by Clare Clark
Edward regarded her thoughtfully. Then he kissed her again. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘No interview.’
For once Maribel was grateful for the dismal English climate. Had it not been for the Indian’s nasty chill she was certain that Charlotte would have insisted upon accompanying them to Earls Court. As it was, it was the nursemaid who brought the boys to the mews behind Chester Square to meet them. The children wore feathered war bonnets and fringed chaps and galloped about on cloth-headed horses. The horses, affixed to broomsticks, had button eyes and ribbon bridles and luxurious manes of looped yarn. Above their heads the boys brandished wooden tomahawks. They capered and whooped about the stable yard, their feathered tails flying, their cries echoing off the cold cobbles.
When it came to the photograph the boys clambered onto the steps of the carriage, the Indian stiff as a totem between them. The boys had insisted upon him abandoning his overcoat which they considered quite unseemly for a real live Indian brave and, even from behind the camera, Maribel could see that the poor man was shivering. The horses shook their heads in their traces, their breath making clouds in the chill air. From his seat on the box John the coachman murmured at them soothingly in his soft Irish brogue. He sat with his back very straight, his dark cloak spotless, his eyes set on something very far away.
The boys raised their weapons and bared their teeth. Maribel took the photograph.
‘All done, my little Sioux,’ she said.
‘Just one?’ pouted Bertie, the eldest of the three. There was a smut on his cheek and his fair hair stuck up from his forehead in grassy tussocks.
‘Just one. I must take our Indian warrior to the doctor.’
The boys leaped from the steps, pushing and jostling.
‘Attack!’ the littlest one whooped. ‘Attack the Deadwood Stage!’ and the nursemaid was obliged to bear him away before the lacquer was chipped by the assault on the imaginary pale-faces cringing inside.
The Indian travelled on the box beside John. Alone inside the carriage Maribel pressed a finger into the buttoned hollows of the leather upholstery and tried to master the butterflies in her stomach. The doctor had replied to Edward’s letter. He would be there to receive them. He had said nothing of his wife, of course, but surely, Maribel thought, he would have told Ida she was coming. It was not every day that a stranger delivered a Red Indian to your door.
The traffic was atrocious. On Finborough Road the gas company were repairing the mains and the surrounding streets were crowded with conveyances impatient with the long delay. John was an able driver, skirting drays and hand barrows and traders with their donkey carts, squeezing through arches and lanes hardly wider than the carriage’s wheels, but still Maribel tapped restlessly with her toes on the floor of the brougham, as though her own nervous energy might power them through the traffic more swiftly. When the carriage stopped completely for several minutes in a narrow street, she pushed down the window, unable to contain her exasperation. In the middle of the thoroughfare, and impervious to the vehicles obstructed by her trade, a white-aproned dairy maid milked her cow directly into the jugs of several waiting customers.
It was almost noon when they finally drew up in front of the doctor’s house. John called out to the horses, then jumped down from the box to open the door for Maribel. As he folded down the steps she fussed with her skirts, her gloves, her cigarettes which she put first in the bag she wore around her wrist, then in her pocket, then once more in the bag. John waited as she straightened her hat and smoothed the line of her coat collar, his expression blank. His was a strikingly kindly face. The previous week two Irishmen had been arrested in Islington, accused of plotting to assassinate the Queen during her Jubilee procession. The men had been in possession of several dynamite bombs provided for them by the Americans. There were no bombs for the Red Indians, no attempts to blow up the White House, the House of Representatives in protest at the illegal seizing of land by the capitalists. It was a great deal simpler to take the natives’ part when they were not your natives.
On the pavement she fiddled again with her collar, patting her hair into place beneath the brim of her hat. It was a respectable street. There was no sign of the mean, dirty-yellow terraces that huddled about the showground. The houses were good-sized, solid and white, fenced in with glossy black railings of wrought iron. The pavement was kerbed and adorned with a row of spindly fruit trees, so new that they were hardly more than sticks. Maribel thought of the devastated orchard at Inverallich and she tugged hard at the cuffs of her gloves, pulling the kid taut. Despite the season, one of the trees was flowering, its leafless branches dotted with frail white blossoms like torn scraps of paper. Maribel reached up and took one. It smelled of coal dust and of cold. She crushed it between her gloved fingers, dropping it onto the ground.
