Chapter Nine 1892
Chapter Nine
After the third time, Theo realised it wasn’t a coincidence.
Families of their vague acquaintance – cousins of the Fitzwilliams; a god-daughter of the Smith-Copelands – began to visit.
Families with unmarried sons in their twenties, next to whom she found herself seated at dinner.
Their scrutiny was unsubtle. Usually, Theo was quite capable of seeming to take part in a conversation when her mind was elsewhere, simply by saying oh and yes and really when instinct nudged her to.
But these new visitors wanted her opinion on things; to know what she had read, what she played, whether she liked to dance or travel or hunt.
‘Of course she’s trying to marry you off,’ Audrey said, late one evening after just such a dinner.
The guests had been a family out of Dorchester, owners of a publishing firm that had once put out a book of her father’s.
The son and heir – Bertram – had kept asking her how she found the food, and smirking at her replies as though they had a joke to share. As though he knew her.
‘But did you see him?’ Theo said, turning on her dressing table stool as Audrey held up Theo’s skirt and examined it for marks.
‘I did. They looked like money.’
‘Money and . . . well . . . not much else.’
Audrey smiled. ‘If he’d been handsome and witty, would you have liked him any better?’
‘Yes. Maybe.’
‘But wanted to marry him any better?’ Audrey shook her head. ‘That’s the trouble, isn’t it, miss?’ she said softly.
Audrey knew Toby’s name from the letters she smuggled out to post for her mistress, but they had never spoken about him. Theo didn’t know how much Audrey had gleaned from gossip.
‘In any case,’ Audrey went on, ‘your mother is a determined sort of person. Dr Anscombe had best hurry up. She’ll see you wed before this year is out, else I’m Queen Vicky herself.’
‘What do you mean, about the doctor?’
Audrey tipped her head. ‘I think you know what I mean, miss.’
Theo did, but she didn’t want to talk about it.
Her friendship with Dr Anscombe had grown gradually.
His was the only company she looked forward to between Crudge’s visits, though the faint sense remained that, on some level, he was still treating her disordered nerves.
In any case, she didn’t want their relationship to change, or for things to grow strained between them.
She wasn’t sure how it would feel to know that he thought of her that way.
He’d asked her to call him Ralph, in private, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
‘I think my mother would like to marry Dr Anscombe herself,’ Theo murmured. ‘The way she looks at him sometimes. I don’t think he notices it.’
‘Oh, I think he does,’ Audrey said. ‘But he’d far rather marry you.’
‘He’s closer to her in age.’
‘What does that matter, with men?’ Audrey paused to consider. ‘I think he’d make a fine husband. Lord knows he’s nice to look at, and he’ll never want for an income. He might even be famous one day – everyone says how good he is. Did you hear about the mayor’s wife?’
‘What about the mayor’s wife?’
‘Cook was telling us. The Mayor of Shaftesbury’s wife, last year – I forget her name.
Might’ve been Violet. Anyway, she started all of a sudden to lose her breath and cough all the time, and it turned out she had a tumour growing right on her windpipe.
’ Audrey tapped two fingers on the notch at the base of her throat.
‘Just here. Her husband took her to see the best surgeons money could buy, but all of them said they couldn’t take it out without killing her. ’
‘But Dr Anscombe did?’
Audrey nodded. ‘He said there was danger in it, but he was willing to try since the lady was slowly being throttled. She’s right as rain now, though she wears a high collar, to cover the scar.’
Theo considered this. ‘Perhaps he might have been able to save Rosalind,’ she murmured.
‘Who’s that?’
‘Rosalind Mackie – who gave me her butterfly necklace when she died. She and her husband came to stay here, three years ago. She had a tumour in her lung, and even though her husband was a doctor he couldn’t save her, nor could any of the doctors they’d seen.
She came here to pray to the goddess for healing, but that didn’t work either. ’
‘Poor her. I bet Dr Anscombe could’ve helped her.’
The idea of it was very sad, but also thrilling.
Theo turned to Crudge’s latest letter from Granada.
His letters provoked equal measures of longing and delight; she read each one over and over until the next arrived.
I woke early this morning and saw the sunrise as it reached the Alhambra.
Ah! But the colours were incredible, Theo, simply incredible.
There is still snow on the highest peaks and it is dazzling, all rosy pink; then the deep chasms between the promontories are blacker than night.
How I wish you were here! You will see it one day – somehow, I shall make certain of it.
Theo tried to picture a feeling of such wonder. Her imagination flickered tentatively, but she couldn’t sustain it.
