‘He followed us,’ Euphemia assured her. ‘In Nan’s carriage with Will and Totty. He’s home too.’
‘Ah!’ Caroline sighed with exhausted satisfaction, and slept at once.
Henry’s sensible practitioner arrived forty minutes later.
Dr Brambling was one of those doctors who can make a patient feel better simply by walking into the room. He was a tall, awkward, avuncular man, with a shock of perpetually untidy grey hair, a bush of a beard, and a craggy face. Everything about him was larger than life, from his booming voice to his size twelve feet, but his size and awkwardness were deceptive. His hands might look clumsy but they were actually extremely tender and skilled.
Now he ran them softly over Caroline’s aching spine, and along the ridges of scar tissue in her arms where Dr Owen had applied his ferocious cups, and made murmuring noises of encouragement to her.
‘You have been poorly, my dear. Yes, indeed. I can see that. Very very poorly. Is that tender? Yes, yes. I can see it is. Well now, we must build you up again, mustn’t we? Can’t have you tumbling down, eh? Leave that to London Bridge.’
The childish joke was oddly comforting. It was what he always said to Harry when the poor little thing had a fever.
‘Now tell me,’ he said, in his nice gossipy way, ‘what brought this about, eh? When did you fall ill?’
So they told him, because he was the sort of man it was easy to confide in. Euphemia began with an abridged version of the court case and Caroline’s collapse and from there they both went on to describe her illness and the terrible weakness she suffered when she was bled and purged, and he listened quietly, patting his patient’s hands from time to time, until the tale was told.
‘Well now, Mrs Easter,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you need to be bled any more, my dear, nor purged either. What you need is fresh air, nourishing food and plenty of rest, as advocated by the good Miss Nightingale. And I think we could dispense with darkened rooms. If you are strong enough to withstand a journey, a little sunlight will do nothing but good, eh?’
And certainly drawing the curtains and letting in the daylight transformed the room and made them all feel infinitely better.
‘That’s an improvement, upon me life,’ the doctor said. ‘Now I can see you. Would you just put out your tongue for me, my dear?’
‘Keep her in bed,’ he said to Will and Euphemia when his examination was over and they were downstairs in the front parlour. ‘Tempt her to eat. Let her sleep when she will. Sleep is a great healer. I will call back tomorrow evening and see how she is, but I feel fairly certain she will soon be on the mend. There is only one other piece of advice I should like to offer.’
Will looked a query at him.
‘I think it would be helpful to hire another nurse to assist Miss Callbeck. If it were not ungallant,’ he said to Euphemia, ‘I should say you look as weary as your patient, my dear, and we can’t have that, now can we? You need to rest too from time to time, you know, to keep up your strength.’
It was such excellent advice that they took it as soon as he’d left the house, for after working for six months in London hospitals Euphemia knew exactly where to find a good nurse. And the girl she wrote to was Taffy Biggs, care of St Bartholomew’s.
That evening Henry took a tray full of small tempting dishes up to the bedroom and began the gentle task of coaxing his darling to eat. He sat beside her on the bed and fed her with a spoon, one small mouthful at a time, as if she were a child. And with every spoonful he stroked her hair and kissed her cheek and told her how very very much he loved her.
‘Just a little bit more of this nice tender chicken,’ he urged. ‘Or a spoonful of the sauce, eh? You could swallow that, couldn’t you my dearest?’
She did her best, even though the effort exhausted her.
Finally when she’d eaten all she could, he put the tray aside, took up her hairbrush and brushed her poor shorn head.
She thanked him wearily, her face very pale in the gaslight.
‘I would do anything to make you well,’ he said. ‘Anything. I love you so much.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I can see.’
‘I am so very sorry I shook you,’ he said. ‘If I could undo it…’
She put her fingers on her lips to stop him. She remembered their row, but distantly, as though it had happened to someone else. It was unimportant now. ‘Hush,’ she said. ‘There is no need.’
