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Agnes van Rhijn. Of all people, George has to find out that Bertha is increasing from Agnes fucking van Rhijn.
That Bertha, his wife, is with child. His child.
He's drunk, as he seems to be most times, these days, the laudanum lending a little edge to his wine and port that he can't quite seem to shake. He's not meant to be toppling out of a cab onto 61st Street at nine in the morning. He'd meant to be going back to the Union where he's been playing at keeping house for the better part of the last five months.
He's blinking up at his palatial mansion confusedly. It's too late to call the hansom cab driver back - he's already driven off into the dusty morning sunlight. He should hail another one, else just walk into his own house and ask Church to summon his own carriage. But the house looms over him, an impenetrable fortress. Even now, Bertha is probably sitting at her desk, attending to her coffee and correspondence. Even if he snuck into the gate, even if he were as quiet as a church mouse, somehow she’d know. She always knows.
He can’t say the same thing for himself.
As if in answer to his blurry contemplation, the doors to the house fling violently open. George jumps back - stumbles, rather - in a futile attempt to hide. But it’s not Bertha storming out, nor is it Church preceding her. It’s Agnes Van Rhijn, face twisted in fury. She sees him at once and George can pinpoint the moment she decides to make him collateral damage of whatever tiff she’s having with his wife.
“I suppose it’s too much to expect that the master of the house keep civilised hours,” she snarls when her path intersects with his. “And this is the kind of family my niece will marry into! Still, it is not too late for her to reconsider.”
The engagement between Marian and Larry must be back on again, George supposes. It’s possible Larry might have said something. He finds it all too difficult to keep up these days.
“I wish them very happy,” he says with a bow that is all sarcasm and none of it politeness. Far be it from George to lose his sense of absurdity despite his current circumstances.
“She certainly does.” The death glare Agnes sends over her shoulder leaves George with no uncertainty to whom she is referring. That is a little of a surprise. The last he’d heard, Bertha had been entirely opposed to their engagement. Or had it been that she’d merely been taken aback? Certainly she’d spoken of Marian with much warmth in the days when he’d been convalescing. Not that he’d paid her too much mind. Back then, he’d already been planning alternate routes and branching tracks - ones that would take him as far out of Bertha’s influence as possible.
“I suppose they fancy themselves in love,” he muses. Ostensibly he is speaking of Larry and Marian, but his mind is entirely on Bertha, that night they’d met. She’d worn a blue gown. Or had it been green? He'd kissed her under a tree but the details seem to blur with his rising heart rate. He really ought to get back to the Union. He might have imbibed a little too much last night - as loath as he is to admit it. Imbibed too much and self-medicated too little. The world seems to tilt on its axis.
“Love!” Agnes snorts. “Much good that has done any of us. Much good that has done Mrs Russell.”
The rumours of his desertion are more fact than gossip these days, coded as they are in blind items. They don’t get everything right - George certainly hasn’t had time to seek out women of ill-repute, nor has he inclination for a mistress. It had always been Bertha or no one. And if he can no longer stand the person he is with Bertha, then, well, it would have to be no one.
But if George has seen the gossip columns, and Agnes van Rhijn has seen them, then Bertha has indubitably seen them too. It still twists a hole in his stomach to think of her hurt, to think of her doubting him, faithless as he’d proven to be. That can’t be helped though. He can’t explain. The temptation to be drawn back into her gravity is still too great, even though he understands the rot between them. Even though he’s tried to dull it with work and spirits and the sweet oblivion of laudanum. Too tempting to lay his head on her shoulder and unburden himself. To have her absolve him - them - of his sins.
His placid silence seems to infuriate Agnes more than any pithy retort. “I don't pity your wife much, Agnes seethes. “But I do pity her having to tolerate your pawing.”
George’s anger at any slight to Bertha appears to be too well-ingrained a reflex for him to have rid himself of it that easily. “I beg your pardon.” He draws himself up to his full height, an effect marred only by his slight swaying.
