Dark Angel

by Sally Beauman

  The women seemed to feel that dignity was paramount: They were all for arranging Shawcross decorously, his shoulders propped against monogrammed linen pillows, his smashed leg protected by a cage under smooth sheets. Haviland, seeing this and knowing their efforts were hopeless, gave up. Let the man lie as they wanted him; let him have the beef broth by all means, if he could take any; yes, yes, cologne dabbed on the forehead did have very often a most soothing effect.

  Haviland’s bedside manner came to the fore: Gravely he listened to the beat of his patient’s heart, and forebore to say how it raced and fluttered. Impressively, magisterially, he examined the patient’s eyes with a small torch, and the bitten tongue with a small spatula; he recommended quiet, he administered morphine, and—while giving no false hopes—he remained silent on such questions as fever and delirium. Septicemia, a matter at the forefront of his own mind, was never mentioned; ladies unacquainted with this term had, he found, a tendency to ask its meaning in plain English, and poisoning of the blood—the alternative term, and a death sentence—was one that could reduce the calmest woman to hysterics.

  Haviland was certain that Shawcross would not survive the first day, let alone the first night; he was astonished to be proved wrong. Shawcross made it through the first day and the first night; he made it through the second; he was still alive on the morning of the third. Both Maud and Gwen were triumphant at this. Both were in that state of optimism and false elation which ensues from shock and lack of sleep; both were beginning to believe, Haviland saw, that Shawcross could recover from this ordeal.

  “Oh, Dr. Haviland, he took a little water from a glass this morning,” Gwen cried as she came to greet him on the third morning.

  “And a spoon of broth last night,” Maud added eagerly. “We wondered—perhaps something very light? A little dry toast? Do you think a coddled egg?”

  They looked at him with expectant faces. Haviland said nothing. He looked down at his patient, opened his medical bag, caught—across the King’s bed—the practiced eye of the senior nurse, and saw her mouth turn down at the corners. He looked at Shawcross and marveled—as he had marveled many times in the past—at people’s capacity to deceive themselves.

  Shawcross had a mounting fever; that much was obvious even before the doctor laid his hand on the hot dry skin. In two days he had wasted, so the skin of his face now seemed stretched tight across his bones. His lips were dry and cracked with dehydration; his eyes, open and unfocused, darted from side to side. Even as Haviland bent over him Shawcross began to shiver, and beads of sweat broke out on his brow.

  “Lady Callendar, if you would perhaps leave us a moment, while we change the dressing?”

  He saw Maud and Gwen exchange looks—frightened looks. Both left the room without speaking. Haviland twitched the bedclothes aside, lifted the cage that supported them.

  The sickly smell told him immediately, even before he looked down at the dressing.

  “When was this last changed?”

  “An hour ago, Dr. Haviland.” The nurse paused. “His temperature is a hundred and three. It’s risen two points since six this morning.”

  “Delirium?”

  “There was some distress in the night. Nothing intelligible. He hasn’t regained consciousness this morning.”

  Haviland sighed. With the nurse’s assistance the dressing was changed once again, and further morphine was administered.

  Then, his face grave, he went downstairs once more, where he requested an interview with Lady Callendar and her husband.

  In the morning room the doctor looked from husband to wife. Lady Callendar’s face was puffy from lack of sleep and weeping; her husband, moving slowly and stiffly, seemed to have aged years in the past days. Composing himself, Haviland made the small speech he had been rehearsing in his mind for two days; it was sad and regrettable, but he had to inform them that it was now a matter of hours. Once death had ensued—really he understood how painful it must be to them to consider such a matter at a time like this—the police would have to be informed. An inquest would be necessary, a formality, of course.

  The doctor, having pronounced these difficult words, fell silent. Lady Callendar, he noted, made no reply. Her husband, hunched before the fire, fumbled at the rugs wrapped around his knees like an old and infirm man. He would not meet the doctor’s eyes.

  “I won’t have Cattermole blamed” was all he said. “Won’t have it, d’you hear? It was an accident—an accident.”

