“You must be quite lonely while she is away,” said Beatrice. She was smiling, and he knew she was teasing him.
“I’m keeping busy this summer.” He was flustered by her friendly challenges. Lucy often teased him, but she always maintained a charming deference, and he indulged her from all the advantage of superior age and knowledge. “I go around with old Dr. Lawton some afternoons,” he added. “There is a whole array of interesting cases among the poorer cottages.”
“I expect the country doctor is suitably impressed?” asked Beatrice.
“Not at all,” admitted Hugh. “He has known me since infancy and thinks me quite as much a fool as when I was scraping my knees in the orchards with my cousin. But he has forgotten more medicine than I can imagine learning, and I find it humbling to try to be of use to him.”
“If one cannot transform one’s age, it is perhaps enough to be useful,” said Beatrice. She sighed, exchanging her teasing tone for sincerity. “I hope I may aspire to some usefulness.”
“I hope you will be able to be happy as well as merely useful,” said Hugh. “This town has always been a very tranquil refuge for me, but you may find it quiet after your life of travel.”
“I would settle for being a hermit,” she said. He noticed that her eyes lost some of their light. “After the past year, I crave only to be allowed my work, and my rest, away from the stupidities of society. I shall be like Charlotte Bront?’s Lucy Snowe, content to tend her little school for the children of the merchant classes.”
“Well, I’m afraid there are a number of charitable committees and ladies’ groups in the town,” said Hugh. “I doubt they will leave you alone for long. My aunt has threatened to keep a cricket bat in the front hall to see them off.”
“Thank you for the warning,” said Beatrice, smiling. “I shall give my landlady instructions that I am never at home.”
—
Beatrice was sorry that she had left Hugh Grange at the high street, and that upon her arrival at Mrs. Turber’s double-fronted cottage she had casually declined to wait for Agatha Kent before entering via the larger of the two front doors. She was used to the inspection and approval of lodgings and had many times, and sometimes in other languages, firmly negotiated terms and arrangements on behalf of her father. But whereas the very particular requirements of a well-regarded man of letters had always been treated with respect, if not instant agreement, by landlords of several countries, the simple requests of a tidy spinster did not meet with similar patience or courtesy. Mrs. Turber’s fleshy, well-fed face had expressed surprise, a not inconsiderable suspicion, and eventually an undertone of fury as Beatrice questioned her as to cleaning methods, mealtimes and menus, the delivery of coal and hot water, and the proper airing of bed linen. It was sobering to acknowledge that she probably should not have commented on the smeared window glass. Mrs. Turber had become so red in the face that Beatrice had asked if she were quite well and volunteered to look upstairs by herself while Mrs. Turber went for a sit down in her own quarters.
In the tiny bedroom, she rested her head against the cold, rough plaster of the wall and gave herself to the slack-jawed silence of a weary grief. She was conscious of a wish to shout at her father, who had abandoned her so absolutely. He would have found this funny—looking around the squalid cottage with his eyebrow raised as he gently pointed out that death had not been his first choice; that he had, in fact, been called away before finishing several important pieces of work. She imagined he would have a few words to say about her impetuous flight to Sussex and the entirely unnecessary choice to submerge herself in the grim world of salaried work. With her eyes shut, she felt a corner of her lip twitch at her own foolishness. The daughter of Joseph Nash, she reminded herself, did not succumb to self-pity. Her tiredness eased, and she opened one eye halfway and gave the cottage’s bedroom a squinty look.
It had a bowed aspect, as if it were a cabin on an old galleon. The walls seemed to lean on each other above the sagging floor, and the ceiling had a slight convexity, like the underside of a large white dinner plate. The window, while smeared, had pleasant old speckled glass in leaded muntins and a deep ledge. The furniture was appalling. The bed’s posts were spindly and pocked with wormholes. The dresser had lost half a sheet of veneer and two of its blackened brass handles. The rush bottom of the single chair mirrored the sag of the floor. Beatrice stirred herself upright and lifted a corner of the rag rug with the tip of her shoe. It was greasy with dust and smelled of what might have been men’s hair tonic. It reminded her that other people had undressed in this room, sweated onto the hard mattress, and used the china chamber pot that sat in a wooden box under the bed. Beatrice felt a twinge of regret for the white-tiled magnificence of the water closet at Agatha Kent’s house.
She stood up and gave a small bounce on the floor. At least it did not give. She walked to the window and looked at the deep ledge on the outside, which might hold a pot or two of fragrant mignonettes. The view was of the cobbled street and the front doors of the houses opposite. A pleasant Georgian door with white pilasters next to a low oak-studded Tudor one, black with age against freshly painted white daub walls. A window box of white lilies and a potted bay tree for the Georgian house, and a lead trough of scarlet geraniums for the Tudor, gave the street a gay, holiday aspect. The sun’s reflections off red-brick walls and clay-tiled roofs warmed the shadowed street and cast a glow into the room. Outside the bedroom, a small nook on the landing held a window overlooking the rear courtyard. She thought it might be perfect for her writing desk, but she would have to do some work to improve the view, which was of the outdoor water closet shared by both halves of the conjoined cottages and Mrs. Turber’s dingy sheets flapping on a line.
She could hear voices from downstairs, and as she descended the squeaky staircase, with its sticky baluster, she could tell that it was Agatha, speaking in a low, urgent tone to Mrs. Turber, whose voice was a suffocated squeak of indignation. Their conversation carried into the small room through a connecting door from Mrs. Turber’s larger quarters next door.
“All I’m saying is that I run a respectable house. Mr. Puddlecombe never gave me no trouble about hot water, and as for opening all the winders to let in the dirt, well…”
“I assure you Miss Nash is as respectable as I am, Mrs. Turber, and I’m sure she will be amenable to discussing what services can be provided.”
“A bit too respectable for her own good, if you ask me,” said Mrs. Turber. “People will ask what’s a girl that young doing on her own.”
“I have every faith that her being sheltered under your own chaperonage will still every wagging tongue, Mrs. Turber,” said Agatha. “Your name can surely never be associated with gossip.”
“Well, that’s as may be,” said Mrs. Turber, and Beatrice could hear a hint of satisfaction in her voice.
“Who among us would deny a young woman the right to make her own living when she is cast upon the world by the death of her esteemed father?” added Agatha with a catch in her voice. “Lady Emily and I are so appreciative of your sanctuary, Mrs. Turber.” Beatrice thought this was going a little far, but the loud sound of Mrs. Turber blowing her nose suggested that some hint of empathy had been elicited. Agatha Kent, she reflected, was quite the politician.
“Well, I can’t be asked to bring in hot water more’n once a week,” she said. “Orphan or no, I’ve got much to do and my legs won’t stand for carrying them heavy jugs all day. Mr. Puddlecombe never bathed more than once a fortnight.”