The Dust That Falls from Dreams (11 page)

T
he family were seated at breakfast. It was supposed to be one of those breakfasts where everybody drifts down in their own time and helps themselves to what lies within the chaffing dishes. Today Cookie had left kedgeree, devilled kidneys and scrambled eggs, and Millicent was going back and forth with pots of tea and hot water.

However, everybody had appeared at more or less the same time, attracted by the agreeable odours that had drifted up the stairwell, and they were now seated around the long table in the dining room, eating as quietly as they could, out of respect for Rosie’s extreme grief, and out of respect for her latest decision, announced the night before.

Rosie had spent three days sitting motionless in the morning room, on the seat by the window, with its long blue cushion that went the length of the bay. Bouncer lay at her feet. Rosie stared at the gate through which Ash had gone to war, and relived again and again the sight of his retreating back, the jaunty wave as he disappeared, the angle of his forage cap over his eyes, the hitching of his haversack. It was as if she had received a violent blow to the back of the head, or been buried beneath an avalanche. She could neither think nor speak. She twisted and untwisted a small handkerchief between her fingers, looking out through the window at Ash’s back disappearing, the turn, the jaunty wave.

Rosie’s sisters and her mother felt next to useless, although they did their best. They came in and out bearing fresh handkerchiefs, and put an arm around her shoulder and kissed her on the cheek, saying, ‘There, there, buck up, poor Rosie.’ The trouble with all of them was that they were half English and half Scottish, respectable, and imbued with the powerful emotional restraint that those races have inherited somehow (via God knows what
route) from the Spartans. It was a matter of self-conquest, refusal to show weakness, refusal to become a burden to others. This inheritance does not diminish one’s natural sympathies, it merely makes them harder to express and to receive, and it is a legacy which it is extremely hard to unlearn. ‘Come now, Rosie dear,’ said her mother insensitively, ‘no amount of snivelling is ever going to bring him back.’

Rosie went round to the house next door every morning, because Ash’s mother knew how to weep, and that set Rosie off as well. Rosie felt a little ashamed as they clung to each other, but she desperately needed the release of their mutual tears. She felt, although this was something that she would never have admitted, that Mrs ‘Mamma’ Pendennis was more of a mother to her than her own had ever been.

In The Grampians the practical sympathy came from Millicent and Cookie. The latter sent up freshly baked biscuits and Millicent delivered them, saying, ‘Cookie says please try some of these, and we’re both so sorry for your loss, Miss Rosie, we truly are. We was very fond of him too, you know, miss. Please ring if you need anything. Would you like me to change the sheets in your room? And please let Cookie know if there’s anything you’d partickerly like.’

Most surprisingly, Ash’s death had brought out the best in her father. Hamilton McCosh was scion of a family that only two generations before had been destitute Gaelic speakers from the countryside north of Glasgow, but they had believed in education, hard work and ambition, and somehow it had come about that Hamilton had ended up in a large house in Kent, very convenient for London, with a respectable family. He had an infallible nose for taking advantage of the ups and downs of the stock markets, and a flair for marketable inventions. The family accent had slowly transmogrified into the cultured tones of Edinburgh, he had moved over to the Church of Scotland, and this year he was the captain of the golf club at Blackheath. He had played at Muirfield and at St Andrews, and he had fished for salmon and shot grouse with Lord Fermoy, who was a friend of the Duke of York. Hamilton McCosh had ‘arrived’, and he had made the most of himself. He had married a famous beauty, a high-spirited and slightly mad
one, who had scandalised her friends by playing a vigorous game of tennis the day before giving birth to her first child, and campaigning vociferously on behalf of the Women’s Tax Resistance League. Hamilton McCosh had caught her on the rebound, and now, with his daughters almost grown, he also supported a varying number of mistresses, and a few sports. Of all his daughters it was Rosie to whom he was most close.

He went to the Athenaeum less often these days, and came home to sit with her. It was a little awkward at first, his approach being instinctively biblical. ‘Blessed are they that die in the Lord,’ he said, and then, ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend.’

‘Oh, Daddy,’ said Rosie, and he took this as a reproof.

‘I’m sorry, Rosie bairn, but I dinna ken…it’s hard to know what to say.’

She put her hand on his. ‘Daddy, I believe all those things, but I know that you don’t. It doesn’t sound right when you say it.’