  Was it an accident? Constance does not think so, for one. Constance is not allowed into her father’s room, has not seen him since he was brought into the house. She is confined to the nursery, watched over by Nanny Temple. She is a prisoner, she feels.

  Constance cannot sleep. She lies awake night after night, staring at the ceiling of her room, listening for the beat of her albatross’s wings. Constance waits for the albatross, who flies everywhere and sees everything, and the albatross tells her it was no accident—someone wanted her father to die.

  But who? On this question the albatross is silent, so Constance is left to the speculations of her own mind. Denton Cavendish? Gwen? Boy? Acland? Freddie? Any one of them could have slipped away from the parry, as her father must have done, and then … What? Followed him? Pushed him? Called to him? Lured him? Threatened him—with a gun, perhaps, so he backed away from them, off the path, into the undergrowth, into that horrible, horrible thing, with its jaws grinning?

  Constance holds her breath and listens to the beat of the great bird’s wings, white and slow and sure as it circles her room. Not an accident, not a mistake: Constance saw the rabbit and she knows. Someone meant to hurt her father; someone meant to snare him.

  She would like to cry; her eyes scratch, but tears will not come. In a minute it will be morning. She can see light edging the curtains now; in the gardens outside, birds are singing. It will be morning, and then the albatross will leave her. She will be alone again.

  When the room is gray with light she pushes aside the bedclothes and steals quietly to the door. It is very early, and if she is very very quiet, now, when her jailor Nanny Temple must surely be sleeping … She tiptoes in bare feet out of her room, across Steenie’s room, through the day nursery, and out onto the landing. No sound, no stir; her courage rises. They will not keep her away, they will not, these Cavendishes who pretend not to despise her.

  But not the back stairs—there a maid might catch her, for the maids at Winterscombe also rise early. The main stairs: there she is safer, and then, once she is in the hall—cold feet on a cold stone floor—into the side hall, and then a passageway and another passageway. Past the silver room and the china pantry, past the housekeeper’s room and the stillroom: such a warren of rooms and corridors, and Constance knows all of them intimately. One danger point as she nears the kitchens and the sculleries—she can hear voices there—but then, around a corner and she is safe.

  She pushes through a green baize door, and stands, heart beating hard, on the other side of it. Here, on her right, there is a small bare room with an iron bedstead and a washstand. This room, once used by the King’s manservant, is never used now. Immediately opposite it, on her left, are the stairs that lead up to the King’s dressing room. Does she dare to go up? Constance knows this is forbidden but she does not care. She will not care! They have no right, no right, to bar her from her father.

  Silently she steals up the stairs. The door at the top is closed, and Constance listens. She can hear footsteps, the rustle of skirts—the nurse perhaps, in her starched uniform. A clink of glass against metal, a murmur of voices, and then silence.

  But her father is near. Constance knows this, and although she dares go no farther, the knowledge brings her peace. She sinks down to the floor; she curls up there, like an animal. She thinks herself into her father’s mind, so that he will know she is there, his little albatross, his daughter, who loves him. She closes her eyes. After a while, Constance sleeps.

  Inside the King’s bedroo
m, beside the bed, Gwen does not sleep. She has been awake all night, she has seen the deterioration in Eddie’s condition, she has seen the expression on the face of the nurse, and she no longer deludes herself. She knows the crisis is near.

  The nurse has withdrawn. Gwen is alone with Eddie, the silence of the room broken only by the shifting of coals in the fire and the ticking of the clock. Gwen looks at the clock—it is nearing six—and wonders how many more minutes Eddie Shawcross has left. She is ashamed of herself, but she has reached that stage of exhaustion in which she hopes it will be soon. Once she had accepted the idea that Eddie must die, she began to be impatient for the end and to chafe against death’s protraction. She knows this is wicked, and hardhearted; still the involuntary prayer springs into her mind: Let it be soon. Let it be soon, let it be quick—for his sake.

  Her hands twist against the silk of her dress; she turns to look at her lover’s face and finds it difficult to believe that this is the man she loved.

