The First of July(43)

“No. No!” he almost shouted. “Why?” He felt a sense of panic.

“Silly boy,” she said. “Because I need to work. There is a part possibly for me in Lyons. The theatre there is very good. If not, I have an offer—a less good part, it is true—in Paris.”

He was on the point of telling her he loved her and saying he could support her, but realized just in time the crassness of either comment. To offer his love as a reason for her to stay in poverty was an insult, and it would have been even more of an insult to offer her money when she’d just given herself to him. But eventually, he’d thought, as he walked back to Hyde Park, he would declare both of these things. He was filled with terror at the idea of her going and delirious with how she moved and smelled, and her appetite for him.

He’d invited her to Abbotsgate because she didn’t seem to have many friends. His father was unconventional in his friends and infinitely welcoming. It was, Harry sometimes thought, partly because he was bored in the country.

She hadn’t wanted to come at first. “Don’t be silly, Harry. Your father will think you intend to marry me and will have apoplexy.”

But he’d persuaded her by pointing out that she was about to leave England and, just as he’d seen her home, he wanted her to see his. And by asking three other friends, all of whom she knew. “See. Uneven numbers,” he’d said. “And my father will have friends down too. Probably dull ones, but you’ll enchant them.”

What he’d not considered was how potentially cruel it was to flaunt the vast inequality of their circumstances by taking her there; but if she was humiliated by this, she didn’t show it. She was, he thought later and ruefully, an actress. There was no question that she’d amused his father, and he remembered feeling proud that his father had taken a friend of his seriously. They’d ended the evening singing and playing the piano. At one point his father had played, rather badly, and Isabelle had sung, rather well, a French ballad, “Auprès de ma blonde.” After applause and some table-thumping, from his friends and from a visiting couple his father had met the year before in Baden-Baden, they had all sung songs from The Pirates of Penzance. At one point, Harry had thought that the four years Isabelle had on him made her seem closer to the married couple than to his younger friends, two of whom were now quite drunk.

“Why don’t you recite some poetry?” he’d said. And then to his father, “She’s awfully good.”

She’d demurred but had finally been persuaded to do one speech from the play she was in. His father’s friends, who had seen the production and loved it, were thrilled.

“What are you appearing in next?” Mrs. Daubeney had asked.

“I am returning to France,” Isabelle said with slight awkwardness. “I have a part there. In a very good play.”

But his father had jumped in and said “Oh, we can’t let you go. It’s years since we’ve made proper use of the piano and it’s always impossible to lure Harry home. Surely a woman with your talents would make a perfect Shakespearean heroine here in England?”

She had smiled, but Harry felt embarrassed by his father’s ignorance of the world of the theatre or even of what it was like to be poor. He lay awake afterward, wanting her badly, wondering if he dared tiptoe up to her room, or whether she, who so often took the initiative, might come to his, but eventually he must have fallen asleep and was awoken in the morning by a maid knocking on the door.

Isabelle had been hard to reach over the following two or three weeks. He had even gone to her lodgings, but she was never in. He’d left a note at the theatre, knowing that the play’s run would end in days. She answered, affectionately, but explaining that she was very busy with arrangements for her departure. He longed to see her, but his dreams were of her body and her magical transformation from her usual modest demeanor to an almost wanton pleasure in making love. Was it because she was French, he had wondered? Were there English girls like her?

A month after their evening in Abbotsgate, his world fell apart. His father wrote to him, a letter shot through with happiness as well as his customary enthusiasm. He was going to remarry. He had been lonely for so long, he said, and Harry felt a twinge of guilt. But, his father had continued, although he must seem very ancient to Harry, he was not an old man. Now he had met a woman who had changed everything, and they were to be married as soon as possible. Harry was astonished. He’d had no idea his father had a woman in his life. His father had, he said almost boyishly, never been so happy—a slightly insensitive reflection on his time with his own mother, Harry had thought—but he was still amused by his father’s impetuosity. He turned over the page. So, his father concluded, he had Harry to thank for introducing him to Madame Isabelle Dessonnes, and he knew that Harry would welcome her as his stepmother and the new Lady Sydenham. They both hoped they would see him at Abbotsgate as soon as he could get away.