I am blessed to have passionate and opinionated readers, that's what an author truly wants. Thank you for the reviews. Thanks to Xeven for catching an inconsistency in the timeline, yes, I mistakenly had Gab say she was from 2006, when it should have been 2005 (oops).
Chapter 68 December 1877
Christmas passes in watercolor sheets of red, green and gray. Those around me make merry, drink, dance, exchange greetings and gifts. I turn on a counterfeit smile and turn off my memories of Christmas' past. Their joy is no longer appropriate or welcome.
Although I've been at Scalands cottage a mere month and one half, the days seem to double in length. By my recollections, I am around five months pregnant, having missed my first cycle in late August.
I'm eating as healthy as possible, nuts, grains for folic acid, squash, and stewed tomatoes for the beta-carotene and C. Not a beef lover, I still manage to choke down calves' liver for the protein. I feel good and I am, as the Victorian's say, increasing.
Barbara scrounged up a sewing machine so I can sew my own maternity clothes; (shops selling such goods are scarce in 1877!) that's okay because I don't require much.I rarely leave the cottage; mostly I hang around the cottage reading and writing, sewing and stewing about Erik
The S.O.B., I cannot crowd him from my brain no matter how much activity I throw into it for distraction.
Mornings are my worst challenge. I awake warm and toasty in my bed and imagine that the huge down pillow beside me is Erik. Just the three of us there beneath the mountain of cozy quilts, canoodling. Then reality pecks at my head like chickens in a barnyard full of choice corn and Erik becomes a mere pillow again.
Ah yes, dear Erik: He's become the ever-present dull ache in my heart. How I hate him for allowing me to latch onto him so—can't say he didn't warn me about his improprieties. I figured he referred to his Phantom past, not his romantic sensibilities. So kind and solicitous of my every wish, baring his soul and his face to me, lavishing gifts on me, loving me as I'd never before been loved.
And here, I think myself so wise and worldly. I must remember that I knew little about men in my future past life and nothing of those in my present one.
God help me—I miss Erik terribly, and I will always love him, a thought that has cost me the polar ice cap worth of frozen tears, but Love lives inside of me—my solitary remedy for despair.
I mold my arms around my girth, cup my hands beneath the swell, and cradle the child within. Warmth spreads through me from this center. In my hands, I detect movement. My eyes remain closed to the sobering light and I burrow deeper beneath the handmade quilts and coo to our child before drifting off once more into my warm, dark world of shadows and dreams. Nothing can harm us here, nestled deep within this 17th century woodland cottage. Nothing, as long as I stay within my cocoon.
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Geez Louise, stop banging on the door.
I crack my eyes at the clock beside the bed; 1:30 in the afternoon. The banging does not stop and I hear Bastion's voice from the other side of the door inquiring if Madame is presentable?
Presentable hell, I'm not even lucid.
The man will not go away so I holler back at him, asking what he wants.
"Madame Barbara is has come to call, will you be receiving guests today, Madame?"
"Merdé," I grumble. "Sure…I mean certainly Bastion, give me ten minutes and please serve her hot tea and scones if we have any," I say.
"Already served, Madame."
Dear Bastion, always the efficient butler.
I tumble from the bed and throw a bulky dressing gown over my ever-blooming frame, drag a brush through the nest growing from my head, splash my face and make a visit to the WC.
Eight minutes later, I'm padding down the hall in my slippers to make conversation with a new friend. I'd rather pluck my eyebrows than have to think or talk right now.
Barbara sits properly upright in the paisley chair everyone seems to fancy. She puts down her dainty teacup and rises to embrace me when I enter the parlour.
"Oh, did I wake you from your nap, Gabrielle? Beg my pardon if I have, dear."
Nap? Ha, if she only knew.
I plop into the deeply cushioned sofa and reach for a cup of tea. I remember friends back in Chicago going on and on about the great number of things their doctor's had discouraged them from imbibing in, coffee being one of those things that the jury wasn't out on yet. Well, by golly I allow myself few vices, one or two cups of tea in the morning were not going to stunt little Erik or Erika's growth.
She scrutinized me and an amusing smile cast itself across her lips.
"My, my dear, how you've increased—what are you now, six months along?"
"Five." No humor colors my reply."I see," she laughs. "Good for you! You are surely blessed with a healthy child, Gabrielle."
