‘You’ve fallen for her, haven’t you?’ Dolly demanded. ‘Hook, line and bloody sinker. She’s got you dangling on the end of her line.’
‘I’m not here to talk about Celia. Where’s Lizzie?’
‘She’s gone for a walk with Edward. They’ll be back before lunch.’
He watched as she went to the long sash windows and snatched at the cretonne curtains, pulling them quickly across the windows so that the sunlight wouldn’t fade the velvet chairs. She had not lost the mannerisms of her younger days. She still took the battle to the enemy.
Oliver decided to divert her attention. ‘When does Edward go back?’ he asked.
‘Tomorrow.’ She drummed her fingers on the lacquered table and narrowed her eyes. ‘Wouldn’t a decent sort of woman have given you what you wanted? Do you have to make a fool of yourself and of us?’ she snapped. ‘Don’t you have any feelings left for your wife?’
‘I love Florence. I always have,’ he flashed back at her. ‘But a marriage is not simply affection. I’m a normal, healthy man, with appetites. Have no fear. You, Edward and Lizzie won’t suffer in any way.’ He was in danger of losing his temper. She had no right to question him.
Dolly had not finished though, he could see. She would, as ever, have the last word. ‘Don’t get too involved with that girl. She had no interest in you at all the first time she saw you. It wasn’t until I told her all about Suttonford and the estate that she set her cap for you,’ she said.
‘That’s enough!’ There was anger in his voice now. ‘Hold your tongue.’
They were spared from further argument by the sound of footsteps on the path under the window. Dolly tugged at the curtains again. ‘Here they are,’ she said. ‘I’ll say no more. I’ll go and see to the lunch.’
Oliver opened the door to Edward and Lizzie. ‘Run upstairs and pack your bags,’ he told Lizzie. ‘We’ll be leaving after lunch. Come into the drawing room, Edward. We’ll have a drink together before we eat.’
Lizzie prostrated herself on the bed, clenching and unclenching her hands around the floral counterpane, trying to muffle the sound of her sobs in the pillow.
Had they guessed? Did Mother and Oliver know about her and Edward? Was Oliver’s thunderous face a sign that he suspected? They’d not done anything wrong. Not yet. But soon it would happen, she knew. Was it written on their faces for all to see? Other young women didn’t feel this way about their brothers, they despised them, wanted to be free. But she had tried to put her feelings for Edward aside. And she had failed. Her brother loved her with a single-minded intensity. He had begged her to go to London with him, saying he’d rent a house there and they would be together. And she longed to go, longed never to suffer his absence again. Her days were full. She did all the things that gave her satisfaction, yet inside there was always a gnawing emptiness without Edward.
Her neck was tight from trying to stifle her tears. She buried her face in the bedcover and bit the cloth to gain control. She must be strong. Oliver had shown her a way out. At his house she’d forget Edward; she would put him out of her mind whenever she started to think about him. They would get over it if they were apart. They would meet new friends, maybe even marry when time had cured them, she told herself.
She sat up. There was no time left. She had already packed everything she had, dresses, underwear, winter and summer clothes, her knitting and embroidery and paints and pencils. She got to her feet and put down the lids of the two great trunks that were full to bursting.
Edward’s footsteps sounded outside on the landing. He wanted to be alone with her, he’d said, just for a few minutes before she left. She began to tremble as he entered the room and stood with his back to the door, preventing her from passing. His face was a white mask of pain at their parting. It was always this way when he returned to medical school.
‘Shall I see you before we meet at Christmas?’ he asked her.
‘No. Leave me, Edward. I have to learn to live without you. We both have to.’ She was trying to be brave and calm, not looking into his face.
He towered above her, and for all her height and the two years by which she was older, she felt small and disadvantaged.
‘Will you write to me?’ he asked.
She nodded.
‘Oh, Lizzie!’ He held out his arms and she went to him. Her tears rolled gently down her face and he kissed them away, making her melt as his lips found hers.
