The Red Staircase

by Gwendoline Butler

  Within a minute of my drinking the water, a stout, middle-aged woman, her hair covered with a printed scarf, waddled up the steps of the pump carrying a bucket. She filled her bucket with water. Then she looked at me. I recognised her from the day before; she was the wife of the leading figure on the village council, a sort of Mayor. She said nothing, I said nothing. She sat down, I sat down. Presently, from a capacious pocket in the front of her apron, she drew what appeared to be a large felt sock which she was making. (I did not know then that these were what all country people wore as overshoes, indeed they were often their only boots, even in winter.) As if this was a signal for movement, the steps around the pump began to fill up with women. Some stood, one or two sat down, and others took turns to draw water. They did not speak to me, nor did I make any advance towards them, but I was strongly conscious of their concentrated attention.

  Then the first arrival, obviously a grande dame of the peasant community, rose, went slowly to the pump, and gave herself a drink. Then she refilled the cup and, with what on a less weather-beaten face would have been a smile, handed it to me.

  I drank, replaced the cup, and bowed. She stared at me thoughtfully, and then in an awkward, careful manner, as if performing a movement never before attempted, bowed back. It was the most charming expression of natural good manners I had ever seen.

  Her friends obviously thought so too, because when she’d finished there was a little rattle of applause. As soon as I heard it, I moved forward, went down the steps and, standing on the cobbles, looked up at the women assembled there and addressed them.

  I said more or less what I had said the day before: how I wanted to help them set up their own healthy rule of life, that my only purpose was to train them to assist themselves, and that I hoped at least one of them would come forward to learn all I could teach, to pass it on in her turn. But this time I spoke slowly, and because I was less nervous I believe my Russian was better.

  They listened attentively. Already I knew a few of the faces. There was the plump lady who had arrived first; the cross-eyed girl who was seated next to her was her daughter. That thin woman with a face like a nutcracker was a friend of Madame Mozorov’s, and the flaxen-haired beauty was her daughter. There seemed no resemblance between them, but I realized the mother was probably no older than Dolly Denisov, only she had lost her teeth. Next to this couple, the pretty young wife of the village carpenter was holding her baby. They looked a healthy pair. The sour-looking lady next to her was the wife of the village priest, and therefore important. She was, however, childless; I had been told that all her children had died as babies. Something radically wrong there, I thought. I wondered what were the common disorders I should find among them. Anaemia, I suspected; probably rheumatism. And among the children, scabies and rickets.

  ‘Now I’ll tell you what I am going to do,’ I said. ‘I am going to sit in that whitewashed building down the road and wait for you to call on me. I shall start tomorrow, and then the next day and the day after that. There will be chairs for you all, and I shall wait till you come.’

  Still they listened in silence, but I could sense they approved my way of going about things.

  ‘So think about it and remember me,’ I said.

  Then I got on my cycle and rode back to the Big House.

  The following day I spent arranging the meeting-place which I already called, over grandly, ‘the clinic’. The room had been swept and dusted by servants from the house, who turned the occasion into a party and ended up holding a sort of impromptu dance on the empty floor. One of the men had a tin whistle with him and I came upon them all dancing to his tune. They stopped when Ariadne and I entered, but I pretended to have noticed nothing, not the music nor the loudly stamping feet.

  ‘Just like them,’ said Ariadne. ‘You’re not annoyed?’

  ‘No, on the contrary, I’m glad they don’t seem to find the building unlucky.’

  ‘That’s all nonsense, anyway.’

  ‘Of course it is. But their enjoyment ought to drive away any lingering shadows.’

  ‘It’s cold in here, though,’ said Ariadne with a shiver.

  ‘Cool,’ I said firmly, ‘and all the better for it. More hygienic.’

  I arranged myself and my equipment on two long trestle tables and propped back the door so the villagers would know I was open for custom. By the door were chairs for my customers, and on the other side were two screens to be used where privacy was necessary. Then I sat down to wait.

