Never Look Back (88 page)

‘I know how you feel,’ she whispered back. ‘I loved them too, just as much as I loved Amelia. But wishing for death too is an insult to their memory, Peter.’

She made them both some hot milk and put a measure of brandy in each. ‘We both think we’ve lost everyone we love tonight. But we mustn’t forget we’ve still got one another. There’s Tabitha and Sidney too. I’m going to take you back to San Francisco to see Sidney in a little while. We will build a new life for ourselves there together.’

‘Why, Aunt Matty?’ he asked, his face devoid of colour, brown
eyes utterly bleak. ‘Why did Mama and the girls have to die? It’s not fair.’

She couldn’t tell him that life wasn’t fair, that all over America, and the whole world too, people died suddenly with no sense to it. All she could do was murmur the kind of things Giles would have said, that God wanted Cissie and the girls to live with Him and the angels because they were extra special. She doubted he believed it, any more than she did, but the words did have a comforting ring.

Taking his hand, she led him up to his bed later, and lay down beside him, cradling him in her arms. The brandy worked quickly on him and after a while his sobbing turned to snores, but no such oblivion came to Matilda.

She knew everyone had to face such tragedy. Even as a small girl she could recall the neighbours talking about the children they’d buried, the fires which had taken other family members, and diseases which could run through a tenement like the rats. But what she couldn’t understand was why fate singled her out for such cruelty, so often.

Arnold died just a few hours after Cissie and the funeral service held the following day was for all of them. Cissie and the children were buried alongside John, and Arnold close by.

It was so painful to see Tabitha for the first time since the deaths, standing between the Reverend and Mrs Glover in a severe black dress and bonnet. Few other people had come out of fear of the disease, and Matilda had been told by the doctor she must not embrace Tabitha until all danger had passed.

Tabitha’s eyes mirrored everything Matilda felt. Deep dark pools of sorrow and disbelief. They stood some ten feet from one another, both silently yearning to reach out for the other, knowing that the words they would exchange later could never soothe as a cuddle could.

Matilda held Peter’s hand tightly as the coffins were lowered into the graves, and thought of Cissie’s courage in that cellar when he was born, and made a silent pledge to her friends that she would always love and protect him.

After the grave had been covered over, Matilda beckoned for Tabitha to come and speak to her, and they moved over to the
side of the churchyard, still keeping a few feet of distance between them.

‘What will happen now, Matty?’ Tabitha asked, tears running down her cheeks.

‘I’m going to take Peter back with me, but I want you to stay with the Reverend,’ Matilda said firmly, even though her whole being wanted to take her last remaining child away too. ‘You must do everything we planned, Cissie would be so angry if you didn’t become a doctor because of this.’

‘But you are the only one I have left now,’ Tabitha wept. ‘I want to be with you.’

‘I want you with me too,’ Matilda said, distressed by the child’s grief. ‘But when your mother and father entrusted me with you, I made a promise that I would always do the right thing for you. I know taking you back to San Francisco isn’t that.’

‘Are you sure?’ Tabitha asked, her dark eyes full of doubt.

Matilda nodded. She had thought this through very carefully. While Tabitha might enjoy San Francisco for a holiday, at a time when she wasn’t grieving, to take her there now would be the worst possible thing, for she would hate it. The noise, the dirt and rowdiness would all appal her, she would have no friends, be a virtual prisoner in the apartment, and she would soon bitterly regret that she’d turned down the chance to go to Boston.

‘The Reverend and Mrs Glover love you,’ she said soothingly. ‘All your friends are here, it’s a peaceful, lovely place and a life you know and trust. If in a few weeks you still feel you desperately want to be with me, then maybe we can change our minds. But try it first.’

‘You aren’t going straight away, are you?’ Tabitha said with a look of alarm.

Matilda shook her head. ‘Do you think I’d go before I could hug you again? Of course not, Tabby! I’m going to stay until I’ve sorted out Cissie’s house and everything. I need time to visit Amelia’s grave too, reconcile myself and say my goodbyes to her.’

A look of deep concern crossed the girl’s face and she instinctively took a step nearer Matilda.

‘I was forgetting,’ she said, then stopped mid-sentence and blushed.

