The Lost Garden (The Purchas Family Series Book 5)

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  ‘Not yet.’ At Tremadoc’s insistence, she had written to her father explaining how very badly the Oldchurch tithes fell short of the promised £1,000. ‘I do feel,’ she said now, ‘that it would have been better if you had let me write to Mr Grant. It’s not the kind of thing with which the Duke concerns himself.’

  ‘Then it’s time he learned to,’ said Tremadoc. ‘Trust a woman to make foolish objections. Oh, dammit, you’ve brought on one of my spasms with your foolish cavilling. Ring for Barrett. I need a new bottle of my cordial.’

  She had promised herself that she would speak about Barrett. The moment was not propitious, but she set her teeth and went ahead.

  ‘Before I do so, my dear, there is something I had been meaning to say to you about Barrett. Surely with tithes so low and living so high it is time we faced the facts and got rid of him. Really, he does nothing, except keep the key to the cellars, and I think it more than time I went down and made an inspection there. If they run right under the house there must be space and to spare. It is just to spring clean, and then, if the farmers want to pay their tithe in kind, we will have somewhere to store their offerings.’

  He slapped her face. ‘There, woman! And there, and there! Let that teach you never to speak to me like that again.’ And then, horribly, before she could speak, burst into a helpless flood of tears. ‘You don’t understand anything,’ he moaned at last. ‘Send for Jenkins. I must get to bed. I’m not well; not well at all.’

  It was obviously true. Shock and rage at the blow gave way to anxiety as she waited for Jenkins. And when she went up to their room a little later, she found Tremadoc lying in the big bed, propped high on pillows, deeply asleep but breathing shallow and with difficulty. When she felt his forehead, it was clammy to her touch, and he twitched away from her hand, muttering something in his sleep.

  She went downstairs and found Jenkins. ‘You must go at once for Dr Martin. Ask him to come as soon as he can.’

  Barrett was hovering in the hall as he so often did. ‘The Reverend Mr Vail always sent for Dr Peabody from Winchelsea,’ he said in his soft, apologetic voice. ‘He is a member of the Oldchurch Club. The gentlefolks here don’t think much of young Dr Martin.’

  ‘But the poor worship him,’ said Caroline. ‘And I’ve seen his work in their cottages. Fetch him, please, Jenkins.’ For a moment, she was tempted to continue her challenge to Barrett by telling him to show her the cellars, but this was not the time.

  Back in the bedroom, she found her husband thrashing about in the bed, muttering to himself, his breathing harsher and more difficult than ever. Suddenly he sat bolt upright.

  ‘They’re coming!’ he exclaimed. ‘Save me! They’re coming!’

  ‘Hush.’ She took his hand, and pushed him gently back against the pillows. ‘You’re quite safe here with me. I won’t let anyone get at you.’

  He was crying now. ‘À la lanterne,’ he muttered, and then, ‘Spare me! I did as I was bid.’

  He must be dreaming about the Terror in France, the black time when the mob dragged aristocrats to their death with cries of ‘À la lanterne.’ To the nearest streetlamp, which would serve as a gallows. They must have been working too hard at his poem, and she was ashamed to remember her own almost feverish enthusiasm as they wrote the stanzas about the revolutionary chaos out of which Bonaparte’s bid for power had sprung.

  She stroked Tremadoc’s damp forehead soothingly and wished Dr Martin would come. Oddly enough, though she had encountered him by many a parishioner’s sickbed, she had never met the doctor socially. He was unmarried, of course, but it still seemed strange that he appeared at none of the formal parties to which she and her husband had been invited. But the town gentry did not like him, Barrett had said, and Barrett would know.

  The front doorbell jangled and she hurried downstairs to greet the small, dark-haired doctor.

  ‘Good of you to come so quickly.’ She led the way upstairs. ‘I’m anxious about my husband. I hope it is nothing but over-work and over-strain, but his condition puzzles me. It is quite unlike anything I have seen before. Well,’ she ushered him into the bedroom and held a candle for him close to the bed, ‘you can see for yourself.’

