The Lady's Slipper

by Deborah Swift

  She positioned the plant on the table, where the pearly light from the long casement windows lit up the flower petals and showed off their delicate transparency. The need in her to fix its beauty on paper was urgent. Her fingers itched to take up the brush. She would just make a quick sketch. It was barely dawn–Wheeler would not be awake yet, and although he might guess who had taken it, she doubted if he would have the effrontery to come to the house.

  She remembered the first time she had been introduced to him, at Lady Swainson’s house. She had been curious to meet him then, for she had heard about these odd followers of George Fox, men who quaked in their boots at the word of the Lord. She had been ready to scoff at him, but found him so unlike what she was expecting that she was quite unable to do so. She had imagined a small tremulous mouse of a man, not such a tall, energetic, capable-looking person.

  Alice repositioned the plant to face her. Just one turn of the sandglass, that should be enough time to capture the rhythmic line of the petals. She drew quickly, then began to grind the pigments in a stone bowl, adding water drop by drop from a small flagon. A dribble of gum was added next, imported at great expense from India. The scrape of the grindstone and the motion of stirring the paint was soothing. It was a ritual she had always enjoyed; the sound of the spatula turning in the bowl took her back to her child hood. She saw again her father’s lace-cuffed hand weigh down on hers as he showed her how to press the gum into the soot.

  She traced the forms and spaces of the stems and leaves, sketching the outline in fine sepia brushstrokes. Soon she became engrossed in a world where the only sounds were of sable on paper, the tinkle of rinsing the brushes, and the rising and falling rhythm of her breath. The flower took life on the paper, blooming out of the ivory spaces, waxing slowly into existence. But the light shifted imperceptibly, and she failed to notice that the sand had long since trickled away in the glass.

  She did not hear the knocking for a few moments. A rapping on the front door. When sound suddenly cut through her reverie, her brush jumped and skidded across the page. Alarmed, she placed the board silently on the table and tilted her head round the corner of the door. From this position she could not see who was there; the caller was obscured by a topiary box tree. The person stepped back to look at the upstairs windows, and with a jolt Alice recognized the solid dark figure. It was Wheeler. She shrank back inside the summerhouse.

  He was at her door already. She cursed her own stupidity. The hour must have grown later than she thought. She regarded the painting with panic-stricken eyes. Hastily she moved the paint water onto the side table. She concealed the watercolour behind a stack of boards against the wall and piled a good few more unfinished paintings in front of it. Her head tilted to one side and straining to hear, she pulled out a picture of a dog-tooth fern, and gently placed it on the stand on the table.

  She heard Ella answer the door and some muffled discourse. The click of the door being shut. He must have gone inside. She scoured the room for somewhere to hide the orchid, dithering with the pot in her hands. Her eyes darted round the whitewashed shuttered walls, the wooden panelling, the tall domed casement windows. There was nowhere safe to hide it.

  Thinking quickly, she peered through the window to check no one was looking, then crept round the back of the summerhouse, pressed flat to the wall, out of sight of the house. Cradling the pot under her shawl, she ran to the rhubarb patch. This new, odd-looking plant with its ruby-red stalks was being grown in darkness under wooden buckets. She thrust the flower into the muddy hollow under the nearest plant and lowered the bucket back over it. Back round the side wall and inside to the table, where she quickly positioned a fern.

  Just in time, for Wheeler and her husband were already walking up the path.

  ‘Oh, there you are,’ Thomas said. ‘I told Mr Wheeler you would be out here. I know you hate visitors, dear, but he was most insistent to see you.’

  ‘Good morrow, Mr Wheeler. It is a lovely morning.’ She stood up, aware that she was still breathless. Her voice sounded high-pitched and distant.

  Wheeler nodded to her by way of courtesy, but then waited silently, filling the doorway, making no attempt to remove his brown felt hat.

  ‘Is there something amiss?’ She smiled at him, although her hands were wiping mud surreptitiously off her fingers and onto her painting rag.

  ‘I think thou knowst what brings me here.’ He looked penetratingly at her shifting hands.

  ‘And what might that be?’

