The Sealed Letter

It's an animal that eats up gold," groans Emily Davies, sitting in Fido's office at the Victoria Press the next day. "I so long to be done with it, I'd be happy to pay the costs of winding it up myself."

"Miss Parkes is always complaining the Journal's destroyed her health," says Fido, "yet she won't surrender the reins to anyone with fresh ideas. Surely Madame Bodichon won't be willing to supply the gold forever?"

"I doubt it," says Emily Davies. "In her last, she tells me that Miss Parkes has always had an exaggerated view of the Journals influence. But you know their long friendship…"

There is a pause, now, which stretches into awkwardness. It's up to Fido to speak. "I asked you to call on me this afternoon, Miss Davies, because-well, perhaps you've guessed." She finds this woman's small face unreadable. "The other day at the meeting, when I spoke of a first-class magazine which would combine the progress of women with other vital topics of the day, you seemed… interested. Was I mistaken?"

"You weren't." Emily Davies's eyes narrow. "But if it's not to be a new format for the English Woman's Journal, wouldn't such a magazine constitute a rival publication?"

"No," Fido insists, her voice shaking with excitement, "because it would appeal to quite a different, broader audience. What I'm thinking of is an entertaining monthly, on the Fraser's or Macmillan's model, which will inoculate readers-without their feeling so much as a prick!-with advanced ideas on the relations between the sexes." (She's spent the weekend mulling over this plan, in an attempt-only partly successful-to keep her mind off Helen.)

"Would you be the publisher?"

"Indeed I would. I have some capital, and a good chance of securing an investment partner, a Mr. Gunning; you must meet him. You'd be the sole editor-unencumbered by a committee," she adds wryly, remembering how Emily Davies once painstakingly cut down a rambling article of Arnold's from thirty pages to twenty, before Bessie Parkes could inform her of the Journals policy of never editing the prose of a distinguished man. "How do you like the sound of the Victoria Magazine?"

"Very much indeed," says Emily Davies, with a precise, doll-like smile.

For a quarter of an hour they throw themselves into the details: topics, writers, artists, rates per page. They'll save money on an office by using the premises of the Victoria Press. "What ought our motto to be?" asks Emily Davies.

"Liberty! Let every woman do that which is right in her own eyes," Fido improvises.

"I must insist on a contract; there's too much slapdash informality in the Woman Movement."

"What would you say to one hundred pounds per annum?"

"Payment in addition for any articles I write?"

"Five shillings a page," offers Fido.

They're grinning at each other like children when the boy knocks to say Mrs. Codrington is asking for the proprietor.

Fido's throat locks. Without a word she stands and goes to the door of her office.

"If you have another visitor-"

"No no, do excuse me, if you please, Miss Davies, I'll only be a-"

Helen's rushing across the workroom to seize her by both wrists. "Fido!"

Flora Parsons, for one, is smirking over her composing desk.

Abstractions and judgements fall to dust: this is Helen. "My dear," whispers Fido, trying to steer her away from the office where Emily Davies sits, "this is neither the time nor the place…"

Helen won't move a step. There's something askew about her jacket. "He-" she chokes. The tears are coursing in sheets down her face, into her lace collar.

Fido hisses in her ear. "Whatever the colonel might have-"

"Not him," Helen wails.

Before Fido can stop her, she's swept through the door marked Proprietor. Fido hurries after. Emily Davies is on her feet, sliding her notes into her pocketbook. Fido makes a rapid calculation of status; Helen, for all her dishevelment, comes out ahead by a nose. "Mrs. Codrington-may I present Miss Davies?"

"Delighted," says Emily Davies, holding out her hand, but Helen stands like Niobe, her face eroded with tears.

Wildly, Fido says, "My colleague and I were just discussing the possibility of a collaborative venture."

Helen tries to speak, makes a dreadful gulping.

"Another time," Emily Davies murmurs, edging towards the door.

"He's taken Nan and Nell," Helen bursts out. "And my desk, he's smashed open my writing desk."

The visitor's tiny eyebrows shoot up.

Fido sucks in her lips, gives Emily Davies a shake of the head. "Ladies, good day." And Emily Davies is gone, shutting the door quietly behind her, thinking God knows what about the kind of lunatics Fido Faithfull harbours among her intimates.

But through her fog of mortification, Fido has registered something. "Anderson's abducted the girls?"

A violent shake of the head. "Their father has. I came home, I was shopping," she sobs, "when I walked in the door the house was empty. He's sent all the servants away too."

"Where's he taken them? Not the servants: Nan and Nell," she clarifies. "If I knew, do you think I'd be here?" shrieks Helen. "I'd crawl to China on my knees for my babies."

"Sh," hisses Fido, casting a desperate glance at the door that separates them from her typos. "Sit down, won't you? A glass of water-"

"I'll never sit down again!"

Exasperation, like a wave engulfing Fido. This kind of behaviour is why no one wants to employ women, she finds herself thinking nastily. "What was that about your desk?" she asks after a moment.

"It's broken open, it's in splinters. Everything's gone."

"Everything, what everything?" She waits. "Don't tell me there were letters."

"I-"

"Helen!"

"Nothing from Anderson, I burn them all as soon as I read them, or nearly," Helen assures her. "What then? Not a diary?"

The beautiful cheeks are sunken. "Just an appointment book."

Fido clenches her fists.

"And there might have been… scribbles. A few drafts of letters."

"This is dreadful."

"Do you think I need you to tell me that?"

Fido tries to gather her thoughts. "So all the staff are gone?"

"Except for Mrs. Nichols. She claims to know nothing," says Helen, scrabbling in her bag, "but this wasn't sealed, so I'd lay money she's read it." She slaps down a piece of paper.

Fido picks it up warily. "Eau de toilette," she reads aloud, "gateleg table, chintz samples, nerve tonic…"

Helen snatches it back from her and digs in her bag again. "Here."

The note is unsigned; the admiral must know his wife will recognize his hand. Dated today, Tuesday the twenty-fifth. A single line: You will be hearing from a Mr. Bird, my solicitor, with respect to a petition for divorce. Fido covers her mouth.

