‘Do not go on my account. Ned and Liddy do not return for another week. The children crave company – they are too isolated here. Stay and keep them amused, if not me.’ Mary heard her voice as she spoke. It was not her normal voice. It was full-throated, passionate. ‘I will not marry you, but I will love you. Stay here, if you may. The children will be glad. And I will be glad.’
He twisted his mouth. ‘Mary, there is no woman alive like you who would talk in these terms.’
‘You forget the circumstances of my life thus far, Dalbeattie, which surprises me. I went from the care of Nurse Bryant to living with Pertwee. I saw things in Paris you would struggle to comprehend.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I choose to ask you to stay knowing what might happen.’ She swallowed, knowing that if she crossed the river now there was no going back.
‘Aunt Maryyyy – I am frightened.’
‘I take a nap in the afternoons after lunch, when the children play outside and they do not come back until teatime.’ Suddenly she could hear Liddy’s most earnest instructions to her as the carriage pulled away a week ago. ‘Don’t let them go roving far on their own, darling. Don’t let them meet any strangers – oh, darling, have them take care!’
She blinked, shutting the high, clear little voice out. ‘Hannah, our dear maid from London, is visiting her sister at Tooker’s Farm, this week. She is coming to collect them every day. They will go with her to the farm, to play with the puppies.’ She could hear her own voice was shaking. ‘Do you understand me?’
‘A devoted family retainer with a puppy at a nearby farm?’ He gave a small laugh. ‘One could almost imagine you placed Hannah there merely to be rid of them.’
‘Perhaps.’ She smiled, and then paused. ‘They’re delighted to see her—’ She stopped. Something about Hannah’s pale, withdrawn face, her tiredness, had made her uneasy. Something she could not quite unpick, which she meant to – Bryant blackmailing her about something, she thought, or perhaps she was simply fatigued, unwell . . .
She was at the door. She took a deep breath. ‘I must go to John. Will you come? I will not drive a fork into your thigh.’
His face was half-shadow. ‘By God. Yes. Mary – yes. Yes. I will come to you tomorrow. In this – in this house.’
He took her hand, and kissed it as she opened the door. She caught his face to hers, and kissed him again, astonished at herself, at the response. ‘In this house.’
The next day, when the children had gone to play, and the afternoon haze settled over the house, he came to her once again. Zipporah was shut away in the kitchen, Dymphna was chattering to Darling in the garden, and upstairs their voices floated up to them, as Mary locked the door and stood in the centre of the room, and slowly, shaking, removed her worn and much-mended cotton tea-gown, with his help, his clever fingers deft on the tiny buttons. ‘I’m nervous,’ he told her, as his lips skimmed the soft skin on her neck, as he pulled away the straps of her underclothes, peeling away layers of her, like an unfurling flower. ‘I will be careful—’
‘I am nervous too,’ she said, though she was not. She had never been more certain of anything. After these obstacles, of worldly clothes and conventions, were removed, they were naked, on the bed. His hard, lean, tall body drawn in to hers, like coiled springs, released. That day, he made her his own, and she possessed him, and the day after, and the day after that. The cleft of his chin; the base of his spine; his hooked toes, his wide, muscular thighs, the dark hair everywhere. The strength of him, when he was so gentle. The fury of her, the feverish longing, when she was so demure.
The sound of the children, returning, chased out of whatever tree or boat or lane they’d got to, was the sound that they must get up, rise, smooth out the smiles from their cheeks, the wrinkles on their clothes, the fingers that soon became yet more deftly adroit at fastening buttons and hooks, the better to restore themselves as they had been. To pretend.
It lasted for five days.
Chapter Twenty-Three
‘What dear children, Mrs Horner.’
‘I’ve told my husband, we shall come to the Academy every day of the Summer Exhibition. I must see this painting every day! Their little faces . . .!’
‘It’s awfully interesting . . . I suppose it’s a meditation on the fleeting nature of childhood, of time. I really do think it’s quite remarkable, Liddy. Ned has taken an apparently decorative subject and made something truly profound from it. It is art in its purest form: the two-dimensional rendered into a scene, into an ideal, and thence into our deepest psyche: life, death, time – nature – Poussin. It’s a modern Poussin.’
