by Kate Morton
By the time the water was tepid and Cassandra’s feet were pruned, she’d found little of any use. Just the same veiled mention by Rose of ‘marks’ that embarrassed her.
But she had found something else interesting. Unrelated to the marks, but curious nonetheless. It wasn’t just the words themselves, but the tone of the entry that struck Cassandra. She couldn’t shake the feeling that it meant far more than it appeared to say.
April 1909. Work has started on the wall at the cottage. Mamma felt, and rightly, that it was best to do it while Eliza is Away. The cottage is too vulnerable. It was all well and good for it to remain exposed in olden times when its use was more nefarious, but it no longer needs to signal out to sea. Quite the contrary: there is none among us now who wishes exposure. And one can never be too careful, for where there is much to gain, there is ever much to lose.
39
Blackhurst Manor, 1909
Rose was weeping. Her cheek was warm and her pillow wet, but still she wept. She clenched her eyes against the sneaking winter light and cried as she hadn’t since she was a very little girl. Wicked, wicked morning! How dare the sun so surely rise to gloat over her misery? How dare other people go about their business as if God were in his heaven, when yet again Rose had woken to see the end to her hopes writ in blood? How much longer, she wondered, how many more times must she tolerate this monthly despair?
In some ghastly way it was better to know, for surely the worst days were those in between. The long days in which Rose allowed herself to imagine, to dream, to hope. Hope, how she had grown to hate the word. It was an insidious seed planted inside a person’s soul, surviving covertly on little tending, then flowering so spectacularly that none could help but cherish it. It was hope, too, that prevented a person taking counsel from experience. For each month, after her bleeding week, Rose felt a resurgence of the foul creature, and her slate of experience was wiped clean. No matter that she promised herself that this time she wouldn’t play along, wouldn’t fall prey to the cruel, propitious whispers, she always did. Because desperate people cling to hope like sailors to their wreck.
In the course of a year there had been one small reprieve from the terrible cycle. A month when the bleeding hadn’t come. Dr Matthews had been duly summoned, had conducted an examination and uttered the blessed words: she was with child. What bliss to hear one’s dearest wish spoken so calmly, with so little thought for the months of disappointment that had come before, with steadiness and confidence that all would continue. Her stomach would swell and a baby would be born. Eight days she had nursed the precious news, whispered words of love to her flat stomach, walked and spoken and dreamed differently. And then, on the ninth day—
A knock at the door but Rose didn’t stir. Go away, she thought, go away and leave me be.
The door creaked and someone entered, took infuriating care to be quiet. A noise—something being placed on the bedside table—and then a soft voice by her ear. ‘I brought you some breakfast.’
Mary again. As if it wasn’t enough that Mary had seen the sheets, marked with their dark reproach.
‘You must keep your spirits up, Mrs Walker.’
Mrs Walker. The words made Rose’s stomach tighten. How she’d longed to be Mrs Walker. After she’d met Nathaniel in New York, had arrived at dance after dance with her heart pulsing in her chest, scanned the room until she spied him, held her breath until their eyes met and his lips spread into a smile, just for her.
And now the name was hers yet she had proved herself unworthy of it. A wife who couldn’t perform the most basic of a married woman’s functions. Couldn’t provide her husband with the very things a good wife must. Children. Healthy, happy children to run across the estate, turn cartwheels along the sand, hide from their governess.
‘You mustn’t cry, Mrs Walker. It’ll happen for you in good time.’
Each well-meant word was a bitter barb. ‘Will it, Mary?’
‘Of course, ma’am.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘It’s bound to, ain’t it? A woman can’t avoid it if she tries. Not for long. There’s many I know would be glad to escape it if way were known.’
‘Ungrateful wretches,’ said Rose, face hot and wet. ‘Such women don’t deserve the blessing of children.’
Mary’s eyes clouded with something Rose took for pity. Rather than slap the servant’s plump, healthy cheeks, she turned away and curled up beneath her covers. Nursed her grief deep within her stomach. Surrounded herself with the dark and empty cloud of loss.
