Pertwee wouldn’t talk about their mother. But Liddy remembered her quite well. She remembered playing with the doll’s house, sitting on her lap, her lavender-scented skirts spread out about her, and her telling them about her childhood with her sister, Charlotte. Of the churchyard behind the house. Of the nightingales that sang all night long in May and June. Of the hoop they would chase around the perimeter of the new house with a stick, and the ice on the windows. For Christmas one year when she was quite little her father, the vicar of the church behind the trees, had given her a snowglobe – a large one of figures on an ice rink, for which he had sent to London. She remembered seeing a fox tearing out a chicken’s throat, and the dormouse in its nest curled tightly up in a hedgerow, and the throngs of butterflies flickering around the buddleia that fringed the kitchen garden. ‘Yes, we ate our own apples, and potatoes, and chickens, and sheep’ – for Liddy, when small, wanted a pet lamb. ‘One day, my darling. I’ll take you there one day.’
It had never happened, for Mother and Lydia had stopped on the Heath one day to help a young woman crying out for help for her child’s nursemaid, who had collapsed to the ground in a fit. Mother had escorted the girl – she was no more than thirteen or fourteen – back to Hampstead Road, walking with her arm around her, the mother and her child hanging back, weeping. Afterwards Mary used to wonder: who was this lady? Why couldn’t she have helped her own servant? Why was it only their mother who had wanted to help?
Within two days Mother and Mary grew very sick, and only Mary survived. They were nursed together, at the start, until Mary was removed from her mother’s room. Her mother had screamed for them not to be parted. Mary remembered that. Mary had nearly died, but now was left only with the scars of her illness.
Because as a young girl she wearied of being stared at, and so went out and about less than the other two, and because she was known to be delicate, having so very nearly died, Mary was generally agreed to be the most docile of the three Dysart children. Which was strange, since her mother had always said she would cause trouble. ‘Mary is a world-shaker,’ Liddy recalled Mother telling her. ‘Mary will change things.’
And Mary didn’t feel docile. Certainly she was kind to starving dogs, whom Pertwee tormented with scraps of meat, and wrote letters to her aunt, and listened patiently to Father’s interminable stories of his time training at the Bar, his dismissal and rough treatment at the hands of those in his Chambers, his foresight in buying shares in Carbolic Soap Balls at 4 per cent, his foresight in proposing to Miss Helena Myrtle so soon after her aunt had died and left her and her sister the lion’s share of her fortune. ‘I got to her before the others, you see,’ he’d told her daughter, stroking his whiskers carefully. Mary liked to pretend he forgot she was Mother’s daughter when he said such things.
The doll’s house had been in the nursery. Mother used to open it up every teatime, and they would all play with it, the fire lit, bread and butter and jam served by Hannah. When Mother died, Father decided to hire a nursemaid for the children. He said it would be good for them to have some discipline. After Liddy was rude to Nurse Bryant over not being allowed more jam on her toast, quite soon after Nurse Bryant’s arrival, the doll’s house was moved to the drawing room, where the children were only allowed to play with it on Sunday afternoons. They spent the rest of the week staring longingly at it. They were lucky children, Nurse Bryant told them, to have such a doll’s house.
When, several weeks later, she burned their other toys – Pertwee’s wooden Jack-in-a-box, and Liddy’s rag doll Anna, and Mary’s spinning top – she said they were lucky to have had anything at all and must learn not to complain.
They were also lucky, she told them, to have their dead mother so close by, where they could pray for her soul.
(‘Such a pity,’ Mary had heard Aunt Charlotte say to Hannah on one of her last visits to her poor sister’s children. ‘Surrounded by all that death, most vexing!’)
So very much rested on the outcome of this little walk in the garden that May afternoon. Ignoring the rustling in the trees from the cemetery, which scared her even during the day, Mary leaned forward the better to hear what the couple before her might be saying.
The gentleman had long since left behind the travails of youth. He was a solemn, poker-straight figure in black frock coat and silk top hat, greying hair waxed into magnificent sideburns. He was Highworth Rawnsley, since Oxford days the dearest friend of Mary’s father. As he walked, he inclined his head, very slightly, because of his precariously balanced pince-nez, towards the younger figure at his side. This was Liddy, of course, who twisted her figure eagerly to his unbending one, straining to catch his speech, her lovely face turned to him like a flower towards the sun.
