A Carriage for the Midwife (43 page)

‘What be the matter, then, Madam Trotula?’ she asked sharply.

‘’Tis the worst o’ news, Tess,’ Susan answered with a groan, sitting down heavily on a cane-bottomed chair in the parlour. ‘I’ll wait here until she gets in.’

‘Merciful heaven, be it Mr Hansford?’ cried Tess. ‘Be he – be he . . .?’

‘Yes – oh, Tess, what’ll she do? What can we do f’r her?’

Tess burst into tears and went to the kitchen to put a pan of water on to boil. Almost at once the front gate clanged shut and light footsteps were heard running up the path to the door. Not the steps of one who has just lost the dearest love of her life.

She came into the parlour, flushed and smiling.

‘My dear Susan, you look exhausted, and no wonder! I have heard all about your skilful handling of the Spooner birthing last night – this morning – and how you had to go over to Pulhurst straightway to deliver Mrs Knight! Tess, put a pan of water on to boil to make tea for poor Madam Trotula – ah, I see you have already done so. Good.’

She took off her bonnet and shawl, and went on chatting brightly. Too brightly.

‘I’ll tell you the oddest thing, Susan! I’d been out with Mrs Hansford, and left her on that track to the farmhouse. As I was coming back here, two riders came up, one in naval officer’s uniform, and just for one moment, Susan, my heart gave a very nasty jolt. But you see, I know for certain that the
Royal George
doesn’t sail until Saturday. I had a letter sent up by post-chaise yesterday, and Henry’s word on it. So I wonder what their business was? Did you see them on your way back from Pulhurst, Susan?
Susan? SUSAN!
’

For Susan had risen from her chair and stretched out her arms towards her friend.

Sophia stood rooted to the spot, her eyes wide and staring. From the back of her throat came one word.

‘Henry?’

Susan gave the slightest of nods, and sprang forward in time to catch the fainting, falling body. There were no tears: the blue eyes rolled upwards, blank and sightless.

WHILE THE WHOLE
of Beversley mourned for the lost hero, Miss Glover withdrew herself into an inner world of grief, and for two whole weeks stayed in her room. Susan visited daily, no matter how heavy the demands of her work, to aid the faithful Tess, who sometimes had to spoon-feed her mistress with broths and custards. While they spoke kindly to her, she spoke only to Henry.

‘If only I had married you, my love, when you asked me – oh, Henry, forgive me, forgive me – if only we had been married, if only I was your wife, your grieving widow – if only . . .’

The agonised self-reproaches went on and on, until her friends began to fear for her reason. Susan would put her arms around her and beg her to weep out loud as she had done when she saw the lifeless bodies of Polly Lucket and her babies; but just as Susan had been silent and benumbed on that occasion, Sophia was now set apart by her misery, and seemed untouched by the flood of loving sympathy from the village and far beyond, the constant stream of messages and gifts.

Mr Calthorpe came, sad and anxious-looking, to sit beside his cousin. His ladies sent freshly picked flowers from the gardens of Bever House; choice orchard fruit arrived from the rectory, and honey from the Turnbull hives. Charles Parnham sent bottles of his best Madeira wine, and fresh eggs and cooked chickens were brought from Bennett’s farm. Miss Glover looked upon it all but saw nothing.

When Mr Roberts from the parsonage came and read to her from the Gospels and Psalms, her response was disconcerting.

‘If only we had lain together, my own love,’ she said, ‘I might now be with child. And then at least I’d have our baby to hold in my arms.’

Squire Hansford visited, apologising for his wife’s absence, for she had also shut herself away, too much in need of comfort to have any to give. The squire’s grief took the form of seething anger, and he sat and raged helplessly at the waste of his son’s life. His fury was not lessened by the court martial held on board the HMS
Warspite
on the seventh of September to determine the cause of the disaster.

It was generally acknowledged that rotten timbers were the reason why a simple last-minute repair had caused a sudden inrush of water into the hold and through the lower ports. The court was told that ‘a great crack’ had been heard, the ship keeled over to larboard and lay with her masts flat on the water, then within another few minutes she had sunk out of sight. The verdict was that ‘some material part of her frame gave way, which can only be accounted for by the general state of decay of her timbers’. The whole ship’s company was acquitted of blame.