Matilda understood what had gone through her mind. ‘I have
always loved you, Tabby, as if you were born to me. To me you are my daughter, and nothing will ever change that. But Amelia was so very special too, she was your father’s and my child, the very reason we had to flee all these thousands of miles to find safety here in Oregon. Your sister too, the baby that bound us two even closer together. And now she’s been taken from us, that’s another very good reason why you must never lose sight of your ambitions.’

‘Poor Matty,’ Tabitha whispered. ‘I was feeling so sorry for myself I didn’t think about your pain.’

Matilda felt a surge of love for this child-woman who had her father’s ability to slip into another’s shoes. ‘No one will ever replace Amelia,’ she said in a low voice, trying very hard not to cry again. ‘But I have you, Peter and Sidney. And when I look at you, Tabby, I see Giles and Lily too. That is so very comforting.’

‘I love you, Matty,’ Tabitha said, and as fresh tears rolled down her cheeks she looked just the way she had at six or seven.

‘I love you too, my darling,’ Matilda replied, her arms aching to hold the child. ‘Now, go on back with the Glovers, and I’ll see you in a day or two once we know this terrible disease has run its course.’

A few days later as Matilda was burning the mattresses in the garden, Dr Shrieber came by to tell her he had paid a visit out to the farm where Arnold and Cissie had visited, only to find the whole family dead. As Peter and Matilda were still healthy, despite close contact with those struck down, he didn’t think it could be a contagious disease like smallpox. He had a theory it might come from drinking water that had been contaminated with sewage, and he intended to study other cases to see if he could prove this was the cause of the disease.

Matilda thought he was a good man and wished him success in his studies, but her heart was too full of pain to discuss theories about the cause of her child’s death. She had left Amelia here thinking it was a safe place, but in the end it proved just as dangerous as anywhere else.

All she wanted now was to take Peter and Treacle, and leave Oregon City for ever.

Chapter Twenty-two

‘You can’t go on grievin’ this way, ma’am,’ Dolores said, as yet again for the fifth morning running she found her mistress had ignored both her breakfast and bath and was still lying in bed at noon. ‘Now, git yourself out of that bed!’

Matilda opened one bloodshot eye. Her breath was sour from the brandy she’d drunk the night before, and it made her feel nauseous. ‘Go away and leave me alone,’ she snapped. ‘It’s no business of yours what I do!’

‘Well, is that so?’ Dolores put her hands on her hips and glowered at Matilda. ‘It sure seems like my business when my mistress is behaving like a fool. I knows you are hurtin’, heaven knows it’s a terrible, wicked thing that happened. But you ain’t the first person to bury folks you loved, and you go on like this, it will be me burying you.’

‘How dare you speak to me like that,’ Matilda exclaimed.

‘’Cos I’m an uppity nigger, or so I’ve been told a thousand times,’ Dolores said, her jet-black eyes rolling with impatience. ‘Miss Zandra, she told me to look out fer you, and that’s just what I’m gonna do, even if I have to take a belt to your back to make you see sense.’

Matilda had coped well enough with the voyage back to San Francisco. She had managed to break the terrible news to Sidney and to find a good school for Peter. But then, when that was done, she woke one morning to see how utterly empty her life was now, and she couldn’t bear it.

Since Amelia’s birth everything she’d done had been with her and Tabitha’s future in mind, now suddenly she had no purpose. She had looked upon Cissie and Susanna as her family, and Oregon as home, but there was nothing left there now. Tabitha was with the Glovers, and James was gone too.

Looking back, all she could see was a row of tombstones, every one of them engraved with the name of someone she had loved
dearly. Having fine clothes, money in the bank, and a successful business meant nothing to her without a goal to work towards. She was twenty-nine, too old and cynical to believe there might be something good around the next corner, yet too young to accept her life was now on the downward slide.

This feeling of melancholia grew worse each day. She didn’t want to eat, to talk to anyone, or do anything. Both Peter and Sidney looked at her in bewilderment, and it made her feel so guilty to see them leaning on one another to gain the comfort she should have been giving them.

She began taking little nips of brandy during the day to make herself feel better, and that seemed to work at first, but before long she was drinking whole glasses, staying up in the apartment alone for longer and longer periods, and ignoring what was going on downstairs. Finally she had withdrawn from everything, the business, staff, Sidney and Peter. She didn’t even bother to get dressed, but began drinking the minute she woke, and continued till she eventually found a state of oblivion.

