“How’s the invalid?” she asked brightly.
Hugh dropped Flora’s wrist and took the thermometer out of her mouth.
“We think she had food poisoning,” he told Isobel. He put on his spectacles in order to read the thermometer.
“Food poisoning?”
“It’s all right, don’t sound so alarmed. You’re not going to have an epidemic. She ate a bad oyster at the Fishers’ Arms last night.”
“Oh, Rose.”
Isobel sounded so reproachful that Flora felt guilty all over again.
“I couldn’t help it. And I like oysters.”
“But what about the dance? You’ll be in bed for the dance.”
“Not necessarily,” Hugh told her. “If she does what she’s told, she should be up and about in good time for the dance. Just starve her for a couple of days and keep her in bed.” He picked up his bag and stood, resting one hand on the brass knob at the foot of the bed. He said to Flora, “You’ll probably feel very depressed and a bit weepy for the next day or so. It’s one of the nastier symptoms of food poisoning. Try not to let it worry you too much.” The moment he mentioned the word weepy Flora knew that she was going to cry again. Perhaps he realized this, because at once, ushering Isobel firmly before him, he made for the door. As he went out, he looked back over his shoulder gave her one of his rare smiles, and said, “Goodbye, Rose.”
Flora, bawling, reached for the box of face tissues.
* * *
He was right about the depression. Flora spent most of the first day sleeping, but on the next was overwhelmed by gloom. The weather outside did not help. It was gray, it rained, and there was nothing to be seen from the window save scudding black clouds and an occasional wet, wheeling gull. The tide was in. The waves breaking on the shingle beach below the house made a deeply melancholy sound, and the darkness invaded the house so early that lights had to be turned on at three o’clock.
Flora’s thoughts, inward-turning, self-pitying, churned incessantly but, like someone treading a mill, got nowhere. Lying there in the strange bed in the strange house, she suffered once more from a dismaying loss of identity. And she could not believe that she had ever embarked on the mad charade with so much hopeful confidence, which, on hindsight, looked more like sheer stupidity.
“Identical twins are meant to be two halves of the same person, and separating them is like cutting that person in half.”
Rose herself had said that in London, but at the time Flora had not thought it important. But now it was important because Rose was vile, without principles or morals. Did that mean that the seeds of the same vileness lay latent in Flora?
If their mother had taken Flora and their father had chosen Rose, would Flora have grown up into a person who, at seventeen, would cheerfully jump into bed with a married man? Would Flora have ditched Antony just when he most needed her, and flown to Spetsai with a rich young Greek? Would Flora have been sufficiently unscrupulous to use Rose as Rose had used Flora? At first all this had seemed beyond the bounds of possibility, but after that terrible scene with Hugh in his car, Flora was no longer so sure of herself. Your wife destroyed you by dying the way she did. Those were Rose’s words. But it was Flora who had spoken them. The dreadful sentence seared across her conscience. She shut her eyes and turned her face into the pillow, but that did no good, because she still couldn’t get away from the inside of her own head.
And if this weren’t enough, there were other anxieties, other uncertainties, which seemed to be heaped on top of her, like some deadening weight. How, when the time came, she was going to bear saying goodbye to the Armstrongs? And when she went, where would she go? She couldn’t return to Cornwall. She had only just left, and Marcia and her father surely deserved a little time on their own. London then? It would have to be London with all its attendant problems. Where would she live? Where would she work? What would she do? She saw herself waiting for buses, queueing in the rain, shopping in the lunch hour, paying the rent, hoping to make new friends, trying to find old ones.
And finally, there was the specter of Hugh. But she couldn’t let herself think about Hugh, because every time she did, she found herself once more dissolved into pointless floods of tears.
If you were Rose, you wouldn’t care what the Armstrongs thought of you. You’d just say goodbye, and go and never look back.
I’m not Rose.
If you were Rose you wouldn’t need to find a job and queue for buses. You could take taxis for the rest of your life.
But I’m not Rose.
If you were Rose, you would know how to make Hugh love you.
There didn’t seem to be any answer to that one.
