Fell the Angels

by John Kerr

  ‘Don’t flatter me, Janie,’ said Cecilia, turning to look up at her friend with a smile.

  ‘The truth is not flattery,’ replied Mrs Clark, well aware that the vain young woman delighted in flattery.

  Cecilia rose and walked into the sunlit bedroom. ‘What a lovely spring day,’ she remarked, unlatching and throwing open the casement window. ‘We should take a long drive on the common.’

  ‘I shall tell Mr Griffiths to bring round the carriage,’ said Mrs Clark in a businesslike tone. ‘Will you have breakfast?’

  ‘Have the cook poach an egg,’ said Cecilia, as she slipped off her robe and tossed it on the bed, revealing her chemise and petticoat. ‘With a rasher of bacon.’ Gazing briefly at Cecilia, Mrs Clark smiled and walked briskly from the room.

  Wearing a double-breasted dark-blue coat with a sable collar, matching hat, and navy kid gloves, Cecilia stood on the gravel drive admiring the matched pair of white horses coupled to the open-top coach, painted a glossy green with red wheel-rims and seats upholstered in supple cowhide. ‘A very fine carriage, ma’am,’ said the coachman Griffiths, running a hand over the fender. ‘And well sprung.’

  ‘It should be,’ said Cecilia. ‘It cost me a pretty penny.’ Taking Griffiths’ hand, she put a petite foot on the running board and climbed in, choosing the front-facing seat and admiring her navy, gold-trimmed boots. After a moment Mrs Clark emerged from the house, wearing a hat and wool shawl. She sat beside Cecilia, clapped her hands, and said, ‘What a perfect day for an outing.’ Griffiths climbed up on the driver’s seat, unlooped the reins, and started the horses into a trot. Turning from the drive on Bedford Hill Road, they entered Tooting Bec Common, an expanse of some 300 acres with stands of oak and bright green fields dotted with daffodils waving in the gentle breeze. The driver turned on a track that encircled the Common, where a number of children, under the supervision of their teachers or nannies, were playing, including a group of schoolgirls in matching white dresses and beribboned straw boaters. ‘To be a child again,’ said Cecilia happily, placing a gloved hand on her companion’s knee. Mrs Clark merely smiled, thinking back to her own miserable childhood in a Liverpool slum. Reaching the far end of the Common, Cecilia leaned forward and instructed the driver, ‘Take us to Streatham. A turn around the common there and we’ll be ready for home.’

  By the time they returned to The Priory, Cecilia had regaled Mrs Clark with descriptions of her time at the hydro – ‘showered with buckets of ice water, in the nude,’ she whispered – the communal meals and outings in the countryside, eliciting polite smiles and an occasional soft laugh from her reticent companion. ‘I trust,’ said Mrs Clark as the carriage came to a halt on the gravel drive, ‘that the regimen is beneficial to one’s health.’

  ‘Oh, James – Dr Gully – swears by it,’ said Cecilia, as the coachman opened the door and helped her down. Mrs Clark betrayed no emotion at the mention of the doctor, though she had long since deduced that he was a regular visitor to her employer’s bedroom. ‘And I suppose,’ Cecilia added, ‘it did me some good, though the food was wretched and I was forced to abstain from wine and tea.’ Mrs Clark responded with a hint of a smile and followed Cecilia up the flagstones and into the house. With a glance at the grandfather clock in the hall, Cecilia said, ‘Tell the cook to have lunch ready at half past the hour. I’m going up to my bath.’

  ‘Yes, madam.’

  Cecilia dried herself with a soft towel as the water noisily drained from the claw-foot bath. Folding the towel on a rack, she started for the adjoining boudoir when she perceived someone standing just outside the door. ‘Oh,’ she said, instinctively crossing her arms over her bare breasts.

  ‘It’s only me,’ said Mrs Clark, emerging from the shadows. ‘Shall I get your robe?’

  For a moment Cecilia stared in the older woman’s dark eyes, feeling a blush on her neck, and then said, ‘Yes, what is it?’

  ‘I merely wanted to tell you,’ said Mrs Clark, as she took one of Cecilia’s silk dressing-gowns from the closet and helped her to slip it on, ‘that a boy from the telegraph office delivered a telegram.’ She produced an envelope from her pocket and handed it to Cecilia.

  ‘I see,’ said Cecilia, studying the address as she tied the sash. Looking up, she said, ‘You may tell cook that as soon as I’m dressed I’ll be ready for lunch.’ As Mrs Clark turned to go, Cecilia closed the doors to her boudoir and fastened the latch.

