Sandringham Rose

by Mary Mackie

  However, the doctor diagnosed not typhus but measles. Kitty had suffered that illness in childhood and this, it appeared, was a mild recurrence, no doubt brought about by debility following her recent exertions during the epidemic. How we teased her for alarming us all.

  For my little monkey, though, measles was no teasing matter. His body broke out in the scarlet rash; he was feverish and fretful; he cried constantly and pitifully. And then he was quiet, suffering, burning up with the disease in a way that not all the doctor’s potions, nor all the cool water, nor all the love in the world could halt.

  While I nursed my son, news from Sandringham filtered through to me, often via Reverend Lancaster, who was attending the big house regularly to offer comfort. His Royal Highness’s condition was grave – so grave that the Queen herself journeyed to West Norfolk by rail and joined the anxious party at the big house. When the prince rallied, Her Majesty left, only to be summoned again within days because his doctors thought the end was near. Mr Lancaster said that Her Majesty was distraught; she was prey to a superstitious terror that her oldest son was doomed to die on 14 December, ten years to the day after his father passed on.

  ‘So what if he dies?’ Basil said bitterly. ‘The Queen’s got plenty of other children. I’ve only got one boy. If he dies, what’ll I do, eh, Reverend? Shall you be able to explain it to me?’

  ‘I suggest you should put it in God’s hands, Mr Pooley,’ the rector replied.

  Basil sat by the cradle day after day, watching our son grow weaker. And in between whiles he raved at me: ‘You should have stayed with him! He needed his mother’s milk. You were off nursing other folks’ children when you should have been at home with your own. If he dies, Rose, I’ll never forgive you. Never!’

  Narnie too held me responsible. Whenever she came to the house she would stand over Georgie, her eyes dark with doom. ‘You should never have brought that horse into the house,’ she pronounced one day, nodding at the carved toy. ‘That’s what’s doing it.’

  ‘The horse?’ Basil repeated. ‘Why, what—’

  ‘He’s a witch, that man Chilvers.’

  Denying my own sudden terror, I gasped, ‘That’s superstition!’

  But Basil’s eyes were on the horse, his mind working, remembering things he had heard about Chilvers. He grabbed the toy.

  ‘Basil, no!’ My cry hung in the quiet room as he flung the horse on to the fire.

  I watched it burn, feeling sick. Remembering Victor dying amid the fire of an explosion… myself as a child, trapped in a stable, with hooves trampling near me… nightmare memories mixed up with formless, primeval fears about witchcraft and vengeance, about carven images imbued with spells…

  ‘You’ve killed him,’ I choked.

  ‘What?’ Basil glared at me. ‘It’s wood! You can’t kill wood. What’s the matter with you, Rose? Are you mad?’

  I said nothing. I couldn’t. I sank down beside the cradle where my son lay burning up with fever. In some dark, pagan part of my mind, I was sure that by destroying the horse Basil had destroyed our baby.

  A pall seemed to hang over not only the farm but the whole county, amid clouds laden with snow. Though it was bitterly cold, with hard snow lying frozen inches thick along the lanes, every day crowds gathered by the Norwich gates at Sandringham House to wait for news of the prince. Her Majesty’s terror, reported by the press, infected many people as 14 December approached.

  That fatal Thursday seemed to promise a crisis for both the prince and Georgie. I felt that their fate was linked somehow. If one survived, then both would. If not…

  The day came. Long minutes dragged into hours and still both patients battled their illness. The day passed, and an endless night.

  In the morning someone came running with news of the latest cautious bulletin from the big house: ‘His Royal Highness has rallied a little’, it said. For Prince Albert Edward, the crisis was past, the long recovery begun.

  The crisis passed for Georgie, too. He died that night, 15 December 1871. He was seven months and four days old.

  * * *

  After we buried our darling my husband found business that kept him out of the house. He blamed me for everything.

