The Trespass: A Novel

by Barbara Ewing

  ‘Do men have persip – perspiration? Or only ladies?’

  ‘Everybody has it. But nobody, ever, talks about it.’

  ‘I thought it meant I was sick.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it is – funny.’ And Asobel wriggled slightly disconsolately in her chair in the summerhouse.

  ‘Read on now, Asobel.’ And Asobel sighed and then began to read again of the adventures. She had secretly decided that she was going to be a sailor when she grew up, not a lady.

  Later two of the workmen passed near the summerhouse. They were hauling huge metal poles across the grass.

  ‘Harriet, look!’ Asobel whispered. ‘They are – they are perspirationing.’

  Harriet gave her such a warning look that Asobel at once sat demurely, her hands clasped in front of her as she had been taught.

  But later the younger of the workmen who had been listening to the poetry, John Bowker, ventured past the summerhouse. There was nobody there: cushions and chairs and a table sat neatly and silently in the sunshine.

  * * *

  In London in the sunshine Mary, wearing a light shawl instead of a hat, limped her way to Hyde Park, crossing where the road had been cleared a little by a sweeper, giving him a penny and a smile; her skirts nevertheless caught excrement and leaves as she walked. She loved the Park, never tired of it, the green grass and all the trees – even though the miasma around the Serpentine drifted towards Oxford Street. A band played today as it did so often, jaunty tunes wafted on the afternoon air; fashionable coaches rattled by. A woman was selling ginger beer, Mary bought a twopenny glass, sat on one of the iron seats in the sunshine. She was tired: she had walked to Harley Street, had stood outside the Ladies’ College.

  She listened to the band; now they were playing a polka, the new craze, her fingers tapped in time to the music. She watched the fashionable and unfashionable passing by, and the ginger beer tingled on her lips. In a few days she would turn thirty. Half her life was perhaps over. If she did nothing now her life would stretch endlessly onwards through the other half, and nothing would change. For Harriet’s sake she must always be near; nevertheless on her thirtieth birthday a difference must be made at last. And her thoughts turned again to the Ladies’ College in Harley Street, her heart’s dream. She closed her eyes in the warm sunshine.

  Her mother had known that Mary’s salvation was to be through reading books. Her eyes had sparkled with her plans for Mary’s education: ‘It will be my education too’; daily they had read and talked and planned for Mary, when she was nine, when she was ten, when she was eleven. And her mother told her of meeting an old, old lady of the most impeccable background, Lady Arabella Stockton, who had known Mary Wollstonecraft, known her trials and tribulations, but also her shocking ideas: her belief in the rights of women. She had met the old lady just before Mary was born: ‘It was my first confinement and I was very frightened; after meeting Lady Stockton I prayed every evening and every morning to God, that he would grant me a girl, and I got you, my darling. When you were born I knew that what I might not have for myself I could give to you. And I called you Mary.’ And so all that time, of the rose garden and the rustling skirts of the sisters and the echo of laughter everywhere, the mother and the daughter were conspiratorially reading and planning and questioning and laughing – you could teach! you could travel! you could write books! – and it mattered not one jot that she was a girl who would not marry, being a cripple.

  Mary’s attention was caught by a balloon in the sky above Hyde Park: people rode in these nowadays, waved through the hazy sunshine to the earthbound. She looked up in amazement as she always did, and waved back even though she imagined they could not see her. An elderly man in black was slowly walking by, but staring upwards also. Mary looked at him carefully; she had seen him several times, and she recognised him: it was the old Duke of Wellington, England’s greatest hero. He lived nearby and often walked in the Park. He was all alone, still staring, as Mary had been, up into the sky at the balloon floating by and the people waving. And Mary thought that despite all his history, and all his battles, the Duke of Wellington seemed just as amazed as she.

  All over London, people stared upwards, wondering what the world was corning to.

  * * *

  Next day the workman John Bowker watched, when he could, the comings and goings of the summerhouse. Suddenly Asobel was called urgently up to the house: the dressmaker had arrived.

  John Bowker approached the summerhouse with his cap in his hand. He saw the young lady look up in surprise to see him there; she half-rose: he thought she looked frightened.

