‘Puss, puss,’ Roger called, flicking his fingers gently in front of the cat’s nose. ‘Pussy ...’
Suddenly there was a sharp tap on the door, and the superior voice of Robert was heard saying: ‘If you are ready, young man, the mistress will see you in the drawing room.’
In a trice the cat, frightened by the disturbance, had gone and left Roger faced with grim reality: the prospect of meeting again his awesome ‘aunt’, of trying not to feel inferior in front of the servants. His courage drained away, and his impulse was once again to fling himself down on his bed and weep.
Disconsolately he opened the door to find Roberts waiting outside with a supercilious smile, a hand extended towards the staircase.
‘This way please, sir.’
Downstairs Roger found that Mrs Martyn had changed her dress. Although she was just as beautiful and elegant, she looked a little less formidable in a long tea gown of some soft shimmering material, and several rows of pearls at her throat.
She was standing by the window, and as he entered she turned and he saw in her arms the cat – the beautiful cat who had sat on the wall staring imperturbably at him. It had obviously just jumped into its mistress’s arms as she opened the window. It looked over her shoulder and gave Roger a smug, blank stare before putting its face up to be caressed by its mistress.
‘Oh, what a lovely cat!’ Roger cried, running up to his aunt eagerly and putting out his hands.
Lally immediately stepped back, a look of disapproval on her face.
‘Did you wash your hands, boy?’
‘Yes mum ... Aunt,’ he lied.
‘Show them to me.’
Roger put them both behind his back.
‘I said show them to me.’
Roger extended them palms outwards.
‘You are lying, Roger.’
‘I saw the cat,’ Roger said, his eyes bright with happiness, the expression on his drawn, pale face ecstatic. ‘I was talking to him from my bedroom window. Oh, I’m so glad he lives here. I’m so glad he’s yours. May I hold him, mum?’
‘No, you may not, and he is a she,’ Lally said coldly, withdrawing even further. ‘Her name is Coral and she is a pedigree cat, a very rare breed. Little boys with dirty hands are not allowed to touch her.’
‘Oh, I’ll go and wash them then, mum.’ Excitedly Roger made for the door.
‘Roger,’ Lally commanded sharply.
‘Yes, mum?’
‘I am your aunt, your Aunt Lally – please do not forget it. Now, wash your hands in the cloakroom downstairs and then you may come and stroke Coral.’
Really he was quite a dear boy, Lally thought, hand to her chin, one leg crossed over the other as, for the very first time, she took afternoon tea with her son.
When she had brought him back to Montagu Square she was acting on impulse. She had no real feeling for him – just a sense of duty, she told herself. That was all it was.
Maybe the weather had something to do with it; the fact that, at the time of her visit it had been raining, although so capricious was the English climate that the sun was now shining brightly. Maybe it was the dark, miserable house; the smell of unwashed clothes or the pathetic look on the face of the child to whom, after all, she had given life, and whose prospects in the circumstances in which he was being brought up appeared very grim indeed.
Roger lay on the floor playing with the cat who, now that she had been properly introduced by her mistress, seemed delighted with her new friend. Quite forgetful of her pedigree, she rolled wantonly about on the Aubusson carpet displaying her soft, furry stomach, all four paws in the air.
‘I love her,’ Roger said, looking up at Lally ecstatically. His face was completely transformed, and the thought crossed her mind that, one day, he might look at her like that.
But did she deserve it? Suddenly overwhelmed with guilt, she stretched out a hand to him.
‘Come here to your aunt, Roger, and let me look at you.’
Reluctantly he dragged himself away from Coral, who was not the least perturbed and began to wash herself, particularly where he’d ruffled her fur.
Roger went up to Lally, who touched his face. She had never held him or stroked him since he was a baby. Maybe a peck on the cheek during her rare visits; visits she could scarcely now recall. They had been more duty visits, after all.
‘You’re a dear boy, Roger,’ she said after a while, ‘and I want you to know why I have taken you away from the Mountjoys.’