“Please,” Agnes sneers. Her anger no longer seems to have a focused target. In his inebriated gaze, George sees her for what she truly is: a woman railing at a world she cannot change. He is recalled, once again, to his wife. “Enceinte, at her age? I suppose you took yourself off to your club when she no longer had any use to you. How exactly like a man.”
The world lurches suddenly. George feels a chill come over him and then a dreadful rush of heat. How loudly his heart is pounding in his chest. How the blood is swimming in his ears.
“What the devil?” he curses, but Agnes has long departed in a flounce of her bustle, back straight against the world.
***
As luck would have it, Bertha is still in the entrance hall when he crashes through the doors. She's just finished doing battle, he can tell from the set of her shoulders. She will have no respite from him.
At his ignominious entrance, she half-turns towards him and freezes, lips parted in a little moue of surprise. She looks like she's seen a ghost and perhaps she has. George barely feels substantial these days.
"You're with child?”
Familiar as he is with her body, he can tell without her answer that Agnes had spoken true. Even concealed under a well-placed skirt, her face has filled out slightly, though she is paler than he remembers. She’d always struggled with nausea in the early days of carrying Larry and Gladys, and the two unnamed children in between. Bile rises in his throat to recall it. She’d been so sick. Forty-two is surely too dangerous to be with child. He has no concept how she is now.
“George.” Her voice is familiar in its richness, but strangely even. The warmth is missing. He watches her set her shoulders again as she turns fully to face him.
He’s not prepared to see her, he realises in a rush. He’s not prepared for her to be beautiful, while he is disheveled. He is not prepared for her composure, while he is bursting out of his skin, heart leaping out of his chest to see her.
“I had not expected to see you.” Yet there is no surprise on her face, only resignation. It rankles.
Her bosom is fuller too. That is an unneeded distraction. It used to drive him wild to watch her body ripen with child - his child. It used to — it still does.
He can only repeat his accusation, a statement this time. “You’re with child.” It strikes him how different this is to all the other pregnancies before. Those had been joyful announcements. He’d been unable to resist taking her tenderly at the news. She’d welcomed him with greedy hands knotting in his hair, urging him on.
There is no welcome or joy on Bertha’s face now. “I am.”
She leaves no room for response. No space for his self-righteous indignation. George says lamely, “You didn't tell me.”
Now Bertha does smile, but it is a patronising twist of her lips. He’s seen that smile so many times - directed at old-money snobs and members of the knickerbocker club. He’d never have thought to see it directed at him, on this particular occasion.
“Why George,” she says, cool as anything, "I would have told you if I only thought you'd care."
Care. Despite his best efforts to numb the emotion, George finds that he does care. Impossible, implausible, it seems, to stop. He wants to know it all - chiefly is she well? but he has forfeited the right to confidences and she does not seem inclined to share.
He cannot stop the question. "Is it - is it mine?"
Her gaze shutters and turns even more glacial, if that were possible. "If you have to ask, George, I don't think you deserve to know."
The room is spinning again. His mouth is very dry, it seems, and his forehead very damp with sweat.
Bertha spares him no mercy. Likely she has little left to give.
“Although,” she continues, driving the knife into his chest, “I should spare you some consideration. It must be difficult to recall your wife, given your liaisons all over town. There must be many other candidates for the mother of your child. How difficult it must be to keep track!”
The ground is coming up to meet him. Bertha’s face is warping horribly before him, blurring until it looks like she is crying or he. It must be him.
He manages to get out, “Only you,” before he is meeting the ground. Damned as he is, it has never been more true.
***
When he wakes, he is in his room again, and he can almost pretend that the last five months haven’t happened. That Bertha is right next door, that she will welcome him into her bed, even as she squeals at his icy fingers and feet. That Gladys is down the hall, instead of an ocean away, that Larry still dreams of being an architect with the fine blush of possibility instead of the nostalgia of a forgotten dream. And most of all, that he hasn’t spent the last five months drinking himself into a stupor and pulling further and further away from the only person who has ever made anything mean anything. What good is the fortune he has amassed if he can’t have her? What good is all that if he can’t forgive her? How can she forgive him?