‘I love the wings. They’re so pretty. I do so awfully want the wings, Mama.’
Day after day, standing beside Ned at dinners and receptions, hearing the exclamations and adulation, watching people staring at The Garden of Lost and Found and at her children, and missing them so much after a while it was a pain she didn’t notice but carried with her. And though she had been the one to suggest to Ned that they go back together to London in triumph, after only a day or two she was sick of it, and longed for Nightingale House again.
‘The future is yet unwritten; the past is burnt and gone’
She had written it down on a piece of paper for him when he was struggling to find an inscription for the plaque on the frame of The Garden of Lost and Found. She had left it in the Dovecote, on his mixing table, before they left for London – he had rushed into her in the study. ‘Yes,’ he had said, eyes shining, and pulling her to her feet, laughing, had kissed her, hard. ‘Yes, my darling, that is the one.’
Every detail of the hanging was supervised by Ned: where it was placed, so that the varnish did not catch the light. The frame carved by Ned himself, a wide, swirling, sweeping decorative gilt edging, to emphasise the subject matter within. The lettering of the inscription: the past was dead, the future was theirs, they must look forward . . . keep on going, no matter how hard at times.
But that was before she came back to London. Liddy had to admit she found Piccadilly and Regent Street terrifying: motor cars were everywhere in London now, and there were more hackney carriages and horse-powered buses than ever, too, as well as street-sweepers, hawkers and newspaper-sellers taking their lives into their hands every time they stepped into the road. Buildings were still draped in black for the old dead queen: the new king and the new century not quite things one was used to, not after so long. In London, it seemed reality was different, it was all noise and acclaim and chatter, not the reality of mending torn clothes and planting seeds.
Thank God John was too young to fight if the war with the Boers dragged on, as it seemed likely to. John was a timid chap – already Liddy could see he would be unsuited to fighting. He might be an artist, like his father, perhaps an illustrator of stories, like Arthur Rackham, for he loved observing others. Or a teacher. Then Eliza – she should be denied nothing: if her brother must go away to school, though Liddy could scarcely bear the idea, then so must Eliza. She might even go to university. Might drive a car, even vote: Mother had told Liddy and Mary it would happen in their lifetimes.
Standing in the crowded main gallery of the Royal Academy, Liddy looked around, wanting to enter into the festive feeling. This was Varnishing Day, the crucial moment before the opening of the Summer Exhibition when artists were invited to view their work hanging in its allotted place and were allowed, if they so desired, to make final touches to their canvases. The great beasts of the Victorian era – Leighton, Millais – were all dead and gone. Something had been released with the end of the late Queen’s reign; the atmosphere here, as out on the streets, was different. Electric, buzzing with something.
She smiled mechanically at the wife of a society portrait painter and inclined her head politely at an old and decrepit essayist who had criticised Ned’s work in the past. There was M. George surrounded by a crowd of admirers, leaning forward to make one finishing touch to his Leda and the Swan. He was stroking his moustache like a villain in a Gi
lbert and Sullivan operetta. Liddy’s mouth twitched – Alphonse George was always so certain of his own genius; she rather admired him for it.
At her side, Ned grasped the arm of someone firmly, roughly shaking hands with him. She turned to see Thaddeus Galveston, smiling at him intently.
‘A great day, sir.’ He raised his top hat to Liddy. ‘Madam, your servant. I was glad of your company yesterday.’
Galveston had thrown a dinner party for Ned and Liddy in his rooms in Berkeley Square. A collection of old friends and new investors, rich men. It had been a late night: Ned had stayed behind to talk to Galveston over port and had not returned to their hotel until the small hours. ‘We were discussing what we might do after the exhibition, with this painting. I stand firm this time, Liddy! This painting must transform our fortunes.’
Poor Ned, it had transformed his immediate fortunes: he looked the worse for it this morning. His face was pale, his eyes were bloodshot in the stifling heat of the crowded room.
Liddy shook hands with Galveston and allowed her mind to drift, imagining she was back at home, feet dangling in the stream, Ned beside her, children on the rug, eating mulberries from the tree . . . a fresh cooling breeze . . . the smell in her nostrils, not of heavy perfume but of June summer flowers . . .
