Midsummer's Eve (63 page)

“We must go again,” said my mother. “I always used to enjoy those visits to London so much. Last time, of course, it was very sad … but even Helena must grow away from her grief.”

So once again we found ourselves in London.

This was the year of peace and I was fourteen years of age and rather grown-up for my years. I think events of the last few years had bought me right out of my childhood—although perhaps I had emerged from that after my terrifying encounter at the pool.

Strangely enough because of all that had been happening that event now seemed remote; there were occasions when I did not think of it for weeks. So there was some good in everything.

It was September, a lovely time of the year, unexpectedly warm during the days with a tang of autumn in the early evenings and the leaves in the square and the parks turning golden brown.

Opposite the house in the square was a garden which was for the use of residents. There was a key which hung in the hall; I could at any time take this key and go over there and sit among the flowering shrubs and trees. Although there would have been an outcry if I had gone into the Park alone I was permitted to go into this garden.

I loved to be independent of everyone and it was a favorite spot for me during my stay in the house in the square. In fact they had begun to call it Angelet’s garden.

I used to sit there and listen to the clop-clop of horses’ hooves as the carriages passed through the square and occasionally scraps of conversation floated to me as people passed by, which I found intriguing. I would imagine how those conversations went on after they had passed out of earshot and what the lives of the people who were making it were like.

It was what my mother would call exercising that over-worked imagination of mine.

One day when I was seated near the bed of asters and chrysanthemums, I saw someone standing outside the railings which enclosed the square.

It was a woman. I could not see her face for she was in shadow. I did not look intently—people often gazed in at the gardens as they passed—and when I looked again she was gone. I wondered why I had noticed her. Perhaps it was because she seemed to linger. It was as though there was something purposeful about her.

The next day I saw her again. She came to the railings and looked in then. I was sure at that moment that she had some special interest in the place.

“Hello,” I cried and went to the railings.

I stared in amazement. It was Grace.

“Grace!” I cried.

“Oh, Angelet, I’ve seen you once or twice in these gardens.”

“Why didn’t you speak? Why didn’t you come to the house?”

“I … I didn’t know … till I saw you … that you would be in London.”

“What are you doing here? When did you come home? Oh, Grace, you must have had some strange adventures.”

“Yes, I have. I want to talk to you.”

“Come to the house. Wait a minute. I’ll come out.”

“No …” she said. “Can I come into this garden? I’d like to talk to you alone … first.”

“Of course. Wait a moment.”

I unlocked the door and she came into the garden.

“Oh, Grace,” I cried. “It’s good to see you. We’ve talked about you so much. You’ve heard … about Jonnie?”

“Yes,” she said faintly. “I know.”

“It was terrible. We are getting over it a little now … but we don’t forget. How could we forget Jonnie?”

“No … we could never forget him.”

“It is so awful to think we shall never see him again.”

“Yes … I feel that too. There is a lot I have to tell you, Angelet. I wanted to talk to you … or your mother … first … before I did to anyone else. I am not sure what I should do. I want you to let me know what you think.”

“I? What can I tell you?”

“You’re there.” She waved her hands towards the house. “You’d know how things are. You’d know how they feel about …”

“About what?”

“I think I had better tell you from the beginning. You know we left London Bridge on that day …”

“Yes, yes.”

“We went to Boulogne and then to Paris. They made much of us in Paris. It was their war as well as ours. Then we went down to Marseilles where we stayed a while to collect stores. After that we set sail on the
Vectis
for Scutari. It was a fearful journey. I thought we were all going to be drowned.”

She paused. I watched her face. I was wondering why she had to tell me all this before she told the rest of the family.

“What was Scutari like?” I prompted.

“Unbelievable. It was dusk when we arrived, and looked so romantic … the hospital was like a Moorish palace. That was at dusk. In the light of day we saw it for what it was. The wards were very, very dirty. We had to clean up the place before we did anything else. Miss Nightingale insisted on that. The state of the patients … the lack of materials …”

I fancied she was holding something back which embarrassed her, and for that reason she found it difficult to talk of the matter which was uppermost in her mind.