  ‘Shall I stay with you and help?’ asked Ariadne. ‘It might be interesting, and I like babies.’

  ‘No. Run away. I must be quite on my own this time, so that it is private between them and me. It’s a matter of professional etiquette.’ I was grimly decided on this point; I was going to be as professional as possible or die in the attempt.

  ‘But will they come?’ asked Ariadne.

  ‘Of course,’ I said indignantly.

  Ariadne prepared to wheel her bicycle away. ‘I think you and Mamma are both quite mad,’ she said. ‘But good luck to you.’

  I walked to the door and watched her cycle off, waving as she went. In the flat distance I could see the big house on one side of me, and on the other side I could see the roofs of the village. The sky was a very pale blue today, and the harvest was ripening in the fields and a heat haze hung over everything like a white dust, misting the air and turning even the dark colours of the earth and trees to a pearly shade.

  ‘How beautiful it is,’ I thought. Then I went back, sat down at my table and waited. And waited. No one came. At dusk, I packed up and went back to the house.

  I repeated the process on the second day. I was still hopeful. Of course, they were bound to be shy.

  It took me till the end of the third day to admit that probably no one was going to come. Even then, I hated to admit defeat. But on the fourth morning I was surprised by a child’s cry.

  I looked up to see a young woman, a girl really – my own age, I thought – standing before me cuddling her baby. She had a small smile on her broad-cheeked face. As soon as I looked at her, full-face, she dropped her head shyly. The baby, however, an infant of about six months, I judged, continued to stare at me, unabashed.

  ‘Hello. How did you get here?’

  ‘I came round the side path. There is one that leads behind the village.’ A little reluctantly, this came.

  My first client, and she had come by a back route. ‘You aren’t frightened to come, are you?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Is it quicker by the back?’

  ‘No.’ She shook with silent laughter at my thinking the back route could be quicker than the direct front road.

  ‘No, of course not. Stupid of me.’ I looked at her. She seemed a steady, sensible young woman, if shy, ‘Why, then? Why come round the back way?’

  She considered, then she said: ‘My mother says it is not necessary that we should come to you. That many years must pass before such things as seeing you here can come about. It’s best to stick to the ways we know.’

  ‘Still, you came. Why?’

  Silently, she showed me the child, who looked at me with bright, alert eyes. ‘A nice baby,’ I said. ‘A boy? Yes?’ I held out a pencil and he reached towards it. ‘Very advanced mentally,’ I said. ‘How old is he?’

  She just smiled and bounced him up and down.

  ‘Six months?’

  She shook her head, still smiling.

  ‘Older?’

  She nodded vigorously. I was surprised; he was small for his age. But it was an intelligent and lively little face, as ugly as a monkey, but taking. ‘A beautiful baby,’ I said, and in a way it was true because of the spirit in the face. Anyway, I expect he was beautiful to her.

  I still did not exactly know why she had come, but it was brave of her to do so in the face of the united – if not hostility, at least conservatism – of the entire village. She must have a very strong reason. Silent, yet smiling, she unwrapped the
child from the shawls and blanket bound round him, and laid him before me on the table. One leg, the left, was twisted, with the foot bent back at the ankle and the muscles wasted.

  I looked up at her; she was still smiling, but her eyes were intent, questioning me. ‘A beautiful boy,’ I said gently.

  She took my hand and placed it on the bad leg. ‘You want to know what help I can give? Yes, I can see that is what you want.’ I examined the leg, more to give myself time to think than because I thought it would do any good. A birth injury, I concluded, no doubt Madame Mozorov was not as skilful as she might be. A bit heavy-handed, I guessed, if any manipulation was required. ‘I suppose he’s always been like this? Since birth?’

  I was determined to give her some positive answer, not to let her leave me without some help, though I knew that nothing could restore the limb, her son could never have a normal leg. And yet … ‘Nature has immense powers,’ I said slowly. ‘As he grows, the muscles and bone of the injured leg will grow too. But you must massage it, and exercise it yourself since he cannot.’ I showed her what I meant, rubbing the leg and gently moving it up and down.

