‘I know, my dear.’
‘I wonder if the mail coach for the north-east leaves from the Bull and Mouth at St Martin’s Le Grand. The mail goes from there to Edinburgh and York, I think, so perhaps Doncaster is on that route.’
‘I will endeavour to find out.’
There was a noise at the door and Ambrosia broke into a smile. ‘Is that a quiet little mouse I hear snuffling around the skirting?’ she said. Charlotte was standing in the doorway, twisting her hair and grinning shyly, no doubt hoping her cousins had come to play. ‘Oh, it’s you! I was wrong. I thought I heard the tiniest creature searching for a crumb of cheese. Come here and give me a kiss at once.’
Ambrosia’s news had sent me into a flurry of anxiety, and I paused my finger somewhere in the West Riding. ‘Charlotte, why are you not dressed for bed?’
She hovered at the threshold. There was a beat of silence, and Ambrosia gave Charlotte a friendly wink. ‘Is it bedtime for little mice?’ she said.
The child smiled, and I asked her to close the door. With a glance at me and a fonder, more lingering look at Ambrosia, she did as I bade, and a moment later I heard her running up the stairs.
I sighed, distracted. ‘Where were we? Ah, yes, Yorkshire.’
‘I shall go and give her a kiss before I leave,’ Ambrosia said, settling back into her chair.
I went to the bureau to fetch a quill, ink and paper and seated myself at the little writing table beneath the window. It had belonged to our mother, and was pitted all over where her quill had nibbled the wood.
‘Now,’ I said. ‘Do you think you will stop first in Stevenage, or will you go all the way to Cambridge?’
The next few days passed uneventfully, excepting a misunderstanding with the butcher’s boy, in which he delivered next door’s meat order and we cooked the mutton before the error was noticed. My sister and her family loaded up their carriage and went north, promising to write but leaving me in London quite alone. The months of Ambrosia’s absence would drag, no doubt, without her weekly visits. With the excess of Christmas behind and spring a way off, it was a dull, dead period, a time of hibernation and renewal, in which to reintroduce good habits, turn mattresses and repair wigs.
The day after Ambrosia left, it began to snow. I watched it from the large windows in the withdrawing room that first night, Mother and Father and me and a glass of sherry, with the lamps unlit to better see the flakes falling in the moonlight, landing softly and knitting together in their great white blanket. After I’d checked all the doors and windows, I went up to bid Charlotte goodnight and found her doing the same thing – sitting in a chair at her bedroom window, looking over the quiet street. Her dark hair was loose down her back, and her arms were wrapped around her knees. I watched her silently for a moment, framed in the night sky, and then I noticed she only had on a nightdress.
‘Charlotte, come away from the window and get into bed. You’ll catch your death of cold.’
Catch your death. What a ridiculous phrase, as if it was a ball to be intercepted. Mother, Father and Daniel had all caught it, and now it was airborne again, soon to land in an unwitting palm. There were only two people left in the world now who I loved. Charlotte I could keep close, but Ambrosia was no budgerigar, content to chirrup in a cage, no matter how grand and gilded. She was a tiger, or a comical elephant. I smiled to myself and went to my own room across the tiny landing to undress for bed.
CHAPTER 8
The snow melted to slush, and by Sunday morning was like a glossy layer of goose fat pressed along Devonshire Street. I spent the morning anxious that our carriage wheels would not turn in it, then resigned myself to the idea of not going to church, so by the time the brougham I hired once a week drew up at the front door to take us the short journey to the chapel, I was quite vexed. More so when Charlotte came down the stairs wearing an ermine cape and an incongruous straw boater.
‘Charlotte,’ I said crossly, ‘it is February. We are not having a picnic in Lamb’s Conduit Fields.’
She stared at me, her dark eyes wide. Having never been either on a picnic or to Lamb’s Conduit Fields, my remark was lost on her, and I sighed. ‘Take your boater off, and quickly go and find a smart bonnet. The blue one, with the wide brim. Now!’
