The Specimen (33 page)

“Ah now, Susan. I know exactly where Susan is. She is with Mrs Brewin. I will go and fetch her.” This piece of information seemed to shock Mr Scales out of his private reverie for a
moment. He looked up at George, and George thought if he had told Mr Scales that the queen herself was in the kitchen, he would not have looked more horrified. “Well, I shan’t be a
moment then. Perhaps some tea, also. So, if you’ll excuse me.”

George swung open the door. He could not get out of the room quick enough. He was not sure whom Mr Scales had been likening to a moth. He had assumed that there was only one female now in the
equation, but it would be better if he stopped assuming anything at all. Mr Scales’ willingness to lay himself open, to disgorge his most secret, intimate feelings for a woman made George
uncomfortable. It was too much. The nearer he got to the kitchen and its pleasant smells, the less irritated he became.

Mrs Brewin and Susan had their heads together over a large book on the table in the middle of the room. Every surface was sprinkled with grains of sugar and punctuated with drips of pulped
fruit. Ranks of gleaming preserving jars were lined up, warming near the oven and a flupping, plopping sound came from the giant preserving pan on the hot-plate. He cleared his throat twice to get
the women’s attention. “Ah, there you are, Susan. I wonder if I might extract you for a moment. Mr Scales is most anxious to speak with you.”

“Is he still here?”

“Yes. Yes, indeed, still here.”

Mrs Brewin glanced at him, but there was nothing in her gaze except matters pertaining to jam reluctant to set. George liked his housekeeper a great deal. She was young but plain enough for
George not to desire her. And he did not have to worry about losing her to another. She was faithful to the memory of her husband, lost in the Crimea. Initially, George had worried that this fact
might inflame Miss Carrick, but Mrs Brewin had told him quite bluntly that she didn’t go in for all that murmuring and nonsense. She was pleased, she said, to have Susan to help her; she was
a good girl and pleasant company.

Whilst Susan washed her hands and put on a clean apron, George made a pot of tea and fetched the biscuit tin. Mrs Brewin was quite used to him bumbling about in her kitchen and ignored it, but
Susan was perturbed by it. Susan tried to take over, but all he would let her do was fetch a small jug of milk. She had to follow on behind down the passage towards the study as he bore the tray in
front of him. It had crockery for three. George could feel her alarm and agitation at his back. He had a large stride and the china rattled.

Edward Scales was poking the fire and adding another lump of coal from the wrong bucket. There were two buckets next to the fire: one with the wet stuff, and one with the dry. The fire belched
thick, greenish smoke, and as George came into the room the draw from the doorway caused the smoke to guff out into the room. When Edward turned around with the poker in his hand, George had a
strong impulse to reprimand his guest, but he did not. He asked Susan to bring up another chair.

“Yes, sir.”

Susan wanted to rescue the fire but didn’t. She watched the gobbet of smoke unfurl along the ceiling from the corner of her eye.

Mrs Brewin was a religious woman but she did not believe in divine retribution. She felt a great deal of sympathy for Mr Scales, even though he had committed the sin of
adultery. She did not believe in an Almighty who, having given Mr Scales the gift of a child, should then take it and its mother in such an horrific way. Accidents could happen, and these accidents
had nothing to do with anything except extremely bad luck. Certainly, Mr Scales seemed to be a luckless man, if not perhaps perfectly stupid, as well. It wasn’t clear whether Mr Scales was a
bigamist; he had referred on more than one occasion to his wife, meaning the late sister of Miss Carrick upstairs, and not the late Mrs Scales who had lived in London and was now buried in the
Reverend’s churchyard.

Mrs Brewin and Susan had taken turns all morning to listen at the study door. If she had not heard it herself she would not have believed it. She had seen pictures of a crocodile once, and she
imagined that an alligator was much the same thing. The crocodile pictures were in a large heavy volume belonging to Reverend Sparsholt; it had been left open on the settee, of all places. The
vision she had then of George Sparsholt with a heavy book in his lap did not sit comfortably with the way he stood at the lectern in his study to practise his sermons. The picture now fullest in
her mind of Mr Scales killing all those creatures and emptying their guts in search of his loved ones appalled and inspired her.

