Chapter Fourteen
Jo
Jo half-hoped for an argument. Though she was happy to bask in the power of bringing pleasure without promise of reciprocation, the fact that Emily Clarke of all people looked so desperate to give it was undoubtedly tempting. The taste of her clung to Jo’s lips, the feel of her haunting Jo’s hands even as she lit a few more candles to the purpose of hunting down whatever prim, pretty little nightdress Emily had brought along with her. As she walked toward the wardrobe where Emily had hung up her things, Jo was well aware of her own lingering arousal, fairly certainly she’d soaked right through her trousers.
But no argument came. All she got out of Emily was a grumpy, defeated yawn of nearly resentful satisfaction. Jo could live with that. She may not have come herself, but to tame Emily’s fiery, bottled-up passions for the moment was good enough for now. She’d fetch Emily’s nightdress, and Emily would put herself back together so she did not look so terribly, enticingly debauched over there, half-dressed on the mattress. When she did, the urgency in Jo’s body would eventually dissipate.
And then, like the inevitable question at the end of one of their letters, they’d have something left to answer to. Something to ensure that there was a loose end for them to tie up. For without some dangling, lingering thread, what excuse would someone like Emily and someone like Jo have for ever seeing each other again? Oh, this impulsively arranged evening had been lovely from start to finish, from punch and conversation, to the sharing of a meal with friends, to this rapturous conclusion. But a night was one thing. In the daylight, they had nothing in common. Did not live in the same city. Did not run in the same circles. Once Paul’s baby was properly earthside, they would no longer even have that flimsy connection and excuse to see each other.
Emily wanted a brief tour of the decadent, maybe, but she’d given no indication that she was looking to change any of those things that separated them. She seemed to love her family and be loved in return, clueless though they were sometimes. Found satisfaction in her work, even if it was trying and full of stress. Had habits and convictions and communities that seemed likely to last the test of time. She was, perhaps, more suited to the life she already led than most people Jo met.
For just a moment, Jo wondered if Emily could take her on a tour of such grounded acceptance for a day or two, some reversed version of what they’d done for Emily tonight. But try as she might, she couldn’t think of how to phrase the suggestion. The idea could not be flipped around so literally.
So instead, she would leave her desires untended in hopes of dragging this out to at least one more meeting, letting those beautiful eyes bore holes into her back as she gave up on the idea and rose to go through the sparse items that Emily had hung up in the wardrobe.
“What are you looking for?” Emily asked.
“Your bed clothes...” Jo stopped when she found a rather unlikely garment shuffled in with the simple petticoats and shirtwaists. She took the hanger out of the wardrobe and stared at the long, dangling arms and legs of a scratchy one-piece undergarment. “It’s not this, is it?”
She turned to see Emily looking, no longer debauched and satisfied, but now mortified on the bed. She got up hastily, clutching the undone layers of Jo’s jacket and her own day clothes to her chest with one hand as she snatched the hanger from Jo’s grasp with the other.
“It’s the most healthful attire for sleeping,” she insisted as Jo began to laugh. “Economical, warm, breathable, and unisex.”
“You know what else is economical, warm, breathable, and unisex?”
“If you’re going to say ‘nothing,’ don’t bother,” said Emily, some of her primness returning, as if she weren’t standing there with her tight bun slipping down the back of her head and her clothes practically falling to the floor. “Sleeping naked is not warm.”
“Well, sure it’s not. If you’re sleeping alone.”
The joke seemed to neither amuse nor offend Emily. Rather, it had her glancing a bit concernedly at the door.
“Speaking of, are you staying tonight?” she asked.
“Must be,” Jo said carefully. “It’s getting late, and I’ve already told Miss Withers to put me down for breakfast. There’s no getting out of that commitment.”
“But are you staying in here?” She clutched the union suit to her chest with the rest of her drooping clothes. “With me?”
“Do you want me to?”
“Yes,” she said without any hesitation. “I want that very much.”
