by Adele Geras
“How do you do?” she said. “I’m your Cousin Clara. I don’t suppose you have any recollection of the occasion because it was so long ago, but I was charged with looking after you when you visited the Great Exhibition. Do you remember?”
“Oh, yes,” said Lizzie. “I thought that the whole exhibition was nothing but a forest of skirts and trousers because that was all I could see, till you lifted me up.”
“Yes, I remember,” Clara said with a laugh. “You were very heavy for me and I handed you to Papa after a little while.” Her smile made Lizzie feel properly at home for the first time.
“This is Lucy,” said Uncle Percy, moving her on to where her youngest cousin was sitting in a small armchair. Lucy’s pinafore was very white indeed and her shoes were polished to a high shine. She wore a dark red ribbon in her hair, which curled in ringlets onto her shoulders. Lizzie thought that she might have been called pretty if she’d had a more agreeable expression on her face.
“You’re very small indeed for someone who is twelve years old,” said Lucy. Lizzie would have liked to answer: And you are quite old enough to have some manners, but she recalled what she’d promised her mother and looked down at her feet instead.
“Stop being so rude,” Lucy’s brother told his little sister, stepping forward and shaking Lizzie by the hand. His sandy-coloured hair fell almost into his eyes and he pushed it back with one hand. “I’m Hugh. Take no notice of Lucy. She may be the youngest, but she’s always giving herself airs.”
“Children, children,” said Aunt Victoria mildly. “There must be no quarrels or disagreeable talk on Lizzie’s first day here. What will she think of us? Hugh, you may show Lizzie around the house presently, but Elsie will be here in a moment with the tea.”
Just then, the door to the parlour flew open and a tall, dark man with a scowl on his face and a black patch over one eye came into the room. He glanced neither to right nor left, but strode to the window and remained gazing out at the street. He seemed to disturb the air as he went, and leave a kind of shadow behind him. Hugh, who was standing close to Lizzie, bent to whisper in her ear.
“Poor old Uncle William does get angry very easily. It’s as well to keep out of his way when he’s in a temper.”
“What makes him angry?” Lizzie whispered back.
“It’s hard to know exactly,” said Hugh. “Anything might. Best to avoid him altogether.”
“William, dear,” said Aunt Victoria. “This is Cecily’s girl, Elizabeth. Lizzie. She’s come to stay with us for a while. Won’t that be delightful?”
Lizzie trembled at the idea that Uncle William might come over to greet her and shake her hand. How would she bear to look at that dreadful patch? Even the glimpse she’d had of it as Uncle William crossed the room had caused her to shudder. She imagined what was underneath it (a great hole of blackness where his eye had been) and knew that it would give her nightmares for a long time to come. But Uncle William didn’t move or turn round. Lizzie thought she heard a grunt coming from his direction, but it was difficult to be sure. Aunt Victoria seemed much relieved when Elsie, the maid, came in carrying the tea tray. Lizzie looked at her uncle’s back and shivered. He seemed so angry and unhappy that she felt a sadness come over her as she thought about him. He did not take his tea with the rest of the family but remained at his post by the window, gazing at the twilight until Elsie came in to draw the curtains and take away the tea things.
Lizzie felt suddenly very weary and wondered how long it would be before she was able to go upstairs and unpack. She tried not to think about what Mama might be doing, because she was quite determined not to cry after everyone had been so kind to her.
Chapter Three
In which Lizzie writes a letter home
October 25th, 1857.
Dearest Mama,
This is a very fine house, Lizzie wrote, and it will take me some time to grow used to it, when I have known only our little home till yesterday. There is a parlour and a drawing room and a dining room and a library and bedrooms on the upper floors and in the attic, and the kitchen and scullery and washhouse down in the basement and all the public rooms and the bedrooms very finely decorated in the most modern style…
Lizzie was sitting at the table in the schoolroom with Lucy on her first morning in London. It had once been a nursery, but the Frazer children had grown too old to be looked after by a nanny. Clara had left school and was now learning to be a lady in the company of her mother and grandmother. Hugh went to a boys’ grammar school at Westminster and Lucy attended Miss Jenkins’s Academy, near Sloane Square. Aunt Victoria had arranged for Lizzie to have lessons there as well, while she was in London. Hugh studied Latin and Science and Geography, and Lizzie wished she might accompany him and not Lucy. At Miss Jenkins’s, she was sure, all she would learn was French and Recitation and Bible Studies and how to paint in watercolours. Perhaps if she and Hugh became good friends, she thought, he might teach her some of the things he was learning.
