Rutherford Park (18 page)

“I’m Mary Richards,” she said. “Where is my sister?”

“You’re not allowed to come in. I’ve told your father.”

Another woman was coming up the ward now. Their uniforms crackled on them like waxy paper; the ward sister’s elaborate cap danced over her head in a complicated arrangement of wings. Mary tried to move, but the first nurse was holding on tight. “Diphtheria is highly contagious,” she said. “And you may be carrying disease yourself.”

Mary glared at her. “Hose me down, then,” she said. “Do what you like.”

She had by now seen Sarah: a familiar face in the far corner. And she could hear her thirteen-year-old sister’s tortured breathing. There was a bowl of something by the bed: eucalyptus and turpentine; her cough sounded metallic. “Sarah,” she whispered.

“It’s not allowed,” the nurse repeated. The sister stepped in front
of Mary; she was taller and broader. “You must get out,” she said. “If you don’t want to be like her.”

Mary wanted to kill her. “I haven’t got it,” she retorted. “And you haven’t got it. So how did she?”

The woman tilted her chin. “There are many causes,” she replied.

Mary nodded. “I know what the causes are,” she said. “Dirty mill work and dirty mill houses.”

“Are you a nurse?”

“No, I’m not a nurse,” Mary said. “But I know who gets it and who doesn’t.” She gave the woman a savage look and elbowed her way through. She walked to the bed and squatted down at Sarah’s side and felt for her sister’s hand under the tightly pulled sheet.

“Don’t touch her,” the sister warned.

Mary took out Sarah’s hand and rubbed it between both of her own. “I’m here, I’m here,” she murmured. “What have you done to yourself, eh?”

Of all of them, Sarah looked like their mother. She had thick brown hair; the rest of the family—Francis included—were mousy or fair. And Sarah’s hair was drawn back now just as her mother’s had been to avoid the loom and, later, to get out of the way of the finishing: a near-black wing across the forehead. Sarah wriggled her fingers a little, pointing at her throat. Mary could hear the high-pitched thread of air on every breath.

“Yes,” Mary said. “But it’ll be over soon. It’ll get better.”

Sarah’s nose began to bleed. Mary reached to dab it with the end of her own sleeve, searching in her pocket with her other hand all the while to find a handkerchief. And then suddenly there was far too much blood, a stream of color against the white bed, livid in the afternoon light. The nurses pushed Mary back.

By the time she went back out to her father, she had cleaned
herself up a little, careless of the fury of yet another nurse that she had contaminated a bowl of water. She had been made to swill out her mouth with antiseptic, and scrub her hands. She had been lectured and manhandled to the doors of the ward, numb with shock.

To her bewilderment, it seemed to be forty minutes later, judging by the clock over her father’s head; she felt very weary, and the monochrome colors of the hall fought in her vision, a series of meaningless rectangles, and patches of light from the windows. She put up a hand to steady herself, and her palm slid along the painted wall; she looked at her father, and thought of the stories he told of his own father—a man crippled in the right knee by arthritis after being a piecer in the cotton mills. Of how he’d come to Yorkshire because he thought the work would be easier. And of a story he had told of a girl working a drawing frame who, like Joseph, had got caught in the shaft and drawn into it, and of how she was turned around and around on the shaft until it broke all her bones and her body jammed the gears. And of how, when Joseph died, Francis had said that his father had made the journey over the Pennines for nothing, and that wool was as bad as cotton, and they were all beasts made to be broken in one way or another. And of how angry she’d been even then, because she hated the way he talked, all beaten down, without any dignity.

She knew he thought that she was cruel because she hadn’t cried, and because she’d got this look on her face, determined and sullen, after the accident, and after her mother died. Even now she couldn’t bring herself to weep or put out a hand to help him stand, though she could see the dawning realization on his face as he looked at her, and the hard stone knot was back in her chest, an immovable, furious, choking weight.

“We’re to go down to the other end of the hospital,” she said. “We’re to wait there.”

“Why?” he asked. “Is she being moved?” He’d got to his feet at last, and swayed from side to side, the cap still clutched in his hands. “What’s at the other end of the hospital? Is it another room?”