  She seemed to take in what I meant, and I helped her wrap the child up again. I accompanied her to the door and waved at her as she went. This time she walked boldly up the road which led direct to the village. She was gone out of sight before I realized I had not taken her name or any personal details about her and her son. So much for professionalism, I thought.

  But I had had my first patient, I had made a start, and although the tension had left me trembling, I felt I had come through an initiation.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  After this, on the days following, I had a trickle of women calling on me; only a few, but it was a beginning. I began to feel more confident.

  The condition of the peasants here gave me much to ponder about. I could see that on the estate the tenants were well looked after, but even so their poverty was pitiful. Between the world of the village women and that of Dolly was an immense gulf. Also, they had no freedom to speak of. Dolly was, by her own lights, a kind mistress, but she was a mistress. Underneath the calm of the relationship between Dolly and her peasants I was aware of intense pressures building up. And Dolly knew it too, I thought. Possibly this was why she had got me here. Certainly now I was here, I thought her interest in my work sporadic.

  Very early one morning I was awoken from my sleep by the sound of voices. I lay for a little while, still lulled by sleep, until I realized that the voices were floating up from the garden below. They were soft and intermittent. I went to the window and saw a group of women from the village talking to one of the servants. With shawls over their heads and with their backs towards me, they were unrecognizable. Even as I stood there, Dolly’s steward came into sight and appeared to take charge. The women went with him and silence descended on the morning.

  Puzzled, I went back to bed, and because of the disturbance I went back to sleep with particular heaviness, so that it was later than usual when I went downstairs, and found Ariadne to ask what it was about.

  ‘They were here as early as that? But of course, it would not seem so early to them, they are used to rising with the light.’

  ‘But what did they want?’

  ‘Oh, Mamma, I dare say. I told you how they always come to her.’ And she yawned. A revolution could start, and if it was early morning, Ariadne would still yawn, I thought. Come to think of it, that was probably how revolution would come to Shereshevo, if it ever did come – with a group of peasant women arriving with the dawn.

  She poured me some coffee, then buttered one of the little dry sweet rolls she called brioches and pushed both towards me. ‘Here, eat and drink while I go and find out. I can see you won’t rest otherwise.’

  Presently she returned. ‘As I thought; it was a couple of women from the village about a sick child. As Mamma was asleep, the steward wouldn’t wake her, so they went away again.’

  ‘But who were they? Did he say?’

  ‘He doesn’t know. Or wouldn’t say. Oh, do drink your coffee.’

  I drained it quickly and went to find Dolly, whom I discovered watering her potted plants on the upper terrace.

  ‘Yes, I had heard about the morning call.’ She set her watering-can down. ‘My maid told me when she dressed me. To tell you the truth, I mean to go to the village this morning and investigate.’

  ‘Oh, why did they not come to me?’

  Slowly, Dolly said: ‘They have always come to me. It will take ages to make them change their ways. If they ever do.’

  ‘They don’t trust me. And why should they? The first time they came, when they all waited for me, I wasn’t there, and this morning I was still asleep.’

  In a decided voice, Dolly said: ‘We’ll go to the village.’

  ‘But we don’t know who they are!’ I cried.

  ‘Madame Mozorov will know.’

  When we got to the village, Dolly stayed in the governess-cart and Ariadne and I went into the shop. I noticed that there was the usual group of women around the pump and they were watching us. After my eyes had adjusted to the gloom, I could see Madame Mozorov’s massive form behind the counter. She had her back to us, but she swivelled slowly round as we approached. She showed no surprise, so she had probably heard the pony’s approach.

  ‘My mother directs me to ask where is the sick child, the one that was brought up to the house this morning?’

  ‘The child didn’t come, Little Excellency,’ said Madame Mozorov. ‘Only the mother and the grandmother and a few of their friends. The child was too ill. Besides, it was screaming dreadfully, and the mother thought that none of them might be admitted to the house at all if the servants heard the noise.’

  ‘My mother wasn’t awake at the time, consequently they were sent away.’

