The Blue Hour

Chapter 42: Flora

William had sent his carriage to bring Flora to the Seagrave home where Jane would help her dress for the ball. Going through with it felt impossible in the desperate state she was in. By this evening, her engagement to William would be announced.

After Hamid had left, she had climbed the stairs to her apartment, and immediately taken to bed. She dreamt of him. They made love, their breaths and movements intertwined into a single body of energy, glistening and unrestrained. Black tears rolled down her cheeks, like ink, blurring her vision so she could scarcely see. The ink transformed into slippery dark corridors, a labyrinth from which she was desperately trying to escape. She ran, stumbled, fell, ran again, chased by an echoing screech from a voice she vaguely recognised as her own: "whoring bitch."

She woke with a start, shaking and covered with a fine sheen of sweat.

When she couldn't go back to sleep, she got up and walked around, listened to the 'muezzin' call to morning prayers, to the church bells ring, through the window she stared at the sun rising. Under the rooftops, the pigeons spread their tails and cleaned their feathers. The newspaper boys appeared in the street, the shop owners opened their doors, the cab drivers, the children at the hand of their mothers on their way to school.

She examined her face in the mirror, arranging her hair without paying attention to what she did. Siran had already arranged and rearranged her hair, and she couldn't improve on it, but the meaningless activity felt soothing.

None of it made sense to her. Her own body felt alien and terrifying. A fever burnt her up inside, she would burn right through the chair if she sat on it. It felt like the devil lived inside her, howling with laughter and between the fits spouting out: "You took the money and thought you could save yourself."

It was true, she thought as she dressed, she had taken the money and fled Paris.

"It's enough for a new beginning," the mistress of the orphanage had said when she handed Flora the envelope. An anonymous donor, though they both knew who he was.

"Take it," the mistress said. "It's more than most women of your kind get, it's more than you deserve. Leave, get a fresh start."

The mistress had been wrong. For a fallen woman like Flora, there could be no such thing as a fresh start. Her body could not be trusted. It felt like madness possessed her, dreams haunted her, and her body was burning up with desire.

On her way to William's, she asked the coachman to stop at the church where she kneeled before the priest, begging him to save her. Words poured out of her, incoherent and confusing, mixing everything together: the lover who abandoned her in Paris, the money she took, her fraudulent engagement with William, and the adventure with Hamid. Here, she hesitated, unsure of what to call the turmoil inside. Impurity, she felt, was probably the word which summed it all up.

"Please help me," she murmured.

The priest, Mr Fowler, was skinny and ugly with sweaty hands that sought to clasp hers too tightly, for too long. "What impurity? In the flesh?"

They had touched, nothing more had happened, certainly not in the flesh. It could have happened, it probably had. How else could it feel so real in her dreams? Why else did she feel such guilt?

The priest leaned in so close she could hear him breathe.

"Woman is the devil's gateway. You must resist, resolve not to think of this man in the future, nor dream of him."

Her emotions were troubled, strange, warm, and intoxicating. They frightened her. She was incoherent and confused and ashamed, she was out of control. How could she not think of Hamid again?