The Rose of Sebastopol (12 page)

 

 

A
s soon as Henry came back to England
at the end of May he wrote and asked if he could call the next evening.

Rosa and her mother were by now so well established in Fosse House that they had ceased either to be treated or to behave as guests. The household revolved around the needs of Aunt Isabella, who could not be left for more than a few minutes, her state of health, said the doctor, being too precarious and her state of mind too fragile. In the late afternoons she was helped out of bed and brought downstairs in time to eat a substantial meal and afterwards reclined in Mother’s place on the sofa with her feet up on a cushion I’d embroidered with two peacocks, beak to beak. She held a copy of Mrs. Gaskell’s
Cranford
but I never actually saw her turn a page. Instead she stared at each of us in turn and sighed, as if drawing attention to the fact that she too would be usefully occupied, if only she had the strength. This particular evening, presumably in honor of our visitor, she was wearing a flirtatious lace stole and an ostentatious sapphire ring.

Father read
The Times
under a lamp. At one point he muttered: “Still at sea, many of the troops . . . Appalling journey for horses ... Carried under sail rather than steam ... Don’t understand it . . .”

Mother was writing a letter arguing the case for the installation of a lift in the governesses’ home so that hot food might be conveyed swiftly from the kitchen to the dining room, and Rosa was making a sketch of me.

Despite what she’d told Barbara, Rosa’s education in art, as in so many other subjects, was vastly superior to my own, because she had sat in on the tutorials arranged for Max during the many spells he was in between schools. Her folder contained sheaves of half-finished work and when she first arrived she had leafed hastily through, pulled out the occasional sheet, and flashed it in front of me: “What do you think? Perspective’s all wrong, wouldn’t you say ... ?” She thrust it out of sight before I had the chance to form an opinion. I glimpsed Max standing up on the swing with his long frame idling against the ropes, a cluster of cottages in the village, Isabella reclining on a couch set in the drawing room window, and me, little Mariella, in the Italian Garden. I looked very glum and Rosa had caught my childish timidity with what I suspected was unnerving accuracy, the slightly concave posture as I put my hands behind my back and leant on the wall, head to one side.

She said she wanted a new picture of me in which she hoped to invest a little of what she called Barbara Leigh Smith’s
energy
, and had therefore begun a series of studies. She was perched on a low footstool, back very straight, skirts pooled around her feet. Her charcoal squeaked, her hair slipped forward and had to be pushed behind her ears with a careless movement of her left hand, and either her head was gracefully poised over her work or she was tilting it back as she glanced at me. Her gaze was unfocused, so that she seemed to be looking into rather than at me, which made me feel transparent. That night in particular I did not want her to find out what I was thinking, because of course my whole being was concentrated on Henry.

Aunt Isabella watched Rosa with a proud glare like a mother cat’s. She said: “A
Dr.
Thewell is calling this evening, you say.”

There was a pause as Mother’s attention shifted from the composition of her letter. “Henry is a surgeon, Sister, not a physician. I’m afraid it’s no use discussing your symptoms with him, I doubt he knows a great deal about conditions of the heart.”

“Rosa tells me he is very highly thought of in medical circles.”

“He certainly sits on a number of government boards and committees to do with health. He was especially selected to go to Turkey before the war and oversee arrangements for any wounded soldiers.”

“He must be quite old then, to have achieved so much.”

“Not so old. Thirty.”

Aunt was silent for a moment but her gaze swiveled from Rosa to me. “I forget the exact family relationship between Mariella and this Dr. Thewell.”

Mother’s tone was a little exasperated. “They are second cousins, as I’ve told you.”

Another silence while Mother’s pen dashed across the page. We were braced for the next question. “What was it she died of?”

“Consumption, I believe. We were never sure.”

“Ah.” A long silence. Glancing up I saw that a faint smile had quirked the corner of her mouth. “We see such little company here, Sister, I can’t help taking an interest in the few visitors we do have. At Stukeley we were scarcely alone for a day at a time. Sometimes carriages had to queue at the door in the afternoons.”

“Ella, you’ve moved again,” said Rosa. “Chin up, please, and look a little further to the left.”

