Mrs. Engels. Gavin McCrea

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      Published by Catapult

      catapult.co

      Copyright © 2015 by Gavin McCrea

      All rights reserved

      First published in Australia and the UK by Scribe Publications

      ISBN: 978-1-936787-29-6

      Catapult titles are distributed to the trade by

      Publishers Group West, a division of the Perseus Book Group

      Phone: [phone]

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2015933696

      Designed by Strick&Williams

      Printed in Canada

      9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      To Iñaki

      September

      I. Fair Warning

      No one understands men better than the women they don’t marry, and my own opinion—beknown only to God—is that the difference between one man and another doesn’t amount to much. It’s no matter what line he’s in or which ideas he follows, whether he is sweet-tempered or ready-witted, a dab at one business or the next, for there isn’t so much in any of that, and you won’t find a man that hasn’t something against him. What matters over and above the contents of his character—what makes the difference between sad and happy straits for she who must put her life into his keeping—is the mint that jingles in his pockets. In the final reckoning, the good and the bad come to an even naught and the only thing left to recommend him is his money.

      Young lasses yet afflicted with strong feeling and seeking a likely subject for a tender passion will say that money has no place in their thoughts. They make exceptions of themselves and pass on good matches, for they believe that you must feel a thing, and that this thing can be pure only if it’s a poor figure it’s felt for. To such lasses I says: Take warning. This is a changing world, we don’t know today what’ll happen tomorrow, and the man you go with will decide where you’re put, whether it’s on the top or on the bottom or where. The fine feelings love will bring won’t match the volume of problems a pauper will create. Odds are, the handsome fella you go spooney on will turn out to be a bad bargain, white-livered and empty of morals; the gospel-grinder is sure to have his own blameworthy past and will drag you to the dogs; the flash charmer will come to act the tightwad, insisting you live on naught a year; the clever wit will loiter away his hours believing others must provide his income, and the happiness you anticipated will never turn into happiness enjoyed; there’ll always be something wanting.

      Better—the only honest way—is to put away your hopes of private feeling and search out the company of a man with means, a man who knows the value of brass and is easy enough with it. Make your worth felt to him, woo his protection as he woos your affections, in the good way of business, and the reward will be comfort and ease, and there’s naught low or small in that. Is it of any consequence that he isn’t a looker, or a rare mind, or a fancy poet, as long as he’s his own man and is improving you?

      This must be calculated on.

      Love is a bygone idea; centuries worn. There’s things we can go without, and love is among them, bread and a warm hearth are not. Is it any wonder there’s heaps of ladies, real ladies, biding to marry the first decent man who offers them five hundred a year? Aye, young flowers, don’t be being left behind on the used-up shelf. If you must yearn for things, let those things be feelings, and let your yearning be done in a first-class carriage like this one rather than in one of those reeking compartments down back, where you’ll be on your feet all day and exposed to winds and forever stunned by the difficulty of your life. Establish yourself in a decent situation and put away what you can, that, please God, one day you may need no man’s help. Take it and be content, then you’ll journey well.

      II. On the Threshold

      And there’s no doubting this carriage is high class. The wood and the brass and the velvet and the trimmings: I see it in bright perspective, and though we’ve been sat here since early morning, my mind has been so far away, up in the clouds gathering wool, it’s like I’m noticing it now for the first time: a sudden letting in of daylight. I reach out to stroke the plush of the drapes. Tickle the fringe of the lace doilies. Rub the polished rail. I twist my boot into the thick meat of the carpet. I crane my neck to look at the other passengers, so hushed and nice-minded and well got up. None of this is imagination. It is real. It has passed into my hands and I can put a price on it all.

      Across the table, on the sofa he shares with his books and papers, Frederick cuts his usual figure: face and fingernails scrubbed to a shine, hair parted in a manly fashion, an upright pose, feet planted and knees wide, snake pushed down one leg of his breeches; a right gorger. He fidgets round and tries to throw off my gander.

      “All fine with you, Lizzie?” he says.

      “Oh, grand,” I says, though I’m slow to take my eyes away. I can’t see the crime in it, a lady taking a moment to admire.

      “Lizzie, bitte,” he says, rustling his newspaper, and slapping it out, and lifting it up to hide himself, “I’m trying to read.”

      I click my tongue off the roof of my mouth—for him, naught in the world has worth unless it’s written down—and turn to look out the window. Outside, the country is speeding by, wind and steam, yet not fast enough for my liking. The farther we get away, and the farther again, the better.

      I forbade anyone from coming to the station to see us off, for I didn’t want any scenes, but of course Lydia, the rag-arse, disobeyed me.

      “Don’t let it change you,” she said, gripping my hand and casting anxious glances up at the train as if it were a beast about to swallow me. “Find a friend as’ll listen to you and don’t be on your own. It’s no fine thing to be alone.”

      We embraced and she cried. I squeezed her arm and fixed the hair under her bonnet and told her she was a good friend, the best.

      “Find your people, Lizzie,” she said then through her tears. “I’m told St. Giles is where they be. St. Giles, do you hear?”

      I sat backways in the carriage so I could leave the place looking at it. To go from a familiar thing, however rough-cut, is a matter for nerves, and I suppose that’s why so many people don’t move. Manchester: leastwise they know the run of it.

      At Euston, Frederick stands on the platform, waist-deep in smoke and soot, and takes it all in: heaves it up his nose and sucks it through his teeth and swallows it down as if all these years in Manchester have weakened his bellows and London is the only cure. Around him, around us, a mampus of folk, mixed as to their kind. Men and men and men and men, and here more men hung off by ladies dressed to death and ladies in near dishabbilly and ladies in everything between. By the pillar, an officer in boots. Over there under the hoarding, a line of shoe-blacks. A pair of news vendors. An Italian grinding tunes from a barrel organ. And passing by now—charging through with sticks and big airs—a tribe of moneymen in toppers