What Empty Things Are These

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What Empty Things Are These Page 21

by Crozier, J. L. ;


  ‘Oh, Mrs Staynes, I meant to say…I have decided that henceforth Sobriety and I will dine in the kitchen.’

  Mrs Staynes appeared to freeze on the spot. That was not done diplomatically.

  It tumbled, abrupt and rude, though I had essayed various introductory speeches to myself that morning over coffee. I knew, whatever was said to lessen the effect of such a statement of revolution, Mrs Staynes would be shocked: the house disrupted once more, upstairs brought downstairs, domestic relations set in flux, with the whole placing its foot onto untested ground.

  I cleared my throat. It gave a moment in which to slow my speech and to regain an authority I felt had left me with Mrs Staynes’s arrest, statue-like, at the door.

  ‘I think it would be best at least for the rest of winter.’

  Mrs Staynes turned slowly, dropping her hand from the handle, and stood, holding her face so without movement that the distress within was evident.

  She hopes she will end by comprehending some other meaning in my words. Poor thing! Think of the relief were this to be so—‘Oh ma’am, do you know what I thought you had just said!’

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘We are so very cold in the dining room, Mrs Staynes. It is so very uncomfortable and cold that even the food is never warm—’

  ‘I’m sure we do our best.’ Mrs Staynes was become marble—she was as pale and as unmoving—and her gaze was directed over my head.

  Now she struggles even for resignation.

  ‘Oh, Mrs Staynes. One could not hope for better. You are my helpmeet in all things domestic—’ The housekeeper had moved her hand to her waist where hung the household keys, though she still stood perfectly erect with offence, and perhaps with irresolution. ‘But it would be beyond the best of servants—as you are, absolutely—to overcome the effect of that room. The fault lies somehow in the building of the house itself, I believe.’ I looked at Mrs Staynes’s face.

  She strives so hard for dignity because she fears the ground shifting beneath her feet.

  ‘Do you think the problem lies with the house?’ I gave this a lilting appeal, that which I had always used for my elders, aside from Mr Hadley, in circumstances like enough to this. It was an appeal that relied on the older person’s indulgence. It paid a compliment; it asked for patronage.

  If she answers me, we are nearly arrived.

  Mrs Staynes’s set lips parted to mutter, ‘Perhaps it has to do with the lack of windows.’

  Ah, she replies.

  ‘Indeed, indeed, I think that you are right. But in any case, it does mean that we are never comfortable there, that food never tastes as it should, and…’ I hesitated.

  ‘Yes, ma’am?’

  ‘As things are, Mrs Staynes, with Mr Hadley ill and unresponsive as he is and all of our work in consequence to establish our pattern of life—and you and I have worked together to achieve what I never might have done alone—it feels like banishment at mealtimes to preside over frozen discomfort, as I must in there.’

  Gazing at Mrs Staynes, I kept my eyes a little wide, conscious that my own cheeks still held the fullness of a woman not yet thirty, almost a girl next to Mrs Staynes. I allowed my mouth to fall softly, hoping there was something of a pleading pout about it, with nothing overdone but just enough to assure the housekeeper’s authority as the elder.

  Mrs Staynes looked at last into my own face, and I felt tightness ease from my shoulders. She returns. She has collected herself. There was a gradual smile of condescension there, affection creeping with the small nest of wrinkles about her eyes. It was not a full smile; it was a little sharp for that. I understood that she was allowing herself to be won over, and perhaps that only to avoid impasse.

  ‘Well, ma’am,’ Mrs Staynes said. ‘You know that I do not like disturbance to the right way of doing things.’

  I nodded, my face still upturned.

  She said, ‘But I can concede this, for that is not a pleasant room at this time of year.’

  I kept my gaze still.

  Mrs Staynes turned back to the door and reached for the handle, ‘I shall send Cissy to put the room under sheets.’ She paused a moment to speak over her shoulder.

