Rich Girl, Poor Girl

by Eileen Ramsay

  She went to dinner and she sat at the Anderson-Howard table where the young Lucy had sat so often and where she had imagined herself as Kier’s wife. She saw the candlelight dancing in Rose’s eyes and Kier’s mother’s diamonds sparkling around Rose’s white young neck, and she told them about Venice and Canaletto and Veronese, and she gave them their Venetian glass candlesticks, and she did not mention Maximilian du Pay. She did not tell them about Tuscany either, and certainly said nothing about an orchard and a man and a woman with blossoms in their hair.

  Kier was happy. He followed Rose’s every movement and listened avidly to everything she said.

  ‘Do you approve of my changes, Lucy?’ asked Rose as they sat in the drawing room after dinner.

  Lucy had noticed the different wallpaper and the new upholstery in Kier’s mother’s little sitting room. To her the newness had been like a raw wound, but she had tried to see it with a stranger’s eyes and she had to admit that the selections of bright new materials were charming.

  ‘I have no right to approve or disapprove, Rose.’

  ‘Oh, I know that, but you have such excellent taste and I wanted to know if you agree with my choices.’

  Of course she would need to change the furnishings; she had to stamp her personality on to this house that had sheltered Charlotte Anderson-Howard for nearly half a century.

  ‘Mother thinks it lovely, Lucy. She says she was always much too lazy to change anything,’ said Kier, his eyes noting his wife’s skill as she poured the coffee from the Georgian coffee pot that had belonged to his great-grandmother.

  ‘It’s charming, Rose, and a perfect foil for you.’

  That was when the cramp struck and she bit back a gasp of pain and surprise. She excused herself and hurried along the corridor to the room set aside for her use.

  ‘Not in this house,’ she prayed. ‘Not in this house.’

  Another ferocious cramp gripped her stomach and she felt the warm, sticky wetness on the insides of her thighs, but she was a doctor and had dealt with the symptoms so often. There was pain and relief mixed with sadness in the white face that stared back at her out of the mirror.

  Did you merely hope to be pregnant, Doctor Graham? she whispered to herself. Travel, change of food, of climate . . . of living conditions, all upset the harmony of normal bodily functions. You need never write to Max du Pay. There is nothing he needs to know. She wanted to get home, to weep for the end of a dream, for the end of a nightmare.

  There was still the evening to be got through, and she was glad she had not accepted the invitation to stay for the night.

  ‘Are you unwell, Lucy?’ Rose was outside in the corridor.

  ‘No, thank you. Merely “the curse of Eve”.’

  ‘Oh, won’t you change your mind and stay? Bed and a nice hot water bottle on your stomach . . .’ Rose blushed. ‘How dare I prescribe for you?’

  ‘Dear Rose,’ smiled Lucy. ‘It sounds delightful, but I’m perfectly well and will catch the Aberdeen train. Isa would worry.’

  And when the evening was over and she had said all the right things and admired all Rose’s changes, Kier took her to Leuchars and she got on the train and sat down with relief in a first-class carriage where she was the only passenger. She put her hands on her stomach and hated its flatness, its barrenness. ‘Poor unconceived little baby,’ she thought. ‘If you had existed, what price to pay for a marriage that your father surely does not want. For him I was part of the romantic dream of Italy, nothing more.’

  *

  There Lucy wronged Max. He had laughed at the young British miss he had watched flirting so admirably with the Russian Count at the Embassy in Washington. He had thought then that she was too young for him. She should have her head for a while; she should be allowed, even encouraged to break the hearts of a dozen Washington beaux, and then when she had reaped the field – and if she had not herself been harvested – he would make his play. Max du Pay well knew what a catch he was on the marriage market; he had been told often enough.

  When circumstances changed and the flibberty-gibbet young socialite had shown the depth of character he had only suspected and remained in Britain to attend a university, he had sighed a little over his wasted opportunity but wished her well. There were, he thought, a thousand Lucy Grahams. But he had never found one . . .