  Left alone, I too blamed myself, for neglect and for accepting a gift from Amos Chilvers, and for having let my first baby be taken from me. Perhaps this was a punishment. Perhaps I was fated never to raise a child. I believe I came near madness. I sat in my room, wanting no food, nor company, assailed by black headaches that made me want nothing but to sleep, my mind shutting out a truth it could not bear. When Pam Chilvers came to visit me I refused to see her – I couldn’t have borne her sympathy when a part of me blamed her father-in-law for ill-wishing my baby.

  Reverend Lancaster helped me. He came and sat with me, talking of courage and strength, and listening as I poured out my grief, reliving memories of those few short months when my little monkey was my whole life. I also blurted out my superstitious fears about the wooden horse, and he helped me see how irrational such thoughts were. Why should Amos Chilvers wish to harm an innocent child?

  Grace brought her children to stay, to offer what comfort she could. I was grateful, but in the night, if Tommy or Mary Anne cried, I often found myself out of bed, imagining it was Georgie needing me.

  * * *

  Before Christmas, I was touched by another personal visit from the princess, driving herself in a pretty little horse-drawn sleigh jingling with silver bells. Pale from her recent worries, but with a new light of contentment in her eyes, she came to me without words and embraced me warmly before drawing back to look at me.

  ‘I too have lost a child,’ she reminded me. ‘I know how it feels. Oh, my dear, I feel so sad for you. Forgive me. I would have come to see you before, but, as you know, I have had other things on my mind.’

  ‘You’re too kind, ma’am,’ I managed. ‘Thank you. And the prince – how is His Royal Highness now?’

  ‘He is recovering, thank God. Still weak, but recovering. It’s good to be needed, don’t you agree? I can’t tell you how happy we are, here in our beloved Sandringham.’ She sighed, with a little wistful smile. ‘If only we could stay for ever how happy I should be.’

  She wouldn’t stay. She had to get back to Bertie. But she promised she would visit me often. She loved the homely farm. And she had always known, from the moment we met, that she and I would be friends.

  When it was sure that the prince was out of danger, so great was the relief that the whole nation joined in the celebrations. If His Royal Highness had planned it, it could not have worked out better. His illness had brought the Queen out of her incarceration at Windsor; her people had been vouchsafed a sight of her and they had shared her deep anxiety over her son; but most of all they had been privileged a glimpse into the abiding love that Princess Alexandra had for her husband. The story of her vigil by his bedside, her patience and fortitude through all manner of stresses, and now the way she stood beside him, radiant in the new togetherness they shared, touched all our hearts. In a brief few weeks, the spectre of republicanism withered.

  For the princess, a semblance of happiness had come at last. For me, it remained ever more elusive.

  Basil and I remained apart in spirit. He was out most days, when the weather allowed, and when it did not he shut himself in the farm office, writing painstaking letters or poring over newspapers. Outwardly, nothing appeared to have changed between us. Only he and I knew that when we were alone he hardly looked at me, hardly spoke to me, never touched me. Often in our room he would sit by the empty cradle, looking down into it, rocking it. Remembering…

  It hurt me to watch him, and to know that he still blamed me. We might have comforted each other, but between us now the chasms opened wider and deeper than ever.

  ‘Perhaps we should put the cradle away,’ I said one night when the house was still, with a silence that told of more snow falling. ‘It only reminds us—’

  He looked up, so that I saw the tea
rs in his eyes. ‘Oh, yes, you’d like that! You’d like to put that right away out of sight, the way you’ve put him.’

  ‘Basil… Please don’t. I know you miss him. I miss him, too. Don’t you know that?’

  He dashed a hand across his eyes, watching the cradle again. ‘You never wanted him.’

  ‘Don’t say that!’

  ‘You never wanted me – why should you want my child?’

  ‘Oh, my dear…’ Drawn by the pain in him, I went to stand by him, a hand kneading his shoulder. ‘I do care for you. There has been fond feeling between us. And you must believe… Georgie… my little monkey…’ Tears had got into my voice. ‘You will never know how much he meant to me. Or how much I grieve for him. And blame myself. Though I don’t know what I could have done differently.’