  ‘It should be said, ma’am, that you have shown a mettle of late not many would have suspected, and—’ She looked directly into my eyes and tipped her head just a little to one side. ‘—an uncommon capacity for persuasion.’

  Soup was taken in almost complete silence, as if the hush

  customary for the rest of the house had travelled here and taken root. Cook essayed some quiet stirring at the stove and lifted the lid on the beans very slowly so that steam billowed out in a noiseless cloud. In the unnatural quiet—where normally all would be clattering and banging, and the door swinging on its hinges with the to-ing and fro-ing and the sweeping of skirts, the tapping and sliding of feet on the flagstones, and the giving of orders and the chattering asides—Cook then lowered the lid slowly to the pot and achieved this with no noise whatever.

  When Sobriety and I had entered the kitchen, it was as if we were somehow strangers. Everyone stopped work to watch us approach the table. Two settings had been laid, with silver and crystal and cambric, and set at the end of the big table so that we sat in a space apart from the rest, who did not sit but stood about—except for Cook, who could resort to a flourish with the poker at the stove’s fire—as if they had forgotten their lines in a play.

  Albert—who might normally take his luncheon at Mr Hadley’s bedside but had exchanged his turn with Cissy, so that she might be present later to learn the mechanisms of the sewing machine—slipped outside to the courtyard, with a pair of boots and blacking in his hand for an excuse. I wondered whether these were Albert’s own boots, for Mr Hadley was beyond soiling his own.

  Mrs Staynes advanced a step to hover between the table and Cook’s stove, and Cook, swinging the black iron door closed on the fire, leaned slowly toward her cooking pots and ministered to us in near-silent pantomime.

  By the finish of soup, the tableau was infinitesimally less stiff, even though every movement was hesitant and stilted still, for I praised the taste and added, ‘And it was warm, ladies, as are we, which is clearly how luncheon is meant to be, had we but known it!’

  Mrs Staynes swayed a little on her feet like a soldier on parade. She blinked at an overloud hoot from Cook, who flushed at herself and said, ‘The heat brings out the flavour, that is certain.’ Cook set herself to ladling out portions of herbed stew whose gravy steamed so that the kitchen smelt of it, and Mrs Staynes laid it on the table with a murmur that Cook had been very particular with this meal, since she would be audience to its eating.

  Cook clasped her big arms about her middle and watched the play of knife and fork, and the lifting of forks to mouths, and nodded when comment was made. Sobriety had to blow to cool her morsel down, and I said to the rest, ‘This is a rare problem for the two of us,’ and Cook laughed.

  It was clear that Cook paid especial attention to Sobriety’s eating for, while she strove to eat it, and though it was more palatable for the heat, she did not take much. For some time, weeks perhaps, this had been the case—everyone knew of the empty plate and the half-empty plate that descended to the kitchen thrice daily. So now, when Sobriety laid down her fork, Cook had ready a hot concoction in a cup, and trotted past Mrs Staynes to place it before Sobriety, saying, ‘I know you’ve been peaky, Miss Mullins. This is my auntie’s brew and is sure to pick you up.’

  Sobriety had no option, evidently, and sipped while all the women watched. There was a pinkness gathering about her eyes.

  Look, she will weep soon.

  I turned away and raised my voice. ‘Cook, you know that the man comes today to demonstrate the machine for sewing? Would you care to observe our efforts and perhaps take your turn?’

  Cook must now look away from Sobriety. ‘Oh, ma’am, yes.’ An
d the conversation turned to how very interesting it would be to learn to sew with the machine. Sobriety lowered her cup.

  At the finish of the meal, our chairs were drawn out for us and, nodding to the servants, we rustled from the room; it could be heard repossessing itself behind us, with noises and movement and a sense of the return of familiar purpose.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  The Emporium’s young Mr Dinsdale, the centre of female attention, appeared to grow taller in the assertion of his maleness. He had so forgotten himself after half an hour that he wagged his finger in Cissy’s face and, it must be said, flirted with Cook. All had, at first, listened to his explanations, each craning to observe his finger on the pages of instruction open on the desk. Our skirts ballooned and pressed up against the bookshelves of the small room, the smell of books and papers and cigar smoke now overlaid with that of new machinery and its oil.

