‘Keep out of my light.’
‘Would you like me to do a few rows to speed it on?’
‘Why? I can do it. He wanted me to do it, not you. Get out of it, you clod.’
And Sadie did not offer again, but watched Ella tussle with it. She knew that fighting with the materials never made it easy – you had to respect the tools, let them help you.
When the day of the fitting arrived, the wig was finished just in time. Madame Lefevre had put it on a stand with the other finished perukes. Sadie was glad for Ella, because she had seen the effort she had put in. Granted, it was not as neat as her own work, but it would pass muster, and she was proud of the hours Ella had grafted, and excited to see how her handiwork would look. They heard the doorbell jingle and Mr Whitgift’s slightly nasal voice in the lobby. Ella’s cheeks were pink even before he came in the room. He wasn’t exactly good-looking, his nose was too sharp and his chin too small, but there was a swagger about him that made you think he was. And he was dark, like a Lombardy man.
Madame Lefevre led him through and Ella smoothed over her apron and picked up the finished peruke, holding it out with pride.
‘Ah,’ Mr Whitgift said, ‘it looks fine.’ He plucked the dark curled wig out of her hand and twirled it round on his index finger.
‘This way, sir,’ Madame Lefevre said, holding aside the curtain as Mr Whitgift stooped under the lintel. She beckoned Ella, who dutifully followed. The door of the fitting room banged shut.
A few moments later they heard the door open and Madame Lefevre’s whining voice. Ella reappeared, red-faced, and slumped into her seat. The girls stared at her, trying to catch her eye, until she pushed her tongue out at them.
‘How did it go?’ Sadie whispered.
But Ella continued to ignore them all, scuffing with her foot on the ground. Sadie’s heart contracted for her. Something must have gone awry. Since arriving in London, Ella seemed to have lost all her customary perkiness. Sadie did not know exactly what had happened in Westmorland, why Thomas Ibbetson had died, but she often awoke at night to find Ella staring out of the window, chewing her fingernails to the quick.
Madame Lefevre’s voice had lost its whining tone and now could be heard protesting loudly in the lobby. The bell jangled again as Mr Whitgift left, and a few moments later Madame Lefevre was in the room shaking the wig at them, for all the world like a dog with a rat.
‘I have never been so humiliated.’ She hurled the wig at Ella, who made no move to catch it. It fell to the floor at her feet. ‘She reckoned it wrongly.’ Drops of spittle flew from Madame Lefevre’s mouth. ‘He could have vouched for me all over the city. He has friends in the new theatre too. They need new perukes every month for their play-acting. The best client I have had for years, and she could not follow a few simple measurements.’
‘If you please, madame, what’s the matter with it?’ Sadie asked.
‘She sewed it too bloody tight, that’s what.’
Ella was crimson. Madame Lefevre pointed to Corey. ‘Corey Johnson. I want it set right by Monday.’
‘Yes, madame,’ Corey said.
Sadie wilted on her stool. She knew what to expect before the words left Madame Lefevre’s mouth.
‘And I warned you, you cannot gainsay it. You are dismissed. The pair of you. And you need not think I’ll give you a wage. Look at the waste.’
Ella burst into life. ‘That’s not fair! Lay me off, but not Sadie. She’s done nothing. ’Tis no fault of hers, she’s a good worker.’
‘No, Ella. I’ll not stay. Not without you,’ Sadie said.
‘Don’t be such a bonehead,’ Ella said. ‘We need the pay. No point the both of us being out of work.’
‘Quiet!’ Madame Lefevre approached Sadie, with a vestige of a smile. ‘You may stay, but she goes.’
Sadie swallowed, and turned to Ella. What did she want her to do? ‘I’m not doing it without you, you promised me. You said we’d always stick together.’
‘Don’t be a fool,’ Ella said. ‘You’re grown up now, time to stop behaving like a biddy bairn. Keep your position, Sadie, if she’s offering.’
‘But what will you do?’
‘Something’ll turn up.’
‘But, Ella—’
‘Enough. Out, now, or she’ll be with you,’ Madame Lefevre said, grasping Ella by the arm and hustling her towards the stairs.
