Poor Things

17. Gibraltar to Paris: Wedderburn’s Last Flight

At last, no Wedder! And my own little room in a narrow street in the heart of beautiful sane Paris! Do you remember bringing me here a long time ago? How we gaped at huge pictures in the Louvre? And ate at little tables under trees in the Tuileries Gardens? And visited Professor Charcot at the Salpêtrière,²¹ and how hard he tried to hypnotize me? At last I pretended he had done it, because I did not want him to feel silly in front of his huge audience of adoring students. I believe he saw I was pretending — which is why he smiled so wisely and announced that I was the sanest English woman he had ever professionally examined. Let me tell you how I got back here.

In Gibraltar Wedder made me wait outside the bank while he collected his money. He emerged with the careless swagger I so admired, though I now knew there was not much underneath. On the boat to Marseilles he ordered bottles of wine with our meals. This was new. I drank none because one sip of it makes me giddy, but he said a meal without wine was no meal at all, and pointed out that the French were all drinking it. This ship, unlike the Cut-use-off, was mainly for passengers. In the afternoons and evenings Wedder played cards with men in a corner of the main saloon, and kept at it long after I went to bed. The night before we docked in Marseilles he came back to the cabin whistling and chirping, “My hinny my hen my humming-bird my pretty partridge my Scots blue Bell, you were right in what you once said! Games of skill not games of chance are this man’s mètier.”

He counted his winnings then got into bed the right way round for the first time in weeks. I was starting to enjoy what he called “our second honeymoon” when he suddenly fell asleep. Not me. I knew what was going to happen and that I could not stop it.

Instead of going straight to Paris from Marseilles we put up in a hotel recommended by one of the card players on the boat. The same friend introduced him to a café or club or card-school where he played every afternoon and evening while I waited in the hotel drinking cup after cup of chocolate and brooding over Malthus’ On Population. It took Wedder five days to lose all he had. He behaved better over it than I expected, coming to our room in the afternoon and saying, “Here I am at your mercy again, Bell. I hope you have enough to pay the hotel — I’m totally cleaned out. But you prefer me this way.”

I had no intention of using your money until the last possible moment, God. I packed some essentials into a handbag, smartened myself up, smartened up Wedder, then took him for a stroll to a railway station where we caught an overnight train to Paris. While waiting for it he tried to break away once or twice, begging to return to the hotel to collect a dressing-case with silver-mounted brushes which had belonged to his father. I said, “No, Wedder, you booked that room for us. Be glad the hotel is getting something valuable in return.”

I was so relieved to get clean away from Marseilles that I slept sound though sitting upright on the wooden bench of a French third-class carriage.

On reaching Paris I saw Wedder had not slept a wink and was on the verge of collapsing. I dragged him into the crooked streets on the less posh side of the river where hotels were likely to be cheap, but they were not yet open. In a cobbled space where three narrow lanes met I plonked us both down at a café table and said, “Rest here Wedder. I will go to the station where trains leave for Calais and buy tickets. We could be in Glasgow three days from now.”

“Impossible — it would mean social ruin. We are not man and wife.”

“Then dear Duncan let us return to Glasgow separately.”

“Fiend-woman! Demon! Have I not proved that I love and need you? That parting with you would be tearing my heart out by the roots?” et cetera.

“But you said there were people you wanted to stay with in Paris. Maybe I can arrange that.”

“What people?”

“The midinettes and little green fairy.”

“Hoist with my own petard ha ha ha ha ha.”²²

When Wedder does not want to explain his funny words he gets out of it by using others. At that moment a waiter making the café ready for customers asked if we wanted anything and Wedder said, “Oon absongth.”

The waiter went away and brought back a little stemmed glass of what seemed water and a tumbler of more water. Wedder added drops from the tumbler to the small glass then held this up. The liquid in it turned a pretty milky green. “Meet the little green fairy!” he said and swallowed it in a gulp. Then he cried, “Oon otray!” to the waiter, folded his arms on the table top and hid his face in them. At this moment I saw a well-dressed man come out of a nearby doorway with “Hôtel de Notre-Dame” painted on the wall above it.

“Excuse me, Duncan,” I said and went inside.

The foyer was so small that a heavy mahogany desk in the middle nearly cut it in two. Folk going in or out had to squeeze round the sides. Behind the desk sat a woman who looked like Queen Victoria but younger and friendlier, a neat plump alert little woman in the black silk gown of a widow.

“Do you speak English, Madame?” I asked and, “It is me muver tongue, dear,” she answered in a London voice, “and what can I do for you?”

I told her I had a poor man outside who badly needed rest; that we had not much money and hardly any baggage, so wanted her smallest and cheapest room. She said I had come to the right shop — a cubicle here would cost only twenty francs for the first hour, to be paid in advance, with twenty for each additional hour or fraction of an hour to be paid before either party left. A cubicle had just been vacated and would be ready for use in ten or fifteen minutes — where was my gentleman friend? I said he was drinking green fairies at the café next door. She asked if he was likely to run away. I laughed and said, “No, I only wish he was!”