At Tavtton Square, after some laudanum, Helen's a little calmer. She lies stretched out on Fido's bed, staring at the gaudy sunset that fills the window. "To think," she marvels, "all these years, ever since I made that rash request for a private separation, he's been plotting to punish me."

"You can't be sure of that," says Fido. "It could be a sudden impulse on Harry's part."

"He must have guessed the whole story, on Sunday when he bumped into Anderson on Eccleston Square. Funny," says Helen, her voice cracking, "the price of a single carelessness. I only asked Anderson to come to me at home because you'd barred the door to yours."

Fido feels a stab. "I was acting in accordance with my conscience," she says in a small voice.

"Oh, I know," wails Helen. "I've no right to come here after all the tarradiddles I told you. Why didn't I trust you with the whole truth from the start? I've no right to ask you to have a woman's heart towards me-and yet I do."

Fido puts her finger against Helen's lips to hush her.

"Divorce would rob me of everything. Reputation, name, my daily bread…" Helen lists them bleakly.

The girls, thinks Fido, but doesn't dare say so. "I'm only glad you didn't run to Anderson," she says softly. "So often, I believe, a woman in this kind of débâcle sees no other way out. She throws herself on the man's mercy-and what once was romance slips into squalor, as he learns to rate her on the world's polluted terms."

Helen's smile is a distorted one. "I saw him yesterday evening, at a hotel." Fido stiffens. "I don't want to hear anything said or done in any hotel." For the first time, it hits her that a divorce may mean a trial, in open court, with witnesses saying appalling things out loud.

"He gave me the impression that his feelings for me were quite… unquenched," says Helen. "But then, it seems I'm the worst judge of men's hearts. This morning he sent a little note to say he was returning to Scotland and we wouldn't be meeting again."

"Oh, my darling girl!"

"Regrets, it said. Regrets, D.A."

Fido doesn't say anything for a moment, because if she tries she'll be in tears, and one of the two women must be strong. One of them must remember the way through this nightmarish maze. Finally she speaks, decisive. "You must put this scoundrel out of your mind, Helen. You've wasted quite enough of your time and spirit on him."

Helen shuts her eyes. Her hair, half out of its chignon, looks like blood spilled across the pillow.

"You were right to come to me." Fido's voice vibrates very low, like a cello. "You must have known you'd find safe haven here."

Eyes flicker open, almost turquoise in this strange evening light. "I couldn't be sure. After the way you flew into a rage in the cab-"

"That's all in the past. There must be no more evasions between us, no more falsehoods," she says, seizing one of Helen's hands.

Helen squeezes back. "I've nothing left to hide from you. My heart's split open as if on the vivisector's table!"

Fido winces at the image. She bends over Helen. "Lean on me, my own one. I'll stand by you."

"Through everything?"

"Everything!"

"I can stay?"

"For as long as you need." Forever, Fido's thinking, though she doesn't dare say it, not yet.

"Oh Fido, how did I ever manage without you, all those lonely years!"

Her mind is leaping into the future. Why not? Women do live together, sometimes, if they have the means and are free from other obligations. It's eccentric, but not improper. She's known several examples in the Reform movement: Miss Power Cobbe and her "partner" Miss Lloyd, for instance. It can be done. It would be a change of life for Helen-but hasn't her life been utterly changed, without her consent, already? Can't the caterpillar shrug off its cramped case and emerge with tremulous wings?

As if reading Fido's mind, Helen clings to her hand like a drowning woman. "If you cast me off or betray me like these men have, I'll perish."

"I never will." There'll be some discomfort, some embarrassment consequent on setting up house with a divorcee, but nothing Fido can't weather for her friend's sake.

"Swear."

"There's no need-"

"Swear it!"

"I swear, then." In the ragged silence, Fido plants a hot kiss on that smooth face.

Later that night, when darkness has drawn a merciful cloak over the lurid sky, Helen's fast asleep, on her front, as still as a baby. Beside her, Fido, propped up on four pillows, strains for breath and represses a nagging cough. Emotion always goes to her lungs.

How long does a divorce take? she wonders. The thing is rare in English fiction. In East Lynne, she recalls with effort, the husband seems to obtain one without much trouble-but by then, the deluded Lady Isabel has already eloped to France, which makes the case clearer. Abandoned by her seducer, unrecognizably scarred, Lady Isabel comes home and takes a position as governess to her own children. Doesn't one of them then die in her arms? Wake up. This is real life, Fido reminds herself sternly.

If Helen were to admit the charges-casting the lion's share of blame on Anderson, for his ceaseless solicitations and threats that induced her to break her vows-then perhaps the thing needn't take very long at all. It could all be resolved before the winter, thinks Fido giddily. She pictures Helen and herself celebrating Christmas in the drawing-room below.

In the faint gaslight from the street that comes through the crack in the curtains, she watches the infinitesimal rise and fall of Helen's shoulder blades under the white muslin of the borrowed nightdress. Some lines from Lord Tennyson repeat themselves in her head.

Strange friend, past, present, and to be,

Loved deeplier, darker understood.

It's too late for qualms. In one turn of the planet, everything has changed. While Helen was out shopping today, she was, all unknowing, robbed of everything. The whole establishment of her life has fluttered to the ground like a pack of cards. At a moment like this, Fido can only follow her nature, which is to hold, to save, to love.

The grandfather clock on the landing chimes two. If she'd known what a storm was brewingjust over the horizon, Fido wonders, would she have turned away, that parched afternoon on Farringdon Street, on the last day of August?

Fido?

You're mistaken.

But you're my long-lost friend, my faithful Fido!

Not I.

The very thought of it makes her despise herself, for lack of nerve, parsimony of heart. No, she can't wish that day-not the whole last chaotic month-undone. In the past, Fido's never come quite first for Helen; she's always known that. But now Helen's been shaken awake; she's learned that men's flattery isn't enough to live on. She's come to treasure the one true friend she possesses, the one soul that speaks to her soul. Helen's going to survive these horrors, somehow, and it's Fido who will pull her through. There could be long years of happiness ahead, waiting for them just around the corner.

