Fragile Blossoms

by Dodie Hamilton

  Julia is getting to know and love the cottage. Walking the gardens she learns of the sisters and the animals they loved by the headstones scattered about. There are dogs, Marlow and Meribone, buried behind the herb garden, and cats, Samson and Saraband, opposite the dogs. Exploring her new home she had good moments and bad, wonderful finds and terrible losses. A double tragedy was found in the wash-house tea-chests filled with broken china.

  ‘Oh no!’ She covered her mouth in horror. ‘That’s too dreadful.’

  Albert Roberts removed his cap. ‘So it is, ma’m.’

  A mindless jigsaw of razor edges the tea-chests were full to the brim with precious, worthless, Meissen porcelain. She didn’t know the exact contents, it couldn’t be counted, but from what Luke said who’d sifted the debris the chests contain at least two dinner services. ‘There’s something sick about this,’ said Albert. ‘Hidden away year-after-year, why would you keep such ruin?’

  ‘It’s a reminder,’ said Luke.

  ‘Of what?’ said Julia.

  ‘Of how it felt when he or she took a hammer to them.’

  Luke buried the china as one would bury the dead. For a time then nothing in the cottage gave pleasure, not even the finding of full size beds and truckle beds beneath. Nothing gave pleasure until the piano.

  It was discovered hidden in a back closet. Hearing of the find Julia rushed to the cottage. Albert was in the kitchen supping from a mug. ‘Mornin, ma’m.’

  Julia shook her umbrella. ‘Mr Luke not here yet?’

  ‘Aye, he’s up in the attics and none too happy about it.’

  ‘Forgive me for asking but is he ever happy?’

  ‘He’s not the cheeriest of men, I grant you, but today having been here since early light he’s got cause. Last night’s storm shifted tiles on your roof and with the downpour you’ve rain coming through.’

  ‘Is there much damage?’

  ‘Nothing that can’t be fixed.’

  ‘And you say he’s been here since early light?’

  ‘He has. He heard the rain and couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘And I called him miserable!’ Julia was mortified. ‘What an ungrateful wretch! Your son is entitled to do what he wants. He wasn’t hired to smile and play the fool, only to prove worthy of hire and that he has most assuredly done.’

  ‘Don’t fret, lass,’ said Albert. ‘He is a moody chap. Nobody knows that better than me. He’s never been what you might call a smiler. That was his brother. Our Jacky smiled for Queen and Country.’

  ‘Jacky?’

  ‘Jacky, my youngest lad that was drowned.’

  ‘Drowned!’

  Albert nodded. ‘In the quarry.’

  ‘Oh, Albert, I am so very sorry!’

  ‘As are we all.’ Albert stood contemplating the piano. ‘You’ll be alright with this. It was stored with lovin’ care as the china wasn’t. We’ve an upright in the public bar a chap plays of a weekend. You play the piano, do you?’

  ‘I do.’ Afraid of again speaking amiss Julia patted the keys. ‘You’re right it is well preserved. It speaks well of the cottage.’

  ‘Speaks well of the cottage?’ Hair plastered to his head and shirt wringing wet Luke stood on the stairs. That he’d overheard their conversation was evident. ‘I’d say it speaks well of the ladies that took care of it.’

  ‘I’m sure it does,’ said Julia. ‘I meant only that the condition of the piano might’ve been helped by thick walls and an ambient temperature.’

  ‘I got what you meant! Next time I’m up at two in the morning, rain dripping down my back, I’ll think of ambient temperatures and take comfort.’ He strode into the kitchen pulling his shirt over his head as he went. ‘And you never know if the mood takes me, miserable man that I am, I might jig about a bit.’

  The day continued as heavy and unrelenting as the rain. Albert took the labourers to another job. ‘We were to whiten ceilings but not wi’ muck flying about.’ He hooked his thumb. ‘Why don’t you pop over to the Nelson for a cup of tea! Hangin’ about indoors won’t help.’ He smiled. ‘Not wi’ misery guts in charge.’

  Misery Guts was clearing the attics. Arms braced and head down he swept all before him, sodden rugs and bird’s nests, tangled messes of mice and moth thrown through the window to gather beneath. News spread of a house clearing and a queue formed by the wall. All was going peacefully until a man snatched another’s wire bedspring and a fight broke out.

