Fragile Blossoms

by Dodie Hamilton

  Chilled, a draught blowing, Julia drew her shawl close about her shoulders.

  ‘Come down to my sitting room,’ said Nan, ‘and I’ll make us a warm drink. You can leave your lad. Nothing will wake him.’

  Lamps lit and coal glowing in the hearth it was cosy in the parlour. Nan Roberts took up the patching of linen. ‘How did you get on with Gussie Simpkin? Are you to stay with us or on your way back to Cambridge?’

  Julia blinked.

  Nan smiled. ‘Bakers End needs no Town Crier, a pint of ale in the public bar and tongues start clacking. I heard you’d been left the N and N. It’s not just idle curiosity that gets folk going. It’s because the cottage is connected to the Lansdowne Estate. The Big House has been empty too long. It needs selling and carriages coming and going not boarded up. Hopefully things are about to change. Someone intends living there. We want to know who.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t help. Oh there’s a hole in my skirt!’ Julia grimaced. ‘I must have caught it on the brambles coming through the lane.’

  ‘That lane! I’ve been on the council,’ said Nan, ‘but they say it’s not their responsibility. Should you have been on foot, Mrs Dryden? It’s a fair distance to the cottage and you but a slip of a thing! August Simpkin should’ve brought you back. The money he makes he ought to at least offer a hansom cab.’

  ‘He did. I preferred to walk.’

  Mrs Roberts snorted. ‘I bet he was relieved. Squashed up in that growler of his with a beautiful widow-woman is more than his nerves could take.’

  Julia smiled. ‘I doubt that’s the case.’

  ‘I’m sure it is. I was only thinking earlier with your hair you’d best wear a bonnet indoors as well as out. It’ll give the lassies here a fighting chance. There’s a shortage of good men as it is without you setting them in a coil.’

  ‘You believe in straight talking.’

  ‘I’m from Yorkshire. I believe in honesty. You’ve secrets, my dear, I can tell. But they’re your secrets and as long as they don’t trouble me and mine they’ll stay yours.’

  The room was hushed, firelight glimmering and the muted buzz of male voices in the bar. ‘So shall you sell?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Don’t be too hasty. As Mr Roberts will tell you it’s as good a house as you’ll get anywhere. A dab of whitewash and it’ll be good as new. My Luke will sort it. He’ll put his shoulder to the wheel and unlike some round here he’ll not charge for what he doesn’t do.’

  ‘I think there are mice.’

  ‘We’re on the edge of the Wash. If we were to quit on account of mice the village will be empty. Get a dog and cat. A dog will scare off the rogues and a mouser will clear you of everything and offer the odd rabbit for the pot.’

  ‘Matty would like a dog. He was fond of the college dog.’

  ‘Where did you live before?’

  ‘My husband taught at Cambridge. We lived in the college grounds.’

  ‘A clever man then?’

  ‘Yes, he was.’

  ‘And your boy will take after him.’ Nan sighed. ‘Luke’s teacher wanted him to go to college but we weren’t as we are now. We needed him. He resented that. He thought he could do better and to be fair he could’ve. He’s clever. Give him a problem storing shelves in the cellar or how many stones in a wall and he’ll figure it out. It’s him that keeps the wall bottom of your garden.’

  If the gardens are a blessing then the wall back of the property is a curse. Julia asked Mr Simpkin if she should be alarmed, was there something on the other side that needed to stay on the other side.

  ‘There’s nothing sinister that I know of,’ was his reply.

  ‘Then why build a wall? It casts a gloom over the whole house.’

  ‘I don’t know why it was built. I only know if you accept the property you accept the wall. It’s in the Will: ‘Not to come down until the stars fall.’’

  Julia enquired of Mrs Roberts. ‘Why is there a wall?’

  Nan shrugged. ‘People are always asking that. I tell them only Miss Justine knew why it was built and she took the answer to her grave.’

  ‘Who were the Newman sisters? I mean, where did they come from?’

  ‘They were Irish, I heard, from County Clare. They were gentry. There was talk of them dining with Her Majesty. I wouldn’t be surprised. I met Miss Justine. It was when we had the Beehive Inn at Coddleston. She was in a barouche, a coat of arms on the door. A trace on the lead horse snapped, Luke fixed it. Miss Justine gave him sixpence. He gave me the sixpence but wouldn’t say what she said. That was twenty years ago, he still won’t say.’

