The Land of Summer Page 21

  ‘I don’t even remember what I was doing.’

  ‘P’rhaps it was your stays, madam. Mrs Graham was only saying the other day how stays have this habit of making ladies faint.’

  ‘I was not wearing particularly tight stays, Aggie – that is not my custom.’

  ‘No, madam, I was forgetting. And I should know really, seeing it’s me what dresses you. Maybe you’re sickening for something. Like we was talking about the other day, when we met that lady being ill in the street.’

  ‘I hope not, Aggie,’ Emmaline sighed, putting her hand on her maid’s. ‘I do not wish to spend Christmas in bed.’

  She heard Julius returning later, heard his melodious voice in the hall as he talked to Wilkinson, then heard what she thought must be the drawing-room door close as she supposed Julius went to partake of a drink before changing for dinner. Except tonight he would be dining by himself, a situation that Emmaline thought he would probably prefer, only to find herself surprised by the sound of a knock on her bedroom door and the appearance of her husband on the threshold.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, frowning at the sight of Emmaline lying in bed with her maid sitting on a chair beside her. ‘I heard you’d had an accident or something.’

  ‘You can go now, Aggie,’ Emmaline said. ‘I’m much better now.’

  ‘Agnes doesn’t have to go on my account,’ Julius said, remaining at the doorway. ‘I just looked in to see what had happened and how you were.’

  ‘Aggie has matters to attend to, Julius,’ Emmaline replied. ‘Thank you, Aggie. If I need you I’ll ring.’

  Agnes left the room, bobbing to Julius as she passed him, before scurrying away down the corridor as if she was being chased.

  ‘I do wish she wouldn’t run round the place like that,’ Julius complained. ‘I find it most unsettling.’

  ‘Dr Proctor said I have to stay in bed for a few days, Julius,’ Emmaline said, sitting herself up on her pillows and tidying the sheet in front of her. ‘I hope this won’t prove too inconvenient for you?’

  Julius frowned, then raised his eyebrows and shrugged in a slightly juvenile fashion, as if unable to make sense of what Emmaline had just said.

  ‘Don’t see why,’ he replied. ‘I shall probably dine at my club, because I really cannot tolerate eating on my own. But otherwise I don’t see why I won’t manage. You are all right, I think? Just a bit of a bump on the head, Wilkinson said, nothing too bad, nothing to worry about.’

  Now he peered at her across the bedroom, making Emmaline feel as though he might be looking for further signs of disease, perhaps a rash, or the heightened colour that would denote the onset of a fever.

  ‘As you say, just a bit of a bump on the head. I fell over and gave my head a bang, that was all,’ Emmaline said with what she hoped was a comforting smile. ‘I shall be quite the thing very soon, you will see.’

  ‘Wilkinson thought you might have fainted.’

  ‘Why? Why on earth would I faint? I really am not prone to fainting fits, Julius – as you may or may not have noticed.’

  ‘Women are forever fainting,’ Julius muttered. ‘Least that’s what I have been told. I’ll look in on you again tomorrow. Meanwhile, I hope you continue well and are able to get a good night’s sleep.’

  ‘Thank you, Julius,’ Emmaline replied sincerely. ‘You are really very kind, do you know that? A great deal kinder than you realise.’

  This remark elicited an unexpected response from her husband, who had been making for the door as she spoke. He turned back and stared at her, not in his usual way, but in a way that gave her the impression he was looking at her properly for the first time in a long while.

  ‘What did you say?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing, only that you are a great deal kinder than you think you are.’

  ‘No I am not, Emma, far from it, and you know it. You are the one with the heart of gold, not me. I am, for whatever reason, the very opposite of what you call “kind”. Goodnight, Emma. Sleep well.’

  Chapter Nine

  THE NEXT DAY Emmaline felt well enough to make some notes in her secret notebook. She was working on a poem, and after a light lunch of clear soup and lightly poached fish she sat in bed writing. She must have exhausted herself because she fell asleep mid-task, so that when Agnes brought up her tea her notebook had slipped from the bed to fall on the floor.