Lizzie’s worst fears were realised when James returned to Suttonford from four weeks’ holiday in Scotland. She found him little changed from the boastful boy she had only once met.
He seemed to fill the great house with noise and loud demands for attention from family and servants alike. She noticed that when Oliver was near he was more subdued but whenever he found her alone his behaviour was impossible.
She sat in the conservatory, working on an embroidery. It was pleasant in there, hidden from view behind the hanging purple flowers whose name she did not know. She thought that James would not find her so easily here. But after only ten minutes the door from the house clicked and she heard his footsteps approaching.
‘There you are!’ He had an unpleasant way of tipping back his head, as though he was looking down his nose at her. ‘Father told me to find you, Elizabeth. He wants to see you.’ He had the same dark hair as his father, the grey eyes of his mother and, at fifteen, was tall and well made.
Lizzie had never seen him smiling. His mouth curled into a sneer when he thought he was being clever but she had not seen warmth or genuine amusement in him. ‘Where is he? Does he want to see me now?’ Lizzie asked. She folded her embroidery.
‘He wants to take you to Middlefield. He sees his partner, Albert Billington, every week. You are to have the honour of meeting his wife and family.’ James leaned against the wrought-iron seat, with the smile that was a sneer on his handsome face. ‘I expect he wants to show you round the slums,’ he added in his drawling tone. ‘For some reason he is enormously proud of his wretched little factories. Perhaps they will strike a sympathetic chord in your soul, Elizabeth. They bore me to death!’
‘I expect I shall enjoy it then, if it bores you!’ Lizzie swept past him, furious at his disparagement of Oliver’s achievements. ‘It’s a pity for your father that his son has nothing to be proud of.’
She reddened as she heard his guffaws ringing in her ears. How had the boy grown so despicable? He had had everything. Oliver had talked, often, about the privileged way in which his son was being brought up in comparison with his own early life. From birth he had been pampered and petted, been given everything he could want, yet he had never lifted a finger to help himself, let alone others. Perhaps that’s why he’s so vile, she thought.
Oliver was in his office, scribbling figures onto a sheet of paper, which he folded and placed in his breast pocket at Lizzie’s approach. ‘Do you want to put your bonnet on, Lizzie, and come visiting with me?’ he asked. ‘I’m going to see my partner at the factory and then we’ll go to his house for lunch. You’ll like the Billingtons. They have hundreds of children and they’re a jolly lot.’
‘I’d love to go with you,’ she said. She always enjoyed Oliver’s company and had longed, for years, to see inside his factories. He had always been generous, bringing her lengths of cloth to sew. Her earliest memories were of sorting through bags of pieces of cotton, placing matching lengths into little piles all over the dining-room table, planning her dolls’ wardrobes.
When she got there she found the mill fascinating. She lingered beside the looms, making Oliver smile at her stream of questions. Even the factory girls, not known for their good manners, took to her, answering her questions in a friendly way. Normally, Oliver told her afterwards, they gave onlookers a rough ride, especially the well-dressed ones, whom they derided with a coarse humour that was a language in itself, sending gales of loud laughter down the lines behind the disconcerted visitors.
‘You reminded me of myself on my first visit, Lizzie,
’ he told her when he had torn her away from the mill and they were walking to his partner’s house. ‘I found the whole process absorbing.’
‘How are the printed cottons made, Oliver?’ she asked. ‘I’d love to meet the people who draw the patterns.’
‘Middlefield’s known for its silks as well as cottons,’ he told her. ‘There are some gifted artists working in the silk mills. I’ll take you round to Partington’s next time – if you’d like to come again.’
‘Oh, please,’ she answered, praying that he would not forget.
Late in the afternoon they took the train back to Suttonford and found a first-class compartment to themselves. ‘Are you enjoying your stay with us, Lizzie?’ Oliver asked her. ‘Do you miss Edward and your mother?’
‘I miss them but I’m happy with you and Florence,’ she replied. ‘Did you see Edward when you were in London last week?’
‘Yes. We had dinner at my hotel and talked half the night away,’ Oliver told her. ‘He speaks about you all the time. He misses you.’
