by Sarah Rayne
After the inquest Veronica wanted to go on to lunch. ‘Amy too, of course,’ she said. ‘We’ll have a bar meal at the Red Lion and a couple of drinks in Clem’s memory, dear old Clem.’
Ella thought she had better agree. You never knew who might be watching and taking mental note. She noticed Dr Malik on the edge of the crowd; for a moment it seemed as if Amy was waiting for him to approach her but he merely gave her a half-smile, nodded a brief, polite acknowledgement to Veronica and to Ella herself, and walked away.
‘I didn’t know you knew Jan,’ said Amy to Veronica.
‘We’re the merest acquaintances,’ said Veronica.
Ella was glad she had agreed to Veronica’s suggestion about lunch, because when they got to the Red Lion several others seemed to have had the same idea and the bar was full. Ella was greeted on all sides, with everyone wanting to commiserate and ask how on earth she must have felt, actually finding Clem’s body, poor old Clem, silly old bugger, wouldn’t you know he’d end up doing something like this? And how about a drink to speed him on his way?
Accepting the drinks, Ella felt herself surrounded by friends. It’s all right, she thought. No one suspects. I’ve buried the journals in the garden, right under the spot where Derek always has a bonfire for garden rubbish. She had done it the previous morning when Derek was at the office and Amy at the library, digging quite deeply, then shovelling earth over the notebooks. They would be mouldering away already, and later in the week she could prune the hedges and tell Derek they needed to have a bonfire at the weekend to burn the cuttings. It was not exactly the time to prune but that could not be helped. And even if anyone had seen her actually burying the incriminating diaries, they would have assumed she was simply tidying up that patch of garden.
I’ve got away with it, thought Ella. I’m free.
Chapter 24
London, 1912
Serena was starting to feel as if she would never be free again. She was certainly beginning to think she would never feel well again.
When Dr Martlet next called, she was fretful, complaining about the sores on her face and neck.
‘It’s very distressing. Surely there’s something you can do? I’ve always looked after my complexion so carefully. As a girl they used to say my complexion was as good as Lillie Langtry’s.’
‘I remember how you looked as a girl,’ he said softly.
‘The porcelain look, it was called, and very fashionable. Not that one particularly wanted to be compared to the Langtry hussy, but still . . .’ Serena frowned. ‘Surely there’s something you can do? It’s only in the very early stages, isn’t it? I know you couldn’t help Julius, but he’d had it for years, only no one knew.’
‘Lady Cadence—’
‘I distinctly recall you saying if you had known, you could have helped him.’
‘Helped, but not cured,’ said Dr Martlet. ‘There’s no cure for syphilis.’
‘Then am I to end like my husband?’ She was aware that fear was making her voice hard and ugly.
‘I shall do everything I can for you.’
‘That,’ said Serena, fighting back mounting dread, ‘does not answer my question.’
‘The disease waxes and wanes,’ said Dr Martlet after a moment. ‘You know that – I explained it. That’s how Sir Julius was able to keep it from everyone. It can be quiescent for months, even years. I’m hopeful that will be the case for you.’
‘So am I,’ said Serena coldly.
‘When it’s at its height there are some remedies that can be tried,’ he said, speaking rather reluctantly. ‘And we can and will do so after the birth.’
The birth . . . The dark memory rushed back at Serena yet again. Julius’s face, twisted into the mask of a frightening stranger, forcing into her . . . Then sobbing like a bewildered child ashamed of itself.
‘I should prefer to try the remedies now,’ she said in the same cool voice.
‘It wouldn’t be advisable to try any of the treatments at the moment,’ said Martlet. ‘And the sores will disappear after a time.’
‘Only to return.’
‘Not necessarily. The difficulty is that almost all of the remedies we could try might harm the child.’
Harm the child. The memory clawed at Serena again and this time a dreadful idea etched itself onto her mind like poison.
She said sharply, ‘Dr Martlet, if you will not do what I’m asking, our association must end and I must find a physician prepared to help me.’