Should that surprise her as much as it did? While their first meetings had been so tense, once the letters started, Emily had shown nothing more or less than pure interest in pursuing Jo’s company. But still. A full night together was an intimacy she had only rarely granted. She strongly preferred to steal away for a smoke and bit of time to herself after a dalliance like this, and had never been fool enough to take up with someone who might demand more.
She hadn’t expected Emily to be that demanding woman, but all that standoffishness, that icy independence the doctor emanated...it wasn’t the truth of her. Not really. Oh, she could work hard and stand up for herself and all that; her strength wasn’t a lie. But it wasn’t as tough and spikey a strength as she let on. That affect was something she’d taken on to survive. Useful. Intriguing. But not really Emily.
Who exactly she was beneath that acquired exterior, Jo wasn’t entirely sure yet. But she knew one thing to be true, as she examined the lines of that pretty, pointed face, the glow of candles flashing off her light eyes: whoever Emily was underneath wanted Jo to stay with her tonight.
And Jo, whoever exactly she was under almost two decades of shifting identities and ways of being that had thickened and clung to her like layers of different paints, wanted it too.
So, though it was a one-woman job, she helped Emily out of what remained of her clothes and watched with an incredulous smile as Emily buttoned herself into her very silly-looking pajamas with a simple robe on top. They each took their turn at the oh-so-sanitary tap down the hall—Emily sneaking and Jo keeping watch so no one caught her in those bed clothes—and when they returned, Jo let Emily help with her clothes as well, though she did not need it, either, stripping down to her supposedly less healthful but certainly more comfortable linen undervest and long drawers.
She also gave in to Emily’s pleas to let her unpin Jo’s hair, smooth it with the combs that Miss Withers had stocked the vanity with, and then run her fingers through it.
“Beautiful,” Emily whispered as she caressed the dark waves with something like wonder. “I admit, though, I’m rather surprised you don’t cut it short.”
Jo shrugged, closing her eyes and letting herself enjoy the feeling of being softly scratched along her scalp. “It’s not important to me to pass as a bloke or anything like that,” she said, too sleepy and comfortable to care that she probably wouldn’t have said that in most other circumstances. “I did try that for a bit when I was younger. Didn’t suit much better than the nunnery, to be honest. I’m happy like this.”
“Makes sense,” said Emily. She sounded like she meant the words, and that easy understanding of something that felt unspeakably complex made Jo shiver more than the caresses. “Shall I braid it for bed?”
“That would be quaint of you.”
“Is quaint alright?”
Jo paused. She could not get a primer in security or steady living, maybe, but she’d given quaintness a try here and there for Vanessa’s sake. It wasn’t something that came naturally to her, but maybe with a little instruction from someone like Emily...
“I’m not sure,” Jo said. “Why don’t you give it a try and we’ll find out?”
As Emily braided her hair down her back with firm, steady hands, Jo decided that yes: quaint was alright. So alright that she couldn’t seem to resist this particular reciprocation the way she had the other, running her hand down her own thick braid, which was far tidier and more symmetrical than she usually managed herself, before switching their positions so she could fix the mess she’d made of Emily’s tresses. Though, once Emily’s hair was entirely freed, it was far frizzier and finer than Jo had suspected, and her unskilled brushing and braiding left a lot more of those frothy flyaways than she suspected would have escaped Emily’s own ministrations.
But Emily didn’t complain. They lay down together under the covers on the small bed. It wasn’t a roomy fit, but once Emily settled in with her head tucked under Jo’s chin like she belonged there, it was comfortable enough. Jo stared at the ceiling for a while, listening as Emily’s breathing evened out in slumber.
The last thought she remembered having before she woke up the next morning—alert, refreshed, and with Emily’s beautiful, sleep-reddened face smiling at her—was that she was happy to be having this experience, but there was no way in hell she’d get a wink of sleep.
They got their quaintness put away before breakfast, braids swapped for buns, healthful bed clothes folded up in favor of regular attire. Jo always kept some spares over here for the next day if she stayed over, and was very glad to have done so today because when Emily put on the same navy skirt as yesterday with a fresh shirtwaist in pale yellow with little flowers on it and just the barest bit of cotton lace at the collar, Jo knew she’d catch hell if she accompanied such a beauty to breakfast looking like a complete beast herself.