On impulse she gets out of bed, very softly so as not to disturb the sleeper, and searches in the back of her bureau drawer. She doesn't need a light to find the roll of linen. There's the choker Helen gave her all those years ago, in memory of the beach in Kent where they met in the year 1854: shells, amber drops, mother-of-pearl scattered along the velvet. Fido puts it round her throat now and fastens the clasp. It's tighter than it used to be, but not too tight to bear.

Wheezing a little, she stands beside the bed and pulls the blankets up to Helen's nape, to where the dark hair breaks over pale skin.

She wakes to find Helen standing at the window in the grey morning, fully dressed. "My dear-"

"The girls are terrified, I can feel it," says Helen, without turning. "We must find where he's hidden them."

Fido rubs dust from her eyes. "You're in no fit state, my dear. Why not wait till tomorrow, at least?"

"Tomorrow means one more day without my darlings," says Helen in a guttural voice.

She struggles up on the pillows, suppressing a sigh. She's known Helen to travel for weeks-months-without her children. But she supposes it's different when they've been snatched away. After all, what does Fido know of a mother's feelings?

For the best part of the morning, they hunt Nan and Nell all over town. It's a peculiarly mortifying sort of business.

Helen begins by leaving a pleading note for Harry (drafted by Fido, on a writing tablet on her knee in the waiting cab) at his club. The Rag Club-properly, the Army and Navy Club-stands on Pall Mall, a modern, impregnable fortress, with a crossed sword and anchor over the great arch, and the motto, Unitate Fortior. The doorkeeper's face is marble; he won't give the ladies any clue as to whether Admiral Codrington is in residence.

Then they try the houses of several of the Codringtons' long-time acquaintances. They're met with soaring eyebrows, startled denials. How can any decent mother possibly mislay two daughters, eleven and twelve? There's nothing like a little mysteriousness to make word spread. Really, thinks Fido with a private groan, Helen may as well put a small advertisement in the Times to announce the eruption of her domestic hearth.

At the marble-fronted townhouse of the Bourchiers, Helen sends the driver in with her card bearing a scribbled message, and receives a curt reply that her Ladyship has nothing to communicate to her brother's wife.

Helen falls back into the corner of the growler. "He must have told her. He's probably told everyone by now," she snarls. "Do you think she has my girls locked up in there?"

"It's possible."

"You try, won't you, and this time don't ask for her, just find out from the footman whether the Misses Codrington are staying with their aunt."

"Helen, I-"

"Please! You have a winning face."

Fido burst out laughing. (It must be the strain.) "I've never heard it called that before."

"Strangers like it at once."

"Especially the lower orders, you mean?"

"They assume the worst of mine," says Helen instead of answering.

It's true, Fido thinks; Helen's brand of ostentatious loveliness puts people's backs up. She gets down and goes up to the door; it's starting to rain. By wearing her most benign, parish-visitor expression she manages to extract from the boy in livery the information that the admiral's daughters haven't visited in some weeks.

"Well, at least we know that much," she tells Helen, wiping wet hair out of her eyes.

"We know nothing," Helen corrects her with a groan. "They could be floating in the Thames, as we speak!"

Fido shuts her eyes for a moment, then opens them. "Don't let's give way to melodrama," she says lightly. "No doubt I'm very stupid, but… what possible motive could Harry have for throwing the girls in the river?"

A silence, and Fido holds her breath: is Helen going to fly into hysterics again?

No: a small, grudging smile. "Their resemblance to their mother?"

"Ah, but they have the Codrington stature. No, it would surely be simpler for him to hire some thug to throw you in the river."

Helen giggles. "Harry would hate to spend the money."

"When he could do the job himself, you mean? An excellent point."

"Of course, you may be driven to such lengths yourself, Fido, before he gets a chance."

"Very likely. If you annoy me, I dare say these arms have force enough to manhandle you over Westminster Bridge," says Fido, holding them out to examine them in their tight brown sleeves. "If we're to live together, no doubt you'll discover all sorts of brutish qualities in me."

But the moment of humour has gone by; Helen's staring out the window at the Bourchiers' house again. Fido pulls out her watch, and tuts. "I really ought to be at the press by now," she tells Helen. "I must arrange a meeting with Mr. Gunning, about the finances of my new magazine."

Helen's face falls. "You wouldn't leave me, today of all days?"

"My dear, it would only be for an hour, two at most-"

But Helen clings to Fido's brown skirt, her face contorted, and Fido gives in; pats her hand.

The rain's heavier now, so she has the cabman rein in his horse by a London Umbrella Company stand so she can hire one for the afternoon. Then she gives him the next address on Helen's list of acquaintances.

After two more dead-ends, Helen turns from the streaky window and says, "I'm a fool not to think of it before: he must have tracked down the Watsons!"

At first the name means nothing to Fido. Then she says, "Your friends in Malta?"

"His" says Helen, scathing. "When the reverend lost his post, they came back to London. I can just see Harry turning to them for this kind of trick. The husband's a cipher, but the wife would be capable of anything."

In the directory Fido's been carrying around in her bag, she does find a Reverend Joshua Watson in the farthest fringes of Bayswater.

At the house, Helen sends in her card, and after a moment a greying middle-aged lady comes out to the carriage, under a faded umbrella.

"Is that her?" Fido asks, and in response Helen squeezes her wrist tight enough to hurt.

Helen leans out the window and begins without preamble. "You have them, don't you? Give them to me!"

Fido's cheeks go hot. "Please excuse my friend-" she begins.

But then she registers the minute smile on the face of the clergyman's wife, and a tiny glance up at the house. They're here!

"Mrs. Codrington. The girls' father-their sole legal guardian," Mrs. Watson spells out, a word at a time, "has indeed honoured my husband and self by entrusting them to our care for the moment. In the admittedly unlikely case that you have any true feeling for them-"

"How dare you," cries Helen.

"For the sake of little Anne and Ellen, I suggest you give over making a scene in the public street."

"Nan," she spits, "they're called Nan and Nell."

The little smile broadens. "My husband and I have formed a policy of using their proper Christian names, to help them make a fresh start."

"They're mine!"

