Fragile Blossoms

by Dodie Hamilton

  The Queen is close to death and Bertie the gossip where he is and who he is with. Evie learned of the Adelman affair through her housekeeper here at Russell Square, heard her talking with a maid, how the Prince of Wales had better look to his laurels because ‘that nice Mrs Dryden who used to come here is seeing the German doctor whose wife is in a lunatic asylum. I know because his charlady, Peggy, was married to my cousin Joe. And she told me she has to clear up after they’ve stayed the night, one bed rumpled sheets and all.’

  Ho-hum! It’s all such a coil. Crouched in the window seat, several trays come and gone, several maids the same, the bed turned down in her suite, a cold bed only lately occupied by a warm man, Evie’s heart aches and aches.

  Luke would sleep like one dead, same spot all night and not a sound. Evie could climb in and out, roll from side-to-side, talk, shout, scream, and he’d sleep his face pale and beautiful. History likens a handsome man to classic beauty, Michelangelo’s David or a Caravaggio St Stephen. In Luke one sees a Greek profile but learns of a temperament more suited to Attila, the Hun.

  Lady Caroline said of Byron he was ‘mad, bad, and dangerous to know.’ She might have been describing Mister Wolf.

  ‘Oh!’ Evie clutches her chest. She feels sick inside and so empty. She hasn’t eaten since yesterday. Is that why she feels so ill and afraid? It can’t be because once again she is alone.

  What is the day? Is it still Monday? Evie looks at the clock and sees it is four thirty in the morning. The sky in the East is flushed with pink rays of the sun. It’s Tuesday! That’s why she feels faint. She’s been in the window all day and most of the night. Not long until Christmas. Evie doesn’t care for England at Christmas. She doesn’t care for Christmas! What is there to celebrate? Next week she joins Freddie in Paris and then back to Italy and the Villa Borghese. Why the Borghese she doesn’t know, habit perhaps.

  Weary, she climbs up on the window and standing on the padded seat stretches. Giddy she slides down to the floor and presses the bell. It’s a long way down to the Square and one wouldn’t want to fall. Two floors and concrete pavement below one would make an awful mess. That is not the way to go, not the way of Lady Evelyn Baines Carrington, Internationally acclaimed artist. It is more the way of a whore and a sinner.

  Twenty Two

  Hope

  It snowed most of the evening. Around midnight Julia heard scratching at the front door. Mrs Mac, hair in curling rags and tartan shawl about her shoulders, heard it too. ‘What is it, ma’m?’

  ‘I don’t know but Kaiser doesn’t seem overly concerned.’ The dog was there gazing through the banister rails fur smooth and his greying mouth soft.

  Julia lit the lamp and tying her robe went downstairs. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s me, ma’m, Dulce! I am sorry to trouble you but Miss Callie’s gone walkabout again and in this snow and cold I’m afeard for her.’

  Poor Dulce, shoes tied about with rags and a man’s overcoat about her hefty frame she looked like a Raggedy Anne scarecrow.

  Julia brought her into the warm kitchen. ‘How long has she been missing?’

  ‘I’m not sure, maybe an hour or more. I usually know when she’s turning over in bed never mind getting up but this darned cold has left my deaf.’

  ‘Where have you looked and have you alerted Mr Daniel?’

  ‘I’ve looked everywhere in the house and yard. Mr Daniel ain’t back yet and I’m glad he ain’t. Much more of this and he’ll be locking her away.’

  ‘I’m sure Mr Daniel won’t do anything of the kind. We’ll look but why are you without help? Did you not think to bring a manservant?’

  ‘I did think to get Crosby but guessing her not too far away held my peace.’

  ‘Should I send for him now?’

  Dulce chewed her lip. ‘If you must, ma’m, but I’m sure she ain’t far. I can manage when we do find her. I can carry her if I must. These days she ain’t but skin and bone and such a business needs to be hushed up.’

  ‘Very well then we’ll manage alone. Mrs Mac, would you please make Dulce a hot drink and stoke the boiler. Ask Leah if she’d sit with Matty in case he wakes. I’m going to take a look outside. Come, Kaiser!’

