The Rose of Sebastopol (24 page)

I watched until the carriage, jaunty green-and-black, had swept round the edge of the front lawn and out of the gates. The morning had begun clear and frosty but already puffy white clouds had collected in the north. Ruth came to the door and took my hat and gloves but I said I would keep the shawl, because I was cold.

The hall was noisy with the tock of the grandmother clock on the landing, the clip-clop of a cart on the road beyond the gates, a clatter of cutlery from the kitchen, a stair that creaked though nobody came down. I knew that many things were awaiting my attention: in the morning room was Mother’s unfinished blouse; my writing box had been left open, ink-pot and blotter at the ready so I could write to Henry; I had promised Mother that I would practice a selection of Christmas carols as a treat for the governesses when the home opened; and in the kitchen was my aunt’s breakfast tray, which I would have to take up at ten o’clock. In fact she was probably awake, tears seeping down her cheeks, waiting to learn the details of Rosa’s departure. Across the common was Mrs. Hardcastle’s house on The Pavement, where I was due to call that afternoon to plan the next phase of our sewing circle’s campaign to equip the hospital for our wounded soldiers in Skutari.

Rosa must be nearly at Folkestone. Perhaps she was staring out at soggy green fields and thinking of me. Or was she too immersed in conversation with her companions?

Nora had appeared at the top of the stairs. “Did the girl get off all right? ”

“She caught the train, yes.”

“So. Your aunt will be wanting her breakfast.” She leant on the rail which ran round the first-floor landing and rested her chin in her bosom as she stared down at me. Stray hairs sprang forward from under her cap and her skin had the grayish tinge of one who has been up most of the night. “She has been very restless. Scarcely slept for the loss of her daughter.”

As we stared at each other it struck me that my own home was full of strangers and this was one of them. Her eyes were almost lashless, unblinking, with a glutinous quality which made it difficult to distinguish between iris and pupil.

“At any rate,” she said. “I’ll be off to bed now.”

A bell rang. My aunt’s. Pause. Then again, more emphatically.

I pushed through the door leading to the kitchen, where the fish had been delivered and the cook was gutting them at the sink. A row of sorrowful heads lay on the table.

I took a pot-holder, made Aunt’s tea, sliced bread for toast, removed the crusts, buttered it, and poured milk into a jug. Then I carried the tray up two flights of back stairs and knocked on her door. The room was very dark and the air smelt of stale linen. I started to open the curtains but Isabella called from the bed: “Just a crack. I can’t stand much light this morning. I thought you’d all abandoned me. My poor girl. She came into the room to say good-bye but I was barely conscious. Did you actually see the train leave the station? Did she send me any messages? ”

I slid my arm under her shoulders and helped her sit up, placed the tray on her lap, and spread a napkin over her bosom. She took a sip of tea. Ruth had followed me in and was raking the ashes. “This tea tastes of fish,” said Isabella. “In fact I can
smell
fish.” She sniffed her toast and pushed the tray down the bed. “I cannot eat that.”

“I’ll bring you another cup of tea.”

“Don’t trouble yourself. I couldn’t drink it anyway, with my daughter going to Russia. How am I to bear it?”

“It’s a shame you weren’t at the station. I’m sure she would have been glad if you’d come to wave her off.”

“I wish I could have been there. It’s very hard, to be cursed with ill health. One feels so helpless.”

I went to the window and pulled the curtains back sharply, one after another. Thin sunlight poured over the bare trees and into the room. Isabella put up her hand and squinted in the sudden glare. Ruth looked round. “Then don’t be so helpless,” I said. “Don’t be.”

Isabella turned her head into the pillow. “Oh, oh. I don’t know what you mean. Oh, shut those curtains. Fetch Nora, I feel so ill.”

“What are you doing, lying there day after day? Get up out of bed and lead a life like anybody else’s. I’m sick of you behaving as if you’re half dead.”

Ruth’s poker crashed against the grate and Aunt put her hands over her eyes. I was terrified, because I had no idea where the rage came from, but I couldn’t stop. “You think of nobody but yourself. Do you suppose Rosa really wanted to go to the war? Maybe she was driven to it because it was her only hope of escaping you. If you hadn’t been so selfish and her life had been more bearable, she might have stayed. As it is she’s gone and I’ve been left behind to take care of you. Well, I won’t become your slave. You can ring your bell as much as you like but nobody will come. Nora is asleep. Mother is out. The other servants are too busy to look after you. If you want food or drink then get up and sit at the table and eat like a normal person.”

I was shaking so violently that the words came jolting out of my mouth like marbles. Ruth picked up one lump of coal after another in her bare hand and placed them carefully in the grate. Aunt’s head flung from side to side on the pillow and she clutched her throat.

“So there you have it. I shall be working in the morning room, should you want me,” I said. “Ruth, Lady Stukeley will not be needing a fire today, I believe. And as she doesn’t want any breakfast perhaps you would take that tray downstairs.”

I wrapped my shawl tight round my shoulders and marched away, down the main staircase, across the hall, through to the kitchen passage, where I collected a key, out of the back door, and into the garden. The morning air was like a dousing in cold water; a leafless rosebush clung to the arch and the azaleas in the wilderness were covered with frost-bitten leftover buds. My feet smacked down the wet paths and the movement of air amidst the wan vegetation sucked warmth from my skin. The clematis had died back, exposing the garden door. I unlocked it, stepped into the lane, and walked up and down. My feet were soon caked in mud and my uncovered hair tangled. I muttered under my breath: “What have you done? You’ve murdered her.” I imagined writing the news in a letter to Rosa and discovered I didn’t care. Good, good. I’m glad she’s dead. And anyway, Ruth had been present in the room all the time. She knew I never laid hands on her. There’s no law against losing one’s temper.

Then I came to myself and saw the arch in the wall, where I used to wait for Henry, and I realized what a sight I must be and what a terrible thing I had done, shouting at my aunt on the very morning that her daughter left. So much for my promises to Rosa. And what about my poor mother? How would she feel when she came home and found Aunt dead or, worse, gibbering accusations about her wicked niece? And then there was Henry, who thought he was marrying a kind, quiescent person. Surely he would end our engagement if he discovered I was capable of such cruelty to a sick woman.

I locked the gate, walked slowly back up the garden, changed my shoes, and went to the morning room, where a fire had been lit. I opened my workbox, took out a reel of pink cotton and a pair of scissors.

As I pushed the needle into the fabric, I heard a low moan. My hands went up to my eyes and I started to rock but no tears came. The pain of knowing that Rosa was in a train hurtling further and further away from me was as if a steel belt had been wrapped round my heart and pulled tighter, notch by notch.

LONDON, 1854

 

 

 

A
unt Isabella didn’t die of shock
on the morning that Rosa left to join Miss Nightingale’s nurses although relations between us were frigid for a while. When I entered a room she flinched and she never spoke to me directly. The phrase that she repeated over and over again within my hearing was that
she didn’t want to cause anybody further trouble
.

She did, however, get up each morning at a reasonable hour, heave herself down to breakfast, and then do nothing all day but hem the odd pillow-case, wipe her eyes on a lace handkerchief, and sigh. I was thereby punished one hundredfold for my outburst, because it was I who had to endure her company for longest. Nobody except me noticed her martyred behavior, because we were all much too troubled by the terrible news from the war. Not content with killing our troops by cholera and untreated wounds, our government had now chosen to freeze them to death in the siege trenches.

On Christmas Day the leader in
The Times
read: