My Darling Love
Chapter 75 – The Other In Plain Sight
"For most people, a life lived alone, with passing strangers or passing lovers, is incoherent and ultimately unbearable. Someone must be there to know what we have done for those we love."
-Frank Pittman
"I know mother," Wendy answered her mother before she could continue with her own story. The truth was simply too difficult to explain, Wendy saw that, too, in her dream, and understood those circumstances of that particular night in the attic, so she conceded, "I mean I didn't know for sure, I just thought you had with Uncle Harry once. What did father do when he found out?"
As Wendy spoke of her awareness, as well as George's, Mary scrunched her face sending her head back on her neck, wincing at the thought as if in pain. Apparently George Darling was not informed of the intimate details shared with no one but those involved. "Tell me how your father knew, Wendy, please," Mary beseeched her eldest child.
That question left Wendy baffled, "I assumed you told him mother, didn't you?"
Mary was strong woman, always well composed, or at least she tried, so she pulled herself together and wiped the tears that escaped despite her best efforts to keep them restrained. Mary began shaking her head, and moved to stand. As she did she repeated, over and over again, "No, he didn't know, there was no way George could have … Please God … Tell me my darling love didn't know … Harry swore to me … Please God …" Instead of standing on her feet, Mary fell against the sofa and began crying out loud, shrieking for mercy, "PLEASE GOD FORGIVE ME … GEORGE I AM SO SORRY …"
Wendy fell to the floor as well, and wrapped her arms around her mother, trying desperately to console her. Mary clutched Wendy, sinking into herself and began to confess, "Harry felt sorry for me, I was in such a bad way with your father after our quarrel, and I was frightened out of my mind that the slightest infraction of your father's new rules would send me to an early grave. Your Uncle Harry did everything in his power to help your father and me to reconcile and forgive. I was living in terror of your father, Wendy. He would be angry about everything all the time, and your Uncle Harry was the only man alive in the world that could protect my children and give me comfort and the love I needed to go on in a day after day in that hell on earth."
"You were lovers then? It was more than just once?" Wendy asked, startled and well beyond aghast as the words left her lips too quickly to be stopped, and Mary nodded still crying. "But Uncle Harry was living here at the time, and you said you never left the house. Where did you go?"
"The nursery…" Mary said softly, looking about the room with tear-filled eyes. She lowered her head and shook it, utterly humiliated in her actions. All at once, she shifted her gaze to Wendy's and held her face in her hands. "You have to understand, Wendy, at the time I speak of, your father wasn't your father as you remember him. He WAS the devil … Lucifer in the flesh, in this house." Mary had begun her sentiment in her regular tone, lowering her voice as she mentioned Lucifer's name, looking about wildly as if the enemy angel were in the room listening.
Still whispering, Mary recounted, "Lucifer would go out and be gone without explanation. Not everyday, but often enough. Back to hell he went and left me alone only for a few stolen hours of peace. The children, Jane, Edmund and Joseph were at school. We couldn't go to the attic, for if the devil came home and found us there, he would know and he would tell George. Or worse, keep my George away from me forever. I couldn't have Harry in my bed, for again, the devil would know another man had been there on the sheets. Lucifer was afraid to go in the nursery, even when the children weren't home. Your Uncle Harry told him if he hurt my babies, he would send him back to hell himself, even if that meant he had to go with him personally. It was our sanctuary. It was where we went when Lucifer was out of the house. Harry would come home from the tavern at lunch and make love to me on the floor by the window …"
Wendy didn't know what to say, so she said nothing. She gazed at her mother, mouth agape, stunned speechless by her mother's confession.
"Your Uncle Harry told me he loved me. I told him if that were true, we could leave at that very moment, whenever we were together and run away. I got down on my knees and begged him to take me and the children and leave. I begged him to save my precious babies and me. None of us would ever be alone or unloved again."
"What did he say, Mother?" Wendy was shaken by the revelation, never hearing this intimate detail of her mother's heart before.
"He told me, he knew I loved your father. 'You could never leave him, Mary. Not after all that you've both endured to be together. You would never forgive yourself for conceding defeat so easily. You are the one who has to save him. I pray to God asking Him to send George back to you, and give you strength and courage and guidance to conquer the evils that have befell us all. Now you must pray for that, Mary, as well. Captain Hook is already praying...' We needed one more soul…" Mary looked deeply to Wendy, not only casting her eyes to her, but through her.
"The choosing of three, Wendy, it does work the same for good as it does for evil. Your pirate captain told Uncle Harry that. Apparently, your father, Grandpa Joe and I are not the only ones who held his sacred confidences. Because your Uncle Harry asked it of me, I prayed for the same things he did…Instead of asking God for someone to save me, I prayed He give me the ability to save myself…" Mary stopped for a moment, trying with all her might to gain control of her delicately poised emotions.
As Mary began speaking again, she choked through the statement, making it clear to Wendy that her mother's heart was breaking. "One night, your father just told me to lay with Harry. He wanted me to … He said 'service my brother,'" Mary sneered, "he dressed me up like a whore and sent me from our bedroom to the attic. If I knew it was to be the last time for us … but he wouldn't make love to me on your father's command. He wanted me to want him, to love him of my own affection. I knew … I knew, Wendy, it was to be the last time I would feel him in that way. Even after he turned me away, I went back to him … just one last time … because I did love him … I did love him of my own heart …"
"I'm sorry, Mother," Wendy muttered, still without much of a mind or voice.
After sitting on the floor together for some time with nothing to say, Wendy finally thought of something to quash the silence. More questions, more doors into her mother's heart, "How did it end, Mother?"
Mary was staring off into space. The tears had stopped, and now she looked drained and dismal. "Your Uncle Harry ended it, Wendy. On that night I was ready to concede defeat. I fell asleep next to Harold, wanting to get caught, only to find myself the next morning back in the same bed I'd shared with your father since we were wed. I raced down the stairs to find my George sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper. At least I thought it was my George. Your uncle told me your father was to be his old self once again and everything should be as it once was. But … I expected George to treat me like he did after his own affair, begging me for my forgiveness down on his hands and knees. I wanted him to not only hand me an olive branch of peace, Wendy, I wanted to whole tree uprooted from the ground to prove his turnabout in unfair play!"
God in heaven was watching and giggled, nudging George's shoulder, accidentally knocking him from his cloud. "Sorry, George, but I did tell you the whole olive tree would have been the best route!"
"He did nothing but allow the tiniest changes to his rules, which confused me all the more. I went to Harry for that peace, for that comfort … for his love that he always gave to me endlessly … He said he couldn't lay with his brother's wife, the mother of his brother's children. But he had, Wendy, many times and I told him so! He just shook his head to me and said he could betray the devil but not his baby brother. I was quite insistent with him, pleading with him, begging him. I told him, 'however will I go on without you?' He only frowned and told me, 'you will go on with George, because, Mary, that is who you belong with.' But I still cried I could not go on. He grew nasty and shouted at me as he shook me, 'YOU CAN AND YOU WILL MARY, FOR GEORGE IS WHOM YOUR HEART BEATS FOR, NOT ME! NOT NOW!' He promised to be there for me in all other matters, but as lovers we could no longer be." Mary explained, "I still needed him, and without him, Wendy, I needed another …"
"Captain Hook, Mother?" Wendy asked.
Once again Mary nodded. "But I don't want to talk about him, Wendy." She touched her daughter's face and ran her fingers through Wendy's long locks of brunette. "All that I ask, dearest Wendy, is that you not punish your Uncle Harry for my sins. I was the wicked one. It was I that seduced him those afternoons in the nursery... And please, Wendy...there is something else you must do for me…"
"Anything Mother, anything." Wendy interrupted, taking her mother's hand in hers, clutching it closest to her heart.
"Please remember your Grandpa Joe. What I mean is, when you think of him, when you visit him in your heart, do not let my own experiences with my father, Mr. Baker, spoil his memory. God forgive my loose tongue where he is concerned. Grandpa Joe loved you children, and your father and I, so much Wendy, he did change. It really was as if two different people shared the same body. With Grandpa Joe, there were times when I forgot myself; there was ever a Mr. Baker before him. Without your Grandfather, dearest Wendy, well, our family never would have come this far together…May God Bless his soul and grant him peace, may the perpetual light always shine upon him…He deserves…" Mary could go no further, for Wendy snatched a kiss from her mother's lips to silence her.