He can almost pretend. Almost.
There is a pitcher of water next to him and he spills half of it trying to fill his glass. His hands are shaking uncontrollably. Already he is thinking of the vials back at his rooms at the Union. He has none here. Panic fills him at the thought. He has none here. He cannot hide.
The door creaks open. Bertha, of course. She does not knock, but it’s no longer out of familiarity or comfort, but inevitability. He cannot hide.
“You’re awake,” she says. She is silhouetted in the doorway for a moment. He can’t look away. “Should I send for the doctor?”
Even now she tries to protect him. Tries to protect his reputation, meagre as it must remain. Stupid to think that he could fool her. She’s seen it all before, hadn’t she?
“No,” he croaks. “I’ll be fine. I just need to get back to the Union.”
“And the elixirs you have there, I suppose.” Her voice is disdainful. Her father had had a limp, from the war, George recalls. Her father had had a limp, a bottle, and a heavy, heavy hand. How very much like Joe Connelly he must seem.
“The pain —“ he tries to justify, although his voice sounds petulant to his own ear. “You have no idea, Bertha.”
She holds up her hand to stem his tide of words. “I think I do.”
Even in the shadowed light, George can see the truth of it: she will show him no mercy. He deserves none. Perhaps it’s the medicine wearing off: his numbness quickly being replaced by shame.
Bertha walks to the window. Stares out, as if he is now beneath her notice. He probably is.
“I don’t want you near me or the child,” she says coldly. “Not like this, George. You’re not you.”
“And you, I see, are every bit what you’ve always been.” He doesn’t mean to lash out but he’s not in full control of his tongue. They’re his words, sure, but the laudanum seems to loose them where normally he’d be more likely to keep them inside.
Bertha flinches. After all this time, he’s still able to wound. “You used to like that,” she says, squaring her shoulders. “I can’t make myself different just for you. It won’t do any good. It won’t make you better nor will it make you stay.”
“Gladys,” he mumbles, falling behind his usual defence. “Don’t you ever regret? Don’t you ever doubt?”
She shakes her head resolutely. “She is happy, George. Don’t put your guilt on me. If you had true misgivings, you could have put a stop to all of this with one word.”
“And go against you?” He laughs bitterly. “How could I possibly.”
Bertha does not falter in face of his scorn. “You could because, as you have reminded me these past months, this is how the way the world works. A man is unfaithful, but his wife bears the scorn. A woman leaves her father’s house and goes to her husband’s but that is no sure thing. Spring fades, as does love and youth. I gave Gladys the only thing I could: a position of power, which is as close a thing to certainty as a woman has.” It is her turn to laugh. “I should think that we are as good an example of that as any other.”
There had been a time where George had prided himself on being outside the norm. Had it been condescension then, that had led him to seek Bertha’s opinion? Had he been playing at letting her play at directing their lives? Had his love been as fleeting as the seasons, and just as redoubtable?
“I have considered it and come to the conclusion that I can’t apologise for that. I am sorry for you though. I am sorry that you think me too ruthless, too grasping, too much. It is all true. It has always been true. I am mostly sorry that it has taken you this long to see it.”
Finally, she pulls herself away from the window and comes to stand in front of him. He can barely look at her. She is altogether too much his lover and a stranger. He knows her like his heartbeat. Wants her like breathing. She’d never been too much - not until he’d turned his guilt outwards. She’d always been his.
“There was a time, directly after the shooting when I would have done anything for you. Changed myself. Moulded my soul to yours. I can’t do that anymore - George, you see that, don’t you? It’s not just me anymore. I have to think of her too. I have to fight for her too.”
Her hand rests on the gentle swell of her belly. And George - George can’t look away. He’d thought to have dulled that ache of wanting, but all it takes is to see Bertha, illuminated in morning light, Bertha with her hair in waves tumbling around her shoulders, Bertha in the morning, Bertha in the evening - Bertha, Bertha, Bertha - for it to all come rushing back. How quickly he’d forgotten.