The handful who had stayed over took the meal together, including Cordelia, who had fallen asleep in the parlor before adding herself to Miss Withers’s list and thus was provided with some scolding along with her kippers (though of course, there were too many of those as it was).
“Are you with us for another day, my dear?” Miss Withers asked Emily once the stakes for an incorrect answer had been established.
“I’m afraid not.” Emily was polite and stiff-spined again this morning in the company of others. While Jo had no problem squaring that with the side of her that had become so wantonly undone, it was harder to remember that this was the same woman who’d braided Jo’s hair and then snuggled up tight to her side all night in silly pajamas. “In fact, delicious as this meal has been, I’m afraid I won’t be able to linger over it. I have an appointment with a patient, and then a train to catch.”
Though Jo had figured as much, some small part of her was disappointed to hear it said aloud. And was she imagining it, or was there a note of that same reluctance in Emily’s voice?
“A shame,” said Miss Withers, and Emily seemed taken aback by how sincerely she seemed to mean it. “Well, hopefully someone will escort you to the station when the time comes.”
The woman looked meaningfully at Jo.
“I’ll take her!” she snapped as she slapped jam onto her toast. “I wasn’t trying to be impolite yesterday by not meeting her; I simply didn’t know when she was set to arrive.”
“I appreciate that practicality, Jo,” Emily said with an undeniable sparkle in her eye. “As I would appreciate your company during my time in the city today, if it’s not too much bother.”
“You want me to come along with you to see Miss Garcia?” said Jo, surprised and a little panicked about the idea of Emily seeing her home or meeting Paul before they’d even come down from the glow of this meeting...
“I’m to meet her at this address,” Emily went on, taking a folded paper covered in very dramatic handwriting and a lot of misspellings from her pocket. “It’s where she lives with a few other actresses, as I understand it? I’m not familiar with the neighborhood, so was hoping you could show me the way.”
Relief flooded Jo. Though Vanessa often found herself in Jo’s home, she did not actually live there yet, in spite of the going assumption that she and her child would wind up there eventually.
“So?” Emily asked. “Is it too much of a bother?”
“It’s a bit of a bother,” Jo said with a sparkle of her own, one that came with a stupid smile that wasn’t missed by the others. “But not too much.”
When they stepped outside onto Miss Withers’s stoop, Jo glared up at the scatter of clouds, trying to determine if rain seemed likely, because rain would be positively miserable in a chill like this. She should have brought her warmer coat...
Her moody musings were interrupted as Emily stepped up beside her, pulling her gloves on and staring out at the residential street that stretched to either side of them, alive with well-dressed foot traffic and a few clopping coaches. Emily took in a deep breath of the autumn air, seeming happy to ignore how tainted it was by coal smoke, horse dung, and that whiff off the Thames that drifted this way when the wind blew just so. In fact, she smiled wider than Jo had seen yet, even as her cheeks went pink from cold.
“To the actresses’ house, then,” Emily said. “That will make for a lovely constitutional on a day like today, don’t you think? We have just enough time for it.”
Jo had not been thinking that. In fact, Jo had been thinking of heading out to the main thoroughfare and flagging down a hackney because it looked like rain. But before she could bring herself to be such a damper on Emily’s mood, Emily had already taken her by the arm and led her down the stairs to the street below.
It was odd to walk arm in arm like perfectly appropriate lady friends who had only ever undressed one another for a respectable reason like irrationally placed buttons. But Emily didn’t seem to think much of it, staying close to Jo as she strode the streets of London in her clacking boots. And it garnered Jo no more odd looks than usual, though she never did get as many of those as she’d once assumed she would. Miss Withers was already known for having “curious sorts always coming and going,” and once they got to the busier roads, it was the bloody West End, after all: one couldn’t turn their head without finding a dozen fashions more striking, actors more outrageous, or hawked headlines of greater interest than a couple of drably dressed women like themselves, trousers or no.