  Shaking away from my touch, he got up and turned burning eyes on me. ‘You could have stayed with him. You could have been a proper mother. Your place was here, not roaming around after Chilvers and his brood, and all the rest of them. They’re not your people, Rose. You don’t own them.’

  ‘An employer has certain duties,’ I said stiffly. ‘While I keep the farm—’

  ‘Oh, the farm. The bloody farm!’ He thrust his face near to mine, making me step away from the hatred I sensed in him. ‘That’s all you ever cared about. What will you do when Johnny comes home and wants to take over? I shan’t stop him, you know. I’ll give up the tenancy. Gladly. God knows I never wanted it.’

  The chill of the room was reaching me. I huddled into my shawl for comfort, saying, ‘We can put this behind us. We can begin again. We won’t forget Georgie, but—’

  ‘If you tell me there’ll be other children,’ he raged, ‘I’ll hit you.’

  Feeling my eyes sting with distress, I shook my head. ‘What do you want me to say? Shall we go on like this – like strangers? Basil… it’s cold. Come to bed.’

  After the candles were extinguished, in the cocoon of a bed warmed by stone bottles, he lay with his back to me. I wished to sleep, except that too many nights had passed with only cold silence between us and if we were to mend our marriage we had to re-find some sort of sharing. So I stretched out my hand and touched him. He felt warm beneath the flannel nightshirt.

  ‘Basil… Won’t you hold me? I’m cold.’

  I played the coquette, against both nature and inclination. In truth I felt no desire for him at all, but duty and fondness drove me to caress him, until I felt the undeniable stirring in him. With little preamble and no finesse he threw himself upon me, and forced his way into me.

  I lay beneath him feeling cold, letting him ride it out. His body battered me, tearing at me, hurting me. Using me. That was all it was.

  At last he fell away, panting, lying for a while on his back before his breathing quietened and he turned away from me, tucking the blankets round him. He had never been quite so brutal before, never taken me without at least a show of consideration. Was this how it was to be? For the rest of our lives?

  * * *

  On a February day when the air held hints of coming spring, when the birds were active, the bees busy in their hives, two cultivators and a drill out, and the first crocus peeping through beside the drive, I came in from the lambing pens to be met by a distraught Mama.

  ‘Ellen has given in her notice! She wants to leave immediately! She says her family needs her.’

  The lady’s maid herself, when called to explain the suddenness of her defection, looked pale and peaky, her eyes reddened from weeping.

  ‘Is there illness in your family?’ I asked.

  She hung her head and looked at the floor. ‘Yes, madam.’

  ‘Then of course you must go. But there’s no need to hand in your notice. When the situation improves…’

  ‘No, madam. I shan’t come back.’

  She had never been the most communicative of persons. I could extract no more from her, nor did I have time or energy to try. She left that same day; Benstead drove her to the station.

  Kitchen gossip, naturally, found more diverting reasons to explain Ellen’s sudden departure. I was in the passageway, sorting linen in one of the airing cupboards, when I heard Mrs Benstead and Swift discussing the matter. The cook averred that Ellen had received no letter or telegram to inform her of illness in her family, and the maid said that a message could have come to the post office, where Ellen had been only two days before, ‘on errands for the missus’.

  ‘Then why,’ said Mrs Benstead, ‘have she been all red-eyed and sniffly this past two week, heh? And why, if she was on her way to Lancashire, did she buy a ticket for Huns’ton?’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘So my Herbert say, and he know the station master well.’

  ‘Then what d’you reckon is the answer?’ Swift asked.

  ‘If you want my opinion, there’s a man in the case.’

  ‘A man?’ The maid was aghast. ‘But she seem such a quiet sort o’ mawther.’

  ‘Them’s the sort you have to watch.’

  ‘Lor’… But who…’

  ‘Ah, well, that’s the question.’

  At that point I closed the airing cupboard door with a bang and the discussion ended abruptly.

  Whatever the truth of Ellen’s leaving, in her absence Mama grew more demanding of my time and attention. She had become used to having someone with her all the time, tending her and fussing her. We immediately advertised for another maid, but then Mama complained that she didn’t want a stranger, she wanted Ellen, she didn’t understand why Ellen had had to go, and if she couldn’t have Ellen then she wanted Narnie, it wasn’t fair that… and so on.

