It was the changing room for the Turkish and Russian baths, I discovered, a short corridor lined on both sides with cubicles, wooden shelves and lockers at the near end. At the far end was another doorway covered over by a curtain and there were no words for the heat which rolled out as we passed through.
‘Phew,’ I said, letting my fur slip down to my elbows.
‘This is the cool room,’ said Miss Laidlaw. ‘One hundred and twenty degrees.’
I sank down onto one of the beds arranged about the walls of the ‘cool’ room and looked around while I waited to become accustomed to it. The place was beautifully appointed: mosaic underfoot and colourful china tiles depicting Roman scenes on all the walls. At the far end, more of the heavy velvet curtains were drawn across a second doorway.
‘The warm room,’ said Miss Laidlaw. ‘One hundred and thirty-five. Let’s walk through quite quickly, since you’re dressed in outdoor things.’ She held one of the curtains aside and I followed her into the warm room, across it into the hot room – an unspeakable hundred and seventy – and across that, at a trot, but still sure my hair was dropping out of set and my face-powder caking, through the last set of velvet curtains and into the delicious coolth of a marble chamber like a little temple, with niches all around and beyond it, steps leading down into a long bathing pond surrounded by silk ferns and soft lamplight.
‘The plunging pool,’ said Miss Laidlaw. ‘Dip your wrists, Mrs Gilver, and you will be refreshed.’
I shrugged off my gloves, pushed back my sleeves and sitting on the lip of the pool reached my hands down into the water.
‘Oh!’ I could not help exclaiming. It was icy cold, as cold as the burn water in Perthshire. ‘Gosh, how do you keep it like this?’
‘It’s from the upper spring,’ said Miss Laidlaw. ‘It comes straight to us, beautifully cool.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I suppose it’s healthier freezing cold than warm, anyway. Dirt and all that, I mean.’
‘Dirt?’ said Miss Laidlaw, looking rather startled.
‘Not to say dirt, exactly. But don’t germs at least do rather better in warm water?’ I gabbled on, making it worse than ever. ‘And I’m sure you’re never done draining it and cleaning.’
Her face now was quite frozen, as well it might be at this blatant and clumsy meddling in her business. She said no more on the subject but only offered me a small towel to dry my hands and went on. ‘Through there is the Turkish bath or steam room.’ She indicated an etched glass door with a chromium handle. ‘And just here you see the beds for salt rubs and oil rubs.’ She had waved a hand back at the little temple and I thought to myself that she might call them beds but in fact they were marble slabs with water sprays looming above them. I felt quite sure too that it would be ‘cool’ spring water which would come spouting out of these sprays to finish one off after the pummelling.
‘Wonderful,’ I said, thanking God in His Heaven that I was well and needed none of it. ‘And do you advise the patients on how long to stay in and what have you?’
‘No, no,’ said Miss Laidlaw, ‘the Turkish and Russian baths are open to all our guests at their discretion.’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘They’re… closed just now?’ I looked around the empty beds and still water.
‘Um, no,’ said Miss Laidlaw. ‘I expect everyone is having treatments.’ There was a pause while she and I both remembered the long passageway with empty treatment rooms on either side. ‘Or getting ready for luncheon.’
I gave her a bright smile and then, to help the moment pass away, I strolled over to a second door leading out of the spray-bath temple and put my hand on its chromium handle.
‘And what-?’ I began, but stopped as I met resistance.
‘We don’t use all the facilities any more,’ she said. She glanced at the door and her face clouded briefly. ‘There’s a great deal of research being done all the time on hydropathy and physiology. Some of the earlier treatments have been superseded by others. And to be honest, fresh air and exercise are a lot more use than some of the more…’
‘I see,’ I said. I noticed that as I let go of the handle and moved away, the little bit of tension which had hitched her shoulders up left her and she smiled again. ‘Do you have trouble persuading your regular guests to move with the times?’ I asked. I was inching my way towards Mrs Addie. She frowned politely, not understanding me. Perhaps I needed to inch a little more boldly. ‘I would imagine that any of your father’s patients who had always enjoyed “the old ways” would be hard to dissuade of their benefits.’
She threw another look at the locked door, her eyes showing a lot of white like those of a nervous horse.
‘People can grow very attached to ideas,’ she said quietly. Then with a valiant lift of her chin, she went on in quite a different tone. ‘So, these are the medical facilities. I’ll just take you up the ladies’ stair and show you the private rooms.’ She was off. ‘You’ll see the ladies’ drawing room when we rejoin the rest of your party. As well as that we have a gentlemen’s billiards room, a gentlemen’s smoking room, the winter gardens and the dining room. But we encourage all our guests to be outdoors all day if the weather is even slightly cooperative.’
She had galloped up a staircase as she spoke, with me puffing along behind her, still feeling the effects of the stultifying heat, and now we found ourselves on a bedroom corridor, with carpeted floor and satiny papered walls covered with pictures of roses and fat children in aprons.
‘I did a little redecorating,’ said Miss Laidlaw. ‘Not that that’s my particular… but as I said, my father… And I did so want to be able to keep it going after he died.’ She threw open a door.
I stepped forward to see what she meant and found myself in yet another world, far from carpets and watercolours. The walls, curtains and linens were blinding white, the floor stained almost black and the furniture – the high narrow bed, the bare dressing table, the small hanging cupboard and the inevitable towel-draped couch – were made of plain oak without the slightest adornment. It was a wonder Miss Laidlaw’s father had managed to find such stuff: the Victorians were not known for their love of clean lines and the kind of beds one could sweep under with a broad broom.
‘How delightful,’ I said. ‘And how amusing that what must have seemed very peculiar when your father chose it is now slap bang in the fashion.’ I told the truth about being amused; I was not, however, delighted for I am a Victorian – I have given up pretending otherwise – and to sleep in such a room would make me feel either as though I had taken the veil or had been found guilty and was serving it out in solitary confinement.
One thing which did strike me as we made our way down the main – shared, one assumes – staircase was that Hugh would love it. He prefers his quarters barrack-like and added to the fact that the billiards room was for gentlemen alone at the Hydro (and the smoking room too), and that the ladies could be hounded out into their own drawing room with glares and snubs, he would have been as happy as a sandboy here.
When we arrived in the drawing room, which was an unremarkable enough apartment, only a good deal larger than normal and with more pillows strewn in the chairs and chaises (one assumed for the comfort of rheumatic guests), Hugh, the boys and the other Laidlaw were already there. As well as, I was happy finally to see, a few other residents, perhaps as many as five – and this in a room which could hold fifty without it showing.