When dinnertime arrived I took my usual seat at the table, between the soup tureen and a dish of boiled ham. The shutters and curtains were closed to keep out the cold. Eliza and Charlotte came in, and I sat a little straighter and smoothed my napkin. I had not dined with a relative stranger in a long time. I noticed Eliza had changed into a plain green dress that showed her forearms, and she saw me looking, and I turned my gaze to the glazed ham. Neither of us spoke, and Charlotte took her usual seat opposite mine, but Eliza did not move from the end of the table.
‘Are other people coming?’ she asked cheerfully.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘All this food . . . is this for us?’
‘Yes, it is for us,’ I said. ‘And I would like to eat it while it’s warm, if you would be so kind as to take a seat.’ I felt myself colour. The insolence of her, suggesting I ran a wasteful house! This was a modest spread, far less than the groaning tables I’d seen framed in windows on the same street. Hot with irritation, I ladled soup into each of our bowls. Charlotte kept her gaze on her plate, and I noticed her ears were red. Eliza’s dark eyes continued to travel over the table.
‘Tell me, Eliza,’ I said, ‘how does your father earn a living?’
She watched me select the soup spoon and found hers at her elbow. ‘He’s a lighterman, madam.’
‘A man of the Thames. Which dock?’
‘The Pool of London.’
‘What cargo?’
‘Anything he can get. But mainly tobacco.’
I took a sip of celery soup. ‘So the shipments come from the Americas?’
Eliza stared at me. ‘You know about trade, madam?’
‘My late husband was in seafaring.’
She looked down at her soup. ‘Which trade?’
‘Whalebone. He was a merchant.’
The silence was broken by the gentle clink of soup spoons against porcelain.
‘When did he die if you don’t mind me asking?’
I glanced at Charlotte. We rarely discussed her father, and she had no curiosity about him, having never met him.
‘He died before Charlotte was born.’
‘How?’ It came so softly, like a little gasp. But her dark eyes were burning at me across the table with such fervour I was disarmed. I wiped my mouth with my napkin.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You must think me rude.’
‘I don’t.’ I thought aloud. ‘It is a reasonable question, is it not? Death befalls every one of us, after all. It’s just nobody has asked me about Mr Callard in years.’ His name felt odd in my mouth, and in the room, in which he had sat countless times, in the seat Charlotte now occupied. It was no different – the same eggshell blue walls, the same walnut table and chairs – yet somehow it was utterly changed.
It had been a Saturday morning in April, and at breakfast he’d closed his eyes and put his head in his hands. I expected he’d drunk too much the night before, and poured him more coffee, and spread marmalade on his toast. It was not an unfamiliar sight, and I was not worried, so once I’d finished eating I took my newspaper to the parlour. I remember the advertisement I’d been reading – for gingerbread, at a bakery in Cornhill – when I heard Agnes’s shriek, and her calling me. I had thought she’d seen a mouse.
Daniel was collapsed, half on the floor, half on his chair, with his head in his hands, moaning in agony. Agnes, Maria and I lifted him and carried him with difficulty to the stairs, where he vomited on the first landing. By the third floor he was slick with sweat, and we pulled off his jacket to find his shirt beneath soaked with it. Outside our room, his eyes rolled into his head, and his limbs jerked noiselessly in little shivering movements. By the time we heaved him onto the bed, it was clear he was going to die. There were hours I do not remember, but the day turned to night, and my legs were numb from kneeling. Doctor Mead was away studying abroad, so a different doctor was brought – one Daniel and I were not acquainted with, and who did not treat him with the familiar care we’d come to know from our friend. He asked me if Daniel had been suffering from headaches. I thought of the three or four times that year when the pains in his head had been so terrible they’d kept him in bed all day, but usually by evening he was recovered, sitting upright and eating supper from a tray. Perhaps a small part of me wondered if something was wrong, but I did not allow it to take shape in my mind, closing the door on it and retreating with my newspaper, telling myself it was the drink. I had not – could not – allow myself to imagine losing somebody again, and wrongly thought that by taking a younger husband I would be spared from it for years, decades, even. I should have remembered that death as well as life was attracted to youth and beauty.
