Chapter 1
Odette
A DARK AND BITTER AUTUMN comes early to greet Lydia’s return to the London house, she the sick and stately queen, and the rest her muffled retinue.
A squall of rain daily sheets across the Heath, scattering against the many windows like pebbles flung in anger.
The place is battered, wind howling in the chimneys and water blown in beneath the doors; a phalanx of servants mop and dust and sweep, but there is no keeping nature out.
The world turns around Lydia’s illness.
Confined to bed, she is pale and weak and gripped by stomach pains, and Odette spends much of the thin daylight by her side, reading to her from Emma.
Sometimes she listens intently, sometimes Odette is waved away by one hand, curled into a claw, a drawn expression closing down her mother’s face.
Her mother is sliding away from her. Odette is swallowed by a panic that she cannot race fast enough to keep up.
Odette and Cecilia have spread out the sheet of stiff white cotton that will form Lydia’s shroud.
Of course, they could have bought a fine shroud from any number of tasteful outfitters in town, but Odette has chosen to sew one herself.
She cannot bear the thought that there is nothing more she can do for her mother.
They work up in Lydia’s studio, where the best light can be had from the soaring glass.
Already, the close stitching hurts Odette’s eyes, and her fingers tremble.
The cloth is cut into a simple pattern, like a nightgown but open at the back, and together they begin the careful work of inserting the sleeves into the armholes.
They have been cut large to make it easier to manhandle onto a lifeless body.
Around the cuffs and collar of the shroud, she thinks she will embroider baby’s breath for everlasting love, red carnation for heartache and marigold for grief.
Claudine arrives in the doorway, stiff-backed and holding a tray of untouched food. ‘I have business to attend to,’ she says, then leaves without waiting for a response.
Odette knows this is her summons. She secures her needlework and replaces the thimble in the sewing box.
This is how it goes now: Claudine will not explain herself, and Odette will not ask.
There has been no further conversation between them since her father took her into the orchard and explained her flaws to her.
It could be cowardice, but Odette has shied away from any further discussion, saying very little to Claudine while also being mindful when she does to be unfailingly polite, quiet, to tidy herself away into corners and keep her eyes downturned.
She does not know how to face the fight: better to be diminished, placatory.
There is no need for Claudine to attack her if she takes herself out first.
‘Do you want me to come with you?’ asks Cecilia.
Odette hesitates. The truth is that she is afraid of her mother, as well. Afraid to be alone with her, to witness what is happening. ‘For a little while, if you can spare the time.’
A polite fiction that Cecilia indulges her in. They both know Cecilia will spare her anything she asks.
Lydia’s bedroom faces onto the garden; the fire is stoked high and the surfaces are cluttered with the detritus of the sickbed: medicine bottles and handkerchiefs, spouted cups to help her drink, ceramic bowls to catch her bloody vomit, sprigs of lavender against the ripe smell of a body.
Odette enters, braced – to be cheerful, to be patient, to swallow down her horror and shape herself into her mother’s helpmeet.
It is frightening to see her mother so reduced, to see her beautiful face twisted in pain, her bones standing out against her skin.
These are memories she will never be able to scour, her idea of her mother forever indelibly changed, and she rails against it, the horror and the grief, and the desire to turn away and bury herself in beauty and noise and pleasure as though she can blot out what is happening if only she does not give it quarter.
But she has been enough of a coward. There is nothing she can do but offer witness to pain: that is the only gift she has left to give.
The curtains are closed tight against the day; Odette opens them, allowing only a gentle light in, just as her mother likes it.
Lydia lies in the bed, and briefly, Odette thinks she is sleeping, until she stirs, her chestnut hair shifting across the pillow and catching the light like the scales of a fish darting under water.
‘Angel.’ Lydia reaches out a hand to her. Odette sits in the chair drawn up to her bedside.
‘Mama.’
Lydia doesn’t speak again. Her face is pinched and drawn.
Cecilia draws up a chair on the other side of the bed, takes the prayer book from the bedside table and turns the pages to a few marked passages.
They have not told Lydia what the doctor has said.
It has been the subject of much fraught debate.
Aunt Penelope worries that in hiding the doctor’s assessment, they are denying Lydia the chance for a good death, to reflect and make her peace with God and give a comforting example of the way a good Christian can face death.
But Odette could not stomach it. The doctor has not said it is the end for sure, only that they must prepare for it.
These are different things. While there is still a chance, surely they must ensure Lydia focuses on life?
In the end, Claudine forbade anyone from distressing her patient, and George offered no opinion, glad to see the matter settled.