‘Yes, Aunt. Am I never to go back?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Lally said after a pause. ‘I have a husband who is called Prosper. You must call him Uncle Prosper. He is a businessman and very, very rich. He is away at the moment, but he will be back in a day or two, and by that time I shall have purchased for you a complete set of new clothes: new suits, new pyjamas, new underclothes, socks, shoes and hats, new everything. Tomorrow I will send you to a lady who is going to help you to speak properly. You will spend all day with her, and all the day after that, and the day after that, until you have not a trace of the vulgar, awful accent you have now. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Aunt.’
‘That’s better. I want you to be a gentleman, Roger, because you are one by birth, and I want you to impress your Uncle Prosper and be very nice to him, correct and most polite. I want him to like you, do you see, dear boy?’ She began, very gently, to stroke his brow, brushing back his fair hair, and suddenly her eyes filled with tears.
‘Oh, Roger,’ she sighed, ‘it is very important that you get on with Uncle Prosper and that he likes you. Because if he doesn’t, I may have to send you away again.’
Roger turned round and looked at Coral lying again on her back, her ablutions finished, but this time she was winking coquettishly at him.
Roger thought of the cat and the house, the soft warm bed all to himself, the lovely smell of Aunt Lally and the sensuous feel of her hand as she stroked his face, the glint of jewels on her fingers.
‘I will be very nice to Uncle Prosper,’ Roger promised, looking limpidly at Lally, ‘because I like you and I like the cat, and I feel now that I would like to stay here.’
***
Dr Hardy looked at the young girl who, her brow bathed in perspiration, her breathing very rapid and irregular, lay tossing and turning on the bed before him. He put a hand on her wrist, feeling her pulse, and noted that her skin was dry and hot to the touch.
At his request Emily’s maid drew back the bedclothes and discreetly pulled up the girl’s nightdress so that the doctor could examine her. In the background, a hand to her mouth, Margaret waited anxiously.
Dr Hardy stooped and looked closely at the rash on the girl’s chest, on her legs and her stomach.
He nodded to the nurse, who drew down her nightdress and tucked the sick girl up in her bed again.
‘Scarlet fever,’ he pronounced, turning round to the distressed mother. ‘How long has she been like this?’
‘She began to be ill yesterday, Doctor,’ the nursemaid said in a frightened voice. ‘I called her ladyship at once.’
‘Yesterday she didn’t seem quite so ill,’ Margaret said. ‘Her little friend Sarah Wills is unwell too, and they were playing together only a few days ago.’
‘I’m afraid in that case they both have scarlet fever,’ the doctor said. ‘I will prescribe medicine and hope that the illness takes it course. Above all you must keep down the fever with cold washes several times a day.’
Dr Hardy was shown downstairs and offered whisky by Sir Guy as he gave him and George the news. Margaret remained upstairs with her daughter.
‘Any other signs of sickness in the family or the staff?’ Dr Hardy asked. ‘Is Carson all right?’
‘Carson is still at school,’ Guy said. ‘The term has not finished.’
‘Just as well. Scarlet fever is an unpleasant thing.’
‘She will be all right, though, won’t she, doctor?’ Guy asked, suddenly sensing that the doctor was les
s than his usual cheery self.
‘She has a bad attack, Sir Guy, I’ll be honest with you. Her pulse is rapid, her temperature very high. We must trust in the will of God and hope for the best.’
Guy stood up and with a fearsome expression on his face rushed over to Dr Hardy. He grasped him by the lapels, upsetting the good doctor’s whisky all over his waistcoat.
‘Don’t you dare let my daughter die, Hardy. She is my life. If you think there is any remote chance of that, you’d better stay here and make sure that she lives. Do you see?’
‘Really, Sir Guy!’ Dr Hardy stepped back as George pulled his father away. ‘Scarlet fever is a most virulent disease for which there is no effective treatment. The fever must take its course, reach its crisis, and then, as I say, with God’s help the patient will recover.’
‘With your help too, Hardy,’ Guy said, jabbing a finger in his stomach. ‘It’s no use standing there drinking my whisky and taking my money if my daughter is going to be allowed to die.’
‘Hush, Father, hush!’ George threw an apologetic glance at the doctor. ‘Dr Hardy has done all he can. Threatening him won’t help.’