‘I can walk out without your bloody help.’ Ella wrested her arm away, and in doing so elbowed Madame Lefevre hard in the flat wood of her stomacher. Madame Lefevre reeled and staggered backwards, knocking over Ella’s empty stool. The crash reverberated round the damp stone walls, round the cold bare ankles of the girls. The girls cowered down over their benches, anxious to keep out of trouble. A slam followed by the rattle of the bell announced Ella’s departure.
Madame Lefevre was white-lipped. She primped and pinned her sparse black hair back into place and pulled the curtain tight to the wall. She stood with her back to it, as if to protect the girls in the event that Ella should return. Sadie sank down on her stool and stared at the space in front of her.
The other girls bent to their work, though the atmosphere was thick as gruel. Sadie did not dare look over at the empty space where Ella used to sit. If she did, she might cry. She tossed her hair forward over her face and continued to knot, even though her eyes ached and her head throbbed. It had been Ella who had always stood up for her against everyone’s taunts. Now she was gone, who would defend her if they started calling her names? With Ella’s absence, the room seemed suddenly cheerless, as if all the warmth and colour had been sucked out of it. A knot of fear tightened in her throat.
At home in Westmorland, she knew that if she was anywhere near trouble, the accusations would start. Folk would point and cross themselves, and whisper that Lucifer had left his mark on her. Sadie had kept herself to herself, taking in sewing and weaving, and never went out unless Ella was with her. When Ella was there she felt braver. Nobody ever dared to tease Ella, and she would brook no one taunting her sister either. Sadie hunched lower over the workbench.
She pulled a strand of hair until the knot tightened, and it brought to mind poor Mistress Ibbetson, the woman Ella said had been hanged through some fault of Ella’s. She had heard rumours of these events when the milk boy came, and the man from the brewers for the empty jugs. But being closeted indoors had never heard the whole tale. And no wonder, she thought, as ’twas always Ella as brought the news. She had said Mistress Ibbetson wasn’t a witch, but she had been hanged nonetheless. Sadie gripped tight onto the hook, pausing in mid-movement, a flutter in the pit of her stomach. What must that feel like, to know you had done nothing amiss, and to be sent to the gallows with not a soul to gainsay it?
She had been to one hanging, when she was five years old, just after their mother died, and she had clutched on to Ella’s skirts, hiding her face the whole while, so she saw nothing. But she could hear, and that was enough. A man screamed his sins out loud for all to hear, with not an ounce of shame. The cries of the pedlars – the words that were not words but just sounds. Someone calling out in gulping sobs, ‘My Georgie, my boy,’ followed by her choked, ‘Lord have mercy ’pon his soul.’ She recalled the wind’s ghostly voice, and the rain, the heckling crowd. The sudden hush as if the world had paused for breath. Then a creak like a gate swinging in the wind. She had pressed her palms over her ears but it did not drown the sound that erupted all around her. It was the snarl of a pack of wolves baying for blood.
The wig in front of her was a blur, her eyes were filled with water. She blinked it back, swallowed. Maybe she should have gone with her sister. But then Ella had urged her to stay. She looked over to where the stool was lying upended on the floor, and Ella’s empty place. It seemed to mean something, like an omen.
At the end of the day there was nobody to walk home with. Sadie stepped out alone, although the streets were thronged with people. There were hundreds of youngsters like herself, all on their way ho
me in raucous jostling groups. It was unnatural, she thought, there was not a wrinkled face in sight, and hardly any men her father’s age in London. The days of shaking had seen to that. And what was it all for, all the bloodshed between the king’s men and parliament? So many dead, so that in London the children roamed in packs. Madame Lefevre was the oldest person she had seen, not like in Netherbarrow, where the village was run by the elders.
When they had first arrived and were looking for work, they had to contend with crowds of urchins, all looking to make a little extra in good time for the Yuletide festivities. It had frightened her, she clung tight to Ella, terrified they might lose each other in the crush. And everyone was thin as if they’d not enough to eat, and quite a few with a harelip or withered foot, or other disfigurements. Sadie eyed these children with sympathy. Maybe she would not seem so unusual, there were so many odd-looking folk in London. Here people stared at Ella too, because of her smooth rosy cheeks and chubby arms.
Ella found out they were taking folk on at the wigmaker’s, and she had elbowed her way to the front of the herd with the aid of a bodkin from her pinafore.