  ‘You’d not rather your housekeeper helped me?’ He was washing his hands in the porcelain handbasin. ‘Most of the ladies…’ He gave her a wry smile as she handed him a towel. ‘Not that I come to many houses like yours. I’m obliged to you, ma’am.’ He seemed to have accepted that she would stay, and moved back to the bed, leaning down to listen to the harsh breathing, then rolling back Tremadoc’s eyelid to look closely at the sleeping eye. ‘How long has he been like this?’

  ‘Three hours, something like that.’

  ‘And before?’

  ‘Nothing like this. Oh, he has bad dreams sometimes, wakes himself screaming and sweating — well, clammy as he is now. Not a fever; I don’t rightly understand it.’

  ‘In that case,’ the doctor seemed to make up his mind, ‘I think we can safely let him sleep it off. If I could have a word with you downstairs, ma’am?’

  ‘Of course.’ She led the way downstairs, aware of Tench, waiting to take her place by the sickbed, and Barrett, hovering as usual. Once in the morning room, with the door shut, she turned to face the doctor.

  ‘You said sleep it off?’ Here, where the light was better, she was shocked by the fatigue lines on his thin brown face.

  He was looking at her with something disconcertingly like sympathy. ‘You did not know that your husband was addicted to opium, Mrs Tremadoc?’ And then, moving quickly, ‘Here, sit down. Shall I ring for your maid? I’m a brute to put it to you so sharply, but I thought you must have known.’

  ‘Opium?’ Her hands on the arms of her chair. ‘Impossible!’ And then, ‘Fool that I am! His cordial…His mother smelt the same.’ How strange to find herself saying it to this stranger.

  ‘Laudanum,’ said the doctor. ‘Many ladies take it, for pain, for comfort, and, if they are not lucky, for life. Your husband is a most interesting man, ma’am. Those sermons of his are something quite out of the common run; they have even made a churchgoer out of me. We must put our heads together to see how we can save him. He has been over-working, you say. Well, that is understandable enough. The cares of a new parish, though,’ delicately, ‘I have not heard of him as a very active pastor, aside from his remarkable sermons. It is you I have had the pleasure of meeting in the cottages. But those sermons…And then, I have heard talk of a magnum opus being composed. An epic poem? Something of the kind?’ An indescribable something in his tone suggested that he had some doubts about this.

  ‘Yes,’ she said shortly. ‘He is writing a poem about the downfall of Bonaparte.’

  ‘A patriotic theme.’ Drily. ‘It goes well?’

  ‘He has just finished the first canto.’ She had almost said we.

  ‘And he was at the Oldchurch Club yesterday,’ said the doctor, confirming her view that everyone in Oldchurch knew everything. ‘That, too, might be something of a strain, for a stranger, coming new into the town. I am not, myself, a member. In fact—’ He paused. ‘No; gossip. Well, ma’am, I can only urge that you prevail on Mr Tremadoc to take more care of himself and to give up that cordial of his. Keep him contented, keep him happy, as I am sure you know how to do, and I am sure it will be possible for him to wean himself from it gradually. I’ll call tomorrow, to discuss it with him, but I shall rely on you, who can, I am sure, do more for him than anyone. You do not know, I suppose, what strength it is?’

  ‘What strength?’

  ‘Laudanum’s a tincture, ma’am,’ he explained. ‘Opium dissolved in alcohol. It is a question of how many grains. I am afraid, judging by your husband’s condition, he must have been steadily increasing the dose.’

  ‘You sent for Dr Martin!’ She should have anticipated Tremadoc’s reaction. ‘That ill-bred son of a farrier! I’ll not have him in my house again, and so Barrett shall tell him when he calls in the morning. Of all the panics
over nothing! Of course I take laudanum; it’s the only thing for this delicate stomach of mine. Anyone but an idiot female like you would have known it for what it was. I certainly make no secret of it.’ He laughed in her anxious face. ‘Anyone would think, to look at you, that I was taking poison.’

  ‘Dr Martin seemed to think that that was just what it was.’

  ‘Fool of a man. Mind you, I am touched by your wifely anxiety; quite the devoted little woman are you not? Oh, well,’ tolerantly, ‘if it will allay your fears we might as well send for Dr Peabody in the morning. He will tell you, I am sure, that there is no need for you to be nagging away at me about my medicine.’

