The Gates of Rutherford (22 page)

“Oh,” Charlotte said, her eyes brimming. “Something's improved anyway.”

“And what has not?”

Charlotte looked away, and moved so that Christine's hand dropped from her. She got to her feet, walking slowly over to the big attic window. “You can see such a lot of London,” she whispered. “So much space.”

Christine was watching her. “When are you going home?”

“In an hour or so.”

“Then can I start the painting?”

“If you like.”

Christine sprang up. She almost ran over to Charlotte's side, and grabbed her by the shoulder. “No,” she exclaimed. “
Not
‘if I like.'
Not
that! My God. That's another one. What's got into you? Wake up. Look at me.
Not ‘
if I like.' But because you want to. Because you'd want it more than anything. Because you'd want to be painted by me. Because you want to have the evidence of what I see in you. Don't you understand?”

Charlotte was staring at her.

“Look . . .” Christine turned on her heel, looked about the room as if for inspiration. She put both fists to her temples, and then started laughing. “You really make me despair,” she muttered, glaring at the long table opposite where her paints were spread about. In a stride, she was over to the window, brushing past Charlotte. She looked up for just a second at the purple curtains with their lurid green lining, and then she reached for the nearest, clenched her hands around it, and pulled.

“Oh,” said Charlotte, with a gasp. “What are you doing?”

Christine wrenched until the pole that had been precariously
holding the curtain came away. “I'm getting a blazing color for you,” she muttered. The pole clattered to the ground; at the other end of it, the opposing curtain slithered to the floor. Christine gathered up the nearest and dragged it over to Charlotte. She pulled a corner of it and put it against Charlotte's face. “I want you to have this draped around you. I want the bottom half of the painting to be this. As if you're rising from it. I want you to sit in the light over there. On the end of the table, and look out of the windows.”

“But . . .”

Christine waved her hand. “Don't object, please. I want to see your neck and shoulders. I'll arrange the fabric. I want you to look away from me, half profile. And I just want you to have one hand holding the material and the other in your lap. Don't worry about the dressing on it. I shan't paint that.” She stood in front of Charlotte, grasping the material and smiling at her. “It will be fantastic, I promise.”

Charlotte got to her feet slowly. “All right,” she said, and started to walk.

“Just a minute.” Christine laid a hand on her shoulder. “You must undress.”

“What? But I can't do that.”

“Your shoulders and neck.”

“No, Christine. Michael wouldn't like it.”

Christine frowned. “I don't mean you to be entirely naked,” she said. “Pull down the straps on your underthings if you must. And I'm sorry, but damn Michael! What's it to do with him?”

“But . . . in the painting . . . I will look naked. Naked, and just covered up with a piece of material.”

“Yes, darling. You will.”

Charlotte hung her head. “No, that's impossible. I'm sorry.” And she took a couple of steps backward towards the door.

“I promise you . . .”

“No,” Charlotte repeated. “You can't promise me anything. I simply can't pose for you.”

“But of course you can!” Christine sighed in exasperation. “I've wanted to do this painting. I
must
do it.”

“I don't care what you want or what you must do,” Charlotte said.

To Christine's horror, she made for the door and had her hand on the handle. Christine dropped the curtain and rushed over, stopping her from opening it at the last moment. They stood face to face, a foot apart. It seemed to Christine that time then became extremely slow, stretched thin. They were just reflections on its surface, like the reflections on water as it passed. She could almost see them from another perspective, as if they were two separate beings that she was drawing: ethereal things, just whispers. It was the most surreal feeling. She thought of the phrase about angels dancing on the head of a pin, but they were not angels, just approximations of what they were, or how they used to be once. Two changelings, two phantoms.

“Please,” Charlotte murmured, hand on the door itself now. But she made no effort to move.

“Don't beg me for anything. Tell me what it is. You can trust me. Why did you cry on your wedding day?”

Charlotte shook her head slowly. “That was a different reason to now,” she said. “I was afraid of being trapped.”

“And are you now?”