This time I smile at her. "I keep praying for such. Whatever brings your esteemed self out to Hastings, Barbara? I thought you and Eugene were vacationing in Indonesia?"
"We were, but my dear, dear sister is ill and I thought it best to return so she could have someone at her bedside beside servants and doctors you know. Her husband passed last year and she has no one else but me."
"Oh my, I do hope it's not serious?"
"I don't believe so, just a case of the fever. I looked in on her before departing for the train early this morning and her temperature had slipped down a bit, which is wonderful news."
I nod yes, for it is fevers which kill so many of this day and age. They don't quite have the antibody thing down yet.
"Has Bastion been seeing to your needs? Do tell me if he's been lacking and I shall have a word with the man. By the way, how are you faring, dearest?"
I laughed. "Your Bastion is droll but beyond efficient and I feel fine so far, just bored. No offense to your beautiful Scalands, but I'll bet that spring is her shining season."
"And how, winter here is barren, where spring is lush and full. And that is why I have come, to spirit you away for a bit of fun, if you're up for it that is."
Barbara smoothed her hand over the cuff of her brocade jacket and grinned at me.
"Oh good gravy, what have you planned?" I tossed down the tea in my cup and reached to pour a second one. Tiny cups meant I could have two servings.
"You know what a character of a man my Eugene is."
"So I've heard."
"Two nights past we, along with Mary Ann and George, were sitting around the fire chasing the chill with sherry and cognac when out of thin air Eugene plucked a brilliant idea. We should go to the opera. Mozart's splendid The Magic Flute is to appear at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden next weekend!" She smacked her hands together and smiled at me.
"Opera, you want me to join you at the opera? Let's see now, I'm pregnant and in exile because of one of opera's favorite sons? Oh yes, Barbara, it makes perfect sense to parade me in front of a highbrow theatre crowd. You either thrive on scandal or you wish to be rid of me."
"Pish tosh, I eat scandal for breakfast, Gabrielle."
"Indeed you do dear, but what if Erik attends? He already suspects that I am in London."
"You needn't worry, Gabrielle; just listen to this delicious plan Eugene has cooked up for you to attend the evening with us."
I tucked my feet beneath me and balanced the china cup on my knee. "Okay, I'm listening."
"Eugene had an Uncle Bernard—a short and stout fellow, he's passed on, God bless him, and many of his belongings are packed in the mothballs at his widow's home. She's been begging us to relieve her of them. Eugene can fetch some things and we'll puff you up with padding, where you don't already have some that is." She eyed my bulging belly with a knowing smile. "After which all you will require is a top hat, cane, beard and wig and voila! You will be a portly gentleman duping every one of those boorish socialites in attendance.
"Isn't that jolly?" Delighted with her clever plan, she plucked an apple scone from the assortment on the tea tray and popped a sizeable piece of the pastry in her mouth and began to chew with relish.
"You've gone daft, all of you," I said.
"Didn't you tell us of your Parisian romp as escort to the Roux's daughter, Caron? Such a rich anecdote—it worked once, it can work again."
"I don't know…."
"You cannot tell me that a woman of your energy and intellect is not bored to death holed up in the dreary and cold winter woodlands of Hastings. Please Gabrielle, won't you say yes? George, Eugene, Mary Ann and I will be with you, you know."
"All right, the answer is yes, Barbara, and may the good Lord help every one of us."
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And so, on December seventh, 1877 the five of us embarked on a joyously mad outing to the Opera at Covent Garden.
I felt as though I should be singing Putting on the Ritz as our small party strolled along the corridor to box three. This being the second time in a year that I'd undertaken a gender-bending charade, I began to wonder if I didn't have an unacknowledged penchant for cross-dressing.
I felt both ridiculous and giddy. Ensconced in box three of the Royal Opera House, decked to the nines as a man, I looked every bit the pompous opera aficionado of old. A sight to behold, wrapped in dress tails large enough to fit two men. Using my baby bump as a foundation, Mary Ann had stuffed in cotton batting as padding, added a mustache and beard, a top hat and the pièce de résistance, a black lacquered walking cane, adorned with a brass duck's head as a handle, the perfect accessory for a she-male so puffed up that she must waddle rather than walk.
