Rawblood

by Catriona Ward

  The medicaments and nourishment that were prescribed for Miss Hopewell began to be doled out precisely onto the kitchen scales.

  That winter brought about Mary’s worst bout of illness yet. Days passed when she seemed to drift above herself. Betty no longer attempted to remove the blood marks from her handkerchiefs; they were returned the colour of rust. But as Mr Anstruther had observed, she did not seem able to die.

  Miss Hopewell was not surprised when in the spring it was decreed by the solicitous Anstruthers that she must try a change of air and a warmer climate. Mr and Mrs Anstruther had thought the matter through with conscientious thoroughness. As much as they would miss their dear cousin, it behoved her, for the sake of her constitution, to repair to Italy with a companion, hired for the purpose. A suitable lady was found by means of advertisement, interviewed, and engaged; all by Mr Anstruther, who, as her only male connection, had Miss Hopewell effectively in his charge until he could find a way to get her out of it.

  Miss Hopewell had a small capital, which was administered by her cousin-in-law; this would pay for a tolerable standard of living and the wages of the companion. In fact, as Mr Anstruther observed: since this capital had remained almost untouched for several years, she might be expected to go on in a capital way! Miss Hopewell fixed him with a thoughtful eye, and acquiesced. She was tired of her life being measured; it emphasised its probable brevity.

  Miss Hopewell met Miss Brigstocke for the first time at Dover, on the eve of their departure. Miss Hopewell was borne there by Mrs Anstruther, who made much of her throughout the journey, and petted her, pressing her hand and uttering protestations of attachment, mourning their imminent separation. In the carriage Miss Hopewell gave much thought to the woman who was to be her intimate companion. Miss Brigstocke would be more familiar to her than Mrs Anstruther to her husband, perhaps; for that pair had various and diverging interests, as married couples do: domestic, legal, sartorial, familial; and many weeks went by when they saw one another for but a few minutes during the course of it. Not so would be the connection between herself and this woman – in a foreign place, with no acquaintance and scant resources, they would be deeply necessary to one another.

  The day was a bright, English one: a sharp March breeze made its way through the crevices of the carriage and under Miss Hopewell’s pelisse. As they entered Dover Mrs Anstruther leant forward, the better to observe the crush of people around her; Miss Hopewell leant back – she did not want to see sunlight on the silk of dresses, or the gold of officers’ braid. The world was busy and awake, she thought, but she should not have any part in it. Miss Hopewell looked at the sea, instead, which tossed, burdened with the black stick silhouettes of ships.

  ‘Rough,’ murmured Mrs Anstruther, to herself. ‘Very rough today. I do hope it will not …’ Mrs Anstruther’s hand tightened with true urgency; Miss Hopewell caught her cousin’s thought and smiled; Mrs Anstruther would push the packet out of harbour herself, if she could.

  It seemed to Miss Hopewell but a moment before Mrs Anstruther was standing on the flagstones, calling for her to ‘Come down from the carriage, Mary, do!’ and then depositing her in the coffee room of the Cinque Ports Inn with a small, grey woman. This was Miss Brigstocke, who was to share the remainder of her days.

  Now that she sat before her, Miss Hopewell could see little in Miss Brigstocke to alarm her, but little to give her confidence, either. The other woman wore a dress of grey merino, darned neatly and abundantly. Her hair was determinedly frizzed in the fashion of one who last took note of such things at the turn of the century. Her face was small, much crossed by coarse lines, and her eyes shone black. Mary Hopewell felt a tilt of despair, regarding her; Miss Brigstocke looked emptied of life, dried, wrung out.

  Mrs Anstruther thought to order a supper and left the room with the heavy jovial tact of one who has no interest at stake. The women regarded one another a moment.

  ‘It is like an arranged marriage,’ said Miss Brigstocke, at length. ‘How quaint of us! If we do not like one another, I assure you it will be quite proper for you to express your reservations to Mrs Anstruther, you know, in a low voice, at which I shall look suitably devious, or perhaps, drunk, and she will see that I am not fit to accompany you at all. There can be no reason for us going along with it unless we wish; I imagine another advertisement can be placed, and as for me there is a very eligible position at Hove, which I have been considering, so you mustn’t trouble yourself with that.’ Miss Brigstocke paused, and then said in a quite different tone, ‘But, I confess, I have longed to see Italy.’