Jo had been to Vanessa’s boarding house only once before, accepting an invitation to further her helpful, sisterly appearance. It was a pretty nice place compared to the other artists’ housing arrangements she’d seen over the years, fairly comparable and not too far away from the home she and Paul had first shared when they left their parish neighborhood to start fresh—the biggest difference being the smaller number of books and larger number of women walking round in stockings and chemises.
But as they went up to the door (“Watch that step there, Emily, it wobbles something dreadful”) she got the impression that it wasn’t a place Emily was thrilled by.
“What is it?” Jo asked, looking around and trying to figure out what had Emily looking so grim all of a sudden. It was a rougher neighborhood than Miss Withers’s, but decent enough compared to The Curious Fox.
Emily shook her head politely. “Nothing.”
They were let in by one of Vanessa’s fellow actresses. Jo happened to know this woman was a real beauty on the stage, but hadn’t gotten there yet for the day, her hair in curlers with a scrap of stained fabric tied over it, her slim body wrapped in a dressing gown of similar homeliness.
“Jo, innit?” the woman said. She eyed Emily and her doctoring bag suspiciously. “And ’oo’s this?”
“My name is Dr. Emily Clarke,” she said. “Here to see Miss Vanessa Garcia. We have an appointment.”
“Right.” The actress took a cigarette case from where she’d nestled it in her bosom. “Good for you, you know. Doctoring an’ all that. And good fer ’Nessa too—she needs it.”
“Has she been unwell again?” Emily asked.
The actress got her cigarette out. “Yeah. She’s in her room. Come on, I’ll take you up.”
They went inside the musty foyer with its stained wallpaper nearly overtaken by theatrical posters. Jo put her hands awkwardly in her pockets. “I suppose I’ll wait down here,”
Emily nodded, watching with very measured curiosity as the actress lit her vogue and started up the stairs. Emily followed, and smoke cascaded down behind them like they were vanishing into an entirely different world.
After the appointment, Emily rejoined Jo outside. The hint of possible poor weather this morning had fled. After the close, dark atmosphere of the boarding house, the air on the street seemed almost uncannily crisp for this side of London.
“How did it go?” Jo asked.
Emily was quiet as they headed back toward Miss Withers’s home. They’d find lunch over there—something suitably decadent to close out the visit—then gather the rest of Emily’s things before heading to Waterloo Station.
“I’d say it’s mostly good news. In the long run, anyway,” Emily said carefully. “She said I could tell you, so I suppose I will: the baby is growing as expected in spite of Miss Garcia’s illness, and while she is weak, her vital signs are within a range we can work with. In light of that, along with a few other things perhaps more technical than you need to worry yourself over, I think I’ve figured out why she’s been so ill, and why it has been an on-and-off problem rather than straight through.”
Having gotten attached to the woman and her child in spite of herself, Jo’s stomach clenched nervously.
“Will she be alright?”
“She will...” Emily glanced back over her shoulder toward the place they’d just left. “So long as she gets out of that house as soon as possible. At the very least, before the baby is expected to breathe in all that mold and smoke. Her symptoms line up with more time spent there, and it’s not difficult to see why.”
Emily had called it good news, but to Jo, it felt like a lot of pressure to remedy something that Emily probably didn’t realize Jo was involved in.
“Are you sure?” Jo asked, silently begging whatever unlucky God was tasked with listening to her that Emily was mistaken. “It’s not so different from anywhere people like us might be living in this city. I’ve lived in places like that for years, no worse for wear.”
Emily looked skeptical. “Assuming you’re genuinely no worse for wear—which I doubt—you did not live in those places as a first-time mother over forty, working a very physical job and apparently more sensitive to environmental hazards than the average. You may think it was fine for you, but I can tell you with full certainty that it is not good for her. And for her child, well...” Emily grew grimmer than ever before. “Did you know one of her housemates had a child last year?”
