“This . . .” Thom lifts the plate above the table, mouth a curl of disgust. He came in drunk, is worse now with a bottle of claret at his elbow. “This is swill.” He twists around on the chair and drops the plate to the floor. Steak pie, potatoes and gravy plume across the carpet. “No more of your witchery — out of my sight!”
I stoop to clean the mess.
“Leave it for Vaunce! Out!” he shrieks.
It happens she’s at the door, a smile behind her eyes. I rush from the room biting back tears, gravy stains on my skirts. They will not see me break, none of them, though they might try; she watches me run up the stairs, her mind a hive.
Let him banish me, let her clean it up, her mummerings ever staking a claim on him, calming his rages. When the devil takes him this way only she or Carnaby can mollify him; I enflame the hate.
Why turn myself inside out trying to accommodate the wanderings of his afflicted soul? There is no pleasure in his want. He sweats, drools, thrashes in his sleep. The mercury poisons every part of him.
I make up a bed on the sofa in my dressing room, the tower too cold, prepare a tincture of opium, dwell upon our separate abandonments. He never considers me, only himself. Does he hear a child’s cry in the long reaches of the night, does he ever mourn that loss?
He does not. He ails, and the ailment is all. Week upon week of this — night after night another facet of despair or hate or madness. I know what it never is, never more shall be, his limbs strong and true and loving upon me; it were not always a sick grind upon a bed of decay.
* * * * *
I do not see him for a fortnight, not for breakfast nor supper, but the house is neither so large nor the walls so thick that I do not hear his rantings on the evenings he chooses to be home. Does he conduct himself in this way at his work? I’m not so sure he goes to King & Trasker’s every day — I picture him wending through the streets, lording in the beer palaces, and just as the silence convinces me that he is out there carousing he screams or raves or crashes into the hall-stand and storms out the door into the rain.
One cold Thursday morning he does not leave. For four days he does not leave, and no sound comes from his room save for the comings and goings of the servants. Mrs. Vaunce tells me the Master is poorly, and wishes to see no one, meaning me. On the fifth day Doctor Galletly is sent for. She takes him up directly, and as they pass me on the landing the Doctor nods but does not speak, and the door is shut on me.
I go out to the drive, where Mr. Vaunce leads the doctor’s horse to the stable box beside the house, brings her water, a brush and liniment and a blanket.
“He tells me Nancy needs her oats,” he calls.
I take the brush so that he can feed her, carry on with the swift arcing strokes, soft and pleasant on her coat.
“How is he?”
“She’s close-tongued as happens with the maister, don’t allow me near. The doctor will be down betimes.”
Nancy is docile to his cooing. We brush her, throw a rug over her back, unroll it down her flanks. A sun shows itself, high and distant, throws a paltry heat that don’t increase as it climbs into the smoke.
At last Doctor Galletly trots down the steps.
“Ah, thank you, thank you, you’ve done for her nicely.”
“What of Thom?”
“Early days, Mrs. Strake, an unfortunate episode. The disease reveals itself in tangentials.”
“Syphilis, you mean?”
Vaunce stands by Nancy’s head, hand firm to the bridle. He does not flinch.
“Too soon to make such a definite diagnosis. Certainly it is a nervous disorder. I have administered a calmative. His bowels, you see. I have furnished instructions to Mrs. Vaunce as to his diet. May I say, Mrs. Strake, your household is in want of a maid. Good day.”
Vaunce helps him mount. Nancy clops away, dropping apples on the drive. A maid, he says.
I retire to my drawing room, where a coal fire burns. Towards lunchtime Mr. Vaunce knocks at my door.
“He bade me bring this, Ma’am,” hands me a note, gentle and sad.
I once fell in love with the elegance of Thom’s script; the master of my desire has declined to a shivering crawl.
My love, my heart . . .
The words slope down, smudged and blotted, as if he falls asleep. At the margins of the paper he has crossed out a communication of numbers and letters, such notations as I have seen in his office ledgers, referring to warehouses, aisles, rows, stacks and pallets. This scribbled mimicry of health and industry unsettles me more than any phrase or plea. Madness eats at his mind.
The second sheet is a scrap.