She scurried away and thudded up the stairs. I stood in the quiet hall and fastened my cloak at the neck with fumbling fingers, trying to ignore the urge to check the kitchen door a final time. Charlotte would be a minute or two, and by that time the anxiety would be buzzing in my consciousness like a fly, so I hurried towards the stairs at the back of the house and went down to the basement. Maria was scrubbing turnips at the wide wooden table, chatting to Agnes, who was ironing by the range, one of her hands bound tightly in linen. A kettle simmered on a trivet. The kitchen was the only room where my authority was superseded. I did not know the order of the platters loaded in the high dressers, or what time the milkmaid came. It had all the purpose of a small business, one I had no role in, apart from once a week when Maria showed me the bills, and I paid them.
I went straight to the back door and pulled the handle, and it opened into the cold morning. Maria and Agnes stopped talking at once. I stood like that for a moment, with my hand on the door, my ears ringing with anxiety, my heart beating furiously, then turned slowly to look at them. There was a gentle hiss as the iron was placed on the cloth pinned to the table, and Maria spoke first. ‘I am sorry, madam,’ she said. ‘I was washing the turnips and threw the water out into the yard. I was about to lock it.’
The key stuck out of the keyhole. I drew it out and held it between two fingers. ‘Anybody could have come in when your backs were turned, copied this, and then returned in the dead of the night with us all dreaming in our beds.’ My voice was measured, though I felt the opposite. The brass key was as long as my first finger, and I returned it to the lock and turned it once, twice, three times, feeling the satisfying movement of the mechanism falling into place. Then I put it in my pocket. Agnes and Maria watched in unhappy silence, their mouths slack. ‘I will take this with me to church,’ I said.
‘Madam,’ Maria began. ‘We need to use the—’
‘I need to be able to trust you.’ I stared at her across the scrubbed table. ‘I am trying very hard.’
There was an awful silence, and I glanced at the turnip heads on the table, and saw the knife resting on its side. On my left, the iron sizzled gently beside a pile of linen. Weapons were everywhere, if only you looked for them. The thought made me feel defiled, corrupted, and once again I found myself wishing I could scrub my mind with lye, blot the stains from my memories. Without another word I went from the kitchen to find Charlotte, who was waiting for me at the door. We made our careful way down the steps to the brougham, and I felt the outside air for the first time in a week. The snow had made it colder, and it quickly reached down my neck and found the tender place where my glove met my sleeve. Charlotte scrambled into the carriage holding her blue hat, with me following behind. Henry shut us inside, and I could not breathe until we were locked in, and the little curtain was drawn. Charlotte lifted the curtain on the other side, peeping out at a group of young women – servants, in plain brown cloaks – walking good-naturedly together despite the cold.
‘Where are they going, do you think?’ she asked.
‘Charlotte,’ I said, and she closed the curtain.
We journeyed the short way to the chapel in silence. I felt the carriage turn its familiar way right into Great Ormond Street, and left at the tip of Red Lyon Street, sailing towards the Foundling gates. Henry helped us out, and we stood for a moment, blinking in the bright light. The time of year meant there were no groups standing outside the chapel, and Charlotte and I followed an elderly couple across the courtyard, half-bent against the wind. Charlotte’s hat blew off before we reached the doors, and she went running after it, chasing it along the ground with outstretched arms until a great gust blew it upwards and straight into the chest of Doctor Mead. He captured i
t with both hands, laughing easily and passing it back to Charlotte before removing his own. I did not hear what he said, but they walked towards where I stood at the large cedar door, clutching their hats close to them like kittens.
‘Mrs Callard,’ he said as he drew close. ‘You show great command over your bonnet. I am afraid mine and Miss Callard’s require more discipline.’
Charlotte grinned toothily.
‘We may not go inside until you have your head covered,’ I told her, and she stuffed it over her hair in a manner unbecoming, but there was no time to say so.
Doctor Mead held the door for us, but before I could hurry us to our usual pew, he stopped me. ‘May I pay a call on you later this morning?’
I blinked in surprise. ‘You need no permission to call, Doctor Mead. You are always welcome at Devonshire Street.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. If I can’t find you after the service, I expect I’ll arrive before noon, if that does not interrupt your day?’
He knew the way I lived, yet always spoke as though my Sundays were filled with calling cards and invitations. ‘Not at all. You are very welcome to join us for Sunday luncheon.’