  ‘The lady’s slipper orchid has been stolen in the night.’

  ‘Stolen?’ Thomas looked at him questioningly.

  ‘Someone has dug it out and removed it. It is a rarity. I have come to ask Mistress Ibbetson if she knows anything about it.’

  ‘Are you accusing my wife?’

  Wheeler’s eyes dropped. ‘She is a flower artist–she may know of someone who would want it so badly they would come in the night to steal it.’ He looked directly at her.

  She moved towards the windows, feeling sweat gathering on her palms. The room had grown warm. It was oppressive with the three of them so closely confined, as if the walls were boxing them in.

  ‘No one of my acquaintance would do such a thing,’ she said, ‘although, of course, reports of the orchid’s discovery will have spread abroad by now. This is dreadful news. Are you saying the plant is gone completely, not just the flower?’ She felt obliged to carry on with the charade.

  ‘I left my guard of it for only a half-hour. In that time the whole plant was taken.’ He was still staring at her. She wondered if there was mud on her sleeves.

  ‘Surely, anyone could have taken it,’ Thomas said. ‘Were there any footprints?’

  ‘No footprints. No iron marks or patten marks at all.’ Wheeler fumbled in his bag. ‘But whoever it was, they left these.’

  Alice’s stomach clenched and her collar seemed too tight. He held out the few coins, displaying them on the flat of his palm. His hand was broad and strong, the colour of a brown hen’s egg. The coins appeared tiny in his grasp.

  ‘How strange,’ Alice murmured.

  Thomas took the coins from Wheeler and counted them. Alice wished she had not been so reckless. She flushed and moved away. Picking up a jar of ground pigment, she began to empty it into a dish; her hands were unsteady and she scattered green powder upon the table.

  ‘If I hear anything I will let you know,’ she said. It was a kind of dismissal. She was feeling stifled under her thick petticoats. She willed Wheeler to leave.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure my wife will keep you informed. I’m surprised anyone would bother. After all, it’s only a plant.’

  Alice bristled. How typical of Thomas. Why could he never understand her passion for flowers, or her need to express them in paint?

  Wheeler ignored her hint that he should leave. His eyes raked the summerhouse, taking in the pile of paintings, the table with pestle and mortar, the rows of jars with their vivid array of minerals and powders. He approached the boards where she had hidden the painting of the orchid and picked up the first one. Alice held her breath.

  ‘I like this,’ he said. It was a study of flowering honeysuckle, shown just as the flowers were turning to berries.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, coolly, ‘the honeysuckle is over now. That one will be wrapped and sent to the Low Countries. It is a commission for a friend.’

  Wheeler examined it for a few more moments before returning it to the front of the stack. Alice maintained her distance as he walked over to the work on the table. The fern was many shades of green, from the palest moss to deepest sage. He studied it closely, looking at it from several angles.

  ‘But this is deftly handled,’ he said with enthusiasm. ‘The way thou hast caught the light in the layers of leaves.’

  Alice had always found his old-fashioned Quaker speech strange, and although she had heard rumours that he had been educated, Alice was surprised he should have any appreciation of the arts.

  He ad
ded, ‘People have told me of thy talent, but I did not expect such fine work.’

  She felt exposed, as if he had caught her undressed. She did not want him to admire her work. She did not want anything to do with him. She could not make him understand the flower’s importance. He would have left the orchid to be eaten by deer, or die unnoticed in the winter frosts. She did not want any more of his conversation, she just wanted him to go.

  ‘My wife has achieved a measure of success of late with her paintings,’ Thomas said. ‘She never stops painting–she paints morning, noon and night.’

  Alice was embarrassed. When Thomas talked of her this way it made her feel like a prize exhibit at a fair.

  She followed Wheeler’s attention as he looked from the plant to the painting. The painting did not match the position of the plant and she hoped he had not noticed. Evidently not, for he turned away and moved towards the door. He gestured to the paintings of Flora. ‘Is this your daughter?’

  ‘No,’ Thomas said, not waiting for Alice to reply. ‘It is Alice’s sister. She died less than twelvemonth past.’