"As a point of law," says Mrs. Watson with her head on one side, "it's only a woman's virtue that induces her husband to leave his children in her custody. Technically speaking, children are a sort of gift a man gives his wife, you see, which he can withdraw at any time."

"Lying hag!"

Fido is shaken by the statement, but she knows the facts are true.

"You've gone astray, Mrs. Codrington," remarks Mrs. Watson in a sort of joyful sing-song. "You've done dreadful things."

"I'll do something worse, you bitch, if you don't bring down my children," says Helen, lunging at her through the open window. The older woman jerks away from the cab.

"For shame!" Fido's appalled by the language as much as the violence.

But Helen's scanning the upper storey. What comes out of her mouth is like the cry of a gull. "There they are!"

Mrs. Watson turns to look up at the rain-smeared window; frowning, she makes a banishing gesture. But two blank faces stare down at the scene.

"Nell! Nan! Mama is here," Helen shrieks out the window.

Fido pulls Helen back onto the seat. "This is doing no good," she pleads in her ear.

"I don't know you, madam," Mrs. Watson remarks to Fido.

"Emily Faithfull," she says reluctantly, after a second.

"Ah yes, I'm familiar with the name." Very knowing.

Fido stares at her. Familiar with it from the press? From Helen's reminiscences, while she was in Malta?

"I wonder that you continue to associate with this person."

"That is the nature of friendship," she says thickly.

"I, too, was taken in by her, for a little while, Miss Faithfull," says Mrs. Watson with a ghastly benevolence. "You're clearly still caught in her coils."

While Fido's been distracted, Helen has got the door open and jumped down into the street. "Open the window, darlings," she roars up at the white faces. But they don't seem to hear her.

"Won't you be Christian enough to let her have just a moment with her children?" Fido asks Mrs. Watson. "If you please, she's terribly distressed."

"Indeed she is, and it might do the girls incalculable harm to be put through such an encounter with a foul-mouthed hysteric."

"One moment," says Fido furiously, "one embrace."

"The time for embracing is over," intones Mrs. Watson.

Then the faces are gone from the window, and Helen lets out a long, shrill wail.

Fido steps out into the rain, to take Helen by the wet sleeves and pull her back into the cab. "Taviton Street," she calls to the driver.

The solicitor's name is Few, "But my clients are many," he mentions. The ladies stare at him. "Just a little joke," he says regretfully. Another pause. He smoothes down his chalk-white hair. "Now, to the purpose, Mrs. Codrington. The admiral will of course be liable for an allowance to maintain you until the trial-and for my fees, should you win."

Helen holds up her hand. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Mr. Few," she says with a self-possession that staggers Fido. "It's been two days now since my husband walked out; his temper must have cooled. Why don't you propose to this Mr. Bird that the two of you draw up a deed of private separation? I could live very quietly and economically with the girls, or even on my own, so long as I was allowed to see a good deal of them."

The elderly solicitor blinks at her.

Live quietly and economically with me at Taviton Street, says Fido loudly in her head. She's glimpsing new possibilities: We could both be mothers to Nell and Nan.

"I'm afraid it's too late for any such measure," says Few, shaking his head as if marvelling at female ignorance. "The admiral wants a divorce not simply à mensâ et thoro, that is, a separation from bed and board, but à vinculo matrimonii, from the bond of wedlock itself. Had he simply wanted to reside apart from you, he'd hardly have filed a petition yesterday stating that he believes you guilty of misconduct with-" he puts on his glasses to read it "-one Colonel David Anderson."

Helen's cheeks are pink. Fido wonders suddenly: is she imagining herself and Anderson as Lancelot and Guinevere, accused before the world? But such cases aren't decided by single combat in these civilized times. It's not the man's prowess that will save the lady or fail to, but the facts, the arguments, the oiled machine of the law. So Harry's filed his petition already, thinks Fido with dread. What does that mean? She wishes she knew more of the law. Does Few mean that it's too late for Helen to make a full confession of adultery and come to some arrangement with Harry as to her future?

" That in Malta Anderson frequently and habitually did visit her and commit the act in question with her during the years 1862, 1863, and 1864" Few recites, eyes on the page. "Also that in Malta, one Lieutenant Herbert Alexander St. John Mildmay frequently and habitually did visit her and commit the act in question with her during the years 1860, 1861, and 1862"

Fido sits bolt upright. Who on earth is this Lieutenant Mildmay?

Helen doesn't meet her eyes. Fido answers her own question. So the golden colonel wasn't the first man to whom Helen succumbed, then. Later: I'll get the whole story from her later. Fido feels sick to her stomach, and looks at the floor.

"Unlike Mildmay," Few remarks, "Anderson is a named co-respondent to the petition, and as such the admiral's entitled to ask damages of him, though so far he's not done so. Anderson's solicitor tells me his client is presently in Scotland, and that the intended plea is not guilty."

"As is mine," says Helen hastily. "That-" she gestures at the statement of charges as if at a brimming sewer, "that can all be demolished."

"I'm relieved to hear it." The old solicitor's tone is so habitually dry, Fido can't tell if he's being sardonic. He looks back at his client.

"Mr. Few-I'm in a dreadful state today."

"I understand, and I hate to press a lady. But some hints, some beginnings-"

Helen stares out the window as if for inspiration, then takes a long breath. "Things are so very different beyond these shores! I was raised in India, you see. And in Florence, where I spent the last years of girlhood, it's quite acceptable for a married lady to have an acknowledged escort, don't you know: a cicisbeo."

She's fudging a point, Fido wants to say: quite acceptable for the signore, yes; not for the Anglo ladies.

"Lax but harmless foreign mores," murmurs Few, writing it down.

"I admit I've been foolish," says Helen with an infectious smile, "rather frivolous in my pastimes, unwise in some of my friendships. I shouldn't have allowed either Mildmay or Anderson so much of my company if I'd imagined that it would provoke malicious tongues."

Fido finds herself almost admiring the sheer gall of her friend. Perhaps Helen should have been a woman of business; she has powers that Fido's never noticed before.

"Admits to lacking the decorum of a British wife," says Few under his breath. "No hard evidence, then?" He looks over his glasses.

