The Bohemian Girl

by Frances Vernon

  And then they went to bed, thought Lady Blentham.

  ‘Your Irish girl’s tea is so stewed – it makes me feel quite unwell,’ she said.

  Angelina would have liked to hit Charles in the past, to beat him for assaulting her in the name of love, with what he called when speaking to her ‘the instrument of love, you know’. And for refusing to become a Tory and a Cabinet Minister, and refusing to forgive Diana; and even for liking Walter Montrose, whose self-centred vagueness and feeble, poetic affection was now making Violet unhappy.

  ‘Don’t drink it,’ said Diana. ‘Next time you come, I shall make it myself. Formosa Oolong is the kind you like, isn’t it? Can I offer you a little brandy – a restorative?’ She was not being too ironical.

  ‘I understand, Diana,’ said Lady Blentham, thinking only of her own desire to inflict pain to induce understanding.

  Of course, Diana could not really enjoy married love. She felt it her perverse duty to claim that she did, because she was now living a world of forbidden novels, in low, eccentric company. Angelina longed to protect and embrace her small daughter more than she had ever done, even when Diana was a faultless child of three.

  *

  When Violet came back, she was very cheerful, and told her mother and sister that she had had a most instructive gossip with Bridget. She folded Diana in her arms, and made her promise to bring Michael, Alice and Bridget up to Auchingilloch in the summer. Diana agreed, and after that there did not seem to be much to say except about Alice’s beauty and goodness. Very shortly, the Blentham ladies took their leave. Diana remained in her sitting-room trying to re-read Leaves of Grass as she waited for her husband to come back and embrace her.

  CHAPTER 12

  MATURE PERSONALITIES

  The dining-room at Auchingilloch was big enough for twenty, but Sir Walter liked to use it even when he and Violet were alone. It was not a particularly pompous room despite its size, for Violet had had it painted green, taken up the florid carpet and replaced the Landseers with family portraits of children. She had even had these cleaned. Diana, looking across the silver and fruit and flowers, objected only to the overmantel loaded with Benares brass.

  Sir Walter had aged in appearance since his marriage, and his hair was entirely white. He was now talking in a rather ignorant way about the pleasures of Bohemia. His wife and her sister had returned from a long walk too late to change for dinner; Diana was wearing her old suit of Rational Dress, and seemed perfectly at ease.

  ‘How one longs to be freed from convention,’ Sir Walter said. ‘But it is rather difficult for some of us.’

  ‘To be sure,’ said Michael.

  ‘I think my father rather longed to be freed from convention, sometimes,’ said Diana, who had never thought of this before.

  Lord Blentham had died six months ago, in January, before he had quite made up his mind about Alice’s prospective trust. All the Blenthams but Diana were still in full mourning; and yet it seemed to them that he had died a long time ago. It was as though they had not fully realised until his death that Charles had been the head of their house, the person who bound them together as children.

  Kitty and Edward were already at Dunstanton, and Lady Blentham, in deepest mourning of all, had gone to live permanently in London which she hated. Maud had amazed the whole family by taking rooms of her own in a mansion block in Wigmore Street, instead of going with her mother. The Blenthams had always supposed that it was Angelina who had perfect authority over her middle-aged daughter, not Charles at all.

  Everyone in the family was richer than before, but only Roderick was glad that Charles was dead. Lord Blentham had told his second son that he disliked him only a few weeks before his stroke; but on the other hand, he had relented towards Diana. He had added a codicil to his will, leaving her three bits of good jewellery and £200.

  Walter said: ‘It’s rather a strange thing, to find oneself deprived of a parent in adult life, though of course it ought not to be, when one considers the matter rationally. To find oneself the oldest generation – really and truly grown-up, as the children say!’

  Violet laughed, and remembered why she had married him. She reached for a nectarine, though she was in the middle of eating a lark, and said: ‘Well, Didie, Walter’s awfully keen on talking about Bohemianism, but what is it, precisely? In essence, as Walter likes to say?’