  Sobriety had, with this audience shuffling to make way, taken her turn at the machine first of all, for she would have most of the care of my personal sewing. The clatter and whirr of the machine, the crumpling and entangling of the material and the several attempts at an easy rhythm on the foot pedal—all had the effect of setting Cissy to giggling. Cook was no better, her low hoot oddly schoolgirlish even while she clicked her tongue in reproof; and Mrs Staynes drew closer to me, disapproval lending rigidity even while her entire body tilted the better to see, for she was curious and also obliged to know what the rest of the household knew.

  I found myself observing the housekeeper. It is as if she needs a name for her feelings in such a situation, else she does not know how to comport herself!

  Next came Mrs Staynes’s turn. She sat with an unmoving glare at Mr Dinsdale, apparently in case he should forget himself into familiarity with her, and proceeded something like a marionette through her lesson. She made rushes at the pedal, darting to pull material away from the plunging needle, with all the time her lips pressed tight. It was evidently no time for levity, and so Cook and Cissy fell into silence until it came to their turns, which they took with whispered encouragement of each other.

  Cissy, finally, held up an object very like a handkerchief, that she had hemmed with the machine, and it was then there came a knock at the door and she must rush off to answer it, while the rest pressed back to allow her through. She was back soon—she must have run, indeed, in her eagerness to be back in the room with its machine of absorbing interest—and held out a letter to me. I opened it and read.

  Mr Dinsdale, his package of instructions under his arm, accepted an invitation to a cup of tea with Cook before he must take his leave. The hallway, crowded and a-chirrup for a moment with all those spilled from the study, emptied and quieted as Cook took Mr Dinsdale off to the kitchen, Sobriety gathered herself to climb the stairs to the morning room, and Mrs Staynes accompanied her up one flight to the linen cupboard with scraps of material salvaged from our afternoon lesson on the machine.

  Cissy, too, while rendered slow with the anti-climax now that the sewing demonstration had come to an end, was about to mount the stairs to relieve Albert at his post by Mr Hadley’s bed, when I called to her.

  ‘Cissy, it is a letter from the inspector, Mr Broadbent. In a way it is for you.’

  ‘Oh, ma’am, perhaps I don’t have to—?’

  ‘No, my poor girl. It says that you must attend the court for the committal case of Mr Farquharson.’ I folded the letter. ‘There is a difficulty with the trains, it seems, so it is not certain the other witnesses coming from Manchester will be there in time.’

  Cissy stopped still and opened her mouth, though no sound came for a moment. Of a sudden, now that there was no reprieve for her, the girl looked small, like a child’s toy, and very alone, standing on the first tread of the complacent Hadley staircase as if at the gaping mouth of some monster.

  ‘Although, I understand the police are certain the witnesses will be present for the trial itself,’ I said. ‘So it is just this visit you must make. That is all.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ The child’s voice had disappeared.

  ‘Poor Cissy,’ I said to Sobriety that evening. We were in the morning room with the curtains drawn and the world reduced to ourselves before the crackling of the fire, light and shadow shifting on the walls. Outside, beyond the thick curtains, a fitful rain fell, and there must have been an equally uncertain wind, for occasionally there was a moaning while rain spat at the glass. I held my novel, fetched from the library, so that the light from the fire would illuminate the pages.

  ‘We shall be there, and it will be over quickly enough, I suppose,’ Sobriety said.

  My eyes drooped a little. The words upon the page danced about and blurred, and must wait for a better light. The flames would drop soon, from great, lapping hot tongues to darting fingers and then to secret, thrumming embers. So tired, I thought, and wondered at this until my mind ran over all of the things that had happened today, new things in my life, and would happen tomorrow, and had happened thus far after Mr Hadley’s crisis. And would continue to happen, for now there was no stopping at all if there were to be a place for me and mine in this world so unstable and unaccountable.