  ‘She’s down that-away!’ Dulce called. ‘I saw foot prints.’

  A cloak over her robe Julia took the lamp. The dog went before her lifting his paws in the snow. So cold it is not the night for anyone out alone especially an elderly woman. Daniel is anxious for his mother. He believes her sick of mind and had hoped their recent trip to Monte Carlo would help. ‘She takes no rest, Julianna,’ he said, ‘she’s all the while on the move. I hear her nights. It’s this darned house and its ghosts!’ Julia didn’t argue, here in the cottage the past consistently intrudes upon the present. At night the walls whisper, yesterday’s shadows reminding today’s people they are tomorrow’s shades.

  Julia is weary. Callie Masson is not the only who can’t sleep at night. To learn that Freddie was the father of Susan’s baby was bad enough without learning of his struggles as a man. She came away from the séance utterly wretched. It was all so cruel! She’d wanted to leap across the table and shout, ‘this is wrong! Secrets shared before strangers, have you no heart?’ But who was she to accuse, a child singing and a dog’s tail wagging?

  That swishing sound! Julia believes it was Kaiser’s tail accompanying the singing. People would laugh if she said so. They’d say all dogs’ tails make the same sound. Luke shares her belief, he wrote a post script to the note sent about Freddie. ‘Yes I heard it too but don’t be afraid. Kaiser loves Matty. He will take care of him.’

  She wonders why the dog would need to.

  Lamp flickering she slipped and slid along the path. Then Kaiser began to wag his tail as a figure swaddled in scarves loomed out of the darkness.

  ‘That you, ma’m?’

  ‘Oh Joe, thank goodness.’

  Joe held up a lamp. ‘What are you doin’ out here this time of night?’

  ‘Mrs Masson’s wandered away. Her maid seems to think she might be here.’

  ‘And not for the first time! I’ll go lookin’. You get back in the warm. It’s perishin’ cold out here.’

  ‘No I’ll come with you. I have an idea where she might be and wouldn’t want to frighten her.’

  ‘You think I might frit her? More likely she’ll frit me. So where shall we look?’

  ‘I think if anywhere she’ll be where the broken china was stored.’

  ‘That’ll be reet, the two houses are meant to be connected not busted apart like that china. It’s wrong and will be while there’s a wall. The woman we’re lookin’ for has a quarrel with the cottage and a woman that used to live here. It’s why she steals things. She’s tryin’ to get her own back.’

  ‘I think you are right.’

  ‘I know I am. I watch what goes on. That wall I see as a weed. There’s purpose in weeds they feed the earth and the creatures that live on it. But some weeds strangle the life out of more delicate plants. That wall and the reason it was built needs rippin’ from the root before it strangles someone.’

  ‘Hush Joe!’ A cough was coming from the laundry room. Callie was huddled against the wash tub. Between them they led her back to the house. Julia poured Joe a cup of tea and added a tot of brandy. ‘Now sit and be warm, Joe, and tell me why you were out in the snow.’

  ‘I was keepin’ an eye on things.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘This and that.’ He wiped his nose on his sleeve. ‘Nowt you need worry about.’

  Knowing she’d get no more she asked discretion. ‘Please keep what you saw tonight to yourself. As you say Mrs Masson is ill. ’

  He sniffed. ‘No need to ask, ma’m. I’d do anythin’ for thee.’

  ‘I know, and am grateful.’

  He sipped the tea and then got to his feet. ‘Will you be wantin’ me mo
re?’

  ‘No you’d best go home. I can’t have you ill.’

  ‘I’ll be off then.’ At the door, beaky nose dripping, he wrapped a scarf about his head. ‘What goes on here is your business and I won’t be talkin’ but that lady needs to stop her madness before her wanderin’ does harm.’

  Julia left it to Callie to explain why she hid in the laundry room in the early hours with a sheaf of sodden envelopes clutched to her chest. ‘I was looking to post the mail,’ said Callie. ‘I got it into my head that with Christmas coming I needed to post early.’ Puzzled she stared about the room. ‘I had a friend lived here once. We shared happy times. She taught me how to play Bezique and to see angels in the clouds. She’s gone. Now I don’t see angels anywhere.’