“Oh yes,” she replied, and smiled, as if to say this was humorous, or at least ironic. “But not in the way I'd anticipated.”

“In what way, then?”

Charlotte closed her eyes momentarily. “I can't remember very clearly what I was afraid of,” she said. “He was a good man. He still is. Charming and attractive. Intelligent. He seemed to be an understanding person to everyone else. He is understanding with the men
he works with. He is patient with them. I hoped that he would be the same with me. I had no reason to think otherwise. Mother and Father were so pleased when we were engaged. I think Father always thought that I was a loose cannon, and . . .” Her voice faded. “Perhaps he felt I needed control of some kind. I didn't want to spoil it all. And I hoped for adventures. I wanted to be out in a different kind of world, experiencing something new. Marriage itself was an adventure. Even a gamble.”

“One that hasn't paid off, it seems,” Christine said bluntly, but not without kindness. “But tell me why your painting, the way I see it, is so wrong. It's an adventure of sorts, isn't it?”

“It's not that I don't trust you, Christine. It's that I don't trust myself.”

“I don't understand.”

“I don't know what I've become,” she murmured. “A coward, perhaps. Less than I was.”

“But that is ridiculous!”

Charlotte looked at her steadily.

And she walked away, back into the room. Standing where the curtain was still pooled on the floor, she took off the great tawny-colored coat, easing her hand out of the wide sleeve. Underneath, she was wearing another loose-sleeved garment: a black crepe de chine dress with a long skirt and a large square neckline. It had a drawstring waist, and Christine watched as Charlotte undid the knot with her free hand. The dress became a loose oblong shape. She reached down and pulled it up and over her head.

She was wearing just a slip underneath; nothing else. Through it—to Christine's horror she could count every rib—Charlotte was painfully thin. The bones of her shoulders stood out in sharp relief. Even her hipbones could be made out: there were no curves at all. Charlotte looked like a starvation victim, a fact that had been hidden
by the voluminous coat. Christine walked slowly towards her; then stopped, her hand to her mouth. The upper part of Charlotte's chest was not in such dark relief only because of her thinness, but because she was bruised. It looked as if she had been pressed against something ridged or paneled; the bruise had a definite suggestion of a fretwork.

“My God,” Christine breathed. “What's this?”

Charlotte held her gaze for a second, and then she slowly turned around. “We had an argument,” she said quietly. “A disagreement. I don't think that he meant to push so hard.”

“Not
so hard
? He oughtn't to push you at all.”

“I try his patience. And he is a very patient man.”

“Are you serious? Are you
sane
? You're bruised. What was it, a piece of metal of some kind?”

“There's a radiator grille in the wall. From the boiler in the basement. It heats the upper landing.”

“And he pushed you against this?” Christine considered. “Were you not wearing anything? This looks like direct contact with the skin.”

Charlotte crossed her arms across her breasts as if to cover herself. “I had got up in the night.”

“Why? Were you ill?”

“No,” Charlotte replied, still not meeting her friend's gaze. “I was . . .” She couldn't finish the sentence. Christine put her arm around her. “You see, I don't like him,” Charlotte murmured. “To touch me. And after all, it's what a husband wants, isn't it? I thought it would be all right. I've steeled myself to it. I
want
to be kind. It's just that, when he . . .” She seemed to set her teeth, as if the very memory sickened her. “He says that I am not natural.”

“Oh, poor love,” Christine said softly. “Who have you told about this?”

“No one.”

“Not your mother, or sister?”

“No.”

“But why?”

Charlotte hung her head. “I feel ashamed.”

Christine had to literally bite her tongue to prevent the immediate response, the furious denial that sprang automatically to her lips. She tried instead to keep her voice low and level, to hold her temper in check. “Your hand, your wrist . . . ?” she prompted. “It wasn't a fall.”

“I was trying to get out the door to the street,” Charlotte said. “It was very early in the morning. I know it was madness, because I only had my nightdress. But I thought I might be able to run away, and . . .”

