Becoming Belle Read online

  When Belle reached the smoky house, she coughed to let Sara know that she had arrived. The woman opened the door, nodded a greeting and sat again to continue suckling Isidor. Her white chest gleamed against the russet fabric of her dress.

  “Hello, Sara,” Belle said, needing to hear her own voice in order to steady it.

  “Ma’am,” Sara said.

  The boy’s eyes strained sideways to watch Belle, while his mouth stayed latched on to the breast. He paused to frown when Belle waved at him, and a trickle of milk slid from the corner of his lips before he pressed his nose to the breast to suck harder. His eyes never left Belle’s face. Sara looked at the floor, her expression serious, one hand curled around the baby’s bare behind.

  The smells were of boiled bone and mildew. In London Belle did not carry a vinaigrette to ward off smells. She wondered, standing in Sara’s cabin—and not for the first time—if she shouldn’t purchase one to take with her on each trip to Sussex. She covered her nose briefly with the back of her hand, then tried to breathe only through her mouth.

  A toddler—a girl—slunk from under what looked like a heap of rags. She sidled up and stared at Belle. She went to her mother and grabbed at her breast until she managed to snatch it from Isidor, the usurper. The baby cried, but Sara was able to soothe him with soft clucking noises that Belle found both odd and enchanting.

  “He is well, Sara?” Belle said, feeling out of place and unwanted in the dim room. She would have liked to sit but had received no such invitation. “Baby thrives, does he?”

  Sara said, “He does, ma’am,” and Belle nodded, as if this satisfied her.

  “Hello, Isidor,” she said. “Hello, little man.” Her son ignored her and she wondered if she should hold him. But with neither muslin nor drawers to cover him up, Belle was afraid the boy might piddle on her, or worse.

  “Do you want to pick him up, ma’am?”

  “No. That’s quite all right, Sara. Not today.” Belle looked at Isidor, content in Sara’s arms and growing plump in her care. No, she did not need to hold him or breathe once more of his grassy, animal scent. The boy was fat and fulsome as a distillery pig. “Isidor,” she called again, feeling foolishly needy.

  “We call him Dory, ma’am. It suits us better.”

  “I see.” Dory. Well. Belle sneezed and fumbled in her handbag for her handkerchief. “The smoke,” she said and waved at the fireplace, needing to explain herself. She wanted to leave; everything about Sara and her home made Belle feel miserably weak and out of sorts. She poked in her bag, unable to see anything inside it in the gloom, but instead of the handkerchief, she pulled out the paper twist of coins she had readied for Sara. Wanting to assert herself, she left the money on the table rather than placing it in the other woman’s hand. “I thank you,” Belle said, nodded and left.

  She rushed back through Heathfield to the coach stop, noticing only the hard wallop of her heart and her thoughts that flitted from guilt to relief to justification. A wind-hooked leaf worried the air over her head. Once seated on the coach she took a swig of gin from her flask and gathered herself. So she hadn’t held Isidor. What of it? The awkward bundle of him was wearisome; it was upsetting, somehow, for her to take the babe in her arms—he seemed to resist her every time, and Belle was not used to being resisted. And his mushroomy, milky smell was alien; greasepaint and London slops were the smells for her. And, anyway, what would she know of the care of babies, the soothing of them? That was best left to the motherly. Those women who had little to do but lie on their backs to birth another urchin and another. One more never bothered a woman like Sara, did it? No, the harassing burdens of motherhood were not for Belle, not right now. Not with this child, at least.

  But still Belle thought of baby Isidor’s sweet face. He had something of her good looks, she felt: large eyes and creamy skin. There was not much of his father to discern there. Next time, she promised herself, she would hold Isidor. She would dandle him and squeeze his cherubic thighs. The child’s legs were truly enormous—surely he should be walking by now? That might make his legs less lardy, more modest looking. Oh, how did people know what to do with babies and their incessant needs?

