The Foundling

by Halls, Stacey

  ‘Who are you, then?’

  ‘A friend of Bess’s.’

  ‘Why do I know you?’

  ‘I’m a Glim Jack. A linkboy. So unless you can see in the dark, I doubt you do.’

  ‘You’ve been here before. Standing there, outside. I saw you.’

  He raised a full, dark eyebrow. ‘You don’t miss much.’

  ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘I have a proposition.’

  ‘If it’s money you’re after—’

  ‘It’s not.’ He spoke harshly, and I fell into silence. ‘Please.’ He gestured for me to sit opposite him, and slowly, with trembling legs, I moved across the room to take the chair before him, noting the absurdity of how he treated the house like his own, and me a guest. I was utterly powerless. I let my eyes slide briefly around the room; the poker was in its stand, and a porcelain vase sat on the table beside us. He would move quicker, though.

  He saw me look around, and said: ‘I promise I ain’t gonna pink you.’

  The idea of him picking the window lock and slipping inside. . . It was as though he had seen my nightmares, and come to Devonshire Street to use them against me.

  ‘Listen, Mrs C,’ he said genially, relaxing back in the chair. His fingernails, I noticed, were very dirty, and he smelled of tobacco, like Daniel used to. ‘You have your reasons for wanting the child. I understand. I do. She’s been yours these past years, and you’ve cared for her splendidly. The shine on her! She’s like a fresh conker. And I can see you in her. I have to say, I imagined you different.’ To my mortification, I found myself blushing. ‘And the fact that you spared Bess, and didn’t have her thrown in the clink . . . you have a heart, Mrs C. And a conscience. But that child . . . Bess loves that child. Worships her. She has no reason to live without her.’

  I swallowed as my nose stung, and tears pricked my eyes.

  ‘How is she, the little girl?’ he continued.

  ‘She is unwell. She has a fever. I don’t know where you took her, you and Bess, but she arrived here filthy and shivering, in hysterics that she hasn’t recovered from.’

  ‘That’s because Bess’s brother shopped her.’

  ‘Ned?’

  ‘I have another name for him, myself. Several, actually.’ He examined his nails. ‘I imagine he had a deal with you.’

  It was not a question. I coloured again, and felt embarrassed, then indignant. ‘He came to me the night she was rescued, and said he knew where she would be. I haven’t paid him.’

  ‘And will you?’

  ‘I haven’t decided. I feel no remorse in swindling a crook.’

  There was the trace of a smile. ‘You and I both, Mrs C.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Lyle.’

  ‘Am I expected to believe that? Bess came here under a false name; I see no reason why you wouldn’t too.’

  ‘My name is Lyle Kozak. Well, my real name’s Zoran, but I go by Lyle, see, cos it’s more English. Only my old majke calls me that.’

  ‘And you’re a friend of Bess’s, you say?’

  ‘Bess, Eliza, Ebenezer, whatever she goes by these days. Yeah, I knows her.’

  ‘At least one of us does,’ I said. ‘It’s become quite clear I did not know her at all. Where is she?’

  ‘Lying low. That’s what I’ve come to speak to you about: she wishes the pleasure of your company.’

  I stared at him.

  ‘Now, she knows you don’t go outside, so naturally she hasn’t suggested a Clerkenwell chophouse. Nor does she expect you to invite her in for tea. She will be at the Foundling Chapel today at three o’clock, and hopes most sincerely to see you there.’

  ‘Does she. Well, you can tell her, Mr Kozak, that I shan’t go, and that I am astounded she expects a reconciliation when she has deceived me so. She stole my child, if you remember.’

  ‘She stole her child.’

  ‘As I said, I shan’t go. And if you enter my house again, you will feel the watchman on your back.’

  ‘Ooh, which one? I know ’em all.’ His eyes shone with mirth. He was infuriating – a conversation with him was like a racquet sport.

  ‘You forget I hired a thief-taker. I can commission Mr Bloor again; he has ties with the magistrates.’

  ‘Ha! Captain Queernabs? He couldn’t catch a cold. You might as well have hired a blind beggar. Besides, he didn’t catch her, did he? Her white-livered brother nosed her.’

  ‘Are you telling me they were not in league together?’

  ‘Do you really think she’d give her back, after all the trouble she took to get her?’