"I know, Mother. I don't know the man you spoke of, Mr. Baker, so how could I ever get him and Grandpa Joe confused. I know in my heart, my Grandpa Joe could never be capable of doing those horrible things. Grandpa Joe is in heaven with Grandma Elizabeth and Mr. Baker is in hell."
Mary rose from the floor and straightened her dress. She leaned down and placed a perfect kiss on the forehead of her daughter. "I'm going to see Harry. I don't want him to be alone on Christmas," she said, as she left Wendy alone in her room with nothing but her lies and pieces of her mother's heart left exposed with George's letter in James' penmanship still unread and folded on the sofa behind her. Wendy got up quickly and ran from the room, meeting her mother as she stepped outside onto the front stoop. "Mother, do not fret over father. He died not knowing about your affair, that should make you feel better to save him that pain."
Mary glanced at Wendy and then to the street. "He might not have known then, but he knows now." Mary looked up to the cloudy sky as it began to lightly snow. George up above in the heavens wept. "Read your father's letter, Wendy," Mary repeated and was off in the freshly fallen snow.
Wendy was afraid to gaze upon her father's last words to her mother. James had told her, he wrote it out for her father the night before George died. She did everything within her power to stay busy and away from her mother's room. As dinner was all but hot on the table, and she had run out of chores to do, she slowly ascended the stairs to the old nursery and peeked in. The room was dark and there was not even the moonlight shining in to guide her way to the sofa. Flipping on the switch would have easily aided her, but she felt it best to see George's letter under candlelight, so she lit a match and gave the candle that rested on her mother's side table its flame.
Before she began the letter, she listened to her husband, James, downstairs with her three precious babies playing in the parlor. They were giggling in hysterics, rolling about on the floor and having a jolly good time together on this most blessed holiday, completely unaware of all the dark shadows that had crept into the house to be relived one last time before taking their final repose. Wendy inhaled deeply, and she held that breath as her eyes read the first lines,
Dearest Mary,
I love you.
Now you must remember, death has parted us, but only for a short time.
Remember your promises to me, as I expect you to keep them.
Be happy Mary. Enjoy our children and our children's children and our children's children's children. Help our family make a new home and a better life for their own families. Guide them when they need it. Push them forward when they get stuck. Listen when they talk, and talk when they want to listen.
Love. Love the family we made together and everyone else that comes and goes from your life.
Go on. Live on. Make me proud of you.
Mary Elizabeth, move from our room as the memories in it will stop you from starting anew.
Remember me, pray for me, and love me from a far but do not flounder in grief.
Take each day as it is given and be thankful that you are alive enough to experience it. As you grow older, continue to grow, change, move onward towards your own future away from me and blossom into the rose that you have always been.
I never want you to be alone, dearest Mary, not after all our years together. If you truly cherished being my wife, marry another. Anyone please, but not Biggins Fisher. I think my brother Harold would be a fine match, he has always loved you, Mary, and I know and accept that you feel strongly for him. He claims to be unworthy of marriage and all the pleasures that come from being a husband and father, but I know in my heart he is very deserving of the honor and rewards he has earned in his own life.
Remember, my beloved, there is magic, there are miracles, there is a God and there is a heaven. All you will ever have to do to see them is open your eyes.
Trust what feels sacred and blessed in your heart, Mary, always, for it was my love that put it there.
Thank you for loving me on Earth as well as in heaven.
I promise I will see you again soon.
Your adoring husband and darling love,
George
Wendy cried. If she could, she would have cried for days. She walked down the stairs of her home and to the front door, holding her father's letter in her hands. She looked out and saw her Uncle Harry's car arrive with both him and her mother sitting inside. James stepped up behind his wife, "I've set the table," he whispered, "dinner's ready," pecking her cheek. Before turning his attention to the children, who awaited him already in the dining room, he asked kindly of his wife, "please be somewhat civil to your Uncle Harry tonight. At least for your mother."
"James, read this." Wendy handed him George's letter without looking at him, keeping her eyes toward Harry, who had gotten out and walked around to open the car door for her mother.
