The Convalescent Corpse

by Nicola Slade

  Oh, good heavens! It was the braying man with the horse teeth. And this was the man who expected clever, passionate Miss Evershed to abandon her hard-won career and all her hopes and interests, to pander to his whims, to darn his socks and sew name-tapes into his sons’ clothes, just because her sister had been foolish enough to marry him. Her sister, moreover, who had even more foolishly and inconsiderately gone and died. I opened my mouth to smoothe over Addy’s unfortunate remark but I was interrupted.

  ‘I hesitate to say, “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,”’ Miss Evershed said, with a half-smile. ‘Because I can see that you are nothing of the sort, Adelaide, if I may call you that – but you’ve certainly hit the nail on the head. Oh well, I have the Easter holidays before I meet my doom. Perhaps Major Larking will fail his medical board or a hurricane will carry me off, though alas, I cannot make out the smallest glimmer of hope for me.’

  The bitterness in her voice shocked me as she added, ‘If I am lucky I might catch the Spanish Flu and be dead before I am sentenced to a life of drudgery. Or perhaps Major Larking will be the one to die which would be so much more satisfactory.’

  It was hard to think of anything to cap that sentiment, so I settled for a tour of the house and a recital of the rules and regulations, together with the fees.

  ‘If it is not inconvenient for you, I would very much like to move here tomorrow,’ Miss Evershed informed me when I broached the subject. ‘I’m putting up at the Station Hotel but it is full to the rafters, and noisy, as is only to be expected. I’d welcome some peace and quiet as I have some reading to do before school recommences.’ Her brow darkened and she shook herself. ‘Enough,’ she said briskly. ‘Self-pity is corrosive. Pray show me the room you have in mind.’

  ‘The room is not very large, Miss Evershed,’ I explained as I led the way upstairs. ‘It’s not really much bigger than the box-room. When the bathroom was put in it would have been much more sensible to fit it in what will be your room, but plumbing problems made that impossible. We now have an absurd situation where the bathroom is actually quite a decent size compared to the smallest bedrooms.

  ‘My dear girl,’ she smiled faintly. ‘Believe me, a room here, however small, will be paradise compared to my nun-like cell at school and the cubby-hole at the hotel.’

  I opened the door and stood back while our newest guest admired the room. Yes, it was quite small but as I had hoped, Miss Evershed found it charming. (Once I had taken her measure I’d run upstairs and shifted a table into her room, for a desk, and a small bookcase from the landing too.) Like the other bedrooms it had cream-painted walls and we had used cream enamel to rejuvenate one of the asylum beds which now almost filled one wall, with a chest of drawers at the end. The blue-and-cream-striped curtains that used to hang in the morning-room were faded but still good so Addy, who is surprisingly handy with a sewing machine when she lifts her head from her books, had squeezed two short curtains for the narrow window from one of them, and we hung the other in the corner to cover some pegs for clothes. (Although she is happy to use the machine and positively delights in calculating lengths and breadths, Alix and I always end up putting in the finishing touches. Addy’s interest is limited but useful enough as it saves us from having to do the boring bits.)

  Time was flying.

  ‘Very well,’ Miss Evershed said briskly as we parted at the front door. ‘I’ll have my box sent up tomorrow and will move in after luncheon. Good day.’

  Tucking her deposit money into my pocket I dashed into our own kitchen to find Granny putting two rabbit pies in our oven, one for us and one for Balmoral Lodge. She had also set a couple of junkets earlier and picked some winter cabbage so that was dinner accounted for in both houses. She brushed aside my grateful hug and went down to collect more sheets in the store room we had made in next-door’s cellar.

  Our neighbour’s treasure trove of bedlinen had turned out to be brand new but filthy with dust so it all went to the laundry, the cost being outweighed by what we would have paid to equip all the beds from scratch. After I made up Miss Evershed’s bed I made a mental note to air it with a hot brick tomorrow.

  Tonight was our first with any lodger, let alone three of them, so I set the table in the Balmoral Lodge dining-room with particular care, and heated through the fried-oatmeal cakes in readiness. Addy came to help in the kitchen and Alix announced that she would be the waitress, a suggestion that filled me with gratitude. It had been a long, hard day and I was tired out. Mother had been exacting too, changing her mind so that I’d had to retype a whole chapter.

