After Such Kindness

by Gaynor Arnold

  At breakfast, Robert senses my change of mood. ‘You seem in good spirits, Margaret. Is the prospect of a resolution to our problem cheering you up?’ He folds The Times over with a practised movement, and bends towards me to impart his usual morning kiss. His lips hover, and then just brush my cheek. I see he intends not to risk further rejection – until the Harley Street man is consulted, at least. ‘On that very matter, I have already sent a note to Dr Lawrence,’ he says. ‘I was up early, and it struck me that there was no time like the present. I have requested an appointment at his earliest convenience and I hope we will hear something soon.’ He helps himself to tea, and butters a piece of toast with a satisfied flourish.

  ‘Thank you, Robert. I’m sorry for being such a trial to you.’

  ‘All trials serve to strengthen us, Margaret. I pray every night that God will bring us together. And I am sure He will. In the meantime, I hope you will come with me to see Mrs Wentworth this afternoon. She’s been asking after you these two weeks and I feel maybe it is time you started your parochial duties. The carefree honeymoon life cannot last for ever.’ He stops, sensing the irony of what he has said. ‘At least, in the eyes of the parish, it will seem that, now that you are established at the rectory, that, well . . .’

  ‘Yes, Robert. I understand.’

  ‘I don’t expect you to overtire yourself, my dear, but you need to settle into your new responsibilities and – whatever our private troubles – you and I need to set an example to the congregation. We must appear together, in step, and in good heart.’

  ‘Yes, Robert. I really do understand. I am not a clergyman’s daughter for nothing.’ God knows Papa’s situation made me only too aware of the need to keep up appearances.

  ‘Good. Good.’ He grasps my hand and looks at me in the old, friendly way. ‘We will conquer this thing, Margaret. I will not be beaten.’

  He has very sympathetic eyes. That was what first struck me when I awoke to that seemingly unreal world – and saw him smiling at me. In fairy tales, sleeping princesses are always being woken by handsome princes, and in general both parties take the thing in their stride, being fated since time immemorial to fall in love on the instant. But when my eyes fixed on his I still had the mind of a child, and could only guess what romantic love was about. Yet there was something in his expression, and the way he let the blade of grass linger on my neck, that gave me the idea he might be flirting with me. And at the same time, his manner was jovial and comforting – almost as I imagined an older brother to be.

  Of course, in the days that followed, when I was trying to piece my life together, it never occurred to me that Robert would one day be my husband. I may have been fifteen, but I was very childlike – and Robert was already a man of twenty-one. But I liked his kind eyes and the trouble he took to ensure that I was always comfortable and entertained. He reminded me a little of John Jameson, so I was glad to have him as a friend. We walked together and talked together and went to church together, and when he was ordained and moved away for a while, I wrote to him every week – companionable letters of our everyday doings, and how dear Benjy was growing up. When he returned three years later and asked for my hand, I was completely taken aback; I had never thought of him as a lover. But everyone said we would make an excellent couple, and Mama was beside herself with relief. ‘Not every man would take a wife tainted by nervous disorder,’ she said, managing with one stroke to spoil any delight I might have had, while making me apprehensive for the future.

  I take Robert’s hand now, and place a kiss on it to thank him for all his past kindness to me – and his present patience as I struggle with wifehood. He looks surprised, but pleased that I have been the one to demonstrate my affection. ‘Thank you, my dear.’ And he rises and kisses me on the forehead in return. Then he departs for his study, humming ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, and treading, I feel, more lightly than usual.

  I feel guilty to be deceiving him, even in this most minor of ways, but as soon as the door shuts, I put down my breakfast cup and hasten upstairs to retrieve Daisy’s journal from under the mattress. I’ve put it well into the middle, almost at the full stretch of my arm. I know Minnie’s less-than-rigorous bed-making won’t have dislodged it from there. I take it to the window and open it where I’ve left it. I squint at it. Daisy’s writing is becoming ever more difficult to read, as if she were working against time, or in fear of discovery.