  Wearing her latest silk undergarments, she sat before the mirror and studied her reflection. The telegram, crumpled into a ball, was on the dresser beside her silver hairbrush. As she’d expected, it was from James, informing her that he’d returned from his sojourn in Europe and would arrive in Balham on the 6.00 p.m. train. Though the thought of an evening with her lover, after an absence of some three weeks, evoked pleasurable feelings of anticipation, and though he was still capable of arousing her to sexual fulfilment, her ardour had dimmed and the trysts no longer had the dangerous, illicit quality that had thrilled her in Malvern. And, as a consequence, she had grown careless in her precautions to hide her scandalous secret from prying eyes. Taking the old, pale-pink organdie from the closet, she thought about Mrs Clark, about Janie, as she fastened the buttons. There was something, she considered with a shiver, about the way the older woman looked at her, or touched her, that was disturbing and yet exciting in a way she couldn’t explain.

  As usual, Cecilia’s place was set at the head of the dining-room table; the good silver and bone china were laid out on linen beside a silver water goblet and crystal wineglass. As soon as she was seated, the parlourmaid appeared, serving her a bowl of vichyssoise and a selection of finger sandwiches. Once she was alone, Cecilia took a sip of water and then poured herself a full glass of straw-coloured wine from the decanter at her elbow. ‘I always take wine with my meals,’ she had once advised the disapproving maid, ‘to improve my digestion.’ As she was enjoying her soup, Mrs Clark appeared in the passageway holding a clutch of letters.

  ‘I’ve sorted your mail, Cissie,’ she said. ‘Shall we go over it now, or would you prefer to wait?’

  ‘Now would be fine. Please join me.’

  ‘A letter from Mr Taylor, at Coutts,’ Mrs Clark began, as she sat in the chair next to Cecilia, ‘enclosing a statement of your accounts, which of course, I did not open.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And an invoice from Madame Rousseau, the dressmaker on Bond Street—’

  ‘I’m sending the dress back,’ interrupted Cecilia. ‘It isn’t right for me. Don’t pay the invoice. We’ll also return the slippers.’

  ‘But, Cissie? The poor woman …’

  ‘Why should I keep them?’

  ‘Very well.’ After reviewing the usual assortment of bills, social invitations, and correspondence, including a rather stiff letter from Cecilia’s mother, Mrs Clark held up a pale-blue envelope and said, ‘And finally, an invitation from Mr Throckmorton, your solicitor.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘To lunch, on Saturday the 24th, at his house in Surrey.’ She extracted the neatly lettered invitation from the envelope and handed it to Cecilia.

  Cecilia smiled as she glanced at the invitation, surprised that the dour solicitor would reach out to someone of her social position. ‘Send him a reply,’ she said, as she handed the invitation to Mrs Clark, ‘advising that I accept and that I shall be accompanied by my friend Dr Gully.’

  The doctor arrived at The Priory at half past seven, weary from the day’s journey and aggravated by a delay in departing from Waterloo. Shown by the parlourmaid to the drawing-room, he walked slowly, leaning heavily on a silver-handled cane, and seemed to Cecilia, seated by the fire, to have aged during his brief absence. Rising to greet him, she gave him a kiss on the cheek and said, ‘My goodness, James, whatever is the matter?’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ he said with a grimace, slumping heavily on the settee facing the fire. ‘I took a tumble while on a walk outside Gräfenberg and sprained my
knee.’ He reached down to massage the limb.

  ‘Poor dear,’ said Cecilia. ‘Let me get you a glass of wine.’

  ‘No, thankee,’ said Gully. ‘Bad for my gout.’

  ‘Your visit was a success?’ Cecilia lifted her wineglass from the table and took a sip.

  ‘Oh, yes. An excellent opportunity to visit my Continental colleagues, all homeopathic men, of course. And the wildflowers were exceptional.’ Cecilia nodded politely, noticing the whiteness of Gully’s hair, the lines on his face, and the blue veins on the back of his hands. ‘Lots of discussion about the slanderous attacks from our medical colleagues.’

  ‘Attacks?’ said Cecilia with a puzzled expression.

  ‘Calls for a ban on homeopathic medicine,’ said Gully, thumping his cane on the floor. ‘Decrying the water-cure as quackery. Humbug!’

  ‘Oh, dear.’

  ‘Well, Cecilia my dear, they have my answer!’

  ‘Are you sure you won’t have a glass of wine?’