Martlet flinched as if he had been dealt a blow. With the air of a man yielding to intolerable pressure, he said, ‘Very well.’
‘You’ll arrange treatment?’
‘Yes. But there are only two possibilities. One is a fairly new drug they say is producing some good results with early syphilis. It’s been developed by a German scientist: Dr Ehrlich. But it contains arsenic, which is poisonous in the wrong quantities.’
‘When I was a girl people occasionally used weak solutions of arsenic to whiten their hands,’ said Serena. ‘So I have no especial fear of it. But I don’t think my husband would want me to take a German drug. He doesn’t trust the Kaiser, you know.’ Despite the extraordinary and macabre circumstances, there were still rules in marriage, and one of them was obedience to a husband’s wishes.
‘I’m not altogether sure I trust the Kaiser either,’ Martlet was saying. ‘To my mind this obsession he has with the idea of German Imperialism clouds his judgement. All those speeches about what he calls a place in the sun for Germany. Still, that doesn’t mean we should doubt Dr Ehrlich’s work.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Serena politely. ‘But I still don’t care for the sound of it. Is there nothing else?’
‘Well,’ said Dr Martlet, with even more reluctance, ‘there is something called the mercury cure.’
‘Mercury doesn’t sound particularly unpleasant. Isn’t it sometimes called quicksilver?’
‘Yes. I’ve never actually administered it – I’ve never even seen it administered – but I will be straight and tell you it’s not pleasant. I think it’s possible to give it by injection, but as far as I know most physicians make use of an infusion box. The box is about so big.’ He described with his hands a squat structure, roughly oblong in shape, to Serena’s eye like an oversized chair. ‘The patient is enclosed inside it for a number of hours and a mercury solution is heated underneath. The mercury turns to vapour so that the fumes are absorbed into the skin and lungs. It’s a little like the principle of inhaling friar’s balsam from a boiling kettle for a bad chest.’
‘I understand.’ Serena did not think this sounded so terrible.
‘Lady Cadence, this is a painful and exhausting treatment,’ said Martlet very earnestly. ‘And I really am concerned about the risk to the child.’
Risk to the child. There it was again, the trickle of acid into her mind, a little stronger this time, a little more insistent. Serena stared at Dr Martlet and thought: but what you don’t know, you stupid man, is that I don’t care about the child. And if this treatment dislodges it before it can even draw breath—
She snapped off this thought before it could develop, but the child had stirred uneasily and a dull pain rippled through Serena’s stomach. She ignored it and said, ‘Please tell me about this mercury treatment. Could it be administered here?’
‘I should think so,’ said Martlet. ‘It would be a bit of an upheaval, but the equipment could be brought by carriage or carter. I’d have to call in a colleague to supervise everything – probably someone from Guy’s. How would you feel about that?’
A strange doctor who would need her to undress, and who would see the ravages of the disease . . . Who might make one of those painful intrusive examinations to determine the unborn child’s condition . . . I can’t bear it, thought Serena.
But a moment later, in the remote voice she used for giving orders to Mrs Flagg or Hetty and Dora, she said, ‘I should have no objection. I understand the risks. Please arrange this mercury trea
tment for me as soon as you can.’
‘Lady Cadence,’ he said, ‘are you sure?’
‘Perfectly sure,’ said Serena and again felt the child move restlessly.
The equipment for the treatment was conveyed to the house a week later.
Gillespie Martlet’s colleague from Guy’s Hospital was a portly gentleman who brought with him the aroma of cigars and claret. With him came his assistant, a youngish man, who carried the contraption up the stairs with Dr Martlet’s help. Dr Martlet suggested Flagg should be called, but Serena could not bear any of the servants to be part of this or to realize what was happening, and she had given them all the afternoon off. Dora had told her Mr Flagg had bought tickets for an afternoon performance at one of the music halls. Serena had said, ‘I hope you have an enjoyable afternoon,’ and had called Flagg to her room to give him a small sum of money. ‘Perhaps you could have afternoon tea somewhere after the music hall,’ she had said, and Flagg had said that was very kind, milady, and they might go along to Lyons Corner House at Marble Arch, which Mrs Flagg always thought very genteel and where the cakes were particularly good.