  ‘These envelops are soaking,’ said Julia. ‘Let me take them.’

  ‘No!’ Callie clutched them to her breast. ‘I haven’t said all I want to say!’

  It was a while before they got her to settle but then Dulce drying feet and Mrs Mac warming her hands the frontierswoman began to surface and to complain and ask that Daniel not learn of her misadventure. ‘He’s had enough of me getting into scrapes. One more and he’ll lock me away. He’s so little patience these days, Anna, on account of you not treating him right. Barking and snarling it’s got so I’m afraid to speak.’

  ‘Sounds like his father to me,’ said Dulce, ‘full of his own opinion.’

  ‘I hope not,’ said Callie, ‘although he does take after him in being bumptious. His Pa was bumptious. Once he’d made up his mind about a thing there was no going back. Which is why you need set Daniel’s mind at rest, Anna, or he’ll be marrying another and you’ll be sorry. I hope he does find another then he’ll stop picking on me. So what if I don’t always know where I am and whether I’ve eaten. When one is old it’s easy to lose one’s place. You wait, Daniel Masson, you’ll know one day.’

  Mrs Mac nodded. ‘We none of us know how it is going to end.’ She peeled the last envelope from Callie’s lap. ‘I’ll post this letter for you.’

  ‘Letter?’ Callie blinked. ‘What letter is that?’

  ‘This letter.’

  Callie stared at the envelope. ‘That’s not mine. Why would it be? I am an old woman. All my friends are dead. I don’t have anyone to write to. I have no one and nothing but a miserable son and a cold and empty house.’

  ‘Then stay with me and Matty,’ said Julia. ‘You can have my bed.’

  ‘Oh I couldn’t sleep here!’ Callie shrank into Dulce’s arms. ‘It would kill me.’

  Callie slurped tea and crumbled toast and seemed to be calm. ‘I like that cake-stand,’ she said pointing to the shelf. ‘I like the way it shines.’

  ‘Yes it is pretty.’

  ‘What is it Meissen?’

  ‘We think it might be.’

  ‘Might I look at it?’ The stand was passed down Callie holding and Dulce’s hands supporting wings. ‘I had one like this,’ she nodded, ‘same cute roses. Great Aunt Greville gave it to me. I’d sit my dolls and Prissy, my little foxhound, round the table and we’d serve tea, wouldn’t we, Dulce.’

  ‘You may have done, Mizz Callie, but not with me. That was before my time. I din’t come to you until you was in Philly.’

  ‘Oh that’s right! You were of Sam’s leavings, weren’t you, Dulce, and very pretty you were. When I was here I had a maid called Jocelyn. She was pretty and left one night with the first footman from Holkham. They say money is the root of all evil but I think it’s love, fall in love and you pay dearly. Isn’t it funny how I remember that maid’s name but not what I had for breakfast?’

  She slept then. They wrapped her in furs and took Matty’s sled and pulled her back up the Rise. ‘Should I stay?’ said Mrs Mac.

  ‘That is an idea. What do you think, Dulce?’

  ‘I’d surely be grateful for someone.’

  ‘Then please stay Maud. I would myself but have to be in Cambridge early tomorrow. When is Mr Daniel due back, Dulce?’

  ‘I don’t know. It could be tomorrow or a week from now.’ Dulce passed the cake-stand. ‘You better take this, ma’m. Come tomorrow she’ll have forgotten she’s taken it and I don’t want the responsibility.’

  ‘What about the letters? Are they really for posting?’

  Dulce shrugged. ‘To what address, madam, heaven or the other place?’

  Julia didn’t return to bed. Bathed and changed she caught the express to Cambridge. After the night’s struggle she would’ve have preferred to stay home but the séance and that message in German plays on her mind.

  It was freezing cold in the carriage ice on the windows. Julia was not cold. She was livid! Kept up half the night by an old woman’s wanderings and chastised while doing it! She is blamed for Daniel’s bad temper, Callie claiming he’s been kept dangling. Damned cheek! It’s not Julia’s doing. Any ties there might were tied by him. She didn’t put them there. From the first meeting he suggested he cared. But it’s all he does. Were he to ask her to wed she would probably accept, similar tastes and interest it would be a good match for both. But though often together, and a kiss exchanged, he makes no other move consequently another day goes by in silence. If it is a courtship it is a very odd affair, much like waltz, they come together, swing one another round, and then bow and sit apart in separate chairs with confused smiles.

