Rose Tremain - Restoration

Trench being old and meticulous and used to making ermine cloaks and the like, fussed me with tedious letters, requesting that I stipulate precisely what furs were to be used and in what quantities and what colour and quality of silk and satin I required for the linings and furthermore suggesting that I come to London with my staff for individual fittings.

Though I felt most vexed by the delay, I could not behave discourteously to Trench, he being such a trusted friend of my father's. I decided therefore to simplify the operation. I instructed Trench to use only badger skins and to line the tabards not with silk or satin but with a sturdy wool cloth, "such as may be worn even by my groom and my scullery boy." The cost of the tabards was going to be considerable, but so vivid had my imaginary Russians become that I had convinced myself that I at least could not survive the winter without this peculiar garment of fur. The idea, furthermore, that we could wait out the spring dressed as badgers delighted me considerably. No more would I be told I must be quiet to chance upon a badger in the woods of Vauxhall; I would become a badger.

Meanwhile, we waited. Ice formed in the well and the ravaging frost made cracks in the roof tiles. A chimney pot came hurtling down and decapitated a guinea fowl. "How slowly, how slowly time passes," said Celia, warming her hands by the fire. "How shall I endure it?"

There was indeed a kind of sameness to each day. In the mornings, I would persuade Celia to come to my Music Room and sing. My oboe practice had increased tenfold. I would rise at dawn, in the freezing dark and take up my instrument and struggle with scales and arpeggios until the sun crept into the sky but, despite this, I was unable to accompany Celia with any grace at all and, whenever I attempted to do so, she would cease her singing almost at once and pray me not to bother. Thus, there was not, of course, the duet that I had fancifully imagined, but only Celia's voice, singing alone, singing of lost love, while I sat on a chair and stared at her white throat and wondered if time or chance or "the changeful nature of all things" would ever allow me to put my lips tenderly upon it.

At noon, I would dine with Celia, but these meals were becoming irksome to me, owing to the constant presence of Farthingale who was growing more odious and ugly as the days passed, but from whom Celia would seldom permit herself to be parted.

In the afternoons on fine days, I would ride in my park, urging Danseuse to her splendid gallop. Celia's little dog, Isabelle, whom she could not be bothered to exercise, ran snapping at our heels for some of the way and when we outran her would turn and trot home to her mistress who sat dreaming by the fire in her room, reading the poetry of Dryden or doing her eternal petit point .

There was no doubt, Celia was languishing. She was polite to me because she believed the King had made me her overseer. Upon my report of her depended her return to London – or so she understood it to be. But I knew what I was to her: I was a penance she had to endure. I was as irritating to her as my oboe playing, as ugly and discordant. The idea that she could ever love or respect me, I now saw was utterly preposterous. I was on the point of abandoning my ploy to keep her at Bidnold beyond the King's stated time when a most strange incident occurred.

I had spent an evening in my Studio, trying to draw in charcoal the Russians of my unreliable imagination, abandoning my hopeless smudges and scribbles at last towards midnight. I undressed and put on my warmest nightshirt and a nightcap with a little lining of rabbitskin, got into my turquoise bed and fell at once into a heavy sleep.

I woke in some confusion. A hand was pressing my shoulder and a voice was urging me to wake up. I opened my eyes and saw Celia, wrapped in a cloak, bending over me. She was holding a lighted candle and her long hair fell loose about her face, like a curtain.

"Merivel," she said in a whisper of great urgency, "come down. Your bird is dying."

"My nightingale?"

"Yes. You are a physician. It will die if something is not done."

I did not know what time it could be, for I had forgotten to wind my timepiece (if I had been the King, I would have had a diversity of clocks to choose from). I knew only that it was the very middle of the night and so cold that I could see my breath by the light of the candle.

Having given her message, Celia fled from my room, taking the candle with her so that I was left in utter darkness. As I struggled to light a lamp, find my wig and my stockings and wrench a blanket from the bed in which to wrap myself, I wondered why in the world Celia had been looking at my bird at this peculiar hour-she who, with the griping Farthingale, habitually retired to her room no later than nine o'clock. I was more puzzled by this than filled with worry for my bird, until that is I reached my Withdrawing Room at last and saw the poor thing.

Celia had placed the cage on the carpet in front of a fire upon which new logs had been laid. I knelt down.

"Look," said Celia. "It has fallen over."

It was lying on the floor of the cage, its legs in the air, one wing feebly flapping.

"What is to be done, Merivel?"

I looked up at Celia. I had detected in her voice a note of great sadness, of despair even. I was so utterly astonished that she should appear to care so much for something that, I, too, cared about that I was speechless, thus causing her to say once more:

"Merivel, what is to be done?"

I looked again at the nightingale. Its marigold eye, usually such a bright thing, appeared clouded, almost as if a membrane obscured it, but though I diligently searched what remained of my medical mind, I could not recollect what this might signify. I rubbed my eyes. Starved of sleep, wearied by drawings of Russians, I could discover no sensible path to follow.

"I do not know what is to be done, Celia," I said.

"You mean you do not care if the creature dies?"

"On the contrary! I am most attached to it."

"Then try something! Get out your instruments and your remedies!"

I cannot. I cannot. So I wished to say. And yet I understood that I must be seen to do something, that whereas Celia considered me to be inadequate at every human activity from oboe playing to discussions of Dryden's rhyming couplets, from painting to powdering my wig, she wrongly believed that in this one area – medicine – I possessed considerable skill. If, therefore, I could save the bird, I would no doubt earn a little respect from her.

Noting somewhat wryly that this was the second time that some part of my future appeared to depend upon my saving the life of a dumb creature, I took my candle and went to my closet. I returned with a strong physic, a senna and rhubarb preparation dubbed among apothecaries Pill Fortis , some clean linen bandages and the set of surgical instruments so recently sent to me by the King.

"Very well," I said to Celia. "I am going to purge the bird. When I have administered the physic, I shall perform a phlebotomy on the upper leg."

Celia did not flinch. "How may I help you?" she enquired.

"Well… if you would hold it in your hands, stroking its head so that it is not afraid, while I attempt to get the medicine down its throat…"

"Yes," she said. "But shall we not bring a table near to the fire and work upon it?"

"A good idea. And I will lay linen on it."

We thus, in this strange dead of night, prepared the walnut card table as an operating tray and Celia gently lifted the bird from the cage and laid it down. We worked by the light of three candles and, as I saw my poor bird placed before me, I was reminded for a few shadowy seconds of the body of the starling in the coal cellar. How much easier is dissection, I reflected, than cure.