The door was answered by a small, round woman wearing a sprigged dress wrapped about with a canvas apron. There were smuts on her face and her hair was dishevelled. She stared at the Indian, her mouth open. ‘Well, I’ll be blowed,’ she said cheerfully, shaking her head. ‘You’d best come in.’
Maribel and the Indian followed the woman into a small and spartanly furnished parlour at the rear of the house. When she walked she rolled a little from side to side, as though she had rockers for feet.
‘You’ll have to excuse us,’ she said. ‘We’ve the sweep today and we fair don’t know if we’re coming or going.’ She left them to wait, Maribel on an upright horsehair chaise, the Indian leaning against the window frame. He was shivering more vigorously now and several times his head jerked forward, as though he fell asleep standing up. In the cold white light of midday his pallor was ghastly.
Now that she was in Ida’s house Maribel felt calm, almost happy. She looked out of the window into a small garden, its twin brick paths scattered with crumpled yellow leaves. The flower beds were winter-bare, spiked with hard-pruned rose bushes. In the centre of a rather muddy lawn a stone cherub on a plinth held up an amphora. A plane leaf adhered to its chest like a mottled shirt front. There was a wrought-iron bench, a low table. There was clematis on the wall and what looked like honeysuckle across the low branch of the old plane tree, drab and straggly in winter but pretty, she imagined, when in flower, their blooms cascading in soft veils, their sweet perfume scenting the air. It might be a pleasant place to sit when summer came.
She could hear muffled voices in the hall, the bang of the sweep’s hinged brushes in the brick chimney. The Indian coughed, a low unresolved hacking. Maribel stared at her gloved hands in her lap. It did not seem so impossible, now that she was here. She would explain to Ida exactly what had happened, that confiding in her husband was the closest she could come to confiding in Ida. She would hold Ida’s hand and it would be the way it had always been. If she asked Ida not to tell then she would not tell. Edith wept and confessed everything but Ida had understood the importance of secrets. She had always understood everything.
On the other side of the wall a baby began to wail. I lost a son. He was six weeks old. Suddenly she was not sure where she was going to start.
The door opened.
‘Mrs Campbell Lowe? How good of you to come.’
She had forgotten the mellifluous voice, its actorly quality. Then you know our grief. There was no longer a mourning ribbon on his watch chain. She stood, held out her hand. It shook a little.
‘Not at all. How do you do, Dr Coffin?’
The doctor was even slighter than she remembered him. His steel-rimmed spectacles made his eyes look larger than they were. Had he worn spectacles before? In her agitation she could not recall. The tip of his nose was pink. Around his neck he wore a stethoscope with ivory earpieces and a trumpet made from polished wood.
‘Quite well, thank you,’ he said. ‘So this is our runaway.’
He crossed the room to the Indian, who stared at him stupidly and then closed his eyes. The doctor lifted his eyelids, one after the other. Then, taking his wrist, he set two fingers on the Indian’s pulse.
‘Do you know him?’ Maribel asked.
‘By sight, certainly. I examined them all when they first arrived in London. We could not risk contagion. This one was in good health, though I recall some inflammation from a poorly healed fracture of the right fibula.’
Gently he steered the Indian to a wooden settle. There was a similar one at Inverallich in the back hall, its chest seat stuffed with picnic blankets and broken croquet mallets. The Indian sat, his head lolling against its panelled back as the doctor took the stethoscope from around his neck, settling the earpieces in his ears. He pressed the wooden trumpet against the Indian’s chest and listened. In her own throat the pulse beat like a poem, steadily, the words measuring out the silence: Where is Ida? Where is Ida?
The doctor lowered the stethoscope. He frowned.
‘His lungs are congested and his fever is very high. Has his condition deteriorated since yesterday?’
