The Key to Hiding

by Wendy Reakes

  “Because you may feel obliged to seek revenge and I would be responsible for yet more heartache. I won’t do that, Mr Porter.”

  “Was it your uncle.”

  “Oh no, it wasn’t him. But I think he knew about it, which is why I can never go back. The shame of it, you see. I’d be exposed to more danger…and what of my baby?”

  Porter held a frown on his face that was so endearing she wanted to kiss his cheek. She refrained, just in case he thought she was a trollop.

  Chapter 22

  He fed her chicken broth, while she sat up in bed and he repeatedly placed the spoon in her mouth. Beneath her chin was a cloth of white linen to prevent any spills from scalding her chest. She could see roughly cut carrots and onions floating about on the top, and a green herb she couldn’t identify. He said it was parsley and that there was ‘some wild garlic in there somewhere.’

  As she opened her mouth, accepting the spoon with relish, she glanced across the room where her tiny makeshift kitchen had been replenished with supplies; fruit, vegetables, cheese and eggs, as well as some other items covered in muslin cloth. “You brought me food,” she said.

  “Yes, you’ll be able to get up tomorrow and you don’t want me fussing over you all the time.”

  She smiled. “I don’t mind.”

  He coughed and averted his eyes as if he didn’t want to look at her anymore. “I have to go away for a couple of days to take care of some business. Will you be all right while I’m gone?”

  “Of course. I feel a lot better and as you said this morning when you changed the dressings, my wounds are healing very well.”

  He stared into her eyes as if he was mesmerised by her. As she was with him. He leaned forward, and their parted lips touched. The kiss was tender and sweet, like the caress of a velvet peach. When he pulled away he looked ashamed.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, breaking the spell of the moment. He placed the empty soup bowl on the table next to the bed and stood up. He was leaving, and she would miss him. He had his back to her as he looked down at Rain in the cradle he’d provided. He’d found it in the outside store, carrying the old boots she’d been looking for that night. He’d cleaned it up and told her Rain was now its new occupant. “I will be back in a couple of days,” he said. “Stay safe until I return.”

  Without looking back, he left. And he never came back.

  The days after Porter had gone were the loneliest Marley had borne since stealing into the attic the night she lost her shoes. To pass the time, after she’d finished her chores and got Rain sleeping peacefully, lying in her crib outside in the sun, she took up the unfinished embroidery she’d found in Elizabeth’s locked trunk. So far, she had only created the flesh upon the face, but now she was following the hairline with threads of black. She was sure it must have been a portrait of baby William. While she sewed, hours on end, until her eyes could no longer focus in the fading light, she thought about Celia, hundreds of miles from the attic in Wilbury House, and she thought about Porter, the man who’d promised he would return and who, so far, had not. What would their future hold now, hers and Rains? Perhaps she could re-plan their escape. She still had enough money left for the train fare. The walk to the station was a good distance. Would she make it with her leg so weak? It was something to consider, but for now, she would stay until Porter returned.

  Soon it would be September. Celia would be coming back and what a surprise she will have when she finds her still there. Will she be happy, she wondered, or just plain sick of the sight of her? She decided the former. Celia had a good heart. She wouldn’t place the blame on Marley. It had merely been unlucky circumstances she’d been discovered when she went searching for boots…or could it have been lucky, since she had met Porter. Maybe it was a well-timed blessing.

  Of course, it was no business of hers that with Porter away, the house and grounds were unguarded, but she did have cause to wonder at whatever had detained Porter, why he hadn’t sent someone to step into his shoes, rather than leaving the house unprotected.

  She could put weight onto her leg now with the help of an old cane she’d found in the corner of the attic, alongside the oars and cricket paraphernalia. Now that she was up and about, she began to worry more about Porter’s absence; why he hadn’t returned, why he hadn’t sent word, and who was guarding the house?

