Paddington Green, page 26
But that he should be trying to get Abel removed from the hospital; that was something quite other. She knew, better than most, how dearly Abel loved his hospital. She who had watched from her earliest childhood how he had nursed the first little dispensary, how he had added to its services, so painfully and yet so steadily, how it had filled him with a passion that was greater than anything else in his life. She had not seen him for ten years, perhaps, not since the night before her wedding, but she could not imagine much had changed in him in those years. If he had loved his hospital then, would he not love it even more fiercely now? After all, she told herself, he had lost so much else. Jonah, and me. And Mamma.
She closed her eyes at the thought of her mother. In all these long years she had steadfastly denied herself any thought of Dorothea. Dorothea might lie breathing and swallowing pap there in Gower Street—for Abby knew there had been no announcement of her death—but she was dead in spirit. She had died that long ago snowy afternoon outside Lilith’s house in North Audley Street, her life driven from her by plunging horses’ hooves. It was her knowledge that that was so that had made it possible for Abby to face the fact that she had never returned to Gower Street to visit her.
And now William was trying to take his hospital from Abel. From her father. And it was that word above all that lifted itself out of her mêlée of thoughts and remained steadfastly before her. Her father.
She opened her eyes and looked at Henry, still sitting staring anxiously at her, and managed a small smile.
‘Thank you, Henry, for this information. You need not have been so anxious, but I recognize the source of your anxiety as a very nice sensibility and thank you for it. You are a most—most caring man, and I am fortunate indeed to have you here at Caspar’s to watch my interest.’ She put out a hand and he, blushing, set his own into it, so that they could exchange a handshake. ‘You will not lose by your loyalty, I promise you.’
He shook his head. ‘It was not in search of my own benefit as I behaved as I did, ma’am. I may always have my eye to the main chance, and why not, for no one looks after number one if number one don’t, but I couldn’t do it by spitting in your eye, ma’am, if you’ll allow the expression, and that’s a fact.’ And now he blew his nose in his embarrassment, and Abby smiled at him and stood up.
‘Well, Henry, what I ask you to do is nothing. I imagine you did not commit yourself in any way—’
Henry was on his feet too, reaching for his steaming ulster, and shaking it in front of the flames to try to drive out the last of the wetness. ‘Indeed no, Mrs Caspar, I did not. No, it was left as I’d think about it.’ He grinned over his shoulder at her. ‘I didn’t slam no doors, you see, in case you wanted to make some use of the situation. He went away content enough, to wait till I should call on him, at the hospital he said. He said if I sent a message as to when I wanted to see him he’d make a point of being there.’
‘Thank you, Henry. You did well,’ she said gravely, and helped him shrug on his coat, and led the way to the door.
‘It’s my pleasure, ma’am,’ he said earnestly, setting his billycock hat more firmly on his head as she opened the door. ‘And do remember, ma’am, as I’m available any time you may require me, if I’m not here. In working hours of course, I’m around selling to the customers. But a message to Hammersmith will always find me—’ And he went plunging out into the pouring rain, leaving her staring after him through the slanting lines, her lower lip caught between her teeth.
She had to think, and after a moment she went to her office to shed her alpaca apron and put on her mantle, and tell Miss Miller crisply that she had outside business to attend to, and if anyone came, to say she was not available.
And she closed her mind to the fact that she was using this visit of Henry’s to deal with the matter that was really exercising her mind. Gideon. It was Wednesday, and even if last night’s visit to Lombard Street had not occurred, he would be certain to be here shortly, as he always was. But since last night it was even more certain, and it was this fact that she had been trying to hide from all morning in her frenetic busyness about the factory. She did not want to face Gideon, not yet. There were things that must be dealt with between them, things he must be told, but she could not bear to do the telling. Not yet. She had to come herself to some sort of terms with the way she had found what she most needed so short a time before she had discovered that she must throw it away. To be given and to be deprived in one evening—that had been painful enough. To give the matter words so soon after was asking too much of her altogether.
So she fled her factory, going out into the rain of the March morning with her bonnet firmly tied about her ears, her skirts held firmly in her gloved hand, in search of an answer to this new dilemma involving her father. Thinking about that would be almost a comfort, if it stopped her thinking about herself.
23
She stood outside the hospital staring up at its grey front in the dwindling light, and shivered a little. The rain had stopped long ago, but her clothes were still damp, and the cold had struck through to her bones. She had eaten nothing since her breakfast, and it was now past five o’clock, but she was not hungry in the least. She had spent part of the day strolling about the warehouses, ostensibly looking at silks and lace and the new French muslins like any other lady of leisure and fashion of the town, so she was tired and her legs ached a little, and she moved her shoulders wearily under her wet mantle.
It had been almost silly, she had chided herself at one point during the long day. She should have gone home to Paddington Green, to change into warm dry clothes and sit beside her own fireside and talk to Frederick on his return from school, but she had known she could not do that. Gideon was not one to be so easily put off, as well she knew. When he did not find her as he expected at Irongate Wharf Road, then undoubtedly he would make his way to Paddington Green, and there stay as long as he could. She knew as certainly as if he had told her so that he was not going to give in so easily. If she wanted to avoid him— and now she did, most desperately—then she must stay away from home until after dark. She knew he would not alarm his parents by not returning at his usual time to their home; so that would be when she could return to hers.