  As she said this a great change came over Miss Brigstocke. The light fell on her in the same watery way, through the panes of the coffee room. Her face bore the same scores and the eyes remained the same obstinate, berry size. But to Miss Hopewell a door was opened. There was a crack in the edifice of the spinster, through which strange things could be glimpsed.

  ‘Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita,’ said Miss Brigstocke precisely, ‘mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, ché la diritta via era smarrita.’1

  Italy was to Mary Hopewell but a memory of Dante’s; its rivers and fields and cities and people were but his imaginings; she knew that when she laid her hand upon the hot stone of a square at midday, or heard the ripple of the language, or saw the strange sun above her in the azure sky, it would be as if these things were a cloak, which hid beneath it the substance of his verse. This alone would not have bound her to Miss Brigstocke; it is not uncommon, after all, to have a little of the Inferno by heart. It was the face which spoke the words that moved her. Another woman had risen from the depths and was using Miss Brigstocke’s conventional visage quite monstrously.

  ‘I hope that we will be friends,’ said Miss Hopewell, and found that she could smile. Miss Brigstocke smiled also, and released her tight organs with relief; for there was no engagement at Hove.

  The journey passed, as long journeys do, in alternating fits of interest and lethargy. Miss Hopewell kept to her berth. Miss Brigstocke, however, looked always about her, made sketches of amusing olive sellers and burnt-out quaysides at the ports where they put in, recording her observations in a red leather journal. She preserved always a careful distance between herself and the objects of her study. There took place an incident in the inn yard at Livorno; a small boy whose likeness Miss Brigstocke was capturing in ink ventured to speak to her, to lay his hand on her skirt; thinking he was making for her purse, she shrieked and struck him. It transpiring that the child was the innkeeper’s son, unpleasantness was averted by Miss Hopewell only with some effort, and with coin. Their arrival at Siena was a relief to both travellers.

  Miss Hopewell and Miss Brigstocke contrived to live well, as one may do on very little in those parts. They lived as genteel English ladies do when constrained by means: quietly. At Miss Brigstocke’s insistence they did not settle in the town; the apartments, she was persuaded, would be cramped and vermin-ridden. For herself – well, she was nothing – but she could not be comfortable there, for the sake of Miss Hopewell’s health. Miss Hopewell did not demur; it seemed to matter so little. Instead they took a small house in the outlying district, which the agent called a ‘villa’, with cracked red walls and pink tile on the roof, overhung with fir trees which attracted many swarms of insects. Here, Miss Hopewell proposed to end her days, leaving her remaining capital to Miss Brigstocke.

  Constrained by the sense of their enforced intimacy, Miss Hopewell and Miss Brigstocke at first strove to encounter one another only when necessary. For the first month of their householding each hovered in her room, listening for the street or garden door; only when one was absent did the other venture forth. Both lived in fear of being subjected to (or inflicting on the other) the terrible ordeal of commonplaces.

  Gradually, as Miss Hopewell and Miss Brigstocke met at meal times, or by surprise in the parlour, they found common ground. A chance reference to painting revealed a shared taste in watercolours, which provided matter for desultory
, but sustained conversation. From there they proceeded to such topics as art, music and the benefit of foreign travel. When in early June Miss Brigstocke invited Miss Hopewell to address her as Hephzibah, Mary begged Miss Brigstocke to make similarly free with her own name.

  Hephzibah took to visiting Mary’s room of an evening, where she regaled her with the accomplishments and disappointments of her day. Mary sat in bed, her head cocked with polite attention, some piece of mending in her hand: Hephzibah in an armchair with her legs tucked under her like a girl, her long skein of hair spilling grey over her face.