“She did mention something about her friend taking on childbed tasks when they came up.” The chill in Emily’s demeanor was contagious, prickling the back of her neck as she realized she’d seen no sign of a child in the house. “Did...did the housemate move out, then?”
Emily shook her head. “No.”
The chill deepened nearly to a shiver. Well fuck.
“The good news, of course, is that if I’m right, this is easily remedied,” Emily said, almost like she was reassuring herself more than Jo. “She’s not alone in the world. She has the baby’s father, and you, of course. And it sounds as if the two of you moved on to a healthier place. I know that independence is of utmost importance to Miss Garcia, but Jo, you really must encourage her to take my advice and accept better arrangements from you.”
Emily said this so straightforwardly that Jo hardly knew what to do with it. Did she really think it was so simple?
Though, even if it wasn’t, did Jo have the luxury anymore of making it so complicated?
“I’ll see what I can do,” she muttered.
The delicious lunch they took was helpful in resetting their spirits, and they left the tea house full-up with delicacies and arm-in-arm like schoolgirls again. Decadence mixed with quaintness; there was something very special and warming about it in the cool breeze that had Jo walking a little slower than she usually would have as they went back to Miss Withers’s to collect Emily’s luggage.
“Oh, lovely!” Emily squeezed her arm a bit tighter as they passed by yet another newspaper stand. It looked quite the same as all the other newspaper stands they’d been wandering by all day, but apparently not. While nothing about Emily could ever quite be described as girlish or gushingly enthusiastic, she came close to it as she dragged Jo over to where a few of the West End’s more liberal and serious papers had been laid out. “Give me a moment, if you don’t mind. I should like to bring a few of these back to my father.”
“Really?” Jo asked, surprised.
“He loves this one. And this,” said Emily as she perused the selection. “We both do.”
“No, I meant... Didn’t you come here to get away from him?”
Emily gave her a quizzical look. “I am very irritated with him, and yes, I needed a bit of a break. But everything doesn’t have to be perfect for me to bring him a few of his favorite periodicals, does it? Who knows? Maybe it will even pave the way for a conversation we’ve been putting off.”
Jo crossed her arms, trying not to think of the conversation she’d been putting off. Or, more accurately, fighting off. She could happily irritate Paul until the end of time, but she could not put Miss Garcia and her baby in danger. There was nothing for it, save for figuring out how to make the situation palatable for everyone.
She watched Emily scan headlines and volley questions at the young seller that he did not know the answers to for a bit, but The Strand offered a lot of distractions, and without the warmth of Emily on her arm, Jo needed them. She wandered over to a girl who was selling little bundles of dried strawflowers, and a nearby cart for some paper cups of coffee. When she brought her purchases back to the newspaper stand, Emily was just gathering her own up. She looked as flushed and shining with her fresh stack of political news as some ladies looked coming out of a hat shop with a particularly beautiful find.
“Thank you for being patient,” she said. “I am always stunned by the sheer number of informational sources a single city can put out. It’s incredible.”
“Not a problem. I kept busy.”
Jo held out one of the cups and the strawflowers, taking the papers herself so that Emily was not awkwardly overburdened. Emily pursed her lips again at the rearrangement, though there seemed to be a smile she was pursing them over. She covered her obvious pleasure with the flowers, as if she were trying to breathe in any lingering hint of scent in their crunchy, dried petals.
“Decadent nonsense,” she muttered happily.
“I thought it was rather quaint.” Jo offered her arm once more. “Either way, there’s plenty more where that came from. That is, if you’d like to see me again next time you’re here.”
Emily took a few quiet steps, seeming satisfyingly lost in flowers and papers and the steam off her hot coffee cup.
“Well, I will need to come back soon to check on Miss Garcia, won’t I?” she said, losing her fight with that little smile at last. “Not to mention a few other loose ends you and I still need to tie up.”
Miss Withers was at her piano again when they arrived. While Emily was upstairs preparing herself for travel and packing her things in a way she assured Jo was “specific and requiring no assistance,” Jo stood by with her hands in her pockets and listened.
