A Toxic Tapestry

Flouncing along the esplanade at Filey, Florrie knew she was the epicentre of several pairs of eyes;  she relished the attention. There was ‘dear Albie’ her hopeful suitor waiting at the Lover’s Bench, hat and gloves in hand, moustache standing to attention.

There was Eddie, sweating in the gardens of her neighbour’s villa, digging deep into the earth. Florrie eyed his bare, muscled forearms and unconsciously licked her lips. She twirled her parasol in his direction, elated to note his gaze slide over her corseted figure.

Behind her, as always, breathless, pink-cheeked, and hobbling, her chaperone Miss Whitehouse, begging her wayward young charge to slow down.

“Miss Florence, I beseech you to pause for just one moment. It is most unladylike to rush towards one’s sweetheart.”

Florrie ignored the older woman as was her way.

From the upstairs window of the Fortescue villa, a glint of silver told her the old witch on the top floor was at the window, with her eyeglass, huddled in her wheelchair, scrutinising the daily parade of humanity. Florrie would have been even more interested if she’d overheard the exchange between the two residents of the Fortescue mansion.

“Pretty lady, Mama. I do like her so very much.”

“Do you, my sweet? Well, Mama must see what she can arrange.”

The great and the good and the moneyed of Filey were taking their daily constitutional that Sunday afternoon, suited, booted or corseted, inhaling gulps of briny air, tasting salt on their lips and relishing the weight of money in their bank accounts.

Florrie, in her fuchsia dress, dazzled like a hothouse orchid, in the late March sunlight.

“Dearest Florence,” Albert stepped forward, hands filled with a posy, gazing at his beloved with the eyes and demeanour of a devoted Spaniel. “And er – Miss Whitehouse, of course.” Albert tipped his hat to the portly older woman limping in her charge’s wake.

“Should we take a stroll?” he offered his arm and the young couple sauntered toward the Pier and the penny attractions.

“Tawdry, cheap place  . . .” Miss Whitehouse muttered under her breath, as she trailed behind.

The afternoon tipped into a darkling dusk, whilst the waves turned slate grey, the clouds grew be-shadowed and the sea breeze nipped bare faces. The necklace of gas lamps strung along the Pier blinked on, one after the other; amber eyes watching.

Florrie inhaled the scent of toffee apples, sea and sweat – a heady combination which never failed to excite her. Her hands nestling warm inside the fur muff, she turned a glowing face towards Albert. “Do you have pennies?”

Her betrothed nodded.

“Saved them all week for you.” He handed her a velvet drawstring pouch which clinked, to her ears a sound replete with the promise of fun and escapades.

“I want to have my future told, Albie. But you know how Papa disapproves.” Florrie rolled her eyes and pouted. “Please delay Miss Whitehouse for me.” She nodded at the fortune-teller’s tent with its gaudy flags, placed halfway down the Pier, squeezed between the hot chestnuts’ barrow and Peter, the Pasty Man.

Albert hesitated. “I do adore you so, but . . .”

Florrie stood on tiptoe and whispered in his ear. Albert’s cheeks turned red. Then he turned towards Miss Whitehouse, who was only now wheezing her way up the steps. “Go,” he whispered to his fiancée.

Florrie stepped smartly away, boot heels tapping a tune across the wooden slats. She hesitated outside Madame Fortunati’s scarlet tent, before ducking her head, and plunging into the musty interior. A woman, her face half-veiled, was sitting behind an oval table, upon which lay a crystal ball. She waved a  hand, laden with gold rings and bracelets. Florrie sat down in the seat indicated. Madame Fortunati turned her palm upwards and Florrie fished out two sixpences, placing the tiny silver discs on the woman’s calloused flesh.

“You have a question?” She spoke with a fake foreign accent.

Florrie nodded, sticking out her chin. “Will I marry Albert? And stay in Filey?” She crossed her fingers and waited, praying for the answers she hoped to hear.

Madame Fortunati waved her hands over the glass globe and peered into it. Florrie swore she glimpsed swirling mist and the circle of lit candles flickered.

“I see you – yes, rich in a big house – but alone – no man at your side. I see . . .” the woman shivered pulling her shawl around her shoulders.

How dramatic, Florrie thought, amused.

“ . . . death and  . . .” The silence lingered. “Get out! Devil’s spawn!” The woman spat the words.

Florrie leapt to her feet.

“How dare you speak to me like that  . . .”

She paused when she heard Albert just outside the canvas flap arguing with Miss Whitehouse.

“I am certain she came this way, now if you just follow me down here.”