Mary watched, her heart in her throat. She adored her sister more than anyone or anything in the world and she had long ago now realised that she had to leave the house to survive. Of that at least she could be certain.
‘No, my child,’ Highworth Rawnsley could be heard to say to some remark of Liddy’s and at that he took her hand in his, holding the little gloved fingers. ‘Ah! My innocent little one!’
‘But—’ Mary heard her sister reply, smiling up at him. The ribbon pulling her carefully ragged curls away from her face had slipped somewhat, and the curls themselves were drooping. Mary froze – this angered Bryant, she knew, but Liddy didn’t seem to have noticed. She never seemed to care, she took punishment better than either of the others. Always had done, since she was torn from her mother, one shoulder broken, almost lifeless, a rag doll, Hannah was fond of telling them with relish. ‘Greenish blue, twig-like limbs and most ugly, you was. And you just lays there quiet as anything, little bubba, that shoulder must-a been agony, but you never cried, you never did!’
There was a grass stain on Liddy’s newly pressed dress, a smudge on her cheek. Oh Liddy, how will she punish you this time. Mary turned away, unable to watch any more. She must say yes to him, if he proposed. And he would, today, surely –
They had discussed Mother that morning, sitting on Mary’s bed, as she tightened the rags in Liddy’s hair.
‘She liked Highworth?’ Liddy had asked, biting at her nails as Mary pulled the strips of material tighter again. ‘I should like him too if it were true.’
‘She did, dearest but . . .’ Mary had hesistated. ‘Though it is true he was Father’s best man and their dearest friend, I suppose it does not necessarily follow that he would make his daughter a good husband. Still . . .’ She trailed off.
‘But it does not follow that he would not,’ said Liddy, brightening, for she had been nervy all morning, twitching at the slightest sound – the previous night Nurse Bryant had discovered her looking out of the window when she should have been in bed, and this morning she was so sore down one side of her thin ribcage and leg that she said she had not been able to sleep. Mary, examining the bruises that morning, had felt the rush of anger and shame that followed every such disclosure by her sister and as so often, though she was the younger by almost two years, a protective desire to shield her impetuous older sister, who seemed not to foresee in the way she herself did what behaviour could provoke each beating, each humiliation.
The previous winter she had worked up the courage required to tackle Father about it, venturing into his study one cold January evening. But he had dismissed her. ‘It will all come right again, my dear,’ he’d said, as though she had been telling him of a carriage’s broken wheel or a smashed plate. But he had obviously spoken to Nurse Bryant about it the following day, for a deep bowl of water was left outside on the terrace to freeze over on the surface, exactly where Liddy could see it during her lessons, and that night her head was held down in the bowl for so long she had blacked out afterwards.
So, though Highworth Rawnsley was fifty and Liddy only sixteen, though he licked his lips too much and had a curious sibilant rasp, though Mary thought he grasped Liddy’s slim arm too roughly, and though after their marriage he would take Liddy, her bel
oved sister and dearest friend in all the world, away to Perthshire, where she would be required to keep house for him and his bedridden mother, Mary was certain that this was a safer course for her than remaining at St Michael’s House with Nurse Bryant. Mary hoped that perhaps her passionate, impetuous sister was not indifferent to Mr Rawnsley, that she enjoyed his company, the way he made a pet of her, his kindnesses . . . Oh dear Lord, let him be a kind man. Please. Often, when someone started at the sight of her in the street, or when a child pointed at the smallpox scars and let out a wail, or when people smiled far, far too kindly at her, Mary wanted to stop them, and say:
I am glad of these scars. I am afraid when my sister says that they have started to fade, for with them I am untouchable. I am safe from the attentions of any man. Do not you see? I am the lucky one.
A muddled riot of shouting from the hallway brought Mary abruptly out of her reverie. She blinked, turning away from the couple in the garden, who were locked in close conversation. From the hall the shouts grew louder, so, tidying her lace collar and smoothing her skirts, Mary moved towards the noise, stopping to shut up the doll’s house on the way.
‘Oh goodness, Pertwee,’ she said, as she emerged into the hall. ‘What nonsense. Here you are and you’ll disturb Father.’
