How strange it was to be encamped in a foreign land, Queen Victoria plumply gazing into the mist-wreathed night, the voices ringing out beneath the hidden stars! How portentous the message, how wrapped in sentiment the cheapness of life!
Dr Potter thanked me for forcing him to be there. He said it was good for men to weep. He and Mrs Yardley swayed as they walked. We tripped over two figures on the ground, one still moaning, the other cold. The colonel strode off to alert the stretcher bearers, but when they came they were staggering in drink. ‘At night all cats are grey,’ quoted Dr Potter, and clung to Mrs Yardley for support.
I left them as soon as politeness allowed. Once in the tent I cleaned myself as best I could, wiping my armpits and other, more secret places. Then I extinguished the lantern light and waited. Georgie is coming, I whispered.
I fancied I could smell onions, though it may have been the memory of the fire-eater’s act that haunted my nose.
I waited a long time. The human noises died away and the frogs croaked again. Sometimes I floated off and walked through a garden in Cheshire, belly swollen, fingers snipping off blown roses. I could hear the clack of Annie’s knitting needles. Once, Mrs Hardy hovered above me, demanding to know what I’d done with the tiger-skin rug. A pearl of mercury slid down my eyes, but it was only a diamond of light shining through a hole in the canvas.
When at last I rose and emerged into the open, the mist was rolling away across the lake and dawn streaked the sky.
Not a yard distant a man and a woman lay on their backs in the dew, she with her legs splayed wide. They were sleeping, not dead, for their mouths gaped open and both were snoring. A dog had its snout in Dr Potter’s cooking pot tipped from the fire.
Georgie was in the medical tent, fast asleep on a straw mattress behind the instrument table. His arm was flung out across the chest of the fire-eater, who, covered in a hospital night-shirt, the rouge still hectic on his cheeks, lay on the bare ground beside him. This close, I knew him; it was the duck-boy. He had a blister on his lip and blobs of sealing wax spattered his beard.
Behind me a sick man called out for water. He was trying to raise his head, the claw of his hand raking the air. I took no notice and slipped away. He swore after me.
When reveille sounded I found myself at the lake, though I have no recollection of walking there. By now the crimson flush above the hills had faded into shining day. I stood, resentment wriggling like a worm within my breast. It had been my conceit that it was enough to give love, that to receive it would have altered the nature of my obsession. When passion is mutual, there is always the danger of the fire burning to ashes. Rather than lose love it was better never to have known it.
A crane sailed down the sky and landed in the reeds. It frightened me that the child who had trailed Master Georgie at a distance was now treading on his heels, clamouring to be noticed. I knew I was in the wrong; Georgie had made no promises, raised no false hopes, and yet...and yet -
A voice called out, ‘My dear, what a night. Wasn’t it amusing?’ and Mrs Yardley, her hair spilling from its pins and her face creased, waded through the grass. The crane splashed upwards. Then, remembering the sick soldier craving water, misery overflowed and I wept.
Mrs Yardley was very sympathetic. I was in a state to behave stupidly and went half-way to confiding in her. I admitted, or rather hoarsely sobbed, that I loved Georgie. Just voicing it gave comfort.
‘Of course you do,’ she soothed, and patted my hand. ‘It’s only natural.’
‘Last night, after the concert, he said he’d come to me -’
‘Come to you,’ she repeated.
‘But he didn’t-’
‘He has his medical duties,’ she said.
‘What about his duty to me?’ I cried. ‘What about me?’
‘There, there,’ she murmured, ‘you poor child,’ and took me in her arms, which dried up my tears, for there’s nothing I dislike more than to be pitied. I’m not a ‘poor’ child and never was, unless the description is strictly related to poverty. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that Georgie owed me something, on account of the babies, when she said, ‘I wish I had a brother,’ and that closed my mouth. I’d forgotten she supposed I was Georgie’s sister.
When I returned Dr Potter had rekindled the fire and put the water on to boil. He was attempting to grind coffee beans with the heel of his boot.
‘Pompey Jones is in the camp,’ he said, stomping away. ‘He and George have gone to the river to wash.’
“That time Mrs Yardley and I were frightened by the dogs,’ I said, ‘I saw how they dealt with the beans. They had a crusher with a handle.’
‘Well, I haven’t,’ he retorted, and stamped the harder.
