Paddington Green, page 27
One of the three figures moving along the beds looked up too at the cry and detached itself from the pallet beside which it had been kneeling to go as swiftly as space permitted towards the far corner, and Abby could clearly see now that it was a woman, small and neat and very sure in her movements, and almost without thinking she said aloud, ‘Miss Ingoldsby!’
The little woman stopped and turned and stared at Abby and then as naturally as though they had been sharing daily communion for the past ten years instead of not having seen each other during the the whole of that time she said, ‘Good evening, Abby! Your father is—’ she turned her head. ‘Ah, yes, there he is. In the corner.’ And she nodded affably and went on to seek the source of that mewing cry which was now being repeated.
The sound of her voice seemed to have a galvanizing effect on the room, for now more people sent up little cries, as a wave of movement passed among the crowded beds. She could see the effortful heaving of bodies trying to turn themselves over, saw heads lift from the flat mattresses and across the room there was a sudden painful sound of retching which made her own throat constrict in sympathy.
The other two people who had been standing together beside a bed in the far corner looked up, and Abby saw one of them, a young woman, bend over and pull a sheet up to cover the occupant before turning away, but she gave her no more than the most cursory of glances. It was the man who drew her eyes and she stared at him intently.
Abel was in shirt sleeves, his collar unfastened and a crumpled white towel wrapped around his neck. His sleeves were pushed up to his elbows so that his arms were bare, and his hands looked unusually long and tapering. His hair was rumpled and he was unshaven, and he looked so extraordinarily weary, with his red-rimmed eyes and hollow cheeks, that involuntarily Abby stepped forwards so that she was almost in the centre of the big room to stand staring at him. He came towards her with his head down, watching his feet as he made his way past the people on the floor, and just before he reached her one of them stretched out with an emaciated arm and tugged at his trouser leg; at once he stopped and crouched beside him and took a bowl that was lying at the man’s head, and shoved it hard under his chin, supporting the head with his other hand.
The man retched hugely, gasped and retched again, and Abby closed her eyes against the unpleasantness and then, ashamed, opened them again. To be offended by the sight of this man’s obvious agony was in some way to insult him, she felt obscurely. If her father could kneel there and help him while he suffered, she could at least be strong enough to bear viewing it.
The man closed his eyes and subsided against Abel’s hand, and gently Abel let his head down on the mattress and pulled the sheet up to wipe the cracked lax mouth, and then stood up, the bowl in his hand. And saw her standing there.
They stood and looked at each other for a long moment, and then she said quietly, ‘Good afternoon, Papa.’
He blinked slowly and then without seeming to be at all surprised said, ‘Abby,’ and rubbed the back of his hand against his forehead.
‘Give me that.’ Abby turned her head to find Miss Ingoldsby behind her, her hand outstretched. She nodded briskly at Abby and gestured again at Abel, who surrendered the bowl to her hand, and she turned and went away with it to the door, passing the tall thin man and the woman with the candles as she went out.
‘I told her not to come up, Mr Abel,’ the woman said fretfully. ‘Tried to, at any rate, but Mr Snow came down an’ I couldn’ stand arguin’. We’ll take the other one together—no need for you.’ And she moved towards a corner of the room.
‘There’s another,’ Abel said, jerking his head over his shoulder to indicate the bed he had left. ‘And the one next to him won’t be long either.’ His voice was very husky and Abby looked at him again, feeling the fatigue in him as strongly as if it had been her own. He was staring at her, and as she caught his eye she essayed a little smile.
‘I am sorry if I have come at an inopportune time,’ she said softly.
‘Inopportune?’ He laughed suddenly, as he moved aside to let Nancy and the thin man pass. ‘Snow, she says it is an inopportune time.’ The thin man looked over his shoulder at her and grinned, a humourless stretching of tired skin. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘She could be right,’ and went doggedly on to pick up the sheet wrapped figure on the bed. Abel watched him, and then again stood back to let him pass, and suddenly yawned.
‘If it is inopportune to come to a place full of cholera, then you have been so,’ he said, and his voice was sharper now. ‘Nineteen have died in two days, and still going like flies. The other wards are as bad as this, and worse, some of’em. It could go on like this for—who knows how long.’ He looked at her and smiled suddenly, a narrow rictus of a smile that made him look even more weary.
‘Cholera,’ she said, and bit her lip and looked down at the people lying on each side of her, the thin drawn faces, the yellowish skin, the lips drawn back in grimaces of pain, and without thinking pulled her mantle closer about her, and Abel laughed again and said, ‘Aye. Cholera.’
‘Have you no more help than this?’ she asked, staring round the room. Abel shook his head.
‘All the nurses, God rot ’em, ran. Every last one of them. There’s Snow and me and Nancy left. Martha and Miss Ingoldsby came to help. I told them not to, but they came—and Rupert is about somewhere, too.’
‘Martha?’ and Abby looked across the room to the slight figure in the corner trying to see in the tired face bending over a bed the little sister she remembered. And could not.
She turned back to Abel and opened her mouth to speak, but again a cry went up from one of the beds, and he was gone, stretching his long legs over the intervening bodies and she turned away; to find Miss Ingoldsby standing behind her.
‘Well, Abby,’ she said, and looked up at her erstwhile charge, her face smiling gently. ‘I would wish we could have met again in happier circumstances.’
‘They look so weary,’ Abby said, looking over her shoulder at the other two, and Miss Ingoldsby said, ‘Yes. Even Mr Lackland is not accustomed to this degree of labour. He has not slept for two nights, to my certain knowledge. He cannot go on so much longer.’ She shook her head and stared at Abel’s bent back with her smooth forehead faintly creased. ‘He will not be told! It is clear to me that if he becomes a victim of his own exhaustion he will be of no use to his patients, but I cannot convince him. He was always stubborn.’ She looked up at Abby again. ‘It would be of help perhaps if you would speak to him. He always listened to you, did he not?’
‘That was a long time ago,’ Abby said. ‘Before—you remember how it was.’
‘Indeed I do,’ she smiled reminiscently. ‘You asked me such artless questions about Gretna Green, but I knew. I am sorry you were to be so soon deprived of your husband, Abby. It was a great sadness to you, I have no doubt.’
‘Yes,’ Abby said, and with a sudden air of decision pushed back her bonnet, and pulled her mantle from her shoulders. ‘Perhaps I can help a little. I cannot stay for too long—I must return to my son—but a little—’
‘Don’t be a fool, Abby,’ Miss Ingoldsby said sharply, and pushed her towards the door, rearranging the mantle on her shoulders as they went. ‘You would be worse than useless, for you would no doubt catch the contagion yourself and add to our burdens. I am glad you came because perhaps you can persuade him to rest a little. I will send him to you downstairs. And when you have spoken for a little while, for God’s sake go. You will be a hindrance and no help if you do not.’
And Abby went, with one last look back over her shoulder at Martha who was still quite unaware of her, and let Miss Ingoldsby install her in a cold and ill-lit little office downstairs.
‘He will come,’ she said firmly, ‘whether he wishes it or no. Try to remember that he is very tired.’
Abby stood there in the middle of the ugly little room and tried to collect her thoughts. To tell a man as patently stretched to the end of his endurance the tale she had come to tell him was unthinkable. She could not do it. And yet what else could she say to him, after all these years? That she had been unaccountably seized with a desire to pay a social call upon him? That would be lame in the extreme. That she had need of him in her own dilemma? That could not be considered.
She felt the tiredness that had been hanging over her all day tighten round her and let her shoulders sag a little and closed her eyes.
‘Well, Abby?’ His voice came harshly from the door and she snapped her eyes open and said, ‘Papa! You are—come and sit down, at once! You are nigh dead on your feet—’ She moved swiftly across the room, taking his elbow to lead him to the curved-backed chair that stood before the desk, and he let her have her way, and when he reached the chair did not so much sit down as fall into it.