  Julia sighed. ‘I do like the cottage. It’s a pretty place and the gardens are lovely. As for repairs I do have a little money set aside.’

  ‘There you are then! Settle here and be happy!’

  ‘Are you happy here?’

  ‘I’m not unhappy. The business thrives and my family are well. I don’t look beyond that. Luke can’t abide Bakers. He’d leave tomorrow. He reckons folk here are small minded with small minded ways. He’s right, of course.’ Nan jabbed the needle in the cloth. ‘I don’t like nodding to Fussy Gussy’s shrew of a wife but in business as in life you can’t be choosy. I go to church two Sunday mornings a month, I pay my dues, and I follow Cromwell’s advice, I keep my head down and my powder dry. I advise you to do the same.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I do.’ Nan’s glance was steady. ‘You are young and lovely and a widow. There’ll be those wanting to help, and those wanting to hinder, and for a time you won’t know who’s who. Until you do there’s a place here with me and mine.’

  ‘You are very kind.’

  ‘No, not kind! It is our duty in this world to help one another. If you leave that skirt with me I’ll see it mended. There’s a good little dressmaker in Lower Bakers. You wouldn’t want a thing like that spoiled. You have beautiful clothes. That shawl you’re wearing is so soft.’

  ‘Do you like it?’ Julia laid it about Nan’s shoulders. ‘It’s yours.’

  ‘Oh I couldn’t!’ Nan passed it back. ‘I was admiring it, that’s all.’

  ‘You have been kind to Matty.’

  ‘Kind nothing, I love the little lad!’

  ‘Please take it! I do so want you to have it.’

  ‘Well then if you say so but things like this are costly. You have to work to earn them. They don’t fall from the skies.’

  ‘Sometimes they do.’

  ‘What?’ Nan took a closer look at her guest. Three days she’s been watching this young woman. Heavy silken hair and amber eyes, young Mrs Dryden is a rare beauty and her clothes costly in style and make. That blouse with the pin-tucks, there’s a similar garment in Bentalls priced at five shillings. And her skirt and the snakeskin boots? You won’t see boots like that in Norfolk. And why room here? Has she no relatives to take care of her?

  Nan is proud of the Nelson. They don’t rent the Inn as do most victuallers. It’s paid for, lock, stock, and barrel, and not a farthing owing. She’s proud of her husband and her son and the work they do as builders, a reputation as the best in the business. That a lady should choose to stay is no surprise, many gentlefolk stop over on the way to Sandringham, but wouldn’t you think a person of such elegant manner would be accompanied by a maid?

  Six months a widow and not in black! Now she gives shawls away and talks of them falling from the skies. What a thing to say! And why when she said it did her lovely face strike fear in Nan’s heart as though realising the kitten she nursed at her bosom was in fact a wild cat with yellow eyes and claws.

  Nan rang the bell. A maid appeared. ‘Mrs Dryden is weary. Accompany her to her room, Maggie. Make sure she has everything she needs.’

  In the room darning the skirt Julia lamented her foolish tongue. The shawl was gifted along with a travel coat and moleskin furs, La
dy Evelyn Carrington of Russell Square, London, the benevolent giver. It’s what she meant by falling from the sky. So foolish! Her remark brought Bloomsbury to Bakers End and distance between her and Nan Roberts.

  Julia pondered the cottage. Why the wall? What does it repel? Walls can’t make a house safe no matter how high. A window left open and rain will get in, a door unlocked and a thief will rob you of all you cherish. No one person can decide your fate. Only God’s good grace can give you safety.