‘There is,’ he said, with anguished repentance. ‘There is. If you are ever to love me again,’ – and oh how much he hoped she would love him again! – ‘you must know how much I regret…’
Her fingers pressed his words away again. ‘I do love you,’ she said. ‘Hush! Hush! I do.’
‘Oh my dearest!’ he said, catching her tender fingers and kissing them most lovingly. ‘I will never ever …’
This time she put up her mouth and stopped his anguish softly with a kiss. ‘I am home,’ she said, gazing her love straight into his eyes. ‘It is enough.’
That night Henry slept in the blue room, next door to the nursery and a mere two doors away from his darling. Or to be more accurate, Henry passed the night in the blue room and for an hour or two actually lay in the bed and dozed, but he was far too happy to do anything so mundane as to sleep. She was home. They were together. The nightmare was over.
Caroline slept soundly all night long too, without nightmare or fever. And the next morning she sat up and ate an egg for breakfast. And although she dozed for most of the day, by the evening she was well enough to eat nearly everything on her invalid tray. When Dr Brambling put his head round the door at eleven o’clock to see how she was, she smiled at him happily.
‘A great improvement,’ he said. ‘If you go on like this, my dear, we shall soon have you up and about.’
‘I suppose I couldn’t see my Harry just for a little while, could I?’ she asked.
‘Rest for another two days,’ he decreed, ‘eat well, sleep well, and then we’ll see. A lot can happen in two days.’
And a lot did. Will decided he was sufficiently recovered to go back to work. Trade figures were sent to Nan which were so unexpectedly good that she was quite cheered by them, particularly as so much of the managerial work was being done by deputies. And Taffy Biggs arrived.
She was still underweight and very short, about the same height as Nan, but she was so cheerful that Bessie and Mrs Benotti said it did them all good to have her in the house. She was an endless source of gossip, which made her popular below stairs, and her arrival certainly gave Euphemia a chance to rest, for they took it in turns to sit up through the night and watch over Caroline in case her fever returned.
On the fifth day, when there had been no sign of fever, Dr Brambling pronounced himself so well pleased that he saw no reason why Harry shouldn’t come and see his mother that very afternoon.
So after his mid-day rest, the little boy was carried into the bedroom. He was rather shy to start with, because they’d been kept apart for ten days, and ten days is a very long time when you’re only eighteen months old, but within ten minutes he was climbing across the bed to be cuddled, and within half an hour the two of them were eating cakes, taking it in turns to feed one another, with much stickiness and frequent kisses.
That evening Caroline ate the largest meal she’d had since she took the fever. Far from making her ill, the visit had plainly made her well, just as Henry and Euphemia and the good doctor had hoped. From then on she got better by the hour.
And then it was the middle of November and a letter arrived for Nan from Frederick Brougham in Westmoreland. It was an appeal.
‘The snows have begun, my dear, and soon we shall be snowed in here, and travel will be impossible. If Caroline is well enough, how dearly I should like to see you. Your last letter sounded a deal more sanguine. Might I hope for a visit?’
‘Of course,’ Euphemia said, when Nan visited Richmond to see if Caroline really was well enough to leave. ‘You go, Nan dear. She’s c
onvalescing now. Taffy and I will look after her.’
‘Not too much excitement mind,’ Nan warned. ‘If I’m not back before Christmas, see that she’s kept quiet then.’
‘I promise.’
‘Then I think I might go.’
‘Yes, do. A few weeks in the fells would do you good.’
Bessie had other ideas. ‘You’re never going a-journeying at this time of year!’ she said. ‘With the snow coming on and all. What next?’
Nan laughed at her. ‘A journey en’t hardship to me, Bessie. Not after all the travelling I’ve done in my lifetime.’
But Bessie was firm about it. ‘If you’re going jauncing off all that way,’ she said, ‘I’m going with you.’
Nan was touched by her loyalty. ‘It’s a long journey, Bessie,’ she warned.
‘All the more reason.’
‘I could be away for months.’
