chapter 5

A few months after Lucy's arrival in London her sister visits with a beastly brood of flame haired children. The older child, a boy of about four called Charlie, runs to Lucy and she laughs delightedly and ruffles his hair as he throws his arms around her waist, clutching at her skirts with his chubby fists. But when she is given Hamish the baby to hold he immediately begins to squall.

"Do you think he has forgotten me already?" Lucy asks, crestfallen.

A pair of watery green eyes open and seem to stare at me so intently that I wonder if somehow he can really see me. It suddenly seems so ludicrous that I wasted so many hours of my life and threw away so many chances at pleasure in my efforts to be pleasing and desirable and now I am some ghastly apparition that causes innocent babes to shriek at the mere sight of me.

"Of course he remembers you," Hannah assures her as she takes Hamish back in her arms to shush him. "He's just a wee man who likes to make a big fuss."

Hannah resembles a taller and more robust version of her younger sister. It is apparent that she was never regarded as the beauty of the family and accordingly has become the kind of woman who takes a peculiar pride in not concerning herself with such frivolous things as appearance. Her dress is plain and she has made little effort to tame the wildness of her red hair or conceal the smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks.

Hannah regards her sister admiringly. "Marriage evidently suits you, Lucy. You were always such a skinny wee thing that even mother was afraid that she might break you but now you look like a real lady."

Lucy blushes at her sisters words, both proud and embarrassed.

The London social season with all its dinner parties, balls and charity events has not yet begun and all the best families are still tucked away in their country retreats so there is little opportunity for Lucy to meet people. She spends most of her time at home, giving me ample opportunity to weave my wicked web around her. I fear that her sister's arrival will snatch her from my clutches and undo all my hard won influence over her but instead Hannah unwittingly plays into my hands.

When I think of the London of my lifetime, I remember the filthy, rotten stink of it all. But amongst the stench of millions of bodies living on top of bodies in a space barely big enough to contain them were the tantalising aromas of fish and chips, freshly baked sweet buns and steaming cups of soup sold by street vendors day and night all over the city. My mother was always a frightful snob who would sooner starve to death than be seen to frequent the same stalls as labourers and street walkers so I could only breathe in deeply the delicious scents and look on longingly as others feasted on the cheap and tasty fare without tasting a single morsel.

Hannah prides herself on being as unconventional as my mother was stuffy and set in her ways and she and Lucy's constant trips to theatres, music halls, parks and galleries are always accompanied by ice cream, popcorn and sugary ginger beer that they indulge in in the streets like naughty school girls. It frustrates me that the invisible thread that binds us together slackens whenever she leaves the grounds so I cannot experience any of these things vicariously through her but at least Hannah encourages her to eat constantly. I am also pleased to find that I have succeeded in stretching her stomach sufficiently that she still eats with enthusiasm at dinner even after a day of eating so many fattening treats.

At dinner William sits quietly scowling and chewing his steak, resenting Hannah with every bite he takes. Lucy looks at her sister adoringly as they chatter on nostalgically, sharing stories that William was never a part of and gossiping about people he has never met. Even if their conversation did concern him, he still struggles to catch the words of the Scots dialect that she unconsciously slips into when speaking to her sister, thick and warm as a child's comfort blanket. I can see how much he hates it that there are parts of her that he cannot catch like butterflies and keep pressed in some dusty tome in the library to be opened occasionally for his pleasure.

He tries to draw Lucy's attention away from her sister by beginning to tell an amusing anecdote about one of his incompetent workers but Hannah interrupts him.

"Well, father always did say that if you pay peanuts then you get monkeys. Tell me, how much do you pay your workers, William?"

"Enough," he says curtly.

"And what is enough? What is the precise figure in pounds, shilling and pence that is enough for a man to live decently and support his family?"

"If my men feel that they are being paid unfairly then they are welcome to try to find a better deal elsewhere," William says. "But I dare say I offer a better wage than the workhouse at any rate."

"We stand on the precipice of a new century but instead of looking forward with wonder and hope at what humanity might accomplish, I can feel only dread. There are so many wrongs going unchecked in our society that I fear the 20th century will be a dark night for the human heart. There are almost five million souls living in London today, many of them in conditions that bring shame upon us all."

"A dark night for the human heart? What melodramatic nonsense is this?" William scoffs. "You young ladies are far too taken in by Charles Dickens. The man is a terrible sentimentalist. If you must blame the wrongs of society on something then blame the gin houses that make beasts out of men, blame the opium dens that make men too dull and corrupted to function, blame the prostitutes spreading their foul moral and bodily contaminants. Do not blame decent men making a decent living."

"Decent men who pay their workers a pittance so they can barely buy the bread that we all must eat, spew forth their foul factory chimneys into the air that we all must breath and dump their waste in the Thames that we all must drink. This is not a story book, this is not some Dickensian nightmare. This is the world and we all must live in it."

"I was not aware that Scotland had become some socialist utopia since I married your sister," William says. "The last time I was in Glasgow the streets were teeming with emaciated men wandering the streets like mangy dogs looking for a place to die."

"It is true we have as many problems as London, maybe even more," Hannah agrees. "But we cannot wait for the world to be perfect or for wrongs to right themselves. We must be the ones to act."

Hannah is the kind of woman I found insufferable when I was alive. The so-called New Woman who spends a smug afternoon patronising fallen women or making a nuisance of herself handing out pamphlets about women's suffrage in Trafalgar Square and fancies herself to be Emmeline Pankhurt.

I admit that I am enjoying the way Hannah is making William squirm but I find myself growing impatient as Lucy is so distracted by their dispute that the succulent rib of beef is growing cold on her plate and my words cannot worm their way into her mind.

"Perhaps the dinner table is not the place for politics," Lucy says at last, her eyes darting between them uncertainly.

She eats in quick, nervous bites until her plate is empty and at last I can claim my prize, savouring the seared crust, the tender flesh and the meltingly soft fat of the steak.

William grits his teeth and forces civility through the rest of dinner but his mood blackens the minute the bedroom door closes and he is alone with Lucy. The atmosphere suddenly feels claustrophobic, his presence so oppressive that he seems to squeeze every last breath of air from the room.

"Your sister is quite possibly the worst kind of woman," he begins his tirade. "These shrews scold and chide us with their sharp tongues but they have never lived a single day in a man's world."

Lucy sits quietly on the edge of the bed, chewing her bottom lip. She is torn between her loyalty to her sister and her duty to her husband.

"It is an affront that cannot be borne for a man to be challenged at his own dinner table," he turns to her suddenly and grasps her hands. "I am so thankful that you barely resemble her at all. You are sugar and spice and all things nice, just as a wife should be. My little angel of the house."

In years to come we will be remembered as a generation of furtive perverts and hypocritical moralists. The Victorian body is in a state of syphilitic decay under its high collared shirt and stiffly starched trousers. And yet I never understood our obsession with one of our most base bodily functions that sustains a dark industry of street walkers, brothel whores, pornographers and peep show artists willing to cater to all manner of strange appetites so long as the price is right. When I was alive I longed for William's touch, for any sign that he desired me but the act itself was always a mild inconvenience at best and a discomfort at worst.

Many a night have I played the peeping tom at Lucy and William's bedside but I have never once felt even the faintest stirrings of lust. It is, after all, hardly the stuff of the bodice ripping romance novels that ladies keep hidden under their pillows. She lies still as a patient etherized on a surgeon's table and their love making is so quiet, punctuated only by his grunts of exertion and the creak of the bed, that sometimes I can even hear the murmuring of the servants downstairs or the rattle of carriages passing outside.