A Dangerous Fortune(44)
“Don’t say no, please?” he interrupted. “If you can’t say yes, say nothing. Think about it, at least for a day, perhaps longer.”
Maisie sighed. She knew she should turn him down, and it would have been easier to do so right away. But he was begging her. “I’ll think about it,” she said.
He beamed. “Thank you.”
She shook her head ruefully. “Whatever happens, Solly, I believe I’ll never be proposed to by a better man.”
2
HUGH AND MAISIE TOOK THE PENNY RIDE on the pleasure steamer from Westminster Pier to Chelsea. It was a warm, light evening, and the muddy river was busy with cockle-boats, barges and ferries. They steamed upstream, under the new railway bridge for Victoria Station, passing Christopher Wren’s Chelsea Hospital on the north shore and, on the south, the flowers of Battersea Fields, London’s traditional dueling ground. Battersea Bridge was a ramshackle wooden structure that looked ready to fall down. At its south end were chemical factories, but on the opposite side pretty cottages clustered around Chelsea Old Church, and naked children splashed in the shallows.
Less than a mile beyond the bridge they disembarked and walked up the wharf to the magnificent gilded gateway of Cremorne Gardens. The Gardens consisted of twelve acres of groves and grottoes, flower beds and lawns, ferneries and copses between the river and the King’s Road. It was dusk when they arrived, and there were Chinese lanterns in the trees and gaslight along the winding paths. The place was packed: many of the younger people who had been at the races had decided to finish the day here. Everyone was dressed up to the nines, and they sauntered carefree through the gardens, laughing and flirting, the girls in pairs, the young men in larger groups, the couples arm-in-arm.
The weather had been fine all day, sunny and warm, but now it was becoming a hot, thundery night that threatened a storm. Hugh felt at once elated and nervous. He was thrilled to have Maisie on his arm, but he had the insecure sense that he did not know the rules of the game he was playing. What did she expect? Would she let him kiss her? Would she let him do anything he wanted? He longed to touch her body, but he did not know where to begin. Would she expect him to go all the way? He wanted to, but he had never done it before and he was afraid of making a fool of himself. The other clerks at Pilasters talked a lot about dollymops, and what they would and would not do, but Hugh suspected that much of what they said was boasting. Anyway, Maisie could not be treated as a dollymop. She was more complex than that.
He was also a little worried that he might be seen by someone he knew. His family would disapprove powerfully of what he was doing. Cremorne Gardens was not only a lower-class place, it was thought by Methodists to encourage immorality. If he were found out, Augusta would be sure to use it against him. It was one thing for Edward to take loose women to disreputable places: he was the son and heir. It was different for Hugh, penniless and poorly educated and expected to be a failure like his father: they would say that licentious pleasure gardens were his natural habitat, and he belonged with clerks and artisans and girls like Maisie.
Hugh was at a critical point in his career. He was on the point of getting promoted to correspondence clerk—at a salary of 150 pounds a year, more than double what he was getting now—and that could be jeopardized by a report of dissolute behavior.
He looked anxiously at the other men walking along the winding paths between the flower beds, fearful of recognizing someone. There was a sprinkling of upper-class men, some with girls on their arms; but they all carefully avoided Hugh’s eye, and he realized they too were apprehensive about being seen there. He decided that if he saw people he knew they would probably be as keen as he to keep it quiet; and he felt reassured.
He was proud of Maisie. She was wearing a blue-green gown with a low neckline and a bustle behind, and a sailor hat poised jauntily on her piled-up hair. She attracted a lot of admiring glances.
They passed a ballet theatre, an oriental circus, an American bowling green and several shooting galleries, then went into a restaurant to dine. This was a new experience for Hugh. Although restaurants were becoming more common, they were mostly used by the middle classes: upper-class people still did not like the idea of eating in public. Young men such as Edward and Micky ate out quite often, but they thought of themselves as slumming, and they only did it when they were either looking for or had already found dollymops to keep them company.
All through dinner Hugh tried not to think about Maisie’s breasts. The tops of them showed lusciously above the neckline of her gown, and they were very pale, with freckles. He had seen bare breasts, just once—at Nellie’s brothel a few weeks ago. But he had never touched one. Were they firm, like muscles, or limp? When a woman took off her corset, did her breasts move as she walked, or remain rigid? If you touched them, would they yield to pressure, or were they hard, like kneecaps? Would she let him touch them? He sometimes even thought about kissing them, the way the man in the brothel had kissed the whore’s breasts, but this was a secret desire that he felt ashamed of. In fact he was vaguely ashamed of all these feelings. It seemed brutish to sit with a woman and think all the time of her naked body, as if he cared nothing for her, but just wanted to use her. However, he could not help it, especially with Maisie, who was so alluring.
While they were eating there was a fireworks display in another part of the gardens. The bangs and flashes upset the lions and tigers in the menagerie, and they roared their disapproval. Hugh recalled that Maisie had worked in a circus, and he asked her what it was like.