Harry was speaking. "You can't really blame her for not liking me, Mary, after all, she thinks I am trying to replace her father, and I'm sure after hearing about our affair, I am too fare no better in her eyes, even if we had good reason at the time … Did she say anything to you after she read my letter? I mean specifically, about me and my past?" Harry asked, helping Mary by the hand out of his car.
"No, Harold. She only asked after the child."
"What child, Mary, I mean which one?"
Mary had stepped out of the car and now stood in front of her almost intended. "The boy that died in your care by his mother's hand," Mary answered, giving it little thought. He offered his arm without a word while Mary thought on. She stopped by the front steps and turned him to face him. "Harold, why would she ask me about the baby you lost?"
"I don't know, Mary, I just thought maybe she would …" He made the same unsure, uncomfortable expression George did when trying to lie, truth always being their better faces. He too was thinking quickly, "She thinks ill of me for taking to bed with loose women, you know that." He nodded his head all about on his shoulders, another trait George had when hiding behind his words, sending up another red flag in Mary's eyes.
"Why would she care that you put a woman of questionable virtue and profession in the wrong way when you were drunk, Harold? What would that have to do with her? With Wendy's reputation, she is not one to think ill of anyone in that way, no matter how pure she claims to be now."
"Well, I just …" Before Harry could back himself further into a corner with anther lie, Mary interceded on his behalf, "And if it was the women of loose means you are worried about, why question specifically if she took notice about the child that was lost? Unless you are worried that she feels knocking up a prostitute when drunk is the lowest of the low."
"You know I don't like to lie to you, Mary, but…" Harold held his tongue and his eyes to Mary, who glanced up to the house keeping her eyes from him. "Mary," he spoke softly to gain her attention. That didn't work, so he touched her face with his hand.
She turned to him, unhappy to think him withholding honesty, and he offered the truth, as he truly knew it.
"A very long time ago, Wendy came to me in almost the same way. She had lain down for a man she said was drunk and she was certain he had left her with his baby. Oh, Mary, she was so scared. She wasn't with child, mind you, but I still gave her a stern talking to and was really harsh with my words, although I did try to be understanding of her situation. The time passed, and my diagnosis proved correct, but still she worried that perhaps she'd lost the baby. I talked with her again, and told her rather crudely that if she wanted to be whore, than she should do as they do and not lay down for drunkards who always seem to put women in that way, being careless. I think reading that about me, and remembering how mean I was at the time, it may make her hate me all the more. I'm sure she thinks me a hypocrite for lecturing her on how foolish she was, all the while knowing I was once that very drunken fool myself." He teetered on his feet and lowered his head.
"Oh Harold, I'm sure Wendy understands better now, knowing you spoke from your own experience. Although, you probably should have told her that then as opposed to her reading it in your letter now."
She gave him a kiss on the cheek and retook his arm, playfully yanking him forward up the walk to the house, but he stopped her. "Mary," Harry said, "Do you think me the lowest of the low for what I did?"
Mary exhaled deeply, "If you abandoned that woman, knowing she was with your child, I would think you that low. But you wanted to do your best, maybe not for her, as the situation was not a desirable one, but for your child. Thus, even though the predicament you found yourself in was dishonorable, you were still honorable in your actions. I'm sorry you will never have children of your own, Harry." Mary touched his cheek and moved into his embrace. "Did you ever want them? I mean, Harry, I'm sure when you were younger, you must have…" she asked, raising her face to his.
Harry put his hands on her cheeks, catching the tear that fled her eyes, "To be quite honest, Mary, I never thought about it. I always wanted to be loved by a woman first. I wanted a woman to love me, me for who I was, not just for a good time. You can't even begin to imagine how many young proper ladies of polite society chased after me hoping to hold my arm for a fancy party, a night out on the town and a turn in my bed. And you can also never even begin to imagine how many times I've heard, 'oh no Harry, I just wanted a little fun with you, nothing more. I heard from one of my friends how marvelous you are in the sack, and I must say, she did not lie. My mother doesn't even know I was seeing you tonight…I am to be engaged in the spring to a,' you fill in the proper, reputable profession of honor and wealth, Mary, 'and I would like to keep it that way. You and I are only for tonight, dearest Harry. My parents would never approve of a gentleman with your reputation!" Harry whined, doing his best impression of a princess of polite society, who was truly just an easy lay hidden behind her pretty dress and proper etiquette.