  ‘So her brother betrayed her. I’m sure it’s all she deserves.’

  ‘You have left her with nothing. And even with nothing, she is ten times the woman you are.’

  Fear and fury coursed through me. ‘You do not know a single thing about me, Mr Kozak. I can change my mind, you know. One word to the magistrate and I’m sure they will find room in Newgate for a child-snatcher.’

  ‘You might be more careful with your intimidations, Mrs Callard,’ he said quietly, a malevolent sneer on his face now. ‘You gentry morts have no clue. You sit in your drawing rooms and bury your heads in your cushions, cause prison don’t happen to the likes of you. You read about it in the papers, but it’s just a story to you. An idea. I can tell you what it’s really like, though, what it’d really be like for Bess. Well, to start, she has no money, and prisons are businesses, you see. They want to make a profit. You wouldn’t go to an inn and demand supper and a room if you had no money – you’d get off to a bad start with the old bluffer, wouldn’t you? Now, our friend Bess would have to cough up to enter the prison,’ he began counting on his fingers, ‘then there’s bed and board, food and drink, oh, and if you don’t want your chains to rub you raw, they charge you for the pleasure of removing them. She can’t afford none of that, you see, so like the other sad souls in that lice-ridden saltbox, she’d have to eat the rats and mice what she shares her cell with. It’s a death sentence, you see, just a crueller and more undignified one than you get at Tyburn.

  ‘It might not be the vermin what gets her, though,’ he went on, growing genial again, as I listened in horrified silence. ‘I reckon you’re in there a week afore you’re that desperate, and perhaps the sweating sickness will get her first. Or, I don’t know, I doubt those sacks they give ’em to sleep on have been cleaned since the plague, so she might even catch some of that down there and be dead by teatime. And all because,’ he slammed his hand on the table, making me shudder, ‘your husband made a duchess out of her. Now, that don’t seem right, does it? I know he was put to bed with a shovel himself, rest his soul, but it don’t make sense that Charlotte’s made an orphan, if it can be avoided. Do you agree?’

  My voice shook. ‘If only she had come to me in the beginning, and told me who she was . . .’

  Lyle hooted with laughter. ‘You would have handed over the child, would you? “Excuse me, miss, may I trouble you for my daughter back, what you have cared for these past years? Thank you for your generosity, we’ll be going now.” Oh, why didn’t she think of that? If only she’d rapped your brass knocker! You wouldn’t have sent her away; I bet you’d have invited her in for tea and cake and a sit-down!’

  I closed my eyes. ‘I am not a monster. Whatever you think of me, I am not cruel. I would not have turned her away.’

  ‘Turned her away? You wouldn’t even have come to the door.’

  The truth of his words struck me dumb. Then the withdrawing room door opened, startling us both, and Agnes gave a yelp upon seeing us.

  ‘Agnes,’ I said calmly. ‘Mr Kozak is just leaving.’ I turned to him, and said coldly: ‘Good day to you.’

  I remained seated, and after a long look at me, he stood, setting the glass paperweight down gently on the table.

  ‘Three o’clock,’ he said.

  I put on my cloak and took it off again, and went to look at Charlotte, who had refused first her breakfast and the
n the tea Agnes brought in a steaming cup.

  Since she had returned, I only saw Bess in her. There was nothing of Daniel, with his fair hair and light, changeable eyes. She was all Bess. In her manner, too: inquisitive and stubborn, and sly as a fox. She had stuffed that morning’s toast down the side of the bed and moved to Bess’s bed, which had until now been neatly made. She waited for my reaction, but I did not betray it.

  ‘I want my mama,’ she said, upon seeing me, and when I did not respond, she reached for the saucer on the little stool by the bed and flung it at the wall, where it shattered, and cried: ‘I want my mama!’

  I scolded her, and swept up the shards of china with my bare hands, feeling very weary then. Going from the room, locking her inside once more, I felt as though I could curl up on the carpet and sleep for a week. Her fever had broken, but for how long would she be like this? The child was wilful and vexed, and I knew exactly how those two things could mature into something intense and more powerful, remembering the key turning on me at Aunt Cassandra’s in the years after my parents died, when I’d thrown one of my performances, as she’d called them. Now I was the one holding the key. I found it endlessly surprising, how history would repeat itself, despite a person doing everything in their power to make it otherwise.

