‘I dunno, madam,’ Eliza said. ‘He knows I live here now, so I expected he wanted to see how I was coming along.’
‘He is not welcome at Devonshire Street again.’
Eliza nodded, but looked troubled for the rest of the day. Each time I looked at her I wondered if the man really was her brother, enquiring of his sister’s welfare, or if his visit had had a different purpose altogether.
Eliza Smith was a puzzle to me, and I had never been one for games.
That night I lay awake with the bedcurtains and curtains open, looking at the moon. Its misty face hung above the backs of the houses in Gloucester Street opposite, shining through powdery clouds. I had sat up late writing to Ambrosia, who had reached the north-east safely and found a house to rent on the outskirts of Durham, belonging to a duke who wintered on the continent. There were several acres, she wrote, and a stable block full of horses, and they went riding together, when the children were not running about like puppies getting perfectly filthy. Knowing she had arrived safely, I felt a loosening – my jaw, I realised, had been clenched for a fortnight, and I pushed my fingers into it, kneading away the tension, and poured myself a glass of brandy from the decanter beneath the window to celebrate her safe arrival.
The clock in the hallway distantly chimed midnight. My throat burned from the drink, and my stomach was empty. I wanted some bread and cheese, and decided to make my way downstairs, my stockinged feet soundless on the carpets. In the basement there was a chink of light around the kitchen door, and low voices, and I pushed it open to find Eliza and Agnes at the kitchen table. Eliza had her back to the range, and Agnes sat facing the door. They had the solemn, furtive look of men at a card game, and if they were startled to see me they did not show it, nor I them. I pulled my bed jacket tighter around me, though the kitchen was still warm, with dying embers in the range.
‘Madam,’ said Agnes. ‘We thought you was a spook.’
‘I thought there might be some bread and cheese left over from supper.’
Agnes got up, busying herself in the larder. Eliza would not look at me, examining her nails and rubbing at knife marks on the table.
‘I hope you shall not be tired in the morning,’ I said.
‘No, madam,’ she said softly.
I had interrupted some private exchange, most likely about myself.
Agnes set a small glass of milk in front of me and unwrapped the cheese from its cloth. I stood waiting for Eliza to leave, but she did not.
‘I heard Charlotte stirring on my way down,’ I said.
Without looking at me, she peeled herself from the table and padded quietly from the room.
‘What were you and Eliza discussing?’ I asked Agnes.
She arranged a heel of bread and some cheese on a plate. In the light from the single flame, the lines on her face looked deeper. ‘This and that. Time ran away with us.’ She yawned. ‘I should be going up.’
I checked the back door, and Agnes closed the shutters and took the candle, and we made our wordless pilgrimage to bed.
CHAPTER 12
‘Agnes, there is a Negro outside my house.’
A young woman in a sable-coloured skirt and black jacket was standing outside the dining room window, looking up and down the street as though waiting for somebody. Her hair was tucked into a mob cap and she was quite composed. I wondered if she belonged to one of the larger houses on the square, but there was something about her air and the way she dressed that made her seem like her own woman, belonging to no one. I had read about the blackamoor population of London, who lived mainly in the east around the rookeries of Moorgate and Cripplegate, and who had never been slaves at all. The children of freed men and women, they kept their own trades and lived in lodging houses like the rest of working London. My father had been raised on a sugar plantation in Barbados, and I wondered what he would make of this woman, who appeared as ordinary and unremarkable as any English person.
Agnes, who had been clearing the breakfast things, stopped piling porcelain onto her tray and joined me at the window. ‘Well, I never,’ she said. ‘She looks as though she hasn’t a care in the world.’
‘Where do you think she is from?’ I asked.