“Hag!” she whispered at the fortune teller, before she slid out of the tent, behind the Pasty Man’s fragant-smelling stall and into the shadows, from where she watched Albert guide Miss Whitehouse towards the Punch and Judy show and the hysterically laughing gaggle of bodies around it.

A tall shadow sucked the space from around her.

“Good evening, Miss.”

Florrie paused, startled. An arm came out of the darkness, pulling her towards him. A face gleamed in the lamplight, whilst moustached lips brushed hers. She knew him then; recognised the familiar smell and taste of him.

“Eddie . . . this is too dangerous. We might be discovered. Stop it – now.”

Instead, her lover tugged her beneath the wooden barrier, jumping down onto the hard, flat sand, and lowering her after him, with his hands around her waist. Beneath the roof of the Pier they lingered, hungry for each other, kissing and snuggling.

“That old witch gave me the night off.” Eddie’s hand stroked her hair. “And Molly told me where you had gone.”

Florrie shivered with excitement. “I cannot linger long. Albert will miss me.”

Florrie let her hands run over Eddie’s chest and arms. Why she was fire with him and ice when with Albert remained a mystery to her and not one her Mama was going to explain. She had taken to her bed years ago after the death of her eighth baby and she had not ventured downstairs since.

Florrie saw her once a week, on Sundays, for an hour’s Bible reading. The theme of the chosen passage often seemed to focus on the punishments meted out to women who strayed. Florrie couldn’t help but wonder if her Mama suspected something? Or if Molly was a spy in the pay of both mother and daughter? Last Sunday Mama had broken the usual routine by taking hold of Florrie’s hand, and urging her daughter to consider entering a nunnery. Florrie had choked back her laughter, but later, alone in her bedroom, she had surprised herself by weeping for an hour or more. She did not understand herself, not one iota, her head was jumbled up and she was angry so much of the time.

It was Papa who had selected Albert for her.

“He is from a well-connected family, with prospects, Florence,” he had opined, as he’d stared, not at his eldest daughter, but out of the window at the distant sea. “It will be an excellent match.”

Florrie was fond of her Albie, a chubby, brown-haired lad, with a placid disposition, in much the same way she was fond of her pet parrot, Augustus, who spouted a considerably racier line of chat. But Albert smelt of fusty confinement, boredom and duty, not of sex, sweat and lust. These latter she associated with Eddie.

Reluctantly Florrie pulled herself out of Eddie’s arms. Her skin felt as if it was burning. She wanted him so much it hurt.

“I must go.”

Tears in her eyes she walked back towards the seaweed-encrusted steps of the Pier, drawn towards the laughter and the carnies’ shouts of

“Roll up! Roll up! Come pay and play your penny.”

“Mister, step up here . . . Ladies and gentlemen.”

“Hot pasties, pies and scratchings.”

A lone figure stood watching her departure, his pipe glowing in the darkness. His stillness in marked contrast to the hectic activities taking place around him.

At the far end of the pier Florrie espied a group gathered around.  Her heart thumped with anxiety when she glimpsed Miss Whitehouse’s buttoned boots lying awry on the boards. She quickened her pace.

Clickety-clack, trippety-trip, Devil’s spawn, trouble and trick, the words spun in her head.

She shoved her way past the men’s shoulders and came face-to-face with Albert, kneeling, with tears running down his cheeks, waving a handkerchief around.

“She just collapsed, gave a little moan and  . . .” he said when he saw her.

Florrie dropped to her knees, reaching out to touch Miss Whitehouse’s face, but the woman’s bulging blind eyes and protruding tongue dissuaded her.

“She’s gone, my dear. I am so sorry.” An older gentleman’s voice at her side. “Heart, I suspect.”

Florrie rose, stumbled on Miss Whitehouse’s corpse, but thankfully Albert caught her. Inside her there was a scream clawing to break free. Florrie grabbed Albert’s hanky and stuffed it into her mouth. Cheeks bulging, she gazed down at her chaperone’s face and remembered all the occasions she had wished her dead or gone.

“Devil’s spawn,” a female voice whispered near her.

Florrie spun around, but there was no other woman in the group, merely a semi-circle of moustached, or bearded faces, wearing solemn expressions. Above her the gas lamp flickered then died, as though in sympathy.

The pool of darkness it left behind enveloped Florrie, and she felt it enter her.

***

Miss Whitehouse’s demise ended the Pier trips and also the secret trysts for a number of weeks. Florrie, in enforced mourning, roamed the villa’s corridors and gardens, unsettled, and full of resentment at her lack of freedom. Daily she watched Papa and her two younger brothers going to and fro, by foot and carriage, going about their business.  Florrie, in frustration, lashed out more than once at Molly, slapping the girl. At the latest Bible reading with Mama, she had slowly torn out the page and ripped it into pieces. It was cold comfort for there were hundreds more of them, thin as skin, in the damn tome and Mama had merely chosen another one for the reading, in complete silence, without even looking at Florrie.