  ‘Excuse me, miss,’ he said gently. ‘I don’t mean to interrupt you, or alarm you.’

  She sat down again, reassured perhaps by his voice, but said nothing and seemed ready to spring up again at any moment.

  ‘I wanted to ask you to help me.’ The words came out in a rush, seemed to surprise the young man as much as they surprised Harriet, but he hurried on. He tried not to notice how extraordinarily beautiful she was, close to. This was his chance, and nothing else mattered.

  ‘I need to send some letters. I can read quite a bit, I went to a school for a little while but I can’t write, I haven’t used a pencil since I left school and the letters have to be neat-like, it wouldn’t do if they was untidy.’ But all the time, because he saw that he had alarmed her in some way, even in his enthusiasm and his nervousness he tried to speak quietly and he did not move from the door of the summerhouse. Harriet saw that his shoes were worn and his jacket looked as if it belonged to someone else and she could definitely smell him. But there was such earnestness and enthusiasm in his face that she felt herself relaxing. She still had not spoken but now she nodded, to show he might go on.

  ‘I need to go away,’ he said. ‘You couldn’t understand, miss, but there is no work for us here. I used to help on farms but the farms have got machines now, to do what we was used to doing. I was the best there was with a scythe but now they’ve got them threshing machines, even down here. I came back this late summer, I’d heard there might be work at the harvest but we wasn’t needed. There’s nothing here for us and so some of us want to have a new chance and go to a new country. We could start again, maybe even – they say it is so – own some land of our own,’ she saw how his eyes lit up, ‘build things for ourselves, make our lives begin again.’ He forgot she was afraid, stepped into the summerhouse. ‘There’s new lives to be had in Canada and Australia and New Zealand, all these new places we’ve discovered, these new parts of Great Britain. We’ve heard that some of the countries are paying men like me, I mean offering to pay our fares if we work when we get there. What we’ve heard is they might pay for us to get on the boat and just sail away and start again, can you believe that? And we’ve heard that countries are giving free land, acres and acres where no-one has been. So we need to write to find out if they’ll take us, people like us. I went up to the Church and asked the Vicar if he would help me but he didn’t know me and asked me if I had family, and I said I had my mother and sisters and he said I should stay and look after them, but what use am I to them like this, without proper work? If I could go there – Canada maybe, it’s a bit nearer than them other places – I could work and work. I wouldn’t mind the work and then, when I’d made my way, they could come too.’ His eyes shone. ‘I’ve got all the addresses, me mates have already got them things, the Brochures. And one of them has got a handbill, it blew off a building in London and he brought it all the way down, walked with it, to show us.’

  ‘Harriet, Harriet, Harriet!’ Asobel came running down the lawn.

  ‘Do not run, Asobel, ladies do not run!’ Aunt Lucretia’s voice floated down to the summerhouse.

  John Bowker at once moved outside the summerhouse but he kept his eyes on Harriet.

  ‘Bring the addresses tomorrow,’ said Harriet.

  Only for a moment did the little girl stare at the strange, shabby man touching his cap, turning away. �
�Harriet, we are having peach dresses, what do you think, peach dresses, it’s called peach but it’s a sort of pink, well sort of like peaches.’ She tumbled into the summerhouse in excitement.

  ‘Sit down, Asobel,’ Harriet said in her severest voice. ‘Breathe in and out quietly until you are calm.’ Then as Asobel’s breath came slower at last, even though her cheeks were still as pink as peaches, Harriet smiled. ‘Now tell me,’ she said.

  Asobel took one more deep breath and considered her words.

  ‘Actually I am going to be rather beautiful,’ she said.

  ‘I think perhaps it is time for multiplication,’ said Harriet.

  * * *

  Dear Father,

  I have just received your letter and the copy of ‘The Women of England: Their Social Duties & Domestic Habits’, by Mrs Stickney Ellis, which you enclosed. I understand you to mean that young ladies do not work and that it would be quite unsuitable for me to think of working with other children.

  Thank you for agreeing that Mary should come to the wedding. The family here is so much looking forward to seeing her.

  Your obedient daughter

  Harriet Cooper

  * * *

  ‘What exactly do you want the letters to say?’