Everybody was extraordinarily kind. Isobel brought messages from Antony, whom she had telephoned in Edinburgh to let him know that Rose was ill. There was a clumsy bunch of flowers which Jason had picked, and a deep pink azalea from Anna Stoddart.
I am sorry you are under the weather, and hope you’ll be up and about by Friday. Brian and I send our love.
Anna
“It’s out of the Ardmore greenhouse,” Isobel told her. “They have the most beautiful greenhouses over there, the envy of my heart. Rose … Rose, you’re crying again.”
“I can’t help it.”
Isobel sighed, and patiently reached for the tissues.
There were also sessions with Nurse McLeod, who, once she dropped her professional manner and stopped talking about draw sheets, became quite cozy, bringing up her sewing to let Flora see how her “ballgown,” as it was now designated, was getting along. “You see, I’m attaching the lining to the dress. It gives it much more body, and I thought I’d make a wee belt. Mrs. Watty has a pearl buckle in her button box that she can spare.”
There was a get-well card from Mrs. Watty, and from Tuppy a bunch of the last of her precious roses, which she had directed Watty to cut for her. Tuppy had arranged them herself, standing the vase on her bedside table, and snipping the wet stalks all over the eiderdown. Isobel had carried them down the passage. “From one old crock to another,” she told Flora, and put them on Flora’s dressing table.
“Does Hugh come every day to see Tuppy?” Flora asked Isobel.
“Not every day. Not any more. He just drops in when he happens to be passing. Why?” There was a smile in her voice. “Did you want to see him?”
“No,” said Flora.
* * *
Thursday morning dawned a beautiful day. Flora awoke to a morning bright as a new coin. There was sunlight, blue sky, and now the screaming of the gulls reminded her of summer.
“What a day!” Nurse McLeod crowed, bouncing in to draw back the curtains, retrieve Flora’s cold hot-water bottle, and tidy the bed, which meant tucking in the sheets so tight that Flora could scarcely move her legs.
“I shall get up,” said Flora, bored with her invalid existence.
“You’ll do no such thing. Not until Dr. Kyle says you may.”
Flora’s spirits sank immediately. She wished that Nurse had not mentioned his name. Despite the cheerful weather, she was still miserable, although the miserableness now had nothing to do with being ill. It was just the usual routine stuff, and it was centered, pinpointed, on that unforgiveable thing she had said to Hugh. It hung over her like a great sword, and would continue to hang there, she knew, until somehow, she had made herself apologize to him.
The very idea made her feel ill all over again. She slid down under the covers, and Nurse cocked a professional eye at her. “Are you not feeling better yet?”
“Yes, I’m all right,” Flora told her dully.
“How about something to eat? Are you hungry? I’ll maybe ask Mrs. Watty to make a little semolina.”
“If you bring me semolina,” Flora told her coldly, “I shall throw it out of the window.”
Nurse tut-tutted and went down to the kitchen with the news that one of her patients, at least, was well on the road to recovery.
Isobel appeared later on with a breakfast
tray—not a very lavish one, to be sure, but there was toast on it, and some marmalade jelly and a pot of China tea. “And some mail for you,” said Isobel. She took a postcard out of her cardigan pocket and laid it, picture side up, on the tray. Flora saw bright blue sky, bright green chestnut trees, and the Eiffel Tower. Paris?
Puzzled, she turned it over. It was addressed, in an untidy and unformed hand, to Miss Rose Schuster, Fernrigg House, Tarbole, Arisaig, Argyll, Écosse. Bewildered, Flora read the message, which had been written extremely small in order to accommodate it on the space allowed.
I said I’d be in touch. It was super finding you. Decided to stop off here for a couple of days on my way to Spetsai. Am sending this to you at Fernrigg, because I have a strong suspicion that by now you’re there, in the bosom of the family and, who knows, perhaps married to Antony. Give him my love.
It was undated, unsigned.
“Is it from a friend?” Isobel asked.
“Yes. From a friend.”