  It was a mild afternoon on the first week of September when she decided to take matters into her own hands. After all, wasn’t it simply a case of going around the house, checking the rooms for intruders or anything else that shouldn’t be there…Intruders?! An intruder like her! How strange that she had come to think of the house as her home, to be protective of it, to want to care for its welfare. Then she realised, of course she would. Without the house, there would be no attic, thus, no home for me and Rain.

  She took the baby with her when she carried out her rounds. She was the caretaker now. She owed it to Porter and to Celia to make sure everything was in order.

  Walking freely about that grand building, without having to hide in every corridor or watch every door, she suddenly felt liberated after being cooped up for so long. She ambled about, opening and closing doors, sometimes entering the gloom where the shutters blocked out the midday sun. Most of the furniture was covered in white dust sheets, but the paintings lining the walls and the beautiful clocks and rugs were an exquisite sight for her sore eyes.

  Just as she was about to open a door, she stopped short when she heard a noise coming from the mistress’s boudoir. Her instinct was to run and hide in the safety of her attic, but what would be the point in caretaking if she wasn’t going to tackle anything untoward?

  With Rain resting on her hip, she listened some more as she leaned onto her good leg and levered the brass handle downwards, slowly opening the door. Inside, the sun was filtering through the shutters leaving white stripes across the floor and across the gold flock wall coverings. The room where the Mistress slept and dressed was an elegant bedchamber and nothing like Marley had ever laid eyes on before. She walked through an archway, tentatively, fearing what she would find inside. A bed with a pink satin canopy dominated the room, and lace cloths covered electric lamps on the small side tables. A large dresser sat on the opposite side where the sheet had slipped to the floor. In front of a grand fireplace, two easy chairs remained covered with a sheet where at the bottom she could see pink velvet fringe. And there in front of the fire, in the grate was a tiny sparrow hopping on one leg as he attempted to fly.

  She limped over to the bed and placed Rain atop it. She had fallen asleep, oblivious to the opulence of her surroundings.

  At the side of the room a door led to a washroom where a bath as big as two tubs put together sat in the middle of a white marble floor. She spotted a basket and picked it up. It would be perfect for carrying the little bird before she released it into the sky.

  She took a quick glance at Rain, as she went past the bed. She was asleep in the middle of the mattress beneath the pink canopy, looking like a proper princess.

  Marley went to the fireplace where the bird was still flapping about with the intention of escaping. “Hello, little fellow. Did you come down the chimney? Where’s your mama then?” His feathers felt like whispers on her skin as she gently closed her fingers about him and placed him inside the basket.

  Just as she was about to take the basket into her arms, her eyes caught a small hand-painted portrait on the wall at the side of the mantle, hidden among a cluster of others. There, staring back at her was the face of a young boy, carrying a smile she would never forget. A name was scrawled upon it at a slant. William, it said. And facing her was the exact likeness of the black-haired lout.

  Numbed by the image, Marley grabbed the basket with the bird inside and knowing she couldn’t carry it and the baby, she decided to leave Rain safety asleep while she took the little bird up to the attic.

  When she reached the top and put the bird on the floor of her parlour, she heard noises coming from th
e courtyard below the house. The sound of horses and carriages.

  The family and the servants were back.

  She went as swiftly as she could with her hobbling leg, along the path through the forest of furniture to the end where her breathing became a laborious pant. Her head spun. She had to get down to the servant quarters and into the mistress bedchamber before any of the servants came up the stairs. Oh God, she wouldn’t make it.

  She went thought the attic door to the wooden steps and down to the servant’s floor. Then, she rushed along the corridor and sneaked down the stairs leading to the family’s bedrooms.

  When she looked at the door of the mistress’s boudoir, she expelled a gasp when she saw the door was shut. She had definitely left it open when she left Rain and taken the bird upstairs. If it was now shut, someone was in there and they had discovered her baby.

  There was nothing else for it. She had to own up to her presence and plead her case so that she wouldn’t get put in gaol. Oh, why did she start the caretakers rounds today of all days?