‘The doctor said it was his brain,’ I told Eliza. ‘He complained of a headache at breakfast and died the same night.’
She and Charlotte were both staring at me, grave and attentive. I picked up my spoon and began to eat, but I’d brought death into the room, and now it lingered like cigar smoke. Its presence had remained in our house a long time after Daniel, and sometimes I still went to Charlotte at night to check she was breathing. It had been twice an hour when she was a baby, even with the wet nurse slumped and snoring in the corner. I sought out the soft snuffle from her tiny nose, and touched her silky skin to check she was warm. She was not wary of me in her sleep, and her peace soothed me and made me feel all was safe, for now. Then she began to move herself, crawling and walking and rolling. There were stairs to fall down, fires to burn, small objects to swallow: coal, thimbles, candle stubs. I had them all guarded or set up high, out of reach of plump, sticky fingers. If I could have tied cushions to every surface and rounded every corner, I would.
‘Tell me, Eliza,’ I said, ‘were your previous charges frequently struck down by illness?’
‘No,’ was her reply. ‘They were solid little boys. I suppose they had the sniffles now and again, but they never had the pox or nothing.’
Solid. Did Charlotte seem solid, with her paper-white skin and tiny frame? She did not have a large appetite, or the pink cheeks and fat legs of the children I saw in the street.
‘Did you take them outside often?’
‘They were always outside, madam. I could never get them in.’
‘And they caught no diseases?’
‘No, madam.’
‘Not whooping cough, or chilblains?’
‘Not once.’
‘Two young children out on the streets of London with cesspits and rats and animal carcasses heaped in the street. You were not concerned for their health?’
‘No, madam.’ Her voice was small.
I sighed and heaped apple sauce onto my plate, though I’d lost my appetite. ‘That seems rather careless to me.’
We ate in silence, and I had thought the conversation finished, but it seemed Eliza had only been thinking of her response. ‘Many people have to go outside, madam,’ she said, through a mouthful of potato, swallowing with relish. ‘Children don’t always, that much is true, unless they work. But plenty of people live long lives who are outside all day. My brother’s a crossing sweeper.’ She took another great mouthful. ‘If anyone was going to drop down dead from disease, it’d be him, and he’s never had so much as a measle in his life.’
A crossing sweeper! And a father who rowed tobacco for a living. I regretted not asking Doctor Mead more about Eliza’s family, having mindlessly assumed nursemaids were the comfortable daughters of shopkeepers and counting-house clerks. I should have known from her city accent, which chimed of narrow tenements and five to a bed, and there had been that odd smell about her. I’d have Agnes air her clothes tomorrow and I’d speak to Doctor Mead, and tell him – what, exactly? That I was disappointed with Eliza’s family? That he had brought me a common Cockney girl, and no matter how fond Charlotte was of her, she would learn nothing from Eliza of manners or refinement? I could imagine his expression, alert and helpful, and how I would sound: like a dreadful snob. I finished eating, dabbed my mouth, pushed my c
hair from the table, then left without saying a word.
Agnes was lighting the lamps in my parlour, so I went to the withdrawing room to look out. The street was dark, and a linkboy was directing a sedan chair to one of the houses opposite. Its occupant crawled out and paid the men. The linkboy pocketed the coin and put out his torch, and the three of them were swallowed by the night. I shivered and drew the curtains, and went to sit in my chair.
‘I wonder if I have made a mistake,’ I told my parents after a long silence. I could not see their faces. It was cold, with no fires lit, and the idea of moving to the warmth and light of the parlour was inviting but felt like a great effort, and I was full from the food, and tired, so allowed my eyes to close for a moment.