“He found you,” Christine guessed. “He held you by the wrist as you tried to get out.”

“I couldn't open the door. He had hidden the key. He came down the stairs. He said I must be quiet. That I mustn't make a scene. What was I doing, trying to go into the street? How would that seem to anyone? He said that I must appreciate . . .”

She had stopped. She was shivering. Christine ran to pick up the curtain, and she put it around Charlotte's shoulders. She stepped around to the front, and wrapped it across Charlotte's body, and held it there, looking closely into Charlotte's face. “You are never going back.”

Charlotte paused a long time before replying. “I wanted to be like other women,” she whispered finally. “I thought I could make myself like other women, but I can't. He says that I am . . . badly formed. I don't . . . want to do what I should with him. What he says I must do as my duty.” She glanced momentarily up at Christine, and then back at the floor. A slow, dull blush of color was flooding her face. “He said that I am made wrong in some way.”

“And do you believe him?” Christine asked softly. “When he tells you that you are unnatural?”

“I don't know what to believe anymore,” Charlotte said. Her voice was so quiet that Christine had to strain to hear it. She put her face very close to Charlotte; felt the other woman's breath mingling with her own.

“Let me tell you something,” Christine told her. She smoothed her hand over Charlotte's hair, brushing it gently over her cheek. She put her hand below Charlotte's chin and turned her face towards her. “Look at me,” she said. “And listen to me. You
are
like other women. A great number of other women. Do you know why?”

Charlotte shook her head.

Christine smiled. “Because, my dearest, you are exactly like me.”

F
inally, the summer had come.

It seemed to Frederick that he had been living in the thick wool coat for years, and it stank to high heaven. Sometimes, in the camp, the guards would come and take their clothes to the laundry and issue them with others: ill-fitting underclothes and shirts and strangely shaped boxlike jackets of canvas. Frederick was wearing the boots that had brought him from France, from Munster, from home. He didn't mind. They were good boots. He wanted new socks, but he took care to wash out the pair that he had.

Not to complain. Others did; it was their entertainment. He simply didn't like the feeling it left in him: sour and scratched inside, hungering for home. He tried to think of other and more immediate things. The pattern of plaster cracks on the wall nearest his bed and a funny kind of map that they made, almost like the Mosel. He imagined vineyards growing on each side, and the terraced restaurants where his uncle had once taken him on his only holiday as a child. He tried to think of pleasant scenes. Of a music festival in their
village where someone had played a violin, and there had been dancing, kicking up summer dust under the linden trees. He would like to dance again, and be happy. He didn't want to lose the knack of being happy. He didn't want to go home with his soul scoured out, grim-faced, resentful, pained. He had to keep something of himself clean. Still be able to stand up straight. That was how he thought of it.

And now, at last, the sun. He liked the light in the morning. So much light after the rain. It got light at five thirty, pale rims of apricot and pink outside the window. He would get up and look at it. It was important to remember that God still gave you summer mornings, and that it was man who had taken away the pleasure of them and made war on the green earth, churning it up and soaking it with slaughter. He looked at the sunlight and imagined it flowing over the battlefields. Grant them grace to stop, he thought. He was sure that for all the armies with their priests calling on God—and God was unerringly on the side of whatever priest was speaking, German or Turkish, Indian or French—he felt that God had no particular side at all. He just kept giving them summer and spring and winter; rain and harvest and darkness; water and sand and sea. It was man that made a mess of it all, and for that God's heart must ache.

And so he looked hard at the dawns and tried to note them in his head. If he had a notebook he would keep a record, he thought. A record of pleasant days. He held them close in his head and ran his mind over them repeatedly to keep the memory fresh. He wished he could write things down. He hadn't seen paper or a pencil in three years. Not to hold. Not to write with.

They had left their greatcoats behind this week, and went out to work in their trousers and jackets. By noon the jackets would be discarded and the shirts clung to their backs. But they were not allowed to take off the shirts. He didn't know why. Offense to the
female population, perhaps. Although they didn't see many. An occasional woman in one of the villages. A child sitting on a wall by a church.