“I understand,” he says, even as his heart beats faster, even as his hands shake, and sweat beads at his brow. He cannot go on like this. He wants to be saved but he cannot expect Bertha to do the saving. Not if he wants to rebuild what he has torn asunder. Whatever he has to do, he has to do alone.
***
Dr Logan will be of no help for all that he’s been supplying George with the laudanum himself. George considers briefly stopping the medication cold turkey but he knows that that way lies ruin. Already, back at the Union, he is reaching for the vials that he keeps, like poison, stashed in his room. Before he sinks under again, he sends a note to Kirkland. The man had helped him once. Perhaps he can assist him again.
Kirkland arrives when the first dose of laudanum has started to take its effect. Already George can feel its soporific effect seeping through his veins in a parody of wellbeing. Thank goodness he’s had the presence of mind to tell the staff at the Union to send the good doctor up to him without delay.
Kirkland isn’t well-trained for nothing. And in any case, George has grown careless. There is no one to hide from in here, provided he continues to pay for the room and Larry continues to keep the company ticking along. He doesn’t expect brilliance from his son. Brilliance had been his and Bertha’s downfall, hadn’t it? Too bright and for too finite a period. But that was by the by.
Kirkland takes it all in: the disarray of papers, the vials strewn about the table, empty bottles rolling about. George lolling on the edge of his bed, drawn to the floor once more by gravity and the weight of his sins.
“Ah,” he says, an understatement. “I gather you might require my assistance.”
***
It is a trial removing him from the Union but Kirkland insists that George cannot convalesce here. He needs closer care and more scrutiny than any of the paid staff are willing to provide. He needs less scrutiny than the gossip rags will allow. He will permit George small doses of laudanum in order to move him, but it is not enough. But it has to be.
They remove him from the club in the early hours of the morning when he is least likely to be seen. No need to expose his family to that kind of shame. No need to confirm the rumours that had already set rolling.
When George emerges, head foggy, into the grey morning light, Bertha is waiting on the curb next to their carriage. Already, her stomach has grown. George aches to touch her but he cannot sully her with his presence. Cannot sully her with his touch.
“You’re surely not coming too,” he blurts out, blunt and charmless. It is who he is, without her.
She doesn’t flinch this time. “I am not.” She gives no further explanation and George is not foolish enough to think that she might want to see him: the useless prodigal husband. Once, they’d said he might have the Midas touch. Now he knows better. Everything he touches turns to ash.
Bertha might not miss him, but he aches with missing her, and after all he’s put her through, what’s the harm in letting her know that?
“You look magnificent,” he croaks. “God, Bertha. I’m sorry.”
He steps forward and again, when she doesn’t shy away. He asks for permission with his outstretched fingers and feels the warmth as she grants it, as she lets him take her hand.
He is filthy - all clammy with sweat and itching for just another dose but Bertha doesn’t flinch away when he tentatively takes her in his arms. Bertha has never flinched from trouble in her life and god knows she’s seen enough of it.
“I’ll return,” he promises. “I’ll return to you.”
Her blue eyes are as clear and unwavering as the day they met, chin tipped up towards him consideringly. Her belly protrudes between them, brushing against his belly, and he feels that familiar burning in his stomach spreading lower. “See that you do,” she says sharply, and kisses him.
Her mouth is demanding over his, claiming and punishing. This is no absolution. He yields to her, slides his tongue against hers, groans into her mouth as her teeth drag against his lip. She might draw blood. He wants her to draw blood. Wants her to remember that he is hers.
When she draws back, her lips are bruised. She takes his hand and presses it to her belly. She is no Penelope, as much as he’d expected her to wait forever. Already she is halfway aboard a ship that might carry them away from him. She loves him and wants him but he has whittled all that love down to the bone. She loves him and wants him but she is not one for futility.
This is no absolution, he understands, but it is a chance. He daren’t wonder how many he might get.
***
It is difficult. He would never have expected anything less. He had not, however, expected just how difficult it would be.