In the meantime, she must decide what to do about the matter of Abel and the hospital; so she had told herself as she had gone her weary way with other shoppers through the colonnades of Regent Street and in and out of linen draper’s shops, shoe emporia and ribbon sellers’ establishments.
And her decision had been made. Abel must be told of William’s plan to depose him, however much anguish that might cause to William. She had thought carefully about the matter, wondering whether she should approach William himself with her knowledge, and thus prevent him from going any further with his schemes, but she had dismissed that. First of all she doubted she would be able so to persuade William. She had remembered more and more about him as the afternoon wore on, had recalled his stubbornness, his intransigence, and what she had regretfully told herself could only be regarded as positive mendacity. No, going to William would be of little use.
And anyway, she had whispered to herself, it is not William who concerns me. All day the picture of him had been there before her eyes, the father she had loved so dearly, the father she had understood and cared for, and in some sort protected from his own difficult nature. She had managed most steadfastly to avoid any yearning for him or for those long ago days when they had been such good friends and had found so much comfort in each other. Why, she had wondered, should she now feel so great a need to see him again, to talk to him and care for him and just be with him?
Because of Gideon. She had been standing staring sightlessly at a piece of amber-coloured Chantilly lace when the knowledge came into her mind. Gideon and his father. The way old Nahum had sat and looked at her and spelled out so painfully the strength of the bond that held him and his son so inextricably entwined. The knowledge that because Gideon had a father who loved him so dearly she could not love him equally dearly herself. The realization that never, not ever, could she let herself love a man again.
All that had filled her and made her eyes sharpen with the pain of unsheddable tears, and she had ached with an almost physical longing for her own father, someone to whom she could be bound in the same way, someone who would hold her life together, however unhappy that life might become, in the same way that she could now see that Gideon’s life was held together by his father.
And she had turned and gone out into the bustle of Regent Street and hailed a hack and told the driver huskily to take her to Queen Eleanor’s; and he had needed no further direction but tipped his hat and brought her here to Tavistock Street. And now she stood and stared up at the building and breathed deep, seeking within her tired body the strength to go in and find Abel and tell him what was afoot.
She would not ask his love, nor his pardon for the long ago breach between them—for she knew, still, that there was nothing that needed pardoning; she had loved and that had been all about it—nor even his interest. She would tell him her news, and turn to go, she promised herself. And if he called her back, if he made any sign of tenderness towards her, why then, and only then, might she let herself respond as she was aching to do.
She crossed the street, holding her skirts high above the mud, and then smiled wryly, for they were already shockingly bespattered with her day’s walking. At the foot of the hospital’s steps she paused, and frowned slightly. There was an odd silence about the place, and it puzzled her. Had she been asked she would have said she would expect any hospital to be something of a beehive, with people going busily in and out of the doors at all times; but here the door was firmly closed and she could see no sign of activity, although lights burned in the windows.
She stood back and peered upwards at those windows and saw a shadow pass and repass across one of the panes, and nodded to herself, reassured. Clearly there was some lull at the door here, but the hospital was about its usual business above stairs; and she picked up her skirts again to climb the steps and pull on the great bell beside the door.
‘ ’Ere, you don’ want to go there, ducky.’ A hoarse voice from behind her made her jump, and she turned and peered at the figure that had stopped at the foot of the steps. A bent shawled figure it was, with sharp eyes staring at her from a face so engrimed with dirt that she could not even see if it belonged to a man or a woman; and then she saw the skirts, very ragged and filthy, but skirts all the same, peeping out under the torn and voluminous man’s ulster that the figure was wearing and said, ‘I beg your pardon, ma’am. What did you say?’
She cackled at that. ‘Cor! Ma’am, is it? One of the ladies, is yer? I said as yer don’t want to go in there, if yer knows what’s good for yer.’
Abby looked up at the building again. ‘It is Queen Eleanor’s hospital, isn’t it?’
‘Queen Eleanor’s pest’ouse, more like,’ the old woman said, and the voice had become heavy again. ‘Keep aht of it, an’ live to eat yer vittles another day,’ and she began to shuffle off towards the corner of the street.
‘Why?’ Abby cried after her, but the figure shrugged, and went on moving. ‘Pest’ouse, that’s what it is. I wouldn’t even come dahn the street if I could ’elp it—’
She stood there frowning for a moment, and then shrugged in her turn and again started to climb the steps. The fear that every hospital engendered, that was all it was, she told herself. They are places where death is more commonplace than life. That is the cause of the old woman’s muttering. But all the same it was strange that there should be such an eerie quietness about the place.
