after a tour of San Francisco, where I go tomorrow, I plan to return to Scotland. I have had enough of wandering and feel that I will be most happy never to have to venture farther than Fife. Can you house a crusty old soldier?
She had not worried when April newspapers spoke of an earthquake in San Francisco. After all, she still thought him to be among the magnolias and gardenias he so admired in Georgia. Max du Pay’s letter had come in a diplomatic bag and so was faster than her father’s last letter.
When we heard of the devastation in San Francisco, I was able to go at once. We knew Sir John was to stay there and it distresses me to have to tell you, Miss Lucy, that the authorities do list as missing, assumed dead, one Colonel Sir John Graham. The center of the city was practically razed to the ground and the chaos from the continuing explosions from burst gas mains and the ensuing fires had to be experienced to be believed. Sir John’s hotel was totally destroyed and I will repeat, verbatim, the story told me by a waiter, a lad of about fourteen:
‘The building just collapsed around us like one of them card houses the real good gamblers can make. We were in the dining room and lots of folk got killed as the chandelier crashed to the ground. There was dust thicker than a desert wind and I couldn’t see nothing, nor hear nothing but the screaming of people, me mostly, I think, and the groaning of timbers. Then this thing appears, this great tall man comes out of the dust and he’s carrying these two little girls and he’s leading their momma and then, oh God, it was awful but the floor opened up right under us. There’s this chasm in the floor and there’s nothing below, not the laundry rooms which shoulda been there, just nothing but smoke and this dust that got everywhere so you couldn’t breathe or see, and it gets wider and wider and then it closes up a little again and then it opens and then it kinda stays in one place. The guy sets down the little kids and he smiles at me and he says – and he talks real funny – “I do believe I can see what must pass for safety on the other side of this ravine,” and I says, “That was the smoking room but I think we just made us another garden room.” He was smiling so he made you pretend not to be scared, you know. And he looks down at the girls and he says, “Ladies, we are going to have an adventure. I am going to be a bridge and you are going to walk across the bridge to my young friend’s new garden room. Can you jump the crater?” he asks me and I say, “Yessir” although I never jumped nothing that wide before, and he says, “Good chap.” Good chap. But I can’t. I’m no athlete and it’s wider than me and he says, “Try the bridge” and he lays down – Blessed Saviour, he lays down with his hands on one side and his feet on the other – and I run across his body, quick and light as I can, and the lady nudges the little girls on his back and she’s sorta pushing them from one side and I’m reaching for them from the other and they make it and he calls her to go and she’s crying and he says, “Your children” ’cause he can’t really speak, and she stands on him and he shifts a bit and then, dear God, it’s getting wider and he gasps, “Your children” again and she sorta runs across him and we both turn to reach for him – and he’s gone.’
Sir John was the only British resident of the hotel at that time, Miss Lucy, and the actions of that brave man just tell me this was the last deed of your father and my friend.
The letter had gone on to talk about gallantry awards, but Lucy had read it again and again and hugged it to her. She had cried and then she had laughed because Sir John had saved four people and one was a waiter and she could almost hear her mother’s voice: ‘Your father just does not know how to handle staff.’
His body had never been recovered, and once again there had been a sad little ceremony in the churchyard in Fife. No bodies lay under that hallowed soil.
‘I’ll be the first,’ thought Lucy, and had given herself a shake and told herself not to be morbid but to think of having a nice holiday with Isa who, after all, had lost Donald to pneumonia last winter. ‘We’ll go somewhere warm, just as soon as they’re back from their honeymoon and Rose has proved that she can do justice to my patients.’