Some nights he feels like he is being ripped to shreds. There are needles under his skin and insects behind his eyes. Sometimes he might drown in an ocean of sweat. And always, always the shaking, the bone-exhausting, blood-chilling shaking. He is tired to death of it.
He cries, he is sure, though he doesn’t really feel the wetness on his skin. He curses, shouts profanities that Kirkland won’t recount to him later. “You were outside yourself,” he’ll say kindly. “Best not to think on it.”
Kirkland is kind where George wants to be cruel. He doesn't understand how George wants to take the world apart and bend it to his will. Wants to rebuild it to his liking. Not her though. Never her. She is already to his liking.
He calls out for Bertha, he is sure. He calls for her and curses her and is filled to bursting with love for her until he is weeping with the fire and brimstone of it all. She does not come. He must do this alone. He must do this for her.
When it is over, he is sure that all that will be left is a pillar of salt and her name, engraved on his heart.
When it is over, he finds that he is still standing. Well. Lying, anyway, which is almost as good as.
When it is over, he still loves her. And that, well, that is good. It means his faculties are still intact.
“You look well,” Peggy says when George finally descends the stairs. They both ignore the lie.
“Thank you,” he says. He takes Kirkland’s hands. “Thank you.”
“No matter,” Kirkland says cheerily. “Just — I wouldn’t touch the stuff again.”
"Never," George says. He means it too. How dull the last months seem now - the sharp edges of his mind blurred and the cotton wool of his tongue stifling his throat. His reactions slower also, his temper shorter and more irritable. He owns it though - owns every bitter word. He just wishes he hadn't said them.
He says now, “I’ll make sure you are well compensated for your troubles.”
“No need.” Kirkland hesitates. “Mrs Russell has already been more than generous.”
Bertha had been here, George realises. He finds the thought doesn’t bother him as it once might had. She’s already seen him at his worse, at rock bottom - what does it matter that he’d started to dig?
“Did she … did she leave a message?”
Peggy smiles. “Only that the baby has started kicking.”
George smiles too, despite the ache in his heart. He can see Bertha standing in this kitchen as he writhed upstairs. He can see the crease between her brows and twist of her lips as he called out for her. He can see the whiteness of her knuckles as she fists the skirt of her gown.
He can hear her confession: that she still loves him. He loves her too.
He can only hope that that's enough. That it's not too late.
***
Still, when he stands outside Kirkland's house, small travelling case in hand, he cannot bring himself to go home. Where is home, anyway? He can't deceive himself - he knows he is better but not completely healed. He's pulled himself out of his stupor but he hasn't yet learned his lesson.
He is not entirely sure what lesson he is to learn.
He sends a note for Bertha, not trusting himself to leave if he should see her. She'll understand, he knows. She won't want him back only half-repentant.
The note says, simply, I love you.
And then, a hastily scrawled postscript in case she might think that he has plans to … to do away with himself: wait for me.
This he considers and then crosses out. He has no right to ask.
I love you, then. It's as good an epitaph as any other.
***
He travels north in cattle class. Basks in the anonymity, the seething mass of people shoulder to shoulder, cheek to cheek. Doesn't flinch, this time, when he feels the warmth radiating. George himself still feels as cold as ice. But spring is soon, and then the thaw.
When he gets off the train, he finds that he is five miles from Bertha's home town. He hadn't meant to, exactly, but his feet know where his head hasn't quite caught up to go.
He hails a nearby mail coach. "Sir," he calls. "Will you head into town?"
"I'm not a sir," the man replies. "But I'll take you where you need to go."
Where George needs to go is an awfully big ask, but he finds himself clambering up beside the man. He's a local - born and bred here. Chances are, if George digs deep enough he'll find that the man knows Bertha or her family. He doesn't ask though, and the man doesn't offer. Best to stay anonymous. Especially when he doesn't quite know what he's looking for.
