By three in the afternoon, after almost nine hours of constant conflict, the worst was over. The victorious army, half the strength of its adversary, made camp on the banks of the Nile. There, Robert’s exhausted, beaten horse had dipped its head to drink, and as it did so, the strength which had kept him in the saddle deserted him. He slipped down into the warm, muddy water, where he would no doubt have happily drowned had it not been for the determined efforts of two of his fellaheen, the same two who had escorted him from the battlefield. They dragged him, wet and bleeding from that ugly, open wound, into the hastily-erected casualty tent.
A few days later he had embarked with the other wounded on the long journey by barge and rail and truck to the military hospital in Cairo. En route he heard many tales of men wounded and killed by similar tricks to the one which could have been the end of him. Robert knew that only sheer, headlong speed had saved him from the full force of that potentially lethal blow. Even now he could hardly imagine how he had been wounded at such a height from the ground: the man must have leapt and struck, all in the same movement. A blow which might have severed vital organs at waist height, or bared his thigh to the bone, instead had glanced across his left shoulder, cutting deep into the muscle of his upper arm. He knew he had been almost unbelievably lucky to escape with his life, and yet that momentary mistake angered him still. A split-second in which he had forgotten almost eighteen months’ experience in the east and obeyed a reflex learned in childhood: Pax — I surrender. He should have remembered that none of them surrendered, not in Holy War, which was how the Khalifa’s Muslim troops regarded that incursion of Christians into their land.
An hour or so later he was relating the tale to Molloy.
‘I suppose General Gordon stands avenged at long last — even though it’s taken us ten years to do it — and we’ve ruined Omdurman, just as those devils ruined Khartoum.’
‘But more to the point,’ Molloy said slyly, ‘the British have triumphed in the Nile valley and stopped the French in their colonial aspirations!’
Robert laughed. ‘Right! So we’re all due for a big pat on the back, in spite of losing the Khalifa!’
‘Will he give any more trouble, do you think?’
Robert shook his head. ‘Shouldn’t think so – he’s a spent force. They’ll catch up with him eventually.’
Molloy sipped his coffee. ‘Will you go back?’
Consciously easing his shoulder, Robert paused to consider. ‘I don’t know. It depends on this damned thing. If it heals well, I’d prefer to return to the regiment. I think I’ve had enough of sun and sand to last me a lifetime!’
Laughing, Molloy set down his cup. ‘Well, now, let’s have a look at it.’ Warming his hands at the study fire, he unfastened the sling and helped Robert with his jacket and shirt. Running expert fingers over those damaged muscles, he persuaded his patient into movement, watching the response with keen concern.
There came a knock at the study door. ‘Oh, I thought you were finished,’ Letty said, ‘I’ll come back later.’
‘It’s quite all right, we nearly are,’ the doctor murmured, gently touching Robert’s outstretched arm. ‘Bend the elbow, now, and if you can, try to touch the back of your head.’
‘You jest, of course!’ Robert exclaimed to the mirror, but he bent the elbow as required, gritting his teeth as fingertips grazed the tip of his right ear. ‘That’s as much as you’re getting, damn you!’ he swore, and, gasping, leaned against the mantelpiece.
Seeing the beads of sweat on his skin, Letty swallowed hard and turned away, forcing down an urge to fuss.
‘That’s excellent,’ Molloy said. ‘We’ll be having you to hounds in a week, and whirling that sabre like an expert the week after, make no mistake.’
‘Sword,’ Robert muttered darkly. ‘And save the blarney for your other patients, Molloy. I want the truth.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ the other man said agreeably. ‘But you’ve done that shoulder a lot of damage. It’s healed well, despite those army butchers, though I wish,’ he murmured thoughtfully, touching those angry, puckered scars,’ they could have foregone some of the fancy embroidery.’
‘They were stitching people up,’ Robert countered grimly, ‘left, right and centre, in a tent full of flies on the banks of the Nile. The battle had been going on since sun-up, and by the time they got to me, it was dark. I’d lost a lot of blood and I was singularly fortunate not to lose my arm as well! So don’t talk to me about aesthetics, Molloy. As far as I’m concerned, those army butchers did a bloody good job.’