‘Father won’t mind!’ said her brother, his face flushed. He glanced swiftly at her: one of their secret looks, shame and terror mixed with alcohol, and pain sluiced her heart, like lemon on a wound. But, just as swiftly, he was his exuberant, charming self again, throwing his bowler hat on to the coat rack and thrusting two coats at his friend. ‘Here, Ned! Here’s sport. Hang that up, will you, and Dalbeattie’s too!’
‘Dash it, Dysart! I’m not your servant,’ said the aforementioned Ned, and he threw the coats back at Rupert, who gave a too-loud bark of laughter.
‘Ned’s a rough and rude chap, Mary. The roughest of them all! But, look, I’ve promised you for an age that I’d bring him home and see, I have now, haven’t I? Ned, compose yourself. Let’s make introductions. Dalbeattie, you don’t know my sister, Mary, do you?’
A tall figure, disentangling himself from his scarf, glanced at Mary then, obviously flustered, patted his waistcoat with long fingers, blinked several times and held out his hand to her, gazing into her steady brown eyes. ‘How do you do, Miss Dysart. Ch-charmed to meet you. Charmed.’
‘How do you do,’ she said, trying not to blush as he pumped her arm up and down. She had seen him once before, calling for her brother before a walk upon the Heath. This was Lucius Dalbeattie, who was studying at the Royal Academy School of Painting with her brother, though he had recently become apprenticed to an architect.
She liked Dalbeattie, and the way that his eyes met hers directly and didn’t range over her shoulders and hair, anywhere but her pockmarked face. Her small hand rested in his large one for a moment longer; each glanced again at the other, as though taken by surprise, before Mary removed her hand gently, glancing up at him once more as she did so.
‘I’ve heard an awful lot about you, Miss Mary,’ he said.
I know all about you. He was from a wealthy Scottish family, and he and Ned had talked often of building their own Utopia, where they all might live and work in freedom.
‘Only he’s engaged to a girl he’s known from birth,’ Pertwee had told them both. ‘So it won’t happen just yet, for he has to marry her, though I don’t think he’s awful keen on it, save for the fact it was his Pa’s dying wish he do so. Unite the estates, and all that. So I will carry on painting, and Ned too, until Dalbeattie’s ready to build. You can live there if you wish, my dear sisters: we will allow women in Utopia.’
‘To pick up after you and get you out of scrapes and mend your clothes? Oh, how very fortunate for us,’ Liddy had said, for she had less patience than Mary for Pertwee’s schemes.
As he smiled at her and backed away, Dalbeattie collided with Pertwee, who slapped his other companion on the shoulder.
‘This is Ned Horner, Mary. I’m sure you must be pleased to make his acquaintance, for I’ve talked of little else but him since we met. The girls are quite wild to know you now, Ned.’ He winked at them both. ‘Isn’t it true, Mary?’
‘It is,’ she said, wishing Pertwee were not so vulgar, and terrified he would be discovered in this state. ‘It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr Horner.’
‘And you, Miss Dysart. How do you do,’ he said, and he shook her hand, smiling.
He was fairer and slighter than her strawberry blonde, barrel-chested brother and younger, by a couple of years, Mary could tell. His face was thin, and though he wore a three-piece suit like his friends, it was much mended, far shabbier than theirs. The hand that grasped hers was cold, even on this fine May day, and his eyes were an intense grey-blue. As they shook hands he said, seriously, ‘It is a very great honour to make your acquaintance, Miss Dysart. Your brother is a dear comrade of mine . . .’ Then he paused and, turning away, emitted a small, slight belch.
‘That’s torn it!’ Dalbeattie whispered, and Rupert said:
‘I say, Ned, what? Don’t show us all up.’ He turned to Mary, frowning. ‘Horner here sold a picture this morning. To Charles Booth. Charles Booth, Mary!’ His face cleared into a smile, the muscles adjusting slowly. ‘A terrific painting, a truly splendid piece, no – don’t blush, Ned, it’s true.’ Pertwee smiled at Mary. ‘A Meeting. We saw it at the S-Summer Exhibition. Liddy was mad for it, do you recall?’ Mary nodded, for she remembered the painting, of a group of young people – two women and four men – on the Heath, standing informally and talking. But more than that she struggled to remember, though her brother and sister had been in raptures over it, over the Exhibition itself, so much so that they had visited it again, by themselves. Mary had disliked it: the rooms so close and awfully crowded, the throngs around one or two pictures in each room; everything mostly so brown and sombre and formal. Old men, moustaches, hands twisted behind their backs, watching: watching her, Liddy, the paintings, the crowd. Liddy, however, had adored the whole experience.
