The Sealed Letter (21 page)

"I'm afraid it must be done today, as tomorrow is Sunday."

If she tries hard enough, she can almost summon up the scene, feel the bed shudder as Harry clambers in between the women; almost see his gigantic silhouette blotting out the candlelight.

"No need to speak, if you'd prefer: simply nod," adds Few after a second. "Was it as Mrs. Codrington told me?"

He seems to understand. There's no objective way to tell a story. But this is the terrible truth of that night, as best as she and Helen can muster it between them. A sort of joint testimony. Helen could witness to it herself were it not for the absurdity of the law that gags the participants in a divorce. Fido makes herself nod.

"Very good. I regret, again, that this is necessary. I can hardly imagine your distress."

At twenty-one, on that autumn night, is that what he means? Or at twenty-nine, sitting in his chambers?

"Now if you'll be so good as to look over the affidavit, I'll sign it." Few slides the crisp page across the desk.

But Fido has broken out in a sweat, her eyes are swimming.
The affidavit:
that sounds alarmingly official. She's not sure she can bear to see this story written down in black ink on the long, tombstone shape of a legal document.

"Would you prefer me to read it to you in full?"

"Oh no." That would be worse. Fido glances through the paragraphs, but they make no sense to her. Her eyes catch on jagged phrases:
separate but adjoining, in a nightdress, attempted to have connection, resistance of the said Miss Faithfull.

"I wonder, have you any sense of the date of the incident?"

Fido shuts her eyes. She can barely think of her own name. "I really don't ... October. Around the eleventh?" she hazards, just to put an end to it.

"Very good." Few takes the paper back and scratches a few words in.

He walks her to the door and uses a cab whistle to call a growler to take her home.

Mutatis Mutandis

(Latin, "the necessary changes having been made";
in law, this refers to the application of an implied,
mutually understood set of changes)

What should we think of a community of slaves,
who betrayed each other's interest? Of a little band
of shipwrecked mariners upon a friendless shore,
who were false to each other?

Sarah Ellis,
The Daughters of England
(1845)

In Few's chambers on Monday morning, Helen sits fiddling with the coral-beaded fringe of her bag.

The solicitor shuffles his papers and looks up over his tiny glasses. "I must observe that for a woman of business—that's what they call themselves, I believe?—your friend's not very businesslike."

Helen stares at him.

"First thing this morning I received a rather absurd note from Miss Faithfull at her press, asking for the affidavit to be returned to her for burning as soon as I've shown it to your husband's solicitor. How can she have thought that was its purpose?"

"Perhaps she took you up wrongly," Helen mutters, her mind scurrying.

"As if detailed evidence were to be handed over to the opposition in advance of the trial!"

"I suppose ... I have the impression she hoped Harry would withdraw his petition if he were warned of such a damaging countercharge. He must have been trusting to feminine timidity to prevent Fido and myself from mentioning the attack," Helen argues.

Few frowns. "After fifteen years of wedlock, Mrs. Codrington, you ought to have known the masculine mind better. To be charged with a crime of viril-ity—if I may put it so bluntly—is something many men take in their stride."

"Not Harry, the pillar of virtue," she says, sullen.

"Well, whatever his private mortification at being accused of such an attempt, it can hardly match your friend's at being its victim. And judging by today's note, she doesn't seem to have grasped that she'll have to attest to it in court." He takes off his glasses, scowls as he swabs them on his neckerchief. "It is just a matter of maidenly modesty, I hope?"

"How do you mean? My friend is modest, certainly."

"Well, I don't like to doubt a lady's word, but ... I don't suppose her reluctance to repeat her story means that there's something less than reliable about it?"

Helen draws herself up. "She's the daughter of the rector of Headley, and a noted philanthropist. If you knew her as I do, you'd never suggest such a thing."

"No offence intended." Few scowls at the rolls of documents covering his desk. "Well, I wrote back to Miss Faithfull at once to clarify that she'll be called into court; the affidavit will be worse than useless unless she backs it up."

"I'm sure I can persuade her to muster her courage," says Helen. Her mind goes through its calculations. No doubt Fido will huff and puff and make a scene, but when it comes to it—when she sees that Helen needs her to be brave, that it's a matter of friendship (Fido's sacred cow)...

"Certainly you have some time. The court is overbooked, as ever," he remarks. "The Dickenses have renewed their endless squabble about his non-payment of maintenance."

Helen is diverted by this piece of gossip. "And to think what his books and magazines must make him!"

