The Rector's Daughter

by Jean Fullerton

  Charlotte stepped forward and bent over to study the plans he’d been working on.

  ‘So, this is the shaft,’ she said, tracing her gloved finger along the lines he’d sketched.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘And this…’ His larger, work-grubby index finger joined hers on the paper. ‘Is where the well needs to be sunk to draw the water from this spring.’

  Charlotte leant forward and the scent of violet drifted up.

  ‘Which means you pump the water out before it ever reaches the shaft,’ she said as Josiah’s gaze travelled slowly over the curve of her cheek. ‘Rather than waiting until it seeps through.’

  She turned to look at him and their eyes met.

  Standing so close he could see the flecks of colour in her green eyes, the individual lashes and the pale dusting of freckles across her the bridge of her nose, what caught his attention and tightened his groin was her mouth, moist and open and just a few inches from his own.

  The urge to slip his arm around her waist and press his lips onto hers swept through him.

  He turned to face her. She also turned and looked up at him, her lips slightly parted as if anticipating his kiss.

  ‘Yoo-hoo, Mr Martyn!’ a shrill voice called.

  Charlotte blinked and, looking away, adjusted the brim of her bonnet.

  Somehow Josiah dragged his eyes from her and turned.

  Across the yard, sidestepping between broken bricks and oily puddles, came Emma Truman, parasol anchored over her shoulder with one hand and waving frantically at him with the other.

  Forcing a smile on his face, Josiah waved back.

  Without consideration for an afternoon walking across mud, amongst cement and between greasy machinery, Emma was dressed in the palest-lemon dress festooned with ribbon, lace and bows. Over this she wore a matching jacket with military-style gold buttons, frogs across the front in swirls on her sleeves, and a lanyard with an enormous golden tassel looped around her left shoulder.

  With a show of lacy petticoats, she climbed the half a dozen steps to the platform.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Martyn,’ she said breathlessly, shaking her skirts straight.

  ‘And to you, Miss Truman,’ he replied. ‘How nice to see you.’

  She gave him a dimpled smile then spotted Charlotte and her eyes narrowed.

  ‘Miss Truman,’ Josiah jumped in as the two young women regarded each other coolly. ‘I’m not sure if you met Miss Hatton.’

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ Emma replied. ‘How do you do, Miss Hatton?’

  ‘Very well, thank you, Miss Truman,’ said Charlotte.

  ‘So what brings you to Cow Lane today, Miss Hatton?’ asked Emma, swinging her parasol down and closing it with a snap.

  ‘Church business,’ Charlotte replied. ‘My father’s the rector of St Mary’s and Cow Lane is within the parish so I’m here to talk to Mr Brunel on behalf of the church’s welfare committee. And you, Miss Truman?’

  ‘I’ve come with my father,’ Emma replied. ‘He is one of the major shareholders in this marvellous tunnel. I’ve also come to ask Mr Martyn when he will take tea with me and Mama again, as it has been ages since we have seen him.’

  ‘Just over a month, surely, Miss Truman,’ said Josiah, acutely aware of Charlotte standing beside him.

  ‘Which is...’ She stepped closer and tapped Josiah lightly on the chest with the handle of her parasol. ‘Far too long.’ She turned and smiled at Charlotte. ‘Wouldn’t you say, Miss Hatton?’

  An emotion Josiah couldn’t interpret flitted across Charlotte’s face, then she smiled.

  ‘Indeed I would, Miss Truman,’ she replied. Her smile widened to included him. ‘Thank you for keeping me company, Mr Martyn, but Mr Brunel should be back now so please excuse me.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Josiah.

  She curtsied, and so did Emma. Josiah bowed, then Charlotte walked past them to the top of the stairs.

  ‘And I look forward to seeing you in church on Sunday,’ he called after her.

  She turned her head and smiled but didn’t pause. He stared forlornly after her for a moment, then Emma’s shrill voice cut through his thoughts.

  ‘Now, Mr Martyn,’ she said, slipping her arm through his and dragging him towards the draftsman’s desk. ‘What have you been scribbling?’