‘If you’re so dammed clever, you tell me how to get over this,’ Matilda spat at Dolores.

‘You think of someone worse off than yourself,’ Dolores shot back. ‘Miss Zandra left you her money because she thought you’d do something good with it. If she knew you was drinking it away she’d come back and haunt you. And there’s the Captain too. What will he think of you if he comes back and finds you like this?’

Even though Matilda’s mind was confused, in so much as she had no idea what day it was, or how long she’d been holed up in the apartment, her maid’s scornful words cut a clear path through the fog. ‘He’s never coming back,’ she said plaintively. ‘He’s gone, just like everyone else.’

Dolores winced at this uncharacteristic display of self-pity. She thought her mistress looked and smelled worse than a street girl, and decided she needed to take a stronger line. Grabbing hold of Matilda’s shoulders, she shook her like a mop. ‘That man will be back,’ she shouted at her. ‘I never knew a man love a woman so much. And you’ve got Sidney, Peter and Miss Tabitha to think about.’

Matilda pushed her away and cringed back across the bed, frightened by this assault. ‘They aren’t my children,’ she retorted.

‘Maybe’s they wasn’t born to you,’ Dolores replied. ‘But you’s the nearest thing they got to a mammy now, and they is hurtin’ because you ain’t behavin’ like one. There’s girls down in the saloon that would lay down their life for you because you gave them a chance to get off the streets. You is somebody, Miss Matilda, folks round here respect you, and I ain’t gonna let you lose that respect neither. So you’ll get in that bath right now. Or else!’

Matilda could only stare at Dolores, profoundly stunned that this woman who rarely spoke, and never offered an opinion about anything, should launch into her with such ferocity. She needed a drink, but she had a feeling that if she attempted to get one Dolores would make good her threat and beat her. Unable to see any alternative, she got out of bed, but the minute her feet were on the ground Dolores snatched at the hem of her night-gown and pulled it off over her head, leaving her naked.

‘Get in!’ she said in a voice that couldn’t be ignored, pointing to the filled bath in the corner. ‘And I’m gonna wash your hair too, it surely looks an’ stinks like a rat’s nest.’

An hour later Matilda was bathed and her hair washed. Now as her hair dried by the open window, Dolores had forced her hands into a bowl filled with some kind of warm oil. Indignant as she was that she should be treated like a feeble-minded child, it was also soothing to be cared for. The sunshine coming through the window, the lavender fragrance on her clean skin, was making her feel a little less dejected.

The cleaning up in Oregon, and the endless washing in strong lye had made Matilda’s hands look the way they’d been when she first came to San Francisco, but she’d had no heart to do anything about them, or even cover them with her usual gloves.

‘It sure is shockin’ to see a lady’s hand this way,’ Dolores tutted. ‘I never did see worse, not even on a field hand.’

‘I’m not a lady, Dolores,’ she said weakly. ‘I never was, and I never will be.’

‘Is that so! Well, you is my mistress, so that makes you one,’ Dolores retorted sharply. ‘I can make these better, I can do your hair real pretty, and I guess I can make you eat again and hide the liquor. But I can’t make you smile none, only you’s can do
that. You better start thinking of something to make those pretty lips curl up again, and the light come back in your eyes,’

It was the woman’s tone which amused Matilda. Half-angry, half-loving. The way she’d so often been with Tabitha in the past.

‘That’s better,’ Dolores said in appreciation as her mistress smiled. ‘You sure are one handsome woman when you smile.’

‘Do you really believe the Captain will come back?’ Matilda asked a little later, as Dolores wound her hair up in curls. She guessed the woman knew a great deal about men from her time with Zandra, and anyway there was no one else she could confide in about James.

‘I knows he will,’ Dolores said stoutly. ‘He ain’t the kind of man to give up. Reckon if he knew about your sadness, he’d have got here already, if’n he had to walk clean across the country with Indian arrows in his back. You two were meant for one another, that’s for certain.’

‘But he’s married, Dolores!’

‘So?’ Dolores paused in her hairdressing and put her hands on her hips, glowering into the mirror at her mistress. ‘The way I sees it, you got his heart. That surely counts for more than a ring on your finger.’