Rose Tremain - Restoration

I have noticed that the Keepers of Whittlesea are very courteous to each other in argument, Pearce alone among them being given to fits of sulking. And so it was that the closing of the gates to visitors was now discussed in a most amiable way, each one putting forward an opinion and listening politely to those that countered it. Only Daniel remained outside the argument, now and then through his cupped hands making a very peculiar noise a little resembling the hoot of an owl I used to hear from my bedroom at Bidnold. No one paid this any attention at all.

I found myself on the side of Pearce. I knew, for instance, that Katharine's mother had promised to visit her in the summertime and that she longed for this day and hoped her mother would put her arms around her. The notion that, because of our own fear, we would turn this woman away made me feel most uncomfortable. But Ambrose was very passionate in defence of Edmund's proposal. Better that some here should suffer deprivation and loneliness, he declared, than that we should perish and the Hospital fall to ruin. "For where," he asked, "would the survivors go then but to the London Bedlam, which is the saddest place on earth? And there, in all probability die from the very pestilence from which we are trying to protect them!"

Being a large man with mighty lungs, the voice of Ambrose is very big. To me, it appeared to fill up the small parlour so completely that when Pearce spoke again his voice sounded faint and reedy, as if there was no room for it.

And so it was decided: from that very night, the gates would be barred and under the inscription "I have refined thee in the furnace of affliction" would be posted a bill, giving notice that in time of plague no visitors whomsoever would be admitted to Whittlesea. Provisions or money could be left in a basket and would be given to the one for whom they were intended. The well being or otherwise of any inmate could be ascertained by means of a letter to the Keepers.

Pearce was most unhappy with the decision, his disquiet causing a copious running of phlegm from his sore nostrils. And it made me feel afraid. I fell prey to the notion that all the world I had known and loved outside Whittlesea would sicken and die and that we and our hundred tormented souls would be the last beings left alive in England.

And so May came in, hot and still, and the light on the flat horizon danced.

So little rain had fallen since my arrival that we were forced to get water from our well to irrigate our vegetable plot and the nodules of fruit on Pearce's pear trees began to appear wizened, like the cods of an old man.

The primrose season was past and the grass in the ditches was brown and dry. Though Pearce talked of making us nosegays to sweeten our air and drive away the plague germ, he could find no flowers but a few late jonquils with which to make them.

Edmund who, as I have told you, loved a deluge for washing in, declared the heat to be "foul type of weather, ripening nothing but disease" and took to wearing his hat at all times.

I remembered the winter and the snow on my park and my thoughts about Russians, but these things seemed so very distant, it was almost impossible to believe that they had ever been.

The air of the nights seemed not much cooler than that of the days and in them I found sleep difficult, so it became my habit to get up many times in each night; sometimes only to stare out of my window in the direction of Earls Bride and then lie down again; sometimes to tuck my nightgown into a pair of breeches and put on my shoes and go quietly out to Margaret Fell and see whether or not Katharine was sleeping.

I had continued daily with the rubbing of her feet with black soap and I had begun to have some hope for this cure. I could now pause in the task or cease altogether and she would stay asleep for an hour. And whenever I looked at her sleeping thus, I would feel very moved by my own success.

So now, if I found her awake in the hot nights, talking to her doll Jesus, pulling her nightclothes or braiding and unbraiding her hair, I would sit down on the floor beside her pallet and bid her lie down, and then I would place her feet in my lap and begin rubbing them, not with any soap but only with the palm of my hand, and in not many minutes I would see her eyes close and a merciful wave of sleep come over her.

One night, being very tired out of this wakefulness of May, I too fell asleep on the floor of Margaret Fell while rubbing Katharine's feet and when I woke up I saw that Katharine had laid her blanket over me. I might have stayed some while at her side if there had not begun all around me an early morning clamour of the women to piss, so that everywhere I looked they were squatting down on their buckets and the smell of urine quite overpowered me and drove me out into the dawn.

I went to visit Danseuse ,who is most plagued by flies in this hot weather, and I laid my head against her neck and thought about the early morning coming slowly to the Thames, unseen by Celia asleep with the King at Hampton Court. And I remembered Celia's longing for a child and began to wonder whether, in her, the King would create yet another bastard, while with his own Queen he could not produce an heir. These reveries are interrupted by the stamping of Danseuse who, since we rode inside the Whittlesea gates, has been restless and prone to fear. If she were not the only precious thing I own, I would open the gates and let her gallop away.

Some days after this, a great storm moved in over the Fens and the hard earth of Whittlesea was turned once more to mud. Pearce called all the Keepers together in the parlour after our mid-day broth to offer up thanks for the rain falling on his lettuces and his beans. These prayers done, Edmund took up his soap and undressed himself and went out into the deluge but returned, very agitated, a moment later to announce to us that two visitors were at the gates, an old woman and her daughter clamouring to be let in.

"Ambrose," said Pearce, "will you leave these people out in the storm?"

Ambrose went to the window: "The storm is moving east," he said. "It is passing."

"They must not come in!" said Edmund.

"No," said Ambrose, "they must not come in. And they will not. They will read the bill we have posted and they will leave."

"How if they cannot read?" asked Pearce.

Ambrose hesitated a moment before replying. "One of us will go to the gate and talk to them through the grille."

"I shall go," offered Hannah.

"No," said Ambrose calmly. "Edmund will go. He will go directly, for he does not mind the rain."

I watched from the door of Whittlesea House as Edmund, naked except for his frayed under-drawers, jogged out to the gate, soaping his chest as he went, and stuck his head into the small iron grille inset into the heavy portal. I could not hear what he said, for the drumming of the rain on the earth and on the buildings was very loud. Nor could I, from this vantage point, see the visitors, but it appeared they were very insistent for Edmund was so long at the gate he had succeeded in washing all of himself except his legs while he parleyed with them.

He at last came away and bent down to soap his knees and his calves. By this time, however, the storm had indeed moved off in an easterly direction and there was not enough rain falling to rinse off the lather he had made. Edmund threw his head back and glared angrily at the clearing sky before making his way to the pump, where he completed his ablutions. Only then did he return to us and tell us that the visitors had been the mother and sister of my would-be murderer, Piebald, and that they had come out from Puckeridge, some way north of London.

I went up to my room, which is indeed more of a room to me now and less of a linen cupboard, and looked out over the wall that surrounds us to the Earls Bride marshes. On the road to the village, I could see two figures walking, dressed in the clothes of very poor people. Every few steps, they turned and looked back towards us. Then the younger woman put her arm round the shoulders of the older one and they walked on until I could see them no more. Only after they had disappeared from my sight did I "see" that the younger of the two, Piebald's sister, carried a basket that appeared heavy. No doubt they had come with provisions and, being turned away by Edmund, had not thought to leave these at the gate.