Lizzie had always been allowed to look at her father’s books at home. Her particular favourites were the leather-bound volumes full of detailed botanical drawings of every flower and plant imaginable, and she also loved Gulliver’s Travels and The Pilgrim’s Progress. She remembered the terrible day when Mr. Bright had decided that such studies were not becoming to a young lady and forbidden her to take out the books and look at them. When she had disobeyed him, he had sold them to a bookseller and told Lizzie that she would be much better occupied with housework. Of all the dreadful things Mr. Bright had done, this was easily the worst. It wasn’t just the books, it was the memories of her father, which Lizzie felt had been torn away from her. Her mother had tried to console her, and promised her that when she was older, she would be allowed to read such things again, but Lizzie remained furious and upset for days.
Hugh had shown her round the house on the previous afternoon, and she was still dizzy from thinking about the number of rooms and stairs and landings and attics and from trying to remember her way around them all.
I am sharing a bedroom with Lucy, she wrote. It is on the second floor. Grandmama’s bedroom is on the first floor and Elsie and Cook sleep in the attic. So does Maud, the second housemaid. Uncle William’s room is across the landing from ours, and Hugh has the small bedroom next to Uncle Percy and Aunt Victoria’s. Lucy and Clara used to share, but now I’m here, Clara has moved into her own bedroom.
Lizzie wondered whether she ought to mention that Lucy had not been very welcoming, but decided against it. She had shown Lizzie the drawers into which she was supposed to put her things, and had made it quite clear that her opinion of the clothes Lizzie took out of her suitcase wasn’t very high. She had wrinkled her nose a little and said, “Your dresses are not very pretty. Not as pretty as Clara’s. Or mine. I expect that’s because you come from the country. Perhaps Papa will find you some clothes that you can wear in London.”
Lucy had also noticed the tea-caddy as Lizzie took it from the basket and set it on the chest of drawers.
“What’s in there?” she asked, rather rudely.
“It’s a walnut in a flowerpot. It will grow into a tree one day.”
“Hugh likes things like that,” Lucy said, making it clear that she cared not a jot for walnuts or indeed for any plant. “You ought to tell him about it.” She turned her attention to other matters, and didn’t mention the contents of the tea-caddy again.
Lizzie’s first night in London had been the opposite of peaceful, but she decided not to write of that to her mother either. It was sure to distress her. Aunt Victoria had come to wish Lucy and herself goodnight, and tucked Lizzie in quite kindly. She had even kissed her on the top of her head, but it was not the same at all as Mama’s warm embrace. The girls had each brought a candle in a candlestick to light them as they undressed, and Aunt Victoria blew these out before she left. Lizzie feared lying awake, because of being in a strange room and feeling a little homesick, but her tiredness was so great that she
fell asleep at once. Then, quite suddenly, she found herself wide awake again and staring into the dark. Lucy was snoring gently, like a cat lying by the fire. Lizzie smiled to herself, and thought how mortified her young cousin would be to know that she’d been overheard doing something as coarse as snoring.
That was when Lizzie heard the noise. What was it? A shouting from somewhere, but muffled, as though whoever was making the sounds was covering up their mouth. She sat up at once and gazed around her. She could see the jug and basin on top of the chest of drawers, but it was too dark to make out the rose-pattern painted on the china. She could just make out the shape of the wardrobe against the far wall. A line of light was visible under the door. There it was again: a shout and something that sounded like a sob. Someone was crying.