Mary said now, ‘I remember your picture most clearly, Mr Horner; I congratulate you.’
‘That’s why I brought old Ned here, so he could see Liddy, and she could tell ’im herself.’ Mary opened her mouth, aghast, as Pertwee scratched his head. ‘You see, Mary, we went to celebrate, at Lockhart’s Dining Rooms, to toast our future Utopia. Had some chicken, cooked with chestnuts. Chestnuts and chicken. Delisus – delishusus.’ He stopped. ‘Chicken and chestnuts. Might have had some champagne. Whatnot.’
‘That’s torn it!’ Dalbeattie hissed again, desperately.
‘Pertwee!’ Mary hissed, but the unrepentant Pertwee was pushing his friend Ned down the wide hallway, past Father’s study, towards the dining room.
‘Oh, hush, Dalbeattie. You’re not a respectable married man just yet – stop being such an old goat. Let us go this way, Ned, and I’ll fetch us more refreshment!’ He giggled.
‘Pertwee,’ Mary called again, as quietly as she could towards her brother’s retreating back. ‘If Father hears you, you’ll be thrown out on the street, especially after the last time. Please, dearest. Do exercise some caution.’
But her brother merely threw her a smirk and gave her a small wave. Ned turned to her. ‘I’ll make it all right, Miss Dysart,’ he said, with his sweet, lopsided smile.
‘Nearly starved to death last winter, dear old Ned,’ her brother had told her recently up in the Rookery, while Liddy wrote and Mary sewed and Pertwee painted them, and where the three siblings were at their most content. ‘He won’t accept Dalbeattie’s charity, and it’s fearful hard to help him. There’s no money, his circumstances have been most difficult. His mother died when he was a babe, and his father is a carpenter, an honest fellow, too honest, for he takes too long to do the work and charges too little, though I’ve seen some of his pieces, and they are beautiful. You may see where Ned gets his talent from.’
Liddy, dozing by the fireside, had raised her silver
-blonde head. ‘Is he good?’
‘He’s a marvel,’ Pertwee had said frankly. ‘By far the best student at the Academy and the youngest. He can render in minutes a scene I could not complete in a month, and you’re in it, when you look at it. Remarkable, really. And he whittles, too – makes little figures in wood. His hands have to be busy, he says. He barely sleeps, eats nothing, wears his clothes to threads – he’s not like me, not at all, he lives for his art. I do love him as a brother, he’s a most endearing chap.’
Now, from the depths of the house, Mary could hear her father rousing himself from his post-prandial nap. ‘Hannah?’
‘Oh dear,’ she whispered.
‘Hannah! Dear dear Lord, where’s me blasted stick? I can’t find it! Hannahhh!’ And there came the jangling of the bell, and, from the kitchen below, the sound of scurrying, of chairs being scraped back, which meant Miss Bryant might soon be on the move, too.
But the gang of three troublemakers had danced happily past her and out into the garden, limbs flailing about like gadflies on a pond, and as Mary peered in terror she could see them, dashing in and out of the rows of box: tall, helpless Dalbeattie, her own darling brother, fat, saturnine as Bacchus, and Ned Horner, leading the way, the sunlight catching his face and throwing its angular beauty into sharp relief.
Footsteps, brisk, quiet, pattered behind her, and liquid seemed to sweep through Mary’s person, though her mouth was dry.
‘Good afternoon, Miss Dysart,’ came a low voice behind her. ‘Do you know where I might find Miss Lydia?’
‘Yes, Bryant. She’s in the garden.’
‘I’ll fetch her. The tea-gown has come back from the dressmaker’s and it’s time we measured her.’ Miss Bryant, small, sleek, like a blackbird, moved past Mary, who suddenly put her hand on her arm.
The Garden of Lost and Found Page 11