  Black hair peppered with dust Luke leapt to the window. ‘Get you gone, Nate Sherwood!’ he roared. ‘You’ve thieved your bit of junk now clear off and don’t let me see your ugly mug within a mile of this place!’

  Bedspring a portcullis over his head the man ran.

  ‘Who was that?’ said Julia.

  ‘Nobody worth knowing.’

  ‘I gathered that by your tone.’

  ‘My tone! What’s wrong with my tone? Is this another aspect of me you’d see different? Should I have danced a two-step with him?’

  ‘I don’t know what you should’ve done! I only wonder why it need be so violent. After all it was a bedspring he took not the crown jewels.’

  ‘It was your bed-spring and you don’t want him sleeping on it!’

  ‘It wasn’t my bedspring!’ Julia was sick of his testy ways. ‘It wasn’t anybody’s bedspring! It was junk as you said so why couldn’t he have it?’

  ‘Because he’s a bad ‘un and you don’t want him near anything of yours!’

  ‘Such a fuss!’

  ‘There was no fuss until he came. If you’d nothing against folk taking stuff neither had I! But oughtn’t it be decent folk that benefit from cast-offs not one that spends half his life hurting those that can’t defend themselves and the other half ripping the shirt off an honest man’s back.’

  Julia recalled Luke pulling his shirt over his head and compared his back, the ripping muscles and breadth of shoulders, to the stooped back of the man with the bedspring. She smiled. ‘You had a shirt ripped from your back by such a man did you, Luke Roberts?’

  He saw her smile, heard the scorn in her voice, and colouring left the room.

  Rain or not Julia retreated to the terrace garden. The Mole had been at work there were bulbs in need of securing and footmarks in the border. When she returned to the cottage the attics were empty, the ground beneath the window cleared, and the parlour ceiling in process of being whitened.

  Maggie Jeffers, a maid on loan from the Nelson was mopping floors.

  ‘Everything gone, Maggie? ‘

  ‘Looks like it, ma’m.’

  ‘Did I see you out there earlier?’

  Maggie nodded.

  ‘And did you find anything nice?’

  ‘I wanted the blue ribbons you flung but a parlour maid at the Big House got ‘em. Shame! Blue ribbons mean a wedding in the family.’

  ‘They were terribly tarnished.’

  ‘They might’ve washed.’

  ‘I suppose they might.’ A trunk from the attic stood by the door. ‘I wonder if there are ribbons in here.’ Julia knelt at a chest and Maggie with her. The smell of camphor rose from folds of linen and a not so pleasant smell from Maggie.

  ‘It has to be blue,’ said Maggie, ‘or the spell won’t work. You bind a ribbon to your left wrist seven days and nights. If it stays tied the beloved will come.’

  ‘I’ll remember that should I be looking for the same.’ Julia held up a lace collar. ‘This is pretty and may prove cause of a wedding.’

  A bone to a starving pup the maid snatched the collar and ran.

  ‘Is that wise?’ Luke Roberts splashed paint on the ceiling. ‘Stand too close to Maggie Jeffers and she’ll have you spitting over your shoulder when the moon is full and counting your children through apple seeds.’

  ‘Maggie can say and do as she likes. I think we make our own luc
k.’

  ‘Do you?’ He wiped his face on his sleeve white chalk on his cheek making his eyes sapphire blue. ‘Then God knows I must be doing something wrong.’

  *

  It was cold in the church. Julia wished she’d worn a fur cloak as well as the muff but heeding Nan’s advice not to put her head above the parapet she came clad in plain bonnet and woollen cloak. Two minutes and she realised she may as well have gone the whole hog people stare anyway.

  The vicar conducted Julia to an ornately carved pew. ‘This is the Lansdowne pew. As mistress of the former gatehouse you are entitled to worship here. I don’t know exactly where in the pew you sit. No doubt there is a hierarchy but as the house is yet unattended it won’t matter today.’

  ‘I suppose I must sit here.’

  The vicar smiled. ‘Indeed you must. St Bedes is small church. Every member of the congregation has his or her own seat. The occupying of another even when the church is half empty is a dark sin as I am sure you understand.’

  Julia took her seat. ‘I am a parson’s daughter. I understand only too well.’