  His lips are cracked; his once beautifully manicured hands fumble and pull at the sheets; Gwen averts her eyes from the broken nails and the bandages. She looks away, and into her mind—there before she can push it away—comes an image of herself and Eddie, here in this room, just a few days before. She sees herself, wrists bound with black ribbons, and although she is alone her face crimsons with shame. She rubs at her wrist, thinks of bondage and pain, the scent of carnation soap, the allure of the forbidden. As she tries to force the image out of her mind, Shawcross stirs. Gwen turns back to him.

  Sweat has broken out again on his brow (the fever goes in cycles). His eyes are open and fixed; his lips slacken, shape dry and incomprehensible noises, and then slacken again.

  Gwen reaches for the bell for the nurse. In truth, Shawcross’s appearance now frightens her, and she does not like to touch him. Before she can ring, however, Shawcross begins to talk—a rush of words and phrases, some of which are comprehensible.

  Rats. Shawcross begins to talk of rats: large ones, black ones, rats who squirm, rats whose eyes bulge, rats who nibble, rats in pantries, rats in haylofts, rats in sewers, rats in—yes—traps, and the half-rhyme seems to please him, for he gurgles and quivers and repeats the word, and then, rising up in the bed with a strength Gwen did not suspect he possessed, he moves on, from rats to ribbons.

  “Black ribbons,” Shawcross screams, and though his voice is slurred the word is quite distinct. “Black ribbons. Stamp on their heads. That’s it. Stamp on ’em….”

  Gwen is transfixed with horror and disgust. Ribbons, ribbons—oh, why should he talk of ribbons? She tugs hard on the bellpull and forces herself to bend over him, to make her voice soothing.

  “Eddie,” she says softly. “Eddie, my dear. You must rest. You must not talk, please, Eddie….”

  Eddie’s voice has subsided; he slumps back against the pillows. From his throat comes a series of bubbling guttural noises; spittle froths at his lips. Gwen stares down at him fearfully. Can this be a death rattle? She yanks at the bellpull again, and as she does so, Eddie’s eyes stop their darting and flickering; they seem to focus on her face. He looks directly at her and says, with perfect lucidity:

  “You called to me. In the woods. I heard you call to me.”

  “No, Eddie,” Gwen begins, terrified that the nurse will come in and hear this conversation. “No, Eddie, you’re mistaken. You’re feverish. Please lie still….”

  But something has happened, even as she speaks: a small paroxysm. Less than a shudder, not violent in any way, no more, really, than a slight clenching of the facial muscles, followed by a relaxation. In that fraction of a second the greatest of boundaries is crossed, and Gwen knows it instantly, even before the nurse—now at her side—reaches across, touches Eddie’s throat, sighs, checks her watch, and says, “He’s gone.”

  It is a quarter past six, the beginning of a new day. Dr. Haviland is summoned at once, and there is one final nastiness—though, fortunately, Gwen does not witness it.

  Before rigor mortis sets in, Shawcross must be washed and laid out. At seven-thirty, just when this process is almost complete and Haviland is preparing to depart, there comes from the bed a most horrible noise, a gurgling, an eructation. The doctor and two nurses swing around; one of the nurses (the less experienced, and an Irish Catholic) touches her crucifix and crosses herself. The sight that greets their eyes is not a pleasant one, nor a common one, though Dr. Haviland, in cases of severe blood poisoning, has seen it before. From all the orifices of his body Shawcross weeps. A sticky yellowish substance, like honey but not so sweet-smelling, issues forth from his ears, from his nostrils, from his mouth….

  The washing must be done again. The laying-out must be done again; the nightshirt must be changed, the pillowcases, the sheets. The more experienced of the two nurses, tight-faced, sends a message down via the kitchens, for flowers from the hothouses—if possible, lilies.

  They are sent, and finally, at around nine, the other formalities take place. The blinds have already been lowered throughout the house, and in this dim light the members of the Cavendish family come to pay their final respects. Boy, Acland, Freddie. Steenie is spared the ordeal, since his nerves are delicate, but Constance is not. She comes in last, standing rigidly between Denton and Gwen Cavendish at the foot of the King’s bed.