‘Mother has been to London to see him, hasn’t she? I wonder why she won’t come to Suttonford to see me. Surely there are no hard feelings after all this time? It’s years since she worked here.’
‘Your mother will never return as a guest in the house in which she once served. She’ll never set foot in Suttonford again. There are too many painful memories for her here. Dad being killed. All that,’ Oliver answered.
He usually avoided mention of their past life. Lizzie took her opportunity to probe into the family history. ‘Edward and I know little of our father. We only have the photograph. Is there anyone who still remembers him?’
‘No. They’ve all gone. I’d know if anyone was left. You saw the grave. He was my father too, you know.’
Lizzie knew that he would not say more. But why should seeing the grave be significant? What an odd thing for Oliver to say. Graves don’t tell you anything.
Even innocent-sounding questions alarmed him and Mother. He was staring out of the carriage window as if absorbed in looking at the familiar landscape as they approached Suttonford station. It was useless to question him.
And Oliver hoped that she’d be satisfied; hoped she’d ask no more questions. He reassured himself that there truly was nobody who remembered Joe and Dolly Wainwright when they’d been employed by the Oldfield family. Even his mother-in-law Laura, who had lived in London with Florence until she was widowed, did not remember. But then she had never bothered to learn the names of the servants. She was no threat; she could hardly recall the big events in her own life, let alone his.
They were slowing down as the train passed the village. The school he had attended was as it had always been. The cottage he’d lived in stood empty now, not fit for habitation.
He glanced at Lizzie as she gazed at the place she could so easily have known well. He saw for a moment the Lizzie she might have become with Wilf Leach for a father and he saw a Lizzie grown old prematurely with poverty and toil. He was glad he had spared her.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The lecture on transmission of infectious diseases was being followed by a tour of the fever ward. Edward enjoyed working in the fever hospital. He knew that he was the only student who actually liked the smell of carbolic. He watched Dr Hart’s careful examination of the patients, finding himself anticipating the diagnosis in some of the cases. This was the branch of medicine that interested him and he did not mean to miss a second of the great man’s teaching.
Already he felt a bond of understanding growing between him and the specialist. He knew Dr Hart had noticed his absorption in the speciality and had begun to follow his progress, encouraging Edward to come forward with his own attempts at diagnosis.
‘Would you like to see the laboratory findings before you try this one?’ Dr Hart asked, at the bedside of a young man who lay, incoherent, limbs jerking.
‘Where’s he from?’ Edward asked, noting the patient’s extreme thinness and his ragged, dirty fingernails.
‘He’s a vagrant,’ Dr Hart replied, looking at the faces of the four students. Edward waited for one of the others to speak but it seemed no one else wanted to give an opinion.
‘I’d like to see the laboratory report, sir,’ he said, ‘but …’
‘Go on then.’ Dr Hart’s thin, intelligent face showed a quick flash of humour. ‘Have a guess. The poor patient’s not going to be any the worse if you get it wrong.’
‘Relapsing fever?’ Edward ventured.
A smile broke across Dr Hart’s face.
‘Good!’ he said. He turned his attention fully to Edward now.
‘Occurrence?’ he asked quickly.
‘Mostly the poorer classes,’ Edward replied. ‘Tramps, hawkers—’
‘Incubation?’
‘One to sixteen days, but often under nine.’
‘Symptoms, Wainwright?’
‘Pyrexia – nausea – vomiting …’
‘And?’
‘Tenderness in the hepatic region,’ Edward told him confidently.
‘Rash?’
‘Not always, sir.’
‘Good,’ Dr Hart said. ‘Well, gentlemen. That’s all for today.’ He looked directly at Edward. ‘Can you be at the laboratory at nine in the morning, Wainwright? We can examine the samples under the microscope.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ Edward felt a warm glow, the satisfying feeling of having been worthy of Dr Hart’s attention.
The feeling lasted until he had left the ward and contemplated the evening ahead of him. He was hungry and there was nothing to eat in his rooms. Outside the hospital he could easily become dispirited, missing Lizzie, allowing himself to dwell on the bleakness of his life without her.