Dora and Hetty had cleared out a small room on the second floor the previous day. It had been a nursery-maid’s room when Crispian was small and Jamie used to stay with them, but it had been unused for years.
‘The doctors have said a separate room must be set aside for the actual birth,’ said Serena to Dora. ‘I know it’s a good four months away, but since Dr Martlet is bringing a medical gentleman to the house, the room had better be ready for him to see.’ This explanation had seemed to satisfy Dora, and the walls were washed down and the floor thoroughly swept. Flagg, puffing like a grampus, carried in a bedstead, which Hetty made up with clean sheets. There was a marble washstand in the corner with clean towels and soap, and before the servants went off to their music hall Hetty brought a can of hot water, wrapped in flannel to keep it warm.
Serena had been aware of the child stirring all through the morning, almost as if it knew something distressing was ahead, and when the wooden contraption for the treatment was carried in, something at the pit of her stomach clenched in painful spasm. She gasped and bit her lip, but the pain passed and no one seemed to notice. The portly doctor, who was introduced as Mr Josiah Jex, listened to her heart with a stethoscope and looked into her eyes and ears.
‘No dizzy spells, Lady Cadence? No palpitations or swoons? Good. Now then, I believe Martlet is a little concerned about giving this treatment to a lady in your condition, but you seem fairly robust to me. Your pulse rate is a little fast, but I dare say you’re apprehensive about what’s ahead. Very understandable. I’ll make sure the little one is just as healthy before we go any further, though.’ He placed the stethoscope on her stomach to listen to the baby’s heartbeat, then nodded and straightened up.
‘Is it all right?’ said Serena, trying to read his expression.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said, reassuringly. ‘A perfectly good regular heartbeat. I think we can proceed. You understand what we’re going to do, I think? Martlet explained it all?’
‘Yes.’
The wooden box had been set in the centre of the room. Serena hated it at once. It was about the height of her shoulders, roughly square in shape, with a hole at the top where the head of the patient would protrude. At the front was what looked like a hinged flap, with a catch to hold it in place. The whole structure was mounted on small legs so that it stood about eight inches off the floor, and underneath it, on some kind of metal sheet, was a grid like a flattened brazier, with small pieces of charcoal laid out on it.
‘I’ll ask you to undress down to your underthings,’ said Josiah Jex. ‘First we shall paint a mercury solution directly onto the worst affected parts. Rather cold initially, I’m afraid, but I’ll be as gentle as I can.’
The mercury felt cool and not unpleasant against her skin, but when he asked her to lie back on the bed and spread her legs apart, Serena said, ‘Must I?’
‘We do need to treat all the areas,’ said Jex, glancing at the assistant. ‘We’ll be very quick and very gentle, I promise.’
‘We’re very used to treating people,’ added the young assistant. ‘Ladies and gentlemen both.’
They spoke kindly, but Serena thought that of all the humiliations and discomforts she had had to endure, this was the worst yet. To lie on a narrow bed, wearing nothing but a chemise and drawers, while two men moved their hands intimately between her thighs and saw the ravages the disease had inflicted on her skin, was deeply embarrassing and shameful. They both wore thin cotton gloves, but Serena could still feel their hands through the fabric. Josiah Jex’s hands were warm and fleshy, the assistant’s thin and probing. Several times she flinched as they applied the mercury with a small soft brush, but she managed not to resist or cry out. She was thankful that Dr Martlet had waited outside for this part of the treatment; these two men were strangers and she was unlikely to see them again, which made it seem impersonal. But when finally she was allowed to sit up, her whole body felt as if it had been punched.