‘Oh, they did, they did indeed. I’m just concerned about the range of movement — ‘
‘So am I. I expect you to tell me how to regain it.’
‘Robert, please,’ Letty murmured, handing him his shirt. ‘It’s not Dr Molloy’s fault. Don’t be so aggressive.’
‘You’re right. Forgive me.’ Exhausted, he sank down into a chair, fumbling with buttons and collar-studs.
‘It’s all right. Pain shortens the best of tempers.’ Accepting more coffee from Letty, he said: ‘Exercise is what you’re needing, every day and plenty of it. Nothing too sudden or strenuous, you understand — just gentle and consistent movement. Get rid of that sling – which could be doing more harm than good, now — and use your arm as much as possible. It will tire you, so be sure and get plenty of rest. You must send him early to bed, Miss Duncannon,’ he instructed with a twinkle, ‘and no wild hooleys yet awhile!’
‘I’ll do my best,’ she promised, and seeing her brother in difficulties with his tie, bent to help him. His skin was still tanned, but beneath it Robert was waxen with pain and fatigue.
‘I’ll be going,’ Molloy said. ‘I’ll call again in a couple of days, and in the meantime, keep up with those exercises.’
Letty saw him out, and, returning, poured Robert a glass of sherry.
‘A little early in the day, isn’t it?’ he asked sardonically. ‘To what do I owe the honour?’
‘Drink it. It’ll do you good.’
In mock amazement, he raised his glass to her. ‘I never thought I’d hear you say that!’
‘It’s sherry, Robert, not brandy.’ Drawing an envelope from her pocket, Letty paused momentarily. ‘The post just arrived — with a letter from Louisa.’
He stiffened immediately, then winced; setting his glass down, he said: ‘For me?’
‘No. It’s a reply to one I wrote some weeks ago, after we’d heard you were safe in Cairo. There were lists of wounded in every paper, and I wanted her to know you were alive and recovering.’
‘Good of her to reply so quickly,’ he remarked sardonically.
‘Yes, I did wonder at the delay.’ Drawing out two small sheets of paper, Letty handed them across to him.
Robert scanned the lines quickly. Louisa was relieved to know he was safe and in hospital — had great faith in his powers of recovery — Letty must not worry too much about him. Smiling dryly, he read on. But then his smile faded.
‘Oh, I see. Her mother’s ill. Has been for some time…’
‘Doesn’t sound very good, does it?’
He read the letter through again, absorbing every hasty line. ‘No,’ he agreed, ‘it doesn’t.’
Deep in thought, he was startled when Letty asked him what was wrong.
‘Well, perhaps it was foolish of me, but I was hoping to enlist Mary Elliott’s help…’
Leaning back in his chair he rubbed his brow, suddenly realizing how very much he had been depending on Louisa’s mother to help him make contact with his children. Louisa had not replied to his intermittent letters. Giving up, he had diverted his enquiries to her mother: she at least had written with news from time to time. A good woman: once more he was indebted to her.
But as he pondered the nature of Mary Elliott’s illness, another problem presented itself. Before leaving for the Sudan, Robert had made arrangements for an allotment of money to be paid to her each month, for the children. If she was ill as it se
emed, that money would be frozen. And his children, he reflected bitterly, could be starving and in rags before Louisa would let him know.
With a longing so painful he thought it would break his heart, he thought of his two sons. He remembered them as they were: a laughing toddler, and a solemn, year-old baby. But they were no longer babies from the photographs Letty had shown him. Liam and Robin were little boys now, no doubt as mischievous as small boys are. Louisa would have her hands full, he thought, especially with the baby too. His little daughter. Born just nine months after Louisa’s hasty departure for York.
Once Letty had gone, he went to his desk and penned a few lines to Louisa’s mother. Making the excuse of some business to transact, he said he would be visiting York in the near future, and would like to take the opportunity of visiting her. He had heard via Letty that she was unwell, but trusted it was no more than a temporary indisposition, and hoped their meeting would see her restored to her usual self. Unless he heard to the contrary, he concluded, he would see her shortly, certainly within the next ten days.