  ‘But Dr Martin…’

  ‘Can go away with a flea in his ear. Send me Barrett, and I’ll give him my instructions. No!’ — he anticipated her protest — ‘You are not to see Martin. I’ll not have him cross the threshold of my house.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘None of your business.’ He turned impatiently away from her. ‘I’ll have no more of your interfering. Go down and send me Barrett and tell that lazy cook of yours I want a neat little supper, up here, right away. You may share it with me, if you promise to behave yourself, and then come to bed and show me that you have remembered your place.’

  It was another horrible night. She was not sure whether he was trying to convince himself, or her, that there was nothing the matter with him.

  ‘I’ll be master in my own house,’ he said at last and fell into the deep sleep of exhaustion, leaving her to lie, hour after hour, rigid and wakeful at his side, feeling where he had hurt her and wondering how she could face the future.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Tremadoc was not at all surprised when the first publisher they approached accepted The Downfall of Bonaparte with enthusiasm.

  ‘I wish now I’d followed my first instinct and sent it to Murray,’ he said. ‘But this fellow Comfrey writes a civil enough letter. The £30 he offers will come in very handy since your father continues such a skinflint.’

  ‘You do not think,’ said Caroline hesitantly, deciding to ignore the reflection on the Duke, ‘that it might be better to accept Mr Comfrey’s other offer, that we should share both the expenses and the profits? I really believe,’ she hurried on before he could interrupt her, ‘from the way he writes, that Mr Comfrey is as confident of your poem’s success as I am. Just think how maddening if it should become a popular success and you found yourself entitled to nothing beyond the first £30. Somebody told me [it had been Charles Mattingley] that Miss Burney sold her Evelina outright for £30 and never got another penny. Just think how much money the publisher must have made by it!’

  ‘Oh?’ Tremadoc thought about it. ‘Yes, you might even have an idea there.’ He picked up the letter and studied it again. ‘He does seem very eager to know how I am getting on with the second canto…Yes.’ He made up his mind. ‘Write him for me — in your fairest hand, mind. Say I will share the risks and the profits, and tell him he shall have the second canto by Christmas.’

  ‘So soon?’ And then, aware of his darkening brow. ‘I am afraid you will over-tire yourself, as you did in finishing the first canto.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘I know you. You just grudge the time you spend taking down my immortal verse. I know you would rather be out on the gad about the town. And that reminds me of something. I will not have you gossiping with that upstart Martin. Yes, well may you blush, ma’am. You forgot, did you not, that I have friends in Oldchurch who will let me know when my wife misbehaves herself. Taking his hand in public, whispering to him down by the quay! Well,’ he sighed, ‘like mother, like daughter, I suppose, and I should be grateful we live where there are eyes to see you.’

  ‘Mr Tremadoc!’ She was on her feet, shaking with anger. ‘That is enough. I do not know which of your drinking companions chose to tell you he had seen me talking with Dr Martin, but it is perfectly true. And I shook him by the hand when I met him. I had been hoping to meet him ever since you had him turned from the door so rudely when you were ill, but I think he must have been avoiding me. If you really want to know, I was apologising to him on your behalf, and he was enquiring, most civilly, about your health. I was glad to be able to tell him that Dr Peabody had persuaded you to cut down on your laudanum and that you were much better as a result. And now, if you will excuse me, I have your Sunday sermon to write, as well as this letter to Mr Comfrey.’

  It was a timely reminder. The sermons that she had pretended were by her father had run out just when their success had established him as a notable preacher. He had badgered her for days to write to Sophie in the hopes that she might have some more of Mr Trentham’s work, and, in the end, she had been reduced to telling him she had written the sermons herself. He had not believed her until she wrote him another one, for Harvest Festival, which reduced the congregation to patriotic tears, and then, of course, he had been angry, but in the end had forgiven her, saying that sermons were the kind of boring thing a woman might be good at. Since then, he had expected one a week, though he continued loud in his amazement at a mere woman’s being able to do it. She sometimes wondered just what would happen if he should ever realise how much she contributed to The Downfall of Bonaparte.