Helen hesitates. "What exactly-"

"For instance," says Few, "statements by servants, friends, letters of yours, or received by you, letters of others referring to you, entries in this appointment book your husband took from your desk, testimony by cabmen…"

Helen is sinking back in the leather chair.

And Fido melts into compassion, again, the way a wave at its height collapses into froth. "Helen, would you care for a glass of water? Mr. Few, perhaps-"

He pours each of the ladies a glass, from a decanter on his sideboard. "Mrs. Codrington," he asks, "I wonder would you like to reconsider your plea?"

"My thoughts exactly," says Fido firmly.

Helen's eyes look bruised. Instead of answering, she begins, "My girls-"

The solicitor nods, his face creased with sympathy. "Don't let that be a consideration. I very much fear that, in any case, they won't be coming home."

Helen's salt-blue eyes bulge.

"As long as a paternal parent has not been proved insane," Few explains, "sole guardianship lies with him."

Helen burst out. "There must be exceptions."

"Some," he says dubiously. "Any mother, even if proved adulterous, may petition for access or custody of offspring up to the age of sixteen… but in practice, the court won't give children above age seven to a mother unless her reputation is unblemished, and the father's brutal, drunken, ah, diseased-you take my meaning," he says awkwardly. "Oh, and the poet Shelley, of course, he lost his children for atheism."

"The law's a blockhead," says Fido between her teeth.

He gives her an owlish look. "Whenever the point's come up for discussion in Parliament, Miss Faithfull, there's a lot of sanctimonious talk about the hallowed rights of fatherhood-but many of us suspect that the real reason's a more pragmatic one. If women could shed their husbands without risk of losing their children too, it's feared that an alarming proportion of them would do so!"

Still not a word from Helen: her face is a blank page.

Fido speaks up. "Say for the sake of argument that my friend were to alter her plea to guilty, Mr. Few-might it simplify things, speed them along?"

The solicitor holds up one skeletal finger. "Ah, there's an interesting novelty in the 1857 Act: a wife may admit the charges, but then countercharge. If we could prove that the admiral was in any way culpable in the adultery, he'd have to settle for a separation, and pay her full maintenance."

Fido frowns. "But if you failed to implicate Admiral Codrington, Mr. Few, and my friend had already confessed-"

"You've an acute mind, Miss Faithfull," says Few in that patronizing tone she's often heard from men with whom she's had dealings. "There's a little twist I propose to use: Mrs. Codrington could deny all the acts-to cover her back, as it were-but add that if they did occur, her husband was to blame."

Helen yelps with laughter, then covers her mouth. "Excuse me. Isn't that an absurdity?"

"Perhaps in logic, but not in law."

Fido rubs her eyes. What is this looking-glass world into which we've stepped?

"So, Mrs. Codrington, of what could you accuse your husband? The easiest is mutual guilt," Few points out dryly. "Have you reason to believe that the admiral has, like so many husbands, especially military ones, alas…"

"No," she says with audible reluctance.

"Maids, letters from ladies, that sort of thing?"

Helen shakes her head.

"In that case, what we're looking for are the seas."

Fido stares at him.

"The Five C's, we call them," the old man explains. "Did the admiral conduce to misconduct by leaving you lonely and unprotected? Did he condone it by tacit forgiveness?"

"Definitely conducement," says Helen crisply before he can go on, "and quite possibly condonement."

"Condonation," Fido corrects her automatically, head spinning.

"So you believe he knew all along, Mrs. Codrington?"

Helen hesitates, pouts elegantly. "He must have done."

But Helen's always assured Fido that Harry hasn't had the least suspicion. Now, it seems, she's picking up every hint the solicitor drops, and telling him exactly what he wants to hear.

Few only nods. "And the more evidence against you his counsel may dig up, the more our side will make the case that any husband of reasonable intelligence must have understood the situation. Did he connive with you or Anderson or Mildmay by turning a blind eye?" he asks. "Or even collude in the hopes of obtaining an easy divorce?"

Helen's mouth twists.

Fido finds all this sickening. "What's the fifth C?" she snaps, to get it over with.

"Cruelty," says the solicitor.

"How's that defined?" asks Helen.

"Not as broadly here as across the Atlantic-the Americans count anything that makes a wife unhappy," says Few with one of his flashes of wintry wit. "But Judge Wilde generally extends it to include any behaviour that causes the lady illness."

"Mrs. Codrington enjoys very good health," says Fido meanly.

In the cab, Fido's anger struggles with her mercy, and by the time they're on the dusty outskirts of Euston, anger has the upper hand. She clears her throat. "May I ask, who is Lieutenant Mildmay?"

Helen's slumped in the far corner.

"Another/n'end of the family's?"

Helen says, barely audible, "If you like."

"I don't." Fido rubs at a scrape on the back of her hand. "I don't like any of this. It seems to me we've left the truth far behind, and we're adrift in open seas."

"I dare say you're in a huff because I didn't mention Mildmay before."

"A huff?" Fido's voice rises to a shriek.

The small trapdoor in the roof opens with a thud. "All right in there, ladies?"

"Perfectly," she barks.

A second passes. "Very good," says the driver, shutting the hatch.

Fido's got her voice under control. "What, may I ask, is the point of playacting at friendship?" She waits. "I urge you to lean on me, I offer you my-all I have, all I am-and in return you keep shutting me out with your fibs and frauds!"

"Oh, Fido," says Helen exhaustedly, "you make it sound so simple."

"Isn't it? Open yourself to me, I say; tell me everything, so I can help you."

Helen's face, when she lifts it, is like a caved-in cliff. "There are limits to your love, like everyone else's."

"You wrong me," says Fido furiously.

"When I glimpsed you on Farringdon Street, last month-what ought I to have said?" Helen's eyes are huge. "That, since the last time we met, unhappiness had changed me in ways that would appall you? That not one, but two successive men had managed to dupe me into trusting them with my heart and drag me into the dirt?"

Fido struggles for words.

"Your life is such a clean, upright thing. You know nothing of getting into disastrous messes." Helen rests her forehead on one fist. "IfI'd told you all that, on Farringdon Street-how could you have resisted casting the first stone?"