  ‘I had heard it. On the day I moved into my house, I passed the cortege going to the church.’ He turned to Alice and removed his hat. ‘I am right sorry for thy loss.’

  ‘My wife took it hard,’ Thomas said. ‘We have no children, and Alice misses her sorely.’

  Alice remained silent. She had marvelled at Thomas’s noisy outbursts of tears, and then how easily he had found it to put his grieving aside. Alice still had found no way to express her grief and it disquieted her that Thomas trespassed upon it. She felt Thomas’s presence in the summerhouse to be a kind of intrusion into her private world, the world where Flora’s laughing eyes were still indelibly preserved, for Flora had been the last of her family.

  Her mother’s face swam into her mind, weakly entreating her to take care of her new-born daughter. Over the years since her mother’s death, Alice had struggled with the task until she had become almost a mother to Flora herself.

  Alice caught sight of Flora’s face watching. Anger rose in her chest. How dare he barge his way in here? Wheeler’s presence in this special place was an imposition. Alice placed the little mixing dish down with a bang.

  ‘Well, good day,’ Wheeler said, replacing his hat. ‘I regret disturbing thy painting. I am concerned that the plant may be lost to us. It is the only one, as far as I can discern, and should remain in its natural habitat, the place where God intended.’ This last part was addressed directly to Alice. She smiled politely.

  Thomas acknowledged him with a nod and strolled with him towards the door. It was then that she noticed the glass jar of water on the side table, with the brushes still resting in it. The water was pink. Her heart jumped in her chest. Wheeler paused and took it in. He swivelled round and their eyes met. She felt as if he could see inside her soul. Even if he had not suspected her before, in that moment he knew.

  ‘Goodbye to thee, Mistress Ibbetson.’ He gave a slight inclination of his head, but his lips were pressed into a hard line. ‘But have no doubt; I intend to pursue this further through the law.’

  When he had gone, Thomas returned. He tapped on the wooden door to the summerhouse.

  ‘What a strange man,’ he said. ‘God’s breath, I thought he was going to break the door down. Thee-ing and thou-ing all over the place. Getting me up out of my bed at this unholy hour for some business with a plant!’ He shook his head. ‘For some reason he seemed to think you must have something to do with it. Naturally, I told him straight I would not permit you to be out wandering abroad at all hours. You don’t know anything about it, do you, dear?’

  ‘Of course not.’ It slid out easily, but it felt awkward to lie to Thomas. She patted his arm. ‘It is a pity. I was hoping he would let me make a proper study of it.’

  ‘Well, there are plenty of other things in the garden. Is Sir Geoffrey’s commission finished yet?’ He glanced at the painting on the table. She was glad to have a chance to change the subject.

  ‘Almost. But it is a set of three–different varieties of ferns to hang in Earl Shipley’s dining room. His house has been redecorated in the Dutch style, and Geoffrey has persuaded him they will look fine against his dark wallpapering. It is a good commission. Two are finished and here is the third nearly done. Geoffrey is still overseas in the Americas so I have a little more time.’

  ‘How much longer will he be away?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, his ship landed the day before yesterday. But I do not expect to see him for a few more days. He has pressing business on his estate. Jane Rawlinson told me. Apparently he will be busy arranging for his men to deliver the shipment of bulbs and flowers to the gardeners at Hampton Court.’

  Thomas nodded his approval. ‘Take care that you do not catch a chill out here.’ He walked away down the path, with his lopsided rolling gait, and she watched him go with relief. He would be riding out to the counting house soon, and she would be left at her own pleasure, to paint and potter, and make plans for the lady’s slipper.

  When she retrieved the orchid from the rhubarb patch it looked perfect, thank goodness, despite its stay under a dirty bucket. It made her shiver to look at it. She looked a long time, taking in its shape and texture. It was so fragile, so unsullied. As she sat in contemplation, Flora’s dancing eyes surveyed her from the walls, looking down with her perpetual smile. She would never grow old, would always be seven.