‘We’ll leave the room for you to undress completely,’ said Jex. ‘Take everything off, please, and then get inside and close the door like this.’ He demonstrated the hinged door at the front, which opened into two parts, the top flap folding down when the subject was seated inside. ‘We’ll give you fifteen minutes then we’ll come back.’
Serena was grateful for this small privacy. She took off the chemise and silk drawers, opened the hinged flap of the wooden structure and forced herself to squeeze inside. It smelled worse than anything she had ever encountered, but she sat on the wooden bench as instructed. There was hardly any space and it was necessary to keep her feet tightly together and to cross her arms over her body. But it was not as uncomfortable as she had feared and the wooden seat had some kind of covering that softened it a little. By now she was strongly conscious of the child’s distress, and of the pain spiking through her lower stomach. But I’m ignoring you, Serena said to it.
The two doctors returned, inspected the box and the grid on which it stood, and at a nod from Jex, the young assistant kneeled down to set light to the charcoals.
‘This is like a fumigation process, if you’re familiar with that,’ said Jex. ‘There’s mercury in a small tank at the bottom of the box – you’ll be resting your feet on it. We’ve lit the charcoal directly underneath and as the heat rises the mercury will vaporize – turn to smoke. The fumes will soak into you and you’ll breathe them in as well. That seems to be burning quite well now,’ he said to the assistant.
‘How long must I be in here?’ asked Serena.
‘Three or four hours, I’m afraid. You won’t be able to open the door because you won’t be able to reach out to the catch, but we’ll stay in earshot, of course.’
‘You won’t remain in the room with me?’
‘I’m afraid we can’t. If we inhaled all the mercury vapour we administer . . .’ He made a gesture implying it would be harmful. ‘And we’ll have to keep this door closed to prevent it seeping out to the rest of the house. But don’t worry. We’ll look in at intervals to make sure you’re all right.’
‘And to see that the mercury’s staying at the right level of heat,’ said the assistant. ‘But there’s no danger of fire, Lady Cadence. Sometimes we need to add a little more charcoal or mercury halfway through.’
‘We’ll hear you if you call out,’ said Jex. ‘Stay as calm as you can. It’ll soon be over and you’ll quickly recover.’ He nodded to her and the two men went out, closing the door.
The room was very quiet, apart from the occasional sizzling from the charcoal, and several times Serena thought the mercury in the tank spat as it bubbled from the heat. The only other sound in the room was the ticking of the clock, which Jex had moved to the windowledge where Serena could see it.
At first she thought nothing much was going to happen, and that all the talk about pain and exhaustion was purely for the doctors to surround themselve
s and their remedy with a degree of mystery. The small container of mercury under her feet was certainly warming up, but it was not burningly hot or even particularly uncomfortable. Her skin was starting to tingle where the mercury had been painted on earlier, but that was all. It’s bearable, thought Serena. I’ll get through it. But will the child get through it?
The clock’s hands pointed to two o’clock. Normally she would have just finished her lunch and be drinking a cup of Mrs Flagg’s excellent coffee. She would like some coffee now; Dr Martlet had told her to have only the very lightest of breakfasts and no lunch. She had done as he said, but she was used to a substantial lunch and she felt slightly light-headed.
It was half-past two. The inside of the box was beginning to feel uncomfortably warm and Serena began to fear it would overheat and she would burn. They had said they would come back at intervals, but how long would those intervals be? And if she shouted, would they really hear? The house was large and the doors were heavy and close-fitting. She moved restlessly, trying to get more comfortable, but the box was too small to permit much movement. She managed to get her arms into a slightly different position, and as she did so the mercury fumes finally started to rise. There was a smell like hot tin in her nostrils and a stinging sensation when she breathed in. Serena felt even more light-headed and had the impression of a thin mist forming in front of her eyes. She had no idea if there was actual mist from the hot mercury or if it was just the result of its fumes on an empty stomach clouding her vision. Her skin was starting to feel as if it was being scraped with a knife, but it was still all bearable.
