Excerpt: What I know so far.... (ok, so it's a working title)

After dinner, she went up to see her mother, who had woken in the interim and asked for her on learning from Sarah, the maid, that she was home again. She climbed the stairs to her mother’s room and entered its suffocating heat and dimness.
“Iris, my dear, what do you have to tell me of our business with the admiralty? Did all go according to our hopes? She rose up higher upon the stacks of pilows placed behind her. “ did you see anyone of our acquaintance there? You did make yourself known to some of our old acquaintance there, did you not, and dine with some of them?” now that a year had passed since their flight from Portsmouth, Mrs. Felton ahd nearly forgotten the circumstance that drove them from it and the discomfort that must necessarily have attended such social engagements had Iris sought them. She thought not at all of the slights and coldness that most of t heir acquaintance had given them last summer and thought only of the glorious days of her life there in Portsnmouth and of her place at the center of all things in society. She was too ill to think of enjoying them herslef but was not above wishing to enjoy then through her daughter.
“No, mama, that was not possible, unfortunately.” no use to attempt to explain why. Her mother was not willing to think of that and would pretend not to understand her.
“oh, what a shame. So you had no society at all while you were there? No chance of renewing old acquaintance?” she fretted with the embroidery upon the silk quilt.
“no, mama, but I did see the most cunning little charmeuse muffler with beaver trim. All in lovely cherry red with pearl sequins upon it in just the right amount. And a tea set of willow porcelain with a very new design of cherry blossom pagodas that would be suitable for tea with the queen herself, if one could only get asked.”
Her mother brightened at these sallies. She began to chatter animatedly about the fashions and and luxuries of the past and the color came into her cheeks, until Sarah came in to stoke up the fire, which had fallen into a bed of glowing coals. Mrs. Felton began to cough then, long racking coughs that sobbed up from her belly, rather than her chest. Sarah hurried to bring her a narrow dish with a damp rag folded neatly across the bottom and placed it under her mother’s chin until the coughing spasm had settled down a bit. She folded the cloth over itself before she passed Iris, on her way to place it back upon the table in the corner where all the brown bottles of medicine stood. But not before Iris had a glimpse of the dark stain upon it. She kissed her mother goodnight as soon as the maid had her settled against the pillows and covered warmly against the drafts that always seeped into every corner of that house. As much as she had been growing to love this house and it’s orchards before she went off to London, now Iris hated it with equal passion. She looked at her mother laying spent upon the bed that she now realized she might never leave again. Suddenly she saw herself laid there, years from now, as spent and tired as her mother, years and years a spinster, leaving noone behind her to mourn or to remember her with fondness or longing. To leave the earth as though she’d never lived upon it, unmarked by her. She followed the maid out into the hall, shutting the door behind her quietly.
“Sarah! How long has my mother been coughing like that?” her voice, made sharp by worry and something else she could not name, brought the girl up short halfway down the stairs.
“I don’t rightly know, miss,” she said, her eyes widening with apprehension, “ it were before you went off to town, I think. She just never got over that cold she took right before miss Marigold’s wedding.”
“Has the doctor been summoned?”
“Yes, ma’m, he came out the day after you left, when Mistress was taken so bad she couldn’t recognize any of us, and he was with her for ever such a long time, and then he talked with Mrs.Porter a long while, too. She could tell you about it.”
“Thank you Sarah, that will be all.”
Iris went back downstairs to where she found Mrs. Porter, putting the kitchen to rest for the night. She was crouched before the old-fashioned fireplace, banking the coals carefully in a mound of ashes so that there would be enough heat in them in the morning to start the next day’s blaze.
“Mrs. Porter, I should like to know what is the matter with my mother.”
She saw the woman’s back stiffen as she deliberately finished with the banking of coals before she brushed off her hands, hung up the shovel and poker, and rose to stand and face Iris.
“What do you mean?” she asked slowly.
“I’ve questioned Sarah already, I know about the doctor’s coming while I was away. What did he tell you of her condition?” Iris folded her hands against one another. She did not want to be unkind, but she was angry, deeply angered that she had been excluded from the secret. What right had Mrs. Porter to take such a decision upon herself? She felt like a child sent away for their own good.
“Ah, child, I had hoped to keep you free from the anxiety of that knowledge for yet a little while. I knew it could not be very long,” Mrs Porter sat heavily upon the chair at the head of the kitchen worktable where the servants took their meals. She groaned a bit and rubbed her knee with a broad hand. “doctor Hamilton said that your mother has a kind of wasting disease, a cancer of the stomach or liver, that is very rapid in its course and in her case has also spread to the lungs. She sleeps a great deal and eats almost nothing, now. She is as delicate as a baby robin under that muslin gown, and she’s already too weak to walk downstairs on her own.” she stood up again at the expression she saw upon Iris’ face and crossed to her, putting an arm about her shoulders and leading her to the chair she herself had just vacated. “now, there, darlin’ it has come as a shock. Of course it has. It hit us all pretty hard at first, I can tell you, but we’ve become accustomed to how things are with her, a little accustomed. We manage and we do what can be done for her, but Miss Felton, I must tell you, now you’ve asked, the doctor says she won’t live out the winter. He does not expect her to see the new year come in, truth be told. There, now you know the worst. She did not resist when a broad, capable hand cupped her head and gently pressed her tear wetted cheek against a soft apron covered waist.
She thanked Mrs. Porter presently, straightening up and wiping her eyes with her knuckles, although a clean apron corner was proffered her for the task. She went straight backed up the stairs to her own room, undressed, washed, slipped into her nightgown and was about to climb into bed when abruptly she went instead down the hall to her mother’s room and climbed into bed with her. Mrs. Felton did not awaken at the intrusion, she slept like one already cut off from the concerns of the living. Her skin lay in waxy folds around her eyes and mouth. Iris lay carefully beside her, stiff as a poker, staring at the rosy and golden dancing light upon the ceiling from the fire. She was still there, unmoving, when her mother awoke fretfully in the early morning. That was when the thought first occurred to her that Marigold would have to be told. She felt even more desolate at that thought and wondered how long she might decently put off telling her, then understood the impulse that had led Mrs. Porter to conceal it from herself and was no longer angry at her as she had been all night.
Marigold was in Sheepshearing, ten miles upriver, with her husband that week and would not be back for the better part of a fortnight. Mrs. Felton was sinking daily. Her pain was very great. Iris discovered that the cause of her deathlike sleep was the large doses of opiate that the doctor had authorized Mrs. Porter to administer to her. At first, Iris was appalled at this drugging of her mother’s last days, but soon understood why it was so. Her mother wept like a child when the previous dose began to wear off, she said the pain was like a thousand fiery knives buried within her flesh. She eagerly took the next dose of opiate and slipped gratefully into the oblivion it produced.
This was difficult for Iris to witness. Even as she was grateful for the relief offered by the drug she was irrationally hurt by her mother’s willingness to spend the last days they would have together, in an insensible state. She felt keenly a sense of abandonment and wanted to fling her arms about her mother’s neck and cry, “no. don’t leave me mama.” Did she not regret leaving Iris alone? Did she not wish, as her daughter did, to linger over these last moments together? To know one another better? There was so much that Iris had never thought to ask her mother and now she could not. But it was as if her mother was already gone, the separation of death had already begun.