by Anne Perry
Once or twice he had mentioned his father, a man Hester had met several times and of whom she was extraordinarily fond. He even told her a few stories about his student days and his first, disastrous cases. She had not been sure whether to sympathize or be amused. She had looked at his face and ended laughing. He had not seemed to mind in the least.
They had nearly been late for the theater and had taken their seats almost as the curtain rose. It was a melodrama—a terrible play. She had sat trying not to acknowledge to herself how bad it was. She must keep facing the stage. Rathbone, sitting beside her, would be bound to be aware if she gazed around or took more interest in the other members of the audience. She had sat rigidly facing forwards, trying to enjoy the play.
Then she had glanced at him, after one particularly dreadful sequence of lines, and saw him wince. A few moments later she had looked at him again, and this time found him looking back, his eyes bright with rueful amusement.
She had dissolved in giggles, and knew that when he pulled out a large handkerchief and held it to his mouth, it was for the same reason. Then he had leaned across to her and whispered, “Shall we leave before they ask us not to disrupt the performance?” and she had been delighted to agree.
Afterwards they had walked along the icy street still laughing, mimicking some of the worst lines and parodying the scenes. They had stopped by a brazier where a street peddler was selling roasted chestnuts, and Oliver had bought two packets. They had walked along together trying not to burn their fingers or their tongues.
It had been one of the happiest evenings she could remember, and curiously comfortable.
She was still smiling at its recollection when the hansom reached her destination in Ebury Street and set her down with her luggage. She paid the driver and presented herself at the side door, where a footman helped her in with her case and directed her to where she should wait to meet the mistress.
Hester had been told little about the circumstances of Rhys Duff’s injuries, only that they had been sustained in an attack in which his father had been killed. She had been far more concerned with the nature of his distress and what measure she could take to help him. She had seen Dr. Riley at the hospital, and he had professed a continuing interest in Rhys Duff’s case, but it was the family doctor, Corriden Wade, who had approached her. He had told her only that Rhys Duff was suffering from profound bruising, both external and internal. He was in a state of the most serious shock and had so far not spoken since the incident. She should not try to make him respond, except insofar as to make his wishes known regarding his comfort. Her task was to relieve his pain as far as was possible and to change the dressings of his minor external wounds. Dr. Wade himself would care for the more major ones. She must keep her patient clean and warm, and prepare for him such food as he was willing to take. This, of course, should be bland and nourishing.
She was also to keep his room warm and pleasant for him, and to read to him if he should show any desire for it. The choice of material was to be made with great care. There must be nothing disturbing, either to the emotions or the intellect, and nothing which would excite him or keep him from as much rest as he was able to find. In Hester’s view, that excluded almost everything that was worthy of either the time or effort of reading. If it did not stir the intellect, the emotions or the imagination, what point was there in it? Should she read him the railway timetable?
But she had merely nodded and answered obediently.
When Sylvestra Duff came into the room she was a complete surprise. Hester had not formed a picture of her in her mind, but she realized she had expected someone as anodyne as Dr. Wade’s regimen for Rhys. Sylvestra was anything but bland. She was, very naturally, dressed entirely in black, but on her tall, very slender figure, and with her intense coloring, it was dramatic and most flattering. She was pale with shock still, and moved as if she needed to be careful in case in her daze she bumped into things, but there was a grace and a composure in her which Hester could not help but admire. Her first impression was most favorable.
She stood up immediately. “Good morning, Mrs. Duff. I am Hester Latterly, the nurse Dr. Wade engaged in your behalf to care for your son during his convalescence.”
“How do you do, Miss Latterly.” Sylvestra spoke with a low voice, and rather slowly, as if she measured her words before she uttered them. “I am grateful you could come. You must have nursed many young men who have been terribly injured.”
“Yes, I have.” Hester considered adding something to the effect that a large number of them had made startling recoveries, even from the most appalling circumstances, then she looked at Sylvestra’s calm eyes and decided it would be shallow and sound as if she were minimizing the truth. And she had not yet seen Rhys Duff; she had no idea for herself of his condition. Dr. Riley’s pinched face and anxious eyes, his expressed desire to hear of the young man’s progress, indicated that his fears were deep that Rhys would recover slowly, if at all. Dr. Wade had also seemed in some personal distress as he spoke of it to her when engaging her.
“We have prepared a room for you next to my son’s,” Sylvestra continued, “and arranged a bell so that he can call you if he should need you. Of course, he cannot ring it, but he can knock it off onto the floor, and you will hear.” She was thinking of all the practical details, speaking too quickly to cover her emotion. “The kitchen will serve you meals, of course, at whatever time may prove most suitable. You must advise Cook what you think best for my son from day to day. I hope you will be comfortable. If you have any other requirements, please tell me, and I shall do all I can to meet them.”
“Thank you,” Hester acknowledged. “I am sure that will be satisfactory.”