  And then he had reached the age when even he told himself that it was time to settle down, time to decide whether politics or managing the family’s considerable business interests was to be the life for him, time indeed to marry. But Max was a romantic and wanted to marry a woman he could not possibly live without, and not just one who would be a perfect hostess in the du Pays’ magnificent Southern mansion house or who would properly spend a large proportion of the du Pay money.

  He had been seeing a great deal of Ammabelle Redmond.

  ‘That girl’s chitter-chatter is like water on a stone, Mister Max,’ his old nurse, Florrie, told him time and time again. ‘If you don’t come to a decision, she and her mammy are going to do it for you. They’ll wear you down and you’ll find yourself hogtied before you can say it don’t make no never-mind.’

  Max did not at that time appreciate the incredible power of dripping water.

  His father wanted him to assume control of du Pay Chemicals and du Pay Engineering, and his mother wanted him to marry Miss Redmond and to stand for the soon-to-be-vacated local Congressional seat. Max could just as easily have done one as the other, and had decided to travel in Europe for a while before deciding. And there in Venice he had met again Lucy Graham and, being a romantic, had recognized his twin soul, and the intensity of his feelings had almost frightened him and had made him shout out with laughter and relief as he walked back to the Gritti Palace from the little hotel where Lucy was staying.

  ‘What a woman,’ he had told a black Venetian cat as it looked at the strange, tall man who was not drunk but who sang out like a drunk across the Venetian waters.

  He could have told her of his feelings that first night in Venice but as he had held back in Washington, so he held back now. In Tuscany, in the apple orchard there had been no need to hold anything back for she had held nothing back from him. She was tall and strong; she was a doctor. Yet she had made him feel like a giant whose sole aim in life was to protect her. The telegram, so unexpected as are most of life’s blows, had spoiled everything. He had to get back to his father, to his mother who would surely crumble like a building that has lost its foundations should anything happen to Henri Jacques du Pay, ‘Senator Hank’ as the Southern press called him. They were already publicizing his death when his only son reached Georgia, and his mother, who for years had ruled a huge staff with an iron will, sat crumpled in a chair like a heap of faded flowers and held up a devastated face to her son.

  When had he promised to marry Ammabelle? She and her mother had been there in the cool, quiet room with his mother when he arrived. They seemed to have been there every time he turned around since – at the funeral, at the interminable reception afterwards where he had to smile and say all the right things when he wanted to cry like a little boy, on the verandah beside him when he waved goodbye to the last house-guest. His mother said that he had promised, and that the marriage would have made his father very happy. The pictures in his mind of Lucy, shyly smiling at him in the gondola, devastating in the red dinner gown, naked in the orchard with apple blossom in her hair and on her breast, began to fade or at least were superseded by other more immediate pictures and sounds – the dull thud of wet mud falling on his father’s coffin, and Ammabelle’s soft Southern voice like dripping honey. He felt tired and listless; he had no energy. One month since he had left Lucy, two months, three. Surely she would have written if he had meant as much to her as she had to him? Surely she would have expressed regret at the death of his father? The announcement had to have been in the British press.

  The British press had covered the death of the eminent Southern politician, but it did not cover
the engagement of his son to Miss Ammabelle Redmond of Sea Island, Georgia and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, nor publicize the society wedding of the year.

  On the morning before his wedding day Max had left the house at dawn and saddled the tall, raw-boned horse that was his favourite. He had ridden until he and the horse were exhausted, and then he had lain down under a tree and slept. It was late afternoon when he awakened, and he had sat up and leaned back against the tree and tried to sort out his thoughts.

  ‘I am marrying Ammabelle and I love Lucy. This is crazy. How did it happen? If I told her yes, if I asked Ammabelle to be my wife, I cannot turn my back on her. Was I mad with grief? I thought I was rational. I did everything that had to be done. I talked to Ammabelle of marriage, at least she talked to me, but that was before I went to Europe, why I went to Europe, because I could not make up my mind. Or was it just about working for the family? I can’t think, I can’t think.’

  Max beat his fists against the hard ground in frustration and remembered that the last time he had lain on the ground he had lain with Lucy.