  ‘The jam at breakfast! I daresay it will sound strange to you, my dear Mary, but these foreign apricots make quite a different type of preserve, I find. Now I would not be so feather-brained as to say that I miss pips in the jam, but bramble jelly does have a feel of autumn about it, does it not, of hedgerows and sunshine and cool days, and, well, England …’

  Miss Hopewell had enough sensibility to perceive that these remarks were offerings, and she did not scorn them. When Miss Brigstocke made so bold as to admire a paisley shawl, or a pair of ear bobs (‘Oh, do keep them out of sight, dearest; Gabriela is a good girl but every servant has light fingers, you know …’), Miss Hopewell urged her to borrow whatever took her fancy. Miss Brigstocke was always persuaded, at last, to accept these kindnesses: she made a careful show, upon return of the article, of its perfect condition. There was no mention in these courteous transactions of the truth which was apparent to both: that all Miss Hopewell’s property would devolve, one not too distant day, upon Miss Brigstocke; for Mary’s health did not improve.

  There was a compact between the women: that they would carve a life for themselves from the rock face. They marketed, and painted. In the evenings they read aloud to one another, sewed and spoke their prayers, leavening these worthy pastimes with indulgences, strictly rationed: a glass of ratafia, a book from the English library, cribbage. As the days went on Miss Hopewell and Miss Brigstocke suffered, privately and separately, the same betrayal: for they found that Italy had bones of its own and did not use the ones that Dante lent it. This they did not discuss.

  There existed in the district, unfashionable as it was, a little English enclave and some through passage of travellers, touring parties and commercial traffic (for ‘unfashionable’ carries with it the benefit of ‘inexpensive’). But two unattached women without wealth or privilege to recommend them – who are forced to entertain in a small parlour which smells distinctly of the kitchen – are not in danger of being inundated with callers. It was, Miss Brigstocke asserted one evening to Miss Hopewell, a great relief to hold aloof from the hubbub – what liberation, to be beholden only to themselves, no longer subjects in that petty fiefdom, Society!

  ‘Certainly,’ agreed Miss Hopewell.

  Miss Brigstocke paused. Her face was unusually flushed.

  ‘Society!’ she said again, with venom.

  Miss Hopewell looked up from the pages of her novel. She put it aside, and leant back upon her pillows, in order to better observe her companion. In the light of the lamp Miss Brigstocke trembled. She had her lip between her teeth, a little.

  ‘Hephzibah,’ said Mary, ‘you are exercised.’

  Miss Brigstocke nodded. Of a sudden she placed her head in her hands. She spoke through her fingers, as if they were to blame. ‘You know that my life has not been a happy one. That I was born in a workhouse, you also know. I make no secret of it. But I have not told you something, which I fear will gravely affect your view of me.

  ‘The workhouse gave me the name Sarah. Hephzibah, I chose for myself. It seemed fit. It is in the Bible. The name my mother gave me at birth was … Talaitha. My parentage, I regret to say, is not respectable. Do you know that my mother and father were of the Romany people? No, for I have not told you of it. Though I reprimand myself, I think my reticence can be easily comprehended. I have not been welcomed in polite households. Whenever I obtain a position, the matter comes out. I know not how – it happens. Perhaps a friend of my father’s will see me at market in a town, and see his face in mine, and greet me. Or, I will betray myself: one morning I told my last employer that it was raining, in Romany. My mother would say that I have pushed my fate away, my people away … That that fate is now pushing me back. Prikaza.

  ‘When the truth is known of my parentage my departure is wished for by all concerned and soon follows. I think there is a great deal of native mistrust for those of my tribe – but it is not that which forces me on.

  ‘When I see myself anew in their eyes … it is awful. The gypsy. Gadže Gadžensa, Rom Romensa, they say. Like with like. It is the only way they know. I thought myself so bold for running from my people … I scorned them. And what have I gained? I think I expected to discover my own nature by shedding my past. But it transpires that I have not a very discernible character, underneath it all. I am not much of anything. I left the Rom and the Gadže won’t have me.

  ‘But I have said all this and omitted the one important matter: my apology. I did not tell you at Dover. Now I know – by God – by long experience – that it is a thing which people wish to know. Or at any rate they resent its concealment most deeply. Allowing you to take me, ignorant of that significant thing – it was shameful. No, please, I must get it all done or not at all. Were we antipathetic, you and I – unalike, were there no fellow feeling between us, I believe I would have confessed it straight. But I wished to come with you and so I sinned by omission. And as I came to know you better, I came to esteem your friendship most highly, as I hope you have mine, and each day it was harder to surrender it – the ease, the accord between us. I could not bear to be strange in your eyes. But it was not right. So if you wish me to leave, then I will do so.’

