‘Have you and Archie talked about it?’ she asked, suddenly appalled by the notion.
‘Yes, but he only confirmed what I had suspected. I did not think it my place to raise the matter with you.’
She nodded in acknowledgement.
‘But I am always here to listen,’ he added.
Sarah swallowed, his solicitude threatening to prompt more tears.
‘It’s easy to think you can cope with the prospect of impending loss until you are actually confronted with it,’ she said. ‘I knew Mrs Glassford could not be saved. And nor can Archie. It is possible to hide from that reality when you don’t know how much time you have. But now Mrs Glassford is dead …’
She closed her eyes a moment.
‘I am so afraid, Will, but I cannot tell Archie how scared I am. He needs me to be strong. He should not have to comfort me. It must be the other way around.’
‘Archie would not wish you to bear your fears alone.’
‘You do not understand, Will. I cannot tell him my fears, for they are shameful. There is a cowardly part of me that wishes he was already gone, because I cannot face what lies ahead.’
Tears came once more, and again she sought solace in Raven’s embrace. She felt the warmth of him, an easy familiarity about his touch, his smell, and something stirred in her: something that had not been forgotten. She had a glimpse of comfort, of a companion who would help her carry the burden of her coming pain, and of a future that might lie beyond it. Then it vanished when she remembered the reason such a future could not happen: a burden she would have to carry alone. Quite literally.
The last time they spoke, Mrs Glassford had expressed her fear that she was being punished for wanting more. For her defiance. Sarah had assured her otherwise, but now she feared that she was being punished too. She would be left on her own, not merely a widow, but a widow with a child on the way.
It had been easy to fall for Archie, because it felt like there would be no risk in doing so, and that was the danger. She had told herself that it was a noble friendship, offering him comfort while she enjoyed his company. Looking back, it was impossible to trace the point when friendship no longer felt enough. No single increment had seemed like a step too far, and with each little step she had fallen a little further in, still believing it was something transient, something temporary. By the time she saw how far she had come, it was too late to turn back.
With Raven, it had not been tiny increments. It had been giant leaps into the void. He had made her reckless in a way she could not bring herself to regret. He had made so many things seem possible, but then he had withdrawn it all, retreating behind his studies as an excuse. A man who had seemed so dangerous, so unlike other medical men, had suddenly become fearful, acquiescent of all their rules and strictures; reeled in by convention, by concern for what others might think of him.
With Archie, there was no fear of it all being withdrawn because, paradoxically, that was a certainty. She had thought that knowing it was temporary would make it easier. In practice, the opposite was true. Every day she saw the life they might have had together; how good they were for one another (though all the while there hung the question of whether they would have been together had Archie not known what was approaching).
When he asked her to marry him, she had no doubts, no second thoughts. How could she deny him? How could she deny herself? It was true that she had glimpsed the pain to come, but it seemed a speck of cloud on the distant horizon when all around was sunshine and warmth.
Now the sky was black, and when the rains, the thunder and the lightning commenced, she would be alone.
THIRTY-NINE
he rule of man is consolidated by structure, by the erection of institutions. And though a woman might sometimes rule an institution, it is the laws of men that she upholds, and primarily she does so to protect her own position. She prosecutes the laws of men more strictly than men themselves because she knows her power is merely borrowed. She is in permanent fear of the power that has been entrusted to her, and she is merely its vessel and their instrument. As long as she is wielding power in the interests of those who handed it to her, then she knows she will not find herself on the wrong end of it. This is true whether she be in charge of a schoolroom, a hospital or indeed a household, and I can testify to the truth of this in all cases.
Upon the stage in my memory is a parlour in Canonmills, Edinburgh. It was bright and airy, with a view to the Water of Leith from the windows. On this day the chairs were turned from the fireplace towards a low table upon which tea would be served. As though counting down the time to this decorous moment, a recently polished clock was ticking on the recently polished sideboard. All was neat and ordered, a world away from Cumberland Street or the Belmont Institute.
The audience might believe it to be the set for one of those lighter plays about social mores, replete with competing suitors and comic misunderstanding. They would not realise that what they were looking at was in fact an arena for blood sport.
This was the living room of Mrs Olivia Dempster, wherein a number of ladies would soon gather: old friends, good friends. They would sip tea. They would nibble delicately at cake. They would smile warmly at one another. And all the while, they would be vigilant of their own defences and gimlet-eyed in the lookout for a weakness in someone else’s armour that might let them slip a blade between her ribs.
Mrs Emily Robertson would not be attending today, though in her absence she would be the focus of more attention than her presence ever commanded. She had had to withdraw from polite company because her youngest daughter had been caught reading something inappropriate.
Everyone would be sympathetic, everyone would be sorry for her trouble, and everyone would be secretly delighted. Thrilled, in fact: not merely relieved that it did not happen to them, for the retention of mere equilibrium was no cause for excitement. Every time someone else fell, they embraced it as proof that they were better than she, and a vindication of the way they each ran their own homes and raised their families.
It was like a dance: it made its own self-contained sense, and required a grace and skill to execute it. But equally, if you could not hear the music, the movement and posturing would seem absurd, the orchestration slavish.