When the clock struck eight I glanced at Mother for permission to leave the room, threw my shawl round my shoulders, and went down the garden to unlock the gate. Then I walked back and forth, taking deep breaths of the June air as the hem of my gown brushed a border of lavender and a gray moth fluttered in the ivy. I might just hear Henry’s footsteps in the lane but otherwise I would have no notice of his arrival until the gate opened.

A snick of the latch and there he was, half hidden by leaves, hat under his arm, jacket slung over his shoulder. I could hardly catch my breath, he was so beautiful and so distinguished with his expectant gaze and moustache clipped in a new, possibly Hungarian, style.

He hugged me like a brother, kissed my hand and drew it through his arm. I now registered other alterations; there was a tic in the muscle of his jaw that came and went like a pulse, and though he looked tired he was quite tanned, presumably from the sea voyage. I measured the kiss he had given me against all the others I had received from him and knew that it had been more lingering than usual but by no means as presumptuous as Max Stukeley’s. He smelt of sunshine, sweat, soap, and, inevitably, of sickness.

We stood in the seclusion of the wilderness while I told him about our visitors. “My aunt is keen to discuss her symptoms and my cousin Rosa wants you to take her on a visit to the hospital and turn her into a doctor.”

“Does she indeed? Then let’s stay out here for the evening where there’s just you and me and nobody wants anything.”

“You wait until you meet Rosa. She’s extraordinary. I’d forgotten how dull she makes me feel.”

“How dare anyone make my Mariella feel bad about herself? No, I want to see your Rosa less and less.”

We took the longest possible route up to the house through the wilderness and over the lawn. A thrush ran across the grass ahead of us and our feet trod a carpet of needles under the cedar. “Was your trip to Pest successful?” I asked.

“Definitely, yes. I shall be writing a paper for the
British Medical Journal
and have been invited to deliver a public lecture. But whether I’ll get anyone at Guy’s to change their practices is another matter.”

“What changes would you like to see? ”

We had made a slow rotation of the lawn and were now hidden from the house by the cedar’s great trunk. “Let me look at you,” he said as I stood with my back to the tree, my eyes on the rose arch behind his left shoulder. A lock of my hair had blown loose and ruffles of my muslin gown were flying up in the breeze. Beyond the cedar the garden faded into dusk.

“Mariella.” I risked a glance into his eyes and was a little frightened. “Whenever I am away, you draw me back. I hope that will always be the case. I hope that you will always be a beacon, guiding me home.”

He took my hand and drew me closer until I was pressed to his chest and his other hand was on my back. With a pang of grief I understood that he would never touch me again as the friend who used to gallop my eight-year-old self across this same lawn and swing me up into the cedar so that I perched, helpless with laughter, squealing to be lifted down. For one dizzy moment I thought that if I looked up I would see my own white-stockinged legs in the tree above.

“Mariella? ”

His face was so near mine that I felt his breath on my forehead. The expression in his eyes was part smiling, part heavy and distracted. For a moment the kiss was suspended between us and his fingers, gripping my hand, were crushed by our bodies. The juxtaposition of two times confused me; at that moment I was both child and woman and there was something in the heat of his hand on my back and the pressure of his leg amongst my skirts that made me hesitate. His moustache pricked my skin but his lips were soft; he tasted of tea and his tongue jabbed insistently between my teeth. I was so shocked that it was all I could do not to jerk my head away. Afterwards I hung in his arms and turned away my face. “I’m tired of waiting,” he whispered.

I nodded, he drew my hand through his arm, and we walked on, just a very few steps across the lawn, over the paved terrace, and up the three steps to the house.

“At last,” called Mother, pushing aside her letter and putting up her cheek to be kissed by Henry. Father flung down his paper, Aunt Isabella held out a limp hand, and Rosa sprang to her feet so that her drawing materials went rattling to the floor. “Finally, the medical second cousin,” she said, looking him in the eye and shaking hands with a vigor learnt from Miss Leigh Smith.