  ‘Oh – well, it’s not dressing unsuitably, or painting or writing, or caring very little for – formal meals and the rules of mourning shall we say – or making friends of one’s servants, or visiting Scotland in June,’ said Diana, gazing at the door. ‘No – in essence – I suppose the difference is that in polite society, at least when women are present, one never, ever contradicts or argues. And also, it’s not done in the best circles to supply information – not even when one is asked, do you know, in so many words. One must pretend courteous ignorance, unless one’s talking scandal, of course.’

  Sir Walter laughed flirtatiously. Violet assumed her struck expression: the same she had used since schoolroom days.

  ‘Ah,’ said Michael, smoothing his dinner-jacket. ‘Now I understand. Well do I remember, Violet, talking with some man or other at Arthur Cornwallis’s.’

  ‘Arthur’s?’ said Violet, surprised.

  ‘“In that part of southern Poland – what used to be Poland – what is its name?” he said. “Galicia,” I said, and he couldn’t have looked more offended if I’d said Saskatchewan.’

  ‘No, you don’t understand,’ laughed Diana, ‘when you say he couldn’t have looked more offended! He’d have been rather pleased if you’d said Saskatchewan, and the subject would have been changed, gracefully.’ She paused, smiling. ‘No. Anyone who says directly, in mixed company, “No, that’s not true, this is” is essentially a bohemian and not someone who belongs in polite society, however literary and artistic!’ As she said this, she felt satisfied, and quite at home.

  ‘My Diana,’ said Michael, before Walter could pay her a compliment.

  *

  Diana sat down on a stone in the middle of the moor, and Violet flopped down beside her with an exaggerated sigh. They had brought a picnic basket, which they meant to share with Michael, but it was early yet and there was time to be filled in with conversation.

  There was no animosity between them, and little irritation, and yet it was hard to remember that once they had been very much in harmony. People who met them casually had been surprised to learn they were sisters. They felt now like women who kept up a schoolgirl acquaintance only from habit. It chilled Diana to think that such a strong emotion need not die or even change its nature, but could simply become less of the same old thing. She believed she could only understand and cope with disastrous or glorious, enormous change.

  Diana squinted down the slope of the valley to the white-lit stream where Michael was now fishing for anything that would take his bait. His tweed figure was just perceptible. The truth, thought Diana, was of course that nothing mattered to her now but him, and his world, which no one else could understand.

  She turned her thoughts towards her sister’s husband, and tried not to compare him with her own. So long as he was not challenged or criticised in earnest, Sir Walter remained a fond, indulgent but indifferent husband, and a very great bore. But Diana knew that he could be very frightening, and that Violet, who had married him because he seemed the least frightening of men, did not dare oppose him seriously even over little things. Though Walter often said lightly that he was in the wrong, he never believed it. Diana could see that in his eyes when he took off his spectacles.

  She wished she could feel more for Violet, and asked now: ‘Dearest, tell me – when you row with Walter, is he ever – violently disagreeable?’

  Violet was startled. ‘Violently? Didie, gracious. He couldn’t swat a fly, let alone his wife. Besides, we don’t row. We’re not like you and Michael, my dear Diana!’

  Diana saw that she was telling the truth. ‘It’s a good thing, to
be able to fight openly,’ she said, and kicked the grass.

  ‘To be able to say clearly, “You’re wrong, I’m right,” like a child?’ said Violet. ‘I don’t in fact see – oh, never mind! Dearest, must you really go on Wednesday? I thought you would be able to stop with us for three weeks at least.’

  Diana repeated her explanation of the previous day. ‘It’s partly Michael’s work, and partly Bridget. She says the air up here is bad for Alice.’

  ‘What nonsense! Bad for her? How the child can be healthy, growing up in the fumes of King’s Cross and Euston –’

  ‘But she thrives on it.’

  ‘Oh, Didie. I know.’

  ‘Sometimes I wonder whether Michael does. He’s far too thin, and his cough worries me – the London fogs, I’m sure, make it far worse in the winter than it would otherwise be.’

  Violet opened her eyes wide. ‘Didie, he’s not consumptive? People do say it’s the Celtic scourge, you know.’ She rubbed her knees with her palms, then rubbed her hands together.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. Occasionally he claims to be so, which is what makes me think it rather unlikely.’ They smiled at husbands.