  ***

  Lifting her skirts, Charlotte walked up the five steps to the front door of the rectory and yanked on the bell pull. Tapping her foot lightly on the stone, she fixed her eyes on the church’s steeple and, after a moment or two, although she told them not to, they slipped down onto the place she’d left not ten minutes before, Cow Yard, and she wondered if Emma Truman was still there.

  Not that it should matter to her one jot who he had tea with but, as he said himself, the schedule for the work on the tunnel was already slipping behind, so she doubted he’d get much work done with Miss Truman breaking his concentration by demanding attention.

  To be honest, the talkative young women looked more like she was off to the theatre or a musical function than visiting an engineering works.

  Taking a deep breath, Charlotte turned back to the door and pulled on the bell again. Thankfully, after a couple of seconds, it opened. However, instead of Mrs Norris’s flat features it was Sarah’s much prettier face that greeted her across the doorstep.

  ‘I’m sorry, miss, for taking so long to open the door but I was just setting a batch of scones on the cooling tray in the pantry,’ she said.

  ‘Where’s Mrs Norris?’ asked Charlotte as she walked in.

  ‘She said she had to go to the market for something,’ Sarah replied.

  Charlotte glanced at the clock which was showing half past five. ‘At this time?’

  ‘That’s what she said,’ Sarah replied.

  ‘How long has she been out?’ asked Charlotte, untying the ribbon and taking off her bonnet.

  ‘About an hour, miss.’

  ‘An hour!’ snapped Charlotte. ‘Princes Street is only five minutes away, what could possibly keep her out for an hour?’

  She turned to the hall mirror

  ‘I don’t rightly know, miss,’ said Sarah. ‘But I’ve started supper.’

  ‘Thank you, Sarah,’ said Charlotte as she tucked back a couple of stray curls she’d dislodged.

  Formulating what she was going to say to her senior servant, Charlotte’s gaze shifted from herself onto the reflection of her maid, standing behind her hands clasped together and her head bowed.

  Charlotte’s shoulders sagged.

  She turned around and placed her hand on the young girl’s arm.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sarah,’ she said, unbuttoning her coat. ‘It’s not your fault Mrs Norris has been absent for the third time in as many weeks and I shouldn’t take my annoyance out on you.’

  Taking her outer clothing from her, Sarah gave Charlotte a forgiving smile.

  ‘That’s all right, miss. I guessed you were a bit of out of sorts when you came in. I take it the meeting with Mr Brunel didn’t go well?’

  ‘Mr Brunel?’ said Charlotte, looking blankly at her.

  ‘About the conduct of his men?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Charlotte. ‘As I expected, he couldn’t promise anything, as once the men leave the yard he has no say in what they do, but he would ask his overseers to keep an eye to pick out any mischief-makers before they make trouble.’

  ‘So it wasn’t a waste of time as you feared,’ said Sarah.

  ‘No, and I met a Miss Truman,’ said Charlotte as the image of her fluttering around Josiah in the yard flashed through her mind.

  ‘Was she nice?’

  Charlotte gave a tight smile. ‘Exuberant. Is my father in his study?’

  ‘No, he’s in the parlour having tea.’

  ‘Good. Then if you could bring a fresh pot, Sarah, I’ll join him.’

  ‘Yes, miss.’ Sarah’s eyes shifted to the door and back, then she raised her hand to knock.

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Charlotte,
grasping the handle. ‘I don’t need announcing.’

  She opened the door and walked in but after only two steps she stopped.

  Her father, dressed in his clerical garb, was indeed having tea but he wasn’t alone. Sitting beside him, quite close beside him actually, was Mrs Palmer.

  ‘Mrs Palmer,’ said Charlotte as they turned towards her. ‘What an unexpected surprise.’

  ‘I was just passing,’ said Mrs Palmer, smiling complacently across at her. ‘And as you and your father are such close friends I thought you’d forgive me if I dispensed with the formalities and dropped by.’

  ‘Yes, of course you can,’ her father replied, gazing at the woman beside him like a five-year-old who’d found the sixpence in the Christmas pudding. He placed his podgy hand over her slender one. ‘In fact, my dear Mrs Palmer, you can call any time you have the inclination.’