‘I’ll look in again tonight,’ Dr Hardy said nervously, putting down his by now empty glass and taking up his black Gladstone bag. At the same time he vigorously dabbed his waistcoat with a handkerchief, looking both affronted and annoyed. ‘You won’t do yourself any good either, Sir Guy, if you lose your temper so readily,’ he said. ‘You should be careful of your own health too.’
‘And so should you.’ Guy made as if to fly at him again. ‘If my daughter dies I shall proclaim you a charlatan and a fraud, so when you return you had better bring some more effective medicine or another doctor ...’
By this time Dr Hardy had reached the door, and as he sharply turned the handle and threw it open a servant came tumbling down the stairs and rushed towards him.
‘Lady Woodville would like you to come upstairs again at once, sir – Emily is having convulsions.’
Dr Hardy spent the rest of the day at Pelham’s Oak, and even Guy admitted that he spared no effort to save Emily. By evening her fever was a little lower and, emerging from her state of semi-consciousness, she opened her eyes and saw her parents and her brother standing anxiously at her bedside. In the background was Dr Hardy, still in shirtsleeves, and, behind him, her trusted nurse Nora.
With overbright eyes she looked at them, and her cracked, dry lips parted in an effort to smile.
‘Oh, my darling,’ Guy said, kneeling beside her and taking her hot hand. ‘We have been so very worried about you. How do you feel, my precious?’
‘I love you, Father,’ she said. Then she closed her eyes again, but from the even rhythm of her breast it seemed that she had sunk into a deeper, less fitful sleep.
‘Is the crisis over, Doctor?’ Margaret asked, standing at the side of the bed opposite Guy and taking up a limp hand to feel the feeble pulse.
‘She is certainly a little better,’ Dr Hardy said cautiously, slowly rolling down his sleeves. ‘I think tonight will be crucial; but tomorrow, I hope .... I’ll look in again first thing in the morning.’
The doctor put on his coat and picked up his bag, once again preparing to depart. George went down the stairs with him to the massive front doors which were held open by two footmen.
‘I must apologise for my father,’ George said. ‘He has been a very, very worried man. You see he so adores Emily, the only girl.’
‘I quite understand,’ Dr Hardy said a little stiffly, for he too was tired and anxious. A medical man was unaccustomed to being attacked by his patients; usually they were only too grateful for what he could do. However, he had no wish to lose a patient, especially one from a wealthy and well-known family. It did one’s reputation no good at all, and as it was there were already too many doctors crowding into the district and setting up their brass plates.
‘Your father has always been an excitable man. But it does the patient no good even to appear to be worried about them. If they sense the anxiety, inevitably their temperatures soar even higher. Try and keep your father calm, George, away from drink and out of his daughter’s room. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘Thank you, Dr Hardy,’ George said.
He watched the doctor’s carriage depart and when he turned to go back inside his heart was heavy. His sister was so weak and emaciated that he wondered how much fight she had left in her.
Margaret Woodville stayed by Emily’s bed all the time, relieved occasionally by Nora or one of the maids. It was agreed that Guy was too overwrought to stay for long in the same room, and George repeated to his parents what the doctor had said: if Emily felt the anxiety her temperature would rise. Margaret, on the other hand, was a calm, almost unfeeling presence, going about her sickroom duties as quietly and as capably as she went about everything else. Not that she loved her daughter any the less; but she was a woman, and she was more experienced, had suffered more pain and was also more skilled at concealing her emotions.
‘Take your father downstairs,’ she said after Guy had got up from where he had been kneeling beside Emily’s bed and stooped again to place a longer kiss on her brow. ‘And don’t let him come up again. Give him plenty to drink and see that he goes up to bed.’
‘The doctor said not to let him drink, Mother.’ George looked doubtful.
‘I think this is an occasion when we must disobey the good doctor; now do as you’re told.’ His mother gave him an affectionate pat on the cheek before going back into the sickroom and firmly shutting the door behind her.
George went slowly downstairs, thinking what very different people his parents were: his father mercurial, boisterous, romantic; his mother calm, undemonstrative, reserved, slow to show affection.