Fido is blinded so fast she thinks something has struck her, but it's only tears. "Helen!" She moves to the other side of the vehicle and takes Helen by the shoulders. "I don't mean to pontificate, or play the prude. I want nothing more than to stand by your side, and support you through this terrible passage in your life. To lead you to the other side as fast as possible," she adds, "which is why I wanted you to plead guilty."

Helen's nostrils flare.

"Why not drop all this legalistic feinting, simply admit your mistakes, and beg Harry on your knees to let you see something of the girls?"

"Wasn't it you who told me the law belongs to men?" Helen demands. "What about the double standard? A man's reputation can survive a string of mistresses, but if I admit to one intrigue, let alone two, I'll lose everything. My name, my children, every penny of income…"

"Share mine." That comes out very hoarse. She tries again. "As long as I have a home, so do you."

"Oh, Fido." Helen subsides: shuts her eyes, rests her head on Fido's shoulder as simply as a child.

Fido can feel Helen's hot breath against her throat. "Sh," she says, putting one hand up to the vivid hair. They ride in silence, right to Taviton Street.

The next day, Friday, Fido goes straight from the press to meet Helen at Few's chambers for another gruelling session. The solicitor keeps harping on his Five C's.

"Harry wouldn't bring me to parties," offers Helen, "could that count as cruelty?"

Fido has to repress a smile at the idea.

The solicitor pulls at his grey whiskers. "Ah-neglect, perhaps."

"Or if he did come, he'd stand around in a sulk, and go home early on the pretext of having papers to read-abandoning me to whatever escort I could muster," Helen goes on. "Sometimes he wouldn't speak to me for days at a time-thwarted my management of the girls, and the house-confiscated my keys once."

Fido recognizes that as a story from the old days, at Eccleston Square; to the best of her recollection, what actually happened was that Helen hurled the whole bunch of keys at her husband's feet. This rewriting of the past leaves a bad taste in Fido's mouth. But the law is unjust to women, she reminds herself. Helen's a reluctant player, after all, in a game in which the odds are stacked against her.

"Oh, and of course the detestable Mrs. Watson, in Malta," says Helen, brightening. "He cruelly neglected me for her."

Few prompts her. "You suspected-"

"Nothing of that sort; I believe the aged reverend was always in the room, though perhaps not always fully conscious," quips Helen. "But Harry certainly let himself be turned against me; she poured all manner of poison in his ear."

"Hm, possible alienation of affections," mutters Few, scribbling. "Now, Mrs. Codrington-as to nocturnal arrangements, if I may?"

She looks at him blankly, then at Fido.

"Has your husband ever been, shall we say, inconsiderate?" asks the solicitor with a fatherly expression. "While you were in a delicate condition, perhaps? Or even… I hate to ask, but juries look very sympathetically on wives who've been subjected to anything, ah, degrading. In military circles, it's not entirely unknown-"

Fido can't stand much more of this; she interrupts him huskily. "The Codringtons have kept separate rooms for many years. Before leaving for Malta, in fact."

A pause. Surely Helen's not going to deny this? Then she nods.

"At the admiral's behest?" Few asks.

"Well, mine, originally," concedes Helen. "But on various occasions I've done my best to be reconciled to him."

That's the first Fido's heard of it.

"Once after a party I went into his room, and he grabbed my arm and thrust me out!"

This story rings true, somehow; Fido can just imagine Helen, tipsy and giggling, tiptoeing into her husband's austere bedroom.

"Excellent," murmurs Few, "refusal of marital rights, coupled with a degree of violence. So it's the admiral's fault, then, that you haven't been blessed with any more children?"

Helen examines her smooth fingernails. "Harry certainly feels no sorrow on the subject," she says, instead of answering the question. "I've heard him joking to friends that two is an ample sufficiency. But the feelings of a woman, and a mother…" She lets the sentence trail away.

Fido is longing for this interview to be over.

"Mr. Few," Helen asks suddenly, "what if a husband, simply to exercise his tyranny, casts his wife's dearest friend out of the house?"

His eyes swivel to Fido, whose cheeks are scalding. "This is many, many years ago," Fido murmurs to the solicitor. "I was more or less residing with the family here in London from '54 to '57, at which point…"

"That last summer," says Helen with a shudder.

"There was a crisis-between the spouses," says Fido, too loudly, her voice reverberating in the narrow chambers, "and the upshot was that Ha-the admiral suggested I leave. The reason he gave was one I considered perfectly proper: that no third party ought to be obliged to witness such scenes." She adds this stonily, not looking at Helen. She won't be a party to this fantasy of Harry as some vicious, arbitrary Nero.

"Promising," murmurs Few over his notes.

Helen leans towards her. "Fido dear," she objects in a whisper, "how can you report it with such Christian mildness when he-while you were living under our very roof-" she pauses, staring at her.

Fido raises her eyebrows.

"Mr. Few, perhaps that's enough for today?" Helen asks abruptly.

The old man blinks. "Certainly, Mrs. Codrington, I do apologize for tiring you." He rings for their wraps.

There's a branch of the Aerated Bread Company just across the street. "I was quite desperate for some tiffin," remarks Helen, leaning over the little table towards Fido. "I do like these new tea shops; however did we manage in the days when there was nowhere ladies could go for a bite to eat without a breach of etiquette?" She stirs another lump of sugar into her cup. "Have you ever lunched at Verey's in the Strand?"

Fido shakes her head. She feels as limp as if the meeting in the law chambers lasted a week.

"Have an iced fancy."

She ignores the plate. This woman bewilders her. One moment howling like a banshee at being separated from her babies, the next, nibbling cakes. Helen is fallen: that odd word always makes Fido think of a wormy apple. But where are the hollow eyes, creeping walk, feverish delirium of fallen women in novels? (The women that other women such as Fido, in their strength and wisdom and passionate sisterhood, are described as bending down to lift from the gutter.) Clearly adultery need not be a fatal condition. Helen sits here as pertly elegant as ever, sipping her tea.