‘Liddy!’ Ned was tugging her arm. ‘What do you say to Galveston’s proposal?’
Liddy blinked. ‘Forgive me.’ The riverbank, the dancing figures, the garden, the scents of home vanishing, like a scene from a toy theatre being slid back into place out of sight. Galveston tapped his cane smartly on the floor.
‘You have driven a hard bargain, Ned! But here we are. It is as follows: that I buy from you The Garden of Lost and Found for an agreed sum. This sum to include the copyright of the painting. Do you understand?’ She nodded, patiently. ‘And that we tour The Garden of Lost and Found, in the manner of The Light of the World, and so forth. I have associates in Canada and Australia whom I have telegraphed ahead of the exhibition’s opening. They have all expressed a great desire to see it. This—’ He raised the cane, levelling its silver point slowly around the crowded room, as if it were the barrel of a gun. ‘This has already proved my interest correct. They’re queuing up to see it already, look: why not charge them to do so? It’ll be the making of you. You can paint what you want for the rest of your life.’
‘What do you say, Liddy?’ said Ned.
‘Wise of you, to ask your wife’s opinion, for she’ll have one, no matter what you say!’ said Galveston jovially, and Ned turned back to him, with a dangerous note in his voice.
‘I make no decisions without Liddy. She must decide.’
‘Don’t do it,’ said Liddy, flatly. ‘Don’t sell the copyright. Give Thaddeus the painting if you want, for the right sum. But not the rights. Look at Bubbles.’
‘Mrs Horner, I’m grieved you’d suggest I’d sell The Garden of Lost and Found to a soap manufacturing company and allow it to be used in such a cheap way. Millais was a fool – he should never have—’
‘Dear Millais was an artist, not a businessman, as well you know,’ said Liddy, smoothly.
‘I . . .’ Ned hesitated. ‘I’d a mind to do it, we’d agreed last night, Liddy, my love. Galveston will pay us . . .’ and he leaned towards her, and she caught the aroma of last night’s cigar smoke and port wine on his hair and skin, and underneath it all the same old Ned smell, ‘. . . one thousand pounds.’ He stepped back, and watched her reaction, smiling his boyish smile.
‘Exactly,’ said Galveston, carefully. ‘If you agree to this, the final debts on the house will be paid off, and the future of your children entirely secured – you’ll have made the final step necessary. A legacy.’
‘Ned – what kind of legacy is it if you have no control over your work?’ she began, urgently, but then there was a disturbance in the crowd, a parting of the ways. Idly, she turned, and as if in slow motion saw the crowd swell, then vanish, melting away until one man was left, a fellow in a suit with tassels around it – she couldn’t understand it for a second. Look, there he was closer now, the tassels bouncing: what a strange thing to wear to Varnishing Day! He was a young fellow: his moustaches were nothing like Georges’s, she found herself thinking, sandy, bristling, very poor—
‘Mrs Horner,’ he was saying, and he handed her a note, and before she opened it the dread caught at her heart, her legs turned to water – the note was wet with his sweat, his forehead was glistening, and his eyes – His eyes did not meet hers. His voice was too high-pitched as he said, ‘You must go home at once.’ And the words started to swim in and out of her hearing ‘Your daughter – the carriage—’ and she could not understand him, wondered if she was mishearing what he said.
And through the waves of terror and nausea, she heard Ned’s voice. Eliza. Eliza, Liddy – oh dear God. We must go. We must go.
And they were running, running out into the Great Courtyard, and when she saw the horse and carriage already waiting, the crowds parting, fear written on their faces, she knew she had not misheard. It was bad. Something was very bad.
Chapter Twenty-Four
They had moved her to the studio, out of the house, so she might not infect anyone else. She was in there as the carriage screeched to an almost-halt and Liddy flung herself down to the ground, Ned following. Mary was waiting, an apron working between her fingers, her face pale as a ghost – she grabbed her sister by the arm, pulling her towards the open door of the studio.
Little Eliza sat up propped against an easel on a mattress on the floor, gasping for air – her eyes bulged, her small hands clutching and releasing a wooden object in her hand. When she saw her mother tears came to her eyes, but she could not speak, only rasp, stridently trying to catch more breath. Her face was a ghastly yellowish white, her nightgown rucked up around her knees. Her fingers opened and closed more frantically.