  She looks at the cherubim, at the embroidered royal arms, at the bed on which—just a few days ago—she posed for Boy’s photograph. She looks at her father—eyes closed, linen sheets up to his chin. When led forward by Gwen, she bends over his body and places a dry kiss in the air beside his cheek.

  The room reeks of lilies, a flower Constance will loathe forever afterward. She does not cry; she does not speak. She listens for the sound of a bird’s wings, for, even though it is daylight, she knows her protector is here with her in this room. She listens and it comes, a susurration of the air; for the first time she bends her head.

  Constance’s silence, her lack of tears, alarm Gwen. She takes the child back to her room, sits her down, and talks to her quietly and as gently as she can for some while. Gwen knows that the things she says to Constance are banal; she says them nonetheless. She wonders if she should mention Constance’s presence on the dressing-room stairs (where she was discovered by the nurse) but decides against it. The child is capable of deeper feelings than anyone guessed, Gwen tells herself. Let the matter rest.

  “Constance, I want you to know,” she says at last, “that we feel responsible for you, my dear, and we care for you. The matter will need thought, but remember, Constance, you will always have a home here with us, at Winterscombe.”

  Constance has been expecting this. She understands that although Gwen’s eyes are tearful, the invitation springs from guilt and not affection.

  “I understand,” she replies in her stiff way. She pauses. She fixes Gwen with her eyes. “When will they take my father away?”

  Gwen is flurried by the question.

  “Later today, Constance. This afternoon. But it is better not to dwell on it, my dear—”

  “When he has gone …” Constance lays one small grubby hand on Gwen’s sleeve. “Then. May I sit in his room on my own? Just for a little while. So I may say goodbye to him?”

  “Of course, Constance. I understand,” Gwen replies, touched by the request.

  And, later the same day, when Gwen is sure that the undertakers have departed, she herself leads Constance back to the King’s bedroom. She opens the door and switches on the lamps. (She does not want Constance to be frightened.) She checks that the bed has been remade and the lilies removed. She settles Constance in a chair.

  “You’re sure you want to stay here alone, Constance? Would you like me to sit with you?”

  “No. I should prefer to be alone,” the child replies in her odd formal way. “Just for a little while. For half an hour. I want to think of him.”

  “I’ll come back at four,” Gwen replies, and leaves her.

  When Constance is alone in the room,
she looks over her shoulder, toward the bed. Its curtains have a frightening look; they billow at her.

  She stands and, in a cautious way, approaches the bed. She darts out a hand and pulls the coverlet back. The pillows reassure her. They are clean and smooth. They bear no imprint of a head.

  Constance smooths the coverlet into place. She backs away from the bed. She walks about the room slowly, touching the furniture as she passes. The back of a chair: its horsehair-cover bristles. The back of another chair: velvet this time. She smooths out a crease in the antimacassar. She goes into the dressing room, then the bathroom beyond, switching on the lights as she passes. She looks at the great copper shower, at its levers and spouts, at the wonders of German plumbing. From the basin she purloins a small tablet of carnation soap, which she pockets.

  She returns to the bedroom. She becomes more purposeful. There, laid out upon his dresser, are her father’s personal possessions, removed from his evening clothes when he was brought up here. A few coins, the case containing his cheroots, a box of matches, his pocket watch and chain, a clean and unused linen handkerchief.

  Constance picks up this handkerchief, but it is freshly laundered; it does not smell of her father. She sniffs it. She presses it against her face. She replaces it upon the dresser. She picks up the silver watch chain.

  She opens the case of the watch, which is dented. She examines its face. The watch, not wound for several days, has stopped. Its two small black hands point off in opposite directions. Constance closes the case. She holds the watch tight in her hand. She glances once more, over her shoulder, toward the bed. The bed is still empty.

  In a crablike, sideways manner, Constance inches her way from the dressing chest to the writing desk, which stands between the windows.

  The desk is not locked. In its bottom right-hand drawer, however, underneath some sheaves of papers and printer’s proofs, there is a wooden traveling writing case. This is locked, as always. The key to this writing case is small and silver. It hangs upon her father’s watch chain.