1807

In order to complete his initiation into bachelorhood, Matthew Moresby decides to have his living room repainted.

The young man, only 22 years of age, has been feeling the need to bring about change in his new house. It is a small apartment, one he rents from an elderly woman with his wages from the docks. His father had protested the work of course, arguing that his son should put his time and effort towards studying rather than manual labor. Matthew had understood his father’s concerns, seeing as the man was paying for him to attend college and begin his career as a scientist, but his work on the docks was not about shirking his responsibilities. The boy had toiled, earning himself weary bones in the process, because he had needed to prove to himself and the world that he could earn his own living. Every pence, shilling and pound, he tucked away under his mattress and willed himself to imagine what his life would be like once he was purely independent.

Now, Matthew marvels at his new dwelling. There is furniture in every room, food in the kitchen. He has opened the windows up so that a light breeze is allowed to flow through. Standing here, he feels as if he is the captain staring out at his beautiful ship.

There is just something missing- a feeling of familiarity. For this is his house, but it does not feel like his home, not quite yet.

So Matthew Moresby, on his way to becoming Dr. M. Brooke Moresby, decides to revive his new life by having his living room done in a different color.

Some shade of blue, preferably.

On this late Sunday afternoon, Matthew walks down the street, three blocks east and six blocks north to the printer’s. He strides over to a figure bent at the waist, who lifts his head at the noise and reveals himself to be Piers Wilmot Jr, son of the head printer and Matthew’s classmate from university and friend from childhood. The boy, who certainly looks older than Matthew with his well-kept beard and the hungry look his eyes always possess, smiles at his friend.

Mr. Moresby walks out of the printer’s a few shillings lighter, but all the more pleased. Anyone walking down the street would note that the man strolling by, with the way he draws his shoulders back and his green eyes sparkle with some kind of mirth, looks like the spirit of success.

The ad in the newspaper asks for a painter who cares about their hands and knows how to cradle a paintbrush to please use those hands to respond in a swift manner.

One week passes. Then another. Then another. Matthew feels his excitement draining away, leaving him a frustrated shell. He finds himself clenching his left fist when he studies, a habit that he does not remember ever displaying in his childhood. This newest addition to his ticks makes him feel like a flapping infant, only frustrating him further.

He is sitting on the rose-colored love seat in his apartment, staring at his clenched hand with a far-off expression on his face, when there’s a knock on the door.

Believing that his landlord who occasionally likes to play cards over a plate of biscuits is calling on him, he walks across the room and opens the door.

A woman who is certainly not his landlord stares back at him.

He drinks her in for lack of knowing how to react to this stranger standing in front of him.

Outside, the wind is building up to scream, as evident in the way the woman’s deep red hair whips around her face, having escaped her loose bun that holds the majority of it back. She doesn’t seem to notice this, however; the woman stares at him with dark brown, unflinching eyes. Her stare is mellow, as if she sees right on through him. The phrase “lost in her own world” comes to mind, but Matthew knows without having to put it to words that she is paying attention to everything around her.

She reminds him of dark-colored wood, the way she stands, the way she seems to absorb the light around her and mutes its glow. Her skin is pale like wet paper, and he almost reaches out to see if his hand with touch her, or only pass through fog.

As if she can hear his thought, the woman’s stare sharpens, startling him out of his musings.

“M-May I help you, Miss?” Matthew stammers out, defaulting to the manners he was taught to display at a young age. The woman presses her lips together, thinning them until they resemble two pieces of chalk stacked atop one another, and nods.

“I am the painter.” she replies in a hollow voice. Matthew’s eyes widen. She stands with a stiffness in her body, as if waiting for him to challenge this fact. Matthew believes her in an instant, believes her wholeheartedly, and that is what surprises him. Quickly, the young man steps aside and ushers her in, closing the door behind them before the wind can rip it off its hinges.

Once they are inside his home, Matthew realizes that there is more to note about the woman than just her face.

For one thing, the way she dresses is peculiar, especially evident in her dress. No undercarriage is evident, as the dress hangs loosely on her frame. The unshapely fabric is plaid with a color scheme of light and dark gray. It looks as if were made for someone who does not particularly care about what others perceive of her, or for someone with little money to spend on appearances. Matthew decides that she is both.

His eyes trail down to the hem of her dress, where he notes that her feet are protected by thick, dull black workman’s boots that he’s seen men at the docks sport.

She turns away from him and walks towards the table in the kitchen that he bought from the estate sale of an old man who had passed away with plenty of belongings but no heir to pass them down to. The light brown surface is soon covered by the contents of the bag he hadn’t noticed she held in her right hand. She deposits a bucket, which she must have been holding in her left hand, onto the table as well.

Matthew edges closer and gazes down at her possessions. Brushes of all sort of thickness are scattered about, their glossy wooden handles glistening with promise. The bristles on each are pointed and straight. A palette rests near the edge of the table, perfectly white. Someone took great care in crafting these instruments, that much he is certain.