‘Words never get to the heart of things, Rosie bairn,’ he said after a while, and she squeezed his fingers. Then he said, ‘Try to see what’s left. It might not seem much. But if you build on it, it’ll get bigger, surely.’

‘Daddy, what shall I do?’

‘I have always found,’ he advised, ‘that when everything goes agley and is as hard as you can bear, the most important thing is to keep busy. We are creatures who are born to work. Those who do nothing have lives that seem to go on forever and never come to anything. Between you and me, that is why I feel sorry for your mother, rather than vexed, as I should. This is wartime, lassie. We should all be busy. Do you know what I’m going to do?’

She shook her head.

‘No, I don’t either.’ She laughed at this, and he continued. ‘But I know I have to do something. It recently occurred to me that I should pay for some apprentices to learn how to make artificial limbs, and set up a workshop for them. I understand there’s a shortage. It’ll help keep us afloat, and do some good at the same time. What do you think?’

Rosie smiled. ‘It’s a lovely idea.’ Secretly she was smiling at the way that her father’s solutions to everything always involved
making money. ‘But you could volunteer to be a nightwatchman, or something.’

‘The job should suit the man,’ he replied robustly. ‘I’d just be doing something that’s better done by another. Talking of jobs suiting the man, I visited Graham White’s aircraft factory recently, and all the workers are women apart from the foreman. I dare say I’d have a workshop full of women if I start making artificial limbs. Would that be dreadful, or would it be fun?’

Rosie said, ‘Why don’t you employ the wounded who’ve come back from the front? Someone with a leg missing would have a very good idea of what’s needed, wouldn’t they?’

‘Rosie bairn, that’s utterly brilliant. I shall do it straight away. I’m sure I can find a workshop, and the offcuts can be used in the braziers to keep the shop warm.’

There was a long pause, during which Mr McCosh vividly imagined everything that he would have to do in order to set up this enterprise, and then Rosie said, ‘I want to go and nurse the wounded.’

‘You do?’

‘It’s the one thing I can still do for Ash. And I’ve been visiting the Cottage Hospital an awful lot.’

Hamilton McCosh baulked. ‘Your mother would never allow it. Soldiers get wounded in all sorts of…places. There would be…intimacies involved. You’d find it most distressing. All day, every day. The sights would be horrible. For a girl like you. And the noises.’

‘And the smells,’ added Rosie. ‘But would you allow it, Daddy?’

He hesitated and looked into her wan face with its chewed lips and large wounded eyes. ‘Yes, Rosie bairn, yes, of course I would.’

‘Would you overrule Mama?’

‘Gracious me, no man ever does that. When she tells God to send an earthquake, He sends an earthquake.’

‘Please, Daddy. You’re the only one she defers to in anything.’

He patted her hand and said, ‘I’ll do my best.’

‘Anyway,’ said Rosie, ‘I think I know exactly how to get round her.’

Accordingly, Hamilton McCosh steeled himself for a confrontation,
and marched into the drawing room, where, by the light of gas lamps, the women of the house were at their various occupations. Ottilie was sewing, Sophie embroidering, Christabel writing a letter, Rosie listening to her mother, who was reading aloud an edifying passage from a novel by Mrs Hunt.

‘I have something to say,’ announced Hamilton McCosh, positioning himself in the centre of the carpet, with his back to the fire.

‘What is it, dear?’ asked his wife.

He cleared his throat, and then spoke quickly so as not to be interrupted.

‘Rosie has asked me, and I have given her my permission, if she can volunteer to go and care for the wounded, with the Voluntary Aid Detachment.’ There was a collective gasp of shock and surprise, and then he capped it with a masterstroke. ‘There is a war on,’ he continued, ‘and it is increasingly obvious that it will not be a short one. The freedom of all of Europe is in the balance. Luxembourg and Belgium have already fallen. It may be France or Russia or Italy next, and one day it may be us. We will never secure this freedom unless we all put our shoulders to the wheel. I expect every one of you to find something useful to do during these difficult times. I repeat, every one of you.’

‘Including me?’ asked his wife, quite horrified, and her husband nodded gravely, looking directly into her eyes.

Hamilton McCosh took advantage of the silence to stride purposefully from the room. Outside the door he encountered Millicent who had been listening surreptitiously. She bobbed, very embarrassed, and then said, ‘If you don’t mind me not minding my own business, sir, that was very well done, sir.’

