Daughter of the House

CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_cf89ff71-406e-5274-93e8-0f8495f4a4d7)

Puddles of molten metal lay on the steps of the house. It was only rainwater caught in the worn hollows of the stone, but ever since she could remember she had thought it looked like mercury in the lamplight. Devil used a phial of mercury in one of his illusions, and when they were small she and Cornelius had loved the way the metal broke up into tiny globules before a twitch of the glass saucer collected it into a seamless pool again.

Smiling at this memory as well as with the residual pleasure of her encounter with Mr Maitland, Nancy put her key in the lock. The door swung open into the quiet house.

She took off her coat and shook it out before draping it on the hall stand. Droplets darkened the dusty runner. Rubbing her inflamed knuckles, she made her way down a flight of stairs to the kitchen. It was empty but the room was warm at least. This was no longer the steamy domain of the cook and housemaid. Peggy was at home in Kent with her widowed mother and almost as soon as the war started Mrs Frost had left to work in the munitions.

Nowadays Eliza and Nancy ran the household between them. Devil spent long hours at the Palmyra, Arthur was still abroad and Cornelius – Nancy’s lips tightened – Cornelius was not likely to care whether or not the steps had been swept or if the butcher’s boy had brought the wrong order yet again.

She flung open the door of the iron range and stoked the fire. She thought what a great deal of making and tending fires must have gone on all through her childhood, yet she had never paid any attention to the work.

There was a saucepan pushed to one side of the hob and she peered at the contents. Enough of an Irish stew remained to make a meal for the three of them if she added some more spuds and a few carrots. The situation was really quite promising.

Nancy went up two flights of stairs and knocked at her mother’s door.

Eliza had been reading. She took off her spectacles and laid them on the table, pinching the bridge of her nose and blinking. Her dark hair had turned grey and the hollows in her cheeks had deepened. Eliza still drew glances in the street, although she claimed not to care in the least about her appearance. Whether she did or not she had retained her theatrical way of piling on colour on colour, twisting a pair of necklaces together and sticking a discarded bird’s feather in a hatband. These days she looked rare, and not a little forbidding.

‘I thought you might have gone out with your friend Jinny.’

When Cornelius first came home, Jinny had called several times to sit with him. She understood something of what he must have experienced, and Cornelius would sometimes talk to her when he could speak to no one else. Eliza had been grateful for this intervention – grateful for anything at all that seemed to help her son – but she still didn’t quite approve of Jinny. The girl was a suffragette, a radical, a print shop assistant, and she was not likely to help Nancy up in the world. Rather the opposite. Now the war was over Eliza thought Nancy should be putting her expensive education and refined upbringing to better use.

Nancy said, ‘No, not today. How has he been?’

‘Quiet.’

Eliza shuffled to her feet and Nancy immediately went to her. Under her hands her mother’s arms felt thin enough to snap. For a brief second they embraced, wordlessly holding each other close. Nancy thought, let me hold you, but Eliza moved to the door in order to listen to the silence of the house.

‘He must be asleep,’ she said. ‘There’s a letter from Arthur, by the way.’

Nancy took it and eagerly skimmed the flimsy blue pages.

Arthur was at the Brigade HQ in Belgium, to which his regiment was attached as part of the mopping-up operations that must continue for months to come. As always he wrote cheerfully about his superiors and their eccentricities, about excursions into the nearby town with his brother officers, and the football matches and other entertainments laid on for the men.

Pa, there is an officer here called Bolton who is quite a decent conjuror. Have I told you about him? He’s not in your class of course, but he can do some party tricks with a pack of cards and a trio of handkerchiefs. On Saturday I helped him out with a show (in truth I dressed up as his female assistant in skirts and a fetching wig) and the men all howled with laughter. I advise you to book us for the old Palmyra while you still have the chance.

Nancy slipped the letter back into its envelope. Arthur never spoke about the real work he had to do. For the soldiers still in France there were so many bodies to be collected, identities to be established, graves to be dug and information to be filed. But at least Arthur was alive and safe. It was hard that Aunt Faith had to grieve for both her boys.

Nancy smiled at Eliza with all the brightness she could muster. ‘We can have dinner, Ma, as soon as the vegetables are done.’

