The Visitors

by Mascull, Rebecca

  She says, ‘Don’t fret. Your father will make old bones yet.’

  But I know Father has not been himself of late. He is worried about the yield this year. There has been powdery mildew on the crop and he has been out with the workers, dosing the crop with sulphur to kill it, checking its progress day and night. I have not seen him so preoccupied since the beginning of the war. Later, the doctor goes into Father’s room and does not appear again for an hour.

  Mother asks me to come to her room after her afternoon nap. The curtains are half closed, providing a dimness in which two Visitors loiter. I tell them to go. They are Father’s relations and I have no time for them now. Maid Alice is arranging Mother’s hair and I sit on her bed, watching as the thick long tresses are trained up over a horsehair pad and pinned into place, Mother’s eyes patient yet her mouth pinched in the mirror. When she is done, she sends Alice away and turns to me.

  ‘When can I see Father?’

  ‘Your Father is ill and must not be disturbed.’

  ‘Is it bad?’

  ‘It is his heart. His heart is tired. He needs a lot of rest and then he will get better.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He only needs sleep, and then he will be better?’

  ‘Yes. A nurse is coming from town to tend to him.’

  ‘But I can tend to him. No one will do it better. I must do it.’

  ‘No, you will excite him too much, you know you will. You two will talk and talk and he will never get any rest. Is that what you want, to make him more ill?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Then you must leave him alone. You can see him in a few days, when he has rested.’ She smiles and bids me go.

  I am not comforted by this. Mother does not smile very often and when she does, it is usually a sign that she is trying to cover up something. She has to put smiles on, you see, like a mask.

  When afternoon lessons are finished, I ask Lottie if I can walk alone for a while. I creep upstairs and stand in the shadow of the bookshelves outside Father’s room. I wish I could hear what is going on inside. After a time, the door opens and a middle-aged woman appears, dressed in the starched white and blue of the district nurse, carrying a basin of water covered with a towel. She closes the door to and looks up.

  ‘Oh!’ she cries and starts back. She does not expect to see a girl haunting the landing. ‘Get off with you!’ she says. ‘You’ll disturb the patient. Do you understand me? Where’s your nanny?’

  I can see from the muscles straining on her neck that she is trying to whisper and shout at the same time, from her frown and suspecting eyes that she has remembered I am that deaf girl and thinks perhaps I am an idiot.

  I sign at her slowly and full of disdain, ‘I am not the fool,’ and she glares, perplexed.

  I turn, head held high, and march down the stairs very proud. Once outside, I feel desolate. I just want to see Father. Nobody will tell me anything, no one will let me see. I cannot eavesdrop unless I can see their mouths and they know that, they have that power over me. I wander down the path, my head heavy with meditation. As I approach the oast house, I look up to the cooling loft. Where is Caleb now? Is he hot and thirsty? Is he shot at, lying face down in the sandy soil, the backs of his knees burning under the African sun? Is he bleeding? Is he dead? Is he with her? Oh, my love. I shake my head to dispel these pictures. The light is fading. I have just missed the magic hour, when the sun is low and suffuses everything with a golden glow, seeming all the more wonderful since it is about to leave us. It is the gloaming. From the corner of my eye I glimpse a Visitor leaving the side door of the oast house, its blue-white light illuminating the dusky air, so brightly as I have never seen before, walking away from me towards the hop garden. I know that walk so well. I call out to him in my mind, Father!

  He turns. His face is ivory, his eyes anxious.

  The mould is in the hops, he says. Worse than the cursed fly. I fear we have met our Waterloo. What are we to do, Liza?

  Oh, Father! I cry and fall at the Visitor’s feet.

  Now, now, my child. Do not concern yourself. God will protect us.

  He reaches out and helps me up from the ground, his nebulous touch light as breath at my elbow. I stare at him. His face is unquiet, uncomprehending. He does not know he is dead. They never do. I want to turn and run to the house. Perhaps he is at the door of death, perhaps his spirit is free, but he is not yet gone. Perhaps he can be saved.

  Come with me, I beg him. Come upstairs with me. I have something to show you.