The Commissioners of the Navy tried to circulate an alternative explanation, that a freak gust of wind had caused the ship to capsize, and the renowned poet, William Cowper, was commissioned to write an elegy in which this was the reason given.

‘Damned lies, damned, cowardly lies!’ growled the squire. ‘We saw for ourselves, Sophia, she was riding at anchor in a flat calm!’

On the thirteenth of September Lord Howe’s delayed assault on Gibraltar took place, though the combined French and Spanish forces proved harder to overcome than expected. In fact young William Hansford never told his family about the eye-witness accounts that reached the offices of the
Hampshire Chronicle,
the terrible loss of life due to burning and drowning; men leapt from the smoke and flame of stricken vessels into waters littered with pieces of burning wreckage, and the survivors wept for pity of allies and enemies alike. Such accounts were not published, to spare the distress of relatives.

When Susan quietly told Sophia that the siege of Gibraltar had been lifted, she had shaken her head mournfuly.

‘How cruel and wicked, to send husbands and sons to their deaths over a piece of land that is not ours.’

One morning when Susan was visiting Glover Cottage, Selina Calthorpe was shown in. She asked them to excuse her intrusion, and produced some pencilled drawings done by her class at the House of Industry, ‘especially for Miss Glover’. Susan stood aside as she handed them to Sophia and pointed to one in particular. It was a rough sketch of a sailor beside a wavy sea with a ship on it, and the letter H.

Sophia gazed at it for a full minute, and when she looked up, her eyes were full of tears.

‘Poor little orphaned souls,’ she murmured. ‘I am one with them, an orphan and a bastard with no kin, God pity us.’

Miss Calthorpe gave Susan a sideways glance as the tears trickled slowly down the pale face, the first she had shed.

‘I did right to bring it, I think, Madam Trotula,’ she whispered, wiping her own eyes. Susan nodded mutely, hoping that this might be the start of recovery. She still felt awkward in the presence of the Calthorpe girl who had once considered herself betrothed to Henry Hansford.

At Bever House Mrs Osmond had suffered an early miscarriage, apparently brought on by the shock of her brother’s death. This unfortunate occurrence had forced Mrs Hansford to come to her daughter’s bedside, and having tried to comfort her, she then went on to call at Glover Cottage.

Sophia looked up listlessly, her needlework untouched and a young kitten, a gift from Joby Lucket, playing with a tangled skein of silk under her chair.

‘I had not thought to see you, madam, now that we are not to be related,’ she said dully.

‘Please, my dear,’ began the black-clad woman, her face thin and drawn, ‘the squire and I think of you as Henry’s wife, because he wished it so. We regard you as our daughter, Sophia, just as if—’

She began to weep disconsolately. ‘I have no comfort to give you, Sophia, but we’re both in mourning for Henry, so let us mourn together – we shouldn’t be apart. Oh, Henry, Henry!’

When Susan returned from talking with Tess in the kitchen, she found the two women sharing their grief at the loss of the man they had both adored, and calling each other mother and daughter.

Sophia did not again refer to herself as an orphan, and from then on she began to be seen in Beversley, driving out in the Hansford chaise and accepting the sympathy that everybody longed to give. She no longer had the energy she once possessed, and the light had gone out of her eyes; but in her new closeness to Mrs Hansford she seemed to have turned a corner. The rector saw her and decided that she might now be visited without depressing his own low spirits further; he had to be careful in his poor state of health.

The tragedy of Henry’s death and her anxiety for Sophia had taken their toll of Susan as the year declined. In the solitude of her room she reflected that she had no mother figure to turn to: certainly not in Dolly Lucket, who had stood aside and let her be defiled. Susan knew that there were those who considered her hard and cold towards her mad mother: little did they know the truth, she thought bitterly.

But such rancour would not do. She lifted her shoulders and directed her thoughts towards her life as Madam Trotula, friend of an eminent surgeon, trusted and respected by the women who called on her services. Lizzie Decker was ready to start working as her assistant, and it was time to engage the Widow Smart as housekeeper at May Cottage.

