by Vanessa Tait
However had she managed without her medicine? It was, as he never tired of telling her, beneficial to her in every way. It cured all manner of aches and pains, coughs and difficulties of respiration, and more than that, as he said, it cured her mind. She was not bored, or restless, she did not pine or sigh. Her medicine made her strong, as strong as a heroine.
And so, in the mornings, up to her room she would go, in a sweat of anticipation, and lie down on her chaise to wait for the draught to take effect. And then the warmth that was as much a feeling as a thought: nothing mattered very much after all.
But once, when Alexander was late with her draught, Rebecca surprised herself with thoughts of the exact opposite colour: nothing was easy, she was a trapped bird whose feathers were black. And she knew then that the other way of looking at things was a delusion.
But then Alexander came hurrying up to her room with her draught and the smoothness of it soon eased its way into her very cells. It had a physical property which seemed to keep hold of itself as it disseminated around her body, turning every part into a version of itself. Ironing away her creases and drying up her sweat and bearing her away to a camel whose nose was as moist as velvet, and then to a place of shadows and chatter whose words she could not understand, and then again to Gabe, who was very pale and clear, and lying with his head propped on his arm.
‘I can see that you are absolutely rotten at embroidery,’ he says. ‘That flourish there.’ He points to the corner of her handkerchief, which has fallen onto the grass. ‘What is that? Branch or flower?’
‘Neither! It is a curlicue.’
‘I still cannot read your handwriting, or your needle writing, or whatever it’s called. Why ever have you got a B there in the corner?’
‘It is an R. RM. Rebecca Massey.’
‘Of course, I see it now. Rebecca Massey. That is your name and I won’t forget it. P’raps I could keep this, to remind me of it?’ He dangles the handkerchief from one corner.
‘Not when the embroidery is so bad! I don’t want my name blotted. BM could be any number of things. Baby Monkey. Black morning.’
Bland Munning, Back Manning, Ban Man. Her name drifts away from her into a spell in which every word had weight and meaning.
But she had not sewn BM onto her handkerchief. She had sewn RM and that was not her name any more. She had drifted away from her name, her home, into a new name, a new home that was not a home. A home in a shoe and she a little old woman.
‘I should say this is American cotton, judging from its softness.’ Gabe picks it up and drapes it on his face. He puffs it out with his breath and lies still so that it looks like a shroud.
‘And it smells of you, Rebe,’ he says, still beneath it. ‘Rosewater and leather; you have been at your father’s workshop again, haven’t you?’
He sticks out his hand and gropes around for her face, his palm reaching her chin, his fingertips at her lips.
‘And cow, of course, for you cannot have leather without the poor wee cow; and grass and earthworms, I think – is there a hint of earthworm there?’
Rebecca draws his fingers into her mouth and bites them. He tears the handkerchief from his face then and springs up, towering over her with his great wrist bones and feet large enough to set sail in.
And she is an old woman in a shoe. And he is sailing away, that’s what he meant to tell her, of course. The handkerchief had been a way of easing into it.
‘American cotton is done for, you know, and there won’t be any more nice handkerchiefs,’ he says.
‘The Civil War, aye.’
‘Aye.’ He folds her handkerchief into smaller and smaller squares. ‘And there must be a new place for us to get the cotton, otherwise the industry shall be finished. And that place seems to be Egypt.’
‘Egypt? You mean, land of the Pyramids?’
‘Yes, Egypt.’ His look is strange, and when she catches it, a horrible realization begins to creep over her.
‘You mean …’
‘Father is sending me.’
‘To Egypt? No!’ She stands up.
‘Aye.’
‘Oh. To Egypt. How far away …?’ She cannot think.
‘A week’s journey, perhaps.’ He reaches for her. ‘I don’t – ever since father told me—’
‘How long have you known?’
‘For two weeks …’
‘Two weeks? And you have kept it from me?’
‘I didn’t know how to tell you.’