‘I’ll be off, Agnes,’ came Eliza’s voice at the doorway. It was Sunday, and Eliza’s first half-day since she’d joined the household. She had said she would not join us at the chapel, if it was agreeable to me, so that she might visit her family. Charlotte’s face had fallen dramatically, as though she could not bear to be left with me, and it had put me in a sour mood. I imagined Eliza stepping out into the clear morning with her basket on her arm, weaving through Bloomsbury, where the handsome houses and green squares would eventually give way to crumbling tenements and alleys so narrow you could stand at a window and shake the hand of the person in the one opposite. I tried to imagine her home, one or two rooms, simply furnished, with her father and red-headed brother sitting at a table eating a roasted bird with their fingers. I wondered if she should bake her clothes when she returned: the city was where the plague had spread, among other diseases.
She noticed me with Agnes and came over. ‘What you looking at?’
‘She is quite well-dressed,’ I observed.
‘I’ll tell her to move on,’ Eliza said quickly. ‘I’m leaving now, anyway.’
Charlotte was waiting for her in the hall, and when her nursemaid embraced her, she clung to her skirts like a barnacle. I watched as she pulled at Eliza’s sleeve, and Eliza leaned down to listen as the child put her lips to her ear.
‘Yes, of course I’m coming back,’ she said. ‘I’ll be here before dinner to wash your hands. All right?’
But the child’s frown did not smooth, and her mouth was set in a worried line. Eliza had shown her how to sleep with her hair in rags so it tumbled into curls, and this morning she had decorated them with ribbons.
‘Charlotte, leave your nursemaid at once and fetch your hat for church. The carriage will be here any moment.’
Agnes rattled off with the tray, and when she had gone I heard Eliza and Charlotte’s hushed voices in the hall.
‘Don’t be sad,’ Eliza was saying. ‘You’re going to church with Mama, and you’ll come back and feed your budgie and your tortoise and tidy your things away, and then I’ll be back before it’s dark.’
‘What time?’
‘Three o’clock.’
‘Where are you going?’ Charlotte whimpered, sounding as though she’d buried her face in Eliza’s front.
‘I’m meeting my friend, and we’re going to walk about for a bit, and when we’re so cold we can’t feel our hands, we’re going to find a nice warm chophouse for something to eat. And then I’ll go to my brother’s house and see my niece and nephew, then I’ll call on my old man, and then I’ll come back!’
‘You won’t get lost?’
She laughed. ‘No, I won’t get lost. I best go.’
But Charlotte began weeping. Her quiet little sobs floated into the dining room, where I stood clutching the hard-backed chair. ‘Please don’t,’ she said.
I went to the door. ‘Stop weeping at once,’ I commanded. ‘Eliza is entitled to her half-day, and you have managed without her these six years.’
Charlotte pulled away from Eliza’s stomach and regarded me with pure contempt. Her hot, dark eyes burned, and her face was scrunched into a scowl. ‘I want to go with her.’
‘You will do no such thing.’
‘I want to!’ She stamped her foot on the floor, making me exclaim.
I gripped her wrist and shook her. ‘Oh, you insolent child. Go to your room at once. You will not come to church with me, nor will you play in the yard this week. Go!’
She fixed me with a most vicious stare, then turned on her heel and fled, leaving me with Eliza. The nursemaid glanced at the stairs where Charlotte had disappeared and, after a moment, said: ‘Shall I stay, madam?’
‘No.’
She swallowed. ‘Will you still go to church?�
�
‘My attendance is expected.’
‘You’ll leave her here alone?’
‘She will not be alone, with the cook and the maid. You may lock her in her bedroom, and then you may go. The key is kept on the mantelpiece in my bedroom, in the pink vase. I shall let you explain to the child why she is being punished, if she does not understand already. When I return from church I will expect her bedroom to be locked, and the key returned to its rightful place. Is that understood?’
She nodded, looking at her feet. I returned to the dining room to watch for the carriage, and saw the Negro woman still standing there, looking patiently up and down. A few minutes later I heard the street door close beneath the dining room window, and Eliza came up the steps and opened the black gate. I could not see her face. She spoke briefly to the woman, who smiled pleasantly when she saw Eliza, but the smile faded when Eliza spoke, and she nodded, and moved on up the road. Eliza watched her go, and pulled her cloak tighter around her. She glanced back at the house, catching my eye and looking instantly away, then walked south, towards the city. She had only just disappeared from view when the black carriage rolled up, the horses’ breath pluming in misty fronds in the cold morning. I was always anxious about venturing outside, and now I stood for a full minute at the front door, my nerves jangling like marbles in a bag. They were set off so easily; perhaps it was Charlotte’s retaliation; perhaps that Eliza was leaving Charlotte and me alone for the first time in almost a month. Perhaps it was the effortless way she left the house, walking purposefully off into the great, teeming city. Or perhaps it was the way my child loved her nursemaid more than me.