Yes! She must find her fulfilment in her work, and nobody need know of the aching loneliness at the centre of her life.

Christmas came and went, and the new year brought news of the peace treaty with France and Spain; national humiliation was set aside in rejoicing that the war was truly over.

The end of a war means that prisoners are released and may return home.

The weather turned colder towards the middle of January, and there were flurries of powdery snow in the air when Susan took to her bed at noon after being up during the night at a birthing.

‘I’m bone weary, Lizzie, and the back o’ my nose is sore, as if a cold’s coming on.’ She sneezed, and Mrs Decker began to fuss.

‘Get up to bed, Susan, and I’ll bring you a glass o’ wine and hot water. You should take better care o’ yourself.’

Grateful for her bustling concern, Susan drew the curtains and lay down, falling asleep at once.

Just after two o’clock, Lizzie crept into the room.

‘Are ye asleep, Susan?’ she whispered.

‘What is it? Has somebody called?’ Susan sat up with a start.

‘Er – yes, but – ye’ve got a visitor. Mr Calthorpe’s here,’ said Lizzie apologetically.

‘What?’

‘I told him you were resting, but he says it’s very important, and he’ll wait.’

Mr Calthorpe. What had brought him here? What fresh ill news was this? Susan was filled with apprehension, and reached at once for the long woollen wrap she wore when messengers called her from her bed. ‘Tell him I’ll be down, Lizzie.’

She sneezed into a handkerchief, peered at herself in the small looking-glass, and went downstairs. She stiffened at the sight of her father-in-law standing in the parlour; he looked flushed, and his eyes were unnaturally bright.

‘Good day to ye, Mr Calthorpe.’

‘Susan, I have a letter for you,’ he said without any polite preliminaries.

She noted that he called her by her name and not Madam Trotula or Mistress. Her heart began to pound.

‘I must apologise to you, Susan. This letter was brought up to Bever House, and my wife opened it, but it is for you, from a Mrs – er – Nollekens, it looks like, and it came by the hand of a traveller across the Atlantic, from a place called Chippercreek. Here, take it and read it. Edward
lives
, Susan!’

He held out a stained and crumpled envelope with a shaking hand. She took it, and sat down quickly as the room spun round her. He went on speaking rapidly.

‘It’s not easy to read – the woman’s no writer – but the message is clear enough. Go on, read it!’

With a sense of unreality she unfolded the letter on her lap. At first it appeared incomprehensible, a jumble of oddly unfamiiar letters and unconnected words. She took a deep breath and forced herself to concentrate on each word in turn.

‘Do you see, Susan? Do you understand what she says?’ asked Calthorpe eagerly. ‘Edward
did
survive the shipwreck, and must have been taken prisoner to work on this woman’s husband’s farm – but now the war’s over and he’s been set free and she says he’s coming home! On his way! My son is alive, Susan, back from the dead! Have you nothing to say?’

Susan thought she was going to faint. She shook from head to foot, and could scarcely draw breath.

Edward alive
. Edward coming back to Beversley, to his family, to herself. It could not be true. She had thought him dead for so long, she had mourned for him and wept bitter tears for her failure as a wife. And now this peculiar letter. She could not believe it.

Mr Calthorpe stood leaning over her chair, his own trembling hand on her shoulder.

‘Oh, Susan, think what it will be like to see him, hear his voice, touch him! And I am resolved that this will be a time of forgetting old wrongs and divisions between us. I have learned hard lessons in the time he has been gone from us, Susan – for ever, as we thought. But now you will be received at Bever House with full honour as my son’s wife. Kiss me Susan. Kiss me, my daughter . . .’

But she drew back, and the letter dropped to the floor.

‘No, I can’t, I
can’t
, it isn’t true!’

Calthorpe stared in amazement. ‘My dear, I can see that this has been too great a shock for you. I must allow you time—’

But she ran from the room and up the stairs to her bedchamber, and Calthorpe had no alternative but to take his leave.

The news spread around Beversley like wildfire, that Edward Calthorpe had survived shipwreck and imprisonment, and was on his way home. Everybody was happy for Madam Trotula, soon to become Mrs Edward Calthorpe again, a widow restored to wifehood, by God’s mercy.