There was a piece of paper nailed to the door, and she peered at it in the dimness, more puzzled than ever. There was just one word scrawled on it. ‘No.’ And she shook her head, bemused. To put up a written notice in a place where none but a very few could read was strange too, and to put up one so laconic in its content was stranger still. Although perhaps it was there because it was a word that even illiterates could recognize? She shook her head at her own surmising and, practical as always, reached out and pulled on the heavy iron loop beside the door, and heard the ringing peal within cry out and then die away.
She stood there a long time, shivering as the wind came whipping icily through her damp clothes, and feeling the sense of foreboding within her building up. She was not nervous about seeing her father, she told herself, staunchly. It would be strange perhaps, after all this time, but they were reasonable people after all and she had legitimate business with him. She felt so only because of the quietness and the closed door and the sign and she pulled again on the bell, this time with a sharpness born of irritation.
The door opened grudgingly, and she pushed against it to try to enter but whoever had opened it resisted, and a voice said wearily, ‘No. No admission. Place closed,’ and again tried to push the door shut.
But Abby, for all her fatigue, was the stronger of the two so she pushed harder and the door gave before her and she slid round it to stand on the other side, staring at the woman who had opened it.
She was of medium height, was carrying a pair of candles in a branched stick in one hand and swaying a little as she stood there staring back at Abby with lacklustre eyes. Her face had a marked pallor under the roughness of its weathering and it was lined in a way that made it look as though usually she smiled a great deal. But now her face was expressionless.
‘There’s no admission,’ she said again. ‘Closed. Best to go away. We’ll be open when we can.’
‘How can you be closed?’ Abby said, her voice sounding young and vigorous even in her own ears, compared with the flattened tones of the woman before her. ‘This is Abel Lackland’s hospital, isn’t it? He was never one to close his doors to those who needed him. What has changed matters so?’
The woman seemed to become more awake, and held her candle closer to Abby’s face so that she could look at her more easily.
‘You know Mr Abel?’
‘Yes,’ Abby said. ‘I know him.’
‘You aren’t looking for care for some ill person or other?’
‘No. I wish to—to speak to Mr Lackland.’
‘Well, I’m glad o’ that, because you couldn’t get it, not if you was the Queen herself. An’ if you’ve any sense you’ll go away from ’ere and wait until such time as Mr Abel is fit to return to Gower Street, and see ’im there. This isn’t the place for the likes of you, ma’am, and so I tell you. Go on—you go away and I’ll tell him as you called, if you leave your name, and you can go and see him when we’re over this.’
‘Over what?’ Abby said, and looked about her at a couple of guttering lamps with uncleaned sooty chimneys, at dusty stairs and muddied floors. The place looked sorely neglected and she looked back at the woman with the candlestick. ‘Over what?’ she repeated.
From above stairs there was a sound of shuffling feet, and a curious thump, and someone said hoarsely, ‘You’ll have to manage on your own. There’s no one else I can send—I’ll bring the other myself when you return.’
Abby moved closer to the foot of the stairs to gaze upwards and the woman said with a sudden note of urgency in her voice, ‘For God’s sake, woman, go away, will you! Ain’t we got enough to worrit about without you comin’ pryin’ ’ere? I’m tellin’ you fer your own good to get out—now be about your business, will you!’
A figure came down the stairs, bent over and moving slowly with a burden of some sort thrown across its shoulders, and as it came into the light of the pair of candles Abby could see both the bearer and his burden more easily. His stoop could not disguise his height, and he was very thin, and lifted to Abby’s gaze a pale unshaven face below thinning rumpled hair. The burden he carried over his shoulder was also long and thin, and though it was shrouded in a grey sheet, its nature was quite obvious. He was carrying a corpse.
He looked at Abby blankly and then seemed to dismiss her, and went slowly along the passageway towards the rear of the building. ‘Open the door, Nancy,’ he grunted, and the woman with the candles hurried past him to open a door in the shadows.
‘ ’Ere y’are, Mr Snow,’ she said. ‘Mind the way now—I’ll lead you down—watch it—’ and then both light and sound went dwindling away as they both disappeared, leaving Abby in the faint lamplight and seized with considerable trepidation. But she was not a qualmish person so after a moment’s hesitation she picked up her skirts and went purposefully up the stairs. Whatever was happening here, she had come to see her father and see him she would.
At the top of the stairs there was more light, with candles stuck on shelves against the wall. A pair of big doors on one side of the hallway stood ajar, and she moved across the dusty wooden boards to push one open and go into the room beyond.
It was big, running from the front to the back of the house, with unshaded windows at each end which shone blackly, for the room was well lit. It was crammed full with people, she realized suddenly, more than she would have thought possible, for beds stood so close side by side along the walls that there was barely room for a human body to get between them, while two rows of flat pallets were arranged down the centre of the floor, head to tail. And each and every one was occupied.
Three people were moving about between the beds, and Abby blinked as she looked at them, trying to see who they were and then a faint cry came from a far corner, and she turned her head to look and then realized what had been most strange of all about the scene before her eyes.
Despite the crowdedness of the room it had been abnormally quiet. This was the first human sound she had heard since she came into the room, and the silence of the other people here made it seem infinitely poignant, infinitely sad.