*
Dr Nesbitt did not face the dawn of her wedding morning with any of the feverish excitement experienced by most young girls. She had come to the conclusion during the long night that she had made a grave mistake. Had she waited one more day, just one more, Lucy Graham would have offered her a job. She did not want to marry Kier Anderson-Howard. She did not want to marry anyone, and certainly not now, not just at the beginning of her real career. And it was too late to tell him so. Today she was going to marry him, and tonight she would have to sleep with him. He had been so good, so patient. She did love him, she did, and she would do her best to be a good wife, but his restrained love-making frightened her and what it would be like when his passions were allowed full rein . . . oh God, it did not bear thinking about. All that stuff led to babies, no matter that early man had thought it led only to disease, and she wanted no squalling brats around her. She was no Elsie to take them all in her stride, no Leslie to die in her own blood giving birth to them. Oh, doctor, doctor, scratch an insecure woman and all the book-learning flows out with the blood.
‘I’ll get used to it, and it will mean nothing, and anyway, men want only satisfaction and once they have it, and that takes but a few moments, they sleep.’ Rose had learned all these inalienable facts in her childhood and in her years of study among the poor and downtrodden – and yes, among the rich too. Men had the best of everything. Damn them all! Had they given her the job she had earned by right, then she would not now be lying in a cold sweat waiting for the dawn she did not wish to see. If only it could be just the way these last few weeks had been, the only cloud the patent dissatisfaction of Kier’s mother. Kier was a gentleman and when told that his fiancée had not been brought up to ‘indulge’ her fiancée’s baser instincts, he had coloured furiously and been a perfect angel ever since. Lucy was a splendid, generous and helpful employer. She had encouraged Rose to increase their list of poorer women, but had coaxed her into meeting the richer ones like Mrs MacDonald and her lovely young daughters. They liked having such a pretty new doctor. The oldest daughter, like Doctor Nesbitt, was also engaged, but how differently she approached the marriage bed.
‘I can hardly wait, Rose. I may call you Rose. Frank and I are modern; we do not expect that I shall be, like my dearest mother, in an interesting condition every year. I could not have this conversation with dear Doctor Graham. Ma adores her but, entre nous, she is such an old fuddy-duddy.’
Miss MacDonald found that, like Doctor Graham, Doctor Nesbitt too was an old fuddy-duddy. She confessed to knowing all that there was to know about, well, you know . . . making sure that . . .
‘Contraception,’ Rose had said, taking great pleasure from seeing the effect that calling a spade a spade had on the pert young woman. ‘I will be happy to give you the sum total of my knowledge . . . as soon as you are married.’
‘Mother fell with me on her wedding night,’ had argued the thoroughly up-to-date young woman.
‘A risk all well-brought-up young women have to take. I will see you when you return from your wedding trip.’
‘Please, could I not see you before, the day before? Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t possibly commit a sin on the night before my wedding. The house will be packed to the ceiling with decaying relatives.’
Rose had promised to see her . . . and the embarrassed Frank.
Oh, yes, she liked being a doctor. She could spend the rest of her life quite happily just doing her job. And Kier? Could she do without Kier?
Kier was sweet; he was gentle, although every now and again she thought she saw a glimpse of steel, and he was kind. He was also very, very rich, and he owned Laverock Rising. Rose was honest enough to admit that she would love to live in that house, that its very name stirred her. As soon as Kier’s mother moved out – she had bought a town house in St Andrews, bless her – Rose would have the house redecorated. Kier wanted her to change everything, to put her ow
n stamp on the place. My God, to go from the Hilltown, to lodgings, to Laverock Rising. If she had to pinch herself to believe she was really a doctor, what would she have to do to convince herself that she owned that house?
Rose groaned and, turning over, buried her head in her pillow. She knew what she would have to do, and she hated the very thought.
15
Venice, 1908
AT FIRST, VENICE was a disappointment. Where was the light, the colour, the play of the reflections of the buildings on the waters of the canals? It rained the whole of the first day. Lucy sat at the window of her little hotel, La Colombera, and looked out across the waters of the canal to the Jewish quarter.
‘I might as well be in Scotland,’ she thought as countless tourists must have thought before her. ‘At least there I could understand what is going on.’
She rang the bell for the maid and, with much laughter and gesticulation on both sides and referral by both women to Lucy’s phrase book, managed to order water for a bath.