  Basil, who until then had been remarkably tolerant with her, took to losing his temper. ‘You’re always whining! Nothing’s ever right for you. It’s time you realised you’re a grown woman, not a silly spoiled brat.’

  His unkindness made Mama weep. I remonstrated with him, but that only made him angrier, and our quarrels further upset Mama. We were all on edge. Since Georgie died nothing had been right.

  And so, because I simply hadn’t the energy to cope with Mama as well as all the rest, I drove over to Willow Cottage and asked Narnie if she would come back to the farm.

  Narnie blew down her nose and folded her arms over her ample bosom. ‘Oh, yes, you’ll come and ask for me when you’re in trouble. That’s all very fine and grand when you need me. But what happens when you find a new maid? Will you send me back to be on my own again? I’m not so sure I want to be back and forth, forever packing and unpacking, at my age. I’m near seventy years old, you know.’

  She had never complained about being back and forth between the cottage and Grace’s house in Thetford, but I let it go. My strength was at too low an ebb for arguments; I agreed that, if she came, she could stay for as long as Mama wanted her.

  ‘Even when you get a new lady’s maid? You’ll have to get one. I can’t cope with everything my Miss Flora needs, not at my age.’

  ‘Yes, we’ll have a new maid as soon as we can.’

  ‘Well now.’ Smug satisfaction shone from her. ‘Well now. At last you’re considering others beside yourself. A pity you didn’t turn that way before. For it’s my opinion that if I’d been there at the farm, nursing him, that sweet little boy of yours would still be here.’

  She might as well have driven a knitting needle into me. ‘Narnie…’ I said in a low, trembling voice. ‘You are the most evil old besom I’ve ever known, and if Mama didn’t need you I wouldn’t let you over my threshold, not ever again. If you come to Orchards and make trouble…’

  She stared me in the eye, her own gaze cold and unwavering. ‘What troubles you have, you brought on yourself, Miss Rose. Still, if it comforts you to blame me instead… my shoulders are broad. But you remember something, too – I know your secret. I’ve kept it all these years. A word from me would’ve destroyed your reputation, ruined your marriage. It still could. Force me to it, Miss Rose, and…’

  I felt sick as I left the co
ttage. Though the day was bright with spring, for me it was shadowed with bitter menace, clouds of despair dimming the sun and muffling the birdsong. I never wept easily, but on that day the tears rolled down my face, cooling in the breeze, and I whipped up the pony until the trap jumped and bounced along the lane, tossing me half out of my seat at every rut.

  I didn’t see the horses until we were almost on them, and then I had only a glimpse of a gleaming chestnut flank and mane, both riders hauling their mounts aside, the man shouting out in protest. We treated them to a shower of dust and stones, driving furiously on before I fully registered the identity of the couple – Geoffrey and his wife. That knowledge made me apply the whip with even more force.

  We flew into the yard scattering chickens, going at such a pace that I was forced to swerve to avoid the barn. The trap teetered on one wheel, then settled with a jolt, and the frightened pony reared, getting its legs tangled in the harness. A couple of men stared from the barn, Benstead looked his astonishment from a pigsty, and the boy Jack came running to my aid.

  ‘You all right, Miss Rose?’

  ‘Yes.’ I leapt down, tossing him the reins. ‘Yes, see to it, will you?’ Ashamed of myself – ashamed for risking the horse, and the trap, and ashamed for not being able to hide my distress, I half ran up to the house and to my room, where I threw myself down and wept – really wept – for the first time since Georgie died.

  So Narnie returned to the farm to be companion to Mama, and we acquired a new lady’s maid. There were new faces in the kitchen, too: Howlett left – she went to a new position in Lynn and her place was taken by two young girls from village families, Starling and Finch. Since we already had the faithful Swift, Narnie remarked sourly that it was becoming a proper aviary, and sounded like one when the lady’s maid joined in the kitchen gossip.