There was a small noise at the door, and very slowly I heard it open against the carpet. A lit candle appeared, throwing its warm glow over its holder: a round face, with plump cheeks and dark eyes. It was Eliza. I sat very still in the shadows, and waited. She closed the door quietly behind her, and I watched the flame travel to the end of the room furthest from the door. Her steps were tentative, her tread on the carpet silent. I moved my head very slightly and watched as she held the light up to the walls, as though searching for something. She walked the length of the room, behind my chair and all the way around, coming to a halt in front of me before the fireplace. As though at a fork in the road, she looked left at my father’s picture, and right at my mother’s, and decided to visit my father first, taking small, timid steps with the candle held aloft, and stopping a foot or two in front of him. Examining him with her head on one side, the lines of her shoulders dropped, as if she was disappointed. She stayed there for a moment or two, and both of us stared at him in the flickering light: his solemn brow, and kind eyes. Then she moved to my mother, illuminating parts of her – rosebud lips, golden curls – then letting them fall into shadow. She sighed, and the flame lowered, sending the weak light over the bureau positioned beneath Mother’s picture, and coming to rest at her waist. That was when I decided to speak.
‘The artist got everything right except for the colour of her eyes, which were hazel, not blue.’
Eliza jumped out of her skin, letting out a girlish squeal that pierced the velvety peace of the room. She dropped the candle and it thudded dully to the floor and went out. I leaned over to retrieve it from where it had rolled towards my skirts just as the door flung open, revealing Agnes’s frame silhouetted against the landing.
‘Madam? Is that you?’ she asked.
‘Agnes, we will be needing a candle or two,’ I said. ‘Eliza’s sadly went out. And the wax will have dried into the carpet; I’m not sure what you use for that but I do hope it will come out.’
She looked blindly into the darkness, then nodded and descended the stairs. I heard Eliza’s breathing – shallow and gasping – and could almost hear her heart thumping against her chest.
‘Madam,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you was there.’
‘I go wherever I choose to in my house. You, however, may not. Before you leave, which you will imminently, and without a reference, do you wish to tell me why you were creeping around my withdrawing room in the dark?’
She was silent. Agnes reappeared with two lit candles, and her pupils were large and curious, roving from Eliza to me.
‘Thank you, Agnes. I shall take them.’
She put them both into my hands and closed the door. I stood and handed one to Eliza, holding the other up towards my mother’s picture.
‘This is my mother, Marianne. She was twenty-four when this was painted – my father commissioned it as a wedding present. She believed the background too dark and miserable; she would have liked clouds and blue skies, but instead got storm clouds and shadowy trees. Quite prophetic, as it transpired. It was as though the artist knew what was to come.’
Eliza was staring at me, open-mouthed, her black eyes shining.
‘And my father, Patrick.’ I moved towards his picture in the left alcove, and she followed, dumb as a lamb. ‘Handsome, is he not? He was born in Barbados. Can you imagine such a place? He would tell me of it when I was a girl: the palm trees, and the warm winds, and the sun that blistered your skin if you stayed too long in it. He said the sea was bluer than anything you could imagine, bluer even than the sky, or a sapphire. He never could get warm in England. He wore a bed jacket under all his clothes.’ I moved back towards my chair, taking my pool of light with me. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘you may tell me what you were doing tiptoeing about, or Doctor Mead, for I will send a note to have him attend in the first instance. If you shan’t tell either of us, the night watchman will be passing soon, on his rounds. Whatever, it is your choice, but I will know.’
The girl was quite rigid with fear; even her flame jerked anxiously, as though held too tight. ‘Madam,’ she said, ever so quietly. ‘I was doing no harm, I promise you that. Only what you said at the dinner table earlier, about your husband dying . . . I wondered if there was a likeness of him somewhere in the house.’
‘And why,’ I asked, ‘might you want to see a likeness of my husband?’
‘Only because he sounded so tragic, madam, if you don’t mind my saying so. I wished to see him more clearly, in my mind. I am sorry if that was wrong of me.’
I considered. ‘Impertinent, perhaps. Bold, certainly. Do I wish to have a bold nursemaid in my house, Eliza? Would you?’
She opened and closed her mouth.
‘I do not,’ I said. ‘Nor do I wish to inspire such qualities in my daughter. Curiosity is a different matter, but not when it is improper.’