  ‘Perhaps with dinner.’ Gully reached into his waistcoat and produced a folded page torn from a medical gazette. Slipping on his spectacles, he said, ‘I wrote a letter to the editors of the medical journal answering these slanderous attacks, which they’ve published. Shall I read it to you?’ Cecilia nodded. ‘The fetor of servility,’ he began, in a stentorian voice, ‘which exhales from minds putrescent with sordid calculations, may be sweet incense to the nostrils of the low-minded members of the medical profession….’

  ‘My goodness,’ said Cecilia.

  Gully smiled and continued to read. ‘I will not believe that the great mass of medical gentlemen will reverence any confrère who crawls at their feet or licks their saliva. Impertinent statements regarding my financial position, offscourings of gossip about my patients, such a farrago of vulgarities, of shoppishness, and snobbishment on which no gentleman would undertake to pass a comment. And so forth and so on,’ concluded Gully, refolding the page in his waistcoat.

  ‘You write so beautifully,’ said Cecilia, ‘though I’m not sure I fully understand….’

  ‘No matter. Shall we repair to the table? I confess I’m famished.’

  Following a supper of roast beef and parsleyed potatoes, during which Gully amused Cecilia with anecdotes from his travels, including an evening at the Folies Bergère in Paris – ‘very naughty,’ he assured her – Cecilia suggested they take the last of their wine to the drawing-room. Seated in one of the upholstered armchairs, she studied Gully, relaxing beside her on the settee with his usual genial expression, but looking older and frailer than the vigorous man who’d led her on many a strenuous walk in the Malvern Hills. ‘We have an invitation,’ she said after finishing her wine and putting the glass aside, ‘to visit my solicitor, Mr Throckmorton.’

  ‘An invitation …’ said Gully.

  ‘To lunch at his country house in Surrey.’

  ‘Are you socially acquainted with the man?’

  ‘No, but I thought it would be impolite to decline, considering all that he’s done to help me.’

  ‘Well, dear, you may go without me,’ said Gully. ‘I recall that he was somewhat disagreeable.’

  ‘No, James, you shall go with me. I insist. On Saturday next.’

  Gully listened to the chimes from the grandfather clock in the hall and then said, ‘Very well.’ Leaning closer to Cecilia, he whispered, ‘Shall we retire to your room?’

  ‘Not tonight, darling,’ said Cecilia, with a patronizing smile. ‘It’s the wrong time of the month.’

  ‘Well, then,’ said Gully, rising painfully from the settee, ‘I should be going home.’

  Sharing a railway compartment with a dozing Anglican priest, Gully and Cecilia sat facing one another by the window, gazing out on lush green fields and sturdy oaks in the bright sunshine of a glorious May morning. ‘At least,’ said Gully, putting aside his medical journal, ‘we have a nice day in case our host should care to take us on a ramble.’

  ‘But what about your knee?’ said Cecilia, glancing at Gully’s cane. ‘And besides, I doubt Mr Throckmorton spends much time in the out of doors.’

  ‘We shall see,’ said Gully cheerfully. Within an hour of their departure, the train slowed at the approach to a station, and the conductor, standing in the corridor, sang out: ‘Reigate!’ When the train came to a halt with a hiss of escaping steam, Gully donned his top hat, offered his arm to Cecilia and escorted her from the carriage. ‘We may have a devil of a time hiring a coach,’ he said, looking around the virtually empty platform. A short young man wearing high boots, a rough jacket, and soft wool cap emerged from the station and began walking toward them. ‘Miss Henderson?’ he said, approaching Cecilia.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘You must be …’

  ‘Mr Throckmorton’s driver. How dy’do,’ he added, tipping his hat to the doctor.

  ‘Hallo, my good man,’ said Gully. ‘Let’s be on our way.’

  Fortunately, the railway station was only a few miles from The Bellows, Oliver Throckmorton’s country estate, as the road was badly rutted and the springs on his carriage were sorely in need of replacement. Cecilia peered out the window as they turned on to a gravel drive and approached a redbrick house the walls of which were overgrown with ivy and climbing roses. With a final jolt, the driver brought the carriage to a stop, leapt down and held open the door. Gully awkwardly stepped down after Cecilia and, leaning on his cane, walked with her up the flagstone path. After giving the door knocker a rap, a girl wearing a gingham dress and prim, stiff apron appeared with a diffident smile and directed the couple to the parlour, a cosy room with wide plank floors, worn carpets and exposed beams. Oliver Throckmorton, wearing a green sporting jacket with a plaid waistcoat and cream-coloured trousers, stood with his arm on the mantelpiece.