Nathaniel could have drawn it in his sleep. His wife’s face was so familiar to him he sometimes thought he knew it better than his own hand. He finished the line he was sketching and smudged it slightly with his thumb. Squinted and tilted his head. She was beautiful, he had been right in that. The dark hair and pale skin, pretty mouth. And yet he took no pleasure from it.
He filed the portrait sketch in his portfolio. She would be glad to receive it as she always was. Her requests for new portraits were so desperate he could never say no. If he didn’t present a new one every few days she was likely to weep and beg him for assurances of love. He drew her from memory now, rather than from life. The latter was too painful. His Rose had vanished inside her own sorrow. The young woman he had met in New York had been eaten away, revealing this shadow Rose, with darkened eyes from lack of sleep, worry-faded skin, agitated limbs. Had any poet adequately described the wretched ugliness of a loved one turned inside out with grief?
Night after night she presented herself to him and he consented. But Nathaniel’s desire had vanished. What had once excited him filled him now with dread and, worse, guilt. Guilt that when they made love he could no longer bear to look at her. Guilt that he could not give her what she wanted. Guilt that he did not want the baby as desperately as she did. Not that Rose would believe that. No matter how many times Nathaniel assured her that she was enough for him, Rose would not be convinced.
And now, most mortifying of all, her mother had come to see him in his studio. Had perused his portraits somewhat woodenly, before sitting in the chair by his easel and launching her oration. Rose was delicate, she started, had always been so. The animal drives of a husband were likely to cause her great harm and it would be best for all if he could desist for a time. So disquieting was it to conduct such a conversation with his mother-in-law, Nathaniel had been unable to find words or inclination to explain his own position.
Instead he had nodded his accession and taken to seeking solitude in the estate garden, rather than his studio. The gazebo had become his workplace. It was still cool in March, but Nathaniel was only too willing to forgo comfort. The weather made it less likely that anyone else would seek his counsel. Finally, he could be at ease. Being inside the house over winter, with Rose’s parents and her suffocating needs, had been oppressive. Her sorrow and disappointment had permeated the walls, the curtains, the carpets. It was the house of the dead: Linus locked away in his darkroom, Rose in the bedroom, Adeline lurking in the corridors.
Nathaniel leaned forward, attention caught by the spill of weak sunlight through the rhododendron branches. His fingers twitched, longed to capture the light and shade. But there was no time. The canvas of Lord Mackelby sat before him on the easel, beard painted in, blush-shot cheeks, lined forehead. Only the eyes remained. It was always the eyes that let Nathaniel down in oil.
He selected a brush and removed a loose hair. Was about to put paint to canvas when he felt his arms tingle, the strange sixth sense of solitude retreating. He looked over his shoulder. Sure enough a servant stood behind him. Agitation bristled.
‘For goodness sake, man,’ said Nathaniel. ‘Don’t sneak up like that. If there’s something you’d like to say, come, stand before me and say it. There’s no need, surely, for such stealth.’
‘Lady Mountrachet sends advice that luncheon is to be served early, sir. The carriage for Tremayne Hall will depart at two o’clock this afternoon.’
Nathaniel cursed silently. He had forgotten about Tremayne Hall. Yet another of Adeline’s wealthy friends looking to dress their walls in their own image. Perhaps, if he were very lucky, his subject would insist he also feature her three tiny dogs!
To think he had once been thrilled by such introductions, had felt his status rising like the sail on a new ship. He had been a blind fool, ignorant to the cost that such success would claim. His commissions had grown, but his creativity had been reduced commensurately. He was pumping out portraits just as surely as one of the new mass-production factories of which men in business were always speaking, rubbing their shiny hands together with glee. No time to pause, to improve, to vary his method. His work was not that of a craftsman, there was no longer dignity or humanity in his strokes.
Worst of all, while he was busy producing portraits, the time for sketching, his true passion, was slipping through his fingers. Since arriving at Blackhurst he had managed only one panel sketch and a clutch of studies of the house and its inhabitants. His hands, his skills, his spirits had all been stunted.
