Chapter Fifteen 1902 #6
The churchyard was as tranquil as ever, and a song thrush carolled from the top of an ancient yew, but Theo couldn’t feel peaceful.
Looking at the sunken mound only reminded her that Missy was not intact: she had been robbed of her skull as well as her life.
The dead can suffer no indignity, Dr Mackie had said, but it didn’t feel that way to Theo.
Though she could no longer marvel at the sacred, she still felt the outrage of desecration.
So, perhaps the indignity of the mutilation, and the pain, was all with those still living, who had loved that person.
She didn’t think that made it any less of an outrage.
‘I’m so sorry, Missy,’ she whispered, feeling more than ever that she had let her friend down. ‘Dr Anscombe is . . . not what we thought him to be.’
She wondered if that was fair. If Ralph had been good, in fact, and the way she’d constantly disappointed him had changed him, and made him violent.
But was it not violent to cut off a young girl’s head, even if she were dead?
A head that had surrendered to him trustingly, full of fantastical hopes.
‘I will return it to you, I promise,’ Theo murmured.
She felt lost and unsafe. Like she’d stepped away from the world and everyone in it, and was drifting out of reach.
But she resolved not to go back to Ralph; not if it meant putting her son in danger.
She could not tolerate Arthur being hurt, or frightened.
She would not. But if she couldn’t go to Crudge, then where?
After a week, Diana asked how long she intended to stay.
‘I’ve had a letter from Ralph, you see,’ she said. ‘He misses you.’
‘You’ve had a letter from him?’ Theo said. ‘Why should he write to you, and not me?’
‘Why indeed?’
They were in their private sitting room, in the quiet hour before dinner.
‘Mother, I . . .’ Theo struggled to say it. ‘I have left him.’
‘Whatever can you mean?’
‘I mean not to return to him. May I – may we – stay here with you? For the time being, at least?’
Diana gave her a long look. Her expression betrayed nothing, but her tone, when she spoke, was frigid. ‘I’m not sure I understand you, Theodora.’
‘This limp . . . I didn’t trip.’
‘Theo—’
‘He beats me, Mama. He has done for years. And just last week he . . . he beat Arthur too, and I—’
‘Ralph said in his letter that he’d been forced to discipline the boy.’
‘Discipline him?’
‘What on earth is the matter with you? Of course the boy must be corrected – how else will he learn how to behave? You mollycoddle him. He’s not made of soap bubbles, you know.’
‘Did Ralph tell you why?’ Theo said, choking on the outrage. ‘Arthur was protecting me. At four years of age, he was attempting to protect me from his own father!’
‘Lower your voice!’ Diana snapped. ‘I won’t have a scandal, Theo. If Ralph is cross, then you must simply not provoke him. Surely you know by now what causes him to lose his temper? And so you may take steps to ensure that it does not happen again. A husband’s happiness is a wife’s duty.’
Theo didn’t reply at once. ‘Ralph caused me to fall, last year. I fell across the arm of the settle, and I – I started to bleed. I was carrying another child. Just the early beginnings of one, but still . . . I lost it.’
Diana softened fractionally. ‘If so, then it’s a pity. Men often do not appreciate their own strength. But these are private matters between you and your husband, Theo.’
‘How can you be so hard on me?’ Theo was bewildered. ‘Though we have not always been close, I am still your daughter.’
‘And I am your mother, so heed my advice. Go home to your husband, and behave in the proper way. Do not give him cause to chastise you. You were always wilful and . . . difficult. You married a good man, but even a good man may be driven to distraction by a disorderly wife.’
She stood up and gazed down at Theo; her face was pinched, but Theo couldn’t guess what she was feeling.
‘You cannot stay here. I won’t have a scandal.’
‘Yes,’ Theo said woodenly. ‘You said that already.’
She left the next day and took a room at the Grosvenor Arms Hotel in Shaftesbury, sending a telegram to Crudge to ask for help with the bill.
She had very little money of her own – only a small amount of cash, which Ralph gave her each month for sundries.
At any moment she expected word to reach him, as it always seemed to.
She expected him to appear, wearing his smiling public face, and take her home to face the consequences.
A day passed, and another. The waiting was awful.
She was known in Shaftesbury; somebody would see her, sooner or later.
Whispers would pass from busy lips to eager ears – they always did.
At mealtimes, she took a table far from the window and sat facing away from the room.
Her skin crawled at each new set of footsteps, and when the door opened she didn’t dare turn to look.
Audrey, who had a view of the room, met her eye and gave a minute shake of her head.