It took me a long time to hear the music, though I quickly understood that I would never be permitted to partake of the dance itself.
Martha was already in the parlour, waiting for me to join her in making final preparations for the guests.
She called out as I descended the stairs: ‘Mary, time waits for no man!’
It was a knowing remark, urging me to make haste by using a favoured expression of her mother’s.
I was fastening the last button on my dress as I came in. It was cornflower blue and a little baggy because it belonged to Martha first, but I nonetheless enjoyed having the occasion to dress in something fine. I had just changed out of my working clothes. My morning had been busier than normal, preparation for Mrs Dempster’s at-home supplementing my usual duties. As well as helping the cook, I had been beating carpets, dusting furniture, polishing tables and cleaning up after the household’s three dogs and two cats. Having been raised in the country, Mrs Dempster liked to have animals around her. She also rode, though she did not own a horse. She did, however, own a horsewhip.
Martha’s preparation for this gathering had been to spend the morning practising the pianoforte for the recital she was to give. She was nervous about the prospect, concerned about disappointing the guests and terrified of letting her mother down. She did not understand that the guests would be disappointed only if she played flawlessly. Martha had been too cosseted to see the real world that rotted beneath the painted façades.
I remember the first time I laid eyes upon Martha, though more vividly I remember how she smelled. She emerged red-cheeked from the warmth of the kitchen, the happy odours of fresh baking enveloping her. She looked at me with an anxious curiosity, excited in her anticipation but a litt
le apprehensive too.
‘This is Mary,’ Mrs Dempster had said. ‘She’s going to be living here now.’
I often thought back to this choice of words, how I hadn’t been described as Martha’s stepsister, nor as being adopted. The blurring of status had begun immediately.
It took me a long time to realise that when Mrs Dempster had queried the propriety of her friend Mrs Kirkwood’s foot upon my back, it wasn’t because she was appalled. Rather, she was excited by this demonstration of submissiveness.
The adoption rendered me no better than an indentured servant. It was through the diligent efforts of Mrs Kirkwood that many a household was able to procure a maid they might otherwise struggle to afford.
Mrs Dempster got to bask in her peers’ admiration for her charity in taking me in, but her friends also understood that she should not be expected to treat this foundling as an equal to her real daughter. In their eyes, Mrs Dempster had raised me far above my origins, and I ought to be grateful for that much.
Olivia adopted her from an orphanage in Glasgow.
I’ve heard the father was a derelict.
What of the mother?
I can but imagine the worst.
I wanted to tell them that my father had been a captain in the army, a hero of Waterloo, and that my mother was an actress said to be the equal of Madame Vestris. I wanted them to question the stories they were telling themselves by providing an alternative narrative of my own. There was no opportunity to do so. No one ever asked. No one was ever interested enough.
I always had the impression that Martha was fond of me, though it was in the same way as she was fond of the dogs. She was by turns affectionate towards them and amused by them, but there was no question that they were creatures for her to take or leave as she pleased.
Martha laughed at me when I entered the room.
‘What is amiss?’ I asked.
‘You have soot upon your forehead,’ she replied, amused.
I automatically reached towards my head with my sleeve, but Martha’s hand restrained me. She produced a handkerchief and wiped the mark away.
‘Whether on your face or on your sleeve, a sooty mark is not to be tolerated when presenting one’s girls in company.’
Martha wore a knowing smirk as she spoke. If we enjoyed a degree of sorority, it was in having a common foe.
‘You mean as though I’ve just arrived here fae a manky back court,’ I replied, reverting to my original accent.
The way I spoke now was a token of Mrs Dempster’s ‘civilising’ of me.
I remembered some of the teachers at the Institute correcting mistakes in the children’s grammar, and insisting upon what they called the proper words for things in place of the terms we had grown up using. Some of the children were merely confused by this. Others, such as myself, understood the status of the new terms, but continued to use the old ones in everyday conversation.
To Mrs Dempster, however, my very pronunciation gave offence. It sounded ‘coarse and uncouth’, as she put it. ‘Your accent is redolent of the gutter. It is a stench we must scrub away.’
I found it easy enough to adapt. At the Institute, I had sometimes amused my friends by speaking in the manner of the Reverend Gillies or one of the teachers. I soon learned to speak to Mrs Dempster’s satisfaction, but a part of me felt I was being tamed and resented it. I resolved that one day I would go out in the world and speak as I pleased.
In the meantime, my old way of speaking was always guaranteed to make Martha laugh; though seldom as much as when I exaggerated my new elocution and pretended to be Mrs Dempster.
I put the back of my hand to my newly clean forehead, feigning shock and outrage.
‘I will not suffer you to speak in such a manner beneath my roof.’
I bathed in the glow of Martha’s amusement. At such times I understood what it must feel like to be on the stage, for one’s performance to delight an audience.
‘Any young woman evincing such shoddy enunciation might just as well present herself in rags, for she will be making plain the squalor of her provenance, no matter if she be wearing the finest silks from Kennington and Jenner.’
