The Ripper's Wife(20)
“We all take some poison or another.” Jim shrugged. “But my darling Bunny, you must trust me. I am your husband and I love you, and I would never do anything that would take me from your side. I have made myself an expert in these matters; I know just how much I can take. I am not so reckless as to gamble with my life, only my money.” He smiled and stroked his diamond horseshoe.
So I let myself be comforted. He was my husband; I loved and trusted him. And I was, as he said, young and inexperienced; I should not have presumed to judge when I myself knew nothing and had no personal experience of arsenic beyond the little hint in the face wash Dr. Greggs prescribed for me, and I had even been timid and afraid of that, my mind chock-full of murderous melodramas and poisoned rats.
What a silly little fool you are, Florie, I scolded myself as I relaxed in my husband’s loving arms and listened to my kitten purring contentedly against my breast. You behave more like the heroine of some silly blood and thunder melodrama than a real flesh and blood wife! You really must acquire some sense before you make a fool of yourself out where all the world can see; you know the Currant Jelly Set won’t be half so forgiving as Jim!
4
Jim threw a ball at Battlecrease House to introduce me to the Currant Jelly Set. I should have felt right at home, I’d moved in such elite circles all my life, but here I felt like I was standing in the middle of the ballroom on a sinking ship with no hope of salvation.
Their eyes scorched and froze me at the same time, and their nostrils curled like someone was holding a tray of steaming manure right under them. Every time they mentioned the fact that I was American one might easily have imagined them substituting the word half-witted instead.
They were the most patronizing and condescending set of people I had ever met. Even those who were shorter or of a height with me looked down upon me like Zeus and Hera from the lofty top of Mount Olympus. They would cut you dead over round-toed shoes if almond-shaped ones were all the fashion. Lemonade spilled on a white glove, limp frills on a linen shirt, and a slip of the tongue or a word stuttered or mispronounced were the social equivalents of suicide, and sins exposed, not sins committed, were the greatest offense in their eyes. It didn’t matter one whit to them if a man slept with his neighbor’s wife, only if it ended up in the divorce court or the penny papers; you could rack up all the debts you pleased as long as you didn’t end up being publicly declared a bankrupt and having your possessions sold at public auction. If you weren’t equal to or better than the person next to you, you were nothing. They presented what appeared to be a wall of cold British solidarity—they did after all refer to themselves as a set—but they would turn on one of their own without hesitation, like wolves on the weakest in the pack. Smiles hid daggers, and compliments concealed contempt. There was no such thing as sincerity in the Currant Jelly Set.
I couldn’t stand a single one of them! The feeling was overwhelmingly mutual. They might embrace Jim as one of their own, but I would be tolerated only on sufferance; I would never be one of their exalted number.
But God would grant me a reprieve and, for a brief, blessed little while, make the cold waters closing in on me recede.
As I stood stunned in the midst of the gold and champagne brilliance of the ballroom, chandeliers blazing over my head, I suddenly felt dizzy and weak. The next thing I knew I was lying limply on one of the champagne and gold brocade sofas.
Edwin was leaning over me, nonchalantly sipping champagne while fanning me with my own gold lace fan and urging the immediate loosening of my stays as his eyes devoured the décolletage of my arsenic-green bodice. Jim knelt anxiously beside me, kissing and rubbing my hands, mumbling a jumble of words that seemed to be a litany of diseases; I think I heard “scarlet fever” and “diphtheria” amongst them. A rather prominent doctor was amongst the guests, and he insisted that the crowd of frowning faces forming a tight circle around us retreat and give me air. After whispering a few discreet questions into my ear, he ascertained the cause of my malaise was quite natural and proffered Jim his heartiest congratulations.
“My angel, I am so proud of you!” Jim said as he carefully carried me upstairs as though I were as delicate as one of the Dresden shepherdesses on my whatnot shelf and laid me on my bed where cherubs smiled down at me from all four posters.
“A baby,” I kept whispering and stroking my stomach. “I’m going to have a baby!” When I looked in the hand mirror Jim obligingly fetched for me my formerly wan face was truly glowing.
For the next several months I lived quietly. I had a wonderful doctor, Dr. Arthur Hopper, whom I chose myself, because of his kind, friendly manner and the fact that he was not a member of the Currant Jelly Set and did not equate my being American with being uncivilized and simpleminded. He advised me to curtail my social activities when I tearfully confided how lonely and outcast I felt. I’d been visiting in England many times in my life, though mostly in London and at the country estates of Mama’s friends, but now that I was to make my home here I felt for the first time like a pariah, about as welcome as a leper at a royal garden party. Even my own brother-in-law despised me. I’d overheard Michael scornfully describing me to Jim as “a featherbrained adventuress out to feather her nest with pound notes” and “a vain, superficial coquette concerned only with clothes and hats.” To his credit, Jim refused to hear anything against me and walked out, and I hastily withdrew to the foot of the stairs, pretending I was just then descending, so he wouldn’t know I had heard.