  Her whole life I had kept Charlotte safe and healthy, away from pain and grief. In knowing only a few people and going nowhere, she would have nothing and no one to miss. I had been patted and preened by my parents, cosseted like a little lap dog. I’d known a dozen servants, and balls, and other children from large houses like ours, and been entirely unequipped for what had happened to me. I’d not wanted to have a child at all, but the one I did have I’d reared to be self-soothing, clever and interested. And despite all that – because of all that – she was acting just like me in the months and years after my parents’ deaths: violent, uncontrollable and full of rage. These feminine vessels we inhabited: why did nobody expect them to contain unfeminine feelings? Why could we, too, not be furious and scornful and entirely altered by grief? Why must we accept the cards we had been dealt?

  I heard the clock chime two in the hall, and attempted to drag myself from the past into the present. But perhaps we never could entirely. Perhaps we were always made up of both, and they fitted perfectly together, like a jagged little heart.

  The chapel was a different place on a weekday. I had not expected to find it open at all, but it was inviting and tranquil, like the first page of a new book, or a freshly drawn bath. I entered through the little vestibule, and, feeling its significance dwarf me, I took a hymn book from the shelf at the side, as if anybody who might be watching from the balcony could be deceived into thinking I had come to worship on a Wednesday afternoon. There was one other person in the chapel, sitting at the far end by the pulpit. The floor had been recently waxed and a great shining distance yawned between us. Daylight flooded in from the top windows, and without the congregation of three or four hundred, I allowed myself to look around, and take in the plaster ceiling rose, delicate as an iced cake, and the ornate wooden balustrades on the balcony. The pews were great wooden laps waiting patiently for bodies, for prayers.

  The other person did not move, and kept their head bowed. Slowly I approached with the hymn book in my gloved hands, my slippers squeaking on the waxed floor. I had walked here, all the way. Up Devonshire Street, right onto Great Ormond Street, passing the late Richard Mead’s house, then left, where a mews, stable yards and allotments marked the edge of London, before it gave way to fields. I had not told anybody where I was going or who I would meet, slipping silently from the house, locking the door behind me, then dropping the key into my pocket.

  Bess looked up before I reached her. She was wearing a plain brown cloak, fastened at the neck, and her head was bare. I noticed her eyes flick briefly behind me, at waist height, before she met my gaze again.

  ‘I thought you wouldn’t come,’ she said.

  ‘Why did you think that?’

  ‘Because . . .’ She lowered her eyes. ‘Because I’m not sure I would, if I was you.’

  ‘You are not me,’ I said, taking the pew behind hers and sitting to her left. She turned her head slightly, but did not look directly at me. A pale pink ribbon tied her hair at her neck.

  We sat still for a moment.

  ‘You didn’t bring no one with you?’ she asked. ‘Doctor Mead?’

  ‘I am alone.’

  I could see her working up to ask what she really wanted to, and waited.

  ‘You haven’t told the magistrate?’ she said finally.

  ‘No. Mr Bloor was a private commissioner, not a law enforcer. If you think there is somebody waiting for you behind the chapel doors, I assure you there is not.’

  She nodded. ‘My brother gave me away. Did you know that? Oh, course you did. I know he came to you. He stole everything from me in the end.’ She picked at a loose thread on her cloak. ‘We was so close growing up. Abe – that’s my pa – he said me and Ned was thick as thieves. Turns out he was one all along.’

  ‘I have not paid him. I won’t. Your friend, Mr Kozak, the linkboy—’

  ‘Lyle?’ Her voice changed, growing warm and fond.

  ‘I’ve never met anyone quite like him. He is very loyal to you.’

  ‘He was impressed with you, you know. He said you was like a tigress.’

  ‘Me?’ I felt a stab of pride.

  She turned then, and placed a white hand on the back of the pew, but still did not meet my eye. ‘How is Charlotte? Lyle said she had a fever.’

  ‘She is resting. Doctor Mead has been attending her. He says she is suffering from shock.’

  We were skirting around the heart of it, the kernel, waiting to see who would seize it first. She lowered her head again, and a twist of chestnut hair slipped from the ribbon to fall down her cheek. The sound of children’s voices outside played through the high windows; in the yards along the drive the Foundling boys had been busy making ropes, surrounded by straw-coloured coils of twine. The girls were nowhere to be seen, most likely busy at their needles in the workrooms.

