Paddington Green, page 33
She had sniffed loudly then and put her arm round the unresisting Abby and said, ‘I’m that glad to know you, Miss Abby. Knew abaht yer, o’ course, these many years. But never set eyes on yer. An’ you’re a credit to yer family, that you are—’
It was a compliment Abby found curiously warming and she had smiled at this burly and comforting woman, and went obediently to bid her father and Miss Ingoldsby a temporary farewell.
‘I shall return for the funerals,’ she said softly to Miss Ingoldsby, who had insisted that she was sufficiently recovered from her illness to rise and dress as usual, and who was looking as calm and capable as ever, if undoubtedly thinner. ‘You will send me word?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Miss Ingoldsby said. ‘And I am glad indeed that you were able to come, Abby. We had need of you here, but it was more than that. It warms me so to see you and your father on terms of amity again. It is sad it had to be on such an occasion, but—well, better now than never. You are friends again, and I am very glad of it.’
‘I too,’ Abby said. ‘You will take care of my father, Miss Ingoldsby? He is more shaken by his losses, I think, than he knows—’
‘I will indeed. You may rely upon me,’ Miss Ingoldsby said. At the note of fervour in her voice Abby looked at her sharply and to her amazement Miss Ingoldsby, the ever quiet and unruffled Miss Ingoldsby, flushed a brick-red and dropped her gaze in confusion.
There was a little silence and then Abby said carefully, ‘Will my mother’s death make you feel it is necessary that there should be changes in the household, Miss Ingoldsby?’
‘I am not sure I understand you, Abby?’
‘Oh, I think you do!’ Abby said gently. ‘You are very attached to my father, are you not?’
Miss Ingoldsby looked at her for a long moment, seeming to consider carefully and then nodded her head with a brisk little motion.
‘You are clearly perfectly aware that I bear him a great deal of affection, so there would be no point in dissembling. I have for some years known that I would reciprocate immediately if he made any— any sign of bearing an interest in me.’ She smiled a little wryly. ‘But of course he has not. I am after all, a poor little dab of a thing. Your brothers said so to me often enough when they were younger.’
‘Boys!’ Abby said, dismissing them. ‘That means nothing. You are— you are most personable, Miss Ingoldsby!’
‘Perhaps,’ she said calmly. ‘I think I could be, given the chance to wear the right clothes and to hold any worthwhile position in society. Looks are very much a matter of one’s station in life, after all. One never hears a lady of quality being described as anything but beautiful, while the most that will be allowed of a servant is that she may be pretty, even though any person with half an eye can see she completely outshines her betters in matters of looks. But whether or not I am personable has nothing to do with it. Your father is not one to be swayed by such attributes, I think.’
‘No,’ Abby said, and then smiled. ‘You will not feel it necessary to leave the house, then? Your position will be no more equivocal than it has ever been, after all. My mother’s helpless invalidism made her no sort of chaperone. And Martha is too young, I imagine, to be regarded in that light—’
Miss Ingoldsby smiled at that. ‘Martha is a person who may surprise you, Abby. She says little, but she thinks a great deal. And she is not so young! Four and twenty, after all! It may be she who will leave now. She has said to me before this that it was only her mother’s presence in this house that kept her here. I do not think I can take her into account in any future plans.’
‘Where will she go?’ Abby said, a little startled. ‘Is she planning to be wed?’ But Miss Ingoldsby shook her head. ‘You must speak to her of matters to do with her. I would not for the world intrude myself. That would be like gossiping. And I never gossip.’
‘No, I don’t suppose you do,’ Abby said. ‘Not even about your own affairs. For you are clearly going to tell me nothing, are you?’
And now Miss Ingoldsby smiled widely, showing very even white little teeth and, most surprisingly, a soft dimple at the corner of her mouth. ‘You are quite right, Abby. I am not. It is such a comfort to talk to someone with so keen an understanding!’
So Abby dismissed the matter from her mind, for there was no point now in thinking about it. After the funerals would be soon enough to worry about the future of the Gower Street establishment, now she could only ride back to Paddington Green in a hired carriage through the thin sunshine of the March day. She could think only about the way her very bones seemed to ache, about the headache behind her eyes that sent a sharp twinge through her whenever the carriage lurched over the cobbles, about the sense of emptiness within her.