She couldn’t bring herself to be kind; it seemed to be outside her abilities. “It’s the mortuary,” she told him, and took his arm and hauled him forward, a deadweight dragging his feet as he doubled over helplessly with grief. It was as if someone had struck him; he suddenly began whimpering. “Stand up straight. Don’t let them see you cry, Father,” she said, hissing the cruel instruction in his ear. “Do you hear me? Don’t you dare give them that.”

I
t was half past four in the morning when John Gould walked out of the great house. There was a faint dawn light as he opened the library doors and, passing through the orangerie, he was out into the garden. The roses were densely lined on either side of him—pale deep ranks of cream and apricot and pink. All around them hovered the seductive memory of yesterday’s scent; he reached out and touched the nearest petals, trailed his hand among them. To his right was a cobbled path, perfectly laid in herringbone with terra-cotta edging. Everything was heavy with moisture; it had rained in the night.

It felt wonderfully fresh, as if the world had been newly created. The sky above was already blue, and as he stopped and looked down the broad flights of steps towards the lawns, he had a moment of complete well-being. He felt as if the house were his, just for that second: the house, the parkland, the distant woods, the rising hills. The valley was hushed; it was as if nothing could ever touch this
idyll. Hard to believe that there were cities or strife anywhere in the world while standing here; it was a charmed kingdom all its own. He walked forward and rested his hand on one of the stone urns on one side of the steps, and noticed a pattern of bluebirds around the rim; he wondered whether it was the Beckforth bluebird, like the Jamaican plantation. And he wondered whether the story was true that the bluebirds were unlucky.

He considered Octavia Cavendish’s luck, being alone here. She had been absent again at dinner last night, and it had disappointed him—irked him somewhat. He prided himself on knowing women—liked them, actually—but he was baffled at her obvious attempts to keep herself apart. Did she not like
him
? Surely that was not the case. Everybody liked John Boswell. In fact, he made a point of being damn likable; he was good company—he had been told so. He was easy to get along with. But perhaps Octavia Cavendish despised Americans. Or her husband’s wishes, or…Well, then, what? Maybe she despised life. He was used to women smiling more—smiling at him, at least. He would like to be able to condemn her as cold, but could not. There was another woman, he felt, hiding under the surface.

Involuntarily, he looked up at the windows. He didn’t know which one was hers; they were all closed. He turned away and went up the brick path and through the gate, walking fast along the walled garden path beyond. Two boys were already at work here, among the immaculate rows of vegetables; he raised a hand to them by way of hello. Octavia had said that there were fifteen gardeners, some just for the kitchen garden, two just for the plants in the house, some just for the flowers in the glasshouse. Gardeners and undergardeners and boys, a seemingly mute population; he glanced back and saw the boys looking at him—perturbed, perhaps, because
they had been seen. He knew that they were meant to be invisible to the inhabitants of the house. He couldn’t resist a private smile—he supposed it was all to give the impression that these giant places ran along by magic, smoothly gliding without sweat, without effort. What a world. At home, he knew all the servants by name. They were Josh and Edwin and Eddie, Kate and Millie, Thomas and Si. Here, the only person Octavia called by name was her maid, a pert little Frenchwoman with a seductive face. God, it was strange. Beautiful and deserted and enchanted, straight out of a storybook, complete with kings and dukes and princesses. He came from a loud world yelling its price by the yard, and this summer he had descended, like Alice, through a looking glass, into a peculiar landscape of unwritten rules, where tradition lay inches thick and you could turn up a book that had
August 1612
written across the top of a page by a long-dead hand. The world behind the glass, the world down the rabbit hole…He looked back at the house, now touched by the first sunlight, the entire south front lit with a glowing, tawny light, and he shuddered for it. God save it from the brawling world, he thought. God save it.

He was coming to the stable yard, with the enormous glasshouse on his right; the head gardener lived here in the grey stone building beyond, he had been told. Past the pretty tiled roof were various outhouses, all looking prim and neat, as if they had been scrubbed and painted fresh. At right angles to the small garden attached to the first house was a massive barn. He glanced up at the sloping roof as he passed; at the far end was another gate.