‘Then it’ll be months,’ Bessie said, setting her lips in the fiercest expression she could manage. ‘You ain’t jauncing all that way up there on your own, because I won’t have it. Somebody’s got to look out for you, make no bones about it.’
‘And who’ll look out for you, pray?’
‘I don’t need no one to look out fer me,’ Bessie said stubbornly. ‘I ain’t so old as all that even if I have lost most a’ me teeth.’ And then, as she saw the expression gathering on Nan’s face, ‘Very well then, Tom shall come with us, if Mr Will don’t mind. How would that suit?’
The two of them went back to Bedford Square to see what Will would say, and although he was due to travel to Cambridge to report on a jewel robbery, he joked that he was old enough to manage without Tom for once, providing he could find another servant to make his tea and clean his clothes.
So Nan was persuaded to have company on her long journey north – and was glad of it.
Will’s trip to Cambridge was boring without Tom. And to make matters worse Jeff Jefferson was out of town on an assignment of his own. Normally Will would have stayed in the city for as long as he could so as to enjoy his old friend’s company. Now he travelled back to London after two days. There was little to report about the robbery. The thieves had broken in through a skylight and made off with nearly a thousand pounds’ worth of rings and necklaces and the jeweller was in tears, but as a story it was very small beer.
‘Pack up,’ he said to his new quiet servant, when the report was written. ‘We will catch the four o’clock.’
But being back in a virtually empty house was unsettling. There had been so much coming and going in Bedford Square during the past few months, with Nan and Mr Brougham busy over the trial and Carrie and Pheemy always at home, and always talking. Now its unusual emptiness made him feel deserted. He missed them all quite painfully.
He would take in his report first thing in the morning, he decided as he went to bed, and then he would go down to Richmond and see how they were.
It was very cold beside the Thames the next morning and as he walked out of Richmond station the sky was blue-grey with rain clouds and a north-east wind had begun to blow. It punched him down the Quadrant towards the green, lengthening his stride and making his coat tails fly forward before him. Its force lifted his spirits and filled him with energy. He marched into the Square, using his umbrella as a walking stick and whistling happily.
And coming out of the apothecary’s on the corner there was Euphemia, her russet hair blown by the wind, clutching her bonnet to her head with one hand and holding a small dangling package in the other. He’d been dreaming of her all night and thinking of her all the way down in the train, looking forward to the moment when he would see her again, and there she was.
‘Pheemy!’ he called, running towards her. ‘Pheemy!’
She looked up in surprise, and then smiled her lovely welcoming smile, standing as still as she could in the wind until he caught up with her. She’d been to buy some zinc and castor oil cream for little Harry, she said.
‘All on your own?’
‘It’s only a step,’ she said, smiling again, ‘and now I have company.’
They walked past the shops together and she told him how much better Caroline was, and thought how handsome he looked, striding along beside her with that thick beard bristling and his eyes so blue and loving. And he said he was glad to hear it and told her the story of the robbery, admiring her lovely madonna face and thinking how well her blue mantle suited her.
They’d only gone a few yards when a sleety rain began to fall, needling against their faces. Will put up the umbrella at once and held it before them. But they were too far apart for both of them to be protected by it, and presently she noticed that his shoulder was getting wet.
‘Oh Will,’ she said. ‘It’s all coming in on you.’
‘Only one thing for it,’ he said hopefully. ‘You will have to hold my arm and walk as close to me as you can.’
And to his delight, she did. And blissful it was, for he was so warm and protective, her dear, dear Will, striding along with the umbrella held up like a shield between them and the rest of the world. If only he could love me, she thought, yearningly. What a blessing that would be! But he doesn’t even think of it, I fear.
If I wanted to, he was thinking, I could lean my head down and kiss her under this umbrella, and nobody would know. There was hardly anybody about and the few people they saw were walking quickly, heads down against the sleet, taking no notice of anything or anybody. I could kiss her if I wanted to. And he did want to. Very very much. But he couldn’t do it, of course, because she thought of him as a brother. She always had. And he wouldn’t want to upset her.