  Resolute that she would own up to her intrusion on that fine house, she rushed across the landing and slipped into the room. The shutters were still closed, but there was light streaming through a door off the dressing area, perhaps where the nanny slept with the baby.

  She almost screamed out loud when she felt someone tap her shoulder.

  She swung around and saw Celia next to the door, holding Rain up over her shoulder. Marley didn’t know what to think or how to react. Celia placed her finger to her lips to hush her, shoved the baby into her arms, and without taking her eyes off the room next to the dressing area, she ushered her out the door.

  She went as best as she could from the corridor and up the stairs to the servant’s quarters, along that floor, still quiet and dark, and up the stairs to the attic where she closed the door behind her.

  She collapsed into a heap in the safety of her own parlour. She had managed to get Rain onto the bed before pain had shot up her leg and almost screamed in agony. As she moved to lie next to her, they both went to sleep, while below in the house, life before winter began again.

  End of Part Two

  Part Three

  Chapter 23

  April 1901

  Marley had lived in the attic at the top of Wilbury House for almost five-years. Her life had become a curious one, but for Rain, well, how odd for a child growing up in an attic, with only the sky outside to remind her that there was more to life than the place she dwelled with her mother.

  For Marley’s part, she had become a permanent recluse, dreading leaving the safety of her parlour in fear of being discovered and locked in gaol. Outside she was vulnerable, unprotected by her roof and rafters.

  Porter still hadn’t returned. It had soon become clear about his fate when Celia told her what she had heard from the other servants. “He was on his way to Taunton,” Celia had said, wide eyed. “That’s what the groom told us on our return, when we asked about Mr Porter’s whereabouts.”

  “Taunton,” Marley whispered. “To find my cousin, to ask her to take me in. I am sure of it.”

  “He only got as far as Bridgewater, someone said from the pub next to the Bridgwater & Taunton Canal. They all think he was taken, pressganged at the dockside and perhaps made to fight in the Spanish and American war.” As an afterthought, she said with a raised brow, “Honestly, Marley. I didn’t even know there was a war going on.”

  Marley’s heart had broken when Celia relayed the story she had heard about Porter. But, when the end of the war had been decreed in December 1898 and he still hadn’t come back, he was declared dead and a new groundsman recruited to Wilbury House.

  Marley was alone again, secretly mourning the loss of the only man who had shown kindness to her. The only man she had ever loved.

  When Celia came back that day in ‘98, she found Rain -just a baby then- lying on the softness of the Mistress’s bed. “Fortunately,” she’d said, “I went up with the nanny and master John, to prepare the room for the mistress and settle the baby down before she went up. Nanny walked straight past the bed, without a glance, but when I saw Rain, I stood as still as a stone statue, trying to get into my head what on earth she was doing there. When nanny went into the nursery, I picked up the baby and stole her away.” She’d looked at Marley with tears in her eyes when she’d realised she was still in the attic and not -as she’d anticipated- in Taunton. “That’s when you came into the boudoir and took her from me.”

  Two hours later, Celia came to the attic when she was given a short break in her chores. “We’re really busy down there,” she’d said, rushing. “Normally we come back to get the house ready before the family arrive, but it didn’t work that way this year because of the new baby.”

  She’d looked directly at the cane leaning against the bed. “What happened? Why didn’t you catch the train?”

  Marley quickly told her about the night she’d tried getting the boots from the stores, about getting shot and about Porter nursing her back to health. “He told me he’d return in a couple of days, but he never came back. Never!”

  “We can try again,” Celia had said.

  She’d nodded, glumly.

  Celia was cautious when she said, “Unless, unless you’d prefer to stay…then we can go on as before.”

  Marley searched her eyes for a hint of deception, but then she knew she was in earnest. “You would like us to stay, Celia?” I asked.

  She sat next to Marley and held her in her embrace. They were both crying. “Of course, I do. I never wanted you to leave in the first place.”