He leaned back and set his elbows on the arms of the chair and looked up at her with eyes wide and almost opaque, so enlarged were the pupils. ‘It was my fault, Abby,’ he said huskily. ‘It was my fault.’
She slipped to her knees beside him and set her hands on both of his and looked closely at him, and it was as though she were a very little girl again, and knew herself to be Papa’s favourite who could soothe him from his megrims and make him smile and even laugh when no one else could.
‘Dear Papa,’ she murmured. ‘Tell me about it. You will feel better if you speak of it.’
He was still staring at her, and after a moment he pulled one hand from beneath hers, and reached for her face and touched her cheek, and his fingers felt cold and rough against her skin. ‘Yes—it is better to speak of it. If I could only always speak of the matters that distress me.’ He dropped his hand and shook his head and said almost piteously, ‘It was my fault. For all my care, I brought it in here. Picked it from the streets and brought it in here. So many dying, the children, the men—’ he closed his eyes, and peering at him she was almost horrified to see tears escaping from beneath those closed lids; her strong and wonderful knowing Papa, to weep? It was almost more than she could bear, and she put both her hands to his face, cupping it between them, and began to croon softly in her throat, a wordless sound, the one she had used so long ago for James when he had lain dying, for her baby Frederick when he had been so ill with the whooping cough. And they stayed so for it seemed to her a very long time, kneeling there with her bonnet hanging on her back, held by its barely knotted ribbons, her mantle spread around her.
And he slept. She felt his head loll and she let it rest on his chest, gently extricated her hands and stood up, and he slept on, sitting there with his legs outstretched and his hands on the arms of the chair in all the helplessness of total exhaustion.
She went softly to the door and stood there for a moment looking back at him, and could not help but smile. She had done precisely what she had wanted most to do when she had come here; although they had spoken not one word of what had happened between them in the past, although she had said nothing to him that she had wanted to say, the breach between them was healed. The time would come, soon, when she could go to her father’s house in Gower Street as a daughter should, to talk to him as a daughter should, to enjoy his care and affection as a father should give it.
She went out and closed the door softly behind her, and stood in the hall outside tying on her bonnet and rearranging her mantle.
And then stopped and pondered, for there was still the matter of William’s perfidy to be settled. She could not let that situation go on unchecked any longer. But how could she deal with it, with Abel in so sorry a state?
There was a clatter of footsteps on the stairs, and she looked up and saw a tall thin shape and peered more closely. And then smiled widely and held out her arms. ‘Rupert!’ she cried. ‘Rupert, my dear boy! I am so happy to see you!’
And her happiness was not entirely due to the pleasure of meeting again a brother she had not seen for so many years; it was because she realized she had found the answer to her problem. She would discuss the matter of William with Rupert. He surely, would be able to advise her.
24
She reached home at almost nine o’clock, too tired even to be worried about the way Frederick might be feeling in her long absence. He was always happy enough in Ellie’s company, but she knew he fretted quietly when she was away for long. The compunction she felt about him, however, was quite lost by the time her hack took her along the New Road towards Paddington Green, and anyway she was thinking about what Rupert had said.
‘I shall deal with it all,’ he had told her soothingly. ‘There is no need for you to concern yourself at all, my dear. It was more than good of you to come to tell m’father, but I am glad you did not.’ His face had darkened suddenly. ‘William is a fool. He always was. I have had my problems with him myself, I may tell you. This is the last time I shall ever—well, let be. I shall deal with it.’
He had looked down at her then from his much greater height, and smiled at her. ‘You are still concerned about your father’s wellbeing, Abby? After all this time when he has treated you so ill?’
‘He did not treat me ill,’ she said staunchly. ‘I chose to leave him in the manner I did. I cannot blame him if he—if he felt he could no longer regard me as a friend.’