  Asobel had gone, with much sighing and complaining, for her afternoon rest. The workmen had been dismissed because the marquee was ready but John Bowker had found Harriet in the summerhouse.

  From his pocket he took the brochures he had spoken of, and a larger tattered notice which she guessed to be the treasured handbill: he handed it to her with immense care. She saw:

  FREE PASSAGE

  EMIGRATION TO CANADA

  For Mechanics, Gardeners, Agricultural

  Labourers, Domestic Servants

  Of good character.

  ‘I want you to tell all of them, all the countries that Britain owns, that I’m a hard-working, all-round agricultural labouring man of twenty and that I want to go to their beautiful country and work hard and make something of my life.’ He looked uncertain. ‘I thought I should say beautiful country to each of them, and it’s not a lie, they are beautiful to me. And that I need my fare paying. And that I’ll work like a nigger and be a credit to their beautiful country.’ He had to step across to the table to hand her the brochures.

  ‘Are you sure you want to leave England?’ said Harriet shyly, not yet looking at the brochures. ‘It is – it is very beautiful here also, where you live.’

  ‘No, miss, it is beautiful where you are, not where we are. And anyway, it will still be English, Her Majesty is still the Queen after all. We own these new places.’

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘In Canterbury. Like I said, I walked down here because I heard there was work. But there was none – bar putting up this marquee for a couple of days. I’m staying just in the town here. With a friend.’

  ‘I do not think you gave me your name.’

  ‘John Bowker, miss. Twenty years old and hard-working.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Will you? Will you write these for me, miss?’ He looked at her as if his life depended on it, was aware then that he was standing too close, that she had partly turned away, I’ve been lifting them canvases this morning, I’m maybe none too clean, and he moved back at once to the summerhouse door. He had taken the handbill back again. ‘Then I’ll go to London. Most of them offices are in the Strand. I’ll take it to them. I’ll go every day till they give me an answer.’

  LAND AVAILABLE, said the brightly coloured brochures.

  ‘Have you been to London?’

  ‘We walked there, year before last, we’d heard about the work on the railways. But I wasn’t used. I worked at Smithfield for a while, being a country man I had some skills. But not for long, it’s a right brutal, disgusting place is Smithfield Market, I was becoming disgusting meself. I walked back again, to Canterbury.’ Harriet stared at him. It had taken many hours to come here by her father’s coach.

  ‘Yes, of course I will write the letters,’ she said at last. ‘Shall you come tomorrow?’

  ‘They’ve laid us off, miss. Could I come to the servants’ door?’

  Harriet thought for a moment. ‘No, I shall walk to the town in the afternoon. I have done that several times. I could meet you by the clock. You will need to sign the letters yourself, can you do that? I could not sign them for you.’

  ‘Course,’ said John Bowker stoutly. ‘I can write me name, of course I can. I’ll wait by the clock tomorrow then. And – thank you, miss. You could change my life.’

  ‘You change your own life, I think,’ said Harriet. ‘Sometimes other people help you.’

  Neither of them had noticed Cousin John coming towards the summerhouse. He looked in amazement, and then anger, at John Bowker.

  ‘What the devil d’you think you’re doing here, bothering Miss Harriet? How dare you! Get out of here!’ and, in the doorway of the summerhouse, John Cooper struck the other man across the shoulder. ‘Get out of here at once!’

  ‘John.’ Harriet had risen, blushing. But John was still pushing at the workman, named John also. And Harriet saw that John Bowker began to raise his hand too, and then, with an incredible effort it seemed, he let it go. He said nothing as he turned and walked away across the grass, carrying his precious handbill. He did not run.

  ‘My dear Harriet, whatever were you thinking of? You do not speak to the workmen.’

  Harriet had pushed the brochures under some books. ‘He – he only wanted to ask me something.’

  ‘What? What did he have that he could ask you about?’

  For a moment Harriet considered telling him the truth, which was so simple. And then she did not.

  ‘The time, I think,’ she said vaguely, picking up the books, putting the brochures inside them.

  ‘Whatever would your father say? Or my father, for that matter? That is how a girl’s reputation is quite ruined if anyone had seen you, Harriet.’