Yet Mother had always been the real presence in the house, her reliability a source of strength. His father was something of an enigma to George, who was his exact opposite in temperament. He didn’t understand people who drank too much, lost their tempers too easily, or made rash judgements. The talk the other evening about his sacred vocation was quite typical of the kind of reaction he had had from his father all his life; impetuous, ill thought out, irascible. His father had yet to apologise for that, but no doubt he soon would.
When he got to the drawing room Guy was pouring whisky, and as he lifted his glass to his mouth his hand already shook.
He gave George a bleary look and then went to sit in front of the fire.
‘She will be all right, won’t she, George?’ He gazed trustfully at his son, as though only he, with his direct line to God, could give him the spiritual consolation he needed.
‘I thought she seemed a little better, Father,’ George replied cautiously.
‘She’s less red, not so hot,’ Guy nodded. ‘Hardy is a good man. I was wrong to do what I did, but then, I’ve been so wrong in so many things, George. I’ve been a rash, impetuous man, and I’ve made a lot of enemies.’
George poured himself a very small whisky and, replacing the stopper in the decanter, went over to his father’s side and drew up a chair next to him. ‘It is no use blaming yourself for what is happening to Emily, Father. It is nothing to do with you or your past or your life.’
‘But it is,’ Guy insisted, slightly slurring his words, which made George suspect his father had already had a very large amount of whisky in a very short time. ‘Don’t you see? It is. It is the judgement of God for my past life. I have been a bad father, George, worse than you know, a bad husband too. I have been an adulterer, George. I have.’ Guy shook his head sadly as though the experience had given him no happiness at all. ‘I have been to bed with many, many women. I have fathered at least two children out of wedlock that I know of, and maybe many more that I don’t. I ...’
‘What, Father?’ George looked at him incredulously. Maybe Dr Hardy had been right and he should not have allowed his father to drink. But on the other hand how could he prevent the head of the household from doing what he wished in
side it? ‘What are you saying?’
‘It’s true, George.’ Guy threw him a maudlin look. ‘I had one mistress who had a son. I don’t know what happened to him. There was another woman who became pregnant by me. I don’t know what happened to her, or her child. I’ve been a bad, bad man, George, and now God is punishing me.’ Guy put down his glass and, pulling a large handkerchief from his pocket, began to cry. ‘I have been a wicked man, a sinner, and God will take the thing I love most from me – my daughter.’
‘Father! I am not here to hear your confession. Maybe you exaggerate, I don’t know ...’
‘Oh, no exaggeration, George, I assure you,’ Guy continued in the same lugubrious manner. ‘Maybe I have not told you the worst. About how cruel I was to your dear aunt, Eliza, refusing to support her when she wanted to marry Ryder. Now he’s dead too.’
‘Yes, but that’s not your fault, Father.’
‘I could have been kinder to them, more understanding. And yet see how good Eliza was to me? How quickly she forgave me; and look how many times has she been here since Emily became ill, thinking nothing of the danger to herself or her own children. That woman is a saint, and I am the opposite of a saint. I think I have something of the Devil himself in me, George.’
‘Now look, Father, really.’ George eyed his father’s glass, wondering whether he should refill it or remove it for good. Maybe one last glass and then he’d take him upstairs to bed and let him sink into oblivion.
‘The Devil is in me, George, you should know that.’ With tears in his eyes Guy held out his hands to his son, who put an arm awkwardly round his father’s shoulders. ‘You tell me you have a calling, a vocation to serve God. What do I do? Do I listen as a father should, and give wise counsel and advice? No, I do not. I threaten you and mock you. Did I thank Dr Hardy and tell him he was a good doctor for trying to save my daughter? No, I did not. I mocked him and called him a charlatan. Oh, George!’ Guy cried wildly, throwing his arms around his son’s neck. ‘How I love you, how I regret my outburst against you. Pray, George, pray that God will spare Emily, and I vow to you that from now on I will be a changed man. Like St Paul on the Road to Damascus I will allow myself to be blinded by God’s light.’
The People of This Parish (Part One of The People of this Parish Saga) Page 44