  ‘Oh, Lucy, my heart! What have I done?’

  His horse stood patiently at his side, reins trailing. He caught them up and vaulted into the saddle, his body and his heart for the first time in months as light as thistledown.

  And there on the verandah was his mother, as pale and frail as a moth.

  ‘Oh, Max, my dearest boy,’ she whispered in her pale, frail voice. ‘I was so worried, you were gone so long. We have to get ready for your bachelor party, my dear.’ She clung, light as a burr, to his arm and led him along the verandah to the door of his room. ‘Oh, Max, I have always wanted you to marry dear Ammabelle, the daughter of my very dearest friend. You have given me something to live for. Your father would be so proud of you. I wasn’t going to tell you this yet, it’s a kind of wedding present, but the Party wants you to fill Daddy’s place. What a truly good son you have been to me all my life, and especially now in my time of grief. I wanted to die with Daddy, Max, but now you and Ammabelle will fill this sad house with music and laughter again.’

  Her hands clung, her voice clung, sweet sweet as honey, till he felt he was drowning. He could not get his head out from under.

  18

  Dundee, 1914–1916

  ‘DON’T BE RIDICULOUS.’ Rose was angry but also, and later she would try to analyse why, a little frightened.

  She pushed back her chair and stood up. ‘I’m going to bed, Kier. Have your coffee here or in the drawing room.’

  ‘But wherever you have it, don’t bother me. Is that what you are trying to say, Rose?’

  The years had not been so kind to Kier Anderson-Howard as they had been to his wife. He looked his age, although he was fit and healthy and carried no spare weight on his tall, lean frame. Rose was still slim and, to Kier, even more lovely. He had long since forgotten the waif in the too-big dress. No one could possibly recognize Rosie Nesbitt with her rough red hands and the badly bitten fingernails in the delightful creature staring angrily at him from the door.

  ‘You always have to equate everything with sex, don’t you, Kier? I would prefer to sleep alone tonight because I have to get up very early tomorrow – Lucy and I have an important consultation at the infirmary – but I have never denied you and if you must have sex . . .’

  ‘Sex? I might have felt like making love, Rose, but not now. You’re quite safe.’

  He turned away and reached for the claret jug that still stood, almost full, on the table.

  ‘Perhaps I won’t bother with coffee. Good night, Rose. I’ll sleep in my dressing room.’

  ‘And you won’t do anything silly?’

  ‘As usual you are right, my dear. The British Army wouldn’t want such an ancient recruit.’

  Rose stood for a moment watching him. She wasn’t worried that he would drink too much – no, not Kier. He was as disciplined in his way as she was in hers. Perhaps if he wasn’t . . . But at least he was not going to contact old friends at the War Office and ask their help in enlisting. Enlisting? At his age? Blast the Germans! Life was so pleasant, and they were spoiling everything.

  The practice had grown. They had even hired a male colleague, and so Lucy had begun to fulfil her dream of taking a further degree at the university. Now the decision as to whether or not she should specialize in surgery was being taken out of her hands. War had been declared and young Doctor Thomson, like too many other young men, was anxious to leave everything for which he had worked so hard, to join the Army. And there too was Kier, Kier who had willingly resigned his commission to take over his estate, aching to ‘have a go at the Hun’.

  Rose undressed angrily. Men were so stupid! If they were not, if they were as rational and as level-headed as women, there would not be this war that was raging out of control all over Europe. Stupid men with their hearty ‘over by Christmas, lads’.

  ‘I can’t see it being over until they’ve all blown one another to bits,’ thought Rose, ‘and where does that leave me? They wouldn’t take him; surely they wouldn’t.’

  Rose liked being Dr Rose Nesbitt very well. She admitted too that she liked being Mrs Kier Anderson-Howard very well too. Kier was an attentive, even an adoring husband, although sometimes in the last year or two she had found him looking at her in a questioning way. She knew he was distressed that there had been no children. He did not know that there were no children because Rose was taking great care that there should be none. At the beginning of her marriage she had said, ‘In a year or two,’ but now, she admitted to herself – and Rose was almost always truthful to herself – that she had no intention of ever having a child. Because she knew more about birth control than probably any other doctor in Britain, it was quite easy for her to adhere to this decision.