She laughed too and invited me to drink a cup of coffee with her while waiting. She said, “Judging by your voice you come from Manchester, and it is years since I had a heart-to-heart talk with a sensible down-to-earth English woman.”

I popped out and told Wedder this. He stared at me blearily then swallowed the second green fairy. I went back in.

She began by telling me she had once been Millicent Moon of Seven Dials and keen on the hotel trade, but London hotel regulations made life hard for beginners so she had come to Paris where new hôteliers were encouraged. In the Notre-Dame she had first occupied a very subordinate position, but became so indispensable to the manager that he married her — she was now known as Madame Cronquebil, but I should call her Millie. She had become manager herself after the Franco-Prussian war, when the Communards had suspended Cronquebil from a lamp bracket because of his international sympathies. She said she regretted his demise, but pursued her avocation with a facility and acumen which were appreciated in the correct quarters. French men were a lot easier to manage than British. The British pretended to be honest and practical but were at bottom a race of eccentrics. Only the French were sensible about the important things — did I not agree? I said, “I cannot say, Millie. What are the important things?”

“Money and love. What else is there?”

“Cruelty.”

She laughed and said that was a very English idea, but people who loved cruelty had to pay for it, which proved love and money came first. I asked what she meant? She stared and asked what I meant. I said I was afraid to tell her. At this she stopped being motherly and jolly, and asked in a low voice if a man had hurt me?

“O no Millie — nobody ever hurt me. I’m talking about worse things than that.”

I was trembling and starting to weep but she held my hands. This strengthened me so much that I told her what happened in Alexandria. And now I have the strength to tell you about it too, God, but it is so important that I will divide it from the rest of my letter with another line.

Mr. Astley and Dr. Hooker took me to a hotel where we sat among well-dressed people like ourselves at tables on a veranda chatting eating drinking and a crowd of nearly naked folk mostly children watched us all across a space where two men with whips walked up and down and at first I thought a jolly game was happening for many in the crowd were amusing folk on the veranda by bowing and praying to them and wriggling their bodies and grinning comically until someone on the veranda flung a coin or handful of coins onto the dusty ground before the veranda then one or two or a horde raced out and flung themselves down on the coins scrabbling and screaming while the audience at the tables laughed or looked disgusted or turned away then the men with whips who had stood with folded arms pretending not to see suddenly saw and rushed into the crowd flogging it apart and back which caused laughter too and Mr. Astley said remnants of the race that carved the sphinx and Dr. Hooker said that looks like a deserving case and pointed to a thin little girl blind in one eye carrying a baby with a big head who was blind in both she held it tight in one arm held the other straight out swaying the empty clutching hand from side to side mechanically as if in a trance in a trance I stood and walked to her I think the men shouted and followed I crossed the space and entered the crowd of beggars taking the purse out of my handbag to put into her hand but before I could do that someone snatched it anyway the money could never be enough she was my daughter perhaps I knelt on the ground embraced her and the baby lifted them up waded stumbled back through crippled blind children old men with running sores scrambling screaming stamping each other’s fingers to get coins from split purse I climbed onto the veranda a hotel man said you cannot bring these here and I said they are coming home with me and Mr. Astley said Mrs. Wedderburn neither the port authorities nor the captain will let you bring them onto the ship and the baby was wailing and peeing but the little girl clutched me with her other arm I am sure she knew she had found her mother but they dragged us apart YOU CAN DO NO GOOD bellowed Dr. Hooker nobody had ever cursed me insulted me like that before how could he say that to me who like all of us is good right through to the backbone I CAN DO NO GOOD? I cried hardly believing I had heard such a vile suggestion but Mr. Astley said distinctly none at all so I tried to scream like you once screamed God since I wanted to make the whole world faint but Harry Astley clapped his hand over my mouth O the sheer joy of feeling my teeth sink in.

The taste of blood sobered me. I was also surprised, because Mr. Astley did not wince or groan. He only frowned slightly, but two seconds later his face lost colour and he would have collapsed if Dr. Hooker and I had not helped him indoors and placed him on a sofa in the alcove of a lounge. Dr. Hooker ordered hot water, iodine and clean bandages, but though he has a medical certificate it was I who bathed and dressed the wound and bound it with a tourniquet bandage. I also told him I was sorry. In a sleepy voice he told me that a clean, unexpected flesh wound, however painful, was a flea bite to one who had been educated at Eton.

