The Trespass (11 page)

‘What do you do?’ said Harriet in a small voice.

‘Simply taking chloride of lime into some of those dreadful, dreadful places is something – although it is hard to know if it is any use. Everything is so – so absolutely filthy, everything smells so poisonous. There are water standpipes in some of the alleys but they are only turned on for a few hours and it is a penny for three buckets and so often they cannot even afford that. It is shameful,
shameful.
No wonder people seem so worn down, so hopeless. Often I do not think they even take in what we are saying – I believe they think of us as intruders. But sometimes there is someone who will listen, one of the women. Maybe it does a tiny piece of good.’

‘But the cholera!’ Harriet’s voice rose again wildly. ‘All those terrible smells, those odours, those diseases – they
cover
you, you could so easily be infected.’

Mary sighed. ‘I was almost sick the first time I went, but I stopped myself. I would have been so ashamed to be sick because of the smell in someone’s home. And we don’t know that it is the smell of everything that carries the disease. Many people believe that it is the water, not the smells.’

‘But how can you take that risk? How could you, at this time above all others? What if something happened to you? Yes, yes, I know I am thinking of myself too,’ she said, her voice muffled in Mary’s shoulder. ‘But you are my life. I could not have gone on without you.’

‘Ssssssh.’ Mary rocked her sister for a moment and then gently pulled away and took her hand.

‘Harriet, we take precautions of course. Some of the men who come are doctors – even though they are so busy some of them give half a day a week to be in these terrible places, and I am sure they are not foolish. I am thirty years old and so far all I have ever done is take some disinfectant and a few cakes of soap to poor people, that is all! I suppose it is a little more use perhaps than the gestures we make as Ladies of the Church. But I want to be properly
useful.
That is not only my duty, but what I believe in. I cannot believe that my life forever is to be looking after Father!’

‘And the Godfrey’s Cordial,’ said Harriet finally.

‘They give it to their babies to make them sleep, and who can blame them. If they give the babies enough, they are no longer hungry. If they give them a little more, sometimes the babies – do not wake.’ She saw her sister’s horrified face. ‘We live in a different world, Harriet. But after all, Aunt Lucretia has her laudanum.’ And Mary began the long, smooth brushing again, and for a while that was the only sound in the room.

And then there was a knock at the door. The knock they knew. They glanced quickly at each other. Mary saw the colour drain from her sister’s face as the knock was repeated, more insistently.

‘Come in,’ said Mary pleasantly. As long as Mary was there Harriet would always be safe. This was their pact.

Their father stood in the doorway. They saw at once that he had been drinking. His handsome face was flushed and his cravat was undone.

‘Harriet,’ he said. ‘Harriet.’

‘I am just doing her hair for tomorrow,’ said Mary calmly. ‘She must look beautiful for the wedding.’

Silence. Just the sound of his breathing.

‘Have you everything you need, Father?’ said Mary.

The Right Honourable Sir Charles Cooper, MP, stood a moment longer in the doorway. Then he turned and left.

There was only silence now, in the bedroom that was scented with the open yellow roses. Harriet’s face was pale and blank as she stared at nothing. Mary’s face, unseen by Harriet, looked deeply troubled as she brushed the long, dark hair.
I have been responsible for Harriet, guided her life. But I do not know now what to do or who to turn to.

Outside, mistaking the time, the mad rooster crowed. Two of the dogs barked briefly and were silent and the thatch on the roof stirred and settled. In the light from the candles the two women were caught for a moment in the mirror on the wall opposite, like a tableau. Harriet looked down, her face almost hidden. Mary’s face in the mirror was unreadable.

But Mary was thinking that what Charles Cooper had never been able to destroy in his wife, he seemed almost to have killed, in the spring, in his youngest daughter.