‘I’m afraid so. He coughed a great deal but he did not seem feverish. Only cold and very hungry.’
‘He ate?’
‘Like a starved man.’
Dr Coffin nodded gravely.
‘Thank you for bringing him. Colonel Cody will be most grateful for your trouble.’
‘It was nothing. I am glad that we are able to return him to where he belongs. He must have been very afraid.’
Without a fire the parlour was unpleasantly cold. She shivered, rubbing her arms briskly with her hands. The doctor cleared his throat.
‘Well, I must not keep you,’ he said. ‘Our Indian friend has taken up a great deal too much of your time already.’
‘Not at all.’
‘Goodbye then, Mrs Campbell Lowe.’ He held out his hand. ‘And thank you.’
Maribel hesitated, a tightness in her throat. Surely he would think it rude not to offer her a cup of tea. Where was Ida? His hand was still extended. She shook it. She could not think what else to do. The doctor opened the parlour door.
‘Mrs Elliott?’ he called and he nodded at Maribel, standing aside so that she might pass through. Maribel did not move.
‘I am rather thirsty,’ she said. ‘Do you think perhaps I might have a glass of water?’
‘Mrs Elliott!’
‘I don’t wish to put anyone to any trouble. Perhaps if you could direct me to the kitchen?’
Across the corridor a door opened and the stout woman who had let her in put out her head.
‘What is it now, sir?’ she asked testily.
‘Have Billy bring round the trap. And tell him to be quick about it. We’ll need blankets too and a hot-water bottle if you can manage it. We must get our Indian to the hospital. I am sorry to be uncivil, Mrs Campbell Lowe, but if I could ask you to excuse us –’
‘Why not take the brougham?’
Even as she said it she knew she should not. Charlotte had appointments and she had sworn to have the carriage back by one o’clock at the very latest, but that was before she had known how ill the Indian was. A trap would be cold and uncomfortable and might worsen his condition. Besides, Charlotte never managed to stay cross for long.
The doctor shook his head.
‘You are very kind but we have imposed upon you quite enough already.’
‘I insist. You will take him to the West London, I assume?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Then that’s hardly any way at all. John can take you and collect me on his way back.’
‘I couldn’t –’
‘Please don’t argue, Doctor. Think of the poor Indian.’
‘Well, I suppose – if you are quite sure?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘Then thank you. Mrs Elliott?’
He leaned down, placing a hand on the Indian’s arm. The Indian half opened his eyes. The doctor murmured something and slid his arm beneath the red man’s, gently raising him to his feet. The housekeeper bustled in, a folded blanket in her arms which she handed to Maribel, so that she might take hold of the Indian’s other arm. Maribel followed as they supported him through the hall to the front door. His legs moved unsteadily, as though the bones had softened.
At the door Maribel gave John his instructions.
‘And the mistress?’ he asked.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll settle things with her.’ Maribel turned to the doctor. ‘You will let us know how he does, won’t you? We should like to know.’
This time the Indian travelled inside the brougham, the doctor beside him. Mrs Elliott shook her head as the carriage rattled off down the street.
‘Today of all days,’ she muttered to herself as she turned back towards the house.
‘Mrs Coffin,’ Maribel said, hurrying after her. ‘Will she be home soon, do you think?’
Mrs Elliott did not turn round.
‘Friday’s orphans. She’ll not be back a while yet.’
‘But you expect her for luncheon?’ Maribel persisted. ‘The carriage will be an hour or more, I imagine.’
‘She didn’t say nothing about no luncheon. But then we wasn’t expecting visitors, not with the sweep and all. You’d best wait in the back parlour.’
‘The back parlour? Don’t you think – I mean, I hate to be rude but it’s perishing in there.’
Mrs Elliott stared at her, dumbfounded.
‘We’ve the sweep.’
‘So you said. Do you think I might wait in the kitchen?’
