We used to leave our burrow for food, and then, like children, we’d chase each other up the stairs on all fours and disappear under the bedclothes. He showed me how to put drops of laudanum in brandy, which burned my chest and made my head seem as if it would explode, like I was falling down a bottomless black hole. But when he kissed me all over, I burst into fits of laughter. We were living in a barrel of feathers.
Thomas experienced the world through his senses, and he had an appetite for it all: food and music, art and beautiful things, architecture and adventure, liquor and laudanum. We were no angels, but we never professed to be. Thomas was drawn on impulse to whatever would give him pleasure in that moment, and, in those days, pleasing me was one such thing. It was a soft and sensory experience; all lust. As yet I was unaware the same desires would quickly become a burden. I was fascinated by him. After the dark events of the last few months, I felt I was being pushed in a different direction and that this was the right path, the life in the light I craved. This man and my role of wife would be the new terrain I could explore and conquer. I would be damn good at it.
Thomas was often like an excitable child, skipping around, eyes always on me, bleary with a damp glaze as if spellbound. He tried to hold my hand at all times. I would wait as long as I could, then attempt to slip free, only for his fingers to search mine out again. His attention was so intense, it was embarrassing. People stared, although I don’t believe he noticed. It was as if he didn’t care about anything or anyone but us. This wasn’t driven by rudeness or a conscious aim to offend; it was simply a matter of training. Thomas had never been conditioned to consider others or to imagine he might not matter as much as other people. Thomas thought he mattered very much, and, as his wife, so did I.
I wanted nothing more than to be like him. Now that I was married to an upper-middle-class doctor, I pictured a life free of the exhausting, ever looming fear of poverty, free of the drudgery of hard, physical labour, of never being able to earn enough money to put a bit aside. Now at last I had the opportunity to create wealth rather than merely exist. This was my chance. I only had one job: to stop myself from ruining it.
2
After our honeymoon, we travelled straight to the house in Chelsea. I hadn’t had time to think about what it would be like, so when our cab pulled up outside I found my knees trembling with fear that I would be found out for a fraud. I had to keep my hands together to stop the shaking being so obvious. I had never lived with servants or a housekeeper. Growing up with my grandparents, there was a charlady, and a gardener came occasionally after my grandfather died, but no one lived in. I had no clue how to manage the situation and any savvy servants would quickly sniff out my ignorance. They wouldn’t think me good enough to be the doctor’s wife, and they would be quite right. I hadn’t been trained for the role at all. I tried to steady my nerves by asking questions, but mostly I was consumed by how ridiculously unprepared I was. What kind of mistress was frightened of the staff?
‘You can rely on old Mrs Wiggs, my housekeeper,’ Thomas said, ‘above all others, including myself. She’s the most reliable, steady hand you’ll ever meet. By rights she should have been born a duchess, but fortunately she was gifted to us and she’s been with the family since my sister and I were babes-in-arms. Mrs Wiggs comes with the fittings in the Lancaster household. We are lucky to have her.’
I was finally ready to meet Mrs Wiggs in person. After Thomas’s glowing description, I had imagined a short, squat woman with blonde curls and a bosom deep enough to suffocate a small child. She would have a warm smile and bovine eyes, always on the cusp of tears, on account of her emotional generosity.
As we walked through the door, Mrs Wiggs was waiting in the hallway to greet us. Emotional generosity was not the immediate impression I had. The air around her was stiff and frozen. The instinctive reaction was to hold your breath, as I did then.
‘It truly is wonderful to welcome you to our household, Mrs Lancaster,’ she said.
Thomas closed the door behind us and we were plunged into gloom, our eyes too used to the daylight to adjust to our new surroundings. The only illumination was a candle on a cabinet with a mirror above it that made the flame flicker in on itself continually, distracting me, demanding attention. Mrs Wiggs stepped forward into its light and I had to tell myself to loosen my grip on Thomas’s arm.
The only part of her that moved were her eyes; they drank me in, up and down.