“The hospital was very big; it had once been very grand. The mosaic tiles must have been beautiful at one time but they were cracked and many of them broken. The place was damp. Everything was dirty. Dirt … dirt everywhere … and there were so many sick men … row after row of beds. I felt desperately inadequate.”

“That was why you went … because they needed you so badly. Mr. Russell told us all about it. They must have been pleased to see you.”

“The authorities were skeptical of us at first. They just thought of us as a pack of useless women … but Miss Nightingale soon made them change their minds.”

“Grace, what is it you want to tell me?”

She was silent for a while, staring ahead of her at the bronze-colored flowers, her mouth tight, her eyes almost appealing.

She said: “Jonnie … was brought in. It was an amazing coincidence.”

“You mean … wounded? Was it such a coincidence? You were there and he was there and the wounded would be brought in for you to nurse.”

“He wasn’t in my section. I happened to walk through the ward and see him. He looked so ill. I just went and knelt by his bed. I shall never forget his face when he saw me. I believed he thought he was dreaming. He was wounded in the leg. It was rather bad and they were afraid of gangrene.”

“It must have been wonderful for you to have found each other.”

“Oh it was … it was … I asked if I could be moved to that part of the hospital where he was. One of the women changed places with me. It had happened before when someone was brought in who knew one of the nurses. So I looked after him. I had always … been fond of Jonnie.”

“And he was fond of you,” I told her.

“Yes, we had a great deal in common. I was with him every day. He used to look for me. I was so moved to see his face light up when I came. I nursed him. They had to take a bullet out of his leg and I was there when they did it. They had very little to kill the pain. That sort of thing is heartrending. He held my hand while they did it. Then … afterwards … I nursed him and he began to recover. If his recovery had been longer he might not have died.” She bit her lips and seemed unable to continue.

Then she turned to me and pressed my hand. “I had him walking again soon. They needed men. He had a few days’ leave and then was to join the men outside Sebastopol. When you are in that position … when you feel you are facing death and the chances are that you can’t be lucky twice … a kind of desperation gets hold of you. It might have been like that with Jonnie. Perhaps I ought to have realized it, but I was fond of him, Angelet, very fond. I loved him, Angelet. We had this little time together. I got leave and we went out together. There was little on our side of the Bosphorus and they took us back and forth to Constantinople on the other side in little boats they called
caliques …
and we dined in the city. We were reckless … like two people who know they have not long to be together. Constantinople is different from any place I have ever seen. There are two cities really—Christian Constantinople and Stamboul. Bridges connect them and if ever the nurses went out—which they did occasionally in parties—they were warned not to cross the bridges into Stamboul. I was not afraid of anything with Jonnie. It was a wonderful evening. We sat in an alcove in this restaurant which he knew of and we ate exotic foods—caviar and peppers stuffed with meat. It was all very strange and foreign. But I did not notice the food. We talked and talked … not of the war, not of the hospital but of the future and what we should do when we were home again. He wanted to go to Italy. He was fascinated by the site at Pompeii and he talked as though I should be with him. Then suddenly he took my hand and said, ‘Will you marry me?’ ”

I drew breath sharply. Somewhere in my dreams I had thought of marrying Jonnie. Then I had thought of marrying Ben, it was true. But I went back to Jonnie after Ben had gone to Australia.

“I said I would,” she went on. “It’s easy there, Angelet. There is no formality. You have to pay them well and you can get a priest to marry you. It is probably some unfrocked priest from England … I don’t know. But he married us … and that was what we both wanted. We spent three days together … and then I went back to the hospital and he went to Sebastopol. That is my story, Angelet. You know the rest. He never came back.”

“So you … you are Jonnie’s wife?”

She nodded. “What do you think they will say, Angelet?” she asked anxiously. “They might not … accept me.”