  ‘I suppose you want to know,’ I said eventually, ‘how I knew about Charlotte?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I heard about her from my sister.’

  She looked sharply at me. ‘I did not know you had a sister.’

  ‘You would have met her, had she not been seeing out the winter in the north. But then, of course, the game would have been up. Usually she is at my house once or twice a week. Her name is Ambrosia. She was the one who saw you at the Foundling that night, and several months before, at a tavern in the city with my husband.’

  I watched her ear turn red. She was still, and then said: ‘I think I remember her. There was a woman looking at me strange that night. I thought it odd, but then I suppose everybody was looking at us strange. She had a blue feather in her hair.’

  ‘That sounds like Ambrosia.’

  Another silence. ‘I want you to know . . .’ she said, after a while. ‘I want you to believe me when I tell you I didn’t know he was married.’

  ‘I believe you.’

  Perhaps she had been expecting more resistance; her shoulders slumped, as though she had breathed out a great sigh.

  ‘I don’t want you to think I was in love with him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because . . . because I wasn’t. I only met him once before. And then afterwards . . .’ She swallowed. ‘After that night I never saw him again.’

  ‘It makes no difference to me,’ I said, realising it was true.

  ‘And how did you find out my name?’

  ‘Ambrosia again. She followed you in her carriage.’

  She made a movement, and I realised it was an involuntary laugh. ‘You’d have thought I’d notice a great big carriage behind me. She must have acted quick to get her the next day.’

  ‘She did. She came to me that night, directly from following you. I didn’t know whether to believe her at f
irst, though I knew Daniel went with women, so I suppose it shouldn’t have come as a shock. But to have her tell me he had a child . . . a living, breathing child . . . When she told me what the token was, I knew it to be true, because I had the other half.’

  Bess smiled then. ‘It’s like Charlotte, isn’t it? Half of me and half of you. That reminds me.’ She began rummaging beneath her cloak and drew something out, closed in her fist. She held it out to me, dropping it into my glove. ‘I wanted you to have this back.’

  It was my half, with the D carved in Daniel’s sloping hand.

  ‘It wasn’t mine to take,’ she said.

  I closed my palm over it and squeezed it tight.

  ‘Mrs Callard—’

  ‘Please, let me speak.’ I said this thickly, feeling the emotion coming, and trying to hold it off. ‘I never wanted to be a mother. I was given a child by Fate, not by God.’

  She was very still, and her dark eyes – Charlotte’s eyes – were very grave.

  ‘I read somewhere that being a good parent means preparing your child to leave you, and go into the world.’ I swallowed, and squeezed the heart, feeling my own squeeze in my chest, and tears sting my eyes. ‘I cannot say I have been a good parent. But I think . . . I think she is ready to leave.’

  Outside the gates, I drew the folded map from my breast pocket. The paper shook in my hands, and I traced my route with a finger, looking ahead at the empty lane. It was a cold, sunny afternoon, with a few clouds scattered here and there, and just as many cows dotted about the fields. Standing in the dusty lane with the green stretching either side was a very strange feeling: I was exposed, and yet anonymous at the same time. I followed the dry stone wall south, passing again the allotments and stable yards, where liveried grooms walked over the cobbles with saddles and brushes, and did not notice me at all. I stood at the point in the road at which my carriage turned right each Sunday, going west. I turned left and walked down a narrow street of small townhouses, where the road was wide enough for a trap but not a carriage, coming out on a wider road by a modest chapel. There were a few people around: capped nursemaids with their charges, and carmen with parcels. A crossing sweeper paused for a moment, leaning against his broom to catch his breath. Nobody paid me any attention as I moved south towards a large green square, planted with young trees. A coach and horses approached from the left, and I shrank against a tree as the wheels thundered past, closing my eyes against them for a second. My map I held tightly in my gloved hand, and I drew it out again to look at it. The houses on the square were like mine, but lined on the first floor with little iron balconies, and had three slim windows on the upper storeys instead of two wide ones. I walked along the path to the south-east corner and crossed the dusty road to better see the numbered doors, finding that the one I needed was green, with a white brick pattern around it. The fan light above the door was two canes, crossed at the centre.