‘Like what?’
‘Like picking fruit and veg what’s only just landed in the gutter and too good to be left for the maggots, only you have to be quick, because everyone’s up for that game.’
Ned collected horse manure. He looked for stalls and barrows needing an extra pair of hands, because if there was a large enough crowd, he could put fruit into baskets and crates, keeping the customers sweet, and only last Friday he’d earned a few pennies and a good free supper from the shellfish man, who’d had a queue as long as your arm of people wanting liquor, and the water needed keeping on the boil.
‘I’ll do anything,’ he told her blithely, and Jane wondered if he would catch a stream of stinking vomit, wash the face of a dead girl, or take a slap from another who didn’t like the taste of the pennyroyal tincture. But she liked Ned’s spirit, the tea and gabble had taken her out of herself, and when he went back for his sign, she strode towards the Thames, because she felt like seeing the water.
On the banks of the river a crowd had gathered to watch a troupe of travelling players, their platform a boat, just run aground. Undeterred, a man in a long black coat continued gesticulating with his arms, reciting blank verse. Next to him, a woman blue with cold and wearing a thin satin nightgown, beat her bird-like chest as if trying to restart her heart.
‘And they call it entertainment.’
‘Miss Bell?’
‘The very same. Are you fond of the bard, Miss Stretch?’
‘Who, miss?’
‘The man who wrote the lines this deluded ham is spouting.’
Jane listened again. Frowned. ‘I’m not sure I quite understand them,’ she admitted.
Miss Bell moved closer, wrapping an arm around Jane’s bent shoulders. ‘Believe me,’ she said, ‘the words sound better when you’re not being blasted on all sides by these cruel winter elements.’
Wiping her hair from her eyes, Jane supposed she must be right, though surely the words would be the same whatever the weather, and wondered if the man was speaking English or half nonsense.
‘Now,’ said Miss Bell, as the woman on the boat started shrieking, ‘you must come back to my lodgings. Flora has been very clever and got herself a job, and we’re having a pig’s head with all the trimmings. Surely a pig’s head is better than turning to ice watching this third-rate excuse of a performance?’
‘I don’t think I’ll be able to—’
‘But I insist,’ said Miss Bell, with her hands on her hips. ‘I will send you home with a note if I have to.’
They walked the short distance to a lodging house on Kite Street. At the corner a group of rascally boys decided to mimic Jane’s rolling, tipsy walk. Miss Bell, humming softly, pointedly ignored them, and though Jane felt stung and somewhat ashamed, she also felt something of a thrill walking next to this beautiful actress in her elegant blue coat, the hem embroidered with poppies, her thick hair shining, and what a transformation since the last time they had met!
‘I’ve brought company!’ Miss Bell yelled as soon as they stepped inside the little house, where the pig’s head was already scenting the air with its sweet fatty juices.
‘A gentleman friend?’ a voice shouted from the top of the stairs. ‘Heavens to betsy, Martha Bell! What have I told you about bringing home men?’ A woman bounded down the stairs, red-faced, a mop of ginger hair springing from its combs like strands of hot wire.
‘Now, who said I’d brought a man?’ said Miss Bell, peeling off her gloves. ‘What kind of girl do you think I am, Flora Fisher? This is my friend Jane Stretch, the lovely little nurse who helps Dr Swift.’
‘Aha!’ she said. ‘That very good doctor who saves Old Father Thames from clogging up.’
‘He does?’ said Jane. ‘But how?’
‘Don’t you know?’ said Miss Fisher. ‘If it wasn’t for him, and dozens like him I suppose, there’d be girls with bricks in their pockets jumping into the river day and night. Oh those boats would hardly move for all the sorry souls lying at the bottom of the water.’
Around the scrubbed pine table, elbows nudging elbows, Jane felt an overwhelming kind of happiness. Yawning girls in shiny Chinese robes poured generous glasses of wine. One of them pushed a glass towards Jane, which she did not like to refuse. They chattered and giggled and did not look in the least bit surprised to see a crippled stranger at their table. When Miss Bell finally lifted the pig’s head from the oven, there was a clattering round of applause and several bawdy whistles.