  After the short coach ride, Belle sat on the train, drew a long breath and closed her eyes. I will stop somewhere pleasant, she thought, and have a cannikin of hot saloop, rich with sassafras. Maybe even a wedge of plum duff if the saloop was not sweet enough. Sugary things calmed Belle, gave her the same dull satisfaction as her nips of Madam Geneva. Maybe she should forget about food and go to a gin palace, pass an hour or two on her own? Belle always enjoyed the dazzle of the dram shops’ gaslights and the distant camaraderie of other drinkers. She relished the juniper tang of the gin, bitter and promising. A ditty danced through her mind:

  I love the gin! I love the gin!

  And in a butt of it I could swim,

  Or ever live among butts below,

  For the juniper’s taste so well, I know.

  * * *

  —

  Already Belle was feeling calmer; the train tootled out of Sussex and the farther she got from Isidor, the airier she felt. The baby was in good hands, for sure. And he had company—lots of other children to jostle and play with; Belle could never offer him that. What matter if he had little more than refuse and mud as playthings—did children need much more? He seemed a hardy type of baby; there was hope that he would grow into manhood none the poorer for living away from his mother. Yes, Isidor was fine, truly.

  Belle took another swallow of gin and heard her mother’s voice condemning “the devil’s buttermilk”: “It will get you into trouble, Isabel, if you develop a fondness for it.” Too late, Mother, Belle thought, not without satisfaction. She had a last gulp, hoping it might let her snooze until the train pulled in to Victoria. Then home to her Conduit Street sanctuary.

  A CONVERSATION

  The looking glass on Belle’s toilet table was foxed; she observed herself through the blotches and thought it was as if she had freckles or a greater sieve shake of beauty spots. William’s face was freckled and when Belle had teased him about it—“You have Irish pennies on your nose”—he had swiped at his skin as if he could clean the marks away.

  “There are only English pennies in Ireland,” he said.

  “I know that, William. I’m not ignorant.”

  “Oh, Isabel, I didn’t mean to imply that you were.” He took her hands in his. “Do you suppose, Belle, our children will have freckly noses?”

  Belle liked when he talked of children; it fixed him to her in ways that no one else saw. How sweet it would be to have the child of a beloved man instead of one of a cruel one. She brushed her hair and gazed at herself, letting the strokes of the bristles act like a balm. People concluded, she knew, that theirs was one of those stupid loves, one that travels all one way. They fancied William pursued Belle and that she stood still, waiting for him to land at her feet. Implied in this was the assumption that she had lured him, exerted a spell on him with her charms. They said she was with him for reasons of rank—his—and progress—her own.

  “How,” the query went, “could a viscount wish to be seen publicly with an actress? Were theater people not the stuff of closed doors, of intimacies best kept hidden? What proper gentleman would harness himself to a music hall knicker flasher?”

  The gossips delighted in calling her a second-rate prancer; it was all related to her by Flo, who got it from the other dancers, who got it from their highborn men, no doubt. They had proclaimed William a weak-faced, beardless boy and implied that she was duping him. As if, Belle thought, she were not woman and he were not man; as if they did not know the bray of their own desires. Their love flowed back and over between them, Belle knew. It was as if, William said once, they had drunk from the same enchanted pool as infants and the drafts they took made them one. Belle liked when William’s poetic sensibilities rose up; she knew she stirred
him greatly when his words spilled like nectar. And he had a title; she could not help imagining her signature rendered as “Lady Dunlo.”

  Flo fluttered behind the curtain, still abed though it was late afternoon, as was her custom. She grunted, stretched her limbs and hopped quickly from the bed to pull on her dressing gown. She came and stood behind Belle; putting her hands on Belle’s shoulders, she spoke to her reflection.

  “What’s it like, down there in Sussex?”

  “It’s ever so green. And dark. The kind of place Jack the Ripper might fetch up.”

  “That old kipper?” Flo said. “I doubt he ever leaves Whitechapel—too many pickings.”