  Agnes put the tea tray down quietly on the bedside table and picked up the book, which was lying open on its face. She stared at the words, unable to make sense of anything and longing more than ever to be able to read and write, particularly as beautifully as her mistress wrote. She shut the book and replaced it beside the still sleeping Emmaline before pulling the heavy velvet curtains closed, then returning to the bed to wake her mistress.

  ‘I was asleep?’ Emmaline enquired. ‘I can’t have been. I wasn’t tired.’

  ‘I’m just the same when I climbs into bed, madam,’ Agnes replied. ‘I think I’m not even a tiny bit done, then next thing I know it’s time to get up. Sleep’ll do you good.’

  ‘My notebook.’

  ‘On the bed. By your hand.’

  Emmaline took the book and clasped it in her hands as though she had lost it.

  ‘You keeping a diary, madam? That’s something I’d like to do, keep a diary, put in things I see and hear. Is that what you are doing?’ Agnes wondered. ‘If I might ask.’

  ‘What?’ Emmaline looked at her, coming back to earth after being somewhere miles away. ‘No. No, I’m not keeping a diary. At least I don’t think I am.’

  She opened her book carefully, wondering if she had written anything before she fell asleep, thinking it most unlikely after receiving a bump on the head, but to her surprise, and quiet delight, there were six lines of a brand-new poem. She read them through as Agnes bustled about tidying up the already immaculate room, refolding Emmaline’s discarded lace shawl and picking her dressing gown up to smooth it out before refolding it and placing it carefully on the back of a nearby chair, finding that, at least to her mind, the new lines were pleasing.

  She had been concentrating on shorter verses, leaving the composition of the longer poem aside for a while since she found that much more demanding. It would be useless to pretend that she had an overall vision of the long poem, she knew that well; what she did have was a feeling about the theme, a feeling that was so intense, in fact, that she wondered whether another reason why she was backing away from its composition, at least for the moment, was because the power of the sentiment she had so far expressed in the unfinished verses astonished her.

  The shorter poems all dealt with various aspects of love and hope and belief, disappointment and regret, and melancholy. While examining the complex conundrum of love between a man and a woman, they seemed in spite of everything to leave the reader with a sense of expectation and optimism, a promise that such wondrous feelings and emotions did exist and when experienced filled the hearts of those so blessed with an ecstasy whose description was beyond words, even sometimes the words of the poets.

  The longer poem was much darker in tone, substance and voice. It told the story of a young woman in medieval times – perhaps someone who like Emmaline had promised to love, honour and obey – who waited in the tower of her castle for her love to arrive back from the wars. She had only seen him once, but that was enough to win her heart, and now as she waited for his return she examined the nature of her sentiments, trying to understand them and expressing the hope that her returning love, the hero who would one day be her husband, would come back to her. Finally, she doubted that he ever would. The longer she was made to wait the more doubtful she became, until she began to believe that he did not exist, because love itself did not exist.

  That was as much as Emmaline had written of her epic, and although she thought she knew how it must end, she had to be sure. As she lay in bed watching the sky beyond the window, it seemed to her that one of the protagonists must die, and her feelings were directing themselves, i
nsistently, towards the young woman.

  Dr Proctor called again late that afternoon to check on his patient. He brought with him some iron tonic which he recommended Emmaline start taking immediately, having noted what he considered was her undue pallor. He enquired if she had been suffering from any other symptoms, but besides the mild headaches to which she confessed she had always been prone, and the occasional feeling of fatigue which she ascribed to the variety and fullness of her new life in a new country, she considered herself to be in good health.

  ‘And you say you have never been prone to fainting fits before?’ the doctor wondered. ‘Not even as a young girl? Or when you – when you matured?’

  ‘If anything, doctor, I was considered to be a bit of a tomboy when I was a girl,’ Emmaline replied. ‘My three sisters were always what you would, I suppose, call more girlish than I, and I have to say that when they were maturing they were forever fainting – although there were some among us at home who suspected that their faints were more often than not to draw attention to themselves, since they always occurred in front of the opposite sex.’