  Chapter eight

  Charlotte’s heart pounded as if it would burst from her chest as she entered the busy work yard. All around the perimeter lay piles of brick stacked neatly in blocks about three-foot high. At the far end, the largest workshop stood alone with a chimney to the right of it. On the wall of the workshop, facing the main entrance, was a full-scale bas-relief of Mr Brunel’s mining shield.

  It was the last day of September and it had taken her seven months of persuasion but finally, after Mr Peel took his wife to see the shaft, her father had agreed for her to visit the tunnel works.

  Charlotte had dressed with particular care that morning, putting on and taking off three gowns before settling on her new Prussian blue one that the dressmaker had delivered three days before.

  As always, her father was dressed in his black clerical frockcoat and breeches. She had tried to convince him to wear trousers to save Sarah the hours it would take to scrub the mud from his chalk-white stockings, but to no avail. He had just blustered on about how he was obliged to dress befitting his God-given rank and not to oblige the servants. By his position he didn’t mean the one the Bishop of Rochester had bestowed on him, but his aristocratic connection to the Earl of Hatton through his father’s side of the family and the Duke of Cumberland through a very distant great-aunt on his mother’s.

  Charlotte cast her eyes over the dozen or so men working in the yard but didn’t see Josiah Martyn.

  A small twinge of disappointment caught her and she pushed it away.

  ‘Mr Hatton.’ Mr Armstrong strode towards them, looking worryingly pale with dark circles under his eyes. ‘And Miss Hatton and Mrs Palmer as well. How are you all?’

  ‘Still a martyr to my delicate digestion, I’m afraid,’ Mr Hatton replied. ‘And yourself, George?’

  ‘Well enough, other than this infernal cough—’ He broke off, gasping and spluttering, then punched his chest. ‘Forgive me.’ He offered Mr Hatton his hand. ‘Your visit is long overdue.’

  ‘My daughter and Mrs Palmer are respectable women. I had to be absolutely sure that a visit to a building project is suitable for them,’ Charlotte’s father said with his lips pursed together.

  ‘Naturally, but we have had some of the crowned heads of Europe visit in the past months, Mr Hatton,’ Armstrong replied.

  The rector’s lips drew together tightly. ‘What is counted respectable on the continent is no measure for an Englishman.’

  There was a rustle of silk as Mrs Palmer glided past. She held out her hand to George Armstrong.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Armstrong,’ she said, smiling serenely up at the tunnel’s chief engineer.

  She too had taken a great deal of trouble over her dress and had dressed in a geranium-red promenade dress with a tightly pleated bodice. Her concession to the planned expedition was that she wore a small velvet turban rather than one of her wide-brimmed walking hats.

  Although it was supposed to be just Charlotte and her father visiting the tunnel today, somehow Mrs Palmer had managed to tag along. As she had when they went to the exhibition of art at the Guildhall the week before, and the concert at the Mansion House the week before that.

  George cleared his throat.

  ‘If you would follow me,’ he said, leading them towards the shaft.

  Several of the labourers touched their foreheads and, although her father didn’t glance in their direction, Charlotte greeted them with a small smile. Despite the fact it was late September and there was a chill in the air, the men working in the yard were coatless and their collars were open at the neck.

  ‘This is the water pump that allows us to bore so low in the ground without being up to our chins in water,’ Mr Armstrong said, raising his voice to be heard over the clamour. Charlotte and her father dutifully looked at it. ‘The shaft is now at its full depth at sixty-four feet.’ He turned to Mr Hatton. ‘You may have read, sir, in the Partington’s Scientific Gazette, that the clay from the shaft has been used to make the bricks.’

  ‘Er…of course and very enterprising too,’ Mr Hatton said, taking off his glasses and rubbing them on his sleeve.

  Echoing sounds drifted up from out of the shaft and Charlotte peered over the edge, sniffing the damp, acrid smell of the clay.

  The ladder against the far wall creaked as someone below started to climb. The echoing sounds below grew louder and a portly gentleman, who seemed to have been forced into his charcoal-grey suit, scrambled out. He whipped off his soft hat and banged out the dust. He beamed across at them.

  ‘Mr Hatton,’ he said, grasping Charlotte’s father’s hand and pumping it enthusiastically. ‘It’s good to see you again and this must be your charming wife.’