‘I would be delighted, thank you.’
We parted and went to our usual pews, and I thought nothing of the nature of his enquiry throughout the service, nor the hymns, nor the short carriage ride home, until half past eleven, when I heard the door-knocker. Doctor Mead called once a month or so – he had been a friend of Daniel’s, and was two or three years younger than him. Daniel would now have been thirty-five, though he’d only ever reached twenty-eight. I would not see him grow grey hairs, or lines at his eyes, or a rounded belly from decades of port and cheese. I showed Dr Mead upstairs to the withdrawing room, then went to the kitchen. Agnes set about warming the kettle and collecting saucers, and I asked Maria what time the lamb would be ready. She pursed her lips and said half an hour, but would not look at me. I wondered what had displeased her, then remembered the weight of the key at my thigh. I drew it out and set it between us on the table.
‘Doctor Mead so enjoys your roasted potatoes.’ I looked at her until she met my eye, which she did with a resigned wariness. Then, seeing my expression, her frown melted and she drew the key towards her.
‘I shall give him extra, then,’ she said, and I knew I was forgiven.
I thanked her, and went back upstairs to where Doctor Mead was sitting in my chair, but I did not mind.
‘Is your sister well?’ he asked, as I took the seat opposite and settled my skirts around me.
‘As well as ever. She has gone to the north with her family.’
‘Very sensible. London in winter is dreadful.’
I wondered if he had heard of George’s indiscretion with the viscount’s daughter, and decided he hadn’t. Doctor Mead did not open his ears to salon gossip, and would not know half the people discussed if he did. As far as I knew he did not attend salons at all, much to the frustration of preying mothers with eligible young daughters, who they wished to present to him as neatly and deliciously as a box of macaroons. Doctor Mead had never married or even been betrothed. With his charming looks, respectable occupation, Bloomsbury townhouse and family connections, his bachelorhood was regarded in some drawing rooms as the biggest misfortune since the South Sea Bubble. He had been a very great friend over the years, and accepted my way of living without comment or interference. Once or twice he had suggested Charlotte take exercise, but had dropped the matter when I refused. At Daniel’s funeral, on a warm day in the middle of April, I had told him in the church that I would not be leaving the house again, and I kept my word. I felt no grief travelling back to Devonshire Street that day, knowing I would no longer feel the sun on my face or a chill wind down my neck. I had been wiped clean by loss, and felt only a sense of relief when I closed the front door behind me, as one does climbing into bed after a long day. Charlotte had come soon after, and three years of solitude passed comfortably. I raised her in peace and safety, until one summer when she was three years old, and the house hot and stuffy, and she cried for three days in a row, driving me half-mad and close to despair. I’d sent a tearful letter to Ambrosia, who came at once and took her on a walk around Queen Square at the end of the street, and twenty minutes later she returned a different child. Their excursion persuaded me that a change of scenery was necessary once a week for the child’s wellbeing, if not my sanity, and Ambrosia suggested the new chapel at the Foundling Hospital, not three streets away. Daniel had been buried next door at St George’s, so I was familiar with it, and agreed more quickly than she expected. On a bright Sunday morning in April she collected me in her carriage, and I put on an outdoor coat and hat and stepped outside for the first time in three years. I had been so dizzy with anxiety I remember only clutching Charlotte’s hand as if she was my mother, and her clutching mine, and the odd sensation of being close to other people again, and the quick and unpredictable way they moved. I would have preferred a quiet, modest place of worship, but this chapel was so new one could almost smell the paint. The pews were cleanly varnished, the hymn sheets crisp. The ceilings were high and the windows sparkled. Its youth was a balm – it had seen nothing of sorrow, mine or any-one else’s. The day was a dream to me, but that even-ing I went to bed feeling as though I had crossed an ocean and was standing with shaking legs on a foreign shore.
Doctor Mead had been almost as delighted as Ambrosia to see me out of the house, and remarked that he would get me to the theatre yet. I teased that it had taken me three years to come to church, so a play would take fifteen, and he laughed. We both knew I would never go, and had not even been with Daniel, who went everywhere and did everything without me. If people felt pity for me, it was because they did not know it was at my design.