Better, need you, 5 today. Eternity.
This day is a lie. There is no sun above the lowering clouds, no brightness rising in the firmament — there is only him, cold and alone, locked in his room, burning in the flames of his torment.
Thus he begs as he languishes. No-one but him could have kept us apart, no-one had the power; now he summons me. Should I go, I go as his wife, his grace, his love and wisdom — never as his nurse. There is an afternoon to be endured with a new anxiety and little hope. I climb the narrow stairs to the tower room, place the kettle on the spirit stove, pour a glass of sherry, wait for the boil. I brush the tangles out of my hair. Hard work without a maid, everything toil and trouble. The kettle sings.
I pour a cup, no milk, no sugar, laudanum two drops, no more, want a calming, not a dream. I take my first sip as the front door slams. I know that slam — yes, Mrs. Vaunce uses the front door now. I peer from behind the Brussels net, watch her stride up the drive tall and fast, the stalk of the righteous. The wind gusts, the leaves swirl across her path, and she kicks through, hard against the bluster, walks with her disdain grand and undaunted.
I turn to to another window, see Mr. Vaunce rootling about in the back garden. Thom was not like other men, always a laugh in his lust, lightness and love in the mornings.
Well, it all slid into a sneer, a jeer, a depravity, a disease, and a deception. I didn’t take it too hard, provided he didn’t bring it home, not so much as a bedbug. We had our certainty, him and me, in bed, no words, just his skin on mine, our bodies tumbling into memories.
I pour another glass of sherry — too small, top it up — fortify myself to see this man. I go down to our bedroom, sit on the bed, smoke a pipe, lie down and drift the hours away. Our palace, our testament, him and me together here.
God I pray thee Thom I need thee.
* * * * *
I walk through the dishevelment of his dressing room, clothes strewn all about, tap on the door at the far end, fit the key in the lock. I have had this key all along and never used it. The angels in the trees, Pet . . . he is hidden in gloom and stench. The windows are blocked with velvet, the gas lamps burn low, their broken mantles flickering shadows across the wall, a candle stub set on a saucer stings the edge of the fetid air.
The light from the dressing room spills in on my heels but does not penetrate, and my eyes are slow to adjust. He groans in the darkness, lies in shadow, face twisted away from the muck of his stable. The gas jet sputters, leaks an acrid fume, nothing cleaned in here for weeks.
I step closer, catch the low rasp of his breathing, bump against a table, make out a heap of poultices and blisters and a bowl of crusted porridge. A roll of linen bandages falls to the floor. He is on the divan, too low to be a sickbed, blankets heaped on top of him. I make out a ruff of matted hair. It needs a cut. Thom was always vain in his grooming.
He groans again, skews around, hand clutching the cloth, stares stark at me. I kneel onto a pile of discarded bandages, slimed and poisonous, shudder at the neglect.
I try to say his name and all that comes out is a croak, pick up the edge of a blanket, thinking a mountain of bedclothes buries him, but there is only this blanket and a sheet, and through these the fever burns.
“Thom?”
“Caro,” a choke and a gurgle. He reaches for my hand, his fingers dry and bony, the palm so dank it squelches.
I wipe the water from his cheeks, sop the spittle from his beard. His eyes flash. If ever love seduces eternity, it is in this instant — the silence of our thoughts, the union of our souls — that we share a vision of its end. There is still a strength in the clutch of his fingers that holds me from weeping, here the spiraling plait of our life together.
He tries to see me, eyes adrift, and squeezes my hand again. “Caro.” Then his fingers fade, his eyes hood to slits, his mouth yaws as his breathing slows, and the morphine carries him back to a dream.
The room is foul, Mrs. Vaunce a negligence. I move as a cat, a purpose in every step, slip behind the curtains to open a window and pull in ventilation, then sort through the waste that encroaches upon him. I find pots shoved away and forgotten, bowls and plates of slop half-eaten, crusted trails of pudding on the rugs, dressings and plasters kicked aside.
No wonder he swells and ails and loses his mind with nursing such as this. No, Mrs. Vaunce, no Doctor Galletly, this patient is mine. My husband is mine. My love is mine.