‘Leave that to me. You go up and see him.’

Cornelius still occupied his boyhood room. She put her mouth close to the door and spoke in a low voice. He could not bear loud noises.

‘Neelie? Are you awake?’

He was sitting in his usual place in the chair beside the bed. His shoulders slumped and his big red hands hung between his knees.

‘How are you tonight?’ she asked gently. He blinked at her. Behind his spectacles his eyes were swollen.

‘Is it time? Do they need us? Wait, I’ll fill my water bottle. Some poor fellow will need a drink.’ He looked at the walls, his face quivering with confusion, before seizing her hand. He was in anguish.

‘What are you doing here, Nancy? It’s not safe. So close to the guns. Can’t you hear them?’

Fresh tears ran down his face.

‘It’s all right, Neelie. You’re at home with us now, remember?’ She drew his head against her heart and stroked his hair. The rhythm of her heartbeat seemed to comfort him.

Uncertainly he whispered, ‘What’s that?’ And then, ‘I must have been dreaming.’

Cornelius’s waking dreams were so intense that he lived in them more than in the present world. She understood that, of course.

Cornelius drove his motor ambulance for three years, with only short breaks for recuperative leave. When the end of the fighting came he was the longest-serving driver in his detachment. Only when he was no longer needed, when there were no more stretchers to load under the canvas roof of his ambulance and when he did not have to sluice any more blood and human debris from its metal floor before setting off on the next outward journey, only then did he crumble from within.

Cornelius had not come home in one of the grey coaches. He had travelled alone by passenger ferry, telling no one that he was on his way. One evening in Islington Nancy had opened the front door to find him standing there, his pack at his feet as if he couldn’t carry the burden another step.

It seemed at first that he was nearly himself. A little subdued, but that was not a surprise. He had never had much to say during his short home leaves. Then day by day he seemed to be losing an invisible battle of his own. He retreated to his bedroom and began to weep.

‘Yes, Neelie, you were dreaming.’

She didn’t know whether to wish him consciousness or oblivion.

The Wixes’ doctor prescribed rest and sedatives, but the medicine only sent Cornelius into a heavy sleep from which he woke up dulled and tearful. The only times he seemed a little better were after Jinny’s visits, when the two of them sat and talked behind a closed door.

Nancy would try to help him to talk by asking, ‘Neelie? What were the other ambulance drivers like?’ or ‘Tell me about that little town, remember, the one you wrote to me about? With the lace half-curtains at all the windows and the one bell ringing for Mass?’

He would only shake his head and she understood that she was clumsy, although she did not know what she could say that would be any different.

There were a few hopeful signs. He seemed to enjoy Devil’s reminiscences about drives in the old car, or his eyes would settle on his mother’s gaudy scarves and glint with sudden wild amusement. He had a shelf of his old books and sometimes he would take one down and stare at the pictures of butterflies. He no longer drew architectural details, even recoiling from the sketch tablet and pencils when Nancy found them for him.

His family could only offer the security of home, and pray that the tears would stop in time.

‘Would you like some dinner?’ she asked.

Cornelius’s head jerked as if he was surprised to notice the green velvet curtains and the jug of water placed on his night table. He stared at the empty bed on the opposite side of the room.

She told him, ‘There’s a letter from Arthur. He’s been doing magic shows for the men.’

‘Magic? Is that so?’

Arm in arm they slowly descended. In his carpet slippers Cornelius shambled like an old man.

Eliza had set knives and forks on the little gate-legged table in the kitchen corner where Cook and Peggy used to sit in the afternoons to look at the penny papers. The family rarely used the dining room these days except when Devil glared and complained that it was not much different from living in Maria Hayes’s place, back in the old rookery of St Giles. When Devil next ate dinner at home Eliza laid the table upstairs with the best plates and lit two candles in the silver candlesticks. He smiled a little sadly at the sight and kissed the back of her neck.

Nancy guided Cornelius to his chair as Eliza ladled stew. He dipped his head and ate quickly, anxiously glancing at the clock between mouthfuls.

‘Can’t sit here all night. They’ll be lined up, you know. Rows of them.’

Eliza ate hardly a mouthful. She didn’t watch her son but it was clear that every bone in her body shivered for him.