La Colombera, she wrote in her diary, for she could not write to Kier, not now that he was married to Rose, has the prettiest name, the prettiest maids and the hottest water in the whole of Italy. Her love affair had begun.
They took a gondola to St Mark’s Square.
‘You have to come, Isa. Heaven knows what the Italians would think if I travelled about alone.’
Isa had proved an enthusiastic traveller. She had, after all, never been anywhere before, but she had her standards. ‘I’m not going in there,’ she protested as they approached the doors of the great Basilica.
‘No one is asking you to convert, but merely to see the architecture. It’s reputed to be quite magnificent inside.’
But Isa would not compromise and stood outside under her umbrella while Lucy explored.
Even in the rain, in early April, the building was busy with worshippers and sightseers. It was very, very dark, and Lucy stood for a while until her eyes became accustomed to it and it was then that she became aware of a low sound, a voice at prayer. At a side altar a priest knelt. Aware only of his God, he was singing, and his voice, Lucy knew in wonder, could have graced any of the world’s great stages. He was singing quietly, communicating only with God; his prayer was not meant for the world to hear, but Lucy moved over and stood behind him, listening, and as she listened she was filled with a tremendous feeling of peace and relief. It was as if her sadness and sense of loss were pouring out of her and joining the glorious voice as it rose to heaven. She felt that she could have stayed there for ever.
‘Well, as I live and breathe,’ said a voice directly behind her and Lucy turned and saw Maximilian du Pay.
He had hardly changed – tall, sun-bronzed, arrogant, his dark eyes smiling down at her.
Her heart leaped, her stomach churned. My God, after all these years, could his very presence have this effect on her?
‘Max. What on earth are you doing here?’ She did not wait for an answer but went on, ‘Oh, Max, how very nice to see you.’
She had never answered his letter that told her of her father’s last moments. She had meant to: she had sat, often, pen in hand, but the words had refused to put themselves down on the paper.
He smiled again, the smile that told her that he knew exactly what was going on in her mind.
‘Good voice,’ he said. ‘Wasted, don’t you think?’
‘How can you say such a thing?’ They were back in Washington, D.C., fighting with one another.
‘To make you mad, Miss Lucy, or must I call you doctor now?’
She blushed at her gaucheness. She had not seen him for, dear God, was it fifteen, sixteen – no, seventeen years! His last act to her had been one of immense kindness and yet she was prepared to squabble.
‘Max.’ She looked around. There was no one who was obviously with him. ‘I can hardly believe that you are really here. Your wife?’
‘No wife,’ he said. ‘Not yet. Foot-loose and fancy-free, Miss Lucy.’ In his turn he looked around. ‘And you? Married to medicine?’
He did not make it sound attractive. Again she bristled. ‘As it happens, that’s exactly the situation.’
‘It’s so easy to make you mad. Where’s your group, or shall I be your guide? I know everything about this church, since it has rained every day I’ve been here and it’s the nicest place to shelter. Are you one of the faithful? Not that it matters in St Mark’s which isn’t really Roman Catholic. That’s why that loss to the world of grand opera is singing at a side altar – the centre aisles belong to the Orthodox lot. Five denominations are represented here, even our Jewish brethren round the back.’
‘Herr Colner.’ For the first time in many years Lucy thought of her old tutor. ‘I’d like to see the Jewish part, if it’s true.’
‘Now, why would I lie? This church wasn’t built for the greater glory of God, Lucy’ – he had dropped the miss, but there was no point in saying anything, she knew he would pay no attention – ‘but for the greater safety of man. It’s a centre of wordly power, a defence against the infidels pouring in from the north. Religion is incidental, but nice, when it’s sincere like the boy with the voice over there.’
First Lucy had to marvel at the magnificent marble screen with its statues of the Virgin, St Mark and the Apostles, and to stop, dazzled by the Pala D’Oro, the golden jewel-encrusted altar-piece of the Presbytery. But at last they reached the Jewish part of the Basilica.