With the cheerful tune dancing in her ears, she peered around at the well-swept floors, the dust-free surfaces, the prettily papered walls that were clean and dry even up into the shadowy corners. There was no smell of damp in here, and smoking kept strictly to the gents’ parlor or God help you. It was a nice place. Sanitary and safe.
“Miss Withers—”
“Joey,” she snapped over the sound her music, “if you’re going to stand around and do nothing, please turn pages for me.”
Jo obliged. After a moment, she raised her voice over the swell of notes again. “Miss Withers, I have a question.” Miss Withers did not respond, so she went on. “Are you in a position to take in strays on a semi-permanent basis?”
Through a crescendo, and back down. Miss Withers finally spoke: “Joey, dear, you know any of my girls may consider my home their own.”
Jo rolled her eyes at the word girls coming from someone who was her elder by less than a decade. But Miss Withers would probably call her own mum a girl if the occasion arose. Jo had the impression she’d decided to become an old maid around the age of fifteen, adjusted her speech and dress accordingly, and just never looked back.
“What if she wasn’t exactly one of yours?” Jo asked. God, this was a desperate ploy. She felt the shame of it deep in her belly. She had no business doing this, trying to shunt Vanessa off to someone else, just so Jo could hang on to this blissfully ambivalent state for however long she could get away with it.
“Is Dr. Clarke facing difficulties that were not apparent to me?”
“No, not her.”
Miss Withers looked up sharply. Jo doubted she knew who Jo meant, but she had certainly sniffed out that Jo was up to no good.
“Society members are welcome to a room anytime,” she said. “Should a society member have a special friend in need, I might be able to offer something, if the circumstances were right. So tell me, Jo. Are the circumstances right?”
She was so suspicious and scolding that some old part of Jo that was scared of nuns couldn’t help but confess her guilt for even considering this idea: “No, ma’am. They’re not.”
“That’s what I thought.” Slowly and with great relish, she finished her piece. In the silence that followed, she added, “But you, dear, are welcome anytime, so long as you give the appropriate notice.”
It should have been a comfort, to know she had somewhere else to go in the event she got kicked out onto her arse.
But she wasn’t being kicked out onto her arse. As much as she wanted to keep denying it until the end of time, watching Emily pick out newspapers for her father even though they weren’t getting along had shifted something in her brain. Something very annoying. Something that forced her to realize that it was her own insistence on seeing her situation as black-and-white that was making all of them miserable.
Emily returned in her soot-gray traveling dress, all her wisps pinned severely up beneath her simple, unadorned hat, the only hint of color coming from the muted petals of the dried bouquet clutched in her hand. When she smiled at Jo from the foot of the stairs, however, she might as well have been decked in crystalline prisms; the sight of her hit Jo’s eye like a flash of brilliantly broken light.
“Ready?” Emily asked.
Jo offered her arm and off they went.
“Emily?” she asked when they were nearly at the station.
“Yes?”
“Would you mind if I slipped just one of those flowers out of the bouquet and took it with me?”
“Of course not, there’s far too many to begin with,” said Emily, absolutely pragmatic as she held it out for Jo to pluck one of the strawflowers from the ribbon that held them together. “What for?”
“As you said, a little something nice might pave the way for conversations one has been putting off.”
“Ah, so you have one as well?”
“Seems I do.”
“Well, dear Jo,” she said with another of those smiles that had Jo wondering how she’d ever thought this woman dull. “Shall we make a pact, then? To have our conversations, and return to each other’s arms with a lighter load upon our backs next time?”
Jo felt how her own face was uncomfortably torn between a grin and a grimace. “I see. Now that your tour of decadence is over, you’re going back to being responsible, and dragging me along with you.”
“Perhaps,” she said with a little shrug and a kiss pressed to Jo’s cheek that probably looked very respectable to any outsider who could not feel its heat. “If you’ll come with me.”
And before Jo could work out, yet again, whether that had been a purposeful innuendo, Emily said, “Farewell, Joey. Write to me until next we meet, will you?” then turned in a swish of gray wool and was lost to the crowd.