On the way back to the ship in a cab I sat silent and rigid, staring straight ahead while they talked. Dr. Hooker said now I knew the great task which lay ahead of the Anglo-Saxon races, and also why Our Father in Heaven had created an afterlife to counteract the evils of life on earth. At the same time (he said) I should not exaggerate the evil of what we had seen. The open sores et cetera were a source of income to those who flaunted them, and most beggars were happier than folk who lived by honest toil. The girl and baby were accustomed to their state, it was not misery in our sense of the word — they were certainly happier and freer in Egypt than they would be in a civilized country. He admired how completely I had recovered from my first reaction to a terrible surprise, but was not sorry to have administered that surprise — from now on I would think like a woman, not like a child. Mr. Astley said my pity was natural and good if confined to the unfortunate of my own class, but if acted on promiscuously it would prolong the misery of many who would be better dead. I had just seen a working model of nearly every civilized nation. The people on the veranda were the owners and rulers — their inherited intelligence and wealth set them above everyone else. The crowd of beggars represented the jealous and incompetent majority, who were kept in their place by the whips of those on the ground between: the latter represented policemen and functionaries who keep society as it is. And while they spoke I clenched my teeth and fists to stop them biting and scratching these clever men who want no care for the helpless sick small, who use religions and politics to stay comfortably superior to all that pain: who make religions and politics, excuses to spread misery with fire and sword and how could I stop all this? I did not know what to do.

“I still do not know,” I told Millie, smiling through my tears. “I had better return to God for advice. But I cannot do that until I am rid of the poor fellow who waits outside.”

“Bring him in,” said Millie firmly. “Your apartment is ready so take him up to it, knock him off quick and we will have another talk. Your heart is too good for this wicked world, my dear. You need advice from a friendly, experienced woman you can trust.”

I thought “knock him off” a queer way to say “put him to bed”, but out I went and saw — no Duncan! Four empty little green fairy glasses stood on the table top, a waiter who wanted paid sprang forward, but my Wedder had vanished.

I went back inside. Millie made us more coffee then asked how I had met such a man and why I was wandering in Paris with so little luggage. I told her.

She said, “I greatly admire your sense, my dear, in taking a nice long honeymoon with your lover before marrying a respectable husband. Too many women enter marriage completely ignorant of what they ought to give and take. But this Wedderburn is obviously an over-sucked orange. You will be a far better wife to your husband if you now enjoy some variety.”

She explained that the hotel was the sort Londoners call a knocking-shop — her customers were men who paid to wed a total stranger for periods of an hour or less. Knocking was illegal in Britain, but any clean intelligent girl could get a licence to do it in France, or find work in a licensed establishment like her own.

“Is it possible for strangers to wed so quickly?” I asked, astonished, and she said many men preferred strangers because they could not wed those they knew best. Most of her customers were married men, and some of them had mistresses too. It seemed a mistress was what I had been to Wedder, though a Parisian kind are called midinettes.

“He obviously found one while waiting for you,” she said. “Hotels constantly lose business to amateurs — if I did not love my métier I would have retired years ago. I don’t suppose you will want to stay here forever, but many deserted women earn enough to return to God while working for me.”

“Not to my God,” I said.

“Of course not, dear. I’m talking about Catholics.”

Then Wedder strode in. He was in one of his wild states, and demanded a talk with me in private.

“Do you want that, dear?” said Millie.

“Of course!” said I.

She led us very stiffly upstairs to this nice little room then said (to Wedder) “Out of respect for the person of your companion I am forgoing the tariff which is customarily paid in advance, but if in any way she suffers you will be made to pay to an extent you will find astonishing.”

She said this in a very French voice.

“Eh?” said Wedder, looking confused as well as wild.

In a more London voice she said, “Remember, walls have ears,” and left, shutting the door.

He then strode up and down making a speech which sounded more like the Bible than Shakespeare. He spoke about God, his mother, the lost paradise of home, hell-fire, damnation and money. He said that by stealing the five hundred friedrichs d’or I had broken his run of luck, stopped him breaking the casino’s bank and cheated him out of marriage. My theft had robbed the poor of vast sums he would have donated to charity and to the church, and deprived us of a town house in London, a yacht in the Mediterranean, a grouse moor in Scotland and a mansion in the Kingdom of Heaven. And now that he no longer wished to marry — now that he wished he were separated from me by a gulf deeper than Hell itself — he was chained by his abject poverty to the fiend who had damned him to Hell — was chained to a woman for whom he now felt nothing but hate hate hate hate hate — loathing, detestation and hate.

“But Duncan,” I cried happily cutting open the lining of my coat, “luck has returned to you again! Here are Clydesdale and North of Scotland banknotes to the value of five hundred pounds sterling — they are just as valuable as friedrichs d’or. God gave them to me because he knew something like this would happen, and I have kept them for our last moment which has now arrived. Take it all! Return to Glasgow, to your mother, to maidservants who will love your manliness more than I can, to any church of God which catches your fancy. Be free as a bird once more — fly from me!”

Instead of cheering up he tried to swallow the notes while flinging himself out of the window, but being unable to get it open he rushed through the door and tried to dive downstairs head first.

Luckily Millie had been listening from the room next door (this hotel is full of apertures) and had called out her staff. They swarmed over him and filled him with exactly the right amount of brandy. It was not easy getting him off on the train to Calais. He did not really want to leave me, but many hands make light work and off he went. Millie wanted me to keep most of the five hundred pounds but I said no: Wedder loved money more than I did and it was his reward for the weddings we had enjoyed. I would now earn what I needed by working for a living: a thing I had not done before. She said, “If that’s what you really want, dear.”

So here I am.