  It’s years since Julia felt safe. January 11, 1890, at three minutes past seven her mother, Abigail, climbed on a stool to take down a jar of pickles. She fell and never got up again. Sixteen year-old Julia fell with her and has not stopped falling. With mother gone the heart of the family was pinched out and safety invested in father, Rector Philip Dryden. Sisters Charlotte and May were married with children and lived in Cowper. The two of them alone in the Rectory it wasn’t long before Father began to fail. Julia tried shoring him up, every day a fresh egg in a Willow-patterned egg-cup for breakfast, and then a walk in the garden to see the hedgehog under a flower pot, and in the evening a chapter of Oliver Twist. Every day for two years she struggled to keep him here on earth. He hid in books escaping the bleak 19th Century for Homer and Ancient Greece. Thursday evening choir practice was his only joy. She’d sit at the harmonium thumping out a chorus from Handel’s Messiah, Father unable to resist the declamation, ‘Wonderful! Councillor!’

  It was all to no avail, he yearned to follow Mother and faded away.

  The Rectory passed to a new incumbent Julia must marry, and who better, and more to hand, than second cousin Owen Passmore. Julia begged for another way but Sister Charlotte, five years senior and strong of temperament, would have none of it. ‘He is Uncle William’s step-son. He is sober, solvent, and ready to marry. What other way is there?’

  A night in Owen’s company and Julia knew he hadn’t thought to marry, nor, though he nightly battled to create them, had he thought of children. An ugly house in a row of ugly houses in the College grounds, a few sticks of furniture, a borrowed piano and a telescope, marriage was a means to an end for both. The telescope was parked in a front bedroom window. Every morning Owen would say, ‘I’d be obliged if you didn’t touch it, my dear. I have it in the right position. A quarter inch left or right and I must start all over again.’

  Every night in their lumpy bed suffering his apologetic fumbles a riposte to his directive hung in Julia’s mind like a Sampler: ‘Show me Thy way, O Lord and make it plain.’ Owen rarely found his way to either goal. After Matty was ill he stopped trying. If Owen loved Julia he never said so, the words, like the deed, too worrying. Egypt was his love, Egypt and the stars, gazing through a telescope at Venus or digging in sand for centuries’ old broken pottery. A new bride was unsettling, though she did bring a body that nightly drove him crazy and eventually an annuity that helped him seek his dream.

  Owen loved Matty. In the early months he’d sit by the cot hands clasped together gazing at his son as though doubting the fruit of his endeavour. Then Matty fell ill. As a baby he made the usual gurgling sounds, after surgery gurgling sounds were all he made. Owen was shocked. ‘I don’t know why he’s like this. The surgeon’s an awfully good fellow, I knew him at Caius.’

  ‘Damn your awfully good fellow!’ Julia had raged. ‘Look, Owen! Look at the mess he made of your son’s throat!’

  Owen didn’t want to look. He went to Egypt seeking comfort in Heraclion, a sunken city. What he didn’t want to see he wouldn’t. He was like that with the annuity. St Mary’s, Bentham, is a small church with a small congregation. When Father died he’d nothing to leave but a blessing. Another blessing came in ’93 when Aunt Eleanor died and bequeathed an annuity of one hundred pounds per annum to each of Philip Dryden’s daughters. Nan Roberts says Julia has secrets. A second annuity and how it came about is a secret known only to Julia and an artist in Bloomsbury and is best kept so.

  Matty stirred. Opening his eyes and finding her watching he smiled.

  ‘Why you not asleep, Ju-ju?’

  ‘I am asleep, dear heart,’ she whispered.

  It is strange how in the warmth of sleep his speech is less constrained. Julia understands his every word. Owen tried signing for a time. ‘He’s not deaf,’ she would say. ‘It’s no good waving your hands about like that.’

  ‘I know,’ Owen had replied. ‘I was hoping he might sign I love you Papa.’

  That was the last time they were together. Now Owen is dead and will never hear his son say anything.

  Julia was woken by rain coming through the window. It was bitterly cold.

  Shivering she got out of bed and leaned into the rain to close the window. In the yard below a man took shelter under the eaves a piece of sacking over his head. As Julia reached out to close the window he looked up. Brow furrowed and unsmiling he stared, rain from a broken guttering dripping on his face.

  Such eyes, so dark and unfathomable they held Julia transfixed. Rain blew in soaking her nightgown. Still she stared until he with impatient gesture slapped the wall. ‘Go in why don’t you woman and close the window!’

  She did.

  Two

  Something for Nothing

  The document is signed. As of this day, Monday 10th of April, in the Year of Our Lord 1897, the N and N, mice, mould, and wall is theirs. Knowing mother stayed here as a child has made the difference. Until Simpkin mentioned the connection other than a route to security the cottage had no meaning. Now it wears a loving face and not that of a spinster’s fading dream.

  Matty has given his approval. Saturday afternoon a fur cap on his head and sturdy boots on his feet he came to view. ‘Mumma, look!’ he cried. ‘It’s smiling.’ Preoccupied with mice and mould Julia missed what a child would never miss water-logged thatch over an attic window created a winking eye.

  So much work needed inside and out and Matty so cherished at the Nelson it was a while before they moved in. Renovation is to be undertaken by Albert Roberts & Sons. So far Julia is only aware of one son, Luke, the grim-faced individual who sheltered that night under eaves and whose imperious hand commanded her retreat. The Roberts soon proved worthy of hire, arriving early and staying late, the son tackling heavy work while chivvying labourers along, and the father, an amiable fellow, more inclined to chat. Even with a biting wind coming off the Wash Julia kept to the garden. Muffled in furs, her hands and feet developing chilblains, she pulled weeds, hoed borders and shivered, only going in when her opinion was sought.

  With only an estimate to go by and a diminishing purse she worried about mounting costs. ‘Is this really necessary?’ she asked Monday through a haze of dust, the upper rooms gutted and pipes laid bare. Luke Roberts paused in hammering. ‘It is if you want water on tap and a decent plumbing system.’

  ‘I do want such things but am conscious of escalating costs. Last night looking at the upper floors and new bathroom fittings I wondered if we were not exceeding the original intention.’

  ‘Did you not like what you saw?’

  ‘I did. I thought it exceptional work.’

  ‘And do you know what we need to do to make it exceptional?’

  ‘Well no.’

  ‘Then rest easy. You’re right to worry about cost but spare a thought for your future peace of mind. We’re on the brink of a new century. The modern and fashionable lady needs to move with the times.’

  ‘That’s all very well, Mr Luke, but after all this will I be able to afford to be either modern or fashionable?’

  He shrugged. ‘Can you afford not to be?

  Julia is perplexed by the man’s manner. He rarely speaks and when he does it is to challenge. ‘What were you thinking for the walls plain white-wash?’

  ‘I thought to have them papered.’ She passed a scrap of wallpaper. ‘There is this William Morris damask that would look well in the sitting-room.’

  ‘No,’ he sh
ook his head. ‘I’m not putting that on the walls.’

  Taken aback by the blank refusal Julia stared.

  ‘This is heavy stuff,’ he said. ‘It’ll drag on the size.’

  ‘Then perhaps a lighter paper? He does a lovely Japanese print. I saw it at an exhibition last year.’

  ‘English or Japanese it makes no difference. I’m not hanging William Morris on any of your walls.’

  ‘Then perhaps you’ll suggest someone who will!’

  ‘I can hang wallpaper. I didn’t say I couldn’t. I won’t hang William Morris. We stopped using it years ago. The paper has arsenic in the patterning. In time it would make me sick to hang it and you to watch it.’

  ‘Good Lord! Is that true?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘Why would you? It’s not common knowledge. Find me paper you like that isn’t Morris and I’ll hang it for you.’ A blood-blistered thumb caressed the scrap of paper. ‘Do you usually carry bits of wallpaper in your pocket?’

  A memory too intimate to be picked over by a hostile stranger Julia took back the sample. It was Freddie Carrington who did this, tore a strip of wallpaper from his sister’s dining room. Julia had watched in horror.

  ‘For heaven’s sake!’ she’d whispered. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Tearing a strip off the wall.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you like it and might need it to match the pattern.’

  ‘I do like it but not for you to do this!’

  ‘Evie won’t mind,’ he’d said waving a long strip. ‘I took it from behind the dresser. She’ll never know it’s gone.’

  Leaving the house that day Julia offered apologies. Evelyn had raised her big blue eyes. Lips soft and breath smelling of violets she’d kissed Julia’s cheek. ‘Don’t worry, Ju-ju. I’ll not hold you to blame.’

  ‘I’m sure he meant no harm.’

  ‘I’m sure he did. It’s what angry children do to gain attention of the one they admire. They shout or slap. At least he didn’t slap.’