Paddington Green, page 21
He ran down the steps and hailed a hack, bidding it to take him to Panton Street. Tonight he was definitely in the mood for agreeable female company, and he was whistling between his teeth as the cab made its way across the town, through Piccadilly on its way to the lights and glories of the Haymarket and its environs. It had been an unusual Sunday, not only in the way of weather, but in what had happened in it; he might as well have a little fun with which to finish it off.
Long after the last of the sunlight had unwillingly left the sky over the rooftops of St James’s Abel was still at the hospital. He had gone prowling from ward to ward, trying not to let the patients who lay there watching him dumbly with their dull eyes know how worried he was, but unable to keep all his anxiety under hatches. It showed in his tight shoulders, in the controlled movements of his head as he turned to look at the people under his care, in the smoothness of his expression and the low even notes of his voice. When all was well in his domain he did not mind scowling his disapproval or shouting his annoyance. His sudden flares of temper were well known by all, from the most senior of the students to the most insignificant of the kitchen maids, and were in a strange manner a source of admiration. Abel in a rage was so strong, so much the master that even as his people cowered under his blistering tongue they felt security in him. But this quietness, this stillness, was something quite other, and in an ill-understood manner very alarming; and as he went by them the patients turned restlessly on their harsh ticking mattresses and pulled the rough grey blankets over their shoulders, trying to seek the peace of mind that would let them sleep.
Until at last Nancy was able to get him to leave the wards with their flickering smoking penny dips set on shelves in the corners to give a little light by which the night watcher could see when she made her occasional rounds of the long rooms, and make him go to his office to drink the brandy she had set ready for him.
‘You have need of it,’ she said shortly when he tried to push it away. ‘You’ve ‘ad a bad day an’ you won’t be no good to none of us if you don’t get the knots out o’ yer muscles, an’ I knows no better way. So get that dahn yer and shut yer talking.’ And he had drunk the brandy and gradually relaxed his shoulders a little; but his face remained brooding and dark as he sat and stared into the few coals that burned dispiritedly in the little grate.
‘We have perhaps two days before we can know,’ he said abruptly after a long pause. ‘I have never yet been able to decide precisely how long it takes a miasma to work in a man, once he has taken it in, but I have never known it less than two days whatever the disease. There is naught we can know till then. And nothing we can do.’
‘Oh, there is much we can do!’ Nancy said sturdily, and nodded her head encouragingly at him. ‘I shall set them all to scrubbing and cleaning tomorrow so that—’
‘Oh, Nancy, what good is your housewifery?’ Abel said wearily. ‘I know you mean well, and it is always agreeable to be in rooms you have a care of, for I like the sight of well washed boards as much as any. But it cannot do anything against the miasma of disease! If that were enough, why, we should not have the contagion here at all. Your soap and sulphur would have sent it packing when I brought the Merrick girl in. But it did not. We have cholera within our doors and God damn it all, I brought it in! Had I stood at the door hat in hand and invited in Death himself with his scythe at the ready I could not be more culpable.’
‘Such talk is stupid, and I for one won’t listen to it,’ Nancy said calmly, and refilled his glass. ‘As for my scrubbin’ being of no use— well, that’s as may be. Mr Snow always reckons as we does better with those of our patients as ‘as operations ’ere than they do anywhere else, and ’e says its on account of the operating room’s so well took care of an’—’
‘Snow,’ Abel said, and looked up and pushing away his glass with a suddenly vigorous movement got to his feet and looked about for his coat. ‘Snow will help, and will have ideas of ways to contain the infection! We were talking of just such a matter only a week or two gone. Where’s my coat, dammit? I—oh, thank you—’ as Nancy fetched his coat from the back of the door and held it out for him. He shrugged it on and she brushed him down, standing back to stare at him with a judicious eye, and then nodded. ‘Aye, you go and talk to Mr Snow. And then away home to your bed, for you’ll be no use to none of us if you don’t get yer sleep. An’ not a soul shall I let in nor aht o’ the place till you comes in the mornin’. The cholera may a’ got in to Nellie’s, but it’ll ‘ave the devil’s own job getting aht of ’ere if I ‘ave anythin’ to say about it. Come on, now, Mr Abel. All’s not lost yet! We’ve only ‘ad two deaths from it, and one o’ them a babe no stronger than a breath o’ wind in August, so there’s nothin’ to get yerself into such a to-do over. You go ‘ome an’ you’ll see different in the mornin’, I’ve no doubt.’
He looked back at her from the door and after a moment nodded, still unsmiling but not as tense as he had been ever since he had arrived in the sunlit afternoon that seemed so long ago now. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Aye, you may be right. I doubt it, but you may be right. Anyway, there’s nothing I can do here now. Goodnight to you, Nancy.’
But long after he had gone she stood there staring at the door he had closed behind him, her lower lip caught between her teeth. She knew as well as he did how empty of true reassurance her words had been. Tonight was but the lull before the storm, of that she was sure. Two dead of cholera already—and God alone knew how many more were to follow.