In the bucket, there is blue paint that takes his breath away. In the newspaper ad, he hadn’t even described what color he wanted his living room to be painted, largely because he was unsure of how to describe it (a feeling of home, a feeling of reassurance). Staring down at this mixture, he knows that the mood he was trying to capture has been put into a physical form. How had he not noticed she carried a pool of such hypnotizing color at her side?

He glances to the bag the woman clutches, a brown leather briefcase with the initials CB carved into the side. Her fingers are white at their tips, curled to the point of resembling talons. After a moment of hesitation, she gingerly lays the bag down on the table and regains her look of complete focus as her eyes whizz around the table.

Originally, Matthew had simply been hoping for someone to respond to the ad. He had planned on showing the painter the room and discussing the color he wanted, then for work to begin the next day.

Now, staring at this woman with her rigid posture, he knows that work will start today.

She glances at him dismissively.

“If you care about the purity of your furniture, I suggest you move it.” Is that a hint of a smile? Matthew doesn’t have long to decide, because just as soon as it appears, it disappears like smoke trailing out of the window.

Incapable of forming any protests, Matthew quickly begins shuffling his furniture in the living room, the love seat, a coffee table and a pea green arm chair that has a rip in the cushion that is expertly hidden by turning the cushion over, out into the hall. As soon as everything is out of harm’s way, the woman marches into the now-bare room with a thick brush and her bucket.

“What will you do to protect the floor?” Matthew wonders aloud, more so to himself than to her.

“Focus.” is what she responds with, her words directed at the wall.

Then, so simply, she begins to work. The brush is plunged into paint without a second thought, almost lost in the color, then resurfaces with a slick blue coating.

She strokes the wall gently, as if coaxing a child to come out and play. This softness is unexpected, and Matthew finds himself staring at her for a moment longer than necessary.

“What do I call you?” Matthew asks. This question has been swirling around in his head ever since he’d seen her standing outside his door, but he had refrained from asking for fear that she would admit to being a figment of his imagination and fade into the wall.

“Bess, sir.” She offers no last name, prompting the initials on her briefcase to flash in his mind. Her initials then are BB, if she has any ties to the briefcase, not CB. Then, to his surprise, she crosses the room and stands some feet in front of him, offering her left hand. Her right, Matthew notes with a smile, is already speckled with paint. “Bess Wengrave.”

She’s already returning to the wall as he registers her words, having robotically accepted the handshake. Continuing to paint as if she hadn’t taken that moment to acknowledge Matthew, she steadily brings her brush above her head, then down until it almost touches the floor.

To Matthew’s complete surprise, as he watches Bess crouch down and wonders how she doesn’t tire within minutes of this exercise, he sees a flash of leg that is black. For an instant, he believes that she has been burned, or was burned in a terrible childhood accident, but then he looks closer and realizes that she is simply wearing black trousers underneath her dress.

“Why do you…” he trails off, unsure if he should address the strange attire she dons.

“Yes?” she replies absentmindedly.

“Wear… Forgive me, but you’re wearing men’s clothing underneath your own, are you not?”

“I don’t like getting paint on my legs.”

She’s lying. The thought takes Matthew by surprise. Why would he think this when she has no reason to lie in the first place?

He muses on this from the kitchen, making claims of having to study, as she continues to work. He gingerly pushes her painting supplies aside and makes room for his textbook and a cup of tea. He stares at the page intently, subconsciously willing for the text to tell him this woman’s secrets. Outside, the sun begins to dip down towards the earth. When Matthew can no longer make out the text of his book by natural light, he ventures back into his living room.

The room, one with three full walls and one that could be considered a half because of the open doorway that sits in the middle of it, has a thick blue stripe now decorating its perimeter. The paint is evenly spread, falling like a curtain.

After a moment of gawking at the walls, Matthew realizes that Bess is not in the room. He doesn’t have to walk far to find her; she’s sitting on the loveseat, her back against the armrest, with her knees drawn towards her chest, reading an astronomy book he’d purchased at the very same estate sale he’d found his table at.

“Are you… Done?” Matthew asks. The instant that the question leaves his mouth, he feels the tips of his ears begin to burn and is thankful for his head of curly black hair to hide this development.

“There’s no more light. Working by candle doesn’t reflect how the paint will look in the day.” Her eyes never acknowledge his existence, staying on the text in his book (a book, admittedly, he only bought to appear well-informed on a multitude of subjects). She turns the page. “I’ll come back tomorrow and finish the top stripe. Then the next day I will touch up the walls, then be on my way.”

“We should discuss payment.” Matthew declares. A small thrill travels through his chest at the fact that he’s finally spoken to her without asking a question.

“You will pay me when the work is done.” At this, she glances up at him. “You’ll tell me the amount you wish to give me, and I’ll decide if I think it’s appropriate.”