Jane sat wide-eyed as Miss Bell bowed solemnly towards the head, still spitting fat, steam rising from its ears and curling from its nostrils. ‘Mr Pig,’ she said, ‘Sir Hamish Porker, you have been roasted in honour of Miss Flora Fisher, who from Wednesday next will be rehearsing the part of Polly Poke in that wonderful entertainment, Cast Out Your Nets! And through the chewing of your sweet and generous cheeks – Miss Fisher’s favourite morsel – you will give her the strength to dazzle the critics – Boo! – and all her adoring fans, who will no doubt be battling for tickets, the House Full sign being out every night.’
There was more applause, the chinking of glasses, the swishing of ruby red wine. Their plates were soon filled with pig, potatoes, beans, a spicy kind of stuffing, and the room was bursting with laughter, girls tearing bread, and chatting about the boys who liked to wait with armfuls of flowers outside the stage door – ‘as if a bunch of wilting hothouse roses will cure their poor complexions and turn their ugly faces handsome!’ Then there was that cramped excuse of a dressing room, the costume woman’s gin habit, and rumours of a tour. Jane was floating. This had to be the tastiest, happiest meal she had eaten in a long time.
Afterwards, in the parlour, a room strewn with dresses and cloaks, boxes and trinkets, Jane, Miss Bell and Flora sat drinking cups of sweet tea.
‘You must be very proud of your doctor,’ said Miss Bell, twisting a small gold hoop in her ear.
‘I don’t know, miss, I’ve never really thought about it.’
‘Oh, I know the work can’t be too pleasant,’ she continued, ‘but he does such a marvellous job. Heavens, I might be dead if it weren’t for the doctor.’
‘We are all very grateful to him,’ said Flora, as Jane’s face paled, not wanting to think of Miss Bell as anything but here, and alive. ‘And you, too, though Martha did come back saying she wanted to leave the theatre to be … What was it now? Oh, I remember! A schoolmaster’s wife!’
Miss Bell smiled and wagged her finger. ‘Oh, you may scoff,’ she said, ‘but at the time I could think of nothing better than a good quiet life, arranging spring picnics and sponging out ink stains.’
Before Jane left, the girls came into the hall, kissing her gently, touching the curve of her spine ‘for luck’, though Miss Bell quickly shooed them away, saying, ‘She is not a carnival exhibit; Jane is my friend.’
The clouds looked heavy. The sky was almost black. Back beside the river the actors, now lit by giant torches and a scattering of braziers, appeared like painted puppets rocking on the water. The crowds were fast disappearing as a man in a plum-coloured overcoat offered blankets as a ruse to keep them watching, though most couldn’t stand the cold, the actor’s wretched posing or his thunder-clapping voice.
‘Here.’ The man offered Jane a stool and a blanket. ‘It’s better than a seat at Sadler’s Wells.’
Sitting with her boots pressing into the shingle, the words were almost lost to the great open sky – Blow winds and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow! The water was churning, and Jane tried her best to conjure up warmth. A warmth that sat like a fat scarf of wool was how Liza Smithson had once described India, especially Madras, a place exploding with heat. She had once almost melted like a stick of fresh butter when the master had taken her to a silversmith’s, where barelegged men fashioned bowls and calling-card cases that would later sit on the shelves of Liberty in London.
Suddenly, the actor fell onto his knees, and as the boat keeled the sky started dropping its last great snow of the sea
son. Flakes the size of handprints fell into the water, sizzled in the braziers and settled on the stones. People laughed at the absurdity of it all. Who would watch a play in the snow? Were they mad? And as Jane wrapped the blanket tight around her shoulders, the remainder of the crowd started scrambling to their feet, because for all his hearty bellowing, it looked like Lear might be drowning.
Four
Before
Knowledge
WHEN JANE WAS eight years old the girls finally went to school. Their teacher, Miss Prosser, did not smell like warm batter pudding. According to their mother, having heard from the women passing the time of day in the coffee house, Miss Prosser, a spinster, had been ‘badly let down’ in the past. ‘She’ll be cruel all right,’ their mother warned, sending them off for their first day of lessons, away from the wrath of the School Board inspector, bead pots and tales of Indian life, ‘because women who’ve been let down in the past always are.’