  No, no, my dear. I must check the crops. It’s time for treatment. The powdering machine the horses pull keeps jamming. I must get on to Davy, get him to order that new one we saw in the catalogue. I am sure it will be more efficient. Sometimes I wonder if the old ways are not best, when we used to do it manually. But then we would have the sticky stains on our hands and have to rub them with hop leaves, do you remember?

  And he drifts away, muttering to himself of hops and crops and mould and sulphur, the everyday stuff of his life. I want to scream at him, that none of this matters any more, but it is the same with them all and they never will learn.

  I turn and run to the house, fling open the front door and bolt upstairs. Mother must hear me, as she opens her door as I pass and I can see her mouth forming words. I burst into his room and see him in the bed. His mouth is open, his eyes are open. He is alone. Where is the blasted nurse? He is alone, he has died alone. I run to the bed and throw myself across his stiff legs. I recoil and look at his dead face, his lifeless eyes livid, like Tom Winstanley’s. Mother is at my side, pulling at my arm.

  ‘Come away,’ she signs, ‘come away.’

  But I shake my head, no, no.

  I wipe my eyes and reach out to take his hand. No one was there to hold it at the end. I bend down and kiss it. I see Mother reach over and brush over his eyelids. Now his eyes are closed, he looks like he is asleep, head back and snoring with his mouth open as he did in his chair by the fire some nights over a book. But he is not asleep, he is dead and gone. And for the first time in my life, I understand that the body is a painted eggshell, made of flesh and hair so real, so solid that it fools us into thinking it is alive. But the only life comes from within and now his has escaped aimless amongst his beloved hops, and I will never converse with Father again, not the real Father who lived and breathed and understood what it was to be alive and to die. I curse my gift, and despise the Visitors who footslog like cretins in an asylum of their own making, and hate them for accepting Father into their number. And I feel a hot dread of ever seeing his ghost again.

  In the weeks that follow, I avoid the hop garden. I do not want to go there and see his Visitor. I stay inside the house, fearful of going outside, yet suffer the affliction of a prisoner within my memories and misery. But as the funeral comes and goes and we stop speaking of Father with every breath, I miss him more than ever. A threnody sounds day and night in my heart. Nothing serves to lighten my days, not even a letter from Caleb. We write to him, Lottie and I, to tell him of Father’s passing, but hear nothing back. I know full well it is most likely beyond his control. If the Boers have hijacked the mail transport, he may well not have received our letter yet and perhaps never will, let alone reply. I know all this and still I blame Caleb for his silence.

  Some months after his death, Father’s will is read. His fortune is left to Mother, with a very good allowance for myself and a generous annuity to Charlotte for her devotion, to be given for life, whether or not she remains in Golding employ. I am glad this will help the Crowe family, but the money means nothing whatever to me. I am so forlorn and strange of mind. In my sorrow, I have pushed Lottie away. She tries to speak with me, says words such as ‘grief’ and ‘mourning’, but I cannot explain it to her. My distress is not only the loss of Father, but the guilt I endure because the man I pine for most earnestly is Caleb. I wear the willow for her brother, ache for him more than my father, more
than my own flesh and blood. I hate myself for it, but there it is. I cannot reveal this to her and so she looks at me full of sympathy and I want to fling it back at her, say how little I deserve it. I have no one to talk to, no one who will accept this truth and not judge me. I have never spoken to Mother or the maids about any such thing and have no intention of starting now. I only had Lottie, always Lottie, to share my secrets with. Except for this.

  Wreathed in loneliness, I leave the house one evening and go to the hop garden, the same time of day I saw Father last. There he is, sauntering along a hop lane, gazing at the sky. I watch him for a time, thinking of Visitors and their existence, how they are the empty vessel left behind when our life deserts us. I have pitied them, but not understood their plight, not known it in my heart as I do now, looking at Father’s ghost. I call to him. He turns and hurries towards me, about to impart information of great import.

  Adeliza, the charitable missions are placing great pressure on my back to improve conditions for the pickers. I am incensed. I believe we look after them very well. We house them in brick buildings, we provide potatoes and firewood. The well is not too far from the camp and the beck water is clean and healthy.

  The old worries, the old concerns. Pointless now.

  Father, I do not wish to speak of that.

  What is it, my dear?

  I love Caleb Crowe. I have loved him since I was a child. I do not love him like a sister, but as a woman, Father. As a woman loves a man. But I fear he does not love me. He went away to Africa and left me. I know he had enlisted, I know it would have been difficult to escape it. But I believe if it had been me, I would have managed it to stay with the one I loved dearest and best. I have a hope that he loves me, that one day he will come home and renew our love. But on dark days I think he never loved me, is fond of me and took what I offered him as men do, that perhaps he has eyes for someone new. And on those days I curse him and hate him so, it tears a hole in my heart to think of him.

  Father considers this for a moment, then answers: I keep the local pickers away from the Londoners and the gypsies. I never hire tramps. There are never fights on my farm.

  Can you hear me, Father? Are you listening to me?

  Of course I am. We are discussing the pickers, are we not? Please, go on.

  I can see how hopeless it is, to converse with this husk. But he is the only one I can tell.

  I have been thinking. I might go away somewhere, with Lottie if she will come. Travel, as I always wanted to do. I could escape my life here, escape Mother’s illness, the rigours of my education, the mooning about the grounds reading novels of romance, the sorrow and comfort of seeing you, Father, changed as you are and yet ever the same. I long to flee it all. I can use the legacy you have left for me to see the world I touched with fleet fingers on the globe you gave me, leave my disappointment behind and begin a new life in a new land. What do you think, Father?

  You know I only allow the honest hawkers in to sell them food. And they can use our tokens in the local shops. I always advance their pay if they make a fair case of it. But I refuse to give them subs if I fear they will spend it on jollification in the local taverns. I have the village to consider. Do you not agree?

  But I have already walked away. He has not noticed and blathers on. I had hoped that as Father was the first Visitor I knew, and knew so well, I could break through that fog of obsession and reach him, make him hear me. But I believe I never will. And that resolves me. The same day, I tell Lottie my idea. She is in instant agreement and most excited. We consider how to tell Mother of our plans for travel. Mother’s weak condition necessitated that in Father’s will I was left with some limited power over my own money. Thus Mother will not be able physically or legally to prevent us, but I am keen to attempt her consent. We think of doing a Grand Tour of Europe, to sail to France, by railway to Paris, the Tour Eiffel, Notre Dame, Montmartre. Then on to walk the labyrinth at Chartres, float down the canals of Coulon, out to the coast at La Rochelle to sample the seafood, then over the Pyrenees to Spain. The Plaza Mayor in Madrid, through El Greco’s Toledo to the Meseta and Don Quixote country. South to the Alhambra in Granada, the Mezquita at Córdoba, the cathedral at Sevilla. After that, who knows?

  We speak to Mother and she is perturbed, yet has little energy to stop us. We begin to make plans and for the first time in months my life has purpose. We purchase clothes and luggage, research western Europe and plan our route. But then a letter comes from Caleb. It is dated months ago, hopelessly out of date, just after Father’s death. He would not yet have received our news. I envy him his ignorance. Seeing his neat and looping script again summons every drop of love I ever felt for him in a hopeless flood. I have to press my eyes to stop the tears of gratitude from flowing, as I see my name written by his very hand. And I know, whatever this letter contains, that to escape to Europe may be an adventure, but will never cure me of his love. It is a sickness I will carry with me. I must always defer to Lottie when Caleb’s letters come, as she is his sister. But I strain over her shoulder to see, and my heart thumps so in my chest. My first consuming thought is that perhaps there will be a word of love for me in this letter, just a word, a hint on which I may hang a flimsy hope. I read on.

  Frankfort Garrison,

  Orange Free State

  3 November 1900

  Dear Charlotte and Adeliza,

  I would love to hear your news, yet have received no letters from you for months. How is life in Kent? I am glad to say I did finally receive your packages which all came together, with chocolate and socks, sweaters and sleeping caps. I am afraid it is summer here now and getting hotter by the day, so they won’t be so useful as yet. But perhaps I will be here next winter, who knows? And I can use them at night. Thank you for those lovely handkerchiefs embroidered by you, Liza, which I have ruined by blowing my nose on them, but that is their purpose, after all. Thank you all very much for your kindness.

