One morning, hot and feverish, she woke with a terrifying image in her head of herself as a red ball of fire encircled by a golden cage of flames. She began to sob and the doctor’s wife heard her.
Dottie was motherly, although she had no children. She clucked over her husband and now she clucked over Eliza too. It was well intended, but Eliza longed to clap her hands over her ears and yell at her to go away and leave her alone. It wasn’t really fair, as Dottie had always been kindness itself, but Eliza wanted to drown in her sorrow, not be comforted out of it. And though Dottie did her best to persuade Eliza to get dressed and come downstairs, Eliza turned her face to the wall, with silent rage consuming her.
A little later she heard the heavy tread of footsteps from the landing and then a light tapping on her door. She wanted it to be Jay and for one mad moment hoped that it was, and quickly sat up in her bed. When Clifford came in, she sank back down again and refused to look at him.
‘Come on, darling,’ he said. ‘I’m so happy you’re home but this really won’t do.’
She didn’t reply. Didn’t even move a muscle.
‘The Viceroy will be passing through next week. I really will need you in tip-top condition.’
She rolled towards him and opened her eyes. ‘I’m not a bloody horse, Clifford.’
She could see the exasperation in his eyes but could do nothing about it. She wondered if he might know anything about a sister, but when she raised the subject he just looked blank and said Anna must have been delirious. There was nobody left to ask, so Eliza felt inclined to let it lie.
She put up with his wet kisses and luckily he expected no more, but when she thought of what was to come she felt sick. Every time he asked her to set the date she made an excuse. Too close to her mother’s death. Too hot. Too late in the year.
When she wasn’t feeling the slicing pain of being parted from Jay, she thought of her mother, crushed by life, and at the end a broken woman. It was unbearably sad. But then she wondered if her mother had ever really glowed with inner light. Had she ever been happy? If she had, was it David Fraser who had snuffed the light out, and had she herself been dazzled by her father and never really considered her mother?
A half-sister?
The words frequently slipped into her mind, leaving her restless. Another day passed and then another. On the following morning Eliza went into the bathroom, leant against the wash-hand basin and stared into the mirror. She gazed at her ashen skin and her lank hair and saw that the changes were not an improvement. She ran a bath and, afterwards, her spirits picked up.
The bedroom had been heavily curtained and Dottie had left it that way once Eliza claimed the light hurt her eyes. But now Dottie marched in carrying a box. ‘Now, Eliza,’ she said. ‘This is for you, but first I am going to open the curtains. It’s stuffy in here and you need light and air.’
Eliza glanced at the only shard of light visible in a small gap between the curtains; it stung like a knife in her eyes and she turned her back.
‘I don’t care,’ Dottie said. ‘Turn away if you must, but I am airing this room.’
Eliza heard the sound of the curtains being pulled back and saw light flooding the room.
Dottie came over to her. ‘You’ve washed your hair.’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s a start.’ She patted Eliza’s hand. ‘Let’s open the box.’
They sat on a small two-seater sofa by the window overlooking the garden. ‘It’s from Clifford,’ Dottie said in a neutral-sounding voice.
Eliza opened the box, then a leather case inside it, and was surprised to find a new Leica Model C, ‘Schraubgewinde’, complete with a matched set of lenses and also a separate rangefinder that could be attached to the top of the camera.
‘Isn’t that thoughtful,’ Dottie said. ‘You could do a lot worse than Clifford.’
Eliza blinked rapidly and felt a glimmer of excitement. A new camera might make all the difference. ‘But this would have cost the earth. I just can’t believe it.’
‘I know he’s not the love of your life,’ Dottie continued, ‘but surely this proves how much he cares for you.’
‘How do you know he is not the love of my life?’
‘Darling, you told me, remember? Anyway, it’s in the eyes. Always in the eyes. I’ve been there too, in my way.’
Startled by such an intimate confession, Eliza stared at her friend.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ Dottie said. ‘He was a lowly non-commissioned fellow in the British Army, a Londoner, totally unsuitable … but I loved him.’
‘I’m not judging you. How could I?’
‘I don’t usually tell many people this, so I trust you not to spread it around, but I became pregnant. The shame was destroying my mother, so I agreed to marry Julian.’
