Chapter Nine

Mrs. Dickens remembers.

I remember disarray. Clothing strewn across my bed as I pretended to pack.

The doctors had diagnosed my back pain as sciatica, and I could barely dress myself. I wept softly, standing over the empty suitcase.

Walter, my Walter.

“Hurry!” Charles shouted from the hallways. “No more dawdling! I will not have it!”

He appeared in the doorway of our bedroom, face etched with impatience. He was dressed in a red silk vest, purple velvet frock coat and striped trousers. Small and wiry, he was, as always, impeccably – and foppishly – attired. He was freshly showered. Curls were damp, slightly uncoiled, and his unkempt beard betrayed wilder impulses.

“Push him from your thoughts!” he said curtly.

Beneath the scent of his lavender soap, a sour odor seeped into the room. Something feral, tinged with musk.

He was off again, to inspect rooms. “Mamie!” he shouted, “Put away those shoes! Katie, away with that coat! Why is the book shelf so lopsided? Fix it, someone! Fix it! ”

My younger sister, Georgina entered my bedroom. She looked crisp, well rested and unperturbed by the journey looming ahead.

There were uprisings in India, I said tearfully.

She was next to me, doing what I could not do for myself. My lively, animated sister who had lived with us since she was just fifteen years old.

Now, she knelt at my feet, gently helping me with my stockings and then my shoes. She looked at me, upturned face aglow with the knowledge that she was needed. It was a pretty face. At times, mocking. And never kind.

There were native rebellions throughout India, I told her, tears flowing again. Two hundred innocent British men, women and children slaughtered. “. . .what has he sent our darling boy into. . .?”

“You must stop carrying on like this,” she said. I listened for softness but did not detect it. “How much can one poor man be expected to handle?”

She stood up and folded my clothing into the suitcase, working swiftly. And then it was done. She handed me my bonnet.

“Mind yourself, Catherine, that you do not become one more burden in a household of burdens for him. . .”

Georgina had stepped in, all those years ago, to care for my children during my confinements. My parents were struggling with their finances, and I was sorely in need of extra hands, so they sent her to me in exchange for her room and board. Georgina entered our household when she was young enough to believe that the Dickens family was her calling. She was exuberantly ambitious, doing it all before we had to ask.

Virginal, her figure never pulled, stretched or burdened by childbirth, Georgina was unencumbered. She took direction well, and deferred to my authority: under my aegis, she tutored the children, organized the servants and helped me plan the meals. She took no interest in the miracles of my kitchen. Instead, she moved through life to match my husband’s unwavering sense of purpose. They took brisk walks together, conferred about the budget, gossiped and planned. Charles adored her for her loyalty and advice, and he paid her a handsome monthly allowance. My sister never outgrew her position, but she learned early on how to overstep her place. Eventually, my authority did not count for much.

Methodical, cold, impenetrable, my sister gradually became manager of all things mine.