The Essex Serpent(60)
On the path above Naomi, Stella slowly walking plucks speed-well from the verge. It is blue, and so is her skirt, and so are the bands of fabric she has around her wrists. She is going home to the children. She supposes they’ll want feeding, and the thought revolts her – all that soft stuff going into their gaping mouths, into that glistening hole: it is disgusting, if you think about it. She has no appetite for anything you might eat.
In his study Will is sleeping. There’s a sheet of paper on the desk, and it reads, ‘Dear’. Just that: ‘Dear’. He writes so many letters, these days, that on the knuckle of his third finger there’s a swelling he sucks now and then to ease the ache. Waking, he’ll say to himself, ‘Dear …’, and at the first face coming to mind he’ll smile, then cease smiling.
Martha is peeling eggs. Cora has planned a midsummer party: Charles and Katherine Ambrose are coming, and Charles likes nothing more (he says) than an egg rolled in celery salt. Luke is coming. His feelings as regards eggs are of no interest to her. There will be William Ransome, stern as he is these days, and Stella in blue silk.
Cross-legged on the playing-fields with a cheese sandwich on his lap Mr Caffyn writes a note: ‘The school is quieter now than I have ever known it. The children work calmly and are expected to meet the required standards. See enclosed requisition form: order of twenty notebooks (ruled, with margin).’
At three in the afternoon Will pays Cracknell a visit. The old man’s not well, and lies on a couch with his boots on: he knows the flutter in his chest will be a rattle come Christmas. ‘A tincture of rosehip syrup in the evening is what Mrs Cracknell would’ve recommended and I’m not above taking even a dead woman’s advice, Parson – that bottle, there, and the spoon.’ It is a valiant attempt at courage, and Will smiles, but Cracknell does not. ‘It wasn’t the cough that carried her off,’ he says, touching the rector’s wrist. ‘It was the coffin they carried her off in.’
Over in Colchester on the earthquake ruins Thomas Taylor suns his phantom feet. He does a fair trade on a fair day, and his hat is heavy with coins. Wasps have been so obliging as to make their nest in the folds of a curtain, and the papery mass – with all its sinister regularity – is quite the tourist attraction. The air hums; the wasps are too drowsy to sting. Late in the afternoon the black-haired doctor crouches over him in his good grey coat. His hands are raw in places and his skin smells of lemons. He fondles (none too gently) the flesh healed over the severed bones, and says ‘A poor job: I wish I’d been here. I’d’ve done you proud.’
Fifty miles south as the swallow flies and London’s at her best. She knows it: she is irresistible. Children feed black swans in Regent’s Park and pelicans in St James’s, and the limes are incandescent in the avenues. Hampstead Heath comes over like a country fair; nobody uses the Tube. The sun is thick on the pavements while jugglers and tricksters grow rich in Leicester Square. No-one wants to go home. Why would they? Outside pubs and cafes office juniors grow impertinent, and if it’s not exactly love which brews in with the hops and the coffee it’s as near as makes no difference.
In his Whitehall rooms, dressed for the solstice in a new blue shirt, Charles Ambrose greets a visitor. ‘Spencer,’ he says, ‘I have your letter here. Are you free for lunch? There are people I think you should meet.’ Charles himself is more or less indifferent to Spencer’s sudden philanthropic bent – it’s all very much the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, as far as Charles is concerned – but he likes Spencer, and so does Katherine, and one might as well do good as do anything at all.
Spencer, who’s come prepared to plead Martha’s cause, hopes he can remember this statistic and that, and how to mimic her habit of being both matter-of-fact and impassioned. He pictures Martha’s face when he gives her good news (‘And will you come when we instruct the architects, Martha, since you understand it so well …’). There’ll be one of her rare smiles, he thinks: she will see me.
He takes a drink from Charles, and says, ‘Thank you, I’d like that. I thought: maybe you might come with Martha and me, next week? We’re going to visit Edward Burton over in Bethnal Green – the man Luke operated on, you know. Martha has become a friend of his, and says he makes the perfect case study …’
Case study! thinks Charles. He looks at Spencer fondly. The boy’s too thin by half. Would there be lamb at lunch? Might there be wild salmon? ‘Will you be coming to Cora’s party, to see the merry widow play Persephone with flowers in her hair?’ But Spencer cannot: he’ll be in his white coat at the Royal Borough, setting limbs perhaps, a little relieved to be spared the ordeal of finding social graces under Martha’s gaze.
Essex has her bride’s gown on: there’s cow parsley frothing by the road and daisies on the common, and the hawthorn’s dressed in white; wheat and barley fatten in the fields, and bindweed decks the hedges. Cora has walked four miles and is not yet tired. At the fifth mile she passes a farmer stripped to the waist and unbuttons her shirt: why should her skin be disgraceful, when his is not? But there’s someone on the path, and she puts the buttons back through their slots: no sense courting disaster.
She comes to a place where roses are grown for bowls and vases in dining rooms elsewhere; an acre or two of blooms laid out in coloured stripes, as if bolts of silk had been dyed and left to dry. It scents the air; she licks her lips, and there’s Turkish Delight on her tongue.