He disembarks the coach a mile out of town, where the roads curve into familiarity. He'd come here once, to take Bertha away. Back then, she'd welcomed it. Now, knowing where they'd end up, he wonders if she'd still make the same choice. Maybe if given the choice again, she'd opt for a safe banker, someone worked at the mill with her father.
But then again, maybe not.
Even in his most despairing imaginings, when he pictures Bertha without him, he cannot see her living a life anything short of extraordinary. If not him, it would have been someone else: a wealthy man with name and money. A kindly widow who might be obliging enough to die. She'd made no secret of her desire to leave this life behind. But she'd chosen George.
He bends down to sift some dirt through his fingers. He thinks about planting a seed.
Monica lives a little ways away, he knows, but he is not here to see Monica. He knows this path, knows that copse of trees where he used to kiss Bertha in the moonlight until they were both breathless. Knows that hill and dale where she used to pin him beneath her hips until he was gasping. But he only knows half of what she's left behind.
He finds her mother's grave where Bertha had left it. It is overgrown now with grass and weeds. George clears it as best he can with his bare hands, until the dirt clings to his skin, until the soil seeps under his nails.
At the base, he finds the remains of a ragdoll.
The headstone is simple. Mary Connelly, it reads, and the date of her death. Beloved.
Bertha would have been twelve years old. Old enough to remember her mother's dreams. Young enough to be buried under her father's yoke. She didn't speak of her mother much, even now. Of her father, she spoke even less, but what little she said in the early days had been enough. What she didn't say had been more telling. The way she flinched at the crack of a whip. How she would rub her wrist idly, as though wracked by a phantom pain.
He leaves the doll there. Some ghosts are not meant to be disturbed.
***
There is one last stop George must make before he allows himself to think of home, much as he abhors this pilgrimage. There's no good reason for his journey, just a bone-aching compulsion to trace Bertha's youthful footsteps. Self-flagellation, perhaps, or the need to remind himself of who they had been and who they are yet to be.
The path to the house is overgrown as though very infrequently frequented. There are occasional wagon marks but even these are scuffed over.
His footsteps slow as he approaches until he is pressed up against the old spreading oak that he'd kissed Bertha under for the first time. Her dress had been blue. He lays his palm over the old familiar bark.
"Hello old friend," he says and feels foolish for it.
She'd torn up the back of her dress, or rather, he had from pressing her up against it. She'd had scratches on her thighs too from how he'd rucked up her skirts in his haste to be nearer to her. That had been then. Now look at them: miles apart.
Through the leaves, George can see into the house, the windows curtainless and bare. He barely recognises old Joe Connelly through the distance and the frown lines. He is wizened now, taking up less space than he used to. But his hands are still large and punishing as they curl around his pipe and his glass.
George can still recall the bracelet of bruises around Bertha's wrist. The shadows would fit perfectly against Joe's fist. He'd recognise that hand anywhere.
Still, Mr Connelly cuts a pathetic figure, all alone in his kitchen. Solitary, for all his temper and his fists have driven everyone else away. He reminds George of himself, and the resemblance is so striking and horrifying that he has to steady himself against that tree.
The same, but different; he tries to still his pounding heart. Different because he had his business, whereas Joe Connelly had worked in the mills. Different because …
Well, because of Bertha. Bertha and their family and the child growing inside of her, planted in George's carelessness. He hates that - that their child should be born of bitterness instead of love. Still, there is time to rectify that, isn't there? Isn't there?
The bile has risen in his throat again and he is suddenly ashamed. He can go no further. What is he doing here in the first place? These ghosts are not for him. These ghosts are not him. Not yet, anyway. Not if he hastens.
The sun is setting by the time he traces his steps back to the gate. As fate would have it, the man with the mail coach is coming down the lane. He recognises George and slows without him having to hail.
"Finished your business then?" he says, jocular and friendly.
George nods. He knows he'll never return.
The man gestures for him to climb aboard and he does so promptly. The further they get from the house, the lighter he feels in his chest.
"What business would that be then?" his driver asks casually. "You don't see too many people around the old Connelly homestead. Not anymore."
"I'm a friend of the family's," George lies.
