Chapter 3
Cecilia
THE SHROUD IS ALMOST DONE.
Cecilia sews alone in Lydia’s abandoned studio, fixing a trailing line of flower blossoms, adding leaves and petals until the piece is a work of art.
Lydia should be buried with art. That feels important.
The doctor is here again. Each time he comes, Odette sinks further, retreating inside herself, away from Cecilia and into Lydia’s dead world. Sometimes, she will sit beside Cecilia, sewing the shroud, and speak not a word for hours.
The shroud is beautiful. Cecilia is strangely proud of it.
When Odette is not here, she will slip her arms into the sleeves – to judge the span of embroidery and the decoration to the chest, of course – and imagine what her own shroud might be like.
She has a photo card of Sarah Bernhardt sleeping in a coffin, posed for some part or another.
It must induce a special kind of madness to put yourself inside a coffin, to close your eyes and greet death early.
Cecilia touches the delicate embroidery and wonders whether it will be Odette who has to choose the trappings of her end. She cannot imagine outliving her. A world without Odette is no world at all.
Odette bursts through the door in a flurry of skirts, loose hair streaming behind her. ‘Ces! Ces, oh God, Ces.’ She throws herself into Cecilia’s arms and shakes, somewhere between a sob and laughter.
Cecilia holds her for a moment, then pulls them apart enough that she can look into Odette’s face and read whether this portends disaster or hope. ‘What is it?’
‘The doctor – he said she’s getting better.’
Cecilia cannot believe it. ‘What do you mean? What did he say?’
‘Too many things, which I did not understand the half of, but he said he was happy with her progress. Happy! Is that not the best thing you have ever heard?’
‘I don’t understand. What has changed?’
Odette is hardly listening. ‘He said her pulse is strong and she has a good colour. He has not said anything so positive in weeks. He even thinks she may have put on a little weight, which surely means her body is healing!’
Cecilia does not want to press her, to unpick what the doctor may have said and what Odette has taken from it.
It would be too cruel to wrench that hope from her, but there is a great tremor of fear beneath it.
Such miraculous recoveries are not impossible, but they are rare, and she fears what may happen to Odette when – if – this fresh hope is shattered.
Odette bounces up, pulls Cecilia with her. ‘Come on – my father has said we must all go to the drawing room and hear it for ourselves.’
Cecilia follows Odette downstairs, where Uncle George, Claudine, Penelope and Leo are already ensconced in armchairs or pressed together on the settee.
The London doctor is very different to his country counterpart. He is long and thin, with a sharp nose and quick, intelligent eyes. He has less of a bedside manner, but Cecilia finds this leads her to trust what he says more.
He is already speaking when Cecilia and Odette join them.
‘. . . all promising signs. If she pulls through, I am afraid she may be an invalid for the rest of her life and require diligent care, but I am pleased that she is keeping more food down, and there are good signs that the ulcers have begun to heal themselves. It is a tribute to your attentive nursing,’ he says to Claudine.
‘Mrs Fairfax-Waugh is lucky to have a sister so adept at the feminine arts. You will be a great aid to her recovery. It is the joy God gives to unmarried women to provide such careful ministrations.’
He smiles as he speaks, and Claudine inclines her head in acknowledgement. She sits stiffly upright on her chair, and Cecilia wonders if she is the only one who notices that Claudine is clasping her hands so tightly the knuckles show white through her skin.
There is some more light conversation. Odette is keen to have the doctor repeat his good opinion, at which she cries, to the discomfort of all, announcing the end of the gathering.
Odette disappears back into Lydia’s room for the remainder of the day, and Penelope ushers Leo and Cecilia home, insisting that their intrusion is no longer wanted.
They eat a simple meal braced against the cold that the unending rain has brought with it.
The turn of the weather has come sooner than expected, and half the chimneys still need clearing out of birds’ nests that have filled them through the summer, so there is only a fire in every other room.
Cecilia’s bedroom is like ice, the bedding so cold it feels wet to the touch, and her muscles ache with the tension of holding herself against the onslaught.
When, late that night, Odette beckons her through the open window of her room across the road, Cecilia needs no second invitation.
It is trickier for them to find private ways to be together in London, in their two separate houses.
Lydia’s illness has given Cecilia good reason to stay close to her friend, but also ammunition to her mother to insist that she does not disturb a household under stress.
Her mother has a library of etiquette books to fortify her claims, and Cecilia struggles to counter them.