18
‘I have not been completely honest with you, Abby,’ Gideon’s voice came strained and thin from the darkness, and she leaned forwards in an attempt to see him, but the light from the streets outside was not sufficient to bring more than the faintest of glows to the interior of the carriage.
‘Oh?’ she said easily. ‘I cannot imagine you ever being mendacious, Gideon! Are you about to tell me that we are not on our way to dine with your parents after all but that you are going to abduct me to Gretna Green or some such place?’
It was extraordinary how merry she felt; how pleasant all about her seemed, how altogether contented her mood was and had been for the past two days. She had told herself repeatedly that Gideon’s declaration of love and his proposal of marriage were delightful compliments but no more than that, that she had no notion of accepting a young man’s attachment as anything but transient; that she was a sober staid widow who had neither the desire nor in all likelihood the opportunity ever to wed again. But it made no difference to the way she felt, to the lightness of heart that simplified even the dullest of her chores—like teaching the mouselike Miss Miller her bookkeeping methods—that made her suddenly discover herself humming a vague melody as she went about the day’s work. Even now, sitting opposite him on the way to dine in Lombard Street at the house of his parents, she could not be completely serious. There were bubbles in her mind, and she could not but enjoy them.
‘Oh, we are indeed going to my parents’ home,’ Gideon said. ‘But I told you it was—was just a simple party, did I not? That my mother had a notion to entertain? It is that that is untrue.’
‘Well, you had best confess all, Gideon, before we arrive, for I would not for the world be embarrassed by any ignorance,’ Abby said gaily. ‘Is it to be a great ball instead of a simple party? Or a masquerade? Or perhaps we are to dine al fresco in the middle of Finsbury Square!’
‘I wish you will not make fun of me, Abby,’ he said a little plaintively. ‘This is a matter of some importance to me.’
She was contrite at once. ‘Oh, dear Gideon! I am sorry! Please to forgive me, but I have been so—oh, I don’t know! So full of levity this past few days! I must behave myself—I am at risk of being as giddy as young Miss Phoebe!’
He leaned forwards in the stuffy darkness and reached for her hand and even through the kid of her own glove and the heavier leather of his she felt the warmth of him and there was a little answering throb of heat within her.
‘I am very happy to hear you say so. It fills me with the hope that I am not altogether unconnected with your mood. Please go on feeling so, Abby. Please—even when I tell you of my deception.’
She began to feel a little apprehensive. ‘Dear boy! You must tell me at once!’
‘I am not a boy, Abby, but a man, and you must remember that!’ There was a note of acerbity in him. ‘Although I must confess that I have perhaps been a little juvenile in misleading you about this evening. Well, to be short—you are the only guest we have tonight!’
‘Well, that is no matter! I did not dress as for a great fashionable crush, but for a pleasant quiet evening, so—’
‘And it is not an ordinary dinner we shall be having. You see, Abby, tonight—oh, there is so much to explain! I should have done so on Sunday when I first broached the matter!’
He leaned back into the darkness of his corner again. ‘Abby, do you know anything about my faith?’
She became cautious. ‘Not a great deal, Gideon. I know you are a Jew, that you go not to church but to your own place of worship, that there are those who—’ she stopped.
‘Aye. Those who despise us.’ His voice was harsh. ‘Well, that is a matter to which all Jews are accustomed. We have been hated and driven out wherever in the world we have been. It appears to be our destiny. Your own people drove us out of this country many years ago.’
‘I did not know that.’
‘Few do. But we were allowed to return, during the Commonwealth, you know. About two hundred years ago. That was when my forebears came to live and work in London, but we still have relations and many friends in the old country. In Spain. Jewish family ties are always close, and my own has never lost contact with its roots in Madrid.’
‘I do not see why you are telling me this,’ Abby ventured. ‘It is very interesting, of course, but you said you had misled me and must explain and—’
‘I am explaining. About my faith. It is one, Abby, that is more than just a matter of attending church and making worship. We, the Jews, we follow our faith in every matter. In the way we live and work and eat—and—everything. There are many religious duties that are carried out in our own homes, as well as in the place in which we worship. The synagogue, you know.’
‘Indeed? That is most interesting,’ and she could think of nothing more to say, and was deeply puzzled, for he was clearly most disturbed about what he was trying to tell her.
‘Tonight is the first night of Passover. Tonight we commemorate the story of Moses and the way the Jews were driven from Egypt—’
‘I know of that, of course,’ she said, seizing gratefully on her long-ago biblical education. ‘The giving of the commandments and so forth.’
‘Aye. The giving of the commandments. And it is a commandment to us that we must always remember what happened in those distant times. Tonight we remember. There will be a service at the synagogue, and afterwards a festival meal. It is this to which my father bade me bring you. I—I am afraid you will find it very strange tonight. It will not be the sort of evening you expected at all. And I tell you now that I am sorry I did not tell you sooner of my father’s wishes and give you the opportunity to decline.’
His voice sounded heavy and now it was her turn to reach for his hand in the darkness.