  Friday 11th July

  Mr J did not come today as he was too busy thinking. He sent me a note which I have attached. (And there it is, in John Jameson’s inimitable neat script):

  My dearest Daisy,

  My head is so full of mathematical problems that it has grown to twice its size and as a result I am not fit to be seen in polite company. Now, I know yours is not really polite company, Daisy my dear – nor, of course, conversely, is it impolite company – but all the same, the apparition of a man with a hot-air balloon for a head might put you in a terrible fright. You may, of course, be one of those young ladies whom nothing shocks and who walk about with their noses in the air thinking of archery lessons and cream teas, but even Dinah won’t come near me, preferring to sit on the windowsill and glare. Can cats glare, do you think? I’m sure you would agree that they do, if you were here watching Dinah. She has SUCH a decided glare, that even were she to jump off and disappear down a mousehole in the skirting board, I think her glare would stay behind and hover about by the window all by itself, showing its teeth in a disconcerting manner. All this brain work is a dreadful bother and I would much rather be walking about with you and playing our little games (which I am sure you will agree are not silly at all, but very educational), but I have to do it, otherwise the Master of the college (who is a very ferocious man with a face like a Cheshire cheese) will come and knock my huge head off in front of the massed ranks of the SCR (that is the senior common room, you know) and then play croquet with it around the quad, with the Dean and Chaplain flapping about in their scarlet Convocation habits like so many flamingos – all of which I shouldn’t like at all. So, you see, I shall be much obliged to you if you will forgive me from attending on you just now.

  Your very dear friend,

  John Jameson.

  P.S. I shall make every effort to be with you next Monday. Please give my regards to your dear parents, and I hope your brother is quite recovered from his indisposition – although if I were he (which I’m not, otherwise I’d have to shrink to one eighth of my size) I’d carry on being poorly just so I could see your darling face next to my cot and hear you singing those sweet songs, and have – good heavens – a kiss or two from your sweet lips. But such thoughts are in vain, as the poets say – so, like a broken pencil, there’s no point to it.

  I see that John Jameson has put a little drawing of himself at the bottom. He’s sitting at his desk with a big head like a turnip. It glows with ideas coming out in little bubbles called variously ‘geometrical calculus’ and ‘Archimedes’ principle’ and ‘algebraic trigonometry’, and Dinah’s teeth glaring at him from the windowsill. I can’t help laughing.

  Mr J always cheers me up, especially after I have been working hard at my Confirmation lessons with Papa. I am doing that every day now. He always praises me and says how well I have done but sometimes he looks at me so oddly that I feel I have done something to displease him. I think he must still be blaming me for cutting my hair, although he says no, he is blaming himself for something else entirely. Perhaps he is sorry that he allowed Mrs McQueen to come and look after Benjy because now he knows how horrid she is and that she doesn’t love him like Nettie did. She is still horrid to me when I go up to the nursery and makes sarcastic remarks about young people who have time on their hands and nowhere to put it, but she doesn’t dare tell me to go away. I know it is wicked, but sometimes it is quite nice being annoying to her. DEB

  Monday 14th July

  I have had a very busy day with Mr J who came as promised and brought me a very nice story book by Miss
Catherine Sinclair, which I can’t wait to read and we walked to lots of different places and he took some more photographs of me but the sun was very hot and now I have got a headache and a sore throat. Mrs McQueen saw me on the stairs and poked me hard in the back and said she thought I should go to bed as I looked feverish, so I won’t write any more in case she calls Mama.

  I turn over the page, but I see only blankness, and then loose sheets of what looks like Mr Jameson’s writing – some sort of story – then a mixture of letters, drawings, photographs and poems, all interleaved in higgledy-piggledy fashion. It’s seems that the narrative is finished. Or rather, it’s unfinished. I’m in a panic; I can’t believe it. How can she break off now, leaving so much unsaid, and me high and dry in my expectation? Was the book confiscated? Or was something destroyed? I examine it again. There are pages torn out, the cotton threads loose and broken. And at the back, some of the photographs John Jameson took. I don't want to look at them, and quickly thrust them back. I look again at the last entry. Daisy has a headache, she says. And a sore throat. And Mrs McQueen is concerned that she looks ‘feverish’. Feverish: the word reverberates around my brain. And I know quite suddenly that this is not any passing childhood indisposition, but the time I had scarlet fever and almost died.