As he hesitated, wondering which way to choose, a man came out of the very gate he was facing. He was about sixty or so, broadly built, dressed in breeches and a thick jacket. He was carrying a water bucket. Seeing John, he stopped and touched the rim of his cap. “Early up, sir.”

“Yes, I am. I was wondering about taking a horse out.”

Josiah Armitage looked him up and down, then took the bucket up again and cocked his head for John to follow.

They went into the pristine yard; there were stables on three sides. Glancing up, John saw that the clock tower said barely five. The old man went down the line, opening the half doors. In one of the stables he could hear voices: boys larking about, it seemed, laughing. “Shift yerselves!” Josiah called. The laughter stopped; two heads ducked out, and just as quickly ducked back in again.

Smiling to himself, John stopped and looked in the first stable: a grey shire turned its head to look back at him.

“That’s a fine fellow,” John said.

“We got him, and three t’other,” Josiah told him, coming back. “And two Suffolk Punch. But the carriage horses was sold a year back. We had two good pairs, grey and black. And a four.”

“Sold?”

“There’s no call for carriages.”

“I guess not. But what a shame.”

“The young want automobiles now. We got an old landau; we got two little barouches for the ladies. But they never get out now.”

“Master Harry. I suppose he’s got a car?”

Josiah pulled a face of disapproval. “It’ll all come to nowt. There’s no style to it. ’Tis too much speed. My Jack looks after that Metz like a babe.”

John was stroking Wenceslas’s head; the horse blew warm, sweet-smelling breath into his hand. Then John looked up at Josiah. “I heard a child in the house this morning.”

Josiah opened the door, murmuring to the horse. “There’s no bairn there, sir.”

“I could have sworn it. I heard crying.”

“None but her ladyship home. Her and you.”

“No children with the servants?”

“None allowed.”

Armitage seemed so absolutely sure, that perhaps he had imagined it, after all.

An hour earlier, he had opened his eyes suddenly from sleep. The sound of a baby screaming had been close by and piercing. He had listened intently, thinking he heard it again. He was certain that there were footsteps, a door softly closing, more muffled sound. He had sat up in bed, rubbed a hand over his eyes. A child’s cries, and the too-familiar dream. It kept coming to him these last two weeks, and woke him every time with a horrible, crushing presentiment.

He had looked out at the perfect peace of the Rutherford drive, and thought of Quebec and a familiar stretch of coast, where the St. Lawrence broadened out and they put the pilots ashore before crossing the Atlantic. It was where he himself had been on a ship not three months ago. And it was now barely two weeks since the
Empress
had foundered there. He had crossed over several times on board a little Quebec ferry that ran from just north of an uncle’s ranch; it was a busy shipping lane, and it felt very big. He’d been across the English Channel a couple of times, but the Channel didn’t feel like the St. Lawrence: massive, fast churning, icy cold. The last time he’d taken the ferry it had steered through fog, blowing its whistle constantly, and other passengers had called him out on deck, because the whales would surface in such weather. He had imagined them under the tiny boat, moving mountains in the water, navigating the blind and deep reaches of the Channel, and he had always felt very small, very fragile—just a speck on the ocean in the rolling fog.

The
Empress of Ireland
had left Quebec harbor on the afternoon of May twenty-eighth, and she had collided with a Norwegian coal freighter in the early hours of the next morning. The smaller ship
had hit the liner amidships, like a screwdriver piercing a can; those in the lower cabins, fast asleep with their portholes open because of the claustrophobically poor ventilation inside, drowned almost immediately as the
Empress
had rolled to starboard. Those in the upper cabins had scrambled to the deck, but only three lifeboats were launched before the ship tipped further; seven hundred had got out somehow, through portholes onto the side of the listing vessel. For ten minutes or so in the dark, in the fog, passengers and crew had clung to the slanted hull. They thought that she was aground because she was immobile in the water; they thought that she had hit a sandbank. And then suddenly the stern tipped up and she sank like a stone: up at the stern, and then fallen to the depths. More than a thousand had died in fourteen minutes.