He had made the wrong choice, he saw that now. If only he had heeded Rose’s requests and sought a new home for them after their marriage, perhaps things would have turned out differently. Perhaps they would be blissfully content, children at her feet, creative satisfaction at his fingertips.
Then again, perhaps all would be the same. He and she forced to endure similar torture in reduced circumstances. And that was the rub. How was a boy who’d tasted poverty ever expected to choose the poorer road?
And now Adeline, like Eve herself, had started whispering about a possible sitting with the King. And though he was tired of portraiture, though he hated himself for having forsaken so completely his passion, Nathaniel’s skin prickled at the mere suggestion.
He laid down his brush and rubbed at a paint stain on his thumb. Was about to head in for luncheon when his portfolio snagged his attention. With a glance back towards the house, he pulled the secret sketches from within. He’d been working at them on and off for a fortnight now, ever since he’d come across Cousin Eliza’s fairytales amongst Rose’s things. Though they were written for children, magical stories of bravery and morality, they had made their way beneath his skin. The characters had seeped inside his mind and come alive, their simple wisdom a balm for his swirling mind, his ugly adult troubles. He had found himself in moments of distraction scribbling lines that had turned themselves into a crone at a spinning wheel, the fairy queen with her long thick plait, the princess bird trapped in her golden cage.
And what began as scribbles he was now turning into sketches. Darkening the shading, firming the lines, accentuating the facial features. He looked them over, tried not to notice the embossed parchment Rose had bought for him when they were newly married, tried not to think of happier times.
The sketches were not yet finished but he was pleased with them. Indeed, it was the only project that seemed to bring him pleasure any more, grant him escape from the trial his life had become. With a quickening heart, Nathaniel clipped the pieces of parchment to the top of his easel. Lord Mackelby’s gloomy eyes could wait. After luncheon he was going to allow himself to sketch, to draw without purpose as he had once done as a boy.
Finally, with Mary’s help Rose was dressed. She had been sitting in her convalescent chair all morning but had decided eventually to venture from her room. When had she last left its four walls? Two days before? Three? When she stood she almost fell. She was light-headed and weak-stomached, familiar sensations from her childhood. Back then Eliza had been able to hoist her spirits high again with fairy stories, and tales dragged back from the cove. If only the remedy for adult affliction were so simple.
It had been some time since Rose had seen Eliza. She spied her occasionally from the window, stalking through the garden or standing on the cliff top, a distant speck with long red hair streaming behind her. Once or twice Mary had come to the door with a message that Miss Eliza was downstairs requesting an audience, but Rose always said no. She loved her cousin, but the battle she was waging against grief and hope took all the energy she could muster. And Eliza was so spirited, so full of vitality, possibility, health. It was more than Rose could endure.
Weightless as a ghost, Rose drifted along the carpeted hall, hand resting on the dado rail to keep her balance. This afternoon, when Nathaniel returned from his meeting at Tremayne Hall, she would join him outside in the gazebo. It would be cold, of course, but she would have Mary wrap her warmly, Thomas could move the day bed and a blanket for her comfort. Nathaniel must be lonely out there, he would be glad to have her by his side once more. He would be able to sketch her reclining. Nathaniel did so like to draw her, and it was her duty as a wife to offer comfort to her husband.
Rose had almost reached the stairs when she heard voices floating along the draughty corridor.
‘She says she ain’t going to say nothing, that it’s no one’s business but hers.’ The words were punctuated by the striking of a broom’s head against the skirting board.
‘The mistress won’t be pleased when she finds out.’
‘The mistress won’t find out.’
‘If she’s got eyes in her head she will. There’s not many can’t tell when a girl grows fat with child.’
Rose pressed a cold hand against her mouth, crept quietly along the hall, strained to hear further.
‘She says all the women in her family carry small. She’ll be able to hide it beneath her uniform.’
‘Let’s just hope for her sake she’s right, else she’ll be out on her ear.’
Rose arrived at the top of the stairs just in time to see Daisy disappearing into the servants’ hall. Sally was denied such fortunate reprieve.
The servant gasped and her cheeks flushed in most unbecoming blotches. ‘Sorry, ma’am.’ A fumbled curtsy, broomstick tangled in skirts. ‘I didn’t see you there.’
‘Of whom do you speak, Sally?’
The blotches spread to the tips of the girl’s ears.
‘Sally,’ said Rose, ‘I demand you answer me. Who is with child?’
‘Mary, ma’am.’ Little more than a whisper.
‘Mary?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Mary is with child?’
The girl nodded quickly, the lines of her face describing an urgent desire to disappear.
‘I see.’ A deep black hole had opened in the centre of Rose’s stomach and threatened to pull her inside out. That stupid girl with her hideous, cheap fertility. Flaunting it for all to see, cooing over Rose, telling her everything would be well, then laughing behind her back. And she unwed! Well, not in this house. Blackhurst Manor was a house of ancient and sturdy moral standing. It was up to Rose to make sure standards were observed.
Adeline ran the brush through her hair, stroke by stroke by stroke. Mary was gone and though that left them woefully short-staffed for the coming weekend party, the girl’s absence would just have to be managed. While ordinarily Adeline didn’t encourage Rose to make decisions about staff without due consultation, these were exceptional circumstances and Mary quite the little sneak. An unmarried sneak, which made matters even more disgraceful. No, Rose had been right in her instincts, if not her method.
Poor dear Rose. Dr Matthews had been to see Adeline earlier in the week, had sat across from her in the morning room and adopted his low voice, the one he always donned in times of worry. Rose was not well, he had said (as if Adeline couldn’t see as much for herself), and he was gravely concerned.
‘Unfortunately, Lady Mountrachet, my fears are not limited to her apparent decline. There are . . .’ he coughed lightly into his neat fist, ‘. . . other things.’
‘Other things, Dr Matthews?’ Adeline handed him a cup of tea.
‘Emotional matters, Lady Mountrachet.’ He smiled primly and took a sip of tea. ‘When questioned on the physical aspects of her marriage, Mrs Walker confessed to what would be considered, in my professional opinion, an unhealthy tend
ency towards physicality.’
Adeline felt her lungs expand, she caught her breath and forced herself to exhale calmly. For want of something else to say or do, she stirred an additional lump of sugar into her own tea. Without meeting his eyes she bade Dr Matthews continue.
‘Be comforted, Lady Mountrachet. While certainly it’s a serious condition, your daughter is not alone. I can report a rather high incidence of heightened physicality among young ladies currently, and feel certain it is a condition she will outgrow. More concerning to me is my suspicion that her physical tendency is contributing to her repeated failures.’
Adeline cleared her throat. ‘Continue, Dr Matthews.’
‘It is my sincere medical opinion that your daughter must cease physical relations until her poor body has had time adequately to recover. For ’tis all related, Lady Mountrachet, ’tis all related.’
Adeline lifted her cup to her mouth and tasted the bitterness of fine china. She nodded almost imperceptibly.
‘The Lord works in mysterious ways. So too, through his design, the human body. It is reasonable to hypothesise that a young lady with heightened . . . appetites,’ he smiled apologetically, eyes narrowed, ‘would present a less than ideal maternal model. The body knows such things, Lady Mountrachet.’
‘You are suggesting, Dr Matthews, that with fewer attempts, my daughter may have greater success?’
‘It is worth consideration, Lady Mountrachet. Not to mention the benefits such temperance will have for her general heath and wellbeing. Picture, if you will, Lady Mountrachet, a windsock.’
Adeline arched her brows, wondered—not for the first time—why she had remained loyal to Dr Matthews all this time.
‘If a windsock is left suspended for years on end, without opportunity for rest or repair, the harsh winds will invariably tear holes in its fabric. So too, Lady Mountrachet, your daughter must be allowed time to recuperate. Must be shielded from the strong winds that threaten to rend her asunder.’