She found Ellie awaiting her, alerted to her return by the efficient Nancy who had sent a messenger, and Miss Miller hovering anxiously in the sitting room door. All three of the children had come running out as her carriage drew up outside the house, Frederick to leap into her arms in an access of delight which almost bowled her over, Phoebe to pull eagerly at her skirts, and Oliver to stand a little to one side, shy and rather abashed by his sister’s noisy demands for Aunt Abby’s attentions.
‘Oh, Mamma!’ Frederick cried. ‘I have so missed you! Are you all right? Ellie and Miss Miller would only say there is an illness in your family, but I could not understand who she meant for there is only me and Oliver and Phoebe, and Uncle Jonah of course, and we knew you were not with him—’
She was in the house now, taking off her mantle, and she looked up sharply at that.
‘Jonah? He has not sent a message?’ she said over the children’s heads to Miss Miller, and she shook her head and said in her soft breathy little voice, ‘No, Mrs Caspar. That is to say, there is no message I can deliver now.’ She looked flustered as she spoke, and threw a glance at the children. ‘Go out to play now, children, do, and leave poor Mrs Caspar in some peace. We cannot talk properly at all with all of you here making such a din—’
Freddy looked over his shoulder at the governess, and then back at his mother, and his young face was troubled, and then he turned and seized Phoebe by the hand and said with a sort of forced gaiety, ‘Come along Phoebe! We shall have a treasure hunt in the garden, for real treasures. We shall hide a sugarplum and you shall eat it if you find it and Oliver shall have just the stone! Come on Oliver, for you never know—you may find it before she does—’ and he hustled his cousins away, throwing one last look over his shoulder at his mother, who tried to smile reassuringly at him; but she was so tired her face was stiff, and she could produce only a faint grimace.
‘What is it, Miss Miller?’ she said quietly as soon as the children were gone, and then turned in surprise as Ellie behind her threw up her apron to cover her face and burst into noisy sobs.
‘Whatever it is, Ellie,’ Abby said, and fear sharpened her voice, ‘do for heaven’s sake, stop that noise at once! What has happened? Please will somebody tell me what is amiss before you drive me completely out of my wits?’
‘Oh, those blessed little children!’ Ellie gulped and wiped her nose vigorously on her apron and then sniffed again and said with a deep gloom in her voice, ‘Those poor blessed motherless lambs!’ and there was a relish in her tone as she looked mournfully at her employer and shook her head. ‘Poor orphaned—’
’Ellie, I am sure Mrs Caspar needs some refreshment after her journey. And she is very fatigued, after so painful a time as she has had. Please to get some tea,’ Miss Miller said breathlessly and the maid threw her a withering look, for there was no love lost between her and the governess, who she regarded as a jumped up little madam; but she went away obediently enough after a glance at Abby, and Abby turned to Miss Miller with her eyebrows raised.
‘I am sorry, Mrs Caspar, to be the bearer of such news,’ she said after a moment and reddened in embarrassment. ‘Your brother—he came here two days ago. He was—he did not look well.’
‘You had best tell me as shortly as possible what has happened,’ Abby said, and sat down in her own favourite chair, but she did not relax, holding herself rigid, for she was so very tired that she feared that she would fall asleep if she once let go her carefully maintained control.
Miss Miller stood there, and looked at her, rubbing her hands against her skirts uneasily, and then blurted, ‘His wife is dead, Mrs Caspar. Killed herself.’