‘Madam,’ came Agnes’s voice. ‘Henry is arrived with the coach.’
She saw me off at the door with a gentle push, and rubbed the tops of my arms as the chill flowed in. Henry helped me into the coach, and we trundled through the streets, turning right into Great Ormond Street, where the late Doctor Mead had lived, directing my thoughts once again to his grandson. The funeral had been and gone and I had not been there to support my friend, but I thought of him all day, and imagined how it would be to smile up at him from a pew, and have him find strength in my presence.
‘No pretty daughter today, Mrs Callard?’ said an older woman at the chapel, as we were handed our hymn books by a well-dressed Foundling boy. I recognised her as Mrs Cox, the wife of a Whig member. She was wearing cornflower blue and maize gold silk, and her grey wig sat higher than most. I shook my head and and tried to move on.
‘Might you be visiting Richard Mead’s house after the service? The auction begins today.’
‘Auction?’
‘Of the late doctor’s estate. There are thousands of items for sale: paintings, artefacts, books. Some of them quite rare. Did you not read about it in the newssheets? It has been widely reported in our circles.’ She placed an emphasis on ‘our’, which served to exclude me, a mere merchant’s widow.
I was at a loss for words. An auction meant the old man had died in debt, but Doctor Mead had given no such indication. ‘I must go home after the service,’ I said.
‘All of London will be clamouring to get its hands on his Rembrandts and Hogarths. I heard there are even first editions of Shakespeare.’
‘Good day, Mrs Cox.’
After the service I went directly to Doctor Mead, who was beside his usual pew, flanked by hangers-on, whom I longed to scatter like a cloud of flies. A full five minutes passed before the final well-wishers bade him farewell with a lift of their hats.
‘Mrs Callard,’ he said, with a smile, taking my gloved hands in his.
‘How was the funeral?’
‘Magnificent.’
‘Only you could say such a thing. Befitting of Richard, then.’
‘Thank you, it was. No Charlotte today?’
‘She is tired this morning. I let her rest. What is this talk of an auction?’
His expression changed at once. He shook his head. ‘Grandfather left the world with little more than he arrived with.’
I frowned. ‘How little?’
‘He left a large amount of bills unpaid. A large amount of large bills. And, as you know, he departed this life with no time to set his affairs in order, so you can imagine there was quite a swarm.’
‘A shock, I’m sure, but I hope not a disastrous one?’
‘Disaster can be avoided if we sell everything.’
‘Everything?’
‘I must go. I’m sorry. The exhibition at his house starts now. I won’t ask if you can come.’ He spoke kindly, but his words stung all the same. ‘I shall call at Devonshire Street when I can.’
A short woman in a blue bonnet passed and placed a hand on his arm, bidding him good day.
‘I wish to buy something,’ I said abruptly. ‘In the auction.’
He blinked in surprise. ‘You do?’
‘Yes. Your favourite item of his. Buy it for yourself, from me. As a gift. Whatever the price.’
He opened and closed his mouth. ‘That is very generous, but, I assure you, not necessary.’
‘It is quite necessary to me. Your grandfather was a generous man, and we must do the same by him.’
‘Doctor Mead!’ came a voice. We were interrupted yet again by two men in elaborate wigs, who passed their hands for the doctor to shake. ‘Let us accompany you to Great Ormond Street.’
‘We shouldn’t want to miss a thing,’ the other said, and before I could say goodbye they were carrying him off, clutching one sleeve apiece. He made a helpless face and waved goodbye, and I waved back, and felt my joy draining.
