The Great Unknown

by Peg Kingman

  Constantia went first to the cottage and knocked at its door, but no one came. After a moment she turned to follow a much-trodden flagstone path to what she supposed must be the Lodge’s kitchen. And so it proved. Here, the stout door was opened to her knock by a lean woman with floury hands, who stood halfway behind the door, with a question in her face: Who dares bother me now? Behind her a vast black range squatted in the fireplace; a work table stood at the center of the flagged floor. Steam and the smell of warm tallow wafted out.

  “Mrs Russell?” said Constantia.

  “Aye,” said Mrs Russell; and waited, not with any air of patience.

  But Constantia hardly knew what she wanted. (Why do we want to know? Why does it matter? Why does it seem to matter?) She was aware that her mouth was open; that no words came from it; that she must present a picture of imbecility.

  But once again the caped tartan cloak did its office, and Mrs Russell took pity on her. “It’s a wet day for standing on doorsteps then, hinney, with the door open wide, and my coffer paste cooling in the draft,” she said. “Come you in from the rain, and warm the baby beside my hot range.”

  “I went first to the cottage, seeing smoke from that chimney; but no one came to the door,” blurted Constantia at last, coming in.

  “No, only my old mother is there, but she cannot stir from her chair, nor speak a word to you if she did. I am obliged to keep a fire in each kitchen, running back and forth between the two; it seems a sad waste of coal—but we’ve plenty of that. Miss Huthwaite never grudges us the coal, though she’s particular enough about the tea; and the sugar.”

  “Ah! Your mother . . . Mrs Wilson?”

  “Aye,” said Mrs Russell, and resumed briskly kneading her hot-water-crust pastry.

  “And yourself a Miss Wilson, then, formerly?”

  “Of course I was, a long time since; before I was Mrs Forster, and then Mrs Russell. And who might you be?”

  “And hadn’t you a sister?” said Constantia, trembling. “A very pretty sister, called Polly Wilson?”

  Mrs Russell had been standing over her dough, roughly pummeling it with her knuckles, but she now sat down suddenly. “Polly! Why do you talk to me of Polly? Who are you, to talk to me of Polly?”

  “I am . . . I am her daughter. And if she was your sister, then you are my aunt. And your mother, down at the cottage, would be my grandmother.”

  “Polly’s girl! Polly! Can it be? It’s many a long day! Let me look at you.”

  Like the man who had looked in her face, at Dil Kusha, all those years ago—as though he might swallow her—so Mrs Russell looked at her. But this time, Constantia gazed back, seeking her mother’s likeness in this woman; and finding it.

  “My sister’s girl!” said Mrs Russell. “My Polly’s girl! Preserve us! A tonic for the shock; just a drop. Aye, you must let me pour one for you, too; you with a baby to feed. Well, here’s to Polly, then. Polly! And you Polly’s girl! . . . How old are you?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  “Born in . . .?”

  “Eighteen twenty-three.”

  Her glass drained, Mrs Russell gathered up her coffer paste into a rough ball. She divided off a quarter of it and set it aside; the larger portion she then patted flat on her floured table.

  “In the Indies.”

  “Oh aye, we’d thought as much. She will have gone out to the Indies, we said. With him.”

  “With . . .?”

  “Him.” Mrs Russell was now leaning well onto her rolling pin, rolling out the pastry. When it was broad enough and thin enough, she lifted one edge and turned it back over her rolling pin; then, lifting gingerly, she deftly slid the heavy roundel across the top of her wide, deep pie dish.

  “My father?”

  Mrs Russell patted her coffer paste down into the corners of her dish, and did not reply. She took up a bowl filled with parsleyed potatoes and small gutted, plucked, beheaded, footless birds—squabs—and emptied it, bones and all, into the pastry crust; then she topped it with a generous sprinkling of big sticky flakes of salt from the saltbox beside the range. Turning out the remaining paste onto the floured table, she patted it flat, and began rolling out a lid. “Is she there still?” she asked presently. “In the Indies?”

  “My mother died in 1833,” said Constantia.

  “Oh! We never knew.” Mrs Russell downed her rolling pin once more and splashed another dram into her glass. Constantia’s nearly-full glass got none.