‘And when are you leaving?’
‘In another three …’
Rebecca spins away from him. ‘So there is no time! And if you had told me straight away, we could have been married and I could have come with you. Rather than being left here.’ She throws her arm around the grey sea, the grey sky. ‘You always talk of being married, Gabriel, but we are not, still. I am becoming an old maid! And now you are leaving, to Egypt!’
He tries to come to her again but she pushes him away.
‘I do not want to go, Rebecca, my love, know that! But you know what Father is like. He insists, Rebe! And p’raps he is right, there will be no money if someone does not go, and he is too old, and he trusts no one else but me. He says he has found a new plantation there, in the delta. And I think it is no place for a woman, and no time for a proper wedding, I should like to do it right …’
She lifts her head to stare. ‘How do you know what is right and wrong for me? You have never been there. I am sure there are plenty of women in Egypt!’
‘I will be back in six months. Nine at the most. It would be no kind of life for you out there!’
She catches her breath. Looks at him again. ‘But you want to go! It is not a trial for you. That is why you have waited so long to tell me.’
‘No, Rebe!’
‘You do! I can see it in your look. I can see it.’
He sighs then and stares at the ground. ‘I do not want to leave you, Rebecca. You must know that – I love you! But – p’raps I do want to go, you are right – I am curious – and p’raps there is some good I might do there, in Egypt … More good than here, at least, hidden away in Edinburgh.’
‘And I am to be hidden away in Edinburgh then, instead.’
‘The reason,’ he says quietly, ‘that I have not asked you to marry me – properly, I mean – is that …’ He swallows, his great Adam’s apple like a cork in the sea. ‘I do not want to be here in Scotland working for my father’s business – I must strike out on my own, I think, to prove myself! Only then can I come back and be a husband.’
‘I have no say, then,’ says Rebecca.
‘There might be something I can do about the world. The Egyptians are very poor, and Hindoo, and p’raps, though God knows I am not very religious, Britain is a great force of good in the world. We ought to bring to the poorer regions our sense of order, and morality.’
‘Ambition is men’s way of excusing selfishness,’ she says.
‘There is nothing wrong with ambition, I think, as long as it propels Mankind forward in the right way.’ Gabe’s face has transmogrified smoothly into someone who Rebecca understands to be Alexander. ‘Or womankind, if there is such a word. Which of course there is not!’
But sometimes the spirit of the draught gave her energy, and Rebecca rose up from her couch and put on her cloak and visited Eva. As they strolled together in the park, or rambled up and down the streets of the New Town staring in at people’s windows, or sat side by side at the window in Eva’s rooms reading their books – they both had a taste for Mr Collins – the spectre of the shoe receded, until Rebecca hardly thought to press Evangeline on the matter.
It was on such an afternoon, they had known each other a month or two, that Rebecca discovered something surprising. The sun was pouring in through Eva’s little window panes and making her dozy. She must have dropped off because as she came to she found Eva looking at her with a peculiar expression.
‘I fancy,’ said Eva, staring harder at Rebecca’s eyes, �
�that I have had a doze like that. And now I see that your eyes show the marks of it. Your pupils are constricted, are they not?’
Rebecca turned to the looking glass. They were, she had not noticed. That was to say – she had noticed something was different about her image in the glass, something impersonal. But she had put it down to the armour the draught gave her, the way they had of firming her up. But now she saw that her eyes in the glass looked back at her without her really being in them.
But Eva knew, for when she pointed out her own eyes in the glass, she had exactly the same! They were like two dolls with glassy eyes, standing close together, their sleeves pressed flat against the other’s arm and Kitty Kat weaving about their feet.
When they saw it they laughed. ‘I thought as much,’ said Eva. ‘You are taking the new medicine!’
‘And you too? How queer!’
‘I think we are privileged. ’Tis better than laudanum, do you not think? And far more effective.’
‘Laudanum – for the relief of backache, and so on?’ Rebecca had seen the tins stacked up on the counter. ‘But I did not know this was laudanum!’