The man laughs. "That family has no friends. Maybe you knew the mother? But she's long dead now."
"Yes," George says carefully. "I was passing through and thought I'd look them up."
"Ah," he says. "She's dead now. Shame."
They lapse into silence and, for a while, George thinks that might be the end of it but then –
"Joe's a right piece of work," the man says abruptly. "Harsh on his family. One boy and two girls, though he had little use for the girls. There was one other child - a godforsaken girl too, I think - but she died in infancy. No thanks to him, I daresay. The mother passed from childbed fever, they say, but it was heartbreak, truly."
It feels like George is holding his breath. A girl, he thinks with dawning horror, taken in infancy. Bertha had said she had to think of her - their child. An unconscious slip, no doubt, but no less revealing for that.
"The oldest daughter still lives nearby," the man continues. "The son took his father's place in the mill and continues in his tradition in all things. But the youngest daughter - the youngest daughter left at first opportunity. Found a man who loved her enough to give her a better life. My missus talks about her often." He looks sharply at George like he sees right through him. "I hope that man gave her that - a better life."
"Yes," George hears himself say, "I hope he does. I hope he did."
***
It is only when George is standing at the station, tracks stretching before him that he feels like he can finally draw breath.
Where does he go from here, he wonders. The lines - his lines - weave before him in all directions. Any train could set him on a new path. But only one holds any appeal to him.
Bertha, he thinks, her name ringing in his head like a psalm, a hymn, some soliloquy of a twice-damned man. It's always been Bertha: Bertha in the morning, Bertha in her finery at the opera. Bertha when they had nothing but a flimsy suitcase between them and a handful of dreams. Bertha covering his back, manipulating his rivals, wooing his prospective partners. God, she's twice the man he is. And he'd damned her and left her and for what? His pride, primarily, and the guilt of a broken promise that was all his to bear.
He thinks of Bertha - he is always thinking of Bertha - and the child between them. He thinks of her father, bent over his table. Is it so strange that she should want better for them?
When the next trains come, he takes the one headed home.
Home, he discovers what he's always known, is her.
***
The journey home is long but he is glad when he reaches the familiar house on 61st Street. There is the scent of firewood in the air and the feeling of something slotting back into place.
He sees Bertha through the window, presiding over a table of women. Marian’s there, of course, and Aurora Fane and Ada Forte. Mrs Astor is a surprise but none more so than Agnes Van Rhijn.
They are laughing. He can pick his wife’s laugh out a mile away. He hopes never to be further ever again. She is laughing and it sounds like sweet victory.
It is a surprising but it is not a surprise, not truly. There is nothing, he realises, that his wife cannot achieve when she sets her mind to it. He owes so much to her fortitude and her tenacity.
It turns out that he can achieve some things alone too. But what he has realised, above all, is that he doesn’t want to.
Useless, each without the other, Bertha had said once. Now George finds that that isn’t true.
Not useless, then, but lesser. Incomplete.
He watches her laugh and feels the warmth seeping back into his bones.
He does not intrude.
***
The light is filtering out by the time the ladies leave. Their mirth still echoes in the hallways, their conviviality still lingers. George had secreted himself in a small room - just far enough not to eavesdrop but close enough to bask in Bertha’s presence. Now, he ascends the stairs to her room.
"Enter!" she calls when he knocks. She thinks him her ladies' maid no doubt and he can only hope that he's just as welcome.
She has her back to him when he enters, but stands when she sees it is him at the door. She is ripe and swollen, and he is hers. George feels his heart leap. How could he have ever thought to leave her?
Bertha does not move for a very long time. Resignation and hope war briefly on her face and settle on caution. "You're home." She frowns. "Are you?"
"If you'll have me," he breathes.
"Oh George," Bertha sighs. Resignation it is to be then. "You know you're the only one for me."
He takes one cautious step closer. "I went to your home," he says.
Alarm spikes on her face. "Whyever would you do that for?"
"I'd forgotten," he tells her honestly. "I needed to remember."
