‘Please,’ she muttered. ‘Take off your shoes and stockings immediately. Falmouth! Take these things away. Clean and dry the shoes, if you can, but do not bother with the stockings – burn them. And send Dorcas to my room to find a clean pair for Mrs Weekes.’
‘My thanks, Mrs Alleyn,’ said Rachel, wearily.
The stockings that Dorcas brought were knitted silk, far finer and softer than Rachel’s woollen ones. Josephine Alleyn watched her wash her feet and put them on with an expression that hovered between compassion and froideur.
‘Tell me, Mrs Weekes, was this a deliberate attack by my son?’ she asked, at last.
‘I do not think so. That is… he meant to smash the thing, in his anger… but I do not think he meant to injure me.’ But he would have, perhaps, had I not stepped back. Without even knowing he did so. The thought sent her a shiver.
‘What had angered him so?’
‘I… it was my fault. I spoke of love. I thought to… soothe him, to reassure him, when he had grown agitated. But the effect was quite the opposite.’
‘Yes. It would have been,’ said Mrs Alleyn. When Rachel looked up she found the older woman studying her. ‘But you must know, Mrs Weekes – you who have also lost people – that love can be as cruel a thing as any under the sun.’
‘Yes, I suppose it can be.’
‘When I first invited you here to introduce you to Jonathan, I told you, did I not, that I sensed some strength in you?’
‘You did, Mrs Alleyn.’
‘That was the strength I sensed, for it is in me too. It is the strength that comes from suffering, and surviving it. My son does not have it, and so his wounds do not heal.’
‘You speak of your own grief at losing your husband, and your father?’ At this, Mrs Alleyn’s face fell out of its steady composure for once. Her eyelids flickered down, her lower lip shook, just for a moment.
‘I had but two years of marriage to Mr Robert Alleyn, before his untimely death forced me to return to my father. They were the happiest two years of my life,’ she said, words weighty and cold with sorrow. In that moment, Rachel saw Mrs Alleyn differently. She saw a woman, alone and afraid, rather than a grand and powerful lady. Impulsively, she took the other woman’s hand in both of hers and held it tightly, as much for her own comfort as for Mrs Alleyn’s.
‘I do fear that I shall never be that happy,’ Rachel said, with quiet yearning. ‘For such love – passionate love – I have never known.’
As though a door had closed, Josephine Alleyn retreated from her.
‘Do not wish for it,’ she said. ‘Such love will use you ill, like as not. It used me ill. It used my son ill.’ She stared down at their clasped hands so pointedly that Rachel released her hold, confused.
‘But you would not wish to have never felt it at all, surely?’ she said. Mrs Alleyn did not answer at once, and thoughts paraded behind her eyes.
‘Perhaps, perhaps not. Perhaps I value the lessons it taught me, more than anything. The strength that losing it gave me. A woman needs that strength, to survive the ordeals this world will devise for us. The ordeals men will devise for us.’ She said this so grimly that Rachel did not know how to answer.
When Falmouth returned her shoes Rachel immediately smelt the preserving spirits still on them. She didn’t ever want to put them back on her feet, but saw little option. Mrs Alleyn wrinkled her nose and scowled.
‘Well. You will have to wear them to go home, Mrs Weekes, I cannot lend you any of mine. I have always had very dainty feet, but yours… But then do burn them, and find yourself another pair. This should cover your expenses, and you may keep the stockings.’ She fetched coins from a nearby drawer and handed them over.
‘You are very kind, Mrs Alleyn.’
‘But are you, Mrs Weekes? And are you kind enough?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Will you come again to my son, in spite of this… latest mishap?’ She asked it abruptly, almost impatiently. If I say no, she will waste no more time with me.
‘I… I must have a chance to rest, and to think, Mrs Alleyn.’
‘To think?’ she echoed, and then waved her hand. ‘Very well. Take your time, Mrs Weekes.’
When Rachel got home she gave her shoes to a pauper, and found that the foul smell had got into the stockings Mrs Alleyn had given her. She dropped them, pinched between thumb and finger, into a pail of soapy water; then sat near the front window and waited for Richard, lost in thought. Jonathan Alleyn filled her mind: the things he had told her about the war; the way he had lost control in his anger. Is Starling right about him? Could he have done Alice harm, even if he didn’t intend it, and doesn’t remember it? The thought was somehow more troubling to her now than it had been in the beginning. But not killed her, said the echo, in hope. Not that. If there truly had been a letter for Alice from some unknown other person… could that person not also have made her disappear? Or helped her to? She could be alive.
A knock at the door startled her up. It was a smut-faced boy with a note for her; she gave him a farthing and he scampered away. The note was written on a small scrap of paper, the torn corner of a bigger sheet. The ink was as black as soot, the writing well slanted and done with extravagant loops, untidily, as if hurried. The note contained few words, but those were enough to still her. Forgive me. Jon.a Alleyn. Rachel folded this tiny note into her palm and held it until the paper turned as warm and soft as skin. The other note is the key to this – the note to Alice from the lovers’ tree. Did she betray him for another? Is it the war that plagues him, or his secret guilt? I must know.
For several days, she did not return to Lansdown Crescent. She needed to let herself settle, to take a breath, to understand what she thought and felt a little better. To understand why she kept Jonathan Alleyn’s note tucked into her trinket box, and reread it as if it contained some important and complicated instruction that she needed to learn by heart. It had been too long since she’d visited Duncan Weekes, so she took him a beef pie, still warm from the oven. They sat to either side of his mean hearth and ate it from plates on their laps, with a mug of hot watered brandy each, talking about small things and pleasant memories. The old man seemed in good spirits, and Rachel was keen to clear her thoughts for a while, so she mentioned nothing of the Alleyns, or her difficult involvement with them.
She went with Harriet Sutton and Cassandra to buy new shoes with the money Mrs Alleyn had given her, on a day of such pervading chill that the chief topic of conversation was the distant dream of the coming spring and summer; the picnics and boat trips they would take together; the short-sleeved dresses they would wear, the flowers in their hat bands.
‘With the coins she gave you, you could buy a far finer pair,’ said Harriet, as the cobbler measured Rachel’s feet, and she chose a style from his design book.
‘I know. But this way we can all go and have tea afterwards, and I can treat us to cakes to go with it. If you would like to?’
‘Oh, can we?’ said Cassandra, her face lighting up.
‘Those old shoes of mine were far too lightweight for walking right across the city two times in the week, as I now must. A simple, sturdy pair like this will serve far better.’
‘And Mr Weekes will not mind? Your spending money on us?’ Harriet asked this quietly, for Rachel’s ears only.
‘He will not know of it,’ she replied. ‘And if he did, why should he begrudge me the rare pleasure of entertaining friends? I know, in truth, that he wishes me to be out in society more.’
‘Oh, I am sure he would not begrudge it.’ Harriet smiled again, but her eyes showed some misgiving. ‘But perhaps we are not quite the society he would encourage you into.’ She thinks of the money he lost at cards, and she knows it was not the first time. She knows how he hoped I would make him richer. Rachel found that she was not embarrassed by this, but grateful for her friend’s understanding. ‘It is an adjustment, is it not?’ Harriet went on, kindly. ‘The pocket money my father used to give me was far more than I had to spend during my first years as Captain Sutton’s wife.’