Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits - Donoghue [37]
She edges down into the blankets, into his heavy embrace.
"You'll need all your strength for tomorrow's early start, and the long drive to Aberfeldy. Good night, my love."
"Good night," she whispers.
But after the candle is out, he and she both lie awake in the smoky darkness.
Note
"Come, Gentle Night" is about the wedding night of Euphemia "Effie" Chalmers Gray (1828–97) and the art critic John Raskin (1819–96). They met in 1840, when she was only twelve, and were married less than eight years later at her parents' house at Bowerswell, near Perth, on 10 April 1848. My sources for this story are family Utters and legal documents included and discussed in Mary Lutyens's books Effie in Venice (1965), Millais and the Ruskins (1967), and The Ruskins and the Grays (1972), as well as other biographies of Ruskin.
In 1854 Effie ran away from her husband and had their marriage annulled on the grounds of non-consummation. A year later she married the painter John Everett Millais, with whom she had eight children.
Salvage
The Cottage Ladies were breakfasting when word came.
Cousin Anna slid into her self-propelling chair and got as far as the front door.
"Wait!" cried Cousin Sarah. She took hold of the padded handles of the chair and bumped Anna carefully down the steps. On the path, Anna wheeled herself along with frantic thrusts of her hands. Sarah had to jog to keep up with her cousin; she lifted her skirt in both hands. The rain was over, but the October wind cut at Sarah's ankles and neck like a willow switch; she wished she'd thought to bring her Kashmir shawl.
When they reached the beach, the damp brown sand clogged the great wheels of Anna's chair, and she slowed to a grinding crawl. Sarah caught up with her, then, and started pulling the chair along backwards. Anna stared over her shoulder across the half-mile of pale Norfolk strand, across the dark splintered waters, to the ship. The two of them breathed in gasps. They didn't need to say a word.
The main mast was down, Sarah saw; the old red brig was keeling over sideways, as if drunk, or poisoned. On its side was a word in strange, angular letters. The wreck held to the invisible rocks under the hard gray water. Small oil-skinned figures could be seen here and there, roped to the rails. As the ladies came to a standstill and watched, a wave reared up foaming and bit the deck.
"Poor souls," said Sarah, but the wind ate up her words.
Her cousin's eyes were narrowed against the spray, like chisel marks in her wide Nordic face. "You there!" Anna cried, pushing a strand of rogue hair back into her cap. "Ned Sylvester!"
One fisherman left the little knot of men and ran over, hands folded respectfully. "Miss Anna. Miss Sarah," he added, with a sideways nod. "She's a Ruskie, seems like."
"Never mind where the ship's from. Why aren't you using the Apparatus?"
Sarah looked past the fishermen and there it was on a hand-barrow, the Patent Life Saving Apparatus, on which she and Anna had spent half their savings. According to the advertisement in the Times, it could shoot a rope across the sea twice a minute with the greatest degree of precision. But its iron curves bore traces of salty rust already.
"She's too far out for that," said Ned Sylvester, wiping his nose on his sleeve. "No hope for much but salvage this time, we all reckon."
"Don't say that." Anna's cheeks bore two red marks.
"Well, Miss," said Sylvester uncomfortably, his eyes shifting back to the shore.
"Have you so much as tried the thing yet?"
He shook his head, not looking at her.
"Come along, then." Anna jerked her head at her cousin to wheel her down the wet sand to where the other fishermen stood staring out at the wreck. "Exert yourselves, men!" she shouted. "Send for the Life Boat, and set up the Apparatus."
Sarah stood beside one of the fishermen's wives. She realised she was shivering; the wind off the sea was colder than she'd realised. "Has word been sent to Air. Fowell Buxton up at the Hall?" she asked at last. Her voice was too faint; she had to repeat the question.