Abby stared at her, and then shook her head, unbelievingly. ‘Killed herself? It cannot be—’
Miss Miller nodded almost eagerly. ‘It is so, Mrs Caspar. There was even a notice about it in the Daily News. It was the police who found her in the Long Water. In the park—’
Abby sat and looked at her but she did not see her. It was as though she were looking at a picture through the reverse end of a telescope; a small figure dressed in green, standing on the bridge over the Serpentine, one hand up to shade the eyes, and gazing in her direction. She heard Jonah’s voice saying eagerly, ‘How capital to meet you here like this! We were coming to visit you before we take Phoebe home, for I so much wanted my wife to meet you,’ and he had turned to beckon the distant figure, and Abby too had looked and seen her running headlong over the bridge and away into the greenness of Hyde Park, and then glanced at Jonah and seen the expression of pain on his face. And she had chattered busily of nonsense, and done all she could to be cheerful and matter of fact as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
And now she was dead. Drowned in the Long Water in the park. Dead.
‘They say they come in threes,’ she said stupidly, and looked up at Miss Miller who was staring at her with an expression of mystification on her plain little face, and somehow Abby found that exquisitely funny, and she giggled. ‘They come in threes,’ she said again as though it was the most natural observation in the world, and still Miss Miller stared at her, but now with traces of alarm upon her face; it was too much for Abby and she giggled again, feeling laughter welling up in her, rising and bubbling until it burst over her head in a great salt wave and she was laughing and weeping and laughing again, completely and terrifyingly out of control of it all.
The hard reek of ammonia made her eyes smart and she hiccupped and coughed and took a deep shuddering breath and blinked up to see Ellie kneeling beside her with a bottle of smelling salts held under her nose and an expression of satisfaction on her eager face. And again Abby laughed, but this time shakily and with real amusement, not the helpless painful abandon that had so overwhelmed her. Clearly such a reaction was what Ellie expected from a lady of quality and sensitivity and her approval of her mistress was made very plain in the absurdly maternal way she helped her to her feet, and urged her to come to her bedchamber and bath and go to bed and take a little calves’ foot broth to restore her before she slept.
Abby let her lead her away, but stopped at the bottom of the stairs, holding on to the banisters for her legs felt suddenly very shaky, and looked back at Miss Miller.
‘Where is he now, Miss Miller? Do you know?’
The girl shook her head. ‘I do not, Mrs Caspar. He came, looking most distraught, and asked if the children could remain until such time as he had made, some arrangements, and in your absence I took it upon myself to say yes, for I was sure that—’
‘You were quite right, Miss Miller,’ Abby said, and suddenly yawned. ‘Of course they must remain here as long as is necessary. Ellie—’
The little maid nodded cheerfully and again urged her to climb the stairs. ‘Don’t you fret none, ma’am. There’s nothing to fret about, on account I can manage the three o’ them, no trouble at all! Young Master Oliver ain’t no worry to look after, and Master Freddy, ’e can get that impertinent little one to do all she should just with a word. We can manage well enough, ma’am, an’ you come to yer bed, for you’ve had such a shock as could be enough to send yer to yer grave—’
And at last Abby went to bed; weary, confused and almost numbed by the happenings of the past week, she sank into the depths of her own dear and familiar sheets and closed her eyes gratefully against the late afternoon light, and the sounds of the children’s voices from the garden below dwindled into the deepness of her sleep. It was so good to be at home again.
30
She woke suddenly to lie staring up at the ceiling of her room. It was not completely dark for the moon was full and she could see the cold light making a lattice pattern on the white plaster above her head. She closed her eyes again and tried to remember what it was that had woken her. She felt uneasy and somehow strange and she turned her head on her pillow, and tried to turn her body. And then it seized her again, and she knew at once that it was this that had roused her; a deep sickening pain low in her belly that made it seem as though some large and very cold hand had been able to slide itself into her vitals to take her in its cruel grasp, and squeeze and twist.
She lay rigid for a moment, holding her breath, thinking obscurely, ‘It will stop in a moment,’ and it was almost as though she were in childbed again and there was a baby within her demanding to be freed, pushing its painful way against her overstretched flesh. But it gripped tighter and it wasn’t like a childbirth at all, for that had been a glorious pain, and bearable because of what it was. This was ugly and useless and so cruel and she could not help a little whimper escaping her.
It subsided then, not entirely but enough to make it possible to move a little gingerly, and then the other sensation came; nausea filling her stomach so that it seemed to press up against her teeth, filling her chest and then her arms and legs, every part of her with the absolute certainty that at any moment she would cast up her accounts, and that it would be altogether horrible and foul and somehow she must get out of bed and to the washstand in the corner; and then the gripe again, and an even more urgent need to get up and deal with these animal functions, and she rolled her head on the pillow and whimpered again.