  Harriet looked at him curiously, did not answer. He took her arm to lead her back to the house, at the same time firmly taking the pile of books from her. He thought, vaguely, that he might, one day, marry his cousin Harriet. She was extremely quiet, and obviously pliable. And beautiful. He glanced at her. She seemed in some way cast down. ‘Never mind, Harriet, we shall say no more about it.’ He did not notice that she shrank from his arm under hers as they walked up the lawn in the late-afternoon sunshine. Across the grass in the distance a gay marquee with lots of little flags waited silently, ready for the celebration.

  * * *

  That night Mrs Lucretia Cooper had, during dinner, an attack of neuralgia and an attack of the vapours, both at once: after the soup but before the mutton.

  Around the polished oak dining table (covered right down to the legs, a white, stiff double damask tablecloth) the Cooper family had just begun dinner. William was standing, in the process of carving. The maid was just removing the soup plates when there was such a piercing cry from the far end of the table that the maid dropped a plate on Cousin John who sprang to his feet protesting angrily while at the same time looking at his mother in alarm. The screaming went on at the other end and everyone else spoke at once so that a great cacophony of sound rose to the candles in the chandelier.

  William Cooper shouted, ‘STOP!’

  He hardly ever raised his voice, so that when he did everybody was so surprised they became silent immediately.

  ‘What is it, Lucretia?’

  She was now half-lying back in her chair with her napkin to the side of her face so that both Alice and Augusta rose to go to her. She did not answer her husband but sobbed.

  ‘Mamma?’

  ‘Mamma dearest?’

  ‘What is it, my dear?’ said William Cooper.

  ‘It is the Wedding,’ sobbed Aunt Lucretia at last. ‘Things will never be ready, we will be shamed before the whole County, not to mention Sir Marmaduke Miller’s family to whom we are to become joined in matrimony. What if Lady Kingdom should come,
the mother of the most eligible young men in England? There will not be enough food. The gowns are not ready. I cannot manage, William, I cannot manage and my neuralgia is not to be borne and a cholera epidemic lurks in the bushes.’

  Alice looked quite pale and distressed to hear all this but nevertheless with her sister Augusta patted her mother, telling her it would be all right, that the maid was bringing her laudanum, that there was almost no cholera in Kent and anyway only poor people got cholera.

  ‘There have been poor people here!’ cried Lucretia. ‘Putting up the marquee. Leaving their germs. And the band – how do we know where the band has been?’

  ‘But my dear, you engaged the band, it is the farmworkers’ band, I pay for the trumpets, you said you heard them at the Church fete.’

  ‘But I don’t know them!’

  Asobel observed her mother’s display with interest, but quite dispassionately as if she was somebody else’s mother altogether.

  William Cooper, once he saw that the young women were in charge of his wife, continued to carve the mutton. The maid had, in the general disturbance, skipped providentially away from Cousin John who now mopped at his trousers absent-mindedly as he asked querulously down the table: ‘It will all be all right, won’t it, Augy, I mean everything will be in time and what not and so forth?’

  ‘Of course it will, John,’ answered Augusta. ‘Do not be ridiculous. Mamma is only tired and who is to blame her with so much to be done. And do not call me Augy.’

  Alice suddenly burst into tears and had to be comforted by the others. The meal proceeded rather haphazardly and afterwards, seeing that Aunt Lucretia was about to have another attack and was mentioning cholera and bandsmen again, Harriet felt it best to excuse herself and go to her room.

  * * *

  She sat at her window, just the way she so often did at home. There was neither the all-pervading smell of meat nor the smell of the streets. Nor the bells of the midnight carts taking away the bodies. Here she could smell lavender and the grass and the roses. The cesspool to which the servants carried the waste was far down past the main garden; only occasionally did something unpleasant drift towards the house. She stared out across the farm. It was very beautiful in the fading light and there was the slightest chill to the air and she realised with surprise that it was, really, autumn. Bundles of hay leaned together, shadows in the distance. The poplars lining the long drive moved slightly in the small breeze, she heard a horse snort and stamp its feet from the stables and she gave a small sigh of pleasure as she again caught the scent of the last roses of the summer. But she knew it was not the scents nor the sounds nor the country shadows that calmed her of course but something else. I am not afraid, here.