In the carriage on the way home I lifted the curtain at the corner of Great Ormond Street to see it thronged with revellers, as though some country fair was taking place. The door to Richard Mead’s house stood open to the street and a ribbon of bonnets and tricorn hats trailed down the road, with passers-by stopping to enquire and broughams slowing to a standstill.
‘Vermin,’ I muttered, to no one in particular, and dropped the curtain, returning to darkness.
As soon as I arrived home I went straight to the bureau in my bedroom. As instructed, Eliza had replaced the key to Charlotte’s door in the pink vase on the mantelpiece, and I pocketed it, took out my private box, finding what I wanted and holding it in my palm. I went down to Charlotte’s room, and unfastened the lock. She was sitting quite still on her narrow bed, not looking out at the street or playing with her toys or doing any of the other things she did usually to occupy herself. She looked up hopefully, and found my face, and hers fell in response.
Oh, it said. You are not Eliza.
‘Do you now regret your earlier behaviour?’ I asked.
‘Yes, Mama,’ she said in a small voice.
‘You were asked for at church today, by Doctor Mead and Mrs Cox. I had to tell them you had misbehaved.’
She looked glumly at her lap, and I felt a twinge of remorse. How was it that the love for a child was the most complex of all? How could one feel envy, grief and rejection at the same time as simple, uncluttered affection? How was it that I could barely touch her, yet would know her smell blindfolded, and could draw every freckle on her face?
I went to stand before her, and she raised her head expectantly, her little chin jutting out in defiance. Her hair was loose over her shoulders, and she was still wearing her outdoor boots. If I knelt to take them off, would she think me soft, and changed? I decided instead to sit next to her, and felt the little bed creak beneath me.
‘Look at this,’ I said, taking out Daniel’s memento mori from my pocket and holding it flat on my palm.
‘What is it?’ She took it from me, and it filled almost her whole hand.
‘I commissioned it when your father died.’
She gazed at the woman collapsed against the plinth in her theatrical display of grief. ‘Is that you?’ she breathed.
‘Heavens, no. It is symbolic. This is your father’s hair.’ I indicated the painted strands moulded to the ivory, and she traced the
m with her fingertip.
‘Do you wear it?’
‘Not any more. I keep it safe in my bedroom. You’ll have it one day.’
‘When is Eliza back?’ she asked.
Our moment was over before it had even begun. I closed my fingers and stood. ‘Take off your boots and tidy your toys. Eliza will return soon.’
I suppose I had entertained the notion that she might not return. I entertained it every time Agnes and Maria took their monthly leave, too. London lay outside like an open jaw, ready to swallow whomever chose to disappear, and servants who were paid far more than mine left houses far grander. The idea of it unnerved me. It was why I kept the house warm, the bed sheets clean, the larder full: to atone for my odd behaviours, my stony countenance. I’d set in my mould for too long to change, so instead I ordered wax candles for their bedrooms and bought them presents for their birthdays: boxes of sugared almonds and bolts of calico. No servants loved their masters and mistresses; that was the stuff of sentimental ballads and children’s stories. But both my servants were allowed to use their voices, had some degree of authority, and had stayed loyal more than a decade. Trust was imperative, of course, and was earned, not demanded. Most other households had men at the head of them and litters of dimpled children to clean and feed and pet, but there was something neat about a house of women, and, I hoped, safe. Providing a safe place to live was my mission, my purpose, at the centre of my very existence.
But return Eliza did, with rosy cheeks and the smells of the city clinging to her: cold air, straw, manure and the tobaccoey fug of eating houses. She came through the street door, and before she could even place a hand on the gate Charlotte had come stampeding down the stairs to greet her, taking the corners like a whippet and colliding with Eliza’s skirts in a heap in front of the range. The pair of them burst out laughing and embraced in such a dramatic display of affection I half expected a stage curtain to close over them. I had been in the kitchen asking Agnes to place an order for a mourning brooch for Doctor Mead, to help lift his heartache. I had drawn the design myself in my parlour, and pushed it over the table to Agnes with as much dignity as I could muster, though my neck was warm.
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