Her sisters beamed, even as her mother’s scowl remained unchanged.
“And his conversation is the most inspiring and surprising of any I have ever heard. You just want to remember every word of it. He throws off ideas like a pinwheel, until your head spins.”
“I hope he didn’t turn your head too much,” her mother said. “The man has a reputation for doing just that with silly young girls.”
Rebecca knew that she was referring to the scandal with Amber Reeves, an idealistic young Fabian with whom Wells had reputedly had an out-of-wedlock child. But she bridled at the word “silly.”
“Nothing untoward occurred, I can assure you of that, Mother.”
“Where was his wife?”
“In the house, all night long. She was very kind and hospitable to me.”
“And he accompanied you back to the city?”
“He even paid the surcharge to make mine a first-class ticket.”
“No doubt so you could sit together.”
“There were others in the carriage. He behaved like a perfect gentleman.”
“But did you behave like a perfect lady, Cissie?”
It was her mother’s way of reminding her that she was Cicily in this house, and Rebecca only when she was swanning about in literary London, or getting herself into trouble at some street demonstration for the suffragette movement.
“And now I’m not sure why you were summoned there in the first place,” Mrs. Fairfield continued. “Was it really to do with your work?”
“First of all, I wasn’t summoned—I was invited—and yes, he had read my review of his novel and simply wanted to discuss it.”
“No doubt a gushing review.”
“Hardly, Mother. In fact, it was quite the opposite.”
“Oh, yes, I read it, too,” Lettie put in, to draw off some of the fire. “And when I showed it to several of the women at the clinic, and admitted that its author was my little sister, they marveled at her audacity, taking on the great H. G. Wells.”
“So long as this is the end of it,” Mrs. Fairfield declared. “I do not trust his motives.”
“Then perhaps you should trust mine,” Rebecca replied. “I’m not some flibbertigibbet schoolgirl.”
“Then be sure you don’t act like one.”
Rebecca was about to retort when Winnie, always the peacemaker, put a hand on her arm and gave her a look that said, Let it go. She was right; Rebecca knew there was nothing to be gained from bickering. Her mother would never understand her. When their father had abandoned them all years before—for a mythical employment opportunity in Sierra Leone—it had fallen to her mother to somehow keep the household together and to provide for her three daughters. She had managed, but just barely, and her only dream ever since had been for security—for a solid base, and rectitude, and conformity to all the social norms that might provide protection for a female household of limited means. Rebecca wanted none of it; she wanted to break free and live her life exactly as she saw fit.
“I’m going upstairs to change,” she said.
“I’ll come, too,” her sisters said in unison.
Rebecca knew that they wanted to hear more about her encounter with Wells. Their curiosity was only exceeded by that of her fellow writers and editors at the Freewoman, where Rebecca had perched on the edge of a desk, regaling them with details of the Wells household and, mindful of Wells’s admonition that their conversation remain off the record, an expurgated version of what had been said. When the editor in chief, Mrs. Marsden, had pressed her to write a piece about it, she had had to demur.
“Are you mad?” Marsden had said, pushing the glasses back up to the bridge of her very long nose. “A private interview with H. G. Wells and you don’t wish to exploit it?”
Rebecca knew it would be a great scoop and garner a lot of attention, but she felt already that this was one bridge she did not want to burn. Although Wells had entered her life unexpectedly, she was oddly confident that it would be some time before he exited it.
“What did you have for dinner there?” Winnie asked now, trailing her up the stairs.
“What was his library like?” Lettie asked, bringing up the rear.
They continued to pepper her with questions as she changed out of her workaday clothes and into something more comfortable, and she did her best to recall every detail, from the books on the shelves to the herb garden in the yard. But all the while she felt something strange stirring within her, a kind of power that up until now she had allowed to remain latent, something for which she had never found a suitable outlet, or worthy counterpart.
Now, she had. In Wells, she had more than met her match, and she was not about to wait another nineteen years for a similar opportunity to present itself.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Wells stopped in front of the dilapidated lodging house in Notting Hill and consulted the paper in his hand again. Could this be the right address? But there it was, just as the young copy boy at the Evening News, to which Arthur Machen was a regular contributor, had written it: 23 Clarendon Road. “He’s all the way at the top,” the boy had said. “You’ll smell his flat long before you get there.”
Wells hadn’t known exactly what he meant by that, but if this crumbling stoop and dirty brown brick facade were any indication, it did not bode well. The front door, though it had a lock, was propped open with a worn boot, and Wells started up the stairs with one hand on the rickety banister and the other holding the portfolio of material he’d received from the War Office. The only light came from small dirty windows on each landing, and the boy was right about the smell. Halfway up, Wells detected a strange and unpleasant aroma—a mixture of everything from incense to spoiled fish. At the top, the smell was much worse, and behind the scarred wooden door with a brass 8 hanging askew, he heard a low mumbling—chanting?—sound.
Perhaps this was not such a good idea after all; he could simply leave word for Machen at the newspaper office and arrange for a meeting in some more congenial spot, like his club, for another day. But then, Wells had never been a man to put off till tomorrow what could just as easily be done today.
He knocked on the door.
The noise from within abruptly stopped, and a voice called out, “Just leave it!”
Who did he take him for? “I’m afraid there’s nothing to leave.”
Footsteps approached the door, which opened a crack. “Who’s that?” Machen said, peering out onto the gloomy landing. “You’re not the copy boy. What do you want?”
“I wanted to talk to you, if I might. I’m sorry for the intrusion, but I was in London for the day, and—”
“Good Christ, is that you, Wells?”
“It is.” They had met once or twice, briefly, at literary events, and written, twenty years before, for a magazine called the Unicorn.
“What in God’s name are you doing here?”
“It’s not easy to explain through this crack in the door.”
“Oh,” Machen said, “yes, of course.” The door swung wider, but not to its full extent. “The cats,” Machen said, toeing one back with the tip of his shoe, “can’t let them get out.”