  Mary pushed the covers aside and rose. She came to where her friend sat, and placed a hand on the bent shoulder. Through the cotton, she felt the thinness of Miss Brigstocke’s rigid frame.

  ‘It is most trying,’ Mary said, ‘to be obliged to conceal things about oneself, as you say. It is a source of constant anxiety and exhaustion. It must have been a great unhappiness to you, to always be keeping this secret – always steeling yourself for confession or discovery. I will not say, “We will say no more about it” – for I am very interested, and would like to ask you questions, if you would not find it too distressing.’

  Miss Brigstocke looked long into Mary’s face. She nodded. She briskly blew her nose and began to push strands of grey rag hair back into her cap. ‘I can never repay your kindness,’ she said to Mary. ‘But I will endeavour to deserve it. Now get back into your bed, for mercy’s sake. Ask me anything you will. What would you know? All the rather dull book of my life is open to you.’

  Mary laughed. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘anything! Tell me a tale your mother told you, at her knee. Tell me of the history of your people.’

  ‘That,’ said Miss Brigstocke, ‘would take a very long time. And I do not know enough of the old ways to do it justice.’ She was so woebegone at being unable to oblige that Mary was assailed by the desire to laugh. She repressed it.

  A sudden light shone in Miss Brigstocke’s eyes. She regarded Miss Hopewell steadily and with growing purpose. ‘There is one talent, peculiar to my family,’ she said. ‘I have some sight. I cannot claim more than that. My mother was a great chovihani. My skill is small at best – but I am able, on occasion, to tell both the character and the future of a person in the lines of their palm.

  ‘I would look for you. What better use will there ever be for it? Dear Mary. If you have no moral objection to such things, perhaps … if you will show me your palm –’ here she took Mary’s fingers in hers, cold and resistless – ‘our clients prefer that we take the hand, it is the expected thing, but truthfully, it can be enough to hold an intimate item, something belonging to the hand: a glove, a ring. Now. Let us see something of your fortune.’ Miss Brigstocke bared the soft palm to the light. She peered, small black eyes intent; her thumb pressed Mary’s wrist.

&n
bsp; The hand was torn from Miss Brigstocke’s with vicious speed.

  ‘Not necessary, Hephzibah.’ Mary’s voice was cool. ‘I see my future plain. It is nasty, brutish and short.’

  As May passed into June the days grew longer and the sun beat mercilessly on the pink tile of the villa. There came into Siena at this time a certain Reverend Comer, who was touring the churches. The reverend saw Miss Hopewell in the panetteria, where he was partaking of sweet rolls and she was purchasing the household loaf. He soon discovered their direction. As he explained to Miss Hopewell and Miss Brigstocke, men of the cloth are not at the mercy of convention. Their calling grants them passage everywhere. They move in an elevated sphere and scorn such things as introductions.

  The ladies acknowledged the truth of this somewhat dazedly, for Mr Comer had caught them on laundering day, elbow-deep in suds. This did not deter him, but inspired him to call again, and often, for the reverend had a most delicate understanding and was profoundly moved by their situation: he pitied the ladies sincerely. He begged them to believe that he did not regard the kitchen smell in the parlour. An aroma of onions was nothing to a man of God.

  In a villa consisting of four rooms it was impossible to deny themselves when Mr Comer called, as Miss Brigstocke said to Miss Hopewell, without actually hiding under their beds. Why should they wish to deny themselves? asked Miss Hopewell. Only benefit could result from intercourse with a person so brimming with compassion as the reverend. He had too, Miss Hopewell added inconsequentially, a pony and trap at his command.

  Hephzibah could not see how this signified; perhaps dear Mary had sat too long in the sun this morning.

  When it became apparent to Reverend Comer during the course of a morning visit that Miss Hopewell desired to see the olive groves at Argiano, he was much struck. To give a poor soul some pleasure; it was the least that any man of feeling, or of Christian spirit could do. They should all three go there, that very day!