The shadow of a smile touched Sylvestra’s mouth. “I imagine the footman has taken your luggage upstairs. Do you wish to see your room first and perhaps change your attire?”
“Thank you, but I should prefer to meet Mr. Duff before anything else,” Hester replied. “And perhaps you could tell me a little more about him.”
“About him?” Sylvestra looked puzzled.
“His nature, his interests,” Hester answered gently. “Dr. Wade said that the shock has temporarily robbed him of speech. I shall know of him only what you tell me, to begin with. I should not like to cause him any unnecessary annoyance or distress by ignorance. Also …” She hesitated.
Sylvestra waited, with no idea what Hester meant.
Hester took a breath.
“Also I must know if you have told him of his father’s death.…”
Sylvestra’s face cleared as she understood. “Of course! I’m sorry for being so slow to understand. Yes, I have told him. I did not think it right to keep it from him. He will have to face it. I do not want him to believe I have lied to him.”
“I cannot imagine how difficult it must be for you,” Hester said. “I am sorry I had to ask.”
Sylvestra was silent for a moment, as if she too was stunned even by the thought of what had happened to her in the space of a few days. Her husband was dead and her son was desperately ill, locked in his own world of isolation, hearing and seeing but unable to speak, unable to communicate with anyone the terror and the pain he must feel.
“I’ll try to tell you something about him,” Sylvestra replied. “It … it is difficult to think of the kind of things which would help.” She turned to lead the way out of the room and across the hall to the stairs. At the bottom she looked back at Hester. “I am afraid that because of the nature of the incident, we have the police returning to ask questions. I cannot believe they will trouble you, since naturally you can know nothing. When Rhys regains his speech, he will tell them, but of course they don’t wish to wait.” A bleakness came over her face. “I don’t suppose they will ever find who did it anyway. It will be some pack of nameless ruffians, and the slums will protect their own.” She started up the stairs, back very straight, head high, but there was no life in her step.
Following after her, Hester imagined
that Sylvestra was barely beginning to lose the numbness of shock, and only in her mind did she turn over and over the details as their reality emerged. Hester could remember feeling the same when she first heard of the suicide of her father, and then, within weeks, of her mother’s death from loneliness and despair. She had kept on worrying at the details, and yet at the same time never really believed the man responsible for her family’s ruin would be caught.
But that was all in the past, and all that needed to be retained in her mind from it was her understanding of the changing moods of grief.
The Duff house was large and very modern in furnishings. Everything she had seen in the morning room and in the hall dated from no further back than the accession of the Queen. There was none of the spare elegance of the Georgian period, or of William IV. There were pictures everywhere, ornate wallpaper, tapestries and woven rugs, flower arrangements and stuffed animals under glass. Fortunately, both the hall and the upstairs landings were large enough not to give an air of oppression, but it was not a style Hester found comfortable.
Sylvestra opened the third door along, hesitated a moment, then invited Hester to accompany her inside. This room was completely different. The long windows faced south and such daylight as there was fell on almost bare walls. The space was dominated by a large bed with carved posts, and in it lay a young man with pale skin, his sensitive, moody face mottled with blue-black bruises and in several places still scabbed with dried blood. His hair, as black as his mother’s, was parted to one side and fell forward over his brow. Because of the disfigurement of his injuries and the pain he must feel, it was difficult to read his expression, but he stared at Hester with what looked like resentment.
It did not surprise her. She was an intruder in a very deep and private grief. She was a stranger, and yet he would be dependent upon her for his most personal needs. She would witness his pain and still be detached from it, able to come and go, to see and yet not to feel. He would not be the first patient to find that humiliating, an emotional and physical nakedness in front of someone who always had the privacy of clothing.
Sylvestra went over to the bed, but she did not sit.
“This is Miss Latterly, who is going to care for you now you are home again. She will be with you all the time, or else in the room along the landing, where the bell will ring to summon her if you need her. She will do everything she can to make you comfortable and help you to get better.”
He turned his head to regard Hester with only mild curiosity, and still what she could not help feeling was dislike.
“How do you do, Mr. Duff,” she said rather more coolly than she had originally intended. She had nursed very awkward patients before, but for all her realization, it was still disturbing to be disliked by someone for whom she had an instinctive pity and with whom she would spend the next weeks, or months, constantly—and in most intimate circumstances.
He blinked but stared back at her in silence. It was going to be a difficult beginning, whatever might follow.
Sylvestra looked faintly embarrassed. She turned from Rhys to Hester.
“Perhaps I had better show you your room?”
“Thank you,” Hester accepted. She would change into a plainer and more practical dress, and return alone to try to get to know Rhys Duff and learn what there was she could do to help him.