“What do you mean? You are Jonnie’s wife. Therefore they must.”

“I am afraid they will say it is no true marriage.”

“How can they? Don’t they have certificates? Do you?”

“I have one, but, as I say, it was different from the way it is done here. We knew of this priest. He had married one or two other people. It might be that they won’t accept it. They could raise all sorts of objections … if they wanted to.”

“They wouldn’t do that. Why should they?”

“Angelet, you must see. Jonnie belongs to a different family from mine. I worked for your mother.”

“What has that to do with it?”

“They might say … everything.”

“I don’t see how they can if you are married with a certificate to prove it.”

“If they wanted to disprove it …”

“They are good kind people. Jonnie loved you and married you. We all knew that he liked you very much. That was obvious. So they wouldn’t be very surprised. You were both out there. It seems natural to me.”

“I wouldn’t want to embarrass them. I wouldn’t want to be there … if they didn’t want me.”

“But you are Jonnie’s
wife
!”

“Yes,” she agreed.

“I am going to tell them right away … and you are coming with me.”

She drew back. “No … no. Let me wait here. You go and tell them. But if they think it is no true marriage I will say goodbye to you … to you all …”

“My mother would never allow that. She is always saying how she misses you.”

“She made me so happy … you all have.”

“I shall go right away. Promise me you won’t leave this garden, Grace.”

“I promise. If you don’t come back in say half an hour, I shall know they do not believe me … they do not accept me, I shall understand.”

“You are being foolish, Grace, and I always thought you were so clever.”

I came out of the gardens and ran across the road.

Aunt Amaryllis was in the little room where she did the flowers, a vase of water before her and the flowers lying at the side of the sink.

“Aunt Amaryllis,” I cried. “Grace is in the gardens. She has married Jonnie.”

Aunt Amaryllis turned pale and then pink. She dropped the scissors and wiped her hands.

“Come,” I said. “I will take you to her.”

I was glad that they welcomed her so warmly. Jonnie’s widow would have a very special place in the household.

Aunt Amaryllis was almost happy. Helena came and listened sadly to Grace’s story.

“My dear,” she said, “you made him happy before he died.”

“Yes, we were very happy,” Grace told them.

“I’m glad,” said Helena.

I wondered what Uncle Peter thought. He seemed to like Grace but he was suspicious by nature. He asked a lot of questions and I fancied that in his mind he was making notes of details which he would later verify. But even he had been deeply affected by Jonnie’s death and was pleased to see that Grace’s coming and her announcement had lifted the spirits of Helena and Amaryllis. He may even have felt a twinge of conscience because he had been rather pleased with what Jonnie’s going to war had done for Matthew.

The rest of that visit was dominated by Grace’s return to the household.

Of course Jonnie had been rather a rich young man. He had left no will but his widow would not be penniless. She said that she would be happy to leave everything in Uncle Peter’s capable hands.

I don’t know what arrangements were made or how much money Lord John had left to Jonnie. There was no doubt that Uncle Peter had made inquiries as to the validity of the marriage and he must have been satisfied, for Grace now became an independent woman with her own income.

Helena wanted her to live with them until she made plans. She said: “I always wanted a daughter and that is what you will be to me now.”

Everyone seemed satisfied at the outcome; and there was a certain contentment about Grace. She was happy to be in Jonnie’s home.

I
HAD REACHED MY
seventeenth birthday. Life had slipped back into its more or less uneventful groove now that the war was over and the loss of Jonnie was a sad memory rather than a bitter pain to the family.

Without those harrowing dispatches from the Crimea the press seemed full of trivialities for a while and then came the Indian Mutiny which was even more shocking than the war. There were terrible accounts of how our people had been treated, mutilated and brutally murdered … those who had been friendly servants suddenly turning against men and women and children. The fate of the women was stressed; they had been raped and submitted to horrible indignities. My imagination went beyond that moment when I had heard Ben’s voice calling my name. I kept thinking: Suppose he had not come in time.