It was a raw, foggy night and he dug his hands deep into the pockets of his thin overcoat as he crossed the darkened quadrangle and reached the gates.
‘There’s a message for you, Mr Wainwright.’ A porter put his head out of the lodge door and waved a piece of paper.
Edward stepped inside the little waiting room. There was a telephone at the lodge that the students could use, and usually a queue of them waiting their turn. Tonight he was the only person there. ‘What does it say?’ he asked, as the porter thumbed through a sheaf of memoranda for the message.
‘It says, “Your brother is in London. Can you join him at his Bond Street hotel tonight?”’
Edward gave a broad smile of relief. ‘Thank you. Sure it’s for tonight?’
‘Have I ever been wrong?’ The porter gave him a wounded look.
‘Once, you were,’ Edward laughed. ‘You sent me on the wrong night the last time.’
‘I’m right about tonight,’ the man assured him. ‘Shall I call a cab for you?’
‘No. I’ll walk,’ Edward said. It was not far to Bond Street and when the roads were busy it was quicker on foot.
Horses, carriages and omnibuses moved slowly through the dense November fog. Many shop windows were illuminated now that electricity was commonplace and Edward made his way from one island of light to another as they first glimmered then blazed into the gloom.
He lingered in front of a jewellery display. A necklace caught his attention and he decided to buy it for Lizzie for Christmas. It was a gold chain with amethysts suspended at the front in a delicate cascade of gold and lilac. He could picture it against her creamy skin, the stones settling into the hollow at her throat. He would draw the money out of his savings account. It would give him a bit less to live on but there was a little more, Mother said another hundred pounds, to come from their father’s estate when he was twenty-one in January.
Tonight he would ask Oliver again for information about their father, quarryman Joseph Wainwright. Oliver seemed to be adept at changing the course of the conversation whenever he or Lizzie broached the subject but he must know more than he was prepared to tell.
The hotel lobby, mirrored and smelling of polished wood, was warm and quiet in contrast to the bustle outside. Through t
he etched glass doors it was an ordered corner of London. Trolley wheels ran silently as a waiter crossed to the lift. He was expected, the frock-coated manager told him, in suite six on the second floor.
Edward stood at the back of the lift, fascinated by the porter’s handling of the iron- and brass-hinged gates as the man closed the second pair. The heavy ropes of metal, which ran down each side of the well, began to vibrate, taking the strain of raising it. After the endless stairs at the hospital a lift was a decadent luxury. He tipped the man extravagantly with a shilling he could ill afford and knocked at the door of Oliver’s suite.
‘Hello, Edward. Come in and warm yourself.’ Oliver beamed a welcome, ushering Edward into the carpeted sitting room where a coal fire burned brightly and plush chairs were placed before it with decanters and glasses on the heavy side-table.
‘It’s foggy out there. I didn’t keep you waiting, did I?’ Edward warmed his hands and stood with his back to the fire as his brother poured whiskies.
Tonight both wore boiled shirts with hard wing collars and dark suits. Their resemblance to one another was striking. Edward, taller and thinner than Oliver, did not have the look of watchfulness that characterised Oliver; nor Oliver’s quick anger. Rather he had a reserve, an impression of held-back energy and tightly reined emotions, until he relaxed and his features broke into the same disarming smile that Oliver had used to such unconscious effect at the age of twenty.
‘What brings you to London again?’ Edward asked. ‘You were here only a month ago. Business?’
‘That and a summons from James’s headmaster,’ Oliver replied. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing serious, just a prank, but the school wants to talk about it. The boy doesn’t fully exercise his energies. James isn’t keen on sport and there is no provision for young men who don’t play games.’
‘How long will he remain there?’ Edward asked, though he was only being polite, not really interested in James’s education.
‘James isn’t clever like you, Edward. You are fortunate in having a good brain. I think perhaps he’s already learned as much as he ever will,’ Oliver replied.
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