Elephant Man - Christine Sparks [66]
“I’ll get him all the love stories you want, Freddie, but I will not have him in my house. Have you forgotten that we have children?”
“I wasn’t thinking of the girls meeting him. Though actually Jenny would love to. She’s said so. She isn’t as squeamish as you.” He said this because he couldn’t resist annoying his wife, though in truth he had no intention of letting his daughters see the Elephant Man.
“Freddie, I said no.”
The argument ended there for a moment while they had dinner. Treves was wondering how he could bring up the subject again when Anne said, as she poured his coffee, “If John Merrick has formed his impressions of the way people live from reading Alexandre Dumas and the like, what sort of idea does he have of this house?”
“Rather unrealistic, I’m afraid. He dreams of a grand residence with huge rooms and easy chairs into which the hero can ‘fling himself.’ Heroes always seem to be flinging themselves into chairs in the books he reads. They never just sit, apparently. Not heroic enough.”
Her lips gave an involuntary twitch, but she controlled it before he could see. Against her will she was softening to him, but she was determined not to give in.
“I’ve tried to explain to him that No. 6 Wimpole Street isn’t Versailles,” Treves went on. “I’ve told him we don’t have the armies of menials and powdered footmen that he’s read about …”
“I should think not, indeed. Cook would give her notice if anyone called her a menial.”
“Nor do we have the white marble staircase, or the gilded mirrors and the brocaded divans …”
She gave a small choke, but refused to meet his eye.
“I think I managed to convince him that we lived in a more modest way, something along the Jane Austen style. He’s read Emma so I believe he understands.”
She still had not given in when she went to take a last look at her daughters. She stood regarding them for a long time, seeing them with the new eyes that her husband had forced on her. There was Kate, a happy uncomplicated child, with a mind that seldom looked below the surface of things. “Trivial,” her mother had sometimes said with disapproval; but Kate already showed promise of that beauty which in adult life would make people forgive her almost any amount of triviality.
Jenny would have more trouble. She would never be a beauty, and her sharp, clever brain would probably cause her more problems than benefit. But she had a lively, witty personality, which would draw people to her despite the ordinariness of her face.
Both her daughters, Anne realized, had something that the world would call attractive, and the world would be accordingly kind to them.
She returned to her own room to find her husband already in bed, looking at her anxiously. She went across and kissed him.
“When does the Elephant Man want to come?” she said.
The day of Merrick’s visit to Wimpole Street was also the day Nurse Kathleen Darrell was conscripted for “Bedstead Square duties.” She was informed she’d volunteered, but as she privately told Nurse Nora Ireland, it was the kind of volunteering where everyone else steps back quickly and leaves you standing there. Nora felt a certain sympathy, but only said, “You’ll get used to it.”
She and Mothershead between them bathed Merrick for the visit, with Nurse Kathleen looking on. When they finally left the bathroom Nora noticed that her new helper was looking a bit queasy.
Mothershead followed them out, turning to say a few last words to Merrick who was still in the bathroom.
“There now, you’re all dry,” she told him kindly. “Now get into those things.” She closed the door and smiled at the two girls. Nora wondered cynically if Mothershead’s benign aspect was induced by the prospect of having less to do with the Elephant Man in the future.
“Well, I think I can safely hand the duties over to you girls now,” said Mothershead. “Mr. Merrick will require a bath every day; that way he won’t pong quite so much. Nora, you can instruct Kathleen