Despite his sister’s remonstrations, Robert booked his passage and in the intervening days embarked upon a regime of alternate rest and exercise. He sent a note to Harris, requesting bed and board for a few days, and prayed Mary Elliott would be well enough to receive him.
Three
Dead to the world for several hours, Louisa woke reluctantly to a cup of tea from Bessie.
‘She’s still asleep, and she’s all right for now. I’m off to my bed.’
‘All right, Bessie, I’ll be there in a minute.’ Forcing her eyes open, Louisa struggled to stay awake, and tried not to think of the day ahead. Like an automaton she washed and dressed, rescued the baby from her cot, went down to the kitchen to make Edward’s breakfast, trailed back upstairs for the boys. Washed them, dressed them, fed them, and waved Edward goodbye at the door.
‘I’ll see you about eight, probably,’ he said as he left. ‘I hope you have a better day.’
‘So do I,’ she murmured; but each day seemed worse than the one before.
She bathed her mother, helped her out of bed, changed the sheets, and made her comfortable for the day. Downstairs, while the little ones played, she put the sheets in cold water, washed her hands and changed her apron. In hopes of tempting her mother’s jaded appetite, she prepared a soft-boiled egg and thin slices of bread and butter. Arranging the tray with pretty china and a starched linen cloth, Louisa edged her way carefully into the hall.
She almost ignored the two letters lying on the mat, but in the end set the tray down and picked them up. A cream envelope was uppermost, from Lincoln, for Edward; and the thick white one, clearly postmarked Dublin... was addressed to Mrs Mary Elliott.
The handwriting, familiar if less confident, set her trembling. Unable to tear her eyes away, Louisa sat down for a moment on the stairs. It was as though his presence had suddenly grown alarmingly close. From the brevity of that announcement in the Gazette, through Letty’s joyful missive that he was alive and in Cairo, to this note from Dublin, it was like watching through a telescope and seeing the approach of her nemesis.
She did not wish him dead. No, not that. And she was glad he had survived with all his limbs intact: the idea of Robert maimed, permanently disabled, was unbearable. She would have pitied him, and blamed herself. Alive, at least she could still detest him, call him despicable, wish on him another Amelia Loy...
But why had he written to her mother? And what had he written?
Gingerly, as though the envelope contained some secret, explosive device, Louisa placed it face down on the breakfast tray.
Mary Elliott was in a fretful, peevish mood. She complained that her bones hurt, particularly her back and beneath her arms, where she said Louisa had hauled her out of bed. Irritated, biting her tongue, Louisa set the tray down, gently assisted her mother into a sitting position, and propped her up with pillows. Hiding Robert’s letter under a book, she recited the usual litany about eating up and getting well, and received the usual negative responses.
‘Well, Mamma, don’t eat if you don’t want to, but you’ve got a letter this morning, and unless you eat all the yolk and at least half a slice of bread, I shall leave it where it is.’
‘A letter?’ she queried. ‘From whom?’ For a moment all her old vivacity was back, and the milky blue eyes almost sparkled.
‘How should I know? I haven’t looked beyond the address. Come on, eat up and I’ll get it.’ She broke into the egg, spooning soft white and deep orange yolk into her mother’s mouth. Like feeding a baby, she thought, angry at the indignity of illness and age, only too aware that those tiny, claw-like hands trembled too much to hold a spoon.
Louisa knew, as they all did, that it was just a matter of time. The word was never uttered, of course, not even by the blunt Dr Mackenzie, but it was obvious even to those with no medical knowledge that Mary Elliott was suffering some sort of cancer. Painlessly as yet, but with silent, inexorable speed, it was devouring her almost before their eyes.
That ever-present knowledge was like a form of cancer itself, eating away in Louisa’s mind. With pity, sorrow, anger and exhaustion, it was central to everything, subjecting all other concerns, all other emotions, to distant places. Faced with her mother, even Robert’s letter was important only as a means of bribery.
‘Is it from John Elliott? You know his writing well enough.’