"You talked a lot of balderdash in there," Fido remarks. "The idea of Harry cruelly thwarting your longing to have more children!"

She purses her lips. "He's said far worse about me."

Well, there's no denying that. "And what was all that mysteriousness about his treatment of me?"

Helen's fork freezes, mid-air. Her eyes have a guarded expression. "Never mind," she says after a moment.

"But-"

"I'm sorry I brought it up, in Few's office. We needn't speak of it if you'd rather not." She makes a show of going on with her cake.

"I'm perfectly willing," says Fido in exasperation.

"Really? You've never spoken of it in all these years. I've had the impression you hid it away in the deepest folds of your memory."

Fido stares at her. "We seem to be talking at cross purposes, now. What it have I hidden away?"

"Dearest, let's drop the subject," says Helen, pushing away her plate so suddenly the fork clatters. "Trust me, I wouldn't dream of using it to strengthen my case."

Fido's pulse starts to hammer.

"I only-in there, in the law chambers," says Helen with shiny eyes, "I couldn't quite believe I heard you defending my husband as perfectly proper! It breaks my heart to think that you-so independent, so undaunted-that you're the kind of woman who'd blame herself for such an incident."

Fido swallows hard. "My dear," she says, very low, putting her hand over Helen's on the tablecloth, "let's be quite clear: of what incident are we speaking?"

"The incident. The unspeakable one."

A hard pebble in Fido's throat, spots before her eyes. The tea shop seems too full, all at once, though there is only a scattering of customers. "Something involving Harry?"

The blue eyes widen. "You aren't going to claim you don't remember anything?"

"Tell me exactly what you mean," she snaps.

"Wouldn't you rather wait until we can be private?" Seeing Fido's face, she rushes on. "Very well. If you really can't recall it… cast your mind back to the autumn before Harry evicted you."

Fido bridles at the word.

"I'm talking about the night you woke up beside me, and he was there."

"Harry, you mean?" Fido frowns in concentration. "I know he used to come into my bedroom sometimes. On occasions when you were sharing it," she adds.

"That's right, and you didn't like it at all. But that particular night…"

"I woke up and saw a white figure, at the door," she says, nodding, and Helen clasps her hands. "I remember you told me afterwards it was Harry in his nightshirt."

"Of course it was him; who else?"

"That's all I saw: a white figure. I'd had bad asthma, I'd taken my medicine."

"That explains it," cries Helen under her breath. "You were in a stupor from the laudanum."

"That explains what?"

"Why you've forgotten."

Fido strains. A spectral figure, in the doorway: it's a troubling memory, somehow, like a scene of obscure distress from childhood. "I woke up rather agitated."

"I should say you were!"

"I suppose he'd come into my room to ask you something, and found us both asleep?"

Helen taps her fingernails on the edge of the table, and whispers something.

"I beg your pardon?"

Words in her ear, hot breath that makes her jump: "He got in."

"No," says Fido flatly.

"In between us. He clambered over me," Helen whispers.

"I can't believe that."

"Oh, my dear," wails Helen, "I witnessed the whole thing; it's burned on my mind. But if I'd realized how utterly you've managed to erase it from yours, I wouldn't have said a word today. Sometimes it's better to forget."

Fido's chest is tight; her throat makes a high creaking sound. "He climbed into the bed, you say." Very low. "Is there… worse?"

Helen's face is contorted.

A pair of ladies at the next table is looking at them with frank curiosity. "You may as well lift the veil, now," says Fido.

"Oh, but-"

"Go on."

A rapid whisper: "You were dead to the world. I tried to thrust him out, but I hadn't the force; I think he was the worse for drink. He made a joke about it being a cold bed with two women alone in it. And something coarse about the fire needing poking. He grabbed your nightgown and-"

Fido puts a finger against Helen's lips, quite hard. "No."

"It didn't happen," Helen hisses, "I mean, not the final outrage. He only tried-clumsily attempted-you cried out in pain, and then woke up."

She's dizzy with shock. She tugs at her velvet choker, to stretch it slightly. Harry Codrington, rummaging in her nightdress while she lay comatose? No man's ever laid hands on her before. The very thought-

"When you began to struggle, he lost his nerve-thank heavens-kicked his way out of the bedclothes, and fled from the room."

Fido can see the new version, now, like a ghostly image overlaying the old memory. She's so shaken she can hardly speak. "What kind of animal-to try to, to violate, his guest, his wife's-friend."

"One of the family," says Helen in a half-sob.

"But why ever-what possible motive-" Fido presses her knuckles against her lips, very hard. "I'm not the kind of woman that men find irresistibly attractive," she makes herself remark in a tone that would almost pass for humour.

"It was my fault; that's the conclusion I've come to after brooding over it, all these years. I'd maddened him by refusing him his rights for so long," says Helen. "He was drunk, and furious with you for taking my side, I suppose, for being my only succour. I believe it was meant as a punishment of the pair of us. Oh Fido, I'm so very sorry."

Their hands knot like rope on the white tablecloth. All Fido can do is shake her head.

"The truth is, that's why I didn't dare contact you again, from Malta," Helen admitted. "When you didn't write back, I thought you must have cut me off. What kind of a friend had I been, after all? I'd offered you a home, and brought down horror on your head."

"Don't say that." The silence stretches out like a dark pool. "It's you who must forgive me," says Fido hoarsely. "I haven't understood the nature of the beast, not till this moment. What you've had to bear, for so long!"

Helen smiles unevenly; puts Fido's hand to her hot cheek.

Fido makes herself say it: "I shall tell Mr. Few at once."

Her friend jerks upright. "Impossible."

"It's my duty."

"But to stand up in open court, and recount such a narrative-I'd never ask that of you, dearest."

Fido hasn't thought that far ahead; she shrinks at the prospect. "Oh, I didn't mean-I couldn't go into the witness box." Her head's in a sickening whirl. "If only there were a way…"

Helen shakes her head vehemently. "I couldn't put you through that, not though my whole future were to depend on it."

"I wonder-" Fido hesitates. "Few needs to know what he's dealing with; what kind of monster you married. Perhaps the information could be useful, somehow."