"My lovely reputation as a drunk who ruined the virtue of countless innocent girls in my youth, and a drunk, degenerate, disgraced doctor who killed children as I grew older. No wonder I never got married! I'll tell you this much, Mary, if I had a penny for every flirtatious wink I received from the wife of a gentleman as I shook hands with her husband at the tavern, I'd be twice as rich!" Harry took a moment to control his temper that had flared at the thought, and continued on in a more mild tone and peaceful manner, "I wanted to be loved by a woman, just one woman, whom I could care for and adore the same. If children came from that love, well of course I would want them … but, never knowing that love, I never longed for what came after." Harry completed his thought out loud, still holding Mary in his embrace.
"I love you, Harry, just the way you have always wanted, but I can't give you children. Unfortunately, that time for me is long gone. But I would have, Harry, I would have had your children. "
"I know, Mary, and I love you, too. And you never have to worry about giving me children. George has already entrusted me with his children and grandchildren. And I have and will always love them like my own." He kissed her forehead, "Please don't tell Wendy I told you about her, Mary, I gave her my word."
Together, they strolled arm in arm up to the house, directly into Wendy's awaiting embrace. "Merry Christmas, Uncle Harry," Wendy told him warmly, hugging him tightly with tears welling up in her beautiful eyes, the same hue as George's.
"Merry Christmas, Wendy, thank you for inviting me to dinner," he replied still wary of her feelings towards him.
Mary smiled to her daughter, who returned the expression over her uncle's shoulder. "You are family, Uncle Harry, you are always welcome in this home!" Wendy exclaimed, leading him by the arm into the house, "And I think you frightfully silly for not arriving early in the day to see the children open their gifts, especially those they received from you! They have been asking for you all day!"
Christmas dinner was on the table, so once coats and hats were hung by the door, everyone gathered around in their assigned seats and dinner was served. It was glorious, everyone present delighting in their conversations, although no one brought up the offer of engagement. Wendy spoke quietly back and forth at times with James who had read George's letter and replied, "Your father had a fine pen for someone who was blind Wendy …"
After dinner came dessert, and after dessert came presents in the parlor for Uncle Harry from the grandchildren. Jane already called him "Grandpa," or something like it in her baby voice. But her constant repetition of it left Harry no other choice, at least not in his eyes, than to correct her. "No dearest heart, call me--" he started.
"Grandpa Harry," Wendy finished. "Can you say Harry, Jane?" Jane stood up from the floor where she sat, and danced over to her mother. Wendy repeated, "H-A-R-R-Y, now you try." Jane tried and tried and tried, and just like the "Grandpa" it took her forever to say she mastered the "Harry" on the end of it, after several tries. Jane finally got it and began jumping about and cheering for herself that she was able to speak more words that the grownups around her could understand.
"Grandpa Harry and Grandma Mary," Jane proudly presented to those the title belonged to sitting next to each other on the sofa holding hands. "Kissy." The little girl commanded to her grandparents. They didn't, and only kept their faces toward Jane who now pounced shouting excitedly, "Kissy, kissy, kissy, kissy!" over and over again.
Mary and Harry gazed at one another, and then to Wendy, who winked, with, "Well, Mother and Grandpa Harry, your granddaughter is asking for a kiss." Grandpa Harry leaned in to his almost intended and sealed their deal.
The second their lips parted, Wendy spoke up, helping her mother forward to another "anew" with, "I was thinking a spring wedding for the both of you. Best to get you two lovebirds married before there is gossip with the neighbors …"
John and his family stopped by later in the day and congratulated his mother and uncle on their fine match. "Oh course, Mother, I will be paying for the entire wedding," John frankly informed Mary, who was pleasantly surprised by his offer. Harry declined, but John carried on with, "No, I won't hear of it. I do not have any daughters of my own to walk down the aisle, only sons who will walk themselves. Therefore, I should be allowed the honor at least once. And you know the saying; 'the son of the mother who is the bride pays.' "