  ‘Good day, Miss Henderson,’ he said, as cheerfully as he was able.

  Walking up, Cecilia said, ‘Let me introduce—’

  ‘The esteemed Dr Gully,’ said Throckmorton, reaching out to shake hands. ‘A privilege to make your acquaintance.’

  ‘The pleasure is mine,’ said Gully. Turning to two middle-aged ladies who entered from the passageway, he bowed slightly and said, ‘How do you do….’

  ‘My wife Florence,’ said Throckmorton. ‘And my sister Violet. Doctor Gully and Miss Henderson.’

  ‘Cecilia.’

  ‘Doctor Gully,’ said Mrs Throckmorton, a full-figured woman with a florid face. ‘I’ve heard so many wonderful things about you. Doctor Gully,’ she added, in an aside to her sister-in-law, ‘is the personal physician to Lord Tennyson, Charles Darwin and Mr Gladstone.’

  ‘Shall we sit?’ suggested Throckmorton, gesturing to the chairs and horsehair sofa arranged before the fireplace. Gully seated Cecilia, waited for the other ladies to sit and then lowered himself into an armchair. ‘Would you care for tea?’ said Mrs Throckmorton.

  ‘Dr Gully doesn’t approve of tea,’ said Violet, who, like her brother, was tall and thin, with an aquiline nose.

  ‘Doesn’t approve of tea?’ said Throckmorton with a querulous expression.

  ‘Or sugar,’ said Violet, ‘from what I’ve read.’

  ‘At the hydro,’ said Gully equably, ‘as part of the water-cure, the consumption of tea is prohibited, as well as sugar, salt, coffee, alcoholic beverages and the use of tobacco.’

  ‘And what, may I ask,’ said Throckmorton, ‘is the water treatment intended to cure?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Gully, delighted by the opportunity to expound his unorthodox views. As Cecilia listened with a bored expression, he recited the many virtues of hydropathy, its salubrious effects on a host of maladies, not least respiratory ailments, digestive difficulties, and general hysteria, to the evident approbation of Violet and scepticism of her brother, concluding with a disdainful critique of the ‘shibboleths’ of conventional medical practice with its heavy reliance on opiates and other ‘noxious chemicals’.

  ‘Do you not approve of laudanum?’ enquired Mrs Throckmorton. ‘I k
now of many women—’

  ‘I condemn all use of opium,’ said Gully, with a thump of his cane on the floor, ‘including laudanum, which merely dulls the senses and, of course, is habit forming.’

  ‘Pardon me,’ said the girl who’d greeted Gully and Cecilia at the door. ‘But luncheon is served.’

  Seated around a long walnut dining table with matching sideboard in a room with a view of the nearby flower garden and verdant countryside, Cecilia picked at her lunch of mutton chops with stewed vegetables and buttered rolls, as she listened to the desultory conversation, which ranged from politics – Throckmorton’s strong preference for Disraeli, notwithstanding his ‘Jewishness’, over Gladstone – the delightful spring weather, to Violet’s deep religious convictions. Gully, who had deduced that the woman was both a spinster and a teetotaller, said, ‘I, for one, am a believer in spiritualism.’

  Violet gazed at him with a reverential expression. ‘Have you communicated with the dearly departed?’ she asked after a moment.

  ‘Indeed,’ replied Gully. ‘On several occasions.’

  ‘And how,’ said Throckmorton with a sceptical scowl, ‘does a man of science, a medical doctor …’

  ‘Through a medium, of course,’ said Gully pleasantly. ‘The proper medium is essential.’

  ‘Do you care for dessert?’ asked Mrs Throckmorton. ‘The cook baked a pie.’

  When at last the dessert plates had been cleared away, Throckmorton looked to his guests and said, ‘It’s such delightful weather, I believe I’ll take a stroll. Who would care to join me?’ Cecilia turned to Gully, inwardly pleading with him to decline.

  ‘Perhaps another time,’ said Gully. ‘The repast was excellent, but its effects were somewhat soporific.’

  ‘I’ll come along,’ said Violet.

  ‘As will I,’ announced Mrs Throckmorton.

  ‘And I,’ said Cecilia, ‘shall keep the doctor company.’ Once the Throckmortons were out of the door and a safe distance down the drive, Cecilia settled on the sofa in the parlour, kicked off her shoes and said, ‘That woman Violet is a frightful bore.’