‘Who’s to say if she’ll be alive or dead,’ Lucy said, as she sat with me by Mother’s bedside one Saturday. ‘By the time he comes, I mean.’
For the first month or so Mother had spoken every day, swimming up from the depths to say ‘Good morning, darling’. But as March moved into April it took her longer to surface. Edward was on his way, but nobody could say how long his journey would take.
I sighed. ‘Who indeed.’
We were both doing embroidery, Lucy with unthinking facility and I with a laboriousness I welcomed, since something had to be done with my mind and fingers while I took a rest from reading aloud. I was working my way through Ivanhoe, which, Mother used to lament, she had never read.
‘Where did those biscuits come from?’ Lucy asked.
The bag sat on Mother’s bedside cabinet, giving off a gorgeous buttery smell. My tongue was already tasting the delicious crispness of well-toasted shortbread. ‘Mr Kennet. I didn’t see him – the nurse told me. I suppose he didn’t realize she was beyond eating. It was extremely kind of him, anyway.’
‘Ellen. For someone with brains … they’re for you.’
I walked the five miles to Waltham, sat at Mother’s side for two or three hours, and then walked home again, reaching the Absaloms as the late April dusk fell. Mother began to sink more deeply into slumber. One evening Miss Dawes pushed delicately at the gate of the Absaloms. I was by the front door, having only just returned from Waltham.
‘Miss Calvert. I’ve come about the move.’
I turned and went back to her. There was no question of her entering my house. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You can hardly stay here,’ she went on. ‘With no one to look after you.’
I laughed. As if there’d ever been anyone to look after me.
Her dry fingers closed over each other, twisting her heavy silver rings. One had a ruby which on that day was a dull black. ‘Miss Calvert, you can stay with us. And we’ll help you to consider your future.’
‘You’re terribly kind,’ I told her. ‘But I can’t consider moving until Mother dies. This is our home, you see.’
Edward arrived on the tenth of May. I went to Waltham to meet him at the Buck’s Head. I entered into the gloom of the public bar, a place I had not visited in my life. There were no women, and no one sitting, for all that there were plenty of chairs and tables. As I made my way through the standing men one of them turned from the counter and said, ‘Ellen.’ I stepped back and put one hand to my face; I couldn’t help it, because he was six foot, walnut-brown, and endowed with a scar that ploughed across his cheek and pulled his lip down.
‘A cable parted.’ His voice was the same but deeper. ‘I was lucky it didn’t take my head off.’
‘Good God. Edward.’
He laughed. ‘Would you care for a shandy?’
‘I certainly would not.’ I had no idea what a shandy was. ‘Where’s your belt?’ I demanded, because his trousers were held up by a piece of thick twine. ‘The one you made a hole in with the awl?’
‘I sold it to get home. Ellen, you’re weeping.’ He himself was half-laughing. ‘Now, for pity’s sake. A cup of tea, Maisie,’ he called. ‘A cup of tea with sugar, please, for my sister here.’
There he was, a man, calling ‘Maisie’ off-handedly, though he must have known her not more than an hour. Of course, he knew how to make himself at home. He’d done so in all the seaports in the East. He pulled a chair out for me. I sat, the tears flowing down my chin. He proffered a handkerchief. I placed it squarely over my face and nearly choked with the effort of keeping the sobs from braying out. ‘I’m making a spectacle,’ I mumbled.
‘This is the Buck’s Head, not Bishop’s Tea Rooms. No one’s even looking.’
He’d been crying for Mother on the boat, in the Channel, to leeward, convinced she had died already. ‘I don’t know if she’d want me to see her. The state you say she’s in.’ He looked into his tankard. His lip drooped further. It dawned on me that he was afraid.
‘She just looks like a thin little old woman.’ I was gentle. ‘Nothing more alarming than that. I expect you realize they’ve been giving her morphine. That’s a drug—’
‘I know what morphine is, Ellen, thank you.’
We stopped at the butcher’s, another place I’d never seen the inside of. Edward fancied a stew; one like Cook used to make, he said, with everything melting. Then to the greengrocer’s: he was astonished to learn that I had no onions at home, that Mother and I had never put in a vegetable garden, that we had no stored provisions. ‘No wonder you’re about as fat as a hatstand,’ he said, buffing me on the elbow as we walked home with our meat and vegetables in a hessian bag slung over his shoulder.
‘You don’t look overly prosperous yourself.’
‘Pruss-press.’ He hooted. ‘That’s quite a burr you’re getting, Ell.’
I was looking away from him when he spoke, and it felt for an instant as if my old young brother, the one I knew, was by my side. The voice a little lower, a little hoarser.
‘It’s this way.’ I pointed down Rule Street. ‘For the Infirmary.’
He cried when he saw her, as I knew he would, shoulders rising like a bellows, a long series of breaths forcing themselves through his pursed lips. In return she rolled her head from side to side on the pillow, eyelids fluttering, blowing a little white scum onto the edges of her lips. I had to put a stop to this. ‘Try to be quieter,’ I said gently. ‘You’re upsetting her.’
He collapsed sideways onto the chair, smearing the tears across his face. She continued to roll her head.
‘Take her hand, Edward.’
He turned himself towards the bed. Her hand was on top of the covers. He gathered it in his own large brown hand, as careful as if it were a shrew mouse. ‘Where’s her ring?’ he muttered.
I gestured at her neck, at a fine chain. ‘Her fingers are too thin.’
Her head became still. She closed her mouth and the breath whistled through her nose.
‘Mummy,’ Edward said after a moment, ‘it’s me. Edward.’
He bent his head to cross the threshold at the Absaloms. I followed him into the cave of the parlour. I’d made a great effort in recent days with the mould on the walls. He set the bag down on the floor, picked it up again, and stood motionless. I blew on the embers in the range, added kindling and coal, shut the door and opened the vent.
‘Did no one help you?’ he said at last.
I took the meat out of the bag. It was heavy and damp in its greaseproof paper. ‘Mr Dawes – you remember him, the parish officer? – he’s been very helpful, he and his sister. Miss Dawes.’ I pushed the blunt knife through the tough outer layer of an onion. ‘We need some water. Will you go?’
He cast about, looking for a tap.
‘Outside. Remember?’
While the stew was cooking he wandered round the derelict garden. I saw him stand kicking the furrow where we’d found the turnips that first autumn when we came here.
He gulped angrily at the food, lashing gravy around his mouth, wiping his face with the back of his hand. Belching. To reprove him I turned down the paraffin lamp so that the performance was not so clearly illuminated, and took dainty, soundless forkfuls. By and by I realized that it was tears he was wiping away. ‘I made fun of you, for being so thin. I called you a hatstand. I had no notion of … all this. It’s terrible. All a terrible mess. I should have done more.’
The hollowness of his voice, the barely controlled sobbing, had an irritating air of drama.
‘You were young, Edward.’
‘But you’d have done it, Ellen.’ He sobbed again. ‘If you’d gone instead of me. You would have found a way, to raise more money.’
‘How on earth do you know?’ I placed my knife and fork together. ‘You have no idea what I’d have done. Gone to the South Sea Islands and lived on breadfruit, maybe. Stayed there until I was entirely tattooed.’ His weeping tired me. I stood up.
‘Ellen—’