But here, in the brief opportunity of night, when the house is locked up and the servants are busy with their final tasks, Cecilia knows how to climb out of her window, slip across the road and clamber up to Odette’s own room.
Odette waits for her at the window, to haul her in – and, once Cecilia is inside, Odette is on her at once, with an intensity that takes her by surprise. Odette’s hands pull at the collar of her shirt, at the hooks and eyes at her waist, as her mouth presses a hot line along Cecilia’s throat.
It is impossible to speak; Cecilia cannot find the words.
It is easier to guide Odette to the bed, to introduce some softness to her touch.
But still, Odette is hungry, desperate, Cecilia’s shift lifted up over her head while Odette remains fully dressed.
It is never quite like this between them.
Cecilia likes to lead, to serve, trying out each stroke of her fingers or lap of her tongue as though making an offering to her god, attentive to what is welcomed and what is spurned.
Now, it is as though Odette has become a vengeful, demanding spirit of old, capricious and instinctual.
She pushes Cecilia back onto the pillows, kissing her with sharp teeth, biting at her throat, her collarbone, before covering Cecilia’s nipple with her mouth.
Her other hand pushes Cecilia’s legs apart and strokes a line up the inside of her thigh.
Cecilia gasps and arches back, overwhelmed by the twin sensations.
‘Odette – slow – slow down.’ She is not sure she means it, but there is something wild and frightening about this passion, as though they are riding full pelt into a rising tide. ‘Talk to me.’
Odette gives her response with a scrape of an incisor across sensitive flesh, before moving her hand to dip between Cecilia’s legs. All thought dissolves like mist against the bright sun of Odette’s touch.
They have been with each other long enough that Odette knows too well exactly how to bring her pleasure, and Cecilia surrenders into it.
If she tries to move, squirming against the building sensation or canting her hips into Odette’s hand, the teeth against her breast press dangerously close to a bite.
Odette wants her submission, and Cecilia will give it to her. Cecilia would give her anything.
At some point, Odette moves to straddle Cecilia’s leg, grinds herself down against her thigh in rhythm with the movement of her hand, and they fall over the edge together, Odette’s voice muffled against Cecilia’s body and Cecilia with one hand across her own mouth to silence herself.
When they settle side by side on the bed, naked and clothed, Odette cannot look at her. She curls into Cecilia’s side, hiding her face against her body.
‘Are you – is everything all right?’ Cecilia asks, and it is so worthless a question, so profoundly inadequate.
After a moment, Odette says, ‘I do not know what I am.’
Cecilia strokes her hair.
‘Life is—’ Odette pauses. ‘It is too much. How can anyone endure it?’
‘I don’t know.’ And it is the truth. ‘We will weather it together. Promise me we will always be together.’
Odette is silent for too long. ‘No one can promise that.’
Cecilia swallows. It is a blast of icy Heath air across her skin.
No. She supposes no one can promise that.
But she wishes Odette would lie to her.
Cecilia slides free with a plea of needing to use the privy. She finds Odette’s dressing gown and slips down the corridor, a well-practised ghost. The whole household should be asleep, or she would not risk it.
‘This is not what I agreed to.’
Cecilia freezes, one foot resting lightly on the hall runner before her. Has she been caught? Did she make a noise?
No, the voice is coming from Uncle George’s room.
Claudine’s voice.
‘No one is suggesting any firm arrangements now – let’s not overreact.’
Hissing, now. ‘Overreact? I will not let my life end being Lydia’s nurse. She has taken enough from me already; she cannot demand this.’
Cecilia is endlessly overhearing things. It would be better, she thinks, if she could blind herself, stop up her own ears, make herself the unthinking, compliant girl her mother wants her to be. She is Eve, too tempted by the serpent, too weak for knowledge that can only bring her pain.
‘You’re tired. Let’s all get some sleep, and things will look brighter in the morning.’
It is precisely the sort of bland platitude that Cecilia is all too used to from George.
‘Has middle age made you a coward or was I too much of a fool to notice it when we were younger?’
She shouldn’t be listening to this. She should go; she must go.
‘Calm down. We’ve talked about this. The hired nurse is arriving in the morning. You’ll have help.’
‘Help,’ Claudine sneers. ‘I am telling you now, I will not give Lydia the years I have left. I will be no one’s caretaker. Whatever it costs me, I will not bear it.’
Cecilia screws up her courage and flees.