  ‘That poor little wretch would have woken her, bless its unhappy soul. Oh, what a cry it has, strikes you cold. Sharp, you know, like a knife, and yet thin and wailing at the same time, like a lost cat.’

  ‘You always exaggerate, Madame Mozorov. Anyway, my mother wants to know whose child it is.’

  ‘The son of the daughter of old Katia who used to work at the big house as a laundrymaid and married big Paul, the carpenter. The girl’s husband was taken off to serve in the army as one of this village’s quota. He didn’t want to go, but he had to.’

  A string of dark sausages hung from one hook in the ceiling, and by it another hook supporting a skein of dried fish. Neither sausages nor fish looked very appetising but, except for a sack of soft, sweet biscuits and some black bread, it constituted the shop’s entire food stock. I found the atmosphere oppressive and unpleasant. But there was something more than a bad smell troubling me, and I stood there for a moment assessing what it was.

  ‘Miss Rose?’ said Ariadne quickly. ‘Is anything wrong? Are you ill?’

  ‘No, no, not ill at all. I’m perfectly well.’ And it was true, I was quite fit, but I was just experiencing a very strange sensation. For ages now, Patrick Graham had been very far away from me, but suddenly, in this ugly stuffy room, he had come back. I had the queer feeling that he was very close to me.

  It wasn’t a fantasy. I did not believe he was there in the room with me; rather, it was a terribly strong intimation of his presence. As if he had just left me, walked out of the room that minute. I corrected myself: no, it felt as if he was just about to walk in. I turned to look at the door. Of course, there was no one there.

  ‘Are you sure you are all right?’ asked Ariadne’s worried voice.

  ‘Perfectly and absolutely. If you are ready, shall we go?’ And with a firm step, I walked to the door.

  Behind me I could hear her murmuring still to the midwife, and then she joined me. ‘You look better now,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, yes. I am. Really, there was nothing wrong. I am quite myself.’ And the awareness of Patrick’s presence had gone. But nothing could take away the shattering knowledge of how much I still cared for him. T
he protective skin I had grown over the wound had been roughly torn off, and for the moment I winced with the pain of it.

  The women who had been talking around the pump had now picked up their buckets and pots of water and were scattering to their homes. As before, Dolly’s presence had somehow put paid to their gossiping. And yet Dolly herself sat there looking friendly and gentle and benevolent. I thought that nothing I had so far seen at Shereshevo marked the chasm between the classes more clearly than this silent melting away before Dolly’s gaze.

  Ariadne was telling her mother where to go. ‘Old Katia’s house. You know which that is? Near the distillery. Well, I know if you don’t.’

  Old Katia’s house was on the other side of the village, and was larger and more respectable-looking than some of the others. It was not one of the houses we had visited before. It had a trim vegetable garden round it, with sunflowers and poppies growing. Katia herself stood at the door, curtseying and welcoming us. Of course we were expected. A message had got to Katia that we were on our way, probably from one of the numerous children one saw scuffling in the dust of the village street. In the winter that dust must turn to liquid mud.

  Dolly gave the reins to one of the children. Obviously, this time, she meant to enter the house. I hesitated, hanging back behind her.

  ‘Bring that basket, will you please?’ asked Dolly over her shoulder.

  I picked up the basket, which was heavy. Inside, I noticed the shape of a wine bottle and a covered pudding-basin, from which I could guess that Dolly was doing the Lady Bountiful in the classic style, although I could not see that either wine or pudding would do much good to the sick child. I had put my finger on the root of my reluctance to go in: I did not want to see the child. Something in me held back

  ‘Am I to come too?’ It was Ariadne.

  ‘Of course. Bring the other basket.’ Dolly herself carried nothing. ‘Katia,’ she called, as soon as she was close enough. ‘I am sorry about your grandson. It was not properly explained to me this morning. But I have come now.’ Katia gave a little bob, meant to show gratitude. ‘And where is the child, and what is the trouble? Girls, put those baskets on the table.’