  Belle didn’t really think that Heathfield was a morbid place and felt bad for having said it. She thought of baby Isidor, and the way he saw Sara as his one and only mother. The little Judas, Belle thought, and was instantly remorseful. But of course he took Sara for his mama—he had not known any other. Weston was the true Iscariot.

  Flo picked at Belle’s hair, unkinking tangles with her fingers. “How was the child?” she said. “Did he appear well? Happy?”

  “His name is Isidor, Flo. You can call him that, you know. Though the woman has begun to style him ‘Dory.’”

  “Dory? John Dory—your little fish!”

  “He’s called Isidor.”

  “Very well. But try not to look so careworn when you speak of him, darling. It ages you.” Belle handed the hairbrush to Flo and she worked the back of Belle’s hair in long strokes until it glowed. She gouged a blob of pomatum from the pot on the toilet table and rubbed it into her palms, then let them glide over Belle’s hair from crown to tips. “You always had the most beautiful Barnet Fair—like silk,” Flo said, taking handfuls of Belle’s hair and pressing it to her nose. “Rossetti would have painted you if he’d lived.”

  “Bassano does well enough.”

  “A cabinet card is no match for an oil painting, Belle. But maybe your viscount will see to that?”

  “You know, the moment I heard William’s voice I knew that we would be intimates. The night when I first heard him chitchatting in the foyer of the Empire, I was seduced. That soft, regal lilt.”

  “Oh Belle, only you could hear something majestic in Dunlo’s voice.” Flo pulled her sister to standing and dragged her by both hands to her bed. “Sit. Let’s have a chinwag. We’ve been like ships crisscrossing the Channel lately—never a moment’s leisure. You tell me your woes, and I’ll tell you mine, and then we’ll be clear of them.”

  “My woes are few but large, as you know, dearest.”

  Flo lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. “Begin with the most pressing.”

  Belle drew alongside her sister and propped herself on her elbow. “Well, it’s baby Isidor, of course. And, therefore, bloody Weston. And now, of course, William.”

  “I take it Dunlo is unaware of baby Isidor?”

  “I haven’t yet found the way to tell him.”

  “You’ll have to soon enough, Issy. It’s best not to have secrets fester between you and a man.”

  “Why can’t all men be like Wertheimer?” Belle lay back and placed her hand across Flo’s stomach. “It warms me to think how deeply he always cares for me; he’s such a practical friend, so efficient in his generosity. He doesn’t judge. Remember how sensibly he orchestrated Baby’s removal to Sussex?”

  Flo, who had closed her eyes, opened them and turned her head to stare at her sister. “Wertheimer didn’t have much choice, my darling. From the moment the baby was born you were set on being rid of him.”

  “Don’t exaggerate, Flo. That’s not quite the truth of it. I, perhaps, wasn’t fully prepared. I misunderstood the demands of children.”

  “Poor Wertheimer; he idolizes you and you treat him as companion and servant, both.”

  Belle sat up. “I do not! Have a care, Flo. I love Wertheimer, after a fashion. In the only way I can love him. We understand each other. He’s available to me in his way and I’m available to him in mine.”

  “He makes himself available all right—as brass clinker, as occasional landlord, as chaperone. Is there anything that man would not do for you?”

  “Probably not. Like your Seymour.”

  “Yes, like my dear Seymour.” Flo laughed. “He is a dear but I rather like leaving him to stew when he nags at me to give up the stage. Perhaps I shouldn’t.”

  “Seymour is steady as an ox, Flo. You two should encourage each other’s kindnesses rather than upending yourselves every time you disagree.”

  “Probably. But since when did the Sisters Bilton do things by halves?” Flo flipped onto her stomach. “And what of Lord Dunlo?”

  “Ah now. William.” Belle warmed to think of him. “He is a special one.” A special one who would surely not be absent for a second night tonight, Belle hoped.