This morning, they stood by the bridge near to where they had built the road. They could see it now snaking away between the green hedges that had grown much taller, fringed by what the English called “cow parsley.” Like frothy wedding flowers on a church aisle. Like the head of cream on new milk. Here and there, a chestnut tree rippled in the summer wind. Where they were standing he could hear the river water flowing under the village bridge.

“Listen to me,” the guard said.

It was a new man. The shouting one had gone. They were all pleased with that. This was an older soldier, very quiet in his ways. He had a long scar on one side of his neck that looked raw, a lilac edge. Frederick wondered where the guard had picked that up; the Western Front, or Mesopotamia or Gallipoli. He looked at him idly, wondering what his name was, and if he lived near here. If he got to go home in the evening. Or if his wife came to see him. He noticed that as he walked up and down, he limped slightly. His gaze, when he turned it on them, was not aggressive, but soft. Even sympathetic.

“The fields up at Rutherford need to be cut for hay.” He paused. “Understand? Cutting hay.”

No one said anything, but there was a slight shuffling as a long blade was brought from the covered van at the roadside. The guard held it up. “You know what this is?”

Frederick didn't know if the men from the cities knew it, but he did. He tentatively raised his hand.

“Yes. You then. What is it?”

“If you please . . .
sense
.” Inadvertently, he had said the German word. He was thinking of the phrase,
menschen nedermahen
. To scythe people down. To scythe down men. To cut them down, like
armies, like the British coming across the rotted ground towards them. “I think . . . sighing,” he stuttered.

“Scything,” the guard corrected, watching Frederick's face as if he'd seen the fleeting images reflected there. Wary of him. Narrowing his own eyes. “A scythe,” he repeated twice, for the benefit of those at the back.

“We know,” a voice among them muttered. It was ignored.

“It's for cutting hay,” the guard was continuing. He demonstrated. “An art to it, mind. But the meadows slope near the house. They go right to the river. They want it brought in, made into stacks. You understand? Haystacks in the fields, near the barns you mended.”

Fredrick was nudged in the back by two or three of the prisoners. He translated as best he could. Some of the Germans didn't ever listen, didn't ever try to pick up any English. They had begun to look to Frederick as a mouthpiece. “You must not be lazy,” he had told them all one night last winter. “You must use your brains. Learn something. We are here. We may as well get along.”

“Get along with the enemy. Learn something.” A man sitting on his bunk had spat on the ground. “What are you, a schoolteacher now?”

“I am done with war,” Frederick had told him.

The guard came walking towards Frederick now. “You're the man who helped in the dairy once or twice.”

“Help. Yes. The butter.”

“You know what Rutherford is?”

“No, sir.”

The guard walked back to the front of the prisoners. “Rutherford Park is the big house. The estate. Owned by Lord Cavendish. All this around you, all you can see. Village, too. Right up to Catterick's gates. Now, Lord Cavendish is at home now. So if you see . . .” He thought a moment. “Never mind. You're not going to see him. He's
not interested in you. But he's lost a lot of his men. His workers. No workers, understand? So you cut the hay.”

He looked back and forth among them, and finally indicated a third of them, the third where Frederick was standing. “You lot over here, hay cutting. The rest, laying a wall. Drystone walls here.” When they didn't respond, he gave a great sigh. “Never mind,” he said. And he actually smiled. “It's a good job. Easy. Nice to do today. You'll pick it up.”

The two-thirds shuffled off, led by two very young-looking guards in uniforms that looked far too big for them. Frederick watched the boys sadly, seeing the pink skin rubbing at the back of their collars, and the red tips of their ears. Like schoolboys. Fodder for guns very soon.

“Ey up,” the older guard urged the prisoners. “Move on.”

They followed him.

“Ey up,” Frederick repeated softly to himself, smiling, and unconsciously echoing the broad Yorkshire accent. “Ey up, ey up.”

•   •   •

I
n the kitchens at Rutherford, breakfast had been a lengthier affair than usual.