‘Not laudanum, no – ’tis better, as I said. They haven’t a name for this medicine yet. They say it will take away the hunger for my drops that I had before.’
‘Hunger, do you hunger?’ asked Rebecca. She had always thought of her medicine as the end of hunger. But, perhaps after all, it took away all hunger except for that of itself. ‘But, I do not want to end up like a Fensman or a Chinaman, living only for my pipe!’
‘I do not think it is the same thing,’ said Eva. But as they regarded each other in the looking glass a furrow appeared between Eva’s brows. ‘I hope it is not.’
Rebecca reached across and smoothed Eva’s brow with her thumb. ‘You are right. We are not from China, and the Fensmen are well known for being lazy and falling asleep on their hoes. I would not be without my draught. My days go easier, and my husband is easier. If every woman knew that there was a prize to be had just by taking down a solution of those crystals, though the taste is not quite nice, why, they would be able to bear anything.’
Knowing that Eva felt exactly as she did, that Rebecca could fall into a doze on her armchair and not be asked why she did it, that in short, they were together in all their thoughts and feelings, was enough to make Rebecca reach over to Eva again and kiss her on the cheek.
Eva put her hand at the spot. To Rebecca’s reflection she said: ‘But I sometimes wonder if I could stop it, in spite of what Mr Badcock says.’
‘Stop your draught?’
‘I had a hunger for laudanum before, it grew terrible, and Mr Badcock has given me this as a cure. But I don’t know …’ Eva trailed away. ‘I did try to go without, for a day, only Mr Badcock was concerned, and insisted I take it. He said it was not good to stop it all at once.’
‘Oh Eva, I am sure that it is for the best. Something that gives such a feeling of goodness cannot be on the side of evil, can it? And besides, we are together in this, and can help each other.’
Eva let out her breath. Her lips were dry: ‘Oh, you are right. Of course you are right! It is all for the good.’
‘That must be why Alexander pulled me away from you, at the opening – for the sake of the draught. They do not want us to know each other. Do you think so?’
‘Perhaps. I hope so! It is some sort of secret yet, until they patent it.’ She pulled at a piece of skin on her lips. Then she brightened and inclined her head. ‘What do you say we take a walk?’ There was a patch of blue at the top of the glass. ‘Look how pale we are! We could do with the air, I think.’
CHAPTER 12
7 May, Biahmu
My Dear Rebe,
You will think I have been a long time writing to you and I can only wonder when you will get this letter, but all I can say is that I have been in Egypt for two months and miss you dreadfully! Nobody here speaks any English but there is a fellahin boy in the town who does and who will take a letter for you to the agent, my dearest.
All the fatigue of the journey was worth it, to arrive and see a line of camels, if only you had been here to see it with me. The sun is of a kind we never see in Edinburgh – it blazes away in the bluest sky and it gives everything the solidest shape. Scotland is green but I see now that it is a country painted in watercolours. The green here is garish; the palm trees, the crops, the fields of berseem are all a brilliant emerald in the sunlight, then fall away to something greyer in the evening. Night does not come as it does in Scotland, at least in the summer, creeping slowly and quietly. Here it is noisy with insects and braying donkeys and turns all at once into darkness. Once the sun is gone the smell of dung seems to rise up.
Oh my darling, do not mind me talking of dung! We can talk about anything, can’t we? Only dung is a feature of life where I am now, just as it is on the streets of Edinburgh. And how I long to be back there to see your face. The camels and the gamoose and the donkeys and I dare say the children too, all drop it along the dusty paths that lead into the town from the fields. Only instead of boys to fetch it up as they do in Edinburgh, here the women and girls turn it into something resembling pancakes but which is rather fuel for the fire.
I can hear you asking me, Rebe, in that voice you reserve for such questions, about the cotton fields. They are as long and white and I dare say voluminous as I imagined and they will make Father rich, I suppose, though the owner must sell them to him first.