I changed my dress for the duck-boy, not Georgie. He was taller than I remembered and fuller in the face. His black hair, damp from his swim in the river, was drying into curls. He strode right up and took my hand, saying he was heartily glad to see me. He wasn’t at all shy or subservient. It had been three years since last we met, at Christmas, the time I’d come back from being made into a lady and gone to Georgie’s room in moonlight.
*
The concert troupe posed for a photograph before marching off. Preparing the plates for the camera proved difficult because flies kept sticking to the collodion mixture. The duck-boy wasn’t a soldier but an assistant to a photographer he’d met in Chester who thought the world of him. They had been sent out by an important newspaper. He had taken part in the concert at the last moment, owing to a colour sergeant who recited monologues succumbing to the fever. Before leaving England he’d gone to see Mrs O’Gorman; she’d cried at the sight of him. He’d found her in good health apart from a certain stiffness of the joints, which was only to be expected at her age.
Georgie helped with the photographs, even though it meant neglecting his medical duties. The results would be sent back to England, so that the public would be aware of the good times the troops were enjoying. Dr Potter said it was a case of securing the shadow ere the substance faded, meaning, he gloomily prophesied, that it was likely those captured by the camera would shortly be dead.
Georgie was allowed inside the photographer’s van. It was a curious vehicle, painted all over in white, its sides slotted with glass windows. When disembarking at Varna it had nearly sunk in the mud.
The duck-boy and Georgie spent most of the morning discussing thicknesses of solution, physical as opposed to chemical development, the effects of temperature and the exactitude necessary for exposures. Georgie’s own equipment had been lost when the ship caught fire out of Scutari, and Dr Potter declared messing about with Pompey Jones would do him more good than a week of rest.
Later, I encountered Mrs Yardley. She was saddling her horse, and crying. At first she said she didn’t want to talk about it, then almost immediately did so. She had spied the colonel twinkling at the wife of a captain in the Grenadier Guards. I thought her foolish for letting on she’d noticed. It would have been wise to turn the other cheek.
The performers departed at midday, leaving the duck-boy behind. He was his own man as regards time. He sought me out in the afternoon; I was in the open, cutting Dr Potter’s hair.
‘Well, Myrtle,’ he said. ‘Was it worth it?’
I replied I didn’t understand the question.
‘Being turned into a lady. Is it what you expected?’ He was eyeing me steadily, from head to foot, taking in my faded gown and the men’s boots I wore; they were practical because they stopped the insects fastening on my ankles.
‘I don’t regret it,’ I said, defensively. ‘If that’s what you mean.’
‘From what I hear,’ he said, ‘you’ve been done no favours.’
Dr Potter jerked his head from the scissors and said, ‘I note you’re as insolent as ever, Pompey Jones.’
‘That’s observant of you,’ he retorted. ‘But then, I was never made into a gentleman, was I?’ He fingered his blistered lip. ‘I shan’t do the fire-eating again,’ he announced. ‘I’ve lost the knack.’
‘Certain knacks are better lost,’ remarked Dr Potter. They stared each other out; the duck-boy’s lashes were singed. Brushing the hairs from the shoulders of his stained coat, the doctor retreated down the avenue of bell tents.
‘You shouldn’t speak to him like that,’ I said. ‘He’s an educated man.’
‘He understands me,’ said the duck-boy. ‘He always did, and not on account of his learning. For what it’s worth, I reckon him and me see eye to eye.’
He was digging into the pocket of his vest as he spoke. ‘I’ve something to show you,’ he said, bringing out a flat object wrapped in the folds of a red handkerchief. Uncovering it, he held out a square of copper plate. It was black all over with some scratch marks in the middle.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘Why you, of course...standing by Mr Hardy’s bed.’
I was astonished to think of him keeping the picture by him all these years, particularly when there was nothing to see.
Today is in the nature of an anniversary,’ he went on. It was August, if I’m not mistaken, when I first saw you -’
‘In that house,’ I said. ‘On the stairs with the broken banister -’
‘Before that...you were sitting on the station steps...in the rain...in Lime Street.’
‘You did a good thing,’ I told him. ‘A boy stole the woman’s duck and you brought it back.’
