It was the houseboy from Carrington House that went to Frank’s looking for Audrey. Frank sent Michael to get his aunt and bring her to speak to the young man who looked quite frantic. It was Elspeth. She was not doing well, very poorly in fact.
It had been a week since Audrey had seen her, two days after she’d been to the abortionist. They were still searching, she’d told her. Though in fact Dr Whittaker was their only lead. They’d met at the fence on the edge of the Carrington property. Elspeth, flushed from the run, eyes watery, her body keening with the news that they’d had no luck. They’d find someone, they would send a note, Audrey promised. She had networks, people in the cause who might know.
When she arrived at the Carringtons’, Audrey could see that Elspeth was nearly delirious with fever, her face ruddy, glistening with sweat. She ordered linens and a basin of cool water. She leaned into the young woman, wiping her face with a damp flannel, assuring her that the doctor would be there soon. Elspeth was frightened, her face a grimace as she tried to lift her head.
“I did it,” she whispered. “I did it.” Audrey sat back and dipped her fingers into the water, brushing the young woman’s forehead, her face, her neck, until she was able to consider what she needed to do. When her mind was settled, she left the room to find Michael, who she instructed to take a note to Dr Whittaker’s wife.
Everything seemed urgent and frantic now that she knew the circumstances, the need to get the specific kind of help that would be used in these situations. She wished Miriam were here; they’d come to rely on each other. They should not be friends, the two of them, too many barriers forbid it, the difference in age, in class. And she hardly knew what it meant to have a friend.
But to rely on someone, did that constitute a friendship?
Audrey rushed back to Elspeth. “He mustn’t know,” she muttered, over and again in her delirium. There was a young man she wanted to marry, Audrey learned, but even in the flush of illness she would not reveal his name. Audrey wondered about the young man who’d fetched her and now stood out in the hall looking as though he’d seen a ghost. Was he Elspeth’s betrothed?
Edith Whittaker arrived within the hour with a medical kit that included herbal tinctures. She had brought her husband, fearful of leaving him alone, and had asked for tea and biscuits for him. With just her and Audrey in Elspeth’s room, she lifted the covers and saw that Elspeth had lost a lot of blood. She hauled the bloody linens away and lay new ones as best as she could. Audrey fought nausea as she gingerly pulled the sheets from one side when Edith ordered her to do so. At least the war had prepared her for some things.
The heat from Elspeth’s body filled the room, and Audrey longed to step out into the hallway. When a maid swept in after giving tea to the doctor, Audrey told her to get rid of the soiled sheets that lay in the corner and followed her out the door as if ensuring that she do so. But in fact, it was the cool air of the hallway she needed. This was not the time to faint.
“How long has she been ill?” Edith asked when Audrey came back after a moment.
“The houseboy said she fell ill yesterday,” Audrey replied.
The two women kept vigil through the night, an unspoken responsibility to this woman whom they each felt they had let down. When she died at dawn, they left the house, instructing the maid to inform the Carringtons as soon as they returned later that morning. Audrey would come back the next day and let them know the full story, the one that put their son at the centre of this mess.
Winter crept in with Elspeth’s death. As they neared Christmas, bitterly cold winds brought heavy snow to parts of southern and eastern England. Audrey cancelled her lectures, kept her stove running, and invited Miriam over from time to time. If Miriam had any thoughts of being Audrey’s project, she quickly quelled them, bringing maps she’d drawn as if she could lure Audrey from her isolated outpost with them.
Frank came, too, ensuring that Audrey was eating well, puzzled by her sudden reclusiveness. He had come to rely on Miriam. Her natural flying ability gave him confidence that they could win the race. This he boasted to Audrey, who saw that he was not himself, yet she could not determine who he had become.
“You mustn’t be so much alone,” he scolded her in those days after Christmas, when hoar frost kept everything glistening.
“Why? Why mustn’t I be alone?” she asked him, knowing that he, too, had the habits of a hermit.
“It’s too much. To be alone, just listening to the wireless, reading the news in the newspaper. We’ll all go mad if we don’t escape it.”
The real news of these winter months was the campaign of terror against the Jews in Germany, many of whom were beginning to leave this country of torment.
That Hitler had managed to mesmerize the Germans with parades, brightly tinted flags, and operatic staging, the rituals restoring colour to their lives, presented a phenomenon that was difficult to understand and harder for Audrey and Frank to connect with as they sat drinking tea by the fire in a caravan by a river several hundred miles away. But the link was there: they would be affected, they had already been affected.