mother died.

    'You will come to see me, Addy,' she had said, 'in my delightful new home.'

    The January day was dawning crisply cold but fresh and fair after an early shower of rain. The sun began to shine again as Ellie left the house on her father's arm, climbing into the carriage that was to take her to the parish church.

    She was dressed in a velvet dress where dark and light blue flounces alternated in bands around the skirt. On top of this was a charming little jacket of light blue edged with black cord. A long, gauzy white veil of Chantilly lace, held in place by the wreath of orange blossoms, cascaded over her layered skirts. She carried a large posy of snowdrops that Fred had sent her that morning.

    They reached the church and she descended from the carriage with a slight feeling of trepidation. No going back now! She and her father walked sedately down the aisle. Following her was her cousin, Anne Templeton, and Charlotte Dillinger, Lord Dillinger's young daughter, both girls dressed in similar blue dresses, veils falling from their little coronets of false apple blossom, plus two little girls with immense blue sashes and hair bows and their own little posies in hand. There was a small pageboy, too, who had to be bribed with future promises of unlimited cake in order to keep him with the procession, his inclination being to run over to his mother all the time. The bells were pealing gaily as Eleanor Farnham walked through the throng of friends and relations and well-wishers.

    Sadness at the fact that Maria Farnham was no longer present to see her daughter as a bride tinged both father and daughter. Ellie felt sure that her mother was not far away but hovering somewhere, a delicate ghostly presence.

    
Yes, you are watching me, Mama
, she thought, glancing upwards, and as if her father also caught that notion, he squeezed her arm and they both looked keenly at one another in a shared understanding.

Fred, equally smart and well turned out in his deep blue frock coat, pale grey trousers and grey top hat, turned to watch his bride with pleasure and pride as she walked demurely down the aisle, looking neither left nor right. She was elegant, noble and exquisite. He could scarce believe this lovely creature was to be his. He saw how keenly everyone watched her and enjoyed the whispers and sighs of admiration that arose from the ladies over her wedding dress. He turned to Henry, his best man, and Henry smiled encouragingly.

    'You're sure you have the ring?'

    'Of course, I've got the ring!'

    Ellie took her place beside Fred and looked up at him, her hand twisting nervously in her bridal veil. He smiled in reassurance.

    Then Fred noticed that across the aisle, amongst many other friends and relations of the bride, stood Lord and Lady Dillinger. Again, that ripple of dislike came over him and he felt the hairs on his neck rise. He had not met Dillinger more than twice again since the time he had first encountered him with Ellie. Dillinger had offered the use of his country home in Hertfordshire for their honeymoon but Fred had refused the offer. Ellie had been annoyed, used as she was to having her own way, but he had remained firm on this. Now he noticed how closely Dillinger was watching Ellie and her father as they came down the aisle. Perhaps he was imagining things. Maybe this was the way his lordship regarded everything; with that peculiar intensity, eyes always narrowed and a furrow of thought on his lordly brow.