SIX

At three o’clock in the morning a small but insistent rain suddenly became a downpour. Within an hour mud had formed along the driveway, through the stables, about the cesspools. Lucretia Cooper could be heard crying loudly. Servants ran along corridors. At five-thirty the rain stopped. At six o’clock the servants brought immense amounts of hot water to all the rooms, filled tin baths, brought jugs of cold water. Rays of sun appeared. In the stables the two grooms were cursing the mud that lay everywhere, brushing the horses, tying white ribbons in their manes. Servants ran from the kitchen to the dining room and back again, cursing their masters who of course wanted breakfast (‘Kidneys on a wedding day!’ the cook expostulated) before the wedding feast could be dealt with, and the dog with the splint on his leg, who should have been outside where he belonged, was happily making do with three legs and yelping and barking and getting in the way. Augusta and her mother, half-dressed themselves, were supervising Alice’s hair and her voluminous petticoats and her wedding veil and her wedding posy and her state of mind, while Asobel ran from room to room in her peach flowergirl’s dress, seemingly demented. At seven-fifteen Alice had hysterics and maids ran hither and thither for smelling salts and liquorish and laudanum drops. At eight o’clock the brothers William and Charles Cooper, with various sons and nieces and aunts, were still eating breakfast: the brothers discussed politics and ate kidneys while messages kept arriving for William that he was required by his wife; the visiting nieces ate toasted loaf, giggled and excused themselves. Mary and Harriet were dressed and downstairs, helping with great jugs of white flowers that were to be placed in every corner of the entrance hall. Seeing Asobel at one point about to end her life by leaping over the staircase in her stiff little petticoats and the starched, filled bodice that lay under her peach dress, they repaired with her to the summerhouse and the three recited

Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see

the dear bespangling herbs and tree!

and saw the uniformed bandsmen unpack their instruments from their cases in the morning sunshine, polish the trombones and the cornets with big red cloths; the first notes filled the garden rather unsteadily.

Somehow, just before ten o’clock, as some villagers wearing bonnets waited virtuously at the very back of the church to see the gowns, and some stood in knots by the churchyard to wave to the Squire and his family, all the Coopers had been transported to the church in the gleaming carriages by the white-beribboned horses. The church was full of guests (including, to Lucretia’s delight, the illustrious and powerful Lady Kingdom of the eligible sons); the groom and his family were there as required at the altar; the vicar stood smiling in his white surplice, and finally Alice and her father walked down the aisle and Alice promised to love, honour, obey and give all her worldly goods to her husband.

*   *   *

In the end it was a perfect Indian summer day and long after the wedding feast and the toasts were concluded the sun still shone on the marquee, the little attached flags still fluttered in the breeze and the ladies sat in the shade and were brought more lemonade by the servants. Alice and her husband had departed for Ryde (where Lucretia hoped they might catch the eye of Her Majesty), deciding to do most of the journey on the railway (despite Lucretia’s forebodings), and it was generally agreed (very many times) in the relaxed aftermath of the wedding that Alice had looked beautiful and that she and the groom made a delightful couple. The extremely magnificent Lady Kingdom, who had been accompanied by a large clerical gentleman (who Lucretia knowingly assured anyone who was interested was a distant Kingdom relation, and whom Asobel had gleefully dragged Harriet to observe as he staggered somewhat in the gentlemen’s side-tent where alcoholic liquor was dispersed), had long since sailed away in her carriage, but not without looking sharply and somewhat patronisingly at the assorted young ladies through a rather terrifying lorgnette. The band in the marquee, hired till the last guests had taken their leave, was now repeating some of its repertoire: ‘I Dreamt that I Dwelt in Marble Halls’ and ‘The Loreley Waltz’ had been heard a number of times.

Harriet and Mary had at last taken off their bonnets and were sitting under the oak tree with their cousins John and Edward and Augusta and Asobel. Cousin John, flushed by the wedding and the wine, regarded his cousin Harriet and thought how beautiful she looked in her primrose gown and suddenly wished he might be going to Ryde also. He leaned back in his chair with his legs crossed, and looked slyly at Harriet, and imagined how it might be, in Ryde, as night fell. Asobel was exhausted and began winding herself around Harriet, not whining exactly but letting out a soft, plaintive humming.

‘Asobel,’ remonstrated Augusta irritably, but Harriet did not complain, rested Asobel against her knee, settled her comfortably. Then from the corner of her eye she saw her father walking towards the group.

‘Your legs have gone all stiff, Harriet,’ said Asobel in a tired, sing-song voice.

Cousin Edward, seeing his uncle, jumped up at once. ‘Sit here, sir, sit here,’ but Charles Cooper directed his attention to his daughters.

‘I have received a message, I must return to London at once. Come along, Mary.’