  “No. I am sorry,” said Constantia. “I was only ten years old, and none of us—no one knew—to whom to write . . .”

  “I cannot say I am surprised. Still, we’d continued to hope, all these years . . . But I think Todd might have let us have a word, a word about it. He need not have grudged us that.”

  “Miles Todd, was that?”

  “Who else?”

  “Is that who she went away with?”

  Mrs Russell drained her glass instead of replying.

  “But he was not my father, was he?” said Constantia.

  “Will that be what she told you?”

  “She told me nothing. I was only ten years old when she died.”

  “Poor Polly! What will it be, then, that carried her off?”

  (That “carried her off”! Constantia was assaulted by a far-too-vivid image, of her mother being “carried off,” by—!) She could not speak.

  “One of those fevers, I suppose,” said Mrs Russell, easing the edge of her pastry lid backwards over the rolling pin; then she lifted and draped it over her pie.

  “I slept last night at Seaton Delaval Hall; the surviving wing,” said Constantia.

  “Mrs Turnbull . . .?”

  “Treated me kindly.”

  “Hm! Very fond of gossip, not to say slander. Don’t you want your dram?”

  “It burns my throat.”

  “Waste not, want not,” said Mrs Russell. “You might have said so. If you’re not droothy, I’ll drink it for you.”

  “Do, pray,” said Constantia, but she held on to the glass, saying, “I should like very much to know about . . . my mother . . . and my father.”

  Mrs Russell trimmed the lid with a knife, and crimped its edges neatly to the lower crust. With the round handle of her spoon, she poked a hole in the center; then, from the pile of feathers and potato parings in a basin under the table, she selected a pretty pink curled pigeon’s foot, and inserted it in the hole, toes upward.

  “About my mother. And . . . my father, Mr Astley,” said Constantia.

  “What would I know?”

  “A sister may know a great deal. A sister may even be trusted with secrets.”

  “A sister may know how to keep them, too.”

  “My mother is beyond all harm, now, from their being made known.” Constantia slid her glass across the table toward Mrs Russell. “May not the sister’s daughter be trusted, as well as the sister herself? A grown daughter, after all these years; myself a mother? Have I not some right to know?”

  Mrs Russell swallowed Constantia’s dram. “Happen you might,” she conceded, reluctantly. Then she opened the hot oven and carefully set the pigeon pie inside. “I’ve to go down by, and look in on Mother,” she said. “Come you with me.”

  “Mother, here’s one come to call,” shouted Constantia’s aunt at a crumple of linsey-woolsey slumped in the chair in front of the cottage hearth; and she threw several lumps of coal onto the dull fire.

  The old woman stirred in her chair. Constantia saw pale blue eyes, blinking; a skin thin, ashy, deeply wrinkled. No lips showed at the crease of the mouth; they were drawn inward over toothless gums. This crone is my beautiful mother’s mother: my grandmother.

  “And where will Susan have gone to? She was to have fetched water.” Mrs Russell tipped the jug at the back of the stove and, finding it empty, turned her attention back to her mother. “Mother, this is Polly’s girl!” she shouted. “Polly’s girl, just fancy! And the bairn is your great-grandbairn!” Then, more quietly, to Constantia:
“Her eldest? Her only? Aye. Born when, exactly?”

  “In the spring of 1823, in Assam,” said Constantia. “April first, I’ve always been given to understand, though there exist no parish registers or anything of that sort to be consulted.”

  “Aye, that’ll be right,” said Mrs Russell, counting on nine fingers. “By the end of that July—in ’twenty-two—Polly knew she was in for it. Well, it’s not bad blood, the Astleys, no matter which side of the blanket. What are you called?”

  “Constantia . . . MacAdam. She christened me Constantia.”

  “Of all things! She longed for just the thing she could not have, then. Nor to be, poor Polly!”

  “But I do not quite understand the timing of all this,” said Constantia. “Did my mother and Mr Astley carry on, ah, their courtship, even after the fire?”