‘Show her your cap,’ Ella said, pushing Sadie to the front of the crowd. She had taken it off and wordlessly pointed to the rows of almost invisible sewing, the neat smocked frill at the edge with its tiny cross-stitches.
‘Are you quick?’ Madame Lefevre had asked, eyeing Sadie’s downcast face doubtfully.
‘Like lightning,’ Ella interrupted, her fingers crossed behind her back.
So they had been taken on. But every position could be filled four times over. Sadie dodged another group of dishevelled lads who scurried past with their heads down like rats. Now Ella would have no position, and her prospects of finding another employment must be thin. Sadie wondered if Ella had been out looking during the afternoon, and hoped for good news as she hurried back to Bread Street. Maybe she would have kindled a fire and have something hot waiting, for on the short journey from Friday Street the drizzle had already soaked through Sadie’s clothes.
A mangy black cat, bony because of the wet, shot across her path trying to find shelter under the overhanging eaves. She knew she should spit to wipe out the bad luck, but she couldn’t be bothered. With hunched shoulders she went to the darkest end of the alley, where there were three rickety doors set side by side. The rain was pouring off the roof in a steady stream. She had to stand under it to knock. She gave two sharp raps on the middle door and waited for Ella to open it.
No answer. She began to be worried. If Ella wasn’t in, then where was she?
‘Ella?’ she shouted, banging hard on the door.
The door stayed shut.
She did not know what to do.
She had no key to the house, Ella had the only one. So she huddled under the eaves, as much out of the wet as she could, trembling with cold. She caught a whiff of something cooking in the house next door. It smelt like chicken broth. Her stomach churned from hunger. She had eaten nothing all day.
What if Ella was lost, or kidnapped, or drowned in the river? Sadie’s thoughts began to run on, her imagination painting them into textures so real that she felt faint and had to sit down on the ground, made weak by what she had visioned in her head. What if Ella was inside the house, but had fallen down the ladder and hurt herself? Sadie jumped up and started hammering on the door and shouting for all she was worth.
‘Shut your flamin’ racket, for God’s sake.’ Mrs Tardy from the house across the way leaned out of the upstairs window. ‘The babe’s just got off to sleep and I won’t have him woken.’
‘Have you seen my sister?’
‘Keep your voice down. No. I ain’t seen no one.’ The window smacked shut.
Sadie caved in and let herself sag back down onto the slimy step. Without Ella, London would swallow her up, like the whale did Jonah.
The great Bow bell had struck nine of the clock before Ella hurried into the yard. Like Sadie, she was drenched and shivering. Sadie was so angry she could hardly speak.
‘Get that door open,’ she said, half in tears.
Ella brought out the key and they ducked inside.
‘We’re having a fire, and that’s that,’ said Sadie. Ella sat down, bedraggled. She obviously had not been home since she left Madame Lefevre’s shop.
‘Where on earth have you been?’
‘Shut it. Give us a minute, will you. Get that fire lit.’
Sadie began to break kindling and tear up rags to get a fire going. She did it in a fine fever, half wishing it was Ella’s bones she was breaking.
She swore inwardly. The fire would smoke, for everything was damp and their chimney was just a hole cut into the roof. When it rained the damp seemed to stop the smoke rising. She sighed and piled on some wood from a broken old crate they had found down at the docks, and then a few hunks of coal.
Her sleeve steamed with the smell of wet flax as she tinkered to get the flame going. Ella looked on, but did nothing to help. Sadie fanned lamely at the smoke with her skirt.
‘The least you could do is find us some supper,’ she said, glaring at Ella.
‘We’ve nothing in. Anyway I’m too tired with tramping after work.’
‘Where’d you go?’
‘I was that shamed. When he tried the wig on and it just sat on top. Feverface tried to force it down to his ears but he made such a face. She went into one of her thin-lipped rages.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He didn’t get the chance. Madame Lefevre whipped it off his head and started laying into me, the scabby bitch. I don’t know what he must have thought of me. Still, at least you got to stay put.’
‘It’s not the same without you.’