And Mary, with a quick glance to Harriet, began to rise.

‘Father.’

She so seldom addressed him directly that he was almost startled. ‘What is it, Harriet?’

Harriet rose. Asobel, almost asleep, did not complain, but leaned with her arms around Harriet’s skirts.

‘Father, am I to be here for some time yet?’

‘Of course. Until there is some sign that the epidemic is receding. Unfortunately such a sign has not yet been observed.’ His voice was severe as he looked at his beautiful daughter.
Did she not understand what torture this was for him?

‘Father, may Mary stay?’ She saw his face close. ‘Just one more day?’

‘Oh yes, Uncle Charles,’ said Asobel sleepily. ‘Just one more day. I haven’t played with her properly yet and I love her.’

‘Asobel!’ said Augusta sharply.

‘
Please,
Father.’ Her oblique glance was gone, she focused on his face.

There was a pause.

‘I expect I am needed at Bryanston Square,’ said Mary, retying her bonnet.

Cousin Edward stepped towards his uncle. ‘I have to come to London tomorrow on business, sir. I would be very pleased to escort Mary back to town.’

Charles Cooper saw that all the faces were turned towards him, that Harriet’s eyes seemed to brim with something: tears, or anxiety. Or love?

‘Very well,’ he said, ‘if Edward is to be travelling. Come, Harriet, I wish to speak to you before I leave.’

The cousins saw Harriet, who suddenly seemed to shimmer in the pale primrose dress, obediently lift Asobel away from her and step in silence across the lawn. Her father took her arm and drew his daughter close to him. They saw the father and daughter walk past the roses towards the waiting carriage while the band reprised a love ballad.

*   *   *

In the early evening Harriet and Mary and Augusta and Cousin Edward played cards. Asobel had been put, protesting loudly, to bed; Lucretia and William Cooper and various relations sat in combinations around the drawing room recounting the day yet again to themselves, gossiping about family matters. Cousin John was outside somewhere, smoking a cigar. Everybody was drinking negus, everybody was tired, but nobody wanted to end the perfect day and anyway it was not yet quite dark.

‘It was a great success,’ Lucretia repeated. ‘At last we have entertained Lady Kingdom, and who can tell,’ and she cast a significant glance at Augusta, ‘what this may lead to.’

‘Four hearts,’ said Cousin Edward.

‘My only worry is the railways. The stationmaster at one of the stations has been apprehended for embezzlement, parcels are being stolen from carriages, who knows who is in charge?’

‘But my dear Lucretia,’ her sister offered, ‘Her Majesty after all recently travelled from the Highlands to Gosport, a journey of six hundred miles with only stops for the boiler to be replenished. Her Majesty was loud in her appreciation of such a journey. It is the modern way.’

‘Five spades,’ said Augusta.

‘You are right, I expect. Her Majesty was indeed full of praise.’

‘What are you doing in London tomorrow, Edward?’ asked Mary idly.

‘Avoiding the cholera, I hope, Eddie,’ said Augusta sharply. ‘I do wish you would not go.’

‘Come, Augy, I shall be home before you miss me.’

‘Please take enormous care.’

‘I will, I will, dear Augy,’ Edward answered and for once she did not say: ‘Do not call me Augy’ or ‘That is ridiculous’ and Harriet, who had hardly spoken since her father left, saw how Edward smiled at his sister, and she at him.
They are fond of each other,
she thought to herself in surprise. When she was younger, and often alone with her brothers and with Mary, writing TO THE DEAR READERS OF MY JOURNAL to entertain them, there had been warmth and teasing among them, but now, older, her brothers seemed to become more and more like their father, and older sibling relationships remained a mystery. Over the cards she saw that Augusta’s face still wore the supercilious expression that seemed to have become part of her, but she looked drawn too, as if this wedding of a sister who was younger had been even more of a trial than they had guessed. Harriet with an effort put her own, darker thoughts away; she smiled at her cousin.

‘I like so much your gown, Augusta,’ she said. ‘You looked lovely today.’ And was surprised again: her cousin blushed at the unexpected compliment, then her eyes filled with involuntary tears, then in great embarrassment she put her hand up to her face and gave a half-stifled sob. Her brother and her two cousins all leaned towards her across the card table, as if to shield her from the rest of the room.