  I write from the Frankfort garrison. We are stationed here for the next few weeks at least. It is a cut-off place subject to constant raids by Boer commandos, which affords a bit of excitement. The only other fun is the arrival of supplies. Every month or so a British column of wagons comes to bring us newspapers, clothes and extra kit, ammunition, rations and post. Some men go off with the column that delivers to us, and some of the column’s number are left behind here in their place. So there is always feverish anticipation about who will stay and who will go. So far, I have been chosen to stay here all the while. I am quite glad, as it has meant I remain not far from Camp Irene and have awaited my chance to visit there. I have to tell you something now that may shock you, may even sicken you. I am in two minds whether to tell you the real truth about all this, as you are ladies and not used to such things. But I feel that people in England should know exactly what is going on. So I hope you will forgive me. Remember my silly horror stories I would tell by the fire? This is a true one that is all the more horrible for being real.

  A few days ago, our patrol picked up a group of wandering Boer women and children. Wallis and I were ordered to take them over to Camp Irene. They were exhausted, very hungry and some of the children were ill. One woman had a scrawny newborn babe, clearly born out on the veldt. The whole group were in a state. Their skin was thick with grime and their clothes were ragged, their dresses tied up with string. They wore gloves and veldschoens (Boer shoes) made from raw sheepskin. Not at all like Maria’s clean white apron and her son’s shining hair, as I remember it, despite having lived on commando for weeks. But these women had lived alone without protection or supplies. Maybe we would all look a little like this if we had lived wild for many months. These seemed to be a lower class of Boers, with some shoddy ideas about cleanliness and health. One child had a revolting skin rash which looked very angry and its mother had placed upon it a poultice made of cow dung, which she swore was the best remedy. We were allowed only to give them some basic rations and then get them on to the train. We told them they could b
e seen at the hospital at the camp. But they wept and shouted at us, saying they would never go into the camp hospital, as it was staffed by the English who can never be trusted. They were in a sorry state the whole journey and I did what I could by getting them water. Wallis treated them largely with disdain. I had quiet words with him at one point, when he shouted at a Boer child who never stopped crying. But Wallis is sick at heart of this war and the Boers in particular. He blames them for declaring war in the first place and for it dragging on this long. Sometimes he takes it out on them. He is a good man, Wallis, a good friend. I understand him. But I feel a little differently.

  When we arrived at the camp, we saw the women in and they were taken away. The train moved on and we knew the next one coming back was several hours’ wait. Wallis was all for getting out of there and waiting at Irene station. But I told him I wanted to find Maria. He didn’t approve and told me so, saying some things I won’t repeat about her and Boer women in general. I believe he is trying to protect me somehow but I was having none of it and he stalked off alone. I asked a guard about the whereabouts of Mrs Uitenweerde and her son. Records were checked and I was directed to a group of conical tents not far from the hospital. I saw the women we had brought involved in a great argument outside it – a brick building, well-built, with several marquees beyond it for patients; two nurses and a doctor were trying to persuade the women to bring their sick children in to care for them, but they shook their heads and held on to their children ferociously. They would not go in there. ‘We would rather die,’ cried one woman.

  I found the place easily, as the camp was laid out with military straightness in rows of thirty tents, each tent and row given their own number. This may sound orderly, but the tents were pitched very close together on rocky and stony ground, while the pathways between them were littered with rubbish. I stood outside the bell-shaped tent, not knowing how to announce my arrival, as I could not knock on canvas. I called out her full name. Eventually a flap opened and I saw a face. It was a thin, drawn face with dark shadows beneath the eyes, an older woman. I asked her if Mrs Uitenweerde was in that tent. A warm stink of bodies came from within, which made me cover my nose. The woman said, ‘It is me.’ She stepped out and stood before me. To see this skinny thing, so bedraggled and brought so low, to compare it with the feisty young woman I had met only two months ago, made me sick to my stomach. She looked as if she had aged ten years.