‘I don’t know which way to look. It’s all so overwhelming, overpowering, so unbelievably beautiful.’
‘Here you are. Say prayers for your Jewish friends here. Basilica means, or was, the Roman centre of administration. Crafty Venetians added the religious element so that they had a place of sanctuary big enough to take the population. Jews were very welcome; they were the money-makers, and Venice even had at least one Jewish Doge. Why have you never married, Lucy?’
She had not remembered that Americans were quite so direct; she found herself answering honestly. ‘I was never sure whether I loved the man I loved enough to marry him. And then he married someone else.’
‘And are you sad?’
‘Sad for me, yes, because time is rushing past, and I’m confused too.’
Even in the semi-darkness of the church she could see that he smiled.
‘Then you can dine with me tonight and we’ll talk about old times.’
What arrogance! He took her acceptance for granted. He led her through the church and out on to St Mark’s Square where Isa still stood under her umbrella.
‘Where are you staying? I’m at the Gritti Palace. Say you’re there.’
‘I’ll say it, but it wouldn’t be true. We’re at a little hotel on one of the side canals, La Colombera.’
‘I’ll find it.’
‘I haven’t said I’ll come.’
He smiled again. ‘You have to take pity on a lonesome old friend. Eight o’clock.’
‘Miss Lucy.’
Perhaps it was the note of warning in Isa’s voice, but Lucy found herself agreeing.
‘I’m not a young girl, Isa,’ she justified herself on the way back to the hotel in the gondola, ‘and besides, I’ve known Mr du Pay for years. His father was a good friend of my father. It was Mr du Pay, remember, who wrote to me about Father’s death.’
She had nothing festive to wear. Every dress in the wardrobe said ‘professional woman’. She threw them on the bed in a despairing heap.
‘I need something frivolous to wear when dining with Maximilian du Pay.’
Desperately she took her scissors and unpicked the lace inserted into the neckline of her dark blue silk.
‘Miss Lucy?’
Lucy ignored the shocked voice of censure. ‘Good heavens, Isa! I could wear this gown at a medical consultation. All Mr du Pay will see is three inches of skin, well, maybe four.’ She laughed, the laughter of a young carefree girl. ‘I’ve missed this, Isa, this dressing-up and going out. I didn’t realize how much. When my father was
alive, I dined out almost every night, and danced and listened to beautiful music in lovely rooms full of hothouse flowers.’
She stopped, for suddenly a picture of the very young Lucy Graham had come into her mind. She was in the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., and she was wearing a white lace gown and her first, her only, string of pearls.
‘I’m old, Isa. He’ll see how changed I am.’
Since the death of her husband in the same month as that of Lucy’s father, Isa had become more maternal, more proprietorial. She sprang now to Lucy’s defence. ‘Nonsense, Miss Lucy. He’ll see a beautiful, elegant woman who has dedicated her life to others. He’ll be honoured to take you to dinner.’
But Lucy looked at herself in the mirror and could see no shadow of the girl she had been.
‘Has it stopped raining yet?’ she asked calmly, for what did it matter? She was dining with . . . she could hardly call him an old friend, someone she had once known and whom she had met by accident and would no doubt never see again.
The rain had stopped and Max had arranged for a private gondola. He helped her in as if she were a piece of exquisitely delicate Venetian glass, and for the first time in her life Lucy felt small and vulnerable.
‘I thought it best to dine at the Gritti Palace, Lucy. Should any of your family connections see you, your reputation would come to no harm in such a public place.’
‘Good gracious Max. I’m not a young girl.’
He laughed, a full-throated laugh that echoed over the waters of the canal.
‘Bravo, Miss Lucy, for a horrible moment I thought you’d changed.’
They smiled and gave their attention to enjoying the journey as they turned into the Grand Canal. Churches and palaces stood shimmering in the waters, lights streaming from every window. The mooring poles for private gondolas stood, their family flags blowing in the evening breeze. Liveried gondoliers handed jewelled women on to sumptuous cushions and, everywhere, there were reflections.
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