Daughter of the House. Rosie Thomas

search found what she was looking for, a small roll of butter muslin that Mrs Frost must have used for making raspberry jelly. Devil liked jelly, although none had been made in this kitchen for several years. She laid the muslin to one side, acknowledging that it was too late now to try to protect anyone from infection. But it was the memory of sweet red jelly that prompted her to carve slices off yesterday’s loaf and toast them in front of the yellow fire. She laid a tray with butter and shop jam and carried it up to the drawing room, not even glancing out of the window at the spot where Lawrence Feather had appeared last night.

      Eliza was still fitfully sleeping. Her mouth hung open and her jaw sagged. Nancy gave a cup of tea to Faith and sent Devil and Cornelius downstairs for theirs.

      Nancy murmured, ‘I’ve heard that the first twenty-four hours are the worst. If she can survive the night, you know …’

      Faith answered, ‘Your mother will, if anyone can. I have seen her do it before. After Cornelius was born she was more dead than alive, then a few hours later she was sitting up and trying to nurse him and insisting that he was going to live too. Matthew and I sent for the priest to baptise him, we were so certain that he wouldn’t last the day.’

      ‘Was she always the same?’

      Faith said, ‘Yes. Always.’

      Nancy almost smiled. There were no compromises in Eliza except for those forced on her by life’s reverses, and she bowed under those with little grace.

      Eliza’s fits of coughing shook the house. They could only hold her arms and hope that the spasms would not crack her ribs. When the latest one subsided Faith folded a damp cloth with some drops of eau de cologne and placed it on her forehead while Nancy sponged her wrists with cold water. The pillow was sweat-soaked so they placed a fresh towel under her head.

      The two women talked in low voices.

      Nancy asked, ‘Carlo was the dwarf, wasn’t he? She keeps saying his name.’

      ‘Carlo was your father’s stage partner in the very first days of the Palmyra. Eliza and I went to see them perform an act called The Philosopher’s Illusion.’

      Nancy had often heard it described. The trick turned on the dwarf’s miniature stature, which he concealed from the audience throughout by walking on stilts.

      ‘Carlo was in love with her, poor fellow. They all were,’ Faith added.

      ‘Who was Jakey? Ma talked about him too.’

      Faith was distracted. ‘The boy? He was in the company back then. He could act rather well. I think he went on to another theatre and much bigger things.’

      Nancy bent her head and laced her fingers with her mother’s. Eliza’s wedding ring was loose on the bone.

      Devil and Cornelius came back, somewhat restored by toast and tea.

      The day wore on. At the end of the afternoon Nancy walked up the road to the post office. The cold air was like a slap after the close fug of the sickroom. She telephoned Miss Dent, to let her know that she would have to be away from work for as long as her mother needed to be nursed. Miss Dent accepted her apologies with a brief word of sympathy and didn’t ask her when she expected to return to work.

      At home again Nancy found Faith busy in the kitchen and hearty smells of cooking drifting up through the house. She tried to thank her, but Faith would hear none of it.

      ‘Who else needs me? Not Lizzie. And Matthew can look out for Tommy just as well as I can.’

      Nancy put her arms around her aunt’s plump shoulders.

      ‘All the same, thank you,’ she said.

      Soon there was a hot meal ready for Devil and Cornelius. The men ate quickly and gratefully. Cornelius brooded in silence but at least he didn’t mutter about the wounded waiting for his help, or watch the clock as if every spoonful might cost a man’s life.

      Devil didn’t even contemplate going to the Palmyra for the evening performance.

      ‘Anthony will have to manage,’ he shrugged.

      The evening slid into night. Devil dozed at the bedside with his head on his folded arms and Nancy and Faith took it in turns to lie down in Nancy’s bedroom. Cornelius padded between his own room and Eliza’s, and Nancy found his withdrawn vigilance oddly reassuring. He picked up the latest letter from Arthur and scanned it.

      ‘Have you sent for him? He would get compassionate leave, I think.’

      Devil briefly shook his head. They all understood that he delayed because Arthur was to be shielded as far as possible.

      ‘Ah. Well, maybe it’s for the best. I think the crisis may be almost over.’

      It seemed that Cornelius was right. The next time Eliza woke she was too weak to lift her head but she knew them all. Her eyes always came back to Devil.

      Dr Vassilis was visibly surprised when he called the next day, but he pretended to have foreseen the improvement. He examined her before stepping well back to remove his muslin mask.

      ‘Yes, you see, it is just like I told you. It is not the strongest ones who survive. Last night I have a young man die, sick for one day and pfffff, he goes like blowing out this.’ He pointed to the candle in its holder on the night table. The family stared at him, not at all comforted, and the doctor snapped his bag shut. To Cornelius he said in a more cheerful voice, ‘How are you, my friend?’

      Cornelius considered the question.

      ‘There has been more than enough dying, doctor. To sit and brood on it as I have been doing is not helpful. I find nursing my mother a more useful occupation.’

      Vassilis looked shrewdly at him.

      ‘That is a fine discovery, Mr Wix.’

      The doctor bowed and wished them good day. After she had seen him out Nancy gave way in private to tears of relief. To manage her feelings for Devil and Cornelius’s sake she set herself the job of laundering all the soiled bed linen and towels. In the scullery she put water on to boil and found a kind of painful oblivion in plunging her arms deep in the enamel wash tub and scrubbing with the laundry soap until her muscles ached. She tipped the scummy water down the stone sink and ran a fresh tub. She rinsed everything twice and fed the clean items through the mangle, leaning down on the heavy handle with all the weight of her body. She pegged out sheets under the tin roof that partly covered the back area and draped the towels on the wooden maiden suspended from the kitchen ceiling. Her arms were scalded crimson to the elbows.

      Faith found her as she was finishing the work.

      ‘Nancy? Look at you. Doesn’t Eliza send out to a laundry?’

      ‘The boy came for it yesterday when we were all too busy. Anyway I needed to do it myself, and it’s made me feel much better. Is Ma sleeping?’

      ‘She is. Cornelius is with her. Your father’s exhausted so I told him to lie down in your room.’

      ‘That’s good.’

      Faith regarded her with an odd expression.

      ‘Aunt Faith? Is something wrong?’

      ‘You are so like her, you know.’

      Nancy was taken aback.

      Her whole life was coloured by being unlike her mother and by wishing to resemble her more closely.

      ‘Not in your looks, although since you have grown up I see more of her in you every day. In your stubbornness, I mean. You won’t ever give up once you have fixed on an idea. Even when you were tiny, if you wanted to play with a toy you would have it, however hard the boys tried to take it off you. You wouldn’t yell, but you kept your eyes and your little hands fastened tight on it. Lizzie always understood the power of a bargain. She’d hand over the ball so as to get herself something better. You have your mother’s energy too.’ Faith pointed at the white ramparts of sheets, stirring in the wind.