  Callie’s unhappiness has roots in the long ago and should not be blamed on today. It might be better if she was to leave Norfolk. Julia is considering doing the same. Last week she was at the Nanny Too in Cambridge. The town holds many good memories. She could live there or indeed anywhere. Both been to Egypt she and Matty seasoned travellers now, the world their oyster, and as Joe Carmody says while the wall exists old wounds will never be healed.

  Weary and alone in the compartment, the swaying motion of the train a lullaby, Julia slept and dreamed she shared the compartment with Justine Newman and Karoline Adelman. It was them, no denying it, Justine by the window reading a book and Karoline opposite working a tapestry.

  It was a dream and yet so real Karoline’s silver hair piled upon her head and the scarlet feather on Justine’s hat quivering. Differing backdrops accompanied the phantoms, Justine sitting on a bench in a garden a rose bush by her hand, and Karoline indoors on a chaise a lacquered mirror above her head.

  Luke’s right. Justine was beautiful. Clear and serene her face drew the sun’s rays her rich brown hair haloed in light. Dressed in burgundy colour velvet, the folds of her skirt gathered over burgundy leather boots, she sits up straight, a teacher, a book in her hand and a green umbrella against her knee. Her hands are the pale and narrow hands of an anchorite but her broken nails the nails of a gardener. She reads from the same red leather diary Julia found in a trunk and appears to be making notes that Julia can see but can’t decipher.

  It’s likely the dream lasted only a few minutes yet it felt like forever both ladies unaware of Julia and each other. Karoline was lovely, no wonder Stefan adored her. Dressed in dainty tea-gown of pale blue material she sat at a tapestry head bent and lips curved in a smile. She sewed a bright blue thread. Julia could see the image but like the scribbled words in the red diary could make no sense of it.

  She woke with a question on her lips, what can we know of the past? What does she know of Karoline other than what she’s been told? In the sanatorium she sees a haggard face and tormented eyes. Here in the train carriage, albeit in a dream, she sees the young and lovely Karoline. It is the same with Justine, so vividly alive. This is no silhouette hanging on a wall or one of Gussy Simpkin’s dusty memories. These are living souls filled with life and hope.

  The lesson here, thought Julia, is to be wary of another’s memories. Memories are not people. How can we know anything of a person if all we have of them is what we’ve been told?

  Julia always looks forward to the trips to Cambridge. She enjoys Stefan’s company and
hopes he feels the same. These trips feel like freedom. No meetings to attend or funds to raise, the visit is for Julianna the woman, not the mother, or the owner of Tea-Shops, or indeed the Prince of Wales’ reluctant concubine. Matty at home with Mrs Mac it is true Julia does stay the occasional night but at a nearby hotel never at Stefan’s house. Over time a pattern has formed. They meet, a trip is suggested, a concert or a gallery. They lunch together and then visit the sanatorium.

  Today Julia will pay a visit to the Girl’s Home dropping off Christmas hankies.

  The home is not as Evie suggested a charitable organisation, it is a humble affair. It was launched eighteen months ago and financed by Stefan, though latterly with the success of the Tea-Shops Julia contributes. A house adjacent to the sanatorium it was bought with the idea of offering it to the Bernardo project a home for orphaned children. But then with Susan Dudley in mind they thought for young mothers in need. Work on the house began in ‘89 but was halted by local opinion the Council suggesting they’d already got one madhouse on their doorstep and didn’t want another. Work was restarted in the summer on the Karoline Adelman Home for Young Mothers. It was built to offer hope to the needy. Julia saw it as a memorial to Susan Dudley.

  Calm and unshakeable the matron is a good woman. At first Julia thought the house austere. Several months on that opinion is changed. Doors slam, babies cry and women sing, there is the smell of cabbage cooking, it is a home. She never stays overlong and tries not to interfere. Like Stefan she hates the idea of intruding. The girls are not beasts in the field to be stared at!