  She sat down tiredly to write to Mr Comfrey. Tremadoc might not be suffering from over-work, but she most certainly was. The first batch of sermons had been easy enough. She had found herself brimful of ideas and been glad of the chance to express them, but now she felt herself drying up. Oldchurch was not a place that stimulated the mind. Week after week, she talked of housework with the servants and of the cost of living with the neighbours. It was only now, when she was exiled from it all for ever, that she recognised just how stimulating the life and talk at Cley and Chevenham House had been. Many of the ideas for the first set of sermons had come from remembered conversation; and it often amused her to sit, prim as a pin in her pew on a Sunday, and hear her husband unconsciously quote one of Charles Mattingley’s more trenchant remarks.

  If she had had access to a newspaper, it would have helped, but Tremadoc would not take one, pointing out that he could read them at Oldchurch’s one coffee house. He could. She could not, and it was no use thinking he would remember and tell her what he had read. Worst of all, they had no books except her own small collection. She had drawn on the Duchess’ £50 in order to subscribe to Oldchurch’s small circulating library, and was sure of the latest novel or volume of sermons, but Mrs Norman’s little room behind the linen draper’s in the High Street had no works of reference, no classical texts, none of the wealth of material that had been ready to her hand in the old Duke’s library at Cley.

  She finished the letter to Comfrey and began to look through her notes for Sunday’s sermon. Monday was Guy Fawkes Day, and a government edict had prohibited the lighting of bonfires for fear that they should be confused with the beacons that stood ready, all along the coast, to give warning of an enemy invasion. Surely there was something useful that could be said about this? There was a great deal of popular feeling, she knew, against this edict in Oldchurch where Guy Fawkes Day seemed to be a very special occasion. She had seen signs of at least one illicit bonfire down on the quay below the garden where the new Martello Tower was being built. There was a quotation from Kings that would serve as a text: ‘And after the earthquake a fire: but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.’ Yes, that would do. She wrote away busily for half an hour or so, only stopping when Tremadoc looked in to ask impatiently if the letter to Comfrey was ready for his signature.

  ‘I want it to catch today’s post.’

  ‘Yes, here it is.’ She handed it over and he read it through, grunted approval and signed it.

  ‘And this is the sermon?’ He picked up the first sheet, looked it over idly then tore it across with an angry oath. ‘Fool of a woman. Do you understand nothing? Guy Fawkes night is one of the great celebrations of the year, here in Oldchurch, and no government on earth i
s going to stop them from having their procession and their bonfires. And you expect me to preach against it!’

  ‘I thought you might feel it a good opportunity,’ she said mildly. ‘From what I have heard from Mrs Bowles and others of the women, it is a kind of saturnalia and often ends in violence and bloodshed. Surely, as a man of God, and a good citizen, it is your duty to speak out against it?’

  ‘Duty be hanged, and I’ll not have you preaching to me! Guy Fawkes night is a man’s occasion, that’s all. A little rough, perhaps, good honest high spirits and rugged Protestantism.’

  ‘You mean the kind of Protestantism that led to the Gordon Riots?’

  ‘Nonsense! The City Fathers of Oldchurch have everything well in hand, and no harm ever comes to anyone unless some idiotic woman ventures out and encounters the procession. I have been instructed to warn you that it is not a night for ladies to be abroad.’

  ‘You do not mean that you will be joining the procession?’ Who had ‘instructed’ him, she wondered.

  ‘I shall be one of the leaders. Now, sit down and write me a sermon that will not make me ridiculous.’

  To Caroline’s regret, November dawned brilliantly fine. Jenkins had made her a flagged path down the garden, so that even when the grass was wet she could get down to the terrace by the low wall along the cliff edge and look out at the wide view of river, marsh and sea. Warmly dressed to go out shopping, she went down there first for a cold breath of morning air and saw that what had been merely the suggestion of a pile of sticks on the quay had developed overnight into a huge bonfire ready for the lighting. It seemed to her to be dangerously near to the foundations of the Martello Tower that grew so slowly. Parliament had urged the building of these defence towers almost a year before, but nothing seemed to go right with this one. Today, she could see the men who should have been busy on its walls idling on the quay with the other loungers who congregated round the Oldchurch Inn. She congratulated herself, as she had before, that the cliff was sheer to the river below their garden, with no means of access from the quay, which lay a little to the South.