‘I would not have declined, Gideon. If this is a matter of religious importance to you, then I am gratified and most touched in my heart that your father should think well enough of me to bid me share it with you. I remember him as a gentle and kind man and most honourable, and this is very much the action of a gentle and kind man.’
There was a short silence, and then Gideon said quietly, ‘I hope you will always see him so, Abby. As a gentle and kind man. I love him very dearly.’
‘I know you do,’ she said and tightened her grasp on his hand before letting go and leaning back. ‘I know you do.’
‘And I love you, Abby, in a different way, of course. A most urgent, needing and—’
‘You promised you would not speak of this, Gideon,’ she said swiftly. ‘You too must be honourable.’
‘I am trying to be.’
She smiled in the darkness. ‘I know. And in general you succeed. Now, stop fretting yourself about this evening. I have no doubt it will be a little strange to me, and somewhat confusing, for I must confess I was never particularly interested in matters to do with the church— indeed, I regularly commit the sin of falling into a doze during Mr Barker’s no doubt estimable sermons at St Mary’s—but I trust I have been well enough bred to be able to comport myself with dignity. I will give you and your father no cause for offence, Gideon, I do promise you.’
‘It was the risk of offending you that concerned me. We have arrived,’ and he leaned forwards to open the door as the hack came to a stop. ‘I have already committed some sort of sin, in my father’s eyes, you know, Abby, in driving to bring you here. It is forbidden to pious Jews to travel on festivals such as this one tonight. But I prevailed on him to forgive me.’
He led her through the darkness of the street to a heavy doorway. ‘Well, we are here. You will see we make our home above our banking house, Abby. We could not move further away, to more fashionable parts, since my father must live within walking distance of the synagogue. Although it is many years since he could walk—’
The stairs that faced her on the other side of the door were broad and covered in a heavily-patterned Persian carpet held in place with brass clips set into each tread. The walls were panelled and bore paintings in ornate gilt frames and brass sconces bearing fat wax candles, all burning very brightly, and there was a small brazier of fretted brass filled with glowing charcoal standing in a recess halfway up the flight. The place was warm and bright and very inviting, and she let her cloak slip back from her shoulders as Gideon stood back and let her precede him up the staircase.
At the top of the flight a soberly blacksuited footman took her wrap and Gideon’s coat and hat and stick and went soft-footedly away, and she looked about her at a hallway as warm, as well lit and as elegant in its furnishings as the staircase had been. She would have stopped to admire the pictures here but Gideon was looking at her with his face very still and grave, so she smiled up at him and said lightly, ‘Come, Gideon, you fill me with apprehension! I have not seen your father these many years, but I remember him as a man of great charm and urbanity. You need not look so alarmed—I doubt he has any more anxiety about meeting me again, than I have about meeting him! Or is it your Mamma that concerns you? I am sure we shall rub along famously—’
He smiled, and his shoulders relaxed a little. ‘Forgive me, Abby, I am, no doubt, being over-anxious. But I do so wish you and they could be—as I would wish you to be. But perhaps I wish for the impossible—’ and he turned and opened one of the heavy mahogany doors and stood invitingly aside so that she had to enter and could not answer him.
The room was big—bigger than she had expected, knowing it to be in a far from ordinary house, set as it was above a bank, and even brighter and warmer than the parts of the establishment through which she had already passed. The colour that dominated it was red, a rich hot red so unlike the cool white panelling and delicate mahogany furniture that was so fashionable a feature of most houses she visited that she blinked. There was a hint of strangeness about the room that she could not at first identify, a sense of the faintly exotic, and then she realized that this came from the hanging oil lamps, in the same delicately fretted brass as the brazier on the stairs, and the very splendid oriental carpet which hung on the wall that faced the pair of tall windows, now shrouded in crushed velvet curtains of the deepest crimson.
Before the fire, which was piled high with sea coal and comfortably blazing, was a wicker chair, and in it a man she recognized as Nahum Henriques; but not because of his appearance.
The Nahum Henriques she had known had been a square man, broad of shoulder and vigorous in his movements, as black haired as Gideon and with a pair of fine dark eyes that had looked very directly at her.
The man sitting there with a cobweb of woollen shawl about his shoulders and a rug across his knees was shrunken and clearly carried no atom of excess flesh on any part of his body. He had white hair and a face so spare of flesh that it looked like polished bone; but the eyes were the same, very dark and very direct and impulsively she held out both hands and moved across the room towards him in a soft flurry of cream-coloured taffeta skirts.
‘Mr Henriques! How happy I am that we meet again! I am sorry to see you looking to be in poorer health than I remember you, but happy indeed to see you as well as you are! It has not been kind in you to refuse to be visited all these years.’
He looked up at her, and lifted his thin pale hands to accept both of hers. ‘I did not precisely refuse, Mrs Caspar. I simply had no wish to impose myself, in my limited state, upon the sensibilities of others. An invalid is a very tedious person to have about one, after all.’ He dropped his eyes then and said with a curious punctiliousness, ‘I have not seen you since the death of your husband, my good friend James Caspar. You will permit me to offer my condolences, and to wish you a long life, despite the time that has elapsed.’