‘You can see for yourself who it’s from,’ Louisa said, ‘when we’ve finished this egg.’ It was more than half eaten, and no real difficulty so far; that simple satisfaction momentarily outweighed everything else. She waited while her mother slowly chewed a piece of bread; felt the effort it cost to swallow and instinctively offered a sip of tea. The rest of the bread was waved away, but energy and determination lasted long enough for the egg to be finished, and with a sigh of relief Louisa patted her mother’s forearm, feeling the awful absence of flesh.
‘You’ve done marvellously this morning,’ she smiled. ‘I wish you had a letter every day.’
Determined not to be flattered, Mary Elliott gave a half-smile and a little grunt of disparagement. ‘Wouldn’t be the same. Anyway, I wish you’d stop talking about it and just go and get it.’ Despite the feeble voice, her eyes held all their old command, and Louisa marvelled at the way her mother could slip from vague, almost meaningless rambling to this sharp lucidity. And back again.
‘I told a fib,’ she said, the envelope in her hand. ‘I do know who it’s from. It’s from Robert.’
Mary Elliott’s eyes darkened perceptibly, the sparse flesh covering her small, bird-like features suddenly creasing into a thousand wrinkles. ‘Well, give it to me!’
‘Don’t you want me to open it for you?’
‘No, I don’t. I’m quite capable of opening my own letters, thank you. Pass me a knife.’
Biting her lip, Louisa did as she was bidden and stayed to watch the ensuing struggle. Crossly, and with great difficulty, Mary Elliott achieved her objective; then turned on her daughter.
‘Well? What are you waiting for? It’s me he’s written to — not you.’
With another leather-bound ledger complete, Edward rubbed his eyes and glanced at the clock. It was a little after seven and the kettle was hissing gently over the glowing coals of his small fire. He brewed another pot of tea, warming his hands around it before arranging another batch of materials on his bench. It was bread-and-butter work which occupied him, work he preferred to do in the evenings when his concentration was less acute. He measured and scored, trimmed and glued almost mechanically, keeping a notebook and pencil by his side ready to jot down any odd lines of verse which came to him. While his fingers were busy, his mind was also, refining and polishing words with a craftsman’s thoroughness. Although he had written a vast amount since Louisa’s return, over the years he had become increasingly fastidious; much was destroyed, the best kept in the strong-box beside the gold-leaf, and very little submitted for publication.
But his mind that evening was occupied less by words than by figures; by a tortured form of mental arithmetic which steadfastly refused to give the necessary answers. Financially, as in every other respect, their joint resources had been stretched to the limit over the past few months, and while Louisa did her best, that huge house ran up bills which were becoming increasingly difficult to pay.
The hotel had struggled on as a business for well over a year after Louisa’s return; but with children in the house and whiffs of scandal spreading like sulphur fumes, even their regular guests had begun to thin alarmingly. Deciding to close before bankruptcy set in, they had talked about moving, even looked at a few properties; then his aunt had lost interest, and with the onset of her illness she simply wanted to stay where she was. Understanding that, for a while Edward had accepted the contributions she made to the housekeeping; but with no real idea of her savings, and suspecting they could not be vast, he wanted to reserve what little was left for the offices of a decent burial.
In front of his aunt he maintained that money was not a problem, and indeed his own business had expanded to the point where he could barely cope with it single-handedly. With accounts falling behind and paperwork mounting up, Edward knew he needed another pair of hands to take on the bulk of everyday work. He needed someone like his old apprentice, by some miracle still working at Tempest’s. He needed him desperately but could not afford to pay his wages.
The problem lay in the fact that he was owed considerable amounts of money, largely by new customers whose reliability was unknown. But at the bank his credit was none too healthy, and he was repeatedly being warned not to take on more than the business would stand.
Driven by his need to provide, Edward was becoming increasingly anxious. Yet there seemed no answer to it. While his aunt lived, they could not move house; and until they moved to somewhere less expensive, the crisis would only deepen. Edward finished the ledger and cleared his bench, knowing he should have worked another hour, but quite beyond it. Gathering his coat and scarf, he banked down the fire and set off for home.
Louisa Elliott Page 60
