Chapter Fourteen 1898 #4
The heroin tincture tasted bitter and made her feel like she’d fallen backwards into a billion feathers.
She certainly forgot whatever it was she’d been unhappy about, and when the heavenly fog receded she found herself wondering if another small dose might not make the day – might not make everything – much, much easier.
But Ralph controlled all the medicines in the house, and Theo noticed that the craving eased after a day or two.
That craving troubled her, until she began to avoid taking it at all.
She would drop it into her mouth if Ralph were watching but spit it into the basin once he’d left the room.
Arthur made her more determined. She must not be insensible, but ready at all times to protect him.
Instinct told her to shore up and create safety, for him and for herself.
To forget the past, and see only the best in her husband.
It was not easy. It required a continuous and exhausting effort of will.
Once or twice, Ralph made her give the heroin tincture to Arthur, too, when he was loud or colicky. And it did soothe him. But there was no mistaking the lingering lassitude, during which time he would not latch on to her, and would not eat.
‘I am the medical man in this house, am I not?’ Ralph said, when Theo refused to give it to Arthur any more. ‘Who knows better, do you suppose – you, or I?’
‘You are the medical man,’ she said, breathless with nerves. ‘But I am the mother.’
A certain person has developed the habit of taking tonics, she wrote to Albert Mackie.
Indeed, he depends upon them. Cocaine to keep awake, and heroin to fall sleep.
He has quite a different character when he has taken a tonic, compared to when he has not.
Could these medicines change the very essence of a person?
Are they really a cure, or are they merely a numbing?
To which Dr Mackie replied: If pain is the symptom, then may a medicine that numbs it not be called a cure? Such tonics are entirely safe, I assure you. I prescribe them to my own patients on a regular basis.
But Theo wasn’t reassured.
Her fear was an amorphous thing. She couldn’t say what she thought would happen.
There was nothing definite about it, only the growing conviction that she didn’t know who her husband was, or therefore what he might do.
She couldn’t tell if it was because he’d changed, or because she’d never really known him.
If she was careful then he rarely lost his temper with her, yet she increasingly suspected that this was not enough.
That perhaps he wanted to lose his temper with her.
What Theo had taken for shyness on Audrey’s part – the way she faded into the background when Ralph was around – she now understood to be something more.
It was distrust. And the other servants had gone from openly adoring Ralph and resenting their young, unfashionable mistress to quietly going about their work with sombre expressions, shrinking from their master like water from oil.
Theo knew it was her fault. She had disappointed him, and she had not loved him – not in the beginning, and at no time since.
And she was certain he knew it, and didn’t understand.
He was far better suited to being adored.
Theo reminded herself that he was as tethered to her as she was to him.
Only Arthur made that bearable for her, but perhaps she could make it better for all of them by being a better wife.
By being all the things he wanted her to be – loyal and obedient and happy to see him.
Thoughts of Missy’s operation, and her remains, became one more thing Theo kept hidden. So her world shrank a little more every day. So she shrank a little more.
‘But this is not the summit of mankind’s capabilities,’ Ralph declared, pacing the length of the dining-room table one evening. ‘Not even close! It is but a step higher.’
He’d drawn the curtains, declaring the evening sunshine far too bright. His pupils were huge, the whites bloodshot, and when he blinked it was too much – more like a sudden, rapid screwing-up of his eyes.
‘This is only the start – Mrs Geary’s recovery will be the first of many. I have begun to make inroads into areas of surgery that have until now been wholly out of bounds . . .’
Theo sat rigid with her dinner gone cold on her plate.
He didn’t need her opinion, only her ears.
His elation was due to two things: firstly, another article he’d written – ‘The Mechanism of Contra-coup and of Certain Other Forms of Intracranial Injury’ – had been published in The Lancet, to a flurry of interested and congratulatory correspondence.
‘How would you like to live in London, my dear?’ he’d asked, looking up from one letter. ‘It would be exciting, would it not?’
Theo was startled. ‘There has been an offer of a position?’
‘All in good time.’
The second thing was that a patient of his had survived an operation to remove a large bony growth from her skull, with partial paralysis to one side of her body the only apparent after-effect.