  At that moment they heard a faint splash. Then a curse was caught up by the little valley’s echo, and its hollow roar made them laugh with comprehension.

  ‘Hoy!’ called Violet, and her voice came pounding back – O-yy. ‘Hoy!’ Oy – oy.

  ‘Michael!’ cried Diana, standing up and facing the right direction.

  ‘Uhl-l-l,’ said the echo.

  The noon sun was high over the far hill, and it turned the moors pale. Diana turned round, away from the view, and glanced behind her.

  ‘Botheration,’ she said, pushing back a strand of hair. ‘Look at that cloud coming up, it’s going to rain soon. I –’ she stopped.

  Violet said in a lower voice than her sister’s: ‘Ought we to go and see what’s happened to Michael?’

  ‘Of course!’ whispered Diana, quite angrily. They left their small picnic-basket on the rock, and tripped down towards the stream.

  ‘If either of you giggles, I’ll hit her!’ said Michael when they came upon him five minutes later. He was drenched, and puffing far more loudly than they were.

  ‘Wind up your tackle and don’t talk nonsense,’ said Diana. ‘Dearest, did you lean too far forward? Did you fall? My poor one.’ His appearance, though she had expected it, shocked her into making foolish remarks.

  ‘No, Diana, a great brute of a killer-whale pulled me in and tried to swallow me.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Diana, recovering. ‘Just take off your wet clothes behind that gorsebush over there, you can very well wear my knickerbockers, and Violet’s coat – Vio, I’ll borrow your petticoat, please.’

  ‘Women!’

  ‘Thank goodness you did give me a bicycling-suit, all those years ago,’ said Diana. ‘Go on, Michael!’ She was enjoying herself. Self-confidence was the next best thing in the world to love.

  Grey-lipped and shivering, Michael retired. Diana stripped off her breeches, took Violet’s coat, and went in her stockings to join him in the gorse. Violet, holding out her petticoat, heard their argument. When they came back, Michael looked ridiculous, but no warmer.

  ‘We must go straight back to the house,’ said Diana.

  ‘But he ought to be fed before attempting such a horrid walk, surely?’ said Violet, as her sister took the petticoat from her. ‘There’s our little picnic waiting for us, and the sun will soon dry you, Michael.’

  ‘I want to go back,’ said Michael. ‘Will you look at those storm-clouds, sister-in-law!’

  Diana looked at Violet. ‘Very well,’ Violet said. ‘Just leave those wet clothes here, one of the servants will come down and fetch them.’

  ‘Oh, one of the servants will, will he!’ said Michael.

  They had a difficult walk, back up the hill and on to the stony moorland path. There were two miles more to go when they reached it, and the heather-coloured clouds were advancing from the north. They did not drop so much rain as they might have done, but they cut out all warmth, brought midges swarming from the damp ground, and drew behind them an ugly cold wind. The moor was utterly empty.

  ‘Oh, Mother of God, I’ll die,’ said Michael, now in tears.

  Diana slapped his face, and he lunged at her. She laughed, tired out. ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ he said when he was warmer. Diana did not stop laughing. Violet, twenty paces behind them, could not speak.

  ‘Leddy Montrose!’ called a horrified voice.

  ‘Oh!’ she said. Rushing round on the spot, she saw a man with a beard, driving a gig, and recognised him within a moment. ‘Oh, you deliverer, Dr Graham! You don’t know what straits we’re in. I –’

  ‘What’s this, you’ve noo coat on – and who are they?’ The doctor gestured with his whip.

  Violet ran towards him. ‘My brother and sister-in-law – I mean sister and brother-in-law – Mr and Mrs Molloy. Mr Molloy fell into the water and he’s so dreadfully cold. Please, could you drive us back to the Lodge?’ She was now quite composed.

  Diana and Michael hurried towards the gig.

  ‘You’re a doctor?’ said Michael.