‘Well, you have a most forgiving nature, Abby,’ Rupert had said and leaned across the table to pour more wine for her, for he had insisted on taking her to eat some supper (’For you are quite clearly fit to drop in your shoes, and I take no responsibility for you, as a surgeon, if you do not follow my advice!’) and had swept her off to Rules eating house in Maiden Lane and, demanding a mutton chop and boiled potatoes be set before her he refused to speak of any but the most ordinary matters until she had emptied her plate. ‘That is better,’ he had said approvingly when she pushed it away, at last replete. ‘Your colour has returned.’
She had smiled. ‘Thank you, Rupert. It is strange, I must say, to have you looking after me, when I remember so clearly how I used to take care of you! But you will not recall so far back, I dare say.’
‘Come, you are not so much older than I!’ Rupert had laughed then, his sardonic face lifting into warmth. ‘You speak as though you are Methuselah’s mother!’
‘Well, I am a widow lady with a son of my own, now! It is difficult for me to look upon a young bachelor and not regard him as very much my junior.’
He had become serious suddenly, looking down at his plate. ‘I am sorry you went away as you did, Abby,’ he had said then. ‘We had need of you in Gower Street. I can see how—harsh—we have all become. M’father—he is not an easy man to live with. Or work with—’
There had been a little silence and then he had said, ‘Indeed I had made plans to—to well, shall we say leave him behind, to go on with my life in some other sphere. But this past three days—’ He shook his head. ‘I have seen him in a new way, I think. A way I might have seen long ago, had you been there to point the direction. You always had a great partiality for him, did you not?’
‘Yes,’ she had said quietly. ‘Oh, yes, I know how harsh and even cruel he can seem, Rupert, but he is not a bad man, you know. Indeed, he is so very good that in some sense it is more difficult for people to understand him. He has so much love in him, Rupert. So very much—’
‘Aye,’ Rupert’s voice had hardened again. ‘Perhaps for others. But not for his own. You cannot deny, Abby, that he has in some measure earned the scorn that William has heaped upon him. I too, in my time—’ he had paused, looking sharply at her as though about to say more. And then shook his head.
‘Oh, I know! It takes so much work to reach him. And it has hurt me bitterly these many years to be without you all, because of him. But I understand him, I believe. There is so much to understand, Rupert. He did not have a good life when he was a child, you know. That must surely colour your approach to him.’
‘It cannot alter the way he has been so—very hard with all of us. When Mary died, he said nothing. He never speaks of Mamma and her affliction, he shows only feeling for the people at the hospital—and he behaves there with such—such arrogance—’
She had leaned forwards and taken his hand in hers. ‘Please, Rupert,’ she said earnestly. ‘Please not to be angry any more. I can understand, Indeed I can. But you cannot bid the sun rise in the west, can you? And in trying to change my father that is what you attempt. Try to—’
‘I told you, Abby, I have seen him in a new light these past days. No man could have done more than he has for these people.’ He had given a little sharp sigh then. ‘I thought at one time it would be best to banish them all, those gutter people, to use the hospital in a different way, you know? Now, after these last days—I really do not know.’
He had smiled then and clasped her hand warmly. ‘Well, that is no matter with which to burden you, after so long an absence. Let us leave matters thusly; I shall deal with William. You have no need to perturb my father with him. It will be much better for him—for everybody—if you remain silent. And now we shall speak of other matters—yourself and your son and your life. Tell me—I wish to know all.’
So they had talked companionably for another half an hour, and then she had realized the time and in a great flurry of concern for the fretting Frederick at home collected herself and almost dragged him out of Rules’ comfortable sawdust-floored and steamy rooms to seek a hack in the Strand to carry her the long journey home.
And now, as the driver sent his horse clopping cheerfully westwards she smiled to herself at the thought of Rupert and how very agreeable it had been to see him again, and to talk to him on such equal terms. She had not fully realized until now how much she had lost in all these years without family contact; it was good to know that those years were now behind her. She would see much of her sister and brothers as well as her father now, she promised herself, much.
And that will help you to learn to live without Gideon, a corner of her mind whispered, and in the darkness of the musty cab she closed her eyes and tried to banish all thoughts of Gideon and his effect on her.