‘You’re a bad lassie, Millicent,’ he said, but kindly. ‘In future, please refrain from eavesdropping. If my wife had caught you, I expect she would have dismissed you.’

‘I’m ever so sorry, sir,’ she said, adding, ‘But I don’t think she would, sir, not really.’

‘You are indeed fortunate that I didn’t catch you,’ said Mr McCosh, and he bounded up the stairs two steps at a time until he reached his study. Somewhat breathless after his exertion, and feeling a little dizzy, he took a false book from the shelf and
removed from it a small bottle of Bladnoch. He took one swig direct from the bottle, and then poured himself a little stiffener. He sat at his desk until he felt his heartbeat slow down. What mortification and inconvenience it was to live in such terror of one’s wife, and to be obliged to stand up to her so often.

Back in the drawing room Mrs McCosh stood up, rearranged her skirts and sat down again. ‘I absolutely forbid it,’ she said. ‘I will not have one of my daughters becoming a mere nurse. Ladies of our station do not enter such professions, any more than they dance the tango. They do not, indeed, enter any profession. Nurses have been at the forefront of the suffragists. They are a most reprehensible class of woman.’

Rosie protested, ‘But, Mama, after campaigning with the Pankhursts, I would have thought you’d find a mere suffragist not remotely extreme enough! I don’t wish to be contrary,’ she said, ‘but you are quite in the wrong.’

‘Am I indeed? A mother cannot be wrong, and a daughter’s duty is always to be in agreement with her. And I was campaigning because I want the right to vote Conservative. I am convinced that nurses are, in the main, not merely suffragists, but socialists. They are not of the class of women who would vote for Sir Kingsley Wood, now, are they?’

‘A wife’s duty is to agree with her husband,’ said Ottilie drily, whilst avoiding her mother’s gaze.

‘Mrs Claude Watney,’ persisted Rosie, ‘has turned part of her house into a hospital. In Berkeley Square.’

‘Mrs Claude Watney? Has she? Goodness me!’

‘And Mrs Alice Keppel –’

‘The late King’s mistress? Please, Rosie!’

‘And Lady Sarah Wilson and the Duchess of Westminster –’

‘That’s more like it!’

‘– are setting up base hospitals.’ Rosie paused for effect.

‘I fear there may be more,’ said her mother.

‘Yes, indeed. Lady Esher is conducting a course on first aid and home-nursing at the Duke of York’s Barracks.’

‘And?’

‘The Duchess of Teck is working voluntarily at Knightsbridge Barracks.’

‘And?’

‘Queen Amelie of Portugal has taken up work with the Red Cross.’

‘A Portuguese queen is not to be compared with one of our own, of course,’ said Mrs McCosh, with a knowledgeable air. ‘In England and Scotland I doubt if she would amount to more than a duchess.’

‘Nonetheless, Mama, you are quite wrong about ladies not taking such work.’

‘It seems I am to be overruled by my betters, who in this case should know better, but apparently do not,’ said Mrs McCosh with resignation. ‘Where do you expect to find employment?’

‘You get sent where you get sent, Mama, but I know you wouldn’t want me to go to France, and I wouldn’t want to be so far away, so I am hoping to get into something a bit closer, like Netley. In Southampton. Or Brighton Pavilion.’

‘Southampton? Such a dreary place. At least you can get a presentable croissant in France. One hopes that hasn’t changed, at any rate.’

‘The hospital was founded by the late Queen, and she used to visit it several times a year when she was at Osborne House. She used to knit things for the wounded.’

‘I see that you are quite playing upon my respect and admiration for the quality.’

‘I’ve been praying and praying,’ said Rosie, ‘and I am sure that it’s what God wants.’

‘My dear, please, Queen Amelie and the Duchess of Teck are quite enough. To enlist God as well is simply
de trop
.’

‘She’s been most awfully clever, hasn’t she?’ said Sophie brightly. ‘I wish I was as clever as Rosie.’

‘You probably are,’ observed Ottilie. ‘Everyone suspects that you only pretend to be silly.’

‘Oh no,’ said Sophie, ‘I have no brains at all. I am quite hebetudinous.’

‘Sophie, my dear, I think you’ve just invented a word again,’ said Christabel.

‘Have I? You see, I told you I was silly.’ She paused and put her forefinger to her lips. ‘I think I will knit balaclavas, scarves
and stockings for the troops. It’s something I might be able to manage without causing distress or creating too much havoc. I’m just too trivial for anything as grave as nursing.’