  A solitary figure in a wooden box she knelt to her prayers. Matthew attended chapel in Cambridge. It’s cold in here. Until he’s stronger he will stay home. His absence will have been noted by the congregation as will all of her doings. A newcomer to the village her household is under assessment. The issue today will not be the whereabouts of a child or why he croaks like that, poor lad, it will be why a widow of six months wears brown instead of black.

  Owen didn’t want her in black. ‘If anything should happen to me while I am away promise me you’ll not wear widows’ weeds. I do like glossy shades of black but only when worn by a bird or a bear. You are neither.’

  The keeping of this particular promise hasn’t been easy. Even on campus where the modern scholar disowns God in favour of Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution the absence of black raises eyebrows. The day they were due to leave the Bursar’s wife came to call. Julia said they were to stay in London. The Bursar’s wife was doubtful. ‘I went with my Papa. London is a big city. One could easily lose one’s way.’ She’d then offered a parcel. ‘Here you are my dear, a black alpaca skirt and a half-crown. The skirt may serve until you purchase your own.’

  A fortnight passed and though the parlour walls still to be papered the cottage is habitable. Weary of trekking back and forth Julia plans to move in but asked if Matty might stay a little longer with Nan. ‘Of course he must stay!’ was her reply. ‘Paint is caustic to the throat, Anna. He can’t be inhaling that.’

  Nan is in a good mood. She refers to Julia as Anna. People are always playing with her name, shortening or rearranging. With Mother it was Julia which is probably why Julia thinks of herself that way. The only time she was afforded a full name was when Mother was irritated, the hens not laying or yet another member of the congregation taking advantage of Father.

  It’s Matty who brings about the shortening of Christian names here in Bakers. Nan dotes on him, and he upon her and Luke. Aping the long stride and gruff voice he follows him everywhere. ‘Hello, Mister Wolf,’ this morning he sidled up. ‘What big teeth you have.’ Mister Wolf snatched him up and growling ran up and down the yard Matty shrieking with joy. Mister Wolf? Matty does this, gives people he likes fairy-tale names. Julia wishes he wouldn’t; what is charming in a three-year-old is less so in an older child. That night she told Matty he was not to do that.

  ‘But he is a wolf!’ Matty pointed to a picture-book. ‘Huff, puff, and blow the house down.’ Julia rebuked him but thought Luke only himself to blame. Were he to smile instead of snarl he would be the handsome prince. Instead he’s a nursery rhyme villain and the terror of Three Little Pigs.

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t encourage Matty,’ she said. ‘He’ll get used to saying it.’

  ‘The lad’s alright.’ Luke shrugged it away. ‘He’ll stop when the real wolf comes along.’ Dependent to a degree on Nan’s good favour Julia didn’t pursue it. Matty in safe hands she can boost their coffers by taking work as an artist’s model. There was a time when she was ashamed of doing that, thinking she lived two lives, a respectable wife and mother and a woman on the edge of society. A sawbones surgeon changed her opinion. A sunny day in May ‘94 Owen forgot his class notes. Julia delivered the notes and was hurrying home when a woman climbing the College steps hailed her. ‘Mrs Passmore isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Julia had said. ‘I can’t stay to chat. My son is unwell.’

  ‘Nothing serious I hope.’

  ‘It may be. He had a tonsillectomy and his throat is badly infected.’

  ‘Oh my dear that is serious! Do you have a physician you trust?’

  ‘We have someone but I wouldn’t say I trust him.’

  The woman produced a card. ‘This is my man. He is very good. If you feel in any way worried do give him a call.’ Julia had scanned the address and the royal crest. ‘Thank you but a physician to Her Majesty is beyond my means.’

  ‘But not beyond mine. Take it!’ The woman pushed the card into Julia’s hand. ‘Tell him Evelyn Carrington says to come and he will.’

  Julian had pocketed the card. Not for a moment did she think to use it but as Matty’s condition worsened so the card burned through her pocket. She showed it to Owen. ‘Ah yes, Stefan Adelmann, the heart specialist. He is cousin to Karl Adelmann, Professor of Archaeology. I attended a lecture of his, Karnack and the Valley of Kings. He had some interesting things to say.’