It went against her principles, to eavesdrop. She had always looked down on others who indulged and divulged, as she called it, yet it had been she, not Susan, who had started it that morning.
As a result, there was no hot meal for the vicar and Miss Carrick, only some runny plum jam from her stock of bottled fruit, which should by now have set.

She had been George Sparsholt’s housekeeper for some years. She liked the position; it was not taxing. He did not notice dust, and she had time to read novels. She had never done that when
her husband had been alive. And though the sermons were boring and she was obliged to go and listen every Sunday (as well as through the week in disconnected dribs and drabs), she did at least get
to sit in the pew usually reserved for the vicar’s family (as he had none), and so did not have to spend the time looking at the back of people’s heads.

Now, she felt herself somehow infected by the sudden rash of activity in the vicarage. Susan’s enthusiasm for melodrama bubbled over. There seemed to be a surfeit, and Mrs Brewin absorbed
it readily, like a sponge sopping a puddle leaking in under the back door. Poor Mr Scales. He’d spent the first hour of his interview with Reverend Sparsholt weeping. Mrs Brewin had never
heard a man cry like that before. From the stuffy confines of George Sparsholt’s study had come the sound of heaving sobs and hiccoughs. She thought it a very sorry state of affairs, that Mr
Scales had felt compelled to remove himself and his mistress to such a remote corner of the world. She’d heard of Romantic Couples going off to Italy; surely, that would have been better.
Elizabeth Brewin felt sure that the waterways of Venice were safer, being riddled not with alligators, but handsome gondoliers.

An hour had passed since Susan had been called into the study and she had not yet emerged.

Susan had told her all sorts of tales about the actual, Mrs Isobel Scales, and her visits to Carrick House. She’d nodded knowingly when Susan had mentioned the vast quantities of tonic
previously consumed by Miss Euphemia Carrick upstairs. Elizabeth Brewin had suffered with the stuff herself for a short time—whilst her husband had been alive.

Now, she stood at the study door again, aware of the scum forming on the fruit pulp back in the kitchen but not moving to do anything about it. She heard Susan’s high voice laughing
nervously behind the door, and the rumble of Reverend Sparsholt’s church voice. When the Reverend’s voice vaulted through the keyhole Elizabeth Brewin retreated down the passage to the
kitchen.

Among the mess of her jam-making on the kitchen table she began to draft a reply to a letter from her brother. The letter had been a little distressing, to say the least, and Mrs Brewin still
felt that, compared to camels and mysterious Black Brethren of the Australian desert, life at the vicarage was unmentionably dull. Her brother’s admonishing words filled her with sorrowful
vexation, and she pictured her small letters of the previous months; how those small packets had braved tumult and tempest to arrive at last in her dear brother’s hands, only to disappoint
him. He’d said that her letters made him lonelier than ever. She dipped her finger into the pooled jam at her elbow and pushed it along. The jam made a wave at her fingertip and then settled
back to its puddle without showing any sign of a skin. Not the slightest little wrinkle. She sucked her finger and began to write.

Elizabeth Brewin considered what she had put down, and thought that it didn’t much matter that the way it came out sounded like matchmaking. Her brother would likely
laugh about it; for a person like him was never interested in taking a wife nor would he let anything of the kind pass through his mind. Certainly, he wasn’t the sort to entertain beneath. It
was true he thought himself better. And what was it that he had written? “
Here, a man may be anything or anyone he chooses to be as long as he minds his way
.” Her thoughts ran
to the way her brother had been as a child. She remembered the particular habit he’d taken a liking to, of clearing his throat before speaking. He’d been a very dry little bodkin, even
then, and it pained her to think that he’d wandered so very far from her. She looked about her and heard the tinkle of the bell, and realised that it had been pinging for a while now. All
this jam. If she could just get the stuff to set, she could send a pot of it to her brother. She would pack it tight in a box of straw. She was sure that Susan would think it a fine idea. Very
fine.