She managed to get out of bed, half crawling and half falling across her room to reach the washstand and hold on to it, retching so painfully that it seemed she would be turned inside out; and the need to purge increased and added its own burden of misery and she struggled to cope as best she could, feeling more ill than she could ever remember being in all her life.
It seemed to go on for hours, as the light of the moon thinned and the room blackened, and at one point she woke to fmd herself lying crumpled and curled up on the floor beside her washstand and realized she must have swooned, and then gone into a deep sleep, for she was stiff and so cold that she shivered uncontrollably. And then realized that she was not cold at all but very hot and it was this that made her tremble so; and she dragged herself back to bed clutching a bowl from her washstand and collapsing helplessly on to its tumbled covers.
She lay there as the light changed again, thinning into dawn, tossing and retching and bent double over the agonizing pains that shook her, and the bed that had seemed so blissful a place so short a time ago now seemed in some sort a prison, and she wanted to get away from it, and run free outside on the grey dawnlit grass of the Green, leaving her painracked body behind. And knew, with some cool corner of her mind that she was half delirious, half wandering in her wits, and was suddenly very frightened.
But that was not all her fear. Beneath the sensations from stomach and belly that battered consciousness, beneath the distaste that filled her because of the hateful way her body kept throwing out of itself the illness that filled it, lay a greater deeper fear. She could see her mother’s dead face on its white lace trimmed pillow, could see William’s blank-eyed lax-mouthed stare in the midst of its tumbled sheets, each face seeming to be very small and then coming closer so that it overwhelmed her, and then receding and returning again, each in turn, over and over again. And the word rattled through her mind like an urgent drum beat. ‘Cholera, cholera, cholera.’
She tried to push the fear away, but it filled her even more, adding to the burden of her sickness so much that she cried aloud, ‘Don’t let me die! Don’t let me die!’ but it came as a hoarse croak, and she whimpered again, rolling her head on her pillow and feeling the tears running down her face like hot rain.
And then Ellie was there, peering down at her with her face huge and wide-eyed and her voice chattering over her in a cascade of sound but she could not understand the words; and then there was the cool touch of air on her face, and she turned her head and saw it was daylight and the window had been opened and she shivered and someone said, ‘There—don’t fret—don’t fret.’ She looked up and blinked and the face was that of a strange man and that puzzled her and she tried to remember who he was, for there was something familiar about his face. And then she could feel a hard rim of china against her lips and liquid filling her parched mouth and obediently she swallowed and grimaced for it tasted sweet and salt together, and she felt the retching start again, and her head was being held and she felt for one brief moment a little better, not so frightened; and she opened her eyes and tried to see and could not and the fear returned.
Blackness again, sleep and dry-mouthed wakings, and more sleep and then she opened her eyes and saw lamplight and Frederick’s face and was so filled with agitation that she tried to sit up and tell him to go away, right away, for it was dangerous to be with her, but she could only croak that same hoarse sound and his round face creased with anxiety and receded and she relaxed again, glad he was gone.
She began to dream. She was walking in cool woods, among shadows and sunlight, and water trickled somewhere, sweet and singing over pebbles, and she skipped and sang with it. And then it rained and it was cool rain, scented like eau de cologne and lay across her hot forehead and cheeks like a benison. She smiled in the woods, turning her face up to the rain and saw with no sense of surprise at all that Gideon was there, his hand holding hers, and stroking her forehead and bringing more of that cool scented water to her hot face. His voice was gentle but it told her what to do in a bantering sort of way and that made her laugh aloud, or so she thought, but she could not hear her own laughter. Only Gideon’s voice murmuring her name, telling her to lie still and sleep, telling her to drink, and out of the rainy sunlit sky of the woods in which she was still walking came a cup and she drank from it, and it tasted cool and sweet and did not make her retch at all, and she was grateful and happy and comfortable, and breathed deeply and slept.