  ‘Well, ye’re properly soaked, sir. Climb up, man, and cover yourself with this! The doctor looked at Michael’s bare calves and pulled up a horse-blanket from the floor of the gig. Diana and Violet crawled up unaided, shaking the carriage. ‘A brisk drive, a tot of whisky, and to bed with a hot brick,’ said Dr Graham, whipping the horse and facing Violet, ‘and a good thing I happened to be driving to Mollie Campbell’s – she’s expecting her fifth, and if it’s not a breech-birth I’m a Dutchman – else you’d be in trouble by the looks of you, Mr Molloy.’ He turned back to Violet. ‘I can’t be staying a moment at the Lodge, Leddy Montrose, not with a difficult confinement on my hands.’

  *

  As soon as Michael’s chill turned to pneumonia, and the others became seriously worried, he himself began to maintain he was perfectly well.

  Diana did not leave his room except for meals, and Violet cried over the whole inconvenient, frightening, embarrassing affair. Walter told her kindly not to do so, and that every man must die at some time.

  A week after Michael’s fall into the stream, Dr Graham said to Diana: ‘You’re a faithful wee nurse, Mrs Molloy, but as things have turned out, I’d rather have had a professional – I thought at first, I admit, ’twould not be necessary.’ He folded up his stethoscope and put it in his bag. ‘It happens there’s no trained nurse in the district just now, but if you’ve a mind to send now to Glasgow, Oban even, mebbe –’

  ‘Dr Graham, how seriously is he in danger?’

  The doctor paused. ‘He’s no reached the crisis yet, ma’am. When it’s upon him, we can say just how seriously.’

  Diana clenched her fists. Until now, the doctor had agreed with Michael that his illness was trifling. ‘He has weak lungs,’ she said.

  ‘So you told me before, ma’am.’ He returned to his old, severely jocular manner. ‘But I dinna think ye’ll be a widow yet a while. He’s wiry, and he’s fighting.’ Michael, asleep and exhausted, did not look like a fighter at the moment.

  ‘His mother died of consumption – tuberculosis.’ Her voice rose.

  ‘Consumption, as you call it, is by no means the same things as pneumonia.’

  ‘I know!’

  ‘Had I only been able to see him into bed that day I found ye – I didna think it would be so serious, a ducking in the burn.’

  ‘Your instructions were followed.’

  ‘Ay.’

  ‘We put him to bed, we gave him hot bricks, and a hot toddy,’ said Diana, looking very self-controlled. ‘Are you going to stay now?’

  ‘Give him another poultice, ma’am, and bind it tightly mind, about the chest. You can do that as well as I.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Diana, ‘I’ve done it before.’

  Dr Graham picked up his bag and said at the door: ‘I shall back in the mo
rning, early, Mrs Molloy.’

  When he was gone, Diana knelt down by her husband’s bed and prayed. She knew no Catholic prayers but the first few words of the ‘Ave Maria’, in English, and she muttered these now although Michael claimed to be an atheist and was certainly anti-clerical: ‘Hail Mary full of grace, blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb …’ Even in her worst moments Diana believed that the superstitious rituals of his childhood could prevent Michael from reaching the crisis of his illness, and make him recover as though it had never been.

  This was a very bad moment, worse than any before. Before, her most dreadful hours had been flavoured with a romantic terror which Diana now thought wicked. She had had a tiny bit of confidence in Michael and the doctor then, it had been hard really to imagine that he would die and leave her empty. ‘Hail Mary –’ Diana stopped, and got to her feet, crying with shame.

  It was dark in the room; outside it was raining and the sky was solid grey. Diana did not light a lamp, but she looked down at her husband. Michael’s skin was so pale it looked like candle-grease, though his nose was swollen and flushed. Thin locks of unwashed hair lay like flatworms on his forehead, and his open mouth was lifted in a sneer. Michael was very worried about life. He had told Diana yesterday what she had never known before: that they had debts amounting to nearly two thousand pounds.

  The crisis of pneumonia came upon Michael sometime before midnight, and progress after that was swift. He said ‘Sorry,’ several times, probably referring to his debts, thought Diana, and often added, ‘I’m not dying.’ Dr Graham came at nine in the morning, gave Diana a mild sedative, and stayed on through the hours till late afternoon. But for one brief period during which Alice was screaming, there was silence in the house.