  ‘No, no. This is Mrs Palmer, a very good friend of mine.’ He moved aside to avoid brushing his coat on the brick breastwork, then addressed the woman beside him. ‘May I present Mr Truman?’

  Mr Truman bowed. ‘My pleasure, ma’am.’

  Mrs Palmer inclined her head causing the tassel at the crown of her turban to roll.

  ‘And this is my daughter, Miss Charlotte Hatton,’ he continued, ushering Charlotte forward.

  ‘Miss Hatton, who I have heard so much about from my own darling Emma,’ said Mr Truman.

  ‘Mr Truman and his daughter are among the site’s most frequent visitors,’ George Armstrong added, coughing again.

  Mr Truman winked. ‘Have to keep my eye on my investment.’

  They all laughed politely.

  ‘Well I must away,’ said Mr Truman. ‘Good day to you, sir, and glad to have met you at last, Miss Hatton.’

  ‘You too,’ said Charlotte. ‘And do give my regards to Miss Truman.’

  Mr Hatton raised his cane in acknowledgment, then turned and strode away.

  ‘Mr Hatton, if you would go first, and the ladies can follow,’ George said, holding the top of the ladder that Mr Truman had just climbed up. ‘It’s just a short way to the first platform, then Mr Martyn will show you down from there.’

  At the mention of Josiah’s name, Charlotte’s heart did a little dance.

  Her father gripped the uprights of the ladder firmly and descended into the shaft.

  George signalled to the three labourers who were waiting by an armchair attached to ropes.

  ‘Just sit in the middle of the chair, Charlotte, and hold onto the arms tightly,’ George instructed as Charlotte settled herself onto the tapestry seat.

  ‘Just follow Mr Hatton when you get to the bottom. Mr Martyn will be there,’ George said.

  As one, the three burly navvies heaved on the rope and Charlotte swung into the air and over the mouth of the shaft, the sound of dripping water and men’s voices echoing up from below.

  ***

  Josiah took off his felt hat with the candle fastened to the front and wiped the sweat from his eyes. Although autumn was already stripping the leaves from the trees and the weather had become decidedly chillier, you wouldn’t know it at the bottom of the shaft.

  The combination of burning oil lamps, the exhaust from the steam pump and the natural insulation of the earth meant the men had to work stripped to the wai
st, bathed in their own sweat because of the heat.

  He raised his hand for quiet and, cocking his head to one side, listened to the familiar drip, drip, echoing through the shaft.

  ‘It’s fine, men,’ he told the workers standing nervously around him. ‘Just old Father Thames letting us know he be still there.’

  The morning team picked up their tools and resumed their work. He couldn’t blame them for being nervous. He didn’t relish the river above breaking through the tunnel walls and sweeping him into eternity either.

  Replacing his hat, Josiah returned to inspecting the newly laid brickwork. He ran his hands over the wall and smiled.

  Smooth as a baby’s cheek and dry as a bone. The shareholders might moan about Mr Brunel’s extravagancy in using Roman cement and testing every brick, but this tunnel would last five hundred years.

  There was the sound of feet descending the wooden steps behind him and Josiah’s lips pressed together. Mr Brunel might have won the argument about the cement, but he’d lost the argument about visitors. There was a steady stream of visitors, all determined to say they’d visited the latest fashionable place to see and be seen.

  Pulling his shirt collar straight, Josiah turned to greet the visitors but when he saw who they were, he wished he’d had the foresight to collect his jacket.

  Mr Hatton was brushing down his clerical garb and peering through his spectacles into the darkness, but it was the person standing next to the rector who sent Josiah’s pulse racing; Charlotte Hatton.

  With the dim light of the oil lamps sparkling in her eyes, her gaze travelled slowly around at the arched chasm, before resting on him.

  She smiled, and he smiled back.

  ‘There we are, all safely down,’ George said, as he joined the party. ‘Mr Hatton, I believe you know Mr Martyn.’

  ‘Mr Hatton,’ Josiah said, thrusting a none-too-clean hand at the man in front of him.

  Mr Hatton’s wayward eyebrows sprang upwards. ‘I’m not sure I...’