  “Aye, didn’t they. He went away for a few weeks, but returned before the turtle doves in the spring. At the Red House he had to lodge, then—complaining of it, too, as beneath the standard of comfort he had enjoyed at the Hall. But he wasn’t often in his lodgings, was he? Him and Polly spent every minute of every day together—and rather too much of those short summer nights, too—as it turned out.”

  There was a tumult at the door, and then a red-nosed woman let herself in, staggering under a yoke with a sloshing pail of water at each end. “I had to go right up to the well at the church,” she explained breathlessly, “because Taylors’ cows had got out and fouled the spring again. And then I thought I might just stop at Mrs Reid’s for a moment; and as Mr Harvey was there, we got to discussing a point of scripture—Rebecca at the well, in fact!—but here I am at last.”

  “‘Discussing’! Aye, you mean an hour on your knees, I suppose—and our mother left here alone, with the fire burnt down to nothing.”

  “Nay, Rose; I built it fairly up before I went out, and I was nowt like an hour.”

  Mrs Russell turned her back on her sister and, without any effort to introduce or explain, spoke only to Constantia, saying, “Mr Astley had promised to take Polly with him—or so she said. But when it came to it—when his commission came through at last—he sailed away without her. Polly thought she’d die of him leaving, just die of being left. And that’s when Miles Todd became convenient again. She’d sent him about his business pretty sharp, the year before . . . but now, now she let him come round again. And didn’t he come right along, the gowk! Our mother did her best, too; contriving to leave them alone together—”

  “I tried to warn her, didn’t I, that Miles Todd was up to no good with Polly,” said the red-nosed Miss Wilson.

  “Aye, and nearly spoilt all our plans! There you were, keeking and sneaking—in stairwells, behind curtains, spying and darking, carrying tales and tattling! Interfering, and trying to put a stop to—the best thing that could happen!”

  “Miles Todd, the best thing? Miles Todd, good enough for our Polly? A fearful come-down he was, after Mr Astley! And so soon!”

  “Not a moment too soon, hinney. We were lucky to get her off when we did.”

  “What can you mean?”

  “Just that there was not a day to be lost—for Jack Astley had left her a wee token—a little remembrance of himself—which wouldn’t stay hidden under her heart for long . . .”

  “Nay, Rose!”

  “Oh, aye. And here she is, before you: our niece, Constantia MacAdam—Polly’s girl!”

  “Nay! But you never told me!”

  “Of course I did not; you, a child of eight years. You’d never have held your tongue.”

  “I have not remained a child of eight years. You might have told me any time since.”

  “Still cannot hold your tongue.”

  Livia was fretting and drooling again, and Constantia put her to nurse once more; then said, “My mother sometimes hinted, though, that I was a seven-month baby—in which case I was not conceived until the first of September, or so—”

  “Nay,” said Mrs Russell, “I daresay she might pretend to Miles Todd that it was a seven-month baby, and he might have believed such a thing. But I remember it all very well. She knew she was in for it by the end of July. It was just after Jack Astley’s trustees had finally got him his commission—away he sailed!—and still early in August when she ran off to Scotland with Miles Todd, and the neighbors none the wiser yet. Smart work, even for so pretty a girl as our Polly was then.”

  “And Mr Astley? What became of him—in India, and after?”

  “Oh, he did very well, we heard—he was in Sindh and the Punjab even before the fighting broke out, first as an aide-de-camp, and then had a command of his own. But when his leg was broken—well, no; his pony fell with him, at polo—he never got right again afterwards, and was buried at last at—at—where was it, Susan?”

  “At Peshawar,” said Miss Wilson promptly. “In the Christian cemetery; you may take some comfort from that.”

  Whatever troubled Livia, it was not hunger, for she suckled only a minute or two before wailing, arching backward. She did not feel hot, nor cold; she was not wet, nor soiled. At a loss, Constantia offered her breast once more—and then cried out in pain.

  “Bit you?” said Mrs Russell. “So did mine—just the once! Teething, is it?”

  “At five months?” said Constantia, but she rubbed her fingertip across Livia’s lower gum. “Oh! But see these two hard little ridges! Nothing of the kind, three days since!” How precocious she was, this darling daughter! Constantia rubbed Livia’s sore red gum, and wiped her chin again.