Dr Anscombe came for dinner most Saturdays.
Sometimes, he stayed the night then went to church with them in the morning.
His visits were so regular that he generally informed them when he wasn’t coming, rather than when he was.
His being needed at the hospital was the most common cause of absence.
But he arrived that Saturday afternoon, just as the publishing family were leaving and Bertram, still smirking, was pressing a kiss on to Theo’s hand.
His lips left a smear of moisture that she itched to wipe away.
After dinner, Theo played gin rummy with the doctor in a corner of the library, while a foursome of guests played bridge at another table.
‘They look in deadly earnest, don’t they?’ he whispered. ‘I wonder what the stakes are?’
‘Hush – they’ll hear you!’
‘Nonsense – I think we could perform an operetta and they wouldn’t notice.’
‘It’s your turn,’ Theo pointed out.
Anscombe drew a card, frowned at it, discarded it.
‘I think you have both of the kings I’m waiting for, Miss Hallewell.’
‘You aren’t supposed to tell me – now I won’t ever discard a king for you.’
‘Cruel lady,’ he teased.
‘Perhaps I am.’
‘Perhaps that poor fellow you were seeing off when I arrived would agree with you.’
Theo’s face got hotter. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Only that he seemed keen to make a favourable impression, and you left nobody in any doubt that he had not.’
Theo fidgeted her cards uncomfortably.
‘It is whispered of amongst the guests,’ he went on. ‘Mrs Hallewell’s steady stream of suitors, and how bravely young Theodora holds her nerve.’
‘Perhaps she means for me to simply . . . pick one out,’ she said. ‘The way she took me to pick Audrey from two rows of girls at St Agnes’s.’
‘It might be quicker if she did line them all up at once. Then you could assess each one, form an opinion and name a favourite.’ He tapped one finger to his lips for a moment. ‘I think that’s called a “coming-out ball”.’
‘Really, Dr Anscombe. We don’t have such things here in Hallewell.’
‘I wish you’d call me Ralph. Aren’t we friends?’
‘Of course we are. But I don’t think Mama would approve.’
Ralph leaned towards her, eyes sparkling. In the candlelight, he was russet and gold – skin and hair and lips.
‘She need not hear you,’ he said mischievously. ‘You might try it out. Just once?’
Embarrassed, Theo looked away. She sensed that he was flirting with her, and didn’t want, accidentally, to say anything of significance. To that end, but without conscious thought, she strove to make herself his patient again.
‘Earlier, at tea, someone asked about one of the legends of Abrecan,’ she said. ‘The one about how he returns at midsummer, on the anniversary of his death.’
She felt rather than saw Ralph’s subtle withdrawal. He discarded the eight of spades.
‘And what was your reaction?’
‘Almost nothing at all at the time – I even remember thinking to myself that you would be pleased with me.’ She smiled briefly, not holding his gaze.
‘But afterwards, for some hours . . .’ She took a breath.
‘I sometimes feel a terrible urgency that I can’t suppress.
As though it’s all still happening now, and I have a chance to prevent it if I am only to act. ’
‘Miss Hallewell . . .’
‘If I’d stopped Missy setting off for Shaftesbury, for example. If it was the exercise that made her worsen, then I could have saved her by stopping her, and that way saved Kit as well.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Ralph said gently. ‘And in any case, it’s impossible to know.’
‘But if—’
The doctor suddenly dropped his cards and took hold of her free hand in both of his. His skin was hot to the touch.
‘Please, Theo,’ he whispered. ‘Such thoughts will flourish like weeds, if you let them. They will turn to obsession, to the exclusion of everything else.’
He squeezed her hand tightly, and seemed almost afraid.
‘You will make yourself unwell again. I beg you not to do it.’
Theo was shocked. ‘I’m sorry.’
Ralph sat back, and stared down at the table. Then he stroked the back of her hand with his thumb, just briefly. It sent a tingle over her skin. When he let go, Theo felt too aware of her abandoned hand, and was unsure where to put it. He picked up his cards and looked blankly at them.
‘I didn’t mean to startle you,’ he said. ‘Forgive me.’
They finished their game, but the fun had gone out of it. Only afterwards did she notice that he’d called her by her Christian name.
Dr Anscombe didn’t come again for three weeks, and sent his apologies in a note. Theo wondered which part of their conversation had so offended him, but she couldn’t fathom it.
More suitors came.
‘You must make more effort,’ Diana said, wearing a bitten-back expression after one particularly awful dinner. ‘Or do you wish to remain here forever? A spinster with a reputation for frailty of the mind?’