Ella ignored this and stood up and rummaged in the wall cupboard. She pulled down a paper bag and emptied the last few ounces of oats into a kettle to make a bland porridge. Sadie watched her stir it half-heartedly. The fire had taken now and was spitting and crackling. Ella looked comely, bending over in the firelight, her hair drying to curls, cheeks pink and flushed with heat.
Sadie wished she looked half so handsome. No matter how much she ate she was always thin as a stick, not rounded and curvy like Ella. And her hair hung straight as pondweed; she guessed she’d got that from Da.
‘Did you get anything?’ she asked.
‘Nah. I tried the docks and the glassworks. Outside the glassworks I heard tell they were taking on at the bakehouse on Pudding Lane, so I belted over there. When I got there it were like a riot. No chance. So I’ve been downriver to the gunpowder works, that’s why I were so late back – there wasn’t another ferry till now.’
‘No luck?’
‘No. Come back next week, they said. But I’m not going back there anyroad. It stinks like hell. And there’s explosions every week, a lad was telling me. Someone had his head blown off.’
‘Oh, Ella.’
‘No, I’ve decided. I’m on the lookout for a housemaid’s place. Like I had before.’
Sadie felt a qualm of unease.
‘Trouble is,’ Ella said, ‘I’ve no reference, so I’ll have to blarney it. D’you want some of this?’
Ella ladled the thin grey porridge into two bowls and they ate silently, gazing into the fire as the embers died down.
‘Will you give us a tale, Ell? Like you used to?’
‘I can’t think of anything.’
‘What about one of the old ones? You know, one of Ma’s – like you used to tell me in bed at home?’
‘You don’t want those old things. Don’t tell me you still want Little Red Cap or Molly Whuppie now.’
‘Oh, go on.’ Sadie leaned forward. ‘Oh, Grandmother, what big eyes you have. All the better to see you, maid.’
Ella smiled despite herself.
‘Oh, Grandmother, what big ears you have,’ Sadie said.
‘All the better to hear you, maid,’ they chorused together.
‘Oh, Grandmother, what big teeth you have.’
‘All the better to eat you up!’ yelled Ella, jumping up and chasing Sadie round the room till she screamed. They fell back to their chairs laughing, the memories tugging at them like a hand on the sleeve. They sat quiet then, watching the embers in the fire.
‘Do you remember her voice?’
‘No, just her eyes. They were blue.’
‘Grey.’ Ella often snapped when Sadie mentioned their ma. Sadie knew better than to reply. Ella always contradicted her, as if she owned her memory and nobody else was allowed a part of it. Sadie had been only four when her mother died.
‘What happened to her, Ella?’
‘I told you. There was an accident on the sands with the coach. She drowned. She was trying to save me but the water carried her away.’
‘But how? I’ve never understood it. How did she save you? Every time you tell me, it doesn’t make sense. Tell me properly, Ell.’
‘Leave it be.’
Sadie saw in her mind’s eye a gentleman at the door. He had a row of very shiny buttons on his coat. She wanted those buttons. He was holding a bedraggled and silent Ella by the hand. And it seemed Ella was pulling her hand to get it away, but the man with the shiny buttons kept a tight grip on it. But it was so long ago and she was never sure if she recalled it straight or whether it was just imagination. But one thing she was sure of – her father’s stricken face. It was like he was a lantern and the light just went out in it.
‘Can you see pictures in the fire, Ell?’
‘I’ve not looked,’ she said. But after a while Ella said she saw gypsy musicians playing fiddle and drum and fine ladies stamping a dance in orange billowing skirts. Sadie looked into the heart of the coals, but could not find Ella’s dancers. She only saw sunset on the ghylls, high peaks hung with cloud, and the lakes and rushing waterfalls of home.
That night Ella could not sleep, and finally gave up trying. She thought the days of nightmares and being unable to sleep were long gone. Sadie slept exhausted but restless, one arm flung out of the bed, the one blanket tangling round her thin frame. As Ella looked at her she had never felt so alone in her life. In the bustle of the day she could run away from herself, but at night there were no welcome distractions, just her and the dark. She lit a candle to push away the shadows flickering in the edges of her thoughts and stood it on the table. She gazed into the blue heart of the flame, shivered and turned to look behind. Even though she had thought she would feel safe in London, she could not help but always look back over her shoulder.
The Gilded Lily Page 7