  There were times, many times, when an anchor of some sort would be of enormous use, for my world swung about and changed so that I felt I had no purchase on it, no firm grip at all.

  I let myself sink into the warmth, watched the hectic flames, placed a marker in the book and closed it, drew my shawl close at a smattering against the windowpane.

  We were alone, yet the chaotic dance of light and shadow across the walls and ceiling might imply, if one were so minded, that this was not so. As if, I thought, a conclave of spirits fidgeted and played. I allowed myself to consider it.

  ‘Shall you come with me to see Mrs Courtney’s spiritualist?’

  ‘Certainly, if you wish.’

  There was snap from the fireplace, and a small log disintegrated.

  ‘I had an aunt like that,’ Sobriety said. ‘Well, to be precise, she was a fortune teller.’

  ‘This must have been a subject—another subject—to liven the dinner table.’

  ‘Indeed it was.’

  The rain outside settled into a steady drenching.

  Sobriety said, ‘Cook sometimes has an inclination that way, I believe.’ ‘You do not say that, surely, because she offered you a cheering concoction?’

  ‘No, of course not. She reads tea leaves. She read Cissy’s.’

  ‘Poor Cissy.’

  Sobriety understood my meaning perfectly.

  ‘It will be over soon enough,’ she said.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  The crowded gallery was oppressive with chatter and shuffling, movement bending back and forth and restive; hands and kerchiefs waving, hands clutching and pointing, sudden laughter. All were compressed between the plain, unadorned ends of the seating, polished by countless hands over countless years, and lit by windows four panes wide and very tall and square. The light coming into this room from the grey day beyond was flat, unforgiving, and lent no colour to the faces around me, though the brass chandeliers declared pomp even while this paying public contradicted it. Gaslight hissed in brackets upon the walls.

  I attempted not to appear as if I gazed about myself.

  The mahogany table in the centre of this room lent the weight of authority to the lawyers, who arranged their papers upon it. Their place, however, was humbler than the raised bench of the judge, whose seat was of leather and edged with studs. And all of this impressed all the more with false columns and the carved canopy that bore the coat of arms of the court and realm.

  The man pressed against me on the public’s bench was too large for his clothes, his hems threadbare and grey with grime, the buttonholes on his food-spotted waistcoat fraying from the strain of containing his great, pressing gut. He shifted suddenly from time to time as if b
othered by a travelling itch, and stirred up a concoction of smells from himself, of ancient sweat and of drink—soaked, apparently, into his very being—and an ammoniac presence to make the eyes water. At Sobriety’s side sat a woman equally large, whose overblown arms spread in sleeves like wings, so that Sobriety must tilt very slightly toward me.

  Sobriety and I had worn our veils into the courtroom and would, by tacit agreement between ourselves, keep them over their faces. We held scented handkerchiefs to our noses. We knew we gave an impression of separation from the press of common folk with this veiled anonymity and felt a small sense, however imaginary, of safety because of it. We had drawn the veils over our faces almost as one, after descending from the carriage, and whispered courage to Cissy and squeezed her shoulders. We assured her, before she went into the building by her own witness’s entrance, that we would be near her in the courtroom as she testified. Nonetheless, there was a tension in us as we sat side by side, and I became aware after a time that my jaw was clenched. The crowd, meanwhile, restless as if suffering delay at a theatrical event, began to call out to each other, and this loudly, either in abrupt and rude language or in jest.

  The pause between hearings came to an end, at last, and the court officer’s stick sounded against the floor. The chattering noise settled to a sibilant humming, a coughing and a shushing, and all eyes swung to the front. Mr Farquharson (or Mr Forster) was led into the dock, where he stood with the jury on his right. He faced an empty space, raised so as to be easily visible to all, what I supposed must be for witnesses, of whom Cissy would be one.

 

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