Theo realised she’d made no kind of escape. She’d only put them all in worse danger. The one friend in the world she might run to she could not, for fear of taking trouble to him. But she couldn’t go back.
The longcase clock in the foyer interrupted its ponderous ticking to whirr, and strike noon.
‘Look, Mama,’ Arthur said, making her jump. He had a sticky moustache of hot chocolate, and she couldn’t help but smile.
‘What is it?’
She’d borrowed the pencil and jotter from their room, and he’d been scribbling in it. He turned the page towards her. The lines wandered here and there in an unruly fashion, but in them Theo made out an animal of some kind. A neck, a body, skinny legs.
‘That’s very good Arty,’ she said. ‘What is it?’
‘A hen,’ Arthur declared. He pointed out through the window behind him, where chickens were scratching the bare earth of their coop.
‘Of course it is,’ she said. ‘A most excellent hen, in fact.’
At that moment, footsteps did come towards them. Theo’s heart lurched but it was only the clerk of the hotel, with a telegram from Crudge.
‘What does he say?’ Audrey asked.
Theo read it quickly. ‘He’s sending a lawyer to meet me here.’ She glanced at the clock. ‘He’s travelling down today, and should be here by two o’clock.’
‘A lawyer? Can he do something, then?’
‘Well, I don’t know. But I don’t think my uncle would send him unless he thought so.
’ Theo took a deep breath, hope rising. ‘Perhaps there’s some way I might be granted independence .
. .’ She didn’t want to say more in front of Arthur.
‘Might you take Arty to visit the horses, Audrey, while I speak with him?’
The solicitor was a youngish man, with kind eyes in a broad face, and a ready smile.
‘Thomas Womersley, at your service,’ he introduced himself.
‘Theodora Anscombe. Thank you for travelling all this way to talk to me.’
‘My pleasure entirely, Mrs Anscombe,’ he said. ‘It’s rather a treat, in fact, to be let out of London for a while. Now . . .’ He unpacked a ledger, a pen and ink. ‘Why don’t we begin at the beginning?’
Womersley didn’t hurry her; he waited patiently while she fought to explain her situation both honestly and discreetly. During one quiet spell the door banged across the room, and she couldn’t help an involuntary gasp.
‘May I interrupt you, Mrs Anscombe?’ Womersley said.
‘Please, do.’
‘I fear I may be the bearer of bad news.’ He spoke gently, but Theo sank inside.
‘A petition for a period of judicial separation from your husband, on the grounds of cruelty, might only be sought had he been charged and convicted of an assault upon you. Have you ever . . . sought to bring such charges?’
‘Charged as in . . . by the police?’
‘Yes?’
‘No, I . . . I haven’t.’
‘I quite understand. It is no small undertaking, and such accusations can be very hard to prove. Most do not end with success, unless some permanent and obvious injury has been done to the lady in question.’
‘Then . . . the wife may be compelled to remain with her husband, though she has endeavoured to bring charges against him?’
‘Yes. I fear so.’
Theo said nothing.
‘Should you ever bring charges, and Dr Anscombe be convicted, we might then attempt such a petition. However, I feel I must warn you that it is a lengthy and costly procedure, which must pass through the Chancery Division.’
‘My husband controls all of my money.’
‘Well, Mr Crudge has offered to fund any such action. But . . . the fees could easily run into the hundreds of pounds, if not the thousands.’
‘So much?’ Theo breathed.
‘Indeed. Which is why only the very wealthy proceed, though they are the least likely to wish to do so, given the inevitable damage to their . . . position.’ Womersley gave her a rueful look.
‘But there is worse. It strikes me that you are an attentive mother, and would not wish to be separated from your son?’
‘Separated from Arthur? Not ever.’
‘I understand. However . . . should your petition for separation from your husband be successful, you would not necessarily retain custody of the boy. We would have to petition against your husband, for both custody and access, until his sixteenth birthday. And such petitions can fail.’
Under Womersley’s apologetic gaze, Theo’s resolve crumbled. Twin tears slipped down her face, and Womersley gave her his handkerchief.
‘Then it is impossible,’ she said. ‘Did my uncle send you here to that end? To make me see beyond doubt that it’s hopeless?’
‘I think he sent me to do whatever I could. And, regretfully, what I can do is very little. Marriage, within the law, is sacrosanct.’
‘Though a wife is made to suffer fear and pain, whilst her husband does as he pleases?’
‘In far too many cases, yes. I’m terribly sorry to disappoint you, Mrs Anscombe.’
He said it so sincerely that Theo believed him.
‘You are a married man, Mr Womersley?’