Miss Prosser wasn’t cruel, though she always wore black, which made her look snappish and dour. Her hair was snow white, pulled from her pleasant and unlined face with large brass clips, her searing blue eyes scanning the room like two shiny magnets, clicking onto whispering girls, the boot-kickers, the hair-pullers, or the dreamy work-shy girls dozing off like mice in the corner.
The classroom was a pale blue box with tall church-like windows looking onto a line of watery sky, and a wall of smaller windows facing the corridor, where scrappy coats and shawls were kept on hooks, and unruly girls were often pulled by their plaits to see the headmistress. The room was decorated with familiar scenes from the Bible: The Last Supper; the serpent in the Garden of Eden; and Noah with his ark, the animals standing in twos, looking peaceful, the lions seemingly at ease next to two white mice and the penguins.
Agnes sat towards the back with Hannah Baker, a malnourished girl who could barely keep her eyes open, and though she had dreamed of school for months – the books, the little slates, the teacher with her scent of warm batter pudding – what Agnes hadn’t thought of was the work, how you would be pointed at and asked things, with a rap on the knuckles if you were wrong, and as she hadn’t been to school before, how could she be right?
But Jane was often right. She might not have been to school, but she had sat with their father and listened. At the kitchen table (while Agnes was running outside, or sleeping, or messing around) they had counted. Read. She had heard her father read (or pretend to read) from the London Journal. Now, she knew the capital of Italy, thirty-four minus eight, the birthday of Queen Victoria and the date she ascended to the throne. Her little hands would easily find page twenty-nine, before most of the other girls had bothered to lift the book from inside their desks.
‘What does this tell us about America?’ Miss Prosser asked. It was a difficult question and no one could answer it. ‘All right,’ she pressed on. ‘What was the name of the pilgrims’ boat?’
There was a shifting in the classroom. The sound of slates being scratched. Jane’s hand shot up. ‘The pilgrims sailed on a boat called the Mayflower,’ she said. ‘Many did not survive the journey.’
Some laughed to hear the answer coming from a girl who looked so bent and broken, others scowled, while Agnes screwed up her eyes and made very tight fists of her hands. Her stomach flipped and churned. It just wasn’t right! How had her sister learned to read such long words and to say them so well without the slightest bit of stuttering?
‘Very good,’ smiled Miss Prosser. ‘I am glad to see someone is paying good attention.’
On their way home, Agnes walked five steps behind. She stared at the flagstones. She made a growling noise. When they had eaten their supper and Jane had chatted endlessly about the books in the great glass cabinet, the cameo brooch Miss Prosser wore in her collar, and the royal family tree they were creating from card, red ribbon and ink, Agnes grabbed her sister by the elbow and dragged her into the yard.
‘Why are you so clever?’ she asked. ‘It can’t be right, can it?’
‘What do you mean? Why can’t it be right?’
Agnes paced in circles. She folded her perfectly formed arms and sniffed very loudly. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you’re younger than me and you’re the crooked one, aren’t you?’
Jane laughed. ‘So what if I’m crooked? What have bones got to do with brains?’
Agnes shrugged, because she couldn’t think of anything quick or clever to say. All she saw was her sister’s miniature hand in the air. Her voice giving all the right answers.
‘Well?’
‘Well,’ said Agnes, eventually, ‘can’t you just keep quiet about it? Everyone thinks it’s funny.’
‘No,’ said Jane, with a shuddering stamp of her boot. ‘Because learning is one of the only things I can do without tripping over a bootlace.’
By Friday, most of the girls had decided to leave Jane alone, another girl who gave them more risible entertainment being their new target, while Jane made friends with a girl called Honor Fletcher, whose father owned a sweet shop. Honor had been standing on the sidelines when Jane had been teased, looking away, red-faced, as the little gang poked fun at Jane, threw chalk ends and laughed at her. On Friday morning Honor had shyly beckoned Jane over and offered her a piece of coltsfoot rock. Standing in silence, licking the sweet, spicy stick, they could see the other girls chasing around, throwing balls, laughing. Jane closed her eyes. She pictured jars of floral gums, pastilles, liquorice and sherbet. She saw shelves of chocolates wrapped in silver foil. Sticky violet creams. ‘What’s it like?’ she asked Honor, sucking the ends of her fingertips. ‘Living in a sweet shop. Is it paradise?’