  Addy glanced at me as I brushed a stray lock of hair off my hot forehead. ‘First thing tomorrow,’ she announced, as she made gravy, ‘we must ask Bella’s sister, Penny, to come in and wait at table for breakfast and dinner and to wash up. She’s very bright and presentable, and their mother will be glad of the money. If we teach her to cook she can gradually take on some of the work and it’ll be good training for her.’

  Addy rarely notices how people feel so I was touched by her suggestion but worried about the expense. When I protested Alix chimed in, completely in agreement.

  ‘Addy’s right, Christy. It won’t cost much and it’ll be worth it. You’ve borne the brunt of it today, what with having to welcome them and act as hostess with all the chit-chatting that entails and you’re at the point of dropping. Don’t forget you and I barely slept last night but I managed an hour’s nap when my old lady dozed off. We’ll make sure we’re always here on time to help but even if we have a rota we’ll never keep up. We can do more at weekends even though we all have our own jobs in the week. Bella told me her mother needs Penny’s help at home, but I’m sure she’ll be glad to let her come to us some of the time. I’ll drop in on my way to town tomorrow.’

  Dinner went down well with the lodgers and even the daunting Mrs Mortimer seemed grudgingly appreciative, so we left them in the drawing-room with a pot of coffee between them. I had heard no discussion of the sad death of the young officer but I supposed Dr Pemberton might have kept it quiet. Bad for morale, I should think.

  ‘Do come and eat, I’m starving.’ Addy dragged me into our own kitchen and we polished off the rabbit pie with gusto. I was tempted to nip back and start the washing-up next door, but Granny frowned at me, and Mother, who as always looked startled to find herself eating in the kitchen, stared at me.

  ‘Do stop fidgeting, Christabel,’ she said sharply. ‘A well-bred young woman never wriggles; she is always calm and graceful. How else will you find a husband? Lady Esmerelda never fidgets and she is to marry a peer.’

  She relapsed into silence as she scribbled in the note-pad she carries at all times.

  We relaxed as we realised that far from having taken leave of her senses, she was in the throes of creation once again and Mabel de Rochforde was uppermost. Usually, Mother is inclined to rail against the convention that requires young women to marry. We think this might be a reflection of her own union with our erratic and disappointing father.

  It was a relief when she disappeared after eating her helping of junket and I was able to run in and put stone hot-water bottles in the lodgers’ beds and do their washing-up while Addy and Alix tidied our own kitchen. We make do with hot bricks in our own beds, they’re cheaper.

  I was about to stagger into our own drawing-room and collapse on the big chesterfield when there was a ring at the front door. The others were in the kitchen so I was nearest.

  A burly man wearing a loudly-checked coat stood there and looked menacing, although that could have been because most of his face was covered in a bristling black beard, with only a large red nose and two small green eyes visible through the thicket. He clearly felt no need to raise his wide-brimmed, foreign-looking hat to a lady, as it remained firmly clamped to his head.

  ‘Can I help you?’ I asked, devoutly hoping he would say no, and go away.

  ‘I wanna speak to Poicy Fyttleton,’ he said in a strange accent, nodding in agreement with h
imself as he spoke.

  ‘P-Poicy?’

  ‘Yeah.’ The man leaned towards me, breathing out beer and tobacco fumes. I took a step back.

  ‘Dat’s right, Poicy Fyttleton. Go get him, will ya?’

  ‘But-but… he’s dead,’ I blurted out. ‘That’s if you mean Mr Percival Fyttleton. He drowned when the Lusitania was torpedoed.’

  ‘Dat’s where you’re wrong, young lady,’ he said, leaning towards me once more and looking even more threatening. ‘He ain’t dead at all.’

  Chapter Five

  I reached out a shaking hand and held on to the door frame to steady myself. As I took a deep breath, both my sisters appeared in the hall behind me.

  ‘We heard a loud voice, what’s going on here?’ Addy tried to push past me and face up to the visitor. I pulled myself together and tugged at her sleeve. Before I could explain, Alix was at my other shoulder and they stared at the intruder.