  “It’s a coral the bairn will be wanting,” said Miss Wilson.

  The crumpled old woman blinked; stirred; sat up, just a little, in her chair before the fire.

  “A thick trough-shell is just the thing; that’s what I gave to mine,” said Mrs Russell. “How he cherished it! Carried it about until he was nigh five years old, though the big boys mocked him for it. Aye, those surf clams—so stout, and the shells so ridgy. As many as you want down on the sands after any storm.”

  The old woman shuddered; and slowly raised a tremulous arm, a palsied claw; her shawl fell from her shoulder.

  “Why, Mother! What’s the trouble, then?”

  The old woman opened her withered mouth, and gave voice: a croak, a bleat.“What’s got into her? What is it then, Mother? Whatever does she want? Up there, on the shelf? What, the tea-caddy? No? The Staffordshire jug? Oh, Polly’s jug! Lustreware, and far too good to use . . .” Mrs Russell reached it down from the high shelf above the fire, and blew a coating of dust off it. Something rattled inside and she looked into its dark interior. “Bless my soul! Fancy her minding, all these years! I’d forgotten all about it—but here it is still, after all this time: the coral that Jack Astley sent, for Polly’s baby. Poor Polly never knew, for it didn’t come until too late—long after she’d gone off with Miles Todd.”

  “For Polly’s baby . . .” said Miss Wilson. “But that’s yourself, isn’t it, ma’am?” she said, turning to Constantia. “Go on; take it. ’Twas meant for you; sent for you. To think that you’ve turned up, after all! His mysterious ways! Here, take it; do.”

  Unlike the corals one sometimes saw, bedizened with tiny jingling bells and rattles and whistles, this one was unadorned: slim, straight, plain; quite old-fashioned. The pink coral end was slightly curved, the size, shape and colour of Constantia’s smallest finger, but hard and rough as—coral; as pumice stone. The other end was a smooth loop of black metal. She rubbed this and saw the tarnish lift, for it was silver. The tender pink hue of the coral was still pristine, still pink as a maidenly nipple, pale beside the blackened silver; for no baby had ever yet gummed it, chewed it, sucked it, drooled on it, doted upon it. A folded sheet of notepaper was rolled around it, tied with a narrow yellow silk ribbon, very dusty. Constantia untied the ribbon, slid the paper off, unfolded it, and smoothed it flat.

  There was a faded handwriting inside the curl of paper. It was a man’s handwriting: Astley’s handwriting. Her own father’s handwriting, handsom
e, plain and old-fashioned, like the coral. He had written:

  A SOLDIER’S WELCOME TO HIS FIRST-BORN, NEVER SEEN

  You’re welcome, bairn, on Earth’s sweet soil,

  you pledge and proof of amorous toil!

  Brought forth by woman’s travail and moil

  —Eve’s daughters must—

  Let new-made fathers then be loyal,

  worthy of trust.

  You’re welcome, bairn! Who’d still deplore

  such fash and clash as came before?

  Though now embarked to distant shore

  —life’s e’er in doubt—

  yet if I’m spared to home once more,

  I’ll seek you out.

  ’Tis pride and joy to claim, as father,

  my love-begotten son—or daughter!

  Though idle tongues make scornful clatter,

  citing shame or name,

  I know—none better—’tis no matter

  how nor when you came.

  God grant that you may full inherit

  your mother’s looks, her grace and merit!

  And your father’s heart and spirit,

  without his faults.

  Our good name, Astley! Blithely bear it

  e’er in your thoughts.

  —J.A. GRAND CANARY. SEPTR 1822.—

  “But where is the letter?” Miss Wilson was saying to her sister.

  “A letter there never was,” said Mrs Russell repressively.

  “Aye, but there was, Rose; a letter came with it, and banknotes, too,” insisted Miss Wilson.

  “Hush, Susan, you talk too much, and know nothing.”

  Livia was drooling around her fingers jammed in her mouth. When Constantia placed the tarnished loop of silver into Livia’s other hand, Livia grasped it eagerly and brought the coral tip to her sore gums.