Cunning Rose. Isobel would never read another person’s postcard, but even if she had, this one would have told her nothing. It felt, to Flora’s fingers, dirty. She made a face and dropped it over the side of the bed into the wastepaper basket.
Isobel, watching her, was concerned. “You’re not feeling ill again, are you?”
“No,” Flora assured her. She smothered toast with marmalade and bit off a hungry mouthful.
When the meager breakfast had been consumed, Isobel departed bearing the tray, and Flora was alone once more. Despite herself, the message from Rose had both upset and angered her. As well, she was hating herself. She longed for the reassurance of a loving spirit. She needed a little fussing-over, a little caring. There was only one person who was capable of providing this, and Flora wanted her now. Deviantly, not waiting for anybody to say that she could, Flora got out of bed and went in search of clothes. She would go and talk to Tuppy.
* * *
Jessie McKenzie was back from Portree. Her old mother, who had taken to her bed after what was euphemistically known as “a turn,” had decided, after all, that she wasn’t going to die.
This sudden recovery had been brought about, not by the timely arrival of her dutiful daughter, but because a neighbor, calling to cheer the invalid, had left the news that Katy Mel-drum, already the mother of a cross-eyed child called Gary, was once more in the family way. Katy was a shameless girl and had always been so, impervious to both pointing fingers and the gentle remonstrances of her sorely tried priest. Now, with her belly swelling larger each day, she was walking the town scornful and amused, and speculation as to the identity of the father was rife. Most folk had their money on young Robby McCrae, the constable’s brother, but there was talk of a deckhand off one of the boats from Kinlochbervie, and him a married man with a family of his own.
It was too good to miss. To die before the mystery was solved, thus missing all the fun, was unthinkable. The old lady heaved herself up on the pillows, walloped the wall with her stick and, when her startled daughter appeared at the door, demanded sustenance. In two days she was up and about again, gleaning gossip and adding her own opinion to those of others.
Jessie decided she might as well go home.
Home was one of the old fisher cottages, tucked down in the back streets of Tarbole, where she kept house for her brother, who worked as porter in one of the smokehouses. Early each morning Jessie climbed the hill to the doctor’s house, where she answered the telephone, took messages, chatted to visiting tradesmen, gossiped with the neighbors, and drank tea. In between these diverting occupations, she banged cheerfully about the house, creating more dirt than she disposed of, did the doctor’s laundry, and prepared his evening meal.
As often as not, since he was so busy, she was away home before he appeared to eat the fish pie, or the shepherd’s pie, or the two fried chops (her culinary imagination was not extensive) which she would leave for him, hardening in the oven between two plates. Sometimes when she returned the next morning the dried-up meal would still be there, untouched. And Jessie would shake her head, scrape it all into the garbage can, and find someone to tell that if the doctor did not take more care of himself, he would be well on the way to a breakdown, or worse.
Being the doctor’s housekeeper gave her a certain importance, a standing, in the town. What would he do without you? folks asked. Jessie would shake her head, modest but proud. And what would they all do without her, she asked herself, answering the telephone the way she did, day in, day out, taking messages and leaving notes. She was indispensable. It was a rare sensation.
She therefore received something of a shock when she let herself into the kitchen that Thursday morning after her return from Portree. It was a beautiful day, and she had climbed the hill in the cold sunshine, filled with grim relish at the thought of the chaos she was bound to find. After all, she had been away for four days, and all the world knew that Dr. Kyle was a handless creature when it came to doing for himself.
Instead, she found sparkling order: a clean floor, a polished sink, saucepans neatly ranged above the cooker, and scarcely a dirty dish to be seen.
The shock was like a blow to her heart. Slowly, she realized what must have happened. He had found somebody else to take her place. He had let somebody else into Jessie’s kitchen. Her mind made a quick catalogue of the Tarbole women as she tried to think who it could have been. Mrs. Murdoch? The very idea was chilling. If it had been Mrs. Murdoch, then the whole town would know by now that Jessie had been deposed. They would all be talking about her, probably laughing behind her back. She wondered if she was going to faint.