But looking at her mother now, Odette wonders if she can possibly be in any doubt about her own failing body.
Around each of her eyes is a dark shadow, and when she speaks, her gums are pale and seem to be receding from teeth that are over-prominent. It is ghoulish, as though her living body gives way already to the grave.
It has occurred to Odette that her mother may starve to death, if she continues in this way for too long, unable to eat more than a little. Perhaps it is a mercy to be hoped for that the fever will take her first.
No, no. Nothing will be taken.
The rain softens against the window, and the wind slows its assault across the Heath.
Odette holds her mother’s hand, stroking her thumb across her fingers, and thinks about the nights her mother would climb into bed with her, press them close together as though Odette were a small child again, as though there was a way to make them again one entity in two bodies.
It should not be possible for them to be severed by death in this way.
Surely while Odette lives, her mother cannot leave her.
‘I want to paint.’ Lydia rouses suddenly, struggling up from the covers.
There is a feverish urgency to her movements, a clumsiness.
‘Mother?’
‘Up, help me up!’
Odette and Cecilia obey, supporting Lydia on both sides to lift her up to sitting, pressing pillows behind her back and around her head to support her weak body.
‘Paper – charcoal – I can sketch if nothing else.’
‘I’ll get it,’ says Cecilia quickly, and she slips from the room.
Lydia is too animated, bright-eyed and pink-cheeked. The heat radiating from her is something fierce.
‘I really think you should rest,’ says Odette, but Lydia ignores her.
‘Get Leo. I have a scene. Marat in the bathtub. It must be him.’
Odette tries to grasp Lydia’s hand, but she rips it away, nails catching sharply on Odette’s skin. It is a sharp slap of shock to be hurt by her mother in this way.
Lydia does not seem to notice.
Cecilia comes back with sketching paper and a tin of charcoals.
‘I said get Leo. We will do the scene right here.’
‘He’s not at home, Mama.’
He avoids her, Odette thinks. She cannot blame him. They are all so helpless here, she understands that it is easier for him to go to work, where he can do something.
‘Oh. Well, we must make do.’ Lydia spreads the paper about her and makes a few initial sweeping lines with the charcoal. ‘A knife – we need a knife. Cecilia, lie across the foot of the bed. It is a bath – you will have to think about that.’
Cecilia and Odette exchange looks, unsure. Hesitantly, Cecilia sits on the end of the bed and lies back so that she is spread across it.
‘Odette, a knife, quickly.’
Perhaps it is better to humour her. Odette finds a letter opener on the writing desk and returns, hovering awkwardly by Cecilia. ‘Just a brief sketch,’ she says. ‘But you must rest – the doctor said so.’
Lydia is working already, with jerky, uncontrolled movements. Her hair hangs lank around her face; it should be washed, but Odette does not know how to hold her mother in that way. She thinks, abruptly: who deals with her mother’s bedpans? Is it Claudine? One of the maids? Should it be Odette?
She does not know what she owes her mother, and she is frightened that, to pay the debt racked up, she must give herself up entirely.
‘Hold the knife to Cecilia’s breast. Open your shirt a little, darling – yes, like that. Now – press down. It is important to see the skin depress under pressure. Harder.’
‘Mother—’
‘Break the skin. Only a little – break it – there must be blood—’
‘Mother.’
The pain in Odette’s voice seems to shake Lydia back into herself at last. Odette drops the knife to the coverlet, tears welling. Cecilia sits up, fixing her blouse, looking between Odette and Lydia.
Lydia covers her hand with her mouth. ‘Oh. Oh, I’ve ruined it.’
Odette takes a shallow, shaking breath, before she can speak. ‘Nothing is ruined, Mama.’
Lydia is going to cry. It is old familiar weather passing through, and Odette finds herself comforted in some unkind way to at least stand on known ground.
‘Maybe we should ask Mrs Binx to sit with her for a while,’ says Cecilia. ‘Until the doctor can come again.’
There is the unspoken message beneath it: you do not have to stay here. You do not have to do this.
It is what Cecilia always says to her.
But Cecilia is wrong. She doesn’t understand.
This is everything that Odette must do.
‘No,’ she says. ‘You go. I’ll stay.’ She climbs onto the bed beside Lydia and holds her hand. ‘She needs me.’
Cecilia looks as though she will insist again, and when she doesn’t, Odette is strangely disappointed.
Instead, Cecilia gathers up the sketching materials and takes them with her.
Now, Odette is alone with her mother, as it always has been.
She rests her head on her mother’s shoulder, feeling the warmth of her that is still here.
She cannot leave her. She knows what she owes.
She cannot leave.