  Dr Proctor smiled and began to pack up the contents of his Gladstone bag. ‘So definitely not a genuine family malaise then, Mrs Aubrey?’

  ‘I would say not, doctor. When may I get up? I’m really not very good at lying in bed.’

  ‘One step at a time, young lady. Now, I must just ask you one question, which as your doctor I not only have to ask but am permitted to ask. Might you be, by any chance, in an interesting condition?’

  Emmaline stared at him. ‘In an interesting condition?’ she faltered, her mind racing round this English euphemism, wondering if Dr Proctor could possibly mean the only thing she could imagine he meant.

  ‘Are you by any chance with child?’

  For a moment Emmaline felt indignant at the impertinence of the question, laying bare as it did the barren nature of her marriage. Looking up into the good doctor’s face she realised that of course there was every reason why someone of her age and marital standing might be supposed to be expecting a child, yet she still could not help being shaken by the enquiry. It was not the question that had upset her but the dilemma she now faced as to how to respond to it. She could answer with a flat rebuttal of there being any chance of such a thing, but even though Dr Proctor by nature of his profession ought to keep any such information to himself, there was always the possibility that doctors talked in confidence with their wives, and too flat a denial of any expectation of a child would cause comment. Since Emmaline was perfectly sure that the more mature servants at Park House must know that she and Julius did not share a bedroom, let alone a bed, it seemed to her it would not be long before the whole of Bamford would also be in possession of this fact. Faced with these considerations, rather than issuing a denial, or looking in any way affronted by such a question, Emmaline plumped for looking bashful.

  ‘As a married woman I have no idea how to answer that, Dr Proctor. We ladies must live in hopes of great things to come, must we not?’

  She actually managed to blush as she spoke these vague words, although her heightened colour was due more to the fact that she was trying to deceive the good doctor than to any maidenly modesty.

  ‘I understand, perfectly understand. You ladies are always bashful on these points, and quite rightly so. Why, there are some young ladies I have attended who are so reticent that it is only when I lay their offspring in their arms that they care to admit to having been in an interesting condition. And I am here to tell you that if and when what we suspect does become the case, you will get the best attention from your doctor. No mother I have attended has ever had cause to complain. In fact, several of them have named their babies after me – there are three young lads in the town even as we speak named Dennis.’

  ‘How charming, Dr Proctor, how perfectly charming,’ Emmaline said. Determined to maintain her character of a modest young woman, she put one hand to her mouth and lowered her eyes, while the good doctor smiled paternally down at her.

  ‘I have to say something further here, Mrs Aubrey,’ he continued, preparing to leave her. ‘If there is a possibility that you might be expectant, then, given your current medical condition, it might be best to remain confined to your bed for a little longer, just to ensure that if this is indeed happy news, then that is the way it is going to stay. I will wish you goodnight, Mrs Aubrey, but before I do I have some light sleeping powders that I think you should take. They will not induce anything more than a drowsiness that will help you rest better at night. My wife takes them whenever her mother has been to stay.’

  They both laughed, and Dr Proctor placed the small packets on Emmaline’s dressing table. When he reached the doorway he stopped, as something else obviously occurred to him.

  ‘Apropos of the matter of bed rest,’ he said, ‘my wife has been most anxious to call on you, but without success so far, it would seem. Might it be possible for her to arrange a visit now that you are confined to barracks, so to speak? She would be delighted if you could make time.’

  ‘Of course, doctor,’ Emmaline replied, remembering that Julius was due to leave on his travels first thing the next morning and so in theory anyway she could entertain what lady friends she liked. ‘If it’s possible, perhaps she would like to call tomorrow afternoon around tea time. If she doesn’t mind visiting a sick room.’

  ‘Hardly a sick room, Mrs Aubrey,’ Dr Proctor reassured her. ‘Hardly that at all – not if things map out the way we would all like, eh? Eh?’