Lizzie jumped out of bed. She opened the bedroom door as quietly as she could, and understood at once that it was Uncle William who was making those terrible noises. She could hear them quite clearly now. His door was open and someone was with him. There was light coming from his room. Lizzie could hear a voice. Aunt Victoria’s? No, it was Grandmama.
“Hush, my baby boy,” she said. “You’re having a bad dream. See, you are here with us in London and all is well. Nothing to distress yourself over. See now, I’ve brought you a warm drink. Don’t cry, dearest. Take comfort from the fact that you are with your family and we all care for you and love you. There, there…”
Lizzie went back to her bed, and sat listening in the dark. Gradually, the sobs subsided and then faded away altogether. She watched the light from the lamp Grandmama must have been carrying disappear as she went rather heavily downstairs to her own bedroom.
Then Lizzie lay back against her pillows. Slowly, two tears crept out of her eyes and she wiped them away with a corner of her sheet. She couldn’t tell whether she was crying for her own mother, because she missed her, or for poor Uncle William, who had wept like a small child even though he was once a soldier who had served his country with such courage. I must be just as brave as any soldier, she said to herself. Mama would be distressed to think of me lying in a fine London bed and crying, so I will stop this instant. Lizzie made a great effort and managed to stem the tears, but it had taken her very many minutes to fall asleep again.
In the schoolroom, Lizzie turned to her letter again:
I think of you all the time, dear Mama, and long for your letters. Be sure to write every day and tell me of everything that is happening in the village. The garden here is very fine, though I miss the red and gold of the leaves on the trees around our cottage. Here, there are many shrubs, and a lawn and a border that will be full of flowers in the summer, but it’s not like our garden in the country. Hugh says the gardens at Kew are the best in the whole world. He goes there sometimes and I hope he may take me one day.
Chapter Four
In which Lizzie struggles to become more ladylike
On Lizzie’s second day in London, Lucy pulled her cousin by the hand and took her into the morning room.
“Mama,” she said. “Lizzie has not brought any needlework with her.”
“Perhaps she has left it in the country,” said Aunt Victoria, smiling at Lizzie, but raising her eyebrows as though waiting for an answer. She was reclining on a kind of half-sofa, upholstered in sage-green velvet.
“No, Aunt Victoria,” Lizzie said. “I’ve never done any needlework. Except for a little darning. I know how to do that, but Mama says my darns are more like thick scars than smooth sewing.”
She could see from the pinching of her mouth that Aunt Victoria was shocked and felt that Lizzie’s mother had neglected her education in this matter.
“Not even a sampler?” she asked.
Lizzie shook her head. “No, Aunt Victoria. Not even that.”
Her aunt sighed loudly and said, “Well, then, I must help you to begin one, and see that you learn the stitches. I would have expected you, at your age, to have mastered the first steps of the embroidery skills that should be part of every young lady’s education. Lucy is only eight years old but finished her first sampler last year. Come and sit beside me and we’ll begin on this piece of canvas. Here is your needle, and I will ask Elsie to find a sewing basket for you. I am sure there must be one somewhere that you can use.”
Lucy smirked and simpered when her mother’s attention was on Lizzie. Aunt Victoria didn’t notice, but Lizzie saw her and wished she could put out her tongue at her young cousin.
By the time she and Lucy returned to the schoolroom, Lizzie had decided that embroidery was quite the most tedious occupation in the whole world. She’d sat for an hour or more, dragging a thread of green in a silver needle through the canvas again and again, and all the while she was aware that her cousin and her aunt were sewing away at great speed, making tiny, dainty stitches in the fine linen they were hemming. Aunt Victoria looked over at Lizzie’s work and said, “Well, it is your first time, after all. Perhaps it is a mistake to expect too much today. I daresay you will improve with practice.”
Lucy was less kind than her mama. Once they were in the schoolroom, she remarked, “Your stitches are too big. My stitches are very small and dainty. Mama said so. She said I am an excellent embroiderer.”
“I don’t want to be any kind of embroiderer. I hate it. I’d much rather be in the garden with real flowers than making one from threads on a canvas.”