  ‘He says…’ I began, but he brushed that aside.

  ‘Listen, girlies,’ he said, in a wheedling tone as he registered the fact that we were young and hardly likely to be a threat to him. ‘I just want to talk to Poicy. He’s got something of mine and I want it back.’

  ‘I told you,’ I had command of my voice now. ‘I’m sorry we can’t help you but as I said, he’s been dead for almost three years. Since May 1915 when the Lusitania went down.’

  ‘An’ I’m telling you dat ain’t true, Missy,’ he insisted. ‘I know his name was on the passenger list, but I have it on good authority that he got off it alive. I’ve been tailing him since the end of April ’15. That was nearly six months after they found gold in Cripple Creek.’ He registered our blank faces and explained. ‘That’s a gold rush town in Colorado in the mid-west but the seam had petered out until lately, when someone started up nearby and pulled out gold by the sack load. Why,’ he shook his head in disbelief, ‘in the first week alone they took out forty thousand dollars of gold and it didn’t stop there.’

  ‘What has this to do with our father?’ I heard the hollow note in Alix’s voice. ‘I assure you we’re not deceiving you, he is certainly dead.’

  I could hear, quite clearly, the words she left unspoken: “Thank goodness.” Our visitor looked at us with pity.

  ‘So you say, Missy. As to good ol’ Poicy, why him and me met up on another little bit of business in Pittsburg. Fool that I was, I drank too much and let out a secret. Next morning he was gone – and so was the gold.’

  ‘You mean you’re a miner?’ I could see that Addy was fiddling with something behind her back. My heart sank and I hoped it wasn’t our great-great-grandfather’s flintlock pistol that he’d carried at Waterloo. It usually hangs out of the way on the drawing-room wall but Addy can be impulsive at times.

  ‘Nope, I’m not a miner,’ he laughed. ‘I had dealings with a guy who was and he had… acquired, shall we say, several large nuggets. I persuaded him to let me share in his good fortune.’

  I had a sudden thought and so, clearly, did Alix.

  ‘If you’ve been chasing Papa since 1915, why has it taken you so long to come looking for him here? That’s nearly three years.’

  He glared at her. ‘I was unavoidably detained, Miss Clever,’ he grunted. I saw Addy’s mouth open and dreaded one of her notoriously tactless remarks.

  ‘Look,’ I pushed in front of the other two. ‘I don’t know who you are and I don’t care where you’ve been, but if our father is, indeed, alive, it’s news to us. Please go away now or we’ll call the police.’

  With that the man’s eyes opened wide and he looked shocked though not at my declaration. It came as no surprise to me to discover that Alix was brandishing the shillelagh bought as a souvenir by an ancestor when visiting Galway and that Addy did indeed have the flintlock pistol. (I devoutly prayed it wasn’t loaded.) She was aiming it, not at the man’s heart but lower down, a point he had clearly taken on board as his hands fluttered nervously in front of his trousers.

  ‘You win, girlies – fer now.’ He glared at the gun but took a jerky step backwards as Addy’s finger strayed casually towards the trigger. ‘Don’t you worry, I’ll be back.’

  I closed the door on him and leaned against it, horrified. Alix and Addy looked at me, then at each other.

  Addy’s eyes were wide with shock. ‘It’s like Coleridge and Kublai Khan, isn’t it?’ When we stared at her with weary incomprehension, she explained. ‘We had a brilliant idea and a person from Porlock – or rather Pittsburg – turned up and ruined it.’

  ‘It’s not ruined but there’s nothing we can do tonight,’ Alix said decidedly. ‘Christy, go to bed at once, you were worn out before this. We’re all tired. Don’t mention it to Granny tonight, we can talk about it tomorrow. Addy, tuck into bed with her for company and don’t let her fret about it all night.’

  Tuesday, 12th March

  The next day was busy but surprisingly free of unwanted reminders of the past and with no unwelcome visitors or any other catastrophes.

  I slept like a log which I hadn’t expected, with not a whisper of a nightmare, and the other two were the same. The suggestion that Papa might turn up like the proverbial bad penny was too much to take in and when we met in a brief huddle in the kitchen next morning, Alix took charge again. This was a surprise because practical matters are usually left to me.