But her panic was calmed by familiar sounds from upstairs. The doctor was out of bed and getting dressed. She could hear him moving to and fro in his bedroom. She stood, gazing upwards. She thought, Well, he’s there and I’m here. And here I’m staying. Possession was nine tenths of the law. (Or something. Jessie was vague on this point.) She only knew that if she was going to leave this house, she would have to be forcibly ejected. No high-stepping Tarbole female was going to take her place.
Thus emboldened, she took off her coat, hung it on the back of the door, and went to fill the kettle. By the time Dr. Kyle came downstairs, his breakfast was waiting. She had found a clean tablecloth. The bacon was done just the way he liked it, and the egg was well-cooked with none of those nasty jelly bits on the top.
He had stopped by the front door to pick up his mail. Now, as he came down the hall, he called out, “Jessie,” and she replied, in a cheerful voice, “Good morning, Doctor!” and turned to greet him as he came through the door.
It was a little disappointing to see him looking so fit and pleased with himself, but at least he was not wearing the hangdog expression of a man about to sack his housekeeper.
“How are you, Jessie? How did everything go?”
“Oh, not so bad, Doctor.”
“How’s your mother?”
“She has great spirit, Doctor. She’s made a miraculous recovery.”
“Splendid. I am glad.” He sat at the table and took up a knife to slit open the first letter. It was typewritten. A long white envelope with a Glasgow postmark. Jessie took time to notice this as she laid the bacon and eggs, with a little flourish, on the table in front of him.
She poured his tea, and set that down as well. The cup steamed invitingly. The toast was crisp. It was a lovely breakfast. She stepped back to eye him. He read to the bottom of the page, and then turned the letter over to finish it. She saw a flourishing signature.
She cleared her throat. “And how did you manage, Doctor?”
“Um?” He looked up, but he had not heard her. She decided that the letter must be of some importance.
“I said, How did you manage while I was away?”
He gave her one of his rare smiles. She had not seen him in such a good humor for years.
“I missed you, Jessie, as a son misses his mother.”
“Get away.”
“No, it’s tr
ue. The place was a midden.” He caught sight of the bacon and eggs. “Now, that looks good.” He laid the letter aside and started to eat, it seemed to her, like a man who hasn’t seen good food for a month.
“But … it doesna look like a midden now.”
“No, I know. A good fairy came and cleaned it up for me, and since then Nurse has been keeping an eye on things.”
Jessie didn’t mind Nurse. Nurse ran the surgery. She was one of the family, as it were. Not an outsider. But the good fairy? If it was that interfering Murdoch woman … Once more Jessie felt faint, but she had to know.
“And who might the good fairy have been, if I’m allowed to ask?”
“Certainly you can ask. It was Antony Armstrong’s young lady. She’s staying at Fernrigg. She dropped by one afternoon and stayed to do the scrubbing.”
Antony Armstrong’s young lady. Relief swept through Jessie. It wasn’t Mrs. Murdoch. So Jessie’s reputation was safe, her standing in Tarbole unimpaired, her job secure.
Her job. What was she doing, standing here, wasting time, with all the house to be seen to? With an enthusiasm she hadn’t shown in years, she collected dustpans, dusters, brushes, and brooms, and by the time Hugh departed for his morning rounds she was already halfway down the staircase, on her knees, noisily attacking dust and cobwebs. The air was rich with the smell of new polish, and Jessie was singing.
“We’ll meet again, I don’t know where, don’t know when…”
At the front door he paused. “Jessie, if anybody calls, tell them I’ll be in the surgery at ten. And if its urgent, they’ll probably reach me at Fernrigg. I want to drop in and see Mrs. Armstrong.” He opened the door, and then hesitated and turned back. “And Jessie, it’s a marvelous morning. Pull all the blinds up and open the windows and let the sunshine in.”
In normal circumstances, Jessie would have been hotly opposed to such outlandish ideas. But this morning she only said, “Righty ho.” She did not even turn from her task as she said it, and his last sight of her was her round pinafored rump, a pair of straining nylons, and the legs of her apple green locknit bloomers.