Then I saw the change, the brief flash of alarm in Martha’s face, the reddening of cheeks as her eyes turned to the floor.
Mrs Dempster was behind me. She had heard every word.
I turned around slowly. Mrs Dempster did not even speak my name.
‘To your room. At once,’ was all she said.
I retreated up the stairs, one of the dogs scurrying after me.
My room was little more than a cupboard, space only for a bed and a washstand. Nonetheless, I recall how pleased I once was that this little space was mine alone, never having had such privacy. There were times when it served to make me feel isolated, however – no more so than when I had been banished there, awaiting punishment.
I had assumed that my insolence would guarantee exclusion from the afternoon’s events, but I soon realised my error. I could not be excluded, for I was an important part of the tableau. I was to be the polite, smartly presented and grateful stepdaughter who had been elevated by the supreme charity of Mrs Dempster in taking me in and providing me with the opportunity to better myself.
I heard one of the dogs on the boards outside, then the heavier tread of Mrs Dempster, who shooed the creature away. It obeyed, as all the house’s lower creatures did.
She came in, closed the door behind her and turned to face me, only feet away in the cramped little room.
I felt a familiar tightening in my chest. I knew it was pointless to protest or even to express my penitence. Nothing would stop what now must be done.
Mrs Dempster gestured with the horsewhip.
I assumed the position, bending over the bed as I had done so many times before.
‘Pull up your dress,’ Mrs Dempster commanded. ‘I have guests coming and I do not wish to leave a mark.’
On the fabric, she meant.
It was a fiercer thrashing than I had endured in some years. The earliest ones had been the worst. ‘Like breaking in a horse,’ Mrs Dempster had said.
On this occasion, there seemed to be real fury in the strokes and in the duration. She only desisted when blood was drawn, and even then, I suspect, only because it might seep through and become visible. Appearances had to be preserved, after all, because within a half hour I was to be downstairs, pretending all was well.
I played the part that was expected of me: smiling, content and grateful before the guests. Having learned to mask my suffering, I was dry-eyed, giving no indication of pain or injury.
As it happened, there were tears shed at the end of that day, though they were not mine.
One of the dogs became ill sometime in the evening, writhing and squealing on the floor of the kitchen. The creature’s agony would not pass, and it was in a state of such conspicuous distress that in the end Mr Dempster had to despatch it. I heard the awful keening and yelping suddenly silenced, though it was soon to be replaced by Martha’s own howling lamentation.
‘She must have eaten something she shouldn’t,’ Mr Dempster opined, commencing an enquiry as to precisely what and how, in case any of the others might soon fall victim to the same affliction.
He discovered that the pantry door had been left unlatched, and in its hungry curiosity, the animal had dislodged some items from the only shelf it could reach. One of those was a basket of stale crusts, which it had upended. Unfortunately, another of the things it had toppled was a paper bag of arsenic, purchased the previous year when Mrs Dempster spied a rat in the pantry. The contents of the bag had partly spilled among the crusts, and it appeared the poor dog had poisoned itself.
Mrs Dempster had not seemed particularly moved by the loss of the dog, but she did appear stricken at the sight of her daughter’s distress, and her inability to assuage it.
For my part, I observed the reactions of both with a detached fascination, the appeal of which I could not at first apprehend.
But as I watched Martha’s tears and the helplessness of a mother unable to comfort her daughter, I came to understand the effect it was having upon me.
I found their anguish nourishing.
FORTY
rs Glassford’s remains arrived at 52 Queen Street towards the end of the morning. She was brought there upon a cart, which had to sit in place until the clinic was over so that the patients would not witness the body being carried inside by Raven and Jarvis. The butler’s face was unreadable throughout the short journey, with no hint of discomfort or clue as to what introspection might be going on regarding the unusual duties his appointment required of him.
The man was indeed a mystery to Raven, but, despite an air of cold detachment often bordering on disdain, he found it difficult to believe anything truly wicked or deceitful of the fellow. Of course, he reminded himself, the ability to present such a façade would provide the perfect disguise for such wickedness and dishonesty.
The small waiting room at the back of the house had been closed off to allow a post-mortem to take place. Dr Simpson had requested Raven carry out the examination himself, having received an urgent summons to attend to a lady at Tait’s hotel. An examination table had been placed in the middle of the room and several lamps lit due to the dullness of the day. The bleak weather seemed appropriate to the task that Raven had been given, congruent with his mood, but as he rolled up his sleeves a shaft of winter sun broke through the cloud, illuminating innumerable motes of dust as they spun in effortless spirals above the shrouded corpse on the table.
Raven paused for a moment, considering how fleeting our existence could be, how suddenly death could arrive. He thought of Archie Banks, who had seized life with unrestrained vigour once presented with its cruel shortening. He could not help but reflect upon the comparative wisdom of certain choices he himself had made; though ultimately his doubts all came down to one choice in particular.
Holding her in his arms had brought back so many feelings he had thought lay buried. Though it hurt to see her upset, and the thought of her torment to come caused an ache in him, the warmth of her embrace made him aware of how cold he had been. It took a burst of her sunlight to remind him he had been living in darkness.
The Art of Dying Page 17