Florrie discovered a taste for burning objects in the garden, creeping out at dusk with locks of her own hair, scraps of linen, pages, flowers. Watching the flames turn them to ash seemed to soothe her for a while. There was power in this secret, private ritual.

Albert visited daily, sitting upright in the guest’s chair in the parlour, beneath the Grandfather clock, gazing at his beloved with anxiety and incomprehension. They never touched each other, it never seemed to occur to do so to Albert. Unbelievably, to Florrie, they were to be wed in a year.  Florrie marvelled at the precise nature of this timespan, dictated by Papa. As if love, joy and marital desire would bloom within those three-hundred odd days.

Then there was the matter of Eddie. She glimpsed him from behind the curtains, watched him avidly, as he laboured all that long, dreary summer in the gardens next door, his flesh burnished nut brown.

It was a surprising invitation – from their neighbours – the Fortescues, which offered Florrie her longed-for escape route. Papa did not dare refuse the white, linen-backed calling card from one of Filey’s premier families. So, he allowed his daughter to visit next door, but only for one hour.

“Drink only one cup of tea, eat nothing, for it is unseemly for a young woman to cover herself in crumbs. Wear brown or grey and Molly will escort you there and back.”

Florrie chose her darkest grey dress and stepped out, with joy in her heart, and Molly in tow. They climbed the gleaming clean steps to Mrs Fortescue’s villa, lifted the hideous brass door knocker – a gargoyle’s leering head – and banged it, whilst sharing a wink with each other.

Mrs Fortescue was waiting in the front parlour, where the huge bay windows embraced the sea view and flooded the room with light. She was tiny, bird-like, smothered in blankets and shawls, a vision in tartan and velvet, but still her bony hands were chilly to the touch, and her eyes alert and watchful.  A number of seascapes adorned the wallpapered walls.

“My late husband’s work,” Mrs Fortescue waved her hands, heavy with diamonds. “His hobby. Men need a hobby. Or else they become tedious.”

Florrie stared at the sea painted in all its moods – calm, angry, fretful and murderous, feeling kinship with it. One wall however was different. It was bedecked with framed embroidery pieces – samplers of varied sizes.

“My own poor efforts, before my hands became too painful to hold a needle,” her hostess explained.

Florrie stepped closer. There was no sea nor people in any of the embroideries.

“I do not care for the ocean,” her hostess added. Instead each piece had been stitched with a rich array of luscious silks – verdure green for leaves, wine colours, mixed with ox-bloods for petals, scattered with maiden’s hair shades and mortal sin’s true black for berries – a world of plants; each sampler a stitched ode to botany. Florrie peered closer- noting from her own studies – nightshade, foxglove in Roman purple, and devil’s helmet. She turned back to find the old woman watching her intently.

“How interesting,” Florrie commented politely, aware she was being tested in some way.  Mrs Fortescue laughed, the movement shaking her wheelchair.

“A little conceit of mine, my dear. A poisonous pastime.”

Florrie perched on the swollen horsehair sofa before the tea service.

“Do pour, my dear. My hands shake so.” Florrie obeyed and picked up the teapot, whilst eyeing the fruitcake with longing.

“I was young once.  And like you I was a little – wild.”

Florrie focussed on her hostess, wary now.

“I too liked the gentlemen. My Papa married me off at not-so sweet sixteen. It was a speedy wedding. How old are you?”

“Eighteen nearly and I am to be wed next year,” Florrie replied, looking at the carpet. The words nearly choked her.

Mrs Fortescue said nothing, sipping her tea as though deep in thought.

“Tonight is the Pier Fair, I hear. Would you like to go?”

Florrie stared hard at the old woman, considering the words and the offer. This was all most surprising. But she did want to go, very much. Freedom beckoned. She nodded.

“I will send a note to your father with that girl, Molly, to say you will be staying with me for a few hours, to read to me and keep me company. He will not object to that. You may go out later, through the rear garden gate, past the glasshouse, where my gardener works till late.”
Florrie’s head came up, her cheeks reddening, at this allusion to Eddie and the implied knowledge in the old woman’s voice.

“Do we understand each other, Florrie?”

She nodded. “Thank you.” She stared at her hands, and found them balled into fists. Tension flooded through her. Eddie, oh to see him, hold him – it had been weeks.