‘It’s all right,’ Honor shrugged, ‘but the sugar can give you a headache.’
‘Why do you want to play with me?’ Jane asked. ‘No one else does.’
Honor, a pretty girl with a plump face and soap-scented pinafores, took Jane’s arm and pulled her a little closer. ‘Because I like you,’ she whispered, ‘and because I have a baby sister with very bad rickets.’
‘Is she still at home?’
‘I don’t know where she is, though she might be living in Selsey. Do you know Selsey? It’s a seaside place,’ Honor told her. ‘She was sent there for a holiday, only that was last year, and though I waited and waited, she never came back, not even for her doll, which was very strange, because in all her three years she’d never sleep a single night without it.’
Months later, Miss Prosser asked Jane to stay behind when the hand bell had announced it was home-time. Nervously, Jane moved towards the desk, surveying the wonderful mess of chalk pots, painted stones, rulers and a fine china teacup. When her teacher looked up and smiled, Jane’s fingers grabbed the corner of the desk to stop herself from swooning. Reaching into a drawer, Miss Prosser brought out a bulky parcel wrapped in string and brown paper.
‘For you,’ she said, handing the parcel to Jane, ‘because I know you will appreciate it.’
Miss Prosser, resting her chin in her hands, told Jane the parcel contained The Big Book of Knowledge, and the book had come from Miss Prosser’s own house, where it happened to be sitting idle on the bookshelves. ‘It is a book that has not been opened for years, and the words trapped inside are simply fading and going to waste,’ she said. ‘I thought you might like it.’
‘I would like it, miss, thank you, miss, yes.’ Jane could hear herself babbling, but she added yet another thank you, just to be on the safe side.
‘Then do keep it, and see it as something of a prize.’
‘A prize, miss?’
‘Yes, for being my most diligent student, and for learning in adversity.’
Blushing, Jane smiled, though she had no idea what ‘diligent’ or ‘adversity’ meant. ‘I will treasure it, miss.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘It will be your little pot of gold.’
That night, Jane read until her eyes watered.
The oak is the national tree of England. The tree was sacred to the Druids and the Anglo-Saxons.
It sheltered King Charles II when he was hiding from his enemies.
Elizabeth Fry (1780–1845) was a prison reformer, social reformer and philanthropist.
The moon is the second brightest object in the sky after the sun. The moon is a powerful force of nature.
Hermes was the messenger of the gods and the guide of dead souls to the Underworld.
The Big Book of Knowledge was kept in its thin brown paper and wrapped inside a petticoat under Jane’s bed. Agnes knew it was there, but she didn’t like to see it. The words were overlong. It made her chest feel tight.
Jane usually opened the book when everyone was sleeping, or her parents were lost inside the tavern. It had a blue cover. Some of the pages were foxed. A bookplate said: This Book Belongs to Emily Anne Prosser. Presented by St Stephen’s for Regular Attendance. Jane could see Miss Prosser in church. Emily Anne. She was a small straight girl in a black velvet frock coat. She always listened. There was never any dirt on her gloves.
It was a thick book. It pressed at her knees. Twenty-two sections. Sixty illustrations. Twelve Colour Plates. On page 49 a large yellowing water stain appeared like the map of India Liza Smithson had shown her. Bombay was settled over Hook-Tip Moth, Calcutta nudging the perfect insect will ultimately emerge, the warmth of Madras spilling onto both male and female are the same size and very similar, but the female is a little darker in colour. The male is shown (left).
*
Three years had passed.
‘We’re leaving this place,’ said Ivy.
‘Why?’ asked Agnes, now nudging fourteen.
‘Money,’ said their father, already pulling on his coat and stuffing his pockets with the silver-plate cutlery he’d pulled from the half-empty drawer.
‘Quick sharp,’ said Ivy, clapping her hands. ‘We haven’t got all night.’
Agnes filled a small cotton bag with her hairbrush, a slab of scented soap and a small pink pebble a boy called Henry Rook had offered her, saying he had polished it, and in his opinion it was nicer than a jewel. She wore all her clothes. She pressed some torn fashion plates into her bodice, which would keep her amused wherever they were going, and would stave off the cold on the way. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked Jane, who was staring out of the window. ‘Start getting your things together, we’ll be leaving in a minute!’
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