"But what-"

"Oh, how little I know of the law," Fido frets. "What if Few-if he were to warn his opposite number, your husband's solicitor-"

"Mr. Bird," Helen supplies.

"If he told Bird that he has knowledge of an attempted rape." Her voice drops; she barely mouths the word. "Surely, if Bird passed this on to his client-Harry would quail at the possibility of the story getting out? He'd realize that although we are women," she goes on, her voice strengthening, "we're ready to put a name to evil, when our backs are to the wall."

"Yes," marvels Helen, "yes. It could work. He'll be shamed into dropping this wretched petition," she goes on, "and he might even send the girls home!"

Fido doubts that very much, but she can't bear to be the one to strip Helen's illusions away: time will do it for her.

They lie as tight as spoons, that night, in Fido's hard bed, and talk in whispers till very late. "It's not too early to begin to consider your future," says Fido.

"My future?"

"If worse comes to worst."

"I thought… you said I could stay here," says Helen like a frightened child.

"Of course you can!" Fido squeezes her, plants a kiss on the back of Helen's hair. "No matter what happens, we'll be together." She waits a moment; Helen doesn't contradict her. "But it'll be a rather different sphere of life," she goes on. No grand rooms to stuff with trinkets, she wants to say; no girls to prepare for presentation at court. But she doesn't spell out any of that, not yet. "Time might hang heavy on your hands at first, without an occupation." Especially as Fido's always hard at work, from six in the morning-but she doesn't say that either. It strikes her, for the first time, that Helen might require constant companionship, at home or out shopping; might raise objections to Fido's commitment to the Cause. The thought gives her a kind of vertigo. Don't borrow trouble, she tells herself; haven't we more than enough on our plates? She hurries on: "You do have one real asset, Helen: a fine grasp of the English language."

A little giggle, in the dark. "I hope you don't propose I'm to take on Miss Braddon?"

"No no, not writing for publication, but correcting for it, perhaps. For some time now, as it happens," says Fido with a kind of shyness, "I've been looking out for an educated lady, to check proofs at the press."

No answer.

"You could do the work at home, if you preferred-"

"Don't be silly, Fido."

She opens her mouth, and shuts it again.

"I'm not that kind of woman."

Fido stiffens. "You know, for a lady to find respectable employment doesn't lower her to the rank of a fishwife; in fact, it raises her to that of her father or brothers."

"It's a matter of temperament, that's all. The leopard can't change her spots," says Helen, laughing.

"I dare say that's true," says Fido, loosening. What an odd couple we'll make, it occurs to her. The divorcee and the spinster. The adulteress and the woman's rights-ist. The leopardess and the… house cat?

"I'd better let you sleep," says Helen.

Fido snorts. "No chance of that. Every time I think of speaking to Few tomorrow, my stomach bucks like a mule."

"Oh my dear. If only I could take this cup from your lips!"

"No," says Fido, "the truth must out. It's only an absurd sort of squeamishness, on my part; the thought of telling such a story to a man, a virtual stranger."

Helen holds her closer, puts her feet against Fido's cold ones. "I wonder-"

"Yes?"

"Would it help at all if I were to go in first, and give Few the gist of it?"

"Would you really?" Relief floods her veins.

"It's the least I can do. Besides, I'm a married woman," says Helen. "Such language comes rather easier to us."

"Yes, then, yes: it would be so much easier, if you prepared the ground."

"But you have to promise to sleep a little, now," says Helen in motherly tones, "or you'll be in no fit state for anything."

"I promise," says Fido, shutting her eyes, letting out a long breath.

Taking Fido's Kashmir shawl, the aged solicitor clears his throat in a melancholy way. "The Codringtons' is a very sad case," he observes. "Well, as the Bard put it, marriage has many pains but celibacy has no pleasures."

"I believe that was Dr. Johnson."

"Was it? Ah, well, you're the woman of letters, Miss Faithfull."

Silence, broken only by the creaking of her lungs.

"I can't say I was entirely surprised by what Mrs. Codrington told me this morning," says Few, eyes on his desk. "I suspected she was hiding something, yesterday, when she spoke of her husband. These military men-whited sepulchres, more often than not-"

Fido traces the seam of her glove.

"I needn't take up much of your time this morning; I already have a statement of the facts from Mrs. Codrington. This is really a formality, Miss Faithfull-and believe me, I wish I didn't have to offend your modesty in the least degree-"

"Whatever's necessary to help my friend."

"Your loyalty does you credit. And it will indeed be immensely helpful. Perhaps the strongest weapon in our arsenal." Few glances down at the topmost paper of his stack and clears his throat. "One night in the autumn of 1856, then, you were occupying the same room and in the same bed as Mrs. Codrington in Eccleston Square, both being asleep, when the petitioner came in-that's the admiral-"

"He was only a captain at the time," Fido says.

"Never mind that."

And in fact Helen was awake. Fido doesn't suppose that matters either, though it's odd that he formed the impression they were both asleep. Perhaps he assumed it, since it was night? Or perhaps Helen thought it would simplify the story to leave herself out, since she's not permitted to testify; after all, she played no part in events that night, or none that made any real difference.

Few goes on, eyes on the page. "He got in between the two of you, and attempted to behave improperly to you, Miss Faithfull-to treat you, ah, as if you were his wife-but your resistance frightened him and he rushed away. Correct?"

She wheezes; she turns towards the window, but it's shut tight against the late September damp. It's only the difference between her having woken during the attack and her having woken just after it ended: a matter of seconds. When one's taken laudanum, the border between those states of consciousness is never clear. But she doesn't want to sound like an unreliable witness; that would be of no use to Helen's case. Need she mention the laudanum at all, if it would only undermine her account?

"Are you feeling quite well, Miss Faithfull?"

"Habitual asthma," she whispers. "If we could possibly complete this interview at another time-" She's longing for a cigarette. A little time to puzzle this out. On that night-almost eight years ago now-did she half-wake, fight Harry off in her dulled state, and manage to blot the whole thing out of her mind afterwards? Can one be said to have had an experience, if one has only the most fragmentary, uneasy recollection of it?

"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.