  With a smile the good doctor was gone, leaving Emmaline quite content with the way she had conducted herself. Her thoughts turned back to her poetry and how she could best get it delivered to Bray Ashcombe, a man whom she now found occupying a far larger share of her thoughts than she had previously realised.

  Julius put his head round the door on his way out to dinner.

  ‘Might you be feeling a little better?’ he asked her, after his usual initial stare.

  ‘Yes, thank you, Julius. I really am feeling much more the thing.’

  ‘The doctor wants you to stay in bed, I hear.’

  ‘A precaution. Just to be on the safe side.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Julius regarded her, one hand resting on the side of the door. ‘I’m off very early tomorrow. So I won’t disturb you.’

  ‘I don’t mind being disturbed, Julius. I don’t mind if you wake me – I shall have all day to catch up on my sleep.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ Julius replied. ‘Goodnight, Emma.’

  ‘Goodnight, Julius.’

  During the evening, after she had finished a light supper taken in her room, Emmaline worked some more on her poems but found herself tiring very quickly, more than she would have thought possible, in spite of all her bed rest. So, locking away her notebook, she settled down to sleep a great deal earlier than her usual hour. Later, she woke when she thought she heard someone on the landing, and sure enough when she looked she could see light seeping under her door. Moments later she heard the sound of Julius’s dressing-room door closing. She lit a candle and saw it was nearly half past four in the morning, and for a moment she felt like getting out of bed and going to ask Julius what he had been thinking to stay out until such an unearthly hour.

  ‘Really,’ she said to herself, half in and half out of bed and still half asleep. ‘This really has now gone far too far. Far too far.’

  Whereupon her door opened and with a small shriek of fright Emmaline hopped back into bed and pulled the covers over her head.

  ‘Who is it?’ she said from beneath the bedclothes. ‘Have you any idea what the time is?’

  ‘I thought you said you didn’t mind being disturbed,’ came a laconic voice from the doorway, and when Emmaline peered out from the covers she saw Julius standing there dressed in his morning clothes and carrying a large suitcase.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It’s you.’

  ‘I told you I was leaving early. I have to be at the port by seven o’clock because we s
ail at eight, and Weymouth isn’t exactly a stone’s throw from here.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Emmaline said, sitting up in bed and trying to tidy her hair, which had fallen loose. ‘I was fast asleep.’

  ‘Don’t worry about your hair, Emma,’ Julius muttered, frowning at her. ‘Looks very nice down. I’ll see you next week.’

  ‘Goodbye, Julius,’ Emmaline called out after him, but he was gone.

  By midday Emmaline had finished copying out her short poems in her best hand. When she had done so, she put them carefully into a large envelope which she sealed with wax and addressed Personal: Bray Ashcombe, Esq. By hand. Then she summoned Agnes and bade her take the package into Bamford and deliver it personally.

  ‘Shall I wait for a reply, madam?’

  ‘Kind of you, Aggie, but I think not,’ Emmaline replied. ‘It will take some time for Mr Ashcombe to read what I have sent him.’

  ‘Very good, ma’am.’ Agnes nodded. ‘I’ll get Alan to take me into town in the pony and trap.’

  Having nothing to do now that she had delivered the set of short poems, Emmaline took a bath and changed her nightdress and dressing gown for fresh ones, ate a light lunch by her bedroom fire, and then read and slept until Agnes woke her to tell her that Mrs Proctor was downstairs waiting for permission to come up and see her. Once she was fully awake and Agnes had tidied her hair, her visitor was shown upstairs. Dolly served them tea, Emmaline sitting up in her bed against a pile of down pillows, and Mrs Proctor sitting between the bed and the fire.

  By the time the small talk had been dispensed with, such as how Emmaline was enjoying life in England, what she thought of Bamford, the latest fashions and what they were both reading, the two women were at their social ease, and Mrs Proctor steered the conversation round to a more personal level.

  ‘Your husband is away, I gather,’ she said, putting down her teacup, and carefully wiping any trace of cake crumbs from her mouth with her napkin. ‘France again? His mother bad again, I dare say.’