She fretted over Nathaniel’s linen binder, and insisted on dressing him so: his clothes took up the contents of one of her travelling cases alone. He had a flannel cap to prevent eye inflammations, a selection of cambric gowns and lawn smocks, embroidered or trimmed with muslin and satin ribbons, and woollen shoes. Then there were his Russian napkins and flannel pilches, which had to be laundered separately for reasons of hygiene, and Sylvia’s bloody bandages too, while her wounds of childbirth healed, which meant Pansy was at the laundry all day, it seemed. And Sylvia insisted that Pansy starch Nathaniel’s clothes as well, and not just with cold potato starch; she made her heat it up in a pan with borax and candle-wax until it jellified, and dip the clothes in, and then iron them only once dry, which taxed the poor girl a whole extra load as well. I told Pansy she could take all the washing out to Agatha Marrow again, which she did, but when it came back she didn’t do what I did, and put it all straightways in the press and drawers. Instead, she unloaded it in the kitchen and aired the sheets and clothes in front of the fire, and checked them all over for lice and their eggs. Eventually, I decided, given that money was so good, that we could hire a laundress who would come straight to the house itself, even thought she cost nigh on two shillings. a day, on top of the cost of boiling water, and all the extra soap.
But one could not help but pity Sylvia. It cannot have been easy to go from the upper ten thousand to the lower middle class with such rapidity. She had been bred to be nothing more than a beautiful appendage to an aristocratic arm, helpless but ornamental, and it was not her fault she had not received instruction in resourcefulness in circumstances such as these.
She required my presence each evening to hear her latest lamentations, which quickly moved from sobbing to anger. She would reminisce about her childhood and her courtship with Jocelyn; she would bemoan her recent pain, and strategise how to win him back; everything, in fact, but explain the reason for her eviction, much as I was curious to discover it, and despite my best efforts to draw it out of her by stealth, the direct approach having been firmly rebuffed the first night she had arrived.
‘Is he not beautiful?’ she started one evening. ‘Is Nathaniel not exquisite?’ And this single sad thought so quickly precipitated outright indignation. ‘How dare he! The monster! Spends his months with naked African women, all saggy dugs and bloody thighs, and yet he would not even attend me in childbirth while I was wearing a chemise, a full petticoat and a bed jacket! Would the man have preferred me to have worn stays as well? He administered the chloroform, then went off to his club for a game of backgammon and a venison roast.’ And thence she would meander into her thoughts, which took her any which way. ‘Charles Darwin gave chloroform to his wife, and stayed. And Charles Dickens! Queen Victoria took it when she had Leopold and Beatrice. Where was Albert?’
‘At least you got chloroform,’ I muttered.
‘There are, I suppose, some advantages to being married to a man of medicine. I could have had my pick of my brothers’ friends, but they bored me. Decaying men with their crumbling manors, or stiff rods in the Army, or worse, in business. I chose none of them. Jocelyn told me I had too much sunshine in me for the grey lives they offered. He might not have had the breeding my father required, but I loved him.’
‘Breeding?’
‘I’m the daughter of an Earl, Dora. Papa told me I had to think of my future, but I had never wanted for anything. I would bring money to our marriage, so why should it trouble me that Jocelyn never quite reached the five thousand a year Papa demanded? Jocelyn had invented some half-credible scheme, some crazy prospective venture, which half-quelled Papa’s doubts. But of course it came to nothing. I thought my father secretly liked his wayward son-in-law. His interest in science might have marked him as more upper-middle than upper ten, but Papa loved his sense of adventure, and when he received his title for his exploits in India, Papa couldn’t have been more proud. Besides he couldn’t fault Jossie’s love of the foreign climes. They even went tiger-shooting together in Burma. Jocelyn killed two; Papa didn’t kill any, but Jossie gave him one of his, and on the boat back, Papa finally accepted Joss’s request for my hand in marriage. They used to joke that I was traded for a tiger-skin; Jossie always said I was cheap at the price.’
I listened, and oh, but it was tedious! The only thing that kept me in check was Lucinda’s delight at little Nathaniel, and at Sylvia too, with her wan beauty, her suffering and sighs. Lucinda helped out in every way she could – she brought Sylvia drinks while she was nursing, she held the baby while Sylvia bathed, she helped Sylvia bathe the baby – and was responsible for the first smile to cross Sylvia’s face since being thrown out of her own home. I would sit and listen to the woman, but my attention was always on the enchanting games being played on the blanket at our feet, of a happy little girl with a living doll for a playmate.