  ‘If this is true, and let us pray that it’s not,’ she said, looking unusually stern, ‘we’ll have to deal with it as and when events unfold. I suggest we put it to the back of our minds and get on with the job in hand. There’s enough to do, in all conscience.’

  She was right so we set about facing the day, anxious that there was yet another disaster that might befall us but determined to muddle through meanwhile.

  Bella, our maid of all work, arrived earlier than usual, with her younger sister in tow. Great minds had clearly been thinking along the same lines.

  ‘Our mum thought you might like Penny to help out, Miss Christy,’ she announced. ‘She can wash up and help with the beds and a bit of dusting, while I get on with carpet sweeping and scrubbing. As long as she helps Mum at home for a few hours.’

  I practically fell on her neck and welcomed the younger girl. ‘We’ll show you how to wait at table, Penny, would you like that?’ I asked and was relieved that she was eager to learn. ‘I’ll find you an apron and a cap, and you can help Miss Alix this morning and watch what she does.’

  I boiled eggs for the three ladies next door and made toast, then I put a tiny pat of margarine on a saucer for each of them, along with a small dish each of honey. Addy and I had decided that the extra washing up would be better than offering them the honey pot; we were sure both Peebleses would have a sweet tooth and that Mrs Mortimer would match them out of spite. As for the margarine, it was scarce and would surely become scarcer. I sighed as I made a jug of Camp coffee.

  ‘I doubt the Gorgon will approve of coffee essence, but she must know it’s impossible to buy proper coffee. They said in the grocer’s that tea will likely be rationed from next month, so heaven knows what we’ll be drinking then.’

  ‘Dandelions,’ said Addy unexpectedly as she looked up from her geometry school book where she was putting the finishing touches to her prep. ‘You dig them up, the whole plant then you use the tops in salads and roast the roots. When that’s done you grind them up and store it in jars and it tastes something like coffee.’ She glanced up again to see Alix and me staring. ‘What? I overheard someone at the station talking about it yesterday when I called in to pick up that parcel for mother.’

  ‘You’re full of surprises, Addy,’ I enthused. ‘What an excellent idea, we’ll have to keep an eye out for good clumps of dandelions. Pity they’re not ready yet.’

  I paid a brief visit to the ladies next door to check that our guests had weathered the night successfully. I was greeted with gushing pleasure by Mrs Peebles, a civil but silent nod from Miss Peebles and – inevitably – grumbling from Mrs Mortimer.

&
nbsp; ‘A boiled egg and toast is hardly the breakfast Ay expect when staying in an establishment that purports to be genteel.’

  I interrupted her politely and beamed, just to annoy her. ‘We feel it too, Mrs Mortimer, but you, as mother of one of our wounded heroes, know only too well that this country is at war.’

  She goggled at me, taken aback by this frontal attack so that she was (sadly temporarily) speechless. I pressed home my point before she could rally,

  ‘The nation’s ships are under attack from German submarines, Mrs Mortimer,’ I said piously. ‘That means everywhere is suffering from food shortages. We are fortunate enough to have our own hens so eggs, at least, are plentiful in this house, at the moment.’ I crossed my fingers as I pictured our four ageing and temperamental egg providers and decided to leave while I had the upper hand. ‘We are all in this together, Mrs Mortimer, and we are doing our best. I hope you’ll have no reasonable cause for complaint and we will, of course, do everything we can to make you and our other guests comfortable. Good day to you all, ladies. I hope you have a pleasant day.’

  With that I smiled sweetly all round and sailed out of the room, leaving young Penny, who was already proving a fast learner, proudly in charge of the table.

  ‘Granny.’ I dashed into our own kitchen. ‘We desperately need to acquire some more hens before the girls stop laying, and next time we mustn’t give them names. It’s ridiculous that we can’t eat them. We’ll simply have to harden our hearts.’

  Alix was frowning at her reflection in the small mirror by the back door as she put on her hat before setting off to her morning job in town. ‘Christy! You can’t possibly murder Kaiser Bill and the rest of the girls!’