  I don’t at all remember being ill, but over the years Mama has referred to when you had scarlet fever, as if to recall an anecdote, and then she’s pulled herself up short and changed the subject, as if it were something shameful, something not to be mentioned. How can a child’s illness be blameworthy? It’s hardly credible, but I can feel the lick of shame even now. I see Mama’s sad face, her look of contained patience. I forgive you, she seems to say. Just do not mention it in front of me or it will be my death. I strain again to recall what happened, but it’s like looking through a window from bright sunlight into a dark interior: impossible to make anything out except one’s own reflection. Yet, when I think of the words ‘scarlet fever’, it’s not Mama’s face, but Papa’s that comes to me. The mysterious shame that attaches to it must have something to do with him. Perhaps it was when his madness first began.

  Even as I think it, a door suddenly opens in my mind, and I see Papa – his broad, handsome face, his thick brown hair, and his abundant whiskers. He’s saying something to me. But I can’t hear the words. Then he comes closer, and puts his arms around me in a desperate way. ‘You won’t leave me, will you, Daisy? You won’t go away and leave your poor papa?’ And he holds me extremely tight for a long time. So tight I can hardly breathe.

  All of a sudden, I’m back there, lying in my bed. There’s some sort of rumpus going on in the house. But the only person I can see is Papa. He waits silently by the bedside, or moves in and out of the lamplight like a dark ghost. He speaks to me, but my throat is swollen and I can’t reply. He looks kind as he bends over me and asks if there is anything I want. I nod. I want Mama; I want her to hold my hand and stroke my hair and say kind things like she did before. But she’s going to leave me because of Benjy. Benjy’s her favourite. He’s everyone’s favourite. The only person I know who loves me for sure is Nettie and I long for her to come back with her nice, warm, biscuity smell and comforting arms. But she doesn’t come. Nobody comes. Instead I hear the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Up and down, up and down. Then someone calling for hush: Think of poor Daisy! Is it Mama? I think I see her in the doorway, and maybe for a moment at the bedside. But then she is gone. I hear the front door bang shut and the sound of the carriage departing. I have a wild idea that maybe I’ve been left abandoned in the house with no one to care for me. I’ll be like a plague victim, and neighbours will leave my food outside the door in a basket soaked in vinegar and I’ll die in solitude. Or perhaps not in solitude – perhaps Mama has left Mrs Mac to nurse me. I imagine her hard, square face and hard, poking hands as she comes towards me, and think I would prefer to be abandoned.

  But I’m not abandoned. Dr Lawrence comes, and he and Papa stand over the bed. Dr Lawrence touches my neck. I can hardly swallow, and my skin feels hot and itchy and I can’t hear what they’re saying and they seem far off and peculiar. The walls and the ceiling are moving around and now Hannah is in the sickroom, cleaning the floor. And now she is holding me up to spoon liquid into my mouth. And Papa – can it be Papa? – helping me to drink. Combing my hair too, and wiping my face with a cloth.

  Yes, it is Papa. I can see his eyes. Large and brown and sad, gazing intently into mine. Now he has his arm around me, now he is on his knees at the bedside, now he is praying aloud. Now I am on his lap and there is a cool breeze coming in from the open window. I watch the muslin curtains billowing out, then falling back, the sky beyond them pale and blue, the sun a hazy golden ball. I can’t keep my eyes open. My throat is so sore, my head aches so much. I feel Papa kissing me. It’s a very nice kiss, soft and tender, and I drift into sleep, comforted.