While we sat in the cushy box chatting, George pointed out the more exalted members of the audience tucked around us. He informed me of who was wealthy by birth or by sweat, a virtue of which he approved.
"Look over there, dear, orchestra right. Isn't that Viscount Helmsmen?"
Barbara craned her neck to see across my protrusion.
"Indeed, that would be one of my most ardent nemeses," she said, unflappable mirth evident on her face.
"What's his problem?" I whispered.
"Women are his problem. As a member of the parliament, he campaigns tirelessly against a woman's right to vote."
"What in the hell for? Does he fear the entire sex may vote against his arrogant arse?" A keen student of women's studies, I had my suspicions.
"Allow me to quote the Viscount from the last time the question of a women's right to vote was brought before Parliament, 'The mental equilibrium of the female sex is not as stable as that of the male sex. The argument has strong scientific backing…'
"People really do believe that crap don't they--that biological differences such as physical strength also make a person mentally superior?" I still could not fathom that which I knew to be the truth.
"One would think that birthing and raising children would automatically exclude a woman from the ranks of inferiority," Mary Ann reasoned.
"Or a notch or two up the tree at the very least," added Eugene, his English laced with lilting French.
"His clever pontifications to Parliament on feminine pulchritude don't end there, either. The Viscount stated with considerable bluster the fundamental truths of life. Just listen to this..." Barbara continued to quote the Viscount.
'…truths on which all civilizations have been built up, that it is men who have made and controlled the State, and I cannot help thinking that any country which departs from that principle must be undertaking an experiment which will, in the end, prove to be exceedingly dangerous.'
"What a stinkin' pile of monkey dung!" I said, and then glanced around to see if the other opera goers surveying the crowd noticed the man with the feminine voice who spewed obscenities.
Observing the Viscount with my opera glasses, I saw a fat balding man sporting a severe mustache and beard beneath an oversized nose reddened by too much gin. He entertained another man in his box while ignoring the docile woman who sat a half a chair behind him.
"Egads, he's quite ugly, too. The only way that man could possible procure companionship is by title and money, and since most women need to survive, his station makes him a suitable catch."
My bon mot had them all laughing.
A fellow in full dress stepped from behind the curtain. By the way the crowd hushed without prompting, I assumed he must be of some importance, poised to welcome all to the opera's opening night or pass out lofty kudos to attending dignitaries. Instead, he informed us of a significant change in tonight's program.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I regret that our Madame Goddard was called away on personal business; the role of the Queen of the Night will hereby be played by a noble and talented soprano long missing from the world of opera, Her Grace, Comtess Daaé de Chagny.
In that moment, every hand in the opera house erupted into applause; the exception being those belonging to my friends, whose four sets of eyes were now trained on me. I simply stared at the stage before me with all the emotion of a zombie.
Would I never be free of this woman?
Mary Ann's long fingers curled around my arm. "Dearest, would you care to partake of a bit of fresh air?"
"Just get me out of this auditorium, now!"
What I wanted, I wasn't altogether sure; I just knew that I had to get out of there before that woman appeared on the stage.
Mary Ann whispered her intent to George, who wore a concerned frown. She clasped her opera cape about her neck and ushered me past the box's velvet curtain, through the lobby and out into the cool English evening.
Our breaths puffed around us in frosty clouds as we walked slowly down the steps of the Royal Opera house.
I shoved my hands into the pockets of my borrowed woolen cloak.
"Do you mind if we walk a little, Mary Ann? I'm feeling restless."
"'Course, dearest. I cannot count the times I have attended The Magic Flute, a novelty though it is, I fear I shant miss much. Regardless of how sublime the new soprano's voice is, I have absolutely no desire to bring my hands together in applause for the likes of her!"
"Thank you, Mary Ann. You are a dear and faithful friend," I smiled wearily. "Do you think there may be a chance that he's here?"
"He, as in Monsieur DuPuis, I assume? I could not say, but it is doubtful he would recognize you…monsieur." She shot me an amused glance.
I snorted. "One would imagine, but then you don't know Erik."
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The plot thickens…
Such funny and interesting reviews, I don't mind criticism as long as it's not a flame, which serves no real purpose. (The dee, dee, dee, Mencia reference was priceless; he's a most disturbed man). Giant props to Barb, Kay and Amy for pre-reading and doing the beta thing-I'd be horribly lost without you!
-Leesa