He laughed at me then, and explained it was nothing but a street trick. The station was a good place to try it on, what with the waiting and the dumped down baggage. They worked in pairs and split the money. One boy did the thieving and the other the retrieving. Even if the owner didn’t cotton on to what had been lost, ten to one a passer-by with more bobsticks than sense, noting the return of property, would hand over a few coppers - as a reward for honesty. Sometimes the accomplice said, ‘No, sir, I cannot profit from doing what is right,’ and more often than not the amount was doubled.
I was speechless.
‘Of course,’ he said, ‘you had to know which ones were gullible, otherwise you might end up with nothing more useful than the promise of a corner in heaven.’
Deep down I thought it a clever trick, though I declared he should have been ashamed of himself.
‘I never was,’ he answered, voice flat, and asked if I was content with my life.
I nodded.
‘I know about the children,’ he said. ‘From George.’
At this, I felt elation, because it meant that Georgie had bothered to talk about me. The lingering resentment at his preferring to be with the duck-boy dropped clear away, and suddenly the day was beautiful, the vista of tents and distant lakes, previously grey under a leaden sky, now miraculously glowing with radiant light. A troop of horses trotted towards the dirt road, coats silky in the sunlight. I enquired what else Georgie had confided.
‘Just that,’ he replied. ‘And that he was glad...seeing that Annie was no longer capable of producing offspring.’
I might have accused him of being the cause of her disappointment, due to his shenanigans with the tiger’s head, but then, hadn’t I every reason to be grateful for the outcome? Instead, I blurted out, ‘I love him. He is my reason for living.’
He looked at me sombrely and asked, ‘Did they send you away, then?’
‘Not on my own,’ I protested. ‘Both times Annie and I went to a cottage...in the country. At night she knitted and I told her stories. I had to make them up in my head because she’s allergic to books. I respect her. She has never shown jealousy.’
‘Why should she?’ he scoffed. ‘She has never known hunger.’
He wouldn’t stop questioning me. He wanted to know what old Mrs Hardy had thought of it all, and I said Ldidn’t know, but that, like me, she’d only ever wanted Georgie’s happiness.
He looked away. I fancied he was sad. Presently he murmured, ‘I’m thankful I’m not a woman.’
At that moment Dr Potter returned, carrying a haunch of mutton. Jubilantly he described finding a provision wagon overturned down by the lake. It was empty, but after searching about he’d come across the meat lying at the bottom of a slope.
‘That was lucky,’ said the duck-boy. ‘Particularly if there was no sign of the driver.’
‘Indeed there wasn’t,’ the doctor retorted crossly. ‘Otherwise I should have paid him.’ Sitting down on his stool, the leg of mutton clasped between his thighs, he began to pluck off the maggots. Soon after, the duck-boy left us.
‘He knows about the babies,’ I said.
‘From Mrs O’Gorman, no doubt?’
‘Georgie told him.’
‘Then Georgie is a fool. One should never confide in the Pompey Joneses of this world.’
‘What have you against him?’ I asked. ‘Georgie likes him, and thinks him kind, as I do.’
‘Not so,’ he said. ‘He may yet do you both harm -’
‘He keeps a picture of me,’ I protested.
Then Dr Potter said that keeping the picture was an affectation, as was the apparent kindness. ‘One day the mask will slip,’ he warned. ‘As Seneca succinctly put it,
Nemo potest personam diuferrefictam.’
I didn’t wait for the translation and walked off. I wished it was Georgie who held my picture against his heart, however darkened by time.
Plate 5. October 1854
FUNERAL PROCESSION
SHADOWED BY
BEATRICE
I have taken to dreaming, and not only at night. In the past - what years have turned to dust in the space of eight weeks - it was the approach of darkness that brought on fantasies. Then, the image of Beatrice stayed within the cup of my shut eyes. Now, she zooms free, circling my head; I would take her for my guardian angel save that she frowns so. Only the other morning I was disturbed by George pumping my shoulder with his fist. He was shouting, Totter, stop it. Stop apologising.’ I protested I hadn’t spoken, but scarcely had the words left my mouth than my wife’s face, distorted with irritation, loomed up in front of me. The wind was tugging at my clothes and blowing the smoke into my eyes, yet her glare held me captive. To cope with this visitation, for I am not yet mad, I reminded myself that a thirst assuaged by water pissed in by dying men and a stomach subjected to hunger were guaranteed to spore hallucinations.