Read by Harrie Dobby
To the red lady on the St James omnibus –
I sing of men, and of the love
That slipped from my fingers
Velvety pure, ever unsure
I still have your glove.
Please reply as to return address via this column.
- The man with the hat
It is a pointless endeavour for a writer to hide her guilty pleasures from her reader, so instead I shall boldly confess my greatest sin here – I adore the agony columns. Those personal messages which sit on the second page of every great paper in the city of London, where people write tiny love letters, advertisements for missing relatives, requests for money and other cries from the heart – the great majority written in some kind of cipher that is only intelligible to the single soul in the world to whom it is addressed … or to a good detective.
Today was a red lady and a man with a hat. Nothing interesting, but ‘velvety pure’ echoes through my mind as I carry on the typical day of a young lady, practising the pianoforte, replying to correspondence, and getting measured for that cumbersome wedding dress. There is nothing interesting, nothing interesting – until the next day.
To the man with the hat –
You cannot sing of that which you do not know. Keep the glove, as a memento.
K
Who is K? Why can she not give the gentleman her address? Is she married? Living in seclusion? Merely happy to part with a meaningless article of clothing? And yet she encourages him – a memento indeed!
I sit at breakfast, quite wrapped up in my little theories and ignoring the world around me, but the world will not ignore me.
“Clara,” my father says. “Should you see Mr Princeton today?”
“You have not seen him in several days,” mother says. “He will think you are having second thoughts.”
‘My dearest heart’ starts another agony column. Oh, to be called that! I forget my family in the columns.
K –
You have lain down the glove, you wish to duel I believe? And yet I am already stabbed in the heart. Perhaps I shall sing like the swan – a beautiful note before instant death. Or perhaps you shall be kind and stay your blade? Meet me, my red lady.
Man with the hat
Mr Princeton and I walk the cold narrow paths of Russell Square, my mother accompanying us, and he presses my gloved hand, full to the brim with chatter about our life, his life, our future children’s lives, and I look down at my shabby glove and wonder – did K have such a glove? Or was it velvet – ‘velvety pure’? Was it red, like her? What of her was red? Her dress? Her lips? Does she have autumnal red hair? Did it peek out in stray strands from under her hat as she stood on the omnibus, the glove falling unnoticed from her lap? Did the gentleman recover the glove or did he steal it, in the hopes of seeing that singular shade of hair just once more?
Mr Princeton says, “Only a week until our wedding, my love.” He does not have red hair, it is muddy brown, like the puddles we avoid, like my shabby glove in his bone-white grasp. I do not like it.
To the man with the hat –
If it is a duel, I concede to you. Keep your memory of me as your prize. Death is too expensive to waste on a soul such as I. It is cheaper to forget.
K
Oh, K! She begs him to forget her but continues to respond, and in such a fashion! I spiral through our rooms, the paper in front of my nose, as Mother and my sisters gossip about the spring flowers that will adorn my newly-married head. ‘It is cheaper to forget’ I think, all day.
K –
Your glove in my hands, yet you grip my heart. Forgetting is impossible, and comes only through death. It is double the cost. Surely it would be cheaper for all concerned if I were simply allowed to look upon your face a single, last time?
E
E! He has an initial! What does it stand for? Edward? Eric?
“I really think the light blue ribbon is too much,” my mother says in the milliner’s, as I twirl in my wedding dress obediently, thinking only of names that start with ‘E’. “I wonder what colour Mr Princeton likes, Clara, do you know? Clara?”
Edwin? Edgar? Edmund?
“It was strange,” muses my mother. “How you met Mr Princeton. Most unconventional. But I suppose it worked out in the end.”
Elliott? Elijah? Ernest?
“Clara?” says my mother. “Clara?”
E –
The cost to look upon me is unaffordable, but, it seems, unavoidable. Russell Square at 12.
K
Impossible! Russell Square! My Russell Square! I pace the ground like that mangy lion we saw in London Zoo, where Mr Princeton roared with laughter and tried to poke it through the bars with a dry stick. I pace and pace, and suddenly it is half past eleven and I must run if I am to see the red woman and the mysterious E. And so I dash out of the house, quite hatless, quite mad.
It is wet in the square, and I sit restlessly on a bench and watch the proceedings. In a short while I see him – or at least a man in a top hat. He is handsome, because of course he had to be, I could not have my protagonists be otherwise. It may not be him, but it may be – he has the same restlessness as myself and he waits, he hovers, he bites at his nails.
He waits and I wait, both anticipating that flash of red approaching through the sodden trees, from dress or lips or hair.
But of course, it never comes. And we waited so long.
K –
To break my heart must be easy, for you did it yesterday with nary a word passing from your lips. I would pay – I have paid – thrice over for that single look, and yet was still denied. Will I be denied the entrance to Heaven as well? Your glove remains within my grasp, for all I long to throw it into the fire.
E
“Do you remember,” Mr Princeton says, over a blue and white china teacup, “How we met?”
I do remember. I remember that I had liked his brown eyes then, considered them dark and enigmatic. But very soon he was no longer a mystery.
“You answered my agony column so sweetly,” says Mr Princeton. “It meant so much after the heartbreak I had just suffered.”
The tea in my cup is brown and muddy, muddy as his hair, as his eyes.
“Is there something wrong, my dove?” Mr Princeton asks. “You seem quiet.”
So I open my mouth and speak. The china clinks loudly in the room after I have spoken; it is the only thing that breaks a silence so complete.
E –
Contact me no more. You know not what you ask. It would cost us both everything. The glove must go to the fire.
K
“But why, Clara?” my mother says through tears. “Mr Princeton was a perfect match.”
Behind her, my sisters rip up the discarded wedding bouquets and throw blossoms over one another, laughing. That is all they are good for now.
I know it is time. In the afternoon I go to the paper and write my own notice. They do not question me there, they know me of old.
E –
I am no K. I am cheaper to look upon. I may not open the gates to Heaven. My hand could not fit that glove you hold so tightly. But I shall be in Russell Square at 12.
C
I am in Russell Square at 12. I wear a dress of red, although perhaps it was her hair that was red, or her soft lips, and I am in error. But I wear it regardless, and wait for my man in the hat. If he does not come, I shall return once more to the agony columns. If he does, perhaps I shall return to them anyway. I do love a good mystery.
And then he appears through the trees, the handsome man, the unknowable E with the hat on his head, and our eyes meet. And after a moment, he smiles.
A glove – velvet and red, just as I predicted – falls from his grasp and into a muddy brown puddle. And that is where it stays.
(c) Jennifer Rickard, 2021
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