Marcia Talley - The Last Refuge

Now, as Amy bustled into the room smiling cheerfully and carrying a tea tray, I felt curiously detached from reality. Had it been only two weeks since Jud had showed up on my doorstep like a lost puppy?

‘You asked to be awakened at six thirty,’ Amy chirped as she set the tea tray down on a small round table between the two front windows. The skirt of her bright blue dress swished as she stood on tiptoe and threw open the curtains, flooding the room with light.

‘Ouch,’ I said, shielding my eyes.

‘The staff is awake, madam,’ Amy said. ‘Cook said to say that breakfast will be ready to serve by eight. I’ll go wake the children, then be back to help you dress.’ She lifted a yellow silk dressing gown off a wooden peg near the door and laid it carefully on the foot of the bed, before disappearing into the hall.

My bedroom was located directly over the library at the front of the main house, its two tall windows overlooking Prince George Street. Carefully avoiding the chamber pot, I climbed out of bed, slipped the dressing gown over my shift and crossed to the windows, knotting my sash as I went. It had been a warm evening, so the windows – decorated with the same red and white French toile as the bed hangings – were still open. I stuck my head out, looked down the street to my right, wishing I could catch sight of Paul leaving the house, walking the few short blocks to his office at the Naval Academy, but it was far too early for that.

I settled into an upholstered slipper chair and picked up the teapot, carefully pouring the steaming liquid through the silver strainer Amy had balanced over my cup. I was grateful as I sipped that the two cameramen – Derek and Chad – had been assigned to cover the morning ablutions of The Great Patriot himself, Jack Donovan, who slept alone in the master suite directly across the hall.

Amy returned a short time later, materializing as if by magic through the wall just to the left of my bed. A door-sized portion of the woodwork – wallpaper, wainscoting, chair rail and all – yawned open and I nearly dropped my cup. ‘Yikes!’ I squeaked. ‘You scared the life out of me!’

Amy laughed. ‘Sorry.’ She carried a tea kettle on a flat, padded pillow, steam drifting lazily out of its spout. ‘That door leads to the service staircase. It’s a shortcut to the first floor, and to the kitchen. I thought you might want to wash up first,’ she added, heading for a washstand I had overlooked the previous evening. Carefully, she poured boiling water into a bowl in the washstand. She added cool water to it from a matching pitcher, tested the water with a fingertip, then draped a flannel cloth over the brim. ‘It’s ready whenever you are.’

‘I’d kill for a cup of coffee,’ I told Amy as I dipped the flannel into the warm water, squeezed it out and applied the refreshingly warm cloth to my face. ‘A shower, too, but I realize that’s out of the question.’

While I washed, Amy set the tea kettle down on the floor near the hidden door, just discernible as a thin crack, now that I knew where it was. She opened a leather trunk at the foot of the bed and pulled out one of my everyday gowns – an apple-green linen that I’d previously seen hanging in the wardrobe trailer with Katherine Donovan’s name on it.

‘Will this dress be suitable for today, madam?’

When I nodded, she draped the gown carefully over the arm of the chair I’d just vacated. Amy handed me a pair of stockings, a fine white silk, and knelt on the floor in front of me, ready to assist, as if I were an invalid. ‘I think I can manage,’ I said with a smile. ‘Why don’t you find my stays?’

While Amy dug the stays out of a dresser drawer, I rolled the stockings up over my knees and secured them there with a fat elastic band. ‘Why it took until the nineteen sixties to invent panty hose, I can’t imagine. I’m hoping I don’t get gangrene below the knee in this get-up.’

Amy watched while I stepped into the under-petticoat. After I’d tied it around my waist, she handed me the stays. I slipped the corset-like device over my head then turned so she could lace me up the back. ‘If you don’t have a maid, or a husband, you’d never get into this contraption,’ I said, regretting my words almost the moment they fell out of my mouth. Husband . Shit. Amy’s husband was dead.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’

‘That’s OK,’ Amy said, her voice hoarse. She gave my laces a final savage tug before tying them off. ‘It’s not like I haven’t noticed that Drew is dead.’

I indicated a chair, the mate to the one I’d been sitting on. ‘I’ve upset you. I’m sorry. Here, sit down for a minute.’

Amy eased her full skirts onto the chair and sat. For a long moment, she simply stared at me. Then she said, ‘It hasn’t been easy.’

‘Do you want to talk about it?’

She sat quietly for a moment, hands folded, as if weighing how much to tell me. ‘Do you know what a death notification team is, Hannah?’

‘I can guess. Sounds awful.’

‘It is. An official car pulls up in front of your house and an officer, a chaplain, a medic and a JAG, all in uniform, step out of it.’ She looked up at me through a film of tears. ‘Sounds like a bad joke, doesn’t it? “An officer, a chaplain, a medic and a JAG walked into a bar…”’ Her voice trailed off.

‘I knew right away, of course. Nobody needed to tell me, but they did anyway, running through their official script, like “Are you Mrs Edward Drew Cornell? Is your husband Lieutenant Commander Edward Drew Cornell? Ma’am, we regret to inform you that your husband…”’ She swiped a tear from her cheek and sighed deeply. ‘According to the Navy, Drew is missing, presumed dead.’

I reached out and touched her sleeve. ‘Missing? Is it possible he’s still alive?’

Amy bit her lower lip and shook her head. ‘No.’

‘When did this happen, Amy?’

‘Ten months ago. Remember that helicopter crash in Swosa?’

My heart did a flip-flop. ‘After Madani Sabir Nazari was assassinated? My God! It was all over the news. Two of the casualties were Naval Academy grads, so we paid particular attention to the coverage. Drew was on that mission, too?’

She nodded miserably. ‘The Navy’s been trying to recover their bodies for months, but the rebel government in Swosa isn’t cooperating. But what difference does it make? CNN has videos of the crash. The chopper was incinerated. There can’t possibly have been any survivors.’

Outside in the hallway, a patter of bare feet and the putt-putt-putt of a race car screaming by – Gabriel making anachronistic noises. Amy looked up. ‘Guess I better finish helping you dress. You going to wear hoops?’

I shrugged. ‘Might as well go the whole hog.’

Amy helped me tie the figure-eight-shaped hoop Alisha had told me was called a farthingale around my waist, then handed me what looked like an embroidered pouch on a string. ‘What’s this?’ I asked, turning it over in my hands, admiring the handiwork.

‘It’s a pocket. You tie it on under your skirt. You can put things in it like coins, keys, lipstick…’ She laughed out loud. ‘Just kidding about the lipstick. You reach into the pocket from slits in the side seams of your dress.’

‘What made you decide to apply for Patriot House?’ I asked Amy as she helped me adjust the pocket and slip into my gown.

‘Oh, Hannah. It’s been awful. After Drew died, everything seemed to go to hell. I was teaching music in a Catholic elementary school, but the diocese closed the school in a cost-cutting measure, then sold the property.’

‘Let me guess…’

Amy nodded. ‘Pedophile priests. Compensating their victims turned out to be expensive.’