‘My God—’ Liddy sobbed, pushing the doctor out of the way and falling to the floor beside her daughter. ‘What is it? What’s – please say it’s not—’
‘It’s diphtheria, I’m afraid, and it’s well advanced,’ Doctor Carritt said, moving out of the way. He put his hand on Liddy’s shoulder. Behind Liddy, Ned gave a strange choking noise. Liddy turned to look at him, terror in her eyes. She saw Mary, her face buried in her apron, her shoulders heaving with silent sobs. ‘There’s an outbreak at Tooker’s Farm. The farmer’s wife has already died, and her sister who’s visiting from London is mortally ill. Hannah Blount – they said you knew her.’ He smoothed back Eliza’s hair, shaking his head, a momentary flare of despair flickering across his face as he looked at the young girl propped up against the easel. ‘There, my dear.’
The Strangulation Disease – that was what they called it in Highgate, when the funerals of those who died were held at dead of night to avoid the risk of contamination. Liddy shook her head.
‘The milk,’ Mary said, her voice tight. ‘Was the milk not treated properly, is it the cause?’
He turned to Mary. ‘I suspect it’s Miss Blount. Hannah Blount at the farm. She complained of feeling unwell when she arrived, but she was sent away suddenly by her employer from London to visit her sister. Most irresponsible of them.’ He looked at his fob watch, then at Eliza’s thin wrist which he was holding. ‘I fear she’s the cause . . . Her fever is very high. The pulse is extremely fast. She can’t breathe, I’m afraid. The membrane builds up on the throat, it grows at this stage with—’ He broke off.
Liddy cried out then turned to her husband. But she saw that he, too, did not know what to do.
‘There are antitoxins one can administer, but I do not have them, and we are running out of time . . .’ And Liddy saw Dr Carritt glance at Mary with a curious expression, which then she did not understand. ‘The only option left is most risky. I have to consider administering a tracheotomy,’ said Dr Carritt, his thin, elderly face hollow with weariness. Eliza made a grunting, horrifying sound and her mouth fell open, gasping for air. Then Liddy could see,
at the back of the throat, the white coating on the tonsils – like putty, or mouldable plaster, as if someone had stuck it there. So incongruous. She pulled her daughter into her arms, pushing her hair out of the way – the cloud of unruly, tangled gold, stroking her forehead. She was very hot.
‘No! Liddy, you must not – the infection risk—’ cried Mary, as Liddy cradled her daughter in her arms, smelling the sweet honey scent of her soft hair, feeling her cool smooth skin against hers, but Liddy ignored her. Eliza’s eyes, cobalt-blue chips of colour in the gloom of the room, bore into Liddy’s. She tried to say something. Liddy kissed her, and Mary gasped again and Ned turned away.
Looking around her, Liddy saw canvases knocked to the floor, or listing against the walls, paint powders knocked over, feathered spots of bright, bold rainbow colours in this awful scene. Gently, she released Eliza, stood up, stumbled against the wall, steadied herself and walked out into the bright sunshine. Birds were singing loudly, rudely, in the bushes.
‘What – what is a tracheotomy?’ she said.
‘They cut the throat open to aid breathing, but it is very risky,’ said Dr Carritt to her and Ned, without preamble. ‘One in four fails. And she is very young. Nevertheless, without it I am certain she will die. I don’t have the antitoxins to hand to treat her. She will die without them. I am sorry, Mrs Horner, I must be frank with you. This is a dreadful business – diphtheria has been on the decline but where it occurs it is a most awful disease and it is partiularly virulent in children.’
There was a gold-and-grey dappling of the sun through the new leaves on the branches. Yes. They were leaves that had appeared while she had been away. Liddy turned to look at the house, the dear house, saw the church, the graveyard behind.
‘How is Hannah?’ she said, after a while.
‘Very unwell. I am afraid I do not expect her to survive.’ Doctor Carritt stood up straight, and exhaled. He gave Liddy a careful, kind smile. ‘You must decide now, I’m afraid. I can perform the tracheotomy here and now – but Mrs Horner, there’s no time to waste.’
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