“That’s because you come from the country, where flowers are more common, I suppose. Here in London, we like our flowers on samplers, in paintings or in vases on the sideboard.”
Lizzie wanted to say: That’s very foolish of you. Flowers are best in their natural setting, but it was almost time for luncheon and she didn’t want to argue in front of the others, so she remained silent and contented herself with making a face at Lucy’s back as she left the room. Lizzie already missed helping Mr. Alton in his orchard and she made up her mind that when she was quite grown up and could please herself, she would find some way to work every day with growing things. She wondered if there were such people in the world as lady gardeners. All the ones she had ever heard of were men.
In the dining room, the whole family sat around an enormous table, covered in a cloth of dazzling white linen. Lizzie was relieved to be seated far away from Uncle William, who stared down at his plate without meeting anyone’s gaze. From time to time he took a mouthful of food, but he was deep in his own thoughts. Lizzie wondered why no one tried to speak to him. Perhaps they were as nervous of what he might say as she was. He looked just like a giant in a storybook, hunched over his plate and frowning at the food as though he were displeased by it. She couldn’t help fearing that if he were to open his mouth, what would come out would be not words, but terrifying groans and shouts.
Elsie brought in the mutton and vegetables and as soon as she had served everyone, Clara spoke. “I was visiting Papa’s shop this morning when Mrs. Barrett came in. She was telling us about Florence Nightingale. She saw her last week, stepping into her carriage. Can you imagine? I should love to make her acquaintance. In fact, I should like to be a nurse myself, and look after the sick and wounded as she did. Mrs. Barrett says that Miss Nightingale has started a school for nurses. I would like more than anything in the world to enrol in that school, Papa. Please, please say that I may approach the hospital – St Thomas’s I believe – and make enquiries. Please?”
Uncle Percy was so taken aback by this remark that he blinked and paused with a forkful of potato halfway to his lips.
“When you were younger, I remember,” said Aunt Victoria, putting down her fork and frowning at her daughter, “you did indeed bandage your dolls’ limbs, and pretend that your dolls’ house was the hospital at Scutari, but your Uncle William was fighting in the Crimea then. It was only natural for you to imagine yourself helping him and others like him. But I think nursing is a most unsuitable profession for a well brought-up young lady.”
Clara’s cheeks were pink as she answered her mother. “I think the work would suit
me.”
“Fiddlesticks,” said Grandmama, her voice echoing a little in the high-ceilinged room. “Childish games are a very different matter from the real care of the sick. Just think of the blood, Clara dear. And the possibility of catching so many dreadful diseases. The thought of a grandchild of mine wiping all manner of disgusting substances from the faces and bodies of the sick…well, it turns my stomach, I admit it.”
Clara whispered under her breath, “But it is not you, Grandmama, who would be attending to the invalids. It would be me, would it not? I know my own mind.”
“There is time enough for you to decide such things when you’re older,” said Uncle Percy. “You are only sixteen years old. We will consider the matter next year, perhaps.”
“But surely it would do no harm to make a few enquiries?” Clara asked. Her cheeks were scarlet now and Lizzie could see that she was making a great effort to keep her temper.
“I have no wish to discuss such things at the moment, Clara,” said Aunt Victoria. “We will consider your future again at a later date. For the moment, we must put thoughts of you nursing out of our minds and simply give thanks to Miss Nightingale and her ilk for all their sterling work during the late war.”
“She’s an angel,” said Uncle William, in a voice that sounded to Lizzie as if it were very seldom used. It was harsh and grating as if every word cost Uncle William pain to utter it. “I saw her, you know. At Scutari.”
“Indeed you did,” said Aunt Victoria, and everyone at the table turned towards Uncle William, eager to see what he said next, but he had fallen silent again, and began to move the food from the plate to his lips once more with a frown on his face.
Clara went on: “I could be an angel like Miss Nightingale. And I wouldn’t mind the blood. Nor the vomit. I’m not easily disgusted.”