  “I suppose we could stay a while until next summer when Rain is a little older,” Marley said, worn out from the traumatic events of that day. And as she looked at the little bird she’d captured, she decided that day he could stay as well.

  Rain had developed into a beautiful, bonny child. When the house downstairs had celebrated Master John’s first birthday in 1899, Celia, Rain and Marley had their own little party after Celia brought up the remnants of the cake. She’d placed a candle in the centre and they both helped Rain to blow it out. It turned out to be a marvellous celebration and they did the same each year after. Celia gave Rain a toy which had once belonged to her when she was a child. It was a tin monkey which, at the flick of a wrist, climbed up a wooden pole. Her mother had suggested she gave it to baby John, but Celia gave it to Rain instead. When she saw that little monkey, it brought her so much pleasure, her precious smile had just brightened Marley’s day.

  Even now, at the age of five, she still hadn’t spoken a word. She’d spent many times with her, trying to get her to move her mouth and her tongue like Marley, but she only laughed at her mama’s peculiar expressions. Hers was a silent laugh, leaving Marley only to imagine the sound of those chuckles coming from her pretty rosebud lips. In contrast to her pale skin, her hair was jet black, reminding Marley of her father, but she had a talent that far surpassed anything he had to offer.

  She first began painting when she’d turned two. Marley had offered her the easel she’d retrieved from the far reaches of the attic. They’d found paints, but they had dried to a hard crust over the years. Still, Marley managed to thin them out with some turps which Celia brought from the store outside. With the help of the solution, she’d managed to get some colour out of them, albeit the paints of four colours had remained quite lumpy.

  Rain had been unperturbed by the density of the paint and after Marley stretched a square of white sheeting onto a frame of wood, without any help from her, Rain began painting thick brown lines over it. When the dark brown stripes were finished, she added a dot of black to the blue and followed the brown lines with the use of the tip of her finger. Marley couldn’t make it out at all until she added some splashes of white. “That’s a nice painting, Rain,” she said offering motherly encouragement.

  When the paint had almost dried on the canvas, she hung the picture from an old nail jutting out of the wood surrounding the glass door.
Later, when the candle was lit, she saw Rain staring up at her work. She followed her gaze and gasped when the picture suddenly came alive. It was a painting of the roof rafters above their heads and as the light from the candle struck the white streaks, they depicted rays of sunlight creeping through its grooves. The picture had become three-dimensional when the flame of the candle touched the contours of the lumpy paint.

  Afterwards, when she laid in her bed watching her daughter sleep, she thought perhaps the image had been a fluke, since a child of her mental age couldn’t possibly have created something so wondrous.

  The following week, after she made another canvas, Rain dipped her fingers into the lumps of paint and worked it across the stretched sheet like an expert. That time she covered the canvas with a simple pale blue with more streaks of white splattered across it, lined by black. Marley couldn’t make it out at all, until night came, and they lit the candle. As they both looked at the image before them, the light shone over it to create a summer blue sky with white clouds, looking like they were floating over the canvas.

  That was the moment she knew her daughter had been bestowed a gift. ‘An artistic genius,’ Celia called her and Marley, her mother, wholeheartedly agreed.

  Marley and Rain spent their summers alone when Celia went with the household to their summer home on the Italian lakes. It was a lonely time, but since Rain had found out what her legs could do, Marley allowed her to run the corridors of the house without deterrence. The new groundsman wasn’t as diligent as Porter had been and rarely came inside to check the house, so they were free to roam and run, as long as nothing was disturbed that didn’t need to be disturbed.

  As she watched Rain run like the wind, just like she used to do when she was a girl, it warmed Marley’s heart. She was intrigued by the notion that Rain had become accustomed to her life in the attic. She had indicated to her no desire to leave their secret abode, that she was content with her lot, as Marley was content with hers. She didn’t know how long that would last, as she would soon grow and develop and would surely have desires to go beyond the attic confines, to explore the world outside. But for now, she was content, and Marley hung onto that for as long as she was able.