And I haven’t yet seen the Pyramids, my own darling, to tell you about them. Some people come from Britain but I think the journey not worth it to see a pile of stones.
But, as to the main point, I had hoped to do some good, that was the purpose of all this. That was why I left you tearful and alone on the station platform, and how I chastise myself a hundred times a day for it! There is certainly much good that needs to be done here. Babies crawl naked in the dust with their faces hard to make out, there are so many flies massed about. Old people more skeleton than human. I have not yet got to the Suez Canal but they say that conditions there kill hundreds of men. I have been doing the rounds, helping where I can.
I was taken to see a Bedouin marriage ceremony Tuesday last. The legal part of the ceremony they call ‘marriage by twig’ and it consists of a green twig being stuck in the groom’s turban for three days – though it is as binding as any of our rituals and a church is nowhere to be seen.
How I wish you were here, dearest, and I could put in a twig for you. And it would be that easy, if we chose to live here.
I never caught a glimpse of the bride for she was inside the birza the whole time we were feasting. But all through the evening I had the strangest idea that it was you! I couldn’t shake it. And when the bridegroom went in, accompanied by all the shrieking cries from the women and thumping from the men, it was all I could do not to thump him.
I had had too much drink, I think. But the idea persisted, still persists. The married women here wear a burqa from nose to chin with pieces of gold sewn on so that you cannot see their faces, only their eyes. Sometimes I see a woman whose eyes look like yours. I think you are hiding from me, or following me, or both!
I will never be free from you, and I don’t want to be. We ought to have married as you said and then you would be here with me. Because this place has crept its way into my bones too.
I received your last two letters with great joy. But to hear you talking of unhappiness cuts me to the quick! I am sorry you are lonely, Rebe, and only wish I was there to wrap my arms around you like I always used. Is there nothing you can take pleasure in? Could you help out your father again? You need an occupation. You are one of those women, the new type, who need an activity. And yet you underestimate yourself and tell yourself you can do nothing.
Write to me of home and how the place looks. I frequently wonder whether the wall round the oval pond is as it used to be, or have some stones fallen off it? And also the yew hedge whether it has been kept clipped or is untidy. I
wish I could take a turn at it, I think I should enjoy just such employment now rather more than I did when I was at home. Just to sit on the lawn and talk as we used makes my heart ache to think on it.
Ever your most loving,
Gabe
The letter had suffered many readings in the early part of its life, and none in the latter. Rebecca fancied, even after two years kept hidden away behind her lavender bags, that it still retained a smell of some kind of sweet thing that didn’t grow in Edinburgh; flower or dung, she could not tell which.
At first she had thought he had moved, or was coming home. But he had not come home. She had grown so dizzy from the waiting that some days her father had sent her to bed. And then the waiting was just a habit, and the letters, when they turned out to be from her aunt and not from Egypt, did not make her heart fall so hard. After her letters had grown desperate and pleading, and she would have got them back if she could, she had met Alexander outside Church’s shoe shop on some business for her father just after his death. He had recognized her and had taken off his hat and kept her for twenty minutes or more. Each time she moved forward, or took a breath to say, Well, I probably, I ought to be, I should be, I really ought to be getting along, Alexander started another conversation. He wondered how they had not met before, living so close by. And in that wondering, managing to convey surprise, at himself, that he had lived so long and managed to miss her. Rebecca had been astonished to find herself so suddenly chosen, and by someone as handsome as this.
It had seemed the answer to a prayer that she had thought but not exactly spoken.
CHAPTER 13
Rebecca had fallen asleep in the parlour and when she awoke she had the idea she had been asleep all day. The house was quiet, no sign of the servants, nothing left for her out on the dining-room table. No matter, she was not hungry. She would go up and read The Moonstone, then. Rebecca went up the stairs in bare feet and paused at her door. She could hear someone in her room – Jenny, no doubt, putting things away.