‘Oh, she is very curious,’ said Eliza, and there was a change in her voice. ‘She’s asked me all sorts already, about myself and London and . . . everything, really.’
I watched her steadily. Her face was lit from within as well as without, by something other than the naked flame.
‘Has she?’ I asked. ‘And what do you tell her?’
She lifted a shoulder. ‘This and that. Earlier I told her about the menageries on the Strand. Have you been? No, of course not. Sorry. There’s a house with an elephant in it. And at one of the inns there’s two camels in the stable.’
‘Camels at an inn? Are we in London or Bethlehem?’
She laughed, and immediately covered her mouth. ‘Wallis and Winifred, I think they are called. They stink to high Heaven. And they spit. You don’t want to go in twenty yards of ’em.’
‘What else is there?’ I asked.
‘There’s a very odd creature. I forget its name. It looks like an elephant, but with short legs. And it has a big horn on its face, made of bone.’
‘You are teasing now.’
‘I ain’t, I swear it! I saw it myself. Me and my friend went. They said it was from Africa so she wanted to go.’
‘Africa, here in London,’ I said. Even the word sounded rich and exotic. ‘I suppose they have different creatures there.’
‘You can pay sixpence and go and see the elephant. It’s up a narrow flight of stairs, in a room overlooking the street, and it barely fits, the poor devil. Its feet are in chains, and its neck, but it’s only the floorboards and the ceiling keeping it there, and I don’t fancy their chances. They’ll splinter like coals, I said. It looks like it could crush three men and their barrows with one swipe of its trunk. I didn’t go too near, myself. My friend, she knew the man on the door so we got in for thruppence each. He said we could go up again if it was quiet, but we didn’t want to. Once I’d seen its eyes, I didn’t want to see no more. I felt like I could see its soul. I didn’t like looking at it.’
‘Why not?’
‘It was . . . sad. I know it’s an animal and it can’t have feelings, but as I know my own name I know that creature was lonely. It weren’t where it was meant to be.’
We stood in silence for a moment as I tried to picture the leathery beast I’d seen only in engravings.
‘Charlotte loves animals, don’t she?’ Eliza said.
‘Yes.’ I sighed. ‘Sh
e has spoiled the kitchen cat, and made it fat, so now it’s good for nothing but lying by the stove. She has a budgerigar, and a tortoise. I won’t get her a dog – I cannot bear the noise, or the hair, and the mess they make . . . no.’ Forgetting myself, I shook my head and stood. ‘I will write to Doctor Mead, and you will go and pack your things. You may tell Charlotte in the morning. Is she readying herself for bed?’
Eliza had the grace to look contrite. ‘Yes, madam,’ she said, without moving. We stood looking at one another, and I felt that she had several things to say but could not say them. I felt relief that I had a reason to release her, one that was not simply my own prejudice.
‘Stay tonight, as it’s dark now,’ I said. ‘But you will leave before breakfast.’ I opened the door for her, and followed her into the quiet house.
CHAPTER 11
An hour later, I was sitting in the fiery warmth of my parlour when Agnes announced Doctor Mead and admitted him, and the sight of my friend made me sit up with astonishment. His face was ghastly, his eyes dark, with violet smears beneath them.
‘Doctor Mead,’ I said, going to him at once. ‘Whatever’s the matter?’
He said thickly: ‘My grandfather has died.’
We stood facing one another in the little room. I had a fleeting impulse to embrace him, quick and crackling as an ember sparking, and then it disappeared. I settled with placing a hand on his coat sleeve, which was damp.
‘Agnes has not taken your coat,’ I said. ‘Here, let me do it for you. I will send for some brandy. Or would you prefer port? Or claret?’
He was at a loss for words, and clearly heart-struck. I helped him off with his coat and went down to the study, where the best liquor was kept in a locked cabinet, deciding on impulse to dust off one of the more expensive brandy bottles sent by my brother-in-law one Christmas. I had been waiting for the right moment to open it. In less than a minute I was back with Doctor Mead in the warm, low light of the parlour with two crystal glasses, unplugging the bottle and pouring with haste.
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