Just as they were finishing, Mr. Bradfield held up his hand to prevent them all leaving. “Stay where you are a moment,” he said. He handed out their letters, looking for some time at one from the front, which was passed to Mary.

There was nothing for Jenny, for Jenny knew no one at all. She'd been a lucky one, taken up by a local Methodist church in London who had helped her find work because she regularly attended. She was the pastor's walking good deed. But neither the pastor nor the rest of the church wrote to her at Rutherford. “I guess they've got others to look after,” she had told Mary once.

Mrs. Carlisle took a handful of letters with a smile. She had a vast family in Bradford, a whole host of nieces and nephews. Despite her traditional title, she had never married; but the nieces and nephews and cousins kept her supplied with news. Bradford mill workers, for the most part. She was handed two letters this morning.

Nothing for Miss Dodd. Mary stole a glance at her out of the corner of her eye. Miss Dodd was fast becoming a dyed-in-the-wool spinster, devoted to Rutherford. Mary could see her dying here, duster in hand, her starched uniform apron in place to her last breath. When her sweetheart had run off and married another woman, it was obvious that she'd probably lost her last chance. Men were so few and far between. She was married to Rutherford instead, Mary thought. Miss Dodd already had that look: a bit petulant, a bit prim and proper. Disappointed and determined at the same time.

“There's something you need to know,” Mr. Bradfield announced. “A new housekeeper has been appointed. A Mrs. Nicholson.”

A murmur went around the table, except from Edward Hardy, who was pushing the breadcrumbs around his plate in the usual vacant way. He didn't care if Rutherford had a housekeeper or not. He might care if Mrs. Carlisle left and there was no cook, Mary thought. He'd register
that
departure all right.

“Can we know where she's come from?” Miss Dodd asked.

“From the Kent's estate near York.”

“Is she the housekeeper there?”

“No. She's the wife of one of the tenants, I believe.”

A ripple of dismay went round the table. “No experience?” Miss Dodd said huffily. “I should think that I have more knowledge of here than a farmer's wife.”

“I'm told that she was in service before she married, and also had a nursing post in a hospital.”

“A nurse and a housemaid?” Mrs. Carlisle said. “Hardly a recommendation for a house like Rutherford.”

“You'd think she'd be needed in some hospital or other now, with all the wounded coming back,” Mary observed. “If she's qualified.” She leaned forward. “Did Lady Cavendish interview her when she was here, Mr. Bradfield?”

“I understand so.”

“I never saw anyone come to the house.”

“It'll be an agreement between Lady Kent and the mistress,” Mrs. Carlisle opined. “She'll have spoken to her over at the Kents', I expect.” She put her head to one side, a new idea occurring to her. “Perhaps the woman's a bother. Perhaps Lady Kent wants to put her here to be rid of her.”

This was more accurate than anyone knew, but Mr. Bradfield frowned. “It's not for us to speculate. I doubt that Lady Cavendish would employ anyone who wasn't very good indeed. And her ladyship is very aware of how much a housekeeper is needed.”

Miss Dodd seemed to bridle at this, straightening her shoulders and setting her mouth in a disapproving line.

“How old is she?” Jenny asked.

This time, Bradfield stared at the maid until she blushed. “Quite an inappropriate question.”

“What Jenny means,” Mary ventured, “is . . . is she senior?”

“I cannot say.”

“If she's married, does she have children?”

“I understand not. Her husband recently died.”

A slight
oh
sound went round the table, a note of sympathy. But still the general air of disapproval remained. Mrs. Carlisle was looking around at the kitchen itself, muttering, “I shall have to give this place a thorough going-over before she comes.” She looked at Mr.
Bradfield. “Will his lordship allow me another girl up from the village?” she asked. “I've only a scullery maid, you know.”

“I shall ask, if you think it's needed.”

“Needed?” Mrs. Carlisle said. “I should think it is. I can't struggle on forever. We used to have six in this kitchen, when his lordship was first married. Six! And far more on the night of a formal dinner!”