‘God did not intend for us to live in fear and ignorance, Theo,’ Ralph went on. ‘He did not mean for us to be felled ahead of time by accident or disease. He has given us the wherewithal to solve these problems, and to cure ourselves – to cure others.’
He knelt down beside her, and she jumped. Staring into those vast pupils was like leaning over a well. Theo could see nothing at the bottom – no glimpse of reflected sky.
‘It’s wonderful, Ralph,’ she said.
He grabbed her hands and kissed them furiously, then pulled her up from her chair.
‘Come! Come into my arms, my darling girl.’
‘Ralph – the servants!’
‘Hang the servants.’
Theo managed to herd him up to their bedroom, at least, before he fell upon her, his face suffused with passion. This was her duty, she reminded herself; it was how they’d made Arthur, so it could not be so very bad. It was over quickly, in any case.
Later on, when Ralph’s face sagged with exhaustion but he couldn’t sleep, Theo watched him at his dresser, tipping his head back to drop the tincture into his mouth.
His tongue repulsed her – curled out of the way, outlined by faint light from the window.
There was something inhuman about it. Something reptilian.
The next morning he plodded into the nursery while Theo was feeding Arthur, and sank into a chair, unshaven, only half dressed. The nurse excused herself, though for once Theo wished she’d stay. Ralph smelled stale and almost metallic. His hair was mussed, his skin still puffy with fatigue.
‘It’s very early,’ she said. ‘Why not sleep a while longer?’
He ignored her. The morning light was cool and crystalline; Theo had opened the window to hear the birds and let the dewy smell of the garden drift in.
She wanted Arthur to experience every possible beauty, but with Ralph watching them like that her happiness withered.
Arthur’s cheeks were mottled, his eyes clamped shut with perfect concentration as he fed.
A minute later, Theo wiped his chin and deftly switched him to the other side.
‘Ups-a-daisy, little one,’ she murmured.
‘How readily you love him.’ Ralph’s voice broke the air apart.
Theo looked up, her smile fading. She opened her mouth but couldn’t think of a reply. It was not a question.
‘How very readily you love him, when in six long years you have not managed to love me.’
Theo knew she must deny it. She knew she must reassure him, but her tongue refused to move. His stare was nakedly angry. She tensed; Arthur broke off, and started to cry. Ralph grimaced, clapping his hands over his ears.
‘Dose him,’ he said. ‘Dose him, if he carries on that din – or I shall.’
He lurched to his feet and left without another word.
Audrey, who’d been in a corner all the time, quite unnoticed by Ralph, came and took the baby. She put Arthur over her shoulder and patted until he burped.
‘You’ve no better manners than your father, have you?’ she said to him.
Theo didn’t rebuke her. She’d never been more grateful to have Audrey.
A little later, when she heard the front door close behind her husband, Theo allowed herself to relax. Moments of calm were now islands in a restless sea – a sea that heaved with undertow. She could only ever swim for the next one, hoping, but not certain, to reach it.
In the afternoon she went into Shaftesbury with Hermione Abbott, to have tea at the Grosvenor Arms Hotel.
She hadn’t told Ralph about it, not wanting to give him time to find a reason why she ought not go.
He was always far happier if she stayed at home.
In any case, Theo planned to be back before he finished at the hospital.
If she could get away without mentioning it at all, then so much the better.
He didn’t like her to be secretive, yet it seemed increasingly necessary to be so.
Hermione had given birth to her fourth child and youngest son, Percy, just three months before Arthur’s arrival.
‘However adorable little Arthur is – and my goodness, he is,’ she said, as they walked side by side up the hill, ‘I imagine you might be ready for an interlude of adult company. I know I am.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Theo said, though the truth was she wouldn’t have left him at all, if she hadn’t known Audrey was with him. There was nobody else she trusted enough, and she was already missing him.
‘I begin to feel like a dairy cow, after a while,’ Hermione said. ‘Not that I don’t love them when they’re tiny – I do – but once I can pass an entire day without being gnawed upon, I’m not entirely unhappy about it.’
‘I just can’t imagine being a mother four times over,’ Theo said. ‘Feeling this much love for four different children . . . isn’t it overwhelming?’
‘Utterly, in a delightful sort of way. But, Theo – you already are a mother four times over,’ Hermione said, and Theo loved her for it.