The kitchen was warm, the range lit. Maribel sat in a bentwood rocking chair, a patchwork cushion at her back, as Mrs Elliott rolled out pastry and cut it into circles for jam tarts. It was plain that the housekeeper thought the arrangement most improper but Maribel did not care. She rocked backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, until the pine dresser with its willow-patterned china swayed and her eyelids grew heavy and marmalade cats ate crumpets with honey and the door slammed and Ida took off her hat and shook out her plaits because she was still only eleven and wore a sailor suit of serge to her job at the zoo.
‘Mrs Elliott? I am home.’
Maribel blinked sleepily. Ida stood in the kitchen door. She wore a plaid coat with brass buttons and the same ugly brown hat she had worn to the Academy. Her freckled face was pink from the cold. She sighed as she peeled off her gloves.
‘Please tell me the sweep is almost done,’ she said. ‘It must be colder in the hall than in the street.’
Mrs Elliott cleared her throat, jerking her head towards Maribel.
‘Hello, Ida,’ Maribel said, the smile swelling in her, pulling at the corners of her heart, full to bursting with the warmth of the kitchen and the pinkness of Ida’s cheeks and the sweet warm smell of jam tarts baking.
Ida gaped.
‘I am so very glad to see you,’ Maribel said softly.
Ida’s hands twisted her gloves into a rope.
‘Mrs Elliott,’ she said without turning round, ‘perhaps you might check on the dust sheets in the front parlour.’
‘I’ve already done it, ma’am.’
‘Then perhaps you might do it again.’
Clashing the pots in the sink Mrs Elliott glared at the clock on the mantel.
‘Them jam tarts’ll need taking out in a minute.’
‘I’ll take care of the jam tarts.’
Mrs Elliott sucked the insides of her cheeks. Then she wiped her wet hands on her apron.
‘Three minutes past,’ she said. ‘Or they’ll burn.’
Ida nodded, her neck hardly moving. There was a stiffness about her, a held-in quality, as though her back hurt. As Mrs Elliott pitched out of the room, closing the door behind her, Maribel rose to her feet.
‘Ida,’ she said, holding out her arms. ‘Oh, Ida.’
Ida took a step backwards and her round cheeks hardened into corners. Maribel reached out and touched her arm but Ida shook her off.
‘What in God’s name are you doing here?’
‘I brought the Red Indian. Didn’t your husband tell you?’
‘No.’
‘I can
’t believe I’m here. After all this time. You look just the same.’
‘What is it that you want from me?’
‘To see you. To talk to you. Ever since I found out you were here, in London –’
‘It’s not enough for you that your husband is to go to prison? You want to drag us all down with you, is that it?’
‘Ida, don’t. Listen to me. Let me explain. I said something to your husband –’
‘How dare you? How dare you come here? This is my house.’
‘The Indian was ill. I – I thought we could talk.’
‘About what, Peggy? There’s nothing to say.’
‘Ida –’
‘Please go.’
‘Ida!’
‘How shall I explain it to my husband if you are still here when he gets back?’
‘He already knows. We agreed that I should stay.’
Ida’s face was white.
‘What did you say to him?’
‘Nothing. At least nothing about us. I thought we might tell him together. He took my carriage. I said I would wait.’
Ida put her hands over her face. She did not speak. ‘I can hardly believe it,’ Maribel said. ‘You, married. I think perhaps I thought you would be eleven for ever.’
Ida was silent.
‘I’m glad for you. He seems a good man. I should like to tell him, if he is to be trusted. He can be trusted, can he not?’
Ida gave a little cry, her hands hard against her face. When she took them away again Maribel could see the white imprints of her fingers on her forehead.
‘Get out of my house,’ she said and the words were hard and unexpected as a slap.
‘Come on, Ida,’ Maribel protested. She laughed shakily. ‘Don’t be like that.’
‘Get out of my house. Get out and don’t ever come here again.’
‘Don’t say that. You don’t mean it. How can you mean it?’
Anger shrivelled Ida’s face like salt, shrinking her eyes and pressing black lines around her mouth.
‘Why did you come here, Peggy? Have you not disgraced us all enough?’