“Now, perhaps if you will take down Mr Dickens’ ‘Bleak House’, you may read aloud a chapter or two, to add verisimilitude to our fiction.” The older woman smiled, revealing rows of stained teeth, and inwardly, Florrie shuddered.

***

 Several hours later the lovers lay entwined beneath the struts of the Pier. Florrie’s hair and corset were unbound, and her petticoats raised to her waist, as she sat astride Eddie supine beneath her. Above their heads the fair and its customers frolicked in varied ways. The smell of pipe smoke drifted on the sea breeze and Florrie wrinkled her nose, pulling her camisole ribbons together and re knotting them, feeling chilly.

“What a delightful picture the two of you make,” a male voice, amused but cool, spoke right above them.

The lovers froze, waiting like prey for the killer move. It came in less than thirty seconds. A man jumped down over the barrier, shoulder-rolled and stood up. Burly, barrel-chested, bearded, he extracted his still-smoking pipe from a jacket pocket.

“Good evening, to you both. Ah, young love.”

Eddie pushed Florrie off and stood, half-dressed, his fists raised.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Allow me to introduce myself. I am Mr Bertram Patrickson, Inquiry Agent, at your service.”

Florrie hurriedly pulled her velvet cloak across her half-naked body. Shaking with fury, she shouted, “Hit him, Eddie.”

Her lover sprang forward, but Patrickson sidestepped with ease and swung a mean right hook which connected with a crack with Eddie’s jaw. Eddie went down, out cold. Florrie ran shrieking, at Patrickson, nails raking at his face. Above them the sounds of the Penny Arcades, the carnies’ cries  and those of the revellers joined her shrieks of fury. Patrickson grabbed her wrists and held her off. “Desist now, young Miss. I am in the employ of Mrs Fortescue.  She has sent me to bring you to her house. She has a  – proposition for you.”

Florrie paused, breathless. Eddie moaned.

“See lass, he’s alive. All will be well.”

Patrickson took Florrie’s arm and led her across the hard sand, leaving only footprints for Eddie to see when he came to. Indeed Florrie’s footprints would be the last he ever saw of his lover.

Two days later, in a drunken brawl, at The Boar Inn in town, which no one present was sure how it started, Eddie was stabbed to death by a stranger, who fled the scene.

By then Florrie’s life and future had changed beyond all recognition.

***

The announcement in ‘The Filey Times’ took the well-to-do of the town by surprise. The upcoming nuptials of Miss Florence Chellow, daughter of Mr James Chellow on 15 September, 1888 in Saint Mary’s Church to Mr Sebastian Fortescue, son of Mrs Matthew Fortescue, widow.  There was much gossip over the bridge tables, at the speed of the wedding – only weeks away, the lack of a proper courtship, by the surprising choice of the husband-to-be.  Wasn’t Florence betrothed to Albert?  Wasn’t Mrs Fortescue’s sole son and heir – well, how to put this delicately, a man in name only? Who hadn’t been seen in public for years. Indeed it was rumoured he was deformed and hunch-backed.  Saint Mary’s would be full to overflowing on the fifteenth for the whole town wanted to witness this spectacle.

***

Florrie sat in front of the mirror, hands shaking as she rouged her cheeks and lips. Molly, eyes avoiding her mistress’s pale face, hooked row after row of metal eyelets on the corset. Behind the two girls, on the bed, rested froths of white silk and lace. The wedding dress and veil provided by the bridegroom’s mother.  Molly helped her into the gown in silence. Florrie stared fixedly at the simulacrum of a bride in the mirror. The morning sickness which plagued her, had left her wrung out and weak. She had no appetite nor fight left in her. The shocking rapidity of the events following on from Patrickson’s disruption of the tryst.  Eddie’s subsequent murder.  The discovery of her pregnancy and the orchestration of the marriage, with Papa’s complete agreement, had all but crushed Florrie and broken her. In a few weeks her old life had been ripped from her and a new, horrific one beckoned.

“You look lovely, Miss,” Molly said.  Florrie turned and smacked the girl hard across the face.

“You were a part of this. You took the old bitch’s money.” Molly wept, holding her cheek. “Papa, you, Mama, even Albert.”  She recalled the brief humiliating visit where her former beau had offered his weak congratulations, whilst sitting sandwiched between his unbending parents.  “You were all in on it. Only Eddie was different, he loved me and now he’s dead.”  She had no tears left. She was dry, arid, but not barren.  Mrs Fortescue had held up the wedding deal until she’d ascertained that fact. Put simply, the Fortescues needed an heir, one way or another. And Papa had wanted rid of his embarrassing, tainted daughter.