‘You’ll be able to come home to Bedford Square soon, won’t you,’ he hoped. ‘It’s jolly empty there without you all, I can tell you.’
The thought brought her up against reality with a palpable shock, dissolving her happy mood in an instant. It would be unbearable to live in the same house without Nan to keep the balance between them. Why, they would be virtually on their own together. It couldn’t be done. Indeed it couldn’t. ‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘No.’ And she gave a little involuntary sigh that was almost a shudder.
The unexpectedness of that little sound disturbed him. And so did her anguished expression, and the fact that she controlled it so quickly. ‘But you said that Carrie was better,’ he prompted, searching for an explanation, wanting her to continue.
Her face was calm again. ‘She is. Oh yes, she is.’
‘Then if that is the case, you will soon be home.’ Oh, please say you will. I miss you so much. Should he tell her that? Perhaps not.
‘No,’ she said again, wondering how she could explain this to him without hurting his feelings. ‘I couldn’t live in the same house with you, not unchaperoned, not with Nan away. It wouldn’t be proper.’
‘You’ve never thought it improper before.’
‘It might be considered so now,’ she said, walking on doggedly with her face averted.
‘How could it possibly be improper?’ he asked, wondering whether he could tease her away from this odd distress of hers, wondering whether he wanted to tease her away from it, wondering what it meant, as an equally odd and unexpected doubt flickered into his mind. ‘We’ve always lived together so happily, Pheemy, like brother and sister.’
The harmless, hackneyed phrase destroyed her control. ‘Brother and sister!’ she said and suddenly there was a scornful wildness about her that made his heart leap with a new, amazing hope. ‘Always that! Brother and sister! Brother and sister! Brother and sister! But we’re not brother and sister, Will. We never were and we never will be.’ She knew she was saying things that should never be said, revealing more than she had any right to do, but the knowledge only increased her wildness.
‘I thought it pleased you to be like a sister to me,’ he said, and was instantly alarmed to think how trite and foolish the words sounded. He cast about for something else to say, and couldn’t think of anything because this new hope was depriving him of th
e power of thought.
‘It did,’ she said passionately. ‘Oh, it did. It’s just that now …’
‘Now?’
She’d already said far more than she should have done. It was necessary to retreat, even though he was looking at her so lovingly she was almost tempted to continue. ‘It wouldn’t be proper,’ she said.
He realized that she was avoiding his eyes. And now hope leapt towards certainty. ‘Pheemy, my dear, dear Pheemy,’ he said, standing still and putting his free hand on her shoulder so that she would turn and face him again. ‘Is it because …’ Are you telling me …?’
She couldn’t meet his eyes, she couldn’t think, she couldn’t speak, she could scarcely breathe. To have loved him for so long and to be here, now, so near to saying all the things she wanted to say was more than she could bear.
He held the umbrella carefully above her head, and tried to be reasonable despite the mill race of emotion that was propelling him on. ‘There are all manner of situations,’ he said, ‘when it is quite proper for a man and a woman to live together under the same roof.’ And then, giving her his teasing smile, ‘Even when they are not brother and sister.’
‘But none that apply to us,’ she said huskily.
‘Perhaps,’ he said, greatly daring, ‘we should ask ourselves whether…’
The tenderness in his voice was too encouraging to be ignored. She looked her question straight into his eyes, her voice tremulous. ‘Whether?’ she asked.
‘I used to think that love was bound to lead to loss,’ he said, feeling that he ought to explain.
‘Yes.’ Oh, how hope fluttered in her bosom, like a caged bird beating its wings against the bars.
‘I always vowed I would never love anyone … Never allow myself…’
‘Yes, you did.’ Oh, what was he going to say next? Would it be …? Oh Will, my dear, dear Will, go on, go on. She was filled with such longing that her throat ached with it.
Sixpenny Stalls Page 48