  ‘I don’t want a child because it would obviously interfere with my career. Kier even complains about having a working wife. If I had a child he would really put his foot down.’ She tried not to admit that, even though she was a doctor and had been at countless live births, the thought of having a baby terrified her. She had watched women in labour, women powerless to control what was happening to their own bodies. ‘No, no, I must always be in control. I know it’s safer now than when my sister died, safer than when my mother was producing rapidly and, in her case, easily, but it’s not for me. I’m needed where I am.’

  She heard Kier’s firm tread as he reached the door of their bedroom and she sighed resignedly and threw down the covers in welcome; she would never deny him. But when the footsteps died away towards his dressing room, she pulled the covers back up and turned over into the pillows. No, he would not change his mind. He had said she would sleep alone and he always kept his word. The sheets were cold. Kier always lay on her side to warm it before he slid over to his own side. It would have been quite nice to have had his arms around her. She had not been home for a week, and before that she had had her period.

  ‘If he’d just do it and get it over with, I’d call him,’ but of course he wouldn’t because for him it wasn’t just sex but love, and he would do his utmost to see that his wife was pleasured too.

  ‘Damn all men,’ thought Mrs Kier Anderson-Howard, and eventually fell asleep in the cold bed that could so easily have been warmed.

  *

  ‘I have your anniversary gift at the house, Rose,’ Lucy said next morning as they drove to the hospital in Lucy’s splendid new Bentley.

  ‘Oh, how kind, Lucy,’ said Rose. ‘After all these years, you shouldn’t have bothered.’ But inside she was realizing why Kier had been just a little difficult at the weekend. She had forgotten again and this was the second year in a row. To keep Kier happy she should have been delivering and receiving unsubtle hints about gifts, but she found that difficult. Kier had given her so much in the last seven years that there was nothing to want, nothing to desire, and what he wanted she could not, would not give.

  ‘Can you and Andy handle surgery tonight, Lucy? I wanted to surprise Kier by
going home for dinner.’ She would do what she could.

  It was worth the trouble. He was like a child on Christmas morning when he came out of the musty old estate office she never entered and found his lovely wife sitting in a swirl of yellow silk in her drawing room.

  He stood at the door for a moment, joy leaping in his eyes. ‘Rose, my dear. I hardly hoped . . .’

  She stood up gracefully and walked towards him. ‘Silly, did you think I would miss our anniversary?’

  ‘Surgery?’

  ‘Lucy and Andy will manage.’ She said it lightly, as if he was much more important than the evening consultations. ‘Lucy has sent us a gift. You can open it after dinner and come in with me tomorrow, if you’re not too busy, to thank her.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘I must catch an early train, but I couldn’t not be with you on our sixth wedding anniversary.’

  ‘Seventh, darling.’

  Rose coloured delicately and raised her lovely face to his. ‘Sixth, seventh? I can’t remember life before you, you silly old thing. Don’t you realize that?’

  And it was true, of course. She had become both Rose Nesbitt, MD, and Mrs Kier Anderson-Howard within the same three months and she had had no time to think of the hard years of struggle before then. If a photograph had existed of Rosie Nesbitt, she would not have recognized her; she would not have wanted to recognize her. Sometimes, in the mean bedroom of a simple house, she would find memories tugging. She would look at a wee girl in a patched frock sitting by the side of her mother as the woman struggled for the seventh, eighth, ninth time to bring new life into the world, and she would remember Rosie, more often Elsie, and double, if possible, her attempts to ease and help. Her work done, she would return to her spacious modern flat. She would have a hot bath in her beautifully appointed bathroom; she would make herself some tea and some toast; she would remember Kier and his constant worries over her health, and she would boil an egg, and then she would sit and in the peace and quiet of her home, gather strength again for the next day. Life was good.