There was a knock at the door. Molly dashed out, crying, past the father of the bride, who hovered, perspiring. Florrie swept past him, refusing his extended arm.

“Don’t touch me,” she hissed at him. “Ever.”

It was a short service played out before a packed church. The groom beamed, clearly thrilled to be at the altar. The bride did not smile once. Her ‘I do’ inaudible to the throng. His ‘I do’ could be heard from the back row.  Mrs Fortescue sat huddled, a reptilian lizard, in her wheelchair in the front pew, accepting everyone’s congratulations. The bride dropped her posy on the stone floor, refused to kiss the groom, or to exchange a word with anyone. The groom grabbed his new wife and lavished clumsy, sloppy kisses on her. Florrie pushed him away, shrieking, “Let go of me, you cretin!” The groom began to sob and rocked himself in confusion.

Thus the newly-wed couple left the church to begin married life within the walls of the Fortescue mansion.

***

Florrie sat in the parlour, swollen-bellied, staring at the seascapes. “Devil’s spawn,” she crooned, stroking her belly. “My little one.”  Her gaze wandered to the poisonous botanical embroideries and her thoughts to the woman whose hand had stitched them and woven a web of tricks and lies around her.   Florrie remembered the midnight meeting with her mother-in-law, how she detested the enforced relationship she was tied to for life.

“I have a son, my dear,” Mrs Fortescue had confided to Florrie, standing, still covered in sand and Eddie’s kisses, in the parlour at midnight. “He is my sole son and heir. I love him but he is – different. A boy in a man’s body. One day, when I am gone, he will inherit this house and his father’s fortune. He likes you, so he tells me and he does have a fondness for pretty things. He has been watching you from his bedroom window for some time. I wish to keep him happy, also provide a wife to guide him and manage the estate after my death.”

Florrie had sat listening in disbelief, with the private detective Patrickson wedged at her side, so she could not flee.

“If you don’t wish for your night-time activities to be made public” Mrs Fortescue waved a hand at Patrickson who opened his notebook and began to read in a monotone.

“Dearest Eddie, – Oh God – do that again . . . I wish we . .”

“Stop!” Florrie wept, in fury.

“Your father would never live the scandal down. Your Mama isn’t she – bedridden?” Mrs Fortescue smirked at the word. “Your brothers are still trying to make their way in the world of business? Obstacles could be put in their way. But, marry my son, and nothing more will be said about any of this. You have my word.”

The door had creaked open. A young man poked his head in.

“Is she here, Mama? The pretty lady?”

“Yes, Sebastian, she is here.”

The lad trotted into the room, beaming. His gait was clumsy, his head swung from one side to the other, as though on a piece of string. He knocked into a table and when he faced Florrie she saw the blankness in his eyes and she despaired.

“Hello, pretty lady,” he said. Then he leapt forward and hugged Florrie, holding her tight and rocking her. She gasped in shock. Patrickson put a hand on the lad’s shoulder.

“Let her go now, lad. Gently does it.”

Florrie sat back down, shaking.

“You cannot expect me to  . . . marry that . . .”

Mrs Fortescue’s mouth thinned. “He is my beloved son. Be very careful what you say next . . .”

Florrie had met the old woman’s eyes. They chilled her.

“Eddie was right. You are an old bitch.”

Mrs Fortescue nodded, as though satisfied. “I shall take that as agreement. I will speak to your father tomorrow.”

***

Florrie was gripped by the first pains. Ripping her apart, from the inside out. It was nearly time. Her time. Her baby. Hers. Not theirs. Florrie screamed and dropped to her knees. Three floors above her, in the attic Sebastian paused, a silver whistle at his lips, in the midst of an ongoing game of trains, where he played the stationmaster and conductor.     Mrs Fortescue rolled the wheelchair to her bedroom window and on hearing her daughter-in-law’s screams, she smiled, a skull’s head grin and stretched out a bony hand to ring the bell to summon Molly. She wished to be present at the birth. This child would be raised as a Fortescue.

The first warning pain rippled through the old woman’s right arm, another stabbed her chest. She couldn’t catch a breath, there was a weight upon it, a string of drool leaked from her lips.  Mrs Fortescue’s eyes fixed on the hated interminable sea, and her late husband’s pallid face, cyanotic in his last hours returned to her, so vivid. He had not gone quietly, he’d fought her at the very end.

Her lips formed ‘Seb . . .’ but it was a whisper, lost in the thud of the blood in her veins and her heart straining, one last time. She was drowning, submerging  . . . everything was grey, and  –

Two floors down Florrie screamed in triumph, the baby was coming – coming – and she knew, in that moment, she would be the mistress of this house and this child. She knew her time had come.