"No no, this is the bankrupt brother, Frederick. All three brothers left their wives in '57, a curious coincidence—or sign of the times, one might say." Few is searching through the pile of papers again; his white straggling hair almost touches it.

Helen finds herself wondering how old he is, and the odds of his dropping dead while her case is still in preparation.

"Lieutenant Mildmay," he says, meeting her eyes, and she can't stop herself twitching at the name. "Petitioner's counsel have applied to make him another co-respondent, which of course would seal his mouth like yours and Anderson's, and prevent us from calling him in your defence."

"That's outrageous," she says, as it seems expected.

"We'll oppose that application—unless of course you've any reason to fear the lieutenant's evidence might tell against you?"

Helen's mind races. "I'm sure he'll deny any wrongdoing."

"We'll have our man in India examine him, then, and bring back a deposition."

India?
She didn't know Mildmay was stationed there. Disconcerted, she pictures him in a bright sash, riding on a howdah, like the dashing officers she used to wave at when she was a little girl in Calcutta. They haven't corresponded since he left Malta. (Helen finds writing to faraway friends a chore.) But there was never any falling out, only a mild falling away. Gradually it came about that she saw more of Anderson and rather less of Mildmay; neither man was ever so crass as to press her about her choice.

Few goes on. "I must ask—have you seen the
Times
this morning?"

"I've had no leisure for reading the paper," says Helen. The truth is that she can't bear the prospect of seeing her surname leaping in capitals all over the Legal Notices column.
Codrington:
she's never liked the stuffy, provincial ring of it, but she dreads the prospect of losing it too.

"There's an article. You may wish to—at your leisure." He slides a copy of the paper across the desk, and she accepts it, but doesn't unfold it. "Vis-a-vis Colonel Anderson. On page nine there's a notice of his marriage," says Few, frowning. "Perhaps the colonel feels that taking this step at the eleventh hour dissociates him from the charges—as if any jury would be so credulous."

"A ... a notice that it's forthcoming?" she says, hating the way her voice shakes.

"Rather, an announcement that it's taken place." Few waits. "I felt I ought to draw your attention to it; it's best to face these things."

Her voice cracks. "You're not paid to lecture me, Few. I'm already
facing
the loss of my whole world."

He nods, priestly. "You have my sympathies."

Helen snatches her coral-fringed bag and gets to her feet. "I don't want your sympathies, or your homilies. I want your professional expertise. Block this damned divorce and get my daughters back."

She expected her language to stun the old man, but he only shakes his head. "I really must impress upon you that the two aims are mutually inconsistent.

My hope is to win you a separation with a comfortable settlement—but as to your daughters..."

She watches a dying fly stumble along the window sill.

"Are you listening, Mrs. Codrington?"

"I made them, didn't I? In my—in me." Her voice is so guttural she hardly recognizes it.

Few sighs. "Your being permitted to set eyes on them ever again, even from a distance, depends entirely on the admiral's goodwill. And the fact is, every day you resist this divorce—not to mention accusing him of cruelties and depravities—you sacrifice more of that goodwill."

She staggers towards the door.

"My dear madam—"

Outside on the street, Helen lurches along like a madwoman.
Nell,
she says in her head,
Nan,
trying to conjure them up. But their tiny, warped images stay locked up in the bottle. It's only been six days, but their faces are blurring already. What was the last thing they said to her? Or she to them? Some snapped criticism, no doubt. She clings to the thought of Nan asking her for a kiss, that night in the sickroom. The final game of Happy Families.

There's something awry in Helen. She's coming to see that she was born with something missing. She has talents, she even has virtues, but something's lacking that would bind them all together.

She shudders, she sobs.
I'll never see my girls again.
Still gripping the rolled newspaper like a club, she drops to her knees on the chilly pavement, retching.
They'll never see their Mama again.
Shiny bile runs from her lips to the stone like spider's silk.

***

CODRINGTON V. CODRINGTON & ANDERSON

Among the many elevating qualities that have made marriage the central institution of modern (as of ancient) society, it is a marvellous instrument of education. By yoking one woman to one man, it imparts strength to the weaker, softness and moral beauty to the stronger. The blessed companionship of two complementary natures, whose most potent bond lies in the very fact of their difference, enlarges the social sympathies and quickens the spiritual instincts of both.

