20
This ae nighte, this ae nighte,
Every nighte and alle,
Fire and fleet and candel-lighte,
And Christe receive thy saule.
TRADITIONAL BALLAD,
Lyke-Wake Dirg
Fasque, Mearns, 15 April 1850
The two women lay in bed together, Helen Gladstone mewling like a small animal, her face pressed into the starched white bosom of the other. This was not according to medical textbook but to hell with it, Eileen was at her wit’s end.
Dr Purdie had gone home to his, no doubt, adoring wife and family, the other two Gladstones were upstairs deep in conventional slumber, and she had been left atween pit and pendulum.
Above was the portrait of a male of the line. He had the Gladstone features, some great-uncle no doubt, looking down his bulbous nose, eyes deep in sockets, mouth pursed at the goings-on.
Below, Helen burrowed frantically as if trying to conceal herself under the nurse’s body. She seemed terrified, her breath coming in short gasps. then all at once she raised her head. The pupils of her eyes were perfectly round, the irises a black purple.
‘He has washed his hands,’ she said. ‘In blood he has washed them. He told me so.’
‘You should try to rest, Miss Gladstone,’ murmured Eileen, suddenly and acutely conscious of the impropriety of their situation. Thank God the household was asleep. If someone had entered and found her splayed out on the sheets with arms around a patient, all hell would have broken loose. All hell.
But it was her own thoughts and feelings that were causing the commotion. Helen was drenched in sweat yet the nurse found it a sweet smell, a fertile fragrance, and Eileen ached curiously, disturbed by a tenderness which seemed to flood her very being.
William Gladstone, on his evening return from Edinburgh, had demanded that Dr Purdie administer a strong sedative to his sister and then closeted himself with Helen in the bedroom.
He had announced to all and sundry that he wished to impart to his sister the details of the funeral she had not been strong enough to attend the day before, conveniently forgetting that he himself had expressly forbidden her to do so. The tension in him was almost palpable, his manner peremptory. But, given that he had yesterday buried his own daughter in the nearby family vault, it was an excusable state of mind.
Nevertheless Eileen had felt uneasy, for no reason she could put her finger on. There was a wildness in his eyes and she noted that he had changed his mourning attire for a light waistcoat and brougham trousers beneath the still sober frock-coat. Catching her gaze, he folded his arms protectively over the differing garments and dismissed them all, his face white against the dark sideboards which framed it down to the clenched line of his jaw.
The doctor had left, post-sedative. William Gladstone had at last emerged after a period of near two hours’ seclusion with Helen and retired upstairs without another word to join his father who was already abed and asleep.
Sir John had been a strong and driven man all of his life but now, in his eighty-fifth year, the worm of frailty was busy in the flesh.
Age withers us all, strength or no. The worm must eat.
William was forty-one. He had nothing to fear yet. But the worm is patient. An opening will present itself.
Eileen had come back to the room to sit in the chair by the bed and snatch what sleep she could, when suddenly Helen had shot bolt upright, eyes staring, as if a fever inside would not let her rest, as if she dreaded what the darkness might bring. She began to speak in tongues, a mad whirling storm of guttural words that made no sense.
That had been many hours ago and now Eileen herself was tired almost beyond endurance. Her attempts to manage the circumstance had fallen short, and the only action which had quieted the woman was when the nurse had, rather rigidly it must be admitted, yielded to Helen’s entreaties, and stretched out beside her on the bed.
Silence in the room. The thick curtains gobbled up the small scratching noises of the wind outside.
Helen had fallen back, her head just under Eileen’s chin, the damp curls tickling at her neck. They lay in quietness together. Somewhere in the house, a grandfather clock struck four. The witching hour.
When Helen began to speak, the voice was so small and disembodied that it seemed to come from somewhere else, as if a child had crept under the bed and was playing a trick upon the two of them.
‘Jessy and I, our souls are as one. She has gone to heaven. It is God’s judgement that her father may go to hell.’
Outside, a small animal shrieked as a predator struck home. Even through the drapes, it was a sound to freeze the blood.
‘She was punished for his sins. He told me so. He told me many things. He thought I was asleep. He always thinks I am asleep. Always. And then … he feels free.’
Helen giggled. A sly treacherous smile on her face.
‘About wickedness. And lust. And pictures in his mind. And how the world was full of blood, dripping from the walls of Babylon.’
She suddenly turned on to her back and raised both palms into the air like a saint about to give a blessing. Eileen was transfixed.
‘He thought I was asleep. And wept. And told me of his sins. And women of the street who came to him in darkness and touched his flesh. And how he scourged away the sin. With blood. Silly man.’
For a moment, gazing at the hands above her, Helen laughed again, then she cried out in fear and once more whimpered her way back into the nurse’s side.
The nape of Eileen’s neck was ice cold. Helen reached up and laid an unerring hot little hand upon it.
‘I have prayed to Mother Mary,’ she said brokenly.
Her forehead was against the other’s throat and she began to cry, scalding tears, warm in the cold night, which trickled down inside the collar of Eileen’s uniform and on to her bare skin. She could feel the rivulets spreading over the collar-bone, the clavicle, that was the medical term, best to keep medicine in mind.
Despite her small frame, Helen had surprisingly heavy breasts, a pocket Venus. They pressed against Eileen’s arm, one on each side, in the Spanish style. Even though she was sheathed in a nightgown of thick flannel, Helen’s nipples were visible, erectile tissue is so hard to contain, and her haunches, the material stuck to them like a second skin, rounded and curved in a way which would have delighted the Ancient Greeks. Or even Romans.
Romans, Greeks and clavicles, thoughts that were not proper to this situation, were filing in an increasingly disorderly fashion through Eileen’s mind. Hallucination. Delirium. What was she catching from her charge?
‘I have prayed to Mother Mary,’ said Helen, ‘that he may be forgiven. Though I would wish him first to suffer great pain. Like Christ on the cross. Who died for all of us. And gave His blood.’
Her hand still rested on the nape of Eileen’s neck. She could feel each fingertip.