Henry helped gather up the charcoals then surveyed the room fondly as if to check that everything was in place. Lamp-light fell on the patterns of roses in the pale green carpet, on the swags and tassels which held back the pink summer curtains, on the little round table at which my mother had been writing her letter, and on Rosa’s golden head. Meanwhile, dazed by what had happened in the garden, I sank down in my chair, picked up my sewing, and made a succession of bad stitches.

Father at once engaged Henry in a conversation about the war. “They are hanging about,” he said, “Gallipoli, Malta, Constantinople. They should be taking up strongholds along the coast of Russia itself. Inaction is poison to an invading army. When you were out there, could you see any reason why they would become so entrenched?”

“Only that Constantinople and Varna in Bulgaria, where the troops are based, are both very beautiful places. Perhaps our generals prefer to go sightseeing rather than to battle. At any rate, it’s surely better that nobody is killing each other yet.”

“Apparently you were sent to ensure that proper arrangements had been made for casualties. What were your recommendations?” asked Rosa.

There was a moment of surprised silence at the boldness of her clear, feminine voice. Henry stared at her for a moment and I was afraid that she had offended him. “Nothing extraordinary, as I recall, Miss Barr. Everything has changed with the advent of steamships. The wounded soldiers can be transported home in a matter of days, so emergency field stations are all that’s required. But there may not be any major battles to speak of. Warfare is so different now—the threat of our superior fire-power might well be enough.”

“Of course there will be battles. It’s hardly likely that the government will go to the great expense of sending thousands of troops out there only to bring them home again.”

“Token battles, we hope. The Russians are in for a tough time, given the sophistication of our weapons. Our new rifles, for instance, are lethally accurate from a considerable distance.”

“A great opportunity for those young men,” said Father. “I wish I was twenty years younger.”

“And yet the generals in charge, as I understand it, are all old men,” said Rosa. “Lord Raglan, for instance, is sixty-five years old, and has only got one arm, for goodness’ sake. Isn’t it the case that most of them served under Wellington in the wars against Bonaparte forty-odd years ago?”

“Experience tells more than youth, Rosa. You’ll learn that in time. My niece is a very impatient young lady,” said Father fondly. “She has shaken us all up.”

“But in a war when, as you say, there are new weapons, what good will these old men be? ” her voice rang out, and she put her head on one side as if to challenge Henry.

“I can’t comment,” said Henry, laughing. “I’m a medical man, not a tactician. Though it’s certainly the case that in medicine we young men long to shake up the system but are kept down by the caution of our old masters.”

“The truth is,” said Rosa, “no-one knows what will happen in a war. My stepbrother Max told me that. He said that the unexpected was one of the reasons he liked being a soldier. And yet you speak as if the outcome was certain.” She picked up her sketch pad, indicating that there was nothing more to say on the subject.

“Poor Max,” put in Aunt Isabella, who had never shown any feelings other than disapproval for her stepson until this moment, “I do worry about him. He’s in the Ninety-seventh Derbyshire regiment. The trouble with Max is he will get himself into trouble. When he went to Australia he nearly died of thirst walking in the desert. Until he’s home safe and sound, I shall never get a wink of sleep. But you, Dr. Thewell, you must know some very influential people if you were sent out to Turkey by the government. Back on our Derbyshire estate, Stukeley, I was used to all kinds of company. My late husband was a justice of the peace and a great landowner and industrialist. We knew every good family for forty miles. I’ve found it very quiet, since we came to Clapham.”

“You’ve hardly been well enough for company, Sister,” said Mother.

My aunt smiled woefully and shook her head.

“I have always rejoiced in the peace and quiet in this house,” said Henry and went to look over Rosa’s shoulder first at me, then my picture, so that my cheeks burnt.

“You won’t credit it, Dr. Thewell,” said Isabella, “but in my younger, healthier days I have been used to entertaining forty people to dinner and holding balls and garden parties for a hundred. Rosa has been brought up to hold her own in the highest circles.”

“That Derbyshire could offer,” put in Rosa.

Henry was still behind her and I wondered if anyone else noticed the expression in his eye when he studied the picture. “It’s wonderful,” he said. “You’ve absolutely got her.”