  A NOTE

  Belle’s walk to the Empire was piebald with magpies. She counted six, then seven, then eight. She stared around frantically for another so that she would be able to say the rhyme from one to seven again without missing “two for joy.” The eighth magpie was really the first—“one for sorrow.” Another magpie landed on a fence ahead of her, she relaxed and chanted inside her head:

  One for sorrow, two for joy,

  Three for a girl, four for a boy,

  Five for silver, six for gold,

  Seven for a secret, never to be told.

  The magpies’ leavings decorated the path and she lifted her skirts to dodge them. What an extraordinary, slimy mess wild birds made! Pritchard left tiny odorless pebbles that Belle did not mind cleaning up on occasion. He was such a perceptive little fellow—not like a bird at all. Pritch seemed to have a soul the same as any person; he was a darling creature, her tiny feathered love.

  Belle continued along the path, enjoying her own company; she often liked to be alone, or with only a select few, preferring that to crowds; they pressed on her rather. The stage was different: there she was in command and the throng was barely visible beyond the lights. There she felt fully alone and yet connected to her admirers; it was a contradictory pleasure. Belle tried always to walk to the theater by herself, to think out her day with her feet and get ready for the performance. Flo took a hansom; she was finicky about mud splatters and never cared to walk anywhere if she could help it.

  A milk-woman trailed Belle, trying to interest her in a cup of milk.

  “It’s the last of it, miss,” she said, “it will make a fine cream with a bit of butter added.”

  Belle glanced behind, feeling sorry for the woman under the heavy yoke she had shouldered for hours.

  “I have no need for cream or milk, I thank you,” she said. “I’m on my way to work.” She wondered why in heaven she was explaining herself.

  “Work, is it? Some of us work all day. Some all night, it seems.” The woman hitched the yoke forward on her body. “Bloody Bunbury tart,” she muttered.

  Belle was about to retort when a copper who had been behind them stepped forward.

  “Madam,” he said, “I will confiscate your cans if you do not move along.”

  The milk seller pushed her nose in the air and turned away. The copper tipped his hat to Belle and she smiled in thanks and walked on, wondering why the world was determined to be at odds with her when she was doing her very best to live a smooth life. Did she not earn her own money in the best way she could? Was her son not being looked after well, as she was unable do it herself? Was she not trying to renew herself, start afresh, with a decent man? She marched on toward the Empire, stamping her cares into London’s streets.

  * * *

  —

  As soon as Belle was settled in her dressing room, one of the stagehands knocked and gave her a letter. Belle thanked him and tore it open. William wrote that his father had arrived unexpectedly from Ireland and he had had to leave his Burli
ngton Hotel lodgings and pass the previous evening with the earl in his Berkeley Square house. Belle was happy with the explanation for his absence, but she fretted a little for William. Even though she had known him only a short while, she was aware that he feared his father. He had never stated it outright, but everything he said of the earl made Belle feel it was true. He had signed his note “Your loving Dunlo” and said that he would see her at the Corinthian that night. Belle’s heart fluttered up into her throat, then settled.

  She opened her toilet case and pulled out a jar of cold cream. Its perfume stung as she rubbed it into her forehead and cheeks, making her recall the way her mother winced every time she prepared her face for the stage. Mother always brought her case to the kitchen table—she said the light there was the best “for prinking.” But the young Isabel knew, without knowing she knew, that it was all part of Mother’s need to be the luminous one, to occupy the center of the family. The honeyed, floral smell of Belle’s pearl powder brought back one occasion especially—the night Mother was opening as Venus in Farnborough town hall, shortly before Belle left for London.

  The air in their military quarters had been taut for weeks while Mother memorized her lines and neglected all else to do so. She never relished household duties anyway and Father said they could not get a maid until they had a house of their own. Mother liked to lament loudly that her childhood in a Welsh castle, with servants galore, had been so very different from what she had to endure now. The Bilton family never once visited Wales and therefore this apparent castle of Mother’s remained a blurry place, the details of which were embroidered when Mother felt particularly low. She was not a natural housekeeper; and when there was a show pending or when she and Father dined with the regiment, Mother dropped everything. It was up to the young Isabel to make sure her sisters were fed and their home was presentable.