  Typical, his baby son struggles for breath and Owen looks to the dusty treasure of yesterday. Thanks to a modern treasure, the telephone in the Bursar’s office, that evening Stefan Adelman called. There was a knock on the door and kindly eyes smiled over steel-rimmed spectacles. ‘Your son is unwell.’

  ‘But I only made the call this morning! How can you be here so soon?’

  ‘I was already in Cambridge. Lady Carrington told me of your concern and being in the neighbourhood I thought to see your son.’

  A heavy man in grey overcoat and carrying a soft grey hat he flowed into the room as a calm sea. Huge hands, the hands of a farmer rather than a surgeon, he reached down into the cot. ‘Open your mouth to me, mein kind.’ Ten minutes and Matty was gathered up. Instructions were clear. ‘My man is outside. You will wear a hat and coat, Frau Passmore. We take your son to a good place.’ The good place was a hospital close by in Bradbury where Stefan had connections. Julia didn’t hesitate. Urgency was in Matty’s tortured breathing and the set of the doctor’s jaw, and the fact that not once throughout the journey did he lay Matty down.

  There are two people in the world beside her son for whom she would do anything, Stefan Adelmann, consultant cardiologist to the Queen, and Evelyn Carrington, artist and friend, but for them Matty would not be here. It was no hardship then in the spring of ’95 to return a favour. Freddie Carrington was in his last year at Jesus College. Evie would visit the college and then call at the Passmore house. Aware of the house and unpaid bills the meetings were painful. The third visit brought a chance to repay a debt.

  ‘Let down your hair, Rapunzel,’ said Evie, ‘and I will paint you.’

  Julia had smiled. ‘Surely not!’

  ‘Surely yes! I want you to sit for me.’

  ‘I couldn’t do that. My husband would hate it.’

  ‘Must your husband know?’

  ‘Of course he must. How could he not, you and me here in the house.’

  ‘Oh I could never paint you here!’ Evelyn had grimaced. ‘This house is too awful. My muse would quite forsake me.’

  The next visit Evie pulled pins from Julia’s hair. ‘All this glory bundled up and you never sharing. And this?’ she’d gripped Julia’s face between her hands and kissed her, ‘how can you keep this from the world? You are cruel, Ju-ju, cruel and beautiful.’ The kiss shocked both into silence. Then Evie had nodded. ‘I must have that look. It’s
exactly the look I want for a show in September. Come to my Gloucester house next Thursday. We’re picnicking with John Sargent, the artist. Bring Matty. Stefan will be there. You know he likes to see you.’

  That summer Julia sat for John Singer Sargent. A blue silk robe and hair undone she sat under an apple tree a bowl of strawberries in her lap and Matty playing with a puppy. Those sessions were peaceful and Mr Sargent a kind man. Evelyn’s house in London was noisy, doorbells chiming, people spilling out of cabs to play cards or forfeits in the salon while a string quartet plays. ‘What is that they are playing?’Julia asked one afternoon.

  ‘L’apres midi d’une faune,’ said Evelyn. ‘It is you. You are the music.’

  The painting, Fawn Surprised, now hangs in the National Gallery, valued, Julia has been told, in hundreds of guineas. ‘I’ve had many an offer for you,’ said Evelyn, ‘but I won’t sell. I know it’s all I’ll ever have of you.’ Eve Carrington is generous with her time and favours. ‘Take these,’ she’ll heap furs onto Julia’s lap. ‘So much cluttering the closets you would be doing me a favour.’

  Julia would protest. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Of course you can. It pleases me to give them to you.’

  When it came to fees for sitting Julia refused. ‘Mr Sargent doesn’t pay me for sitting so why should you?’

  ‘With John there’s no question of money,’ said Evie. ‘Your fee is the adulation the portrait brings. Even so you should be recompensed.’ She’d then suggested the Grosvenor Gallery and colleagues who having seen Faun Surprised begged a sitting. ‘The fees will buy the things Matty needs.’

  ‘What kind of work is it? I’ll not remove my clothes.’

  ‘You might bare your shoulders. They’d settle for that and pay by post so no one need know. You told me once you get an annuity of a hundred pounds a year. How about another hundred to add to it?’

  When Owen died Julia reverted to the family name Dryden.

  ‘Dryden is a good name,’ said Evie. ‘Shared with a poet what could be nicer.’