How she can make him feel like such a child, he doesn’t know. It’s as if she’s his mother, patiently allowing him to speak, but ultimately setting the rules.

He doesn’t reply, and she doesn’t give him a chance to. Standing abruptly, Bess places the book back on the loveseat’s cushion and stalks to the kitchen. She gathers her brushes swiftly, pulling the paint that clings to the bristles off with the skirt of her dress. Matthew stands in the corner, aghast at how she so carelessly disregards her appearance.

When she catches his eye, she gives him a smile so bitter that he hangs his head in shame. His neck whips towards the door at the sound of it closing. He waits for a moment, as if expecting her to return, then walks to the kitchen to actually study.

The next day is a blur to Matthew. Bess arrives as soon as the sun is illuminating the room, then strides past him as if he is just another piece of furniture. He watches her paint with fervor, attacking the blankness of the walls. This minor break from his studies is well-needed; she is an unclassified species, and he wants- no, needs- to give her a label. It is the ultimate test of his abilities as a scientist, in the young man’s eyes. A test to prove if he is just in calling himself, simply, a man.

He stares at her the entire second day, only leaving to get himself food. He asks her to eat with him three times this day, and each time she declines, saying there was too much work to be done. So he leaves her food on a plate and places it on the loveseat.

Without fail, she slinks away to the loveseat and begins to eat with one hand, her (his) astronomy book in the other. She manipulates her hand so that she can turn the page with her thumb, intent on keeping up this multitasking.

She leaves without a word once the sun has set.

In the dead of night, Matthew stares at the walls and feels himself fall through the sky before he is caught by the reality that he is staring at walls in the dead of night.

The last day, she arrives just an hour before it is time for lunch. Matthew had decided that since this will be his last day before going back to his studies, he will make the most of it and treat himself to a meal.

Because Matthew is a student attempting to cut the stitches that bind him to his father, he does not pay a maid to clean his apartment, nor does he have a cook. His father had offered to send him the one he’d grown up with, a plump woman named Coral who made the most delicious mutton chops, but he had declined and instead asked for Coral to give him lessons. She happily obliged, her wisps of gray hair bobbing up and down as she neared jumping off the ground in excitement, her cloudy blue eyes twinkling. She showed him how to make food that would keep him on his feet, as well as food that would satisfy any craving, whether that be for luxurious and buttery creations, or for more savory and “on-a budget” kinds of meals.

“You’ll catch yourself the perfect wife with your cooking, Dearie!” Coral had proclaimed, the lilt in her voice underlined by her enthusiasm.

The words reverberate in Matthew’s skull as he sets on the table a plate of two pork chops, a dish containing a pile of diced potatoes, and a smaller plate with pear halves stacked in a slick pyramid. He makes sure to set down a clean plate and two sets of silverware, so that Bess can take her own food and retreat to the loveseat.

Bess enters the room just as he sets down a pitcher of milk, wiping her hands on her dress. A blue streak is smeared underneath her eye. She pauses in packing up her supplies as her eyes land on the food. Slowly, they trail up and find Matthew’s face.

As if nothing is out of the ordinary, she pulls a chair out and sits down, its wooden legs creaking at her arrival (he had also bought this old, rickety chair at that estate sale). She serves herself, reaching across the table for the pitcher of milk and dragging it to her side. Matthew, thankful that he had already poured himself a glass, watches her with light amusement as realization slowly fills his stomach.

“What kind of man was your husband?” he asks. Across the table, Bess stiffens, a bite of pear in her mouth.

There it is, Matthew thinks to himself. He has found the solution. Bess swallows and looks down at the table. An emotion flits over her face, grounding Matthew in the moment.

She answers in a new voice, one that isn’t hollow, but flowing with remembrance. “Smiling. Like you.” There’s a smile that wants to break across her face, and is just now beginning to make some progress.

“Not as naïve, I imagine.” Matthew takes a sip of his milk to downplay how the comment stings, even coming from himself.

Her eyes dim. “No, he knew what the world was like…” she glances up at him. “Beyond having dreams.”

“I have too many to keep track of.” Matthew admits.

Bess shakes her head. “You’re a boy.” At the look of self-loathing that spreads across Matthew’s face, she gives him a searching look, wanting his attention. “But that is not a bad thing.”

“It is if you wish to feel accomplished in this world.”

Bess pushes her plate forward and clasps her hands together. She continues to look at Matthew, that unflinching spirit of hers visible beyond her irises.

“You have the capability to love someone. Make them a constellation of adoration. Isn’t that success enough in this lifetime?”

Matthew looks at her and notes, for the first time since meeting her, that she wears a simple gold band on her right hand.

As she walks down the road, hoisting her paint supplies as well as her money down the street, Matthew Moresby wonders from his kitchen what that moment will be like, when he realizes with regret that he is no longer a child.