There is a break in the tension she carries around her shoulders, a chink in her armour. "You don't need to remember all that," she says, voice wavering. "I can remember well enough for both of us."
Another step then. Any closer and he'd be close enough to touch. "I'd forgotten how much we used to want," he says. "I'd forgotten how we used to wish for things we couldn't have." Bertha more than him, probably, but she'd taught him to reach for the stars too. Dragged them down from the sky for him so he could touch.
He curves his palm around her face now. Laces his other hand gently around her wrist where that string of bruises used to lie. She leans into his touch, warming from inside out.
“I wanted better for Gladys,” George says, a confession.
“Oh George,” Bertha murmurs. “Wanting’s a terrible thing. That’s how we go ourselves into this mess in the first place.”
Yet, she cannot seem to take her eyes off him. He certainly can't take his eyes off her. Gently, he traces the plump curve of her lip with his thumb, shuddering as her tongue swipes at his finger roughly.
“Wanting’s not so terrible,” he hazards. “Not if we want the same things. Not if we want them together.”
Her gaze is searching. “And do you? Know what you want?”
He nods firmly. “It’s what I’ve always wanted. I’d only forgotten. It’s only ever been you.”
It's not entirely enough. There are still apologies to be made and forgiveness to grant. But it is enough for now.
Bertha's fists are tight in his hair as she yanks his face down to hers, mouths meeting in fierce clash of heat. George makes an inhuman sound as she grinds against him, shoving him into the bed.
He'd not realised how much she'd been holding back these last months; she'd presented him the same placid, unruffled face to the world that he'd forgotten how violently she felt things. How greedily she took and took from him. How gladly he received.
She hovers above him, but he scrambles backward up on the bed so that he can lean against the headboard and be eye-level with her. His hands, out of practice but well-versed in this dance, rid her quickly of her clothes so that she is bare before him.
His silence is all awe, but perhaps he is out of practice in this too because she retreats a little, self-conscious.
"Sorry, sorry," he gasps. "You're so -" He cannot find the words to describe how it is to see her like that.
She seems to understand anyway, leaning back in to kiss him. Still, it seems important that he speak.
"You don't know what it does to me," George murmurs, leaning forward to capture a taut nipple between his lips. She is sweet and the gasp he elicits is even sweeter. "To see you like this."
"What," Bertha gasps. Her clever hands have found their way into the fastenings of George's trousers and he lifts his hips off the bed to aid her progress. "Fucked swollen with your child?"
Yes. To see her rounding with the evidence of their love, their lust - to know that she is unequivocally his, well, yes. That does things to a man. But it is not just that - it is that she is Bertha, his Bertha and it feels viral that she knows that too –
"No - ah." She has grasped him firmly and impaled herself upon him. His nails dig into her skin, his teeth imprinting sharply on her breast. Her fingers are bruising on his hips. She will leave a mark. He wants her to leave a mark. "I mean yes – Bertha, god."
Bertha means to be merciless tonight and god knows she has earned it with everything he's put her through. But he means to say it and he has to say it and so he chokes it out, even as his hips piston up into hers, even as his fingers close around her breasts, even as she rides him as if she's been aching for his body and his soul –
"To see you – to know you," he gasps, stilling her hips with his hands, "I have looked after your heart so poorly before. I am only grateful that you might think to entrust me with it again."
Bertha pauses above him, eyes shining with something that reminds George of that first evening, her in that blue dress, wrist bruised, under the oak tree. He'd known the right thing to say then and so he says it again and again, long into the night, until she falls asleep with his voice ringing in her ear.
"I love you."
***
Tomorrow they’ll have to pick up the loose threads where they’d left off. They'll need to learn how to weave their entangled, separated lives back together like Penelope, like the Lady of Shalott in that tower. Women, always in waiting. Not like Bertha. Bertha is motion. A steam train hurtling west. A river running steadily to the sea. He wouldn’t have it any other way.
Tomorrow they’ll have to start again.
But tonight, George finds, he is exactly where he wants to be.