  The feeling of Flora’s immobile hand with its perfect shell-shaped nails still haunted her, the unchanged texture of her hair even in death. Alice swallowed hard; she would not succumb to the dark memories. Instead she recalled Flora’s warm body nestling next to hers as they looked at the heavy picture book together.

  Gargrave’s Herbal was the only book with pictures, apart from Aesop’s Fables, and she and Flora had often sat together, marvelling at the life-like woodcut illustrations, turning the heavy fan of pages with their familiar metallic smell of ink, that is until Alice began to tickle her and they rolled over and over screeching with merriment.

  They looked for their favourite plants from the book on their daily walks. Flora was entranced by the name of the ‘lady’s slipper’, imagining she would be able to put the little slippers on her pet cat’s paws. She looked everywhere, hoping she would find it one day. Alice had joined in the game, half serious, not having the heart to tell her she never would–and yet, here it was. She could hardly believe it. But now Flora would never see it. A tear dropped into the dust on the table. The flower remained locked in its own stillness as she wept.

  In the scullery Ella the housemaid was preparing a broth for the midday meal. As usual she took her time, and helped herself to small pickings. She was always hungry. Today it was a bit of boiled ham, along with potato, turnip and a few yellowing leeks. As it was the cook’s day off she would not be there to call her a rivy-rags if she wasted anything, so she threw the big rooty ends in the swill bucket. She did not bother to wash the vegetables but rubbed the earth off with her hands before chopping them and adding them to the pot with the ham. For good measure she threw in some salt from the crock. She crossed herself and tossed some over her shoulder; she didn’t want to leave room for Robin the Devil or his bad luck to enter.

  As she scraped at the potatoes she stared glumly at the wall. She counted all the unwed men she knew in the village, at least ‘them that aren’t ugly or kettled’. She was born for better things than to be scrubbing carrots and carrying coal for the fire. A young man with a fat purse–that was what she needed.

  She wiped her hands on her rump and went into the pantry for more turnips. The shelves were well stocked. She could sneak enough oats for two bowls of gruel or enough wheatflour for a large loaf if she was wily and didn’t do it too often. Once she had even managed a small pot of clover honey.

  She ran her hand along the shelf of preserves with its jewel-like jams and jellies. In some households these were kept under lock and key, but her mistress was daft enou
gh to leave them out in the pantry. She peeled back one of the muslin cloths and poked her finger in, bringing it out with a large globule of golden plum jam. She stuck her finger in her mouth and sucked, before doing the same with another jar.

  It was redcurrant jelly; sour and tart. She coughed and spat it out, ground the stain into the flagstone floor with her clog. She arranged the muslin covers again as if they were untouched, and pushed the jars to the back of the row.

  She peered into the gloom under the shelves and dragged out the sack of turnips, but it tipped over, spilling them at her feet. She cursed, bending down on hands and knees to pick them up. As she dropped the first turnip back inside the sack, she felt something soft. She whipped out her hand with a little shriek. Rats had got into the pantry again. Gingerly holding the neck of the sack open with thumb and forefinger, she squinted inside.

  Something butter-coloured was poking out. She reached in and drew out a damp satin shoe, partially wrapped in brown paper. Mouth open, she held it aloft in the light for a better look. It belonged to her mistress, of that she was certain–she had seen it in her chamber. But what was it doing in the turnip sack? It was a moment or two before she thought to look in the sack for the other one. When she had recovered its twin, she sat on the stone step by the kitchen door and contemplated them both.

  The thought of putting them back did not even cross her mind. It was ‘finders keepers’ as far as she was concerned. She slid off her wooden-soled clogs and tried one of the shoes on. It was too small, but she admired the look of her cold red foot encased in something so fancy. Of course such brightly coloured clothes showed that you were ungodly and vain, but she liked the feel of the soft material, the cream lining against her calloused toes. These were the sort of shoes she deserved, not roof-beam clogs. It was a shame it was so dirty. She looked at the other one and rubbed at it with her hand. There were some dark brown spots that wouldn’t come out. She spat on it and rubbed again–even now the marks did not shift. It looked like blood. How could you tell the difference between blood and paint?