  Someone is stroking me. I can feel hands on my face, my neck. It’s dark, except for a little nightlight a long way off, so I can’t see who it is. My heart leaps up for a moment when I think it might be Nettie – but it’s not her hands. I know her hands – they have rough skin around the fingertips. From sewing, she says. And being in and out of water all day. The hands stroking me now are different. Mama perhaps, come back from Herefordshire? My heart rises again, but Mama always smells of lavender, and this smell is different. I can hear the sound of breathing, as if a wild creature is close at hand, hovering near me in the darkness. I think it’s a lion; I can feel his mane, his thick, curly mane and the soft pelt of his skin. But the lion goes away, and suddenly I’m at the bottom of a huge and roaring waterfall. My ears ache, and my throat aches, and my head aches. I seem to be caught up in long, tangling weeds and I flail my arms and legs about. I scream but I can’t make myself heard. I’m going to drown and no one is coming to rescue me. My body is sprouting with sweat as I shriek soundlessly against the noise. Then I’m carried out to sea, and I have forgotten how to swim: I think back to my lessons on the beach at Brighton – Papa holding me around the waist and making my limbs move back and forward like a frog. Suddenly there are all sorts of creatures swimming alongside me, rising and falling with the motion of the waves. They are making strange wailing noises and they bump against me, jostling me hard. ‘So very sorry,’ says a walrus with a huge moustache, before he changes into a crocodile. The crocodile opens his jaws very wide and I am inside his great red mouth with his white teeth gleaming on all sides. I know I am going to die, and I call for Papa to help me, but the jaws snap shut and all is dark. But there is sobbing somewhere. It’s not me. There must be someone else beside me. The sobbing is very loud. It’s right in my ear. I think it must be the crocodile, weeping crocodile tears. Now I think I am being sick. Now Hannah is taking off my nightgown: ‘I’ll put this in the wash.’ And more weeping. Weeping, weeping, weeping. Papa’s voice: ‘Let her live, Lord. Let her live.’

  Now I’m awake again. The bedroom seems paler and barer than usual. The blue of the walls is cool. It’s like the sky, and I want to fly up and be an angel. I’m calling out for Nettie, but it’s Hannah that comes. She’s washing me all over with a sponge. The cool water trickles down my body and drips onto the sheets. Hannah says, ‘Never mind, miss, it’ll dry.’ She’s got a towel, now. She wipes between my legs as Nettie used to do when I was little. There’s a crisp sheet over me now, lying lightly over my skin. My skin is itching, but I don’t have the strength to scratch. I feel sick and have a pain in my stomach. The lamp is lit now, and Papa is reading something by its light. Now he’s down on his knees again, murmuring something. Now it’s daytime again and he’s walking around the room. I hear Cook’s voice, and Matthews. They are moving some furniture. Cook says, ‘She’s past the worst.’ And I sleep again.

  Now I’m feeling cooler, and my head is lighter. There’s a pale, early morning light creeping through the curtains. Everything in the room looks normal and the walls don’t fly around any more. There’s a little truckle bed n
ext to mine, and Papa is lying on it in his nightshirt, his dressing-gown half open. He’s asleep. I can’t help noticing his bare feet, his rather large toes, and I find myself wondering whether I have ever seen his toes before. Even at the seaside he wears swimming shoes. And his face seems different too. He is asleep, of course, and I don’t think I have ever seen him asleep either – except for a light doze in the garden on a fine day with his straw hat tipped over his face – and he strikes me as looking ragged and wild. ‘Papa?’ I whisper. My voice is so faint, I have to repeat myself. ‘Papa?’

  He wakes up and looks at me. Tears start from his eyes and run down his cheeks. He takes my hands in his and kisses them so fervently that, even in my weakened state, I’m taken aback. He doesn’t seem like Papa any more, and not just because he’s undressed and dishevelled. He seems different in a way I can’t describe.

  ‘The Lord be praised,’ he says, his voice quivering. ‘Oh, my dear, I have saved you. I have been cast down into the pit of iniquity, my sins heavy upon me, but the Lord is merciful and kind. We must praise Him, Daisy. We must praise the name of the Lord.’ And he draws me to him, to the warmth of his chest, bare beneath his shirt. I can feel his heart beating, and smell his breath on my face. His smell is the smell of the lion. And I am afraid of him.

  ‌17

  ‌ EVELINA BAXTER

  I am sitting at my favourite window here at The Garth. The Black Hills undulate in a dark mass against the skyline and the grey clouds above them hint at rain, but I drink in the fresh, sweet air as if it is tonic wine. Now I can breathe again, free of the exhaustion that has weighed me down since Daniel was first afflicted. Now I can I relive our happier times as I take up my books again, and rediscover the country walks that we both loved so much. But guilt still knocks at my door because I know that I estranged myself when he most needed me, and I allowed petty jealousies and unworthy thoughts to come between us. If Daniel had not lived so long, I might have found it in myself to be more patient and faithful. But no one who has not endured it can understand how dreadful it is to have undergone the same loss twice: not merely the death of the body, but the death-in-life that preceded it. And, in between – such horrors.