I was grateful to hear Agnes at the door with the tea tray. She put everything out, as well as as a little plate of sponge biscuits, then curtsied and left the room. Doctor Mead reached for one.
‘Make sure you save room for Maria’s lamb,’ I told him, and he paused with the biscuit halfway to his lips, looking so much like a chastised boy I could not help but smile. ‘Sponge biscuits were Mother’s favourite,’ I went on. ‘She kept them in a little walnut box on her dressing table. I was allowed to take one each Sunday before bed, when she would comb my hair. Sometimes, when she and Father were out, I would creep into her bedroom and steal one. They were delicious. Maria makes very fine ones, almost the same.’
I realised I had quite forgotten myself, and was staring at Mother’s picture. It was easy to imagine she was listening, for she looked as though she was enraptured by the most engaging tale, with her eyes bright and her lips gently parted in wonder. Doctor Mead cleared his throat and ate the biscuit politely, dabbing at his lips with a napkin.
‘Before we eat,’ he said, ‘I wish to speak to you about a matter quite . . . ah . . . delicate.’
‘Oh?’ I sat up straighter.
‘It regards your daughter.’
‘Charlotte?’
He smiled, and I noticed the tiniest crumb at the edge of his lips, and resisted the urge to brush it away. ‘Have you another?’
I blushed and set my cup on its saucer.
‘Have you considered a nursemaid for her?’
I took a sip of tea. ‘I have not, in truth.’
‘It might be rather beneficial for her. Many households like yours have them now.’
‘But Charlotte is not an infant. She can dress herself and read to herself, and she takes her meals and lessons with me.’
‘They are not just for babies. My sister has one for her three children, the eldest of whom is fifteen. Their nursemaid looks after them, takes them on walks, that kind of thing.’ His expression changed, and his cup slipped from its ring, spilling ever so slightly. ‘Of course walks are not compulsory. She can prepare Charlotte for becoming a young woman. They can read together, sew . . . Whatever it is you fair creatures do to make a home lovely.’
I imagined a stra
nge woman coming into my house and eating my food, sleeping under my roof. Occupying my daughter. For so long it had been Charlotte, Maria, Agnes and me. Another person would change the household irrevocably.
‘Did you not have a nursemaid as a child?’ Doctor Mead asked.
‘No, I did not need one.’
‘You must have been quite lonely.’
‘Not at all. I had my parents, just as Charlotte has me.’
Doctor Mead set his cup gently back on the table. I waited.
‘There is a woman whom I met recently in my work,’ he said. ‘She has not been fortunate in life, and I wish to help her. Unfortunately there is no position in my household for her – as you know, I get on perfectly well with a cook and maid.’
‘And you wish for this woman to become Charlotte’s nursemaid?’
He cast about for his next words. ‘If you were able to find room for her in your household, yes. She has suffered the most unlikely misfortune. I hope it would not offend you if I offered to pay her wage.’
‘That would not be necessary,’ I said, sitting a little straighter, smarting slightly at his implication that I could not afford a third servant. The clock ticked, and from the street below came the sound of a cart unloading boxes or barrels. ‘Has she experience of being a nursemaid?’
‘She has. She worked for a family in London, caring for their two sons.’
‘What part of London?’
‘Spitalfields, she said, so silk weavers, perhaps.’
‘So she has no experience of girls.’ I stared at the dark windows of the house opposite, and saw the delft jug. ‘We don’t have the room.’
Doctor Mead blinked in surprise. ‘In this house?’
‘Agnes and Maria have a room each, and I could not ask them to begin sharing.’
‘My sister’s nursemaid sleeps with the children.’
I rearranged my feet on the carpet and pressed my shoulder blades into the chair. If Charlotte had a nursemaid sleeping in her room, she would be a guard – a protector. The slightest cough, a feverish forehead, all her ailments could be relayed to me. And if there was an intruder . . . well, Charlotte would have somebody with her, to alert the household and take her to safety. With no men in the house, many times at night I’d imagined the tread of footsteps on the stairs, though of course our rooms were all locked. A fifth person would be another mouth to feed, another expense in the accounts book, but another pair of ears to listen, and eyes to see.
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