She looked up when she heard the click of the kitchen door opening and Susan coming back in. Down the hall, the Reverend’s voice could be heard indistinctly.

“I’m to go up, and fetch Miss Carrick,” Susan said.

Edward waited in the study, and the Reverend rocked back and forth on his heels, his hands clasped behind his back, until Susan came into the room with Miss Carrick, and then
vanished.

“Miss Carrick,” Reverend Sparsholt said to her, “do make yourself comfortable. This gentleman whom I believe you have met once before, erm, has come bearing some grave
news.”

“Edward Scales.” Edward bowed to Euphemia who stood apart from the two of them and refused to sit on the settee. She inclined her head to Edward.

“Susan has told me that you have come to tell me that my sister is dead, Mr Scales.”

“I wish it were not so, but I must beg your forgiveness, Miss Carrick.”

They each looked into the other’s eyes. Then she said, “I am sorry for your loss, Mr Scales. I understand there was a child, also.”

Edward hung his head. “My daughter, Augusta.”

“That must be hard on you. I expect she was very lovely.”

He could not think how this had happened. He felt insubstantial in the presence of this woman he had known so privately and so intimately. He realised how different she sounded from Gwen. He had
been afraid of hearing her voice, but Euphemia looked and sounded quite different. Her movements and the clarity of her diction were a little slurred from a recent dose of tincture, but she was not
as he had feared. And perhaps it was this which changed everything.

Two Years Later.
Carrick House. June, 1866.

A hot day in the middle of June. Swifts flew overhead, almost clipping the man’s wide-brimmed hat as he walked over the scorched gravel of the drive. The windows were all
open in Carrick House, and a warm breeze lifted the edges of papers on the library desk. Susan watched the man make his progress up the drive. The rustle of papers distracted her for a moment, and
she patted the paperweight holding the pile of letters and bills in place.

The screeching of the swifts cut through the air as deftly as their scimitar wings. Susan left the room, giving it a cursory glance, and went to find her mistress. It would not be difficult, she
had only to follow the sounds of the children playing. With all the doors in the house propped open, she followed the children’s noises and their mother’s voice through to the playroom.
Mr Scales had insisted on the playroom being located downstairs with direct access to the garden. Susan had thought it strange. The new French windows let the twins career in and out at will. They
had not employed a nurse or a nanny. Euphemia spent all her time with the children. She was sitting on the floor surrounded by snippings of paper and string. The twins ran clumsily up and down the
room trailing kites in each hand. Susan eyed the mess with distaste.

“Ma’am, there’s a gentleman coming up the drive. Shall I show him into the library?” Euphemia turned and stood, still smiling at her children, not looking at Susan.
“Yes, show him in. I’m not certain when Mr Scales will be back, but it can’t be any more than half an hour. Give him something to drink.” She clapped her hands.
“Let’s fly them outside now, yes?”

As Susan stepped into the hall the bell sounded and she ran to open the door.

The man stood straight, clasping his hat to his crumpled, linen-clad chest. He was so tall. He bent down courteously. “Is this the home of Mr Edward Scales?” He gave Susan his card,
but she did not look at it. She put it in her pocket.

“Please come in, sir. Mr Scales’ll be back dreckly from his afternoon walk.” She took his hat, but he kept his walking stick. He followed Susan into the study and accepted a
brandy. There was something about his manner which made Susan want to stay in the room. “We’re having such a blast of hot weather, sir. I hope you haven’t had to come far.”
She put the glass next to Edward’s armchair, hoping the man would sit down in it. The warm wind shouldered the smell more or less out of the room. Susan felt her spine ease. The smell from
the cellar had come and inhabited the rest of the house; intruder that it was, greeting all at the doormat and on the stair carpet. It was the brother of mothballs and sister to the worst kind of
sin.