Her first evening in the Duff house was unfamiliar and oddly lonely. She had frequently been among people who were profoundly distressed by violence or bereavement, even by crime. She had lived with people under the pressure of investigation by strangers into the most private and vulnerable parts of their lives. She had known people whom dreadful circumstances had caused to be suspicious and frightened of each other. But she had never before nursed a patient who was conscious and yet unable to speak. There was a silence in the whole house which gave her a sense of isolation. Sylvestra herself was a quiet woman, not given to conversing except when she had some definite message to impart, not talking simply for companionship, as most women do.
The servants were muted, as if in the presence of the dead, not chattering or gossiping among themselves, as was habitual.
When Hester returned to Rhys’s room she found him lying on his back staring up at the ceiling, his eyes wide and fixed, as if in great concentration upon something. She hesitated to interrupt him. She stood watching the firelight flickering, looked to make certain there were enough coals in the bucket for several hours, then studied the small bookcase on the nearer wall to see what he had chosen to read before the attack. She saw books on various other countries—Africa, India, the Far East—and at least a dozen on forms of travel, letters and memoirs of explorers, botanists and observers of the customs and habits of other cultures. There was one large and beautifully bound book on the art of Islam, another on the history of Byzantium. Another seemed to be on the Arab and Moorish conquests of North Africa and Spain before the rise of Ferdinand and Isabella had driven them south again. Beside it was a book on Arabic art, mathematics and inventions.
She must make some contact with him. If she had to force the issue, then she would. She walked forward to where he must see her, even if only from the corner of his eye.
“You have an interesting collection of books,” she said conversationally. “Have you ever traveled?”
He turned his head to stare at her.
“I know you cannot speak, but you can nod your head,” she went on. “Have you?”
He shook his head very slightly. It was communication, but the animosity was still in his eyes.
“Do you plan to, when you are better?”
Something closed inside his mind. She could see the change in him quite clearly, although it was so slight as to defy description.
“I’ve been to the Crimea,” she said, disregarding his withdrawal. “I was there during the war. Of course, I saw mostly battlefields and hospitals, but there were occasions when I saw something of the people and the countryside. It is always extraordinary, almost indecent to me, how the flowers go on blooming and so many things seem exactly the same, even when the world is turning upside down with men killing and dying in their hundreds. You feel as if everything ought to stop, but of course it doesn’t.”
She watched him, and he did not move his eyes away, even though they seemed filled with anger. She was almost sure it was anger, not fear. She looked down to where his broken and splinted hands lay on the sheets. The ends of the fingers below the bandages were slender and sensitive. The nails were perfectly shaped, except for one which was badly torn. He must have injured them when he had fought to try to save himself … and perhaps his father too. What did he remember of it? What terrible knowledge was locked up in his silence?
“I met several Turkish people who were very charming and most interesting,” she went on, as if he had responded wishing to know. She described a young man who had helped in the hospital, talking about him quite casually, remembering more and more as she spoke. What she could not recall she invented.
Once, during the whole hour she spent with him, she saw the beginning of a smile touch his mouth. At least he was really listening. For a moment they had shared a thought or a feeling.
Later she brought a salve to put on the broken skin of his face where it was drying and would crack painfully. She reached out with it on her finger, and the moment her skin touched his, he snatched his cheek away, his body clenched up, his eyes black and angry.
“It won’t hurt,” she promised. “It will help to stop the scab from cracking.”
He did not move. His muscles were tight, his chest and shoulders so locked that the pain of it must pull on the bruises which both Dr. Riley and Dr. Wade had said covered his body.
She let her hands fall.
“All right. It doesn’t matter. I’ll ask you later and see if you’ve changed your mind.”
She left and went downstairs to the kitchen to fetch him something to eat. Perhaps the cook would prepare him a coddled egg or a light custard. Accordin
g to Dr. Wade, he was well enough to eat and must be encouraged to do so.
The cook, Mrs. Crozier, had quite an array of suitable dishes either already prepared or easy to make even as Hester waited. She offered beef tea, eggs, steamed fish, bread-and-butter pudding, baked custard or cold chicken.
“How is he, miss?” she asked with concern in her face.
“He seems very poorly still,” Hester answered honestly. “But we should keep every hope. Perhaps you know which dishes he likes?”
The cook’s face brightened a little. “Oh, yes, miss, I certainly do. Very fond o’ cold saddle o’ mutton, he is, or jugged hare.”
“As soon as he’s ready for that, I’ll let you know.” Hester took the coddled egg and the custard.
She found him in a changed mood. He seemed very ready to allow her to assist him to sit up and take more than half the food prepared for him, in spite of the fact that to move at all obviously caused him considerable pain. He gasped and sweat broke out on his face. He seemed at once clammy and cold, and for a little while nauseous as well.
She did all she could for him but it was very little. She was forced to stand by helplessly while he fought waves of pain, his eyes on her face, filled with desperation and a plea for any comfort at all, any relief. She reached out and held the ends of his fingers below the bandages, regardless of the bruising and the broken, scabbed skin, and gripped him as she would were he slipping away from her literally.