It is a fact to be lamented, then, and not merely by the individuals involved, when a marriage is dissolved—and generally the less said about it the better. When the Matrimonial Causes Act opened the floodgates in 1857, the Divorce Court's first President, Sir Cresswell Cresswell, expressed the hope that the attendant publicity would be on the whole beneficial; that a calm consideration of marital strife and the disgrace which must attach to it would have a deterrent effect. But since then, many commentators have argued that the Court's influence is rather corrupting than otherwise. Unhappy couples are known to attend sessions of this "School for Divorce" to learn the sordid tricks necessary to throw off a burdensome yoke. The public now turns to the Law Reports for a succession of sensational narratives that air details so filthy they put cheeks to blush and make ears ring. Any journal that reports the Court's proceedings at length, then, risks stooping below the level of a French novel.

That being noted—the petition for divorce of Vice-Admiral Henry Codrington, on the grounds of his wife's misconduct with Colonel David Anderson, arguably represents an exception to the rule. The Petitioner, son of the late lamented Admiral Edward Codrington, hero of Trafalgar, and younger brother of General William Codrington, Governor of Gibraltar, has won considerable distinction in his own right, most recently as Admiral-Superintendent of the Docklands at Malta, the principal scene of much of the alleged criminality. The Respondent, née Helen Jane Webb Smith, is the sole progeny of Christopher Webb Smith of Florence, late of the East India Company and author of those modestly invaluable works
Oriental Ornithology
and
The Feathered Life of Hindostan.
As is so shamefully often the case, especially in cases that originate in the lax circles of colonial outposts, the Co-Respondent, Colonel Anderson (for whose recent marriage, interested readers should turn to page 9, below) is an officer in Her Majesty's Army.

The Admiral's petition has appended to it a strikingly diverse list of locations in which Mrs. Codrington is accused of having committed the offence in question with either Anderson or another paramour (Lieutenant Herbert Alexander St. John Mildmay): Admiralty House in Valetta, the Admiralty gondola, Mildmay's lodgings in Valetta, the resort of Cormayeur, the Grosvenor Hotel (London), and, perhaps most intriguingly, the Bloomsbury residence of Miss Emily Faithfull, the petticoat philanthropist whose founding of the Victoria Press has made our readers familiar with her name.

The questions raised when this petition comes to trial will involve the most momentous interests of the parties concerned: the honour of two gentlemen who have served their Sovereign with honour, and the fair fame of two well nurtured and educated ladies. The Codrington trial, in addition, will, according to our sources at the Bar, offer legal novelty in the form of a particularly shocking counterclaim against her husband by the Respondent, and may be considered a test case of the Matrimonial Causes Act's procedural workings.

If the Divorce Court is a necessary evil, then, on such occasions as these, to report on it seems a necessary evil too. When large questions are involved, or the character of those who have achieved celebrity, the organs of opinion are bound to speak, or the public will be left to form their views without guidance. With these high purposes, then, this newspaper will from the first day of the trial embark on the most minute diurnal reportage of the case of
Codrington
v.
Codrington
&
Anderson.

***

There's a wet, autumnal quality in the air already. Helen shivers in the growler as it brings her back to Taviton Street, and forces herself to read the article through one more time.

Instead of hot tea and buttered muffins, there's an envelope waiting for her on a silver tray, with Fido's familiar red seal on it.

October 1, 1864

Helen,

I have asked Johnson to give you this in my absence, as I feel unable to speak to you with any self-possession. This morning all peace of mind was robbed from me by two things I read.

The first was the piece in the Times, which named my house as one of the places in which you and A. had your trysts. I can't imagine how your husband's solicitor found this out—by means of a spy, perhaps?— and I'm filled with horror to find myself named in print as some kind of knowing procuress, when the truth is so much more complicated. When I think of my parents catching sight of the family name in the paper this morning, a name on which through untold generations no shadow has been cast—well, you can imagine how I blanch.

The second shock was Mr. Few's note, explaining that the document he signed in my presence, describing the incident of 1856, irrevocably commits me to testify against your husband. In the teashop, I remember, you said that you'd never ask that of me, not even if your whole future were to depend on it; I can still hear you saying those words. I can't bear to think that you have misled me yet again, Helen, after all your assurances. I can only tell myself that in your present state of distress, you didn't make yourself quite understood to Mr. Few when you were telling him of the incident, and that he must bear some responsibility for having failed to spell out what would follow from committing it to paper in the form of an affidavit. But the fact remains that I find myself faced with the prospect of standing up to describe, in a public courtroom, an obscene and violent attack of which, as you know, I have no clear recollection.