by Kate Morton
‘No,’ Eliza said quickly, gaze darting to Sammy’s face. ‘No, I’m sorry Mrs Swindell. It was insolent of me, you’re right. I . . . I’ll make it up to you. Tomorrow I’ll dust the shop, I’ll scrub the front step, I’ll . . . I’ll . . .’
‘Muck out the water closet shed and rid the attic of rats.’
‘Yes,’ Eliza was nodding. ‘All of it.’
Mrs Swindell stretched the strap out straight before her, a horizon of leather. She glanced beneath her eyelashes, from Eliza to Sammy and back. Finally, she released one side of the strap and hooked it again into place by the door.
A shower of dizzy relief. ‘Thank you, Mrs Swindell.’
Hand shaking a little, Eliza passed the bowl of stew to Sammy and picked up the ladle to serve her own.
‘Stop right there,’ said Mrs Swindell.
Eliza looked up.
‘You,’ said Mrs Swindell, pointing at Sammy. ‘Clean the new bottles and get them set up on the shelf. There’ll be no stew till it’s done.’ She turned to Eliza. ‘And you, girl, get upstairs and out of my sight.’ Her thin lips quivered. ‘You’ll go without tonight. I’ve no intention of feeding a rebellion.’
When she was younger, Eliza had liked to imagine that her father would one day appear and rescue them. After Mother and the Ripper, Father the Brave was Eliza’s best story. Sometimes, when her eye was sore from being pressed against the bricks, she would lie back on the top shelf and imagine her gallant father. She would tell herself that Mother’s account was wrong, that he hadn’t really drowned at sea but had been sent away on an important journey and would someday return to save them from the Swindells.
Though she knew it to be fantasy, no more likely to happen than for fairies and goblins to appear from between the fireplace bricks, the pleasure she took from imagining his return was not dimmed. He would arrive outside the Swindells’ house—on a horse, she always thought. Riding the horse, not in a carriage pulled behind, a black horse with a glistening mane and long, muscular legs. And everyone in the street would stop what they were doing and stare at this man, her father, handsome in his black riding costume. Mrs Swindell, with her miserable pinched face, would peer over the top of her washing line, over the top of the pretty dresses snatched that morning, and she’d call to Mrs Barker to come and see all that was happening. And they would know who this was, that it was Eliza and Sammy’s father, come to rescue them. And he would ride them to the river, where his ship would be waiting, and they’d sail off across the ocean to faraway places with names she’d never heard of.
Sometimes, on the rare occasions when Eliza had been able to convince her to join in telling tales, Mother had spoken of the ocean. For she had seen it with her own eyes, and was thus able to furnish her stories with sounds and smells that were magical to Eliza—crashing waves and salty air, and fine grains of sand, white rather than the slimy black sediment of the river mud. It wasn’t often, though, that Mother joined in at story time. For the most part she disapproved of stories, especially that of Father the Brave. ‘You must learn to know the difference between tales and truth, my Liza,’ she would say. ‘Fairytales have a habit of ending too soon. They never show what happens afterwards, when the prince and princess ride off the page.’
‘But what do you mean, Mother?’ Eliza would ask.
‘What happens to them when they need to find their way in the world, to make money and escape the world’s ills.’
Eliza had never understood. It seemed irrelevant, though she wouldn’t say as much to Mother. They were princes and princesses, they didn’t need to make their way in the world, only as far as their magical castle.
‘You mustn’t wait for someone to rescue you,’ Mother would continue, a faraway look in her eyes. ‘A girl expecting rescue never learns to save herself. Even with the means, she’ll find her courage wanting. Don’t be like that, Eliza. You must find your courage, learn to rescue yourself, never rely on anyone else.’
Alone in the upstairs room, simmering with loathing for Mrs Swindell and anger at her own impotence, Eliza crawled inside the disused fireplace. Carefully, slowly, she reached up as high as she could, felt about with an open hand for the loose brick, pulled it clear. In the small cavity beyond, her fingers grazed the familiar top of the small clay mustard pot, its cool surface and rounded edges. Mindful not to send notice of her actions echoing down the chimney and into Mrs Swindell’s waiting ears, Eliza eased it out.
The pot had been Mother’s and she’d kept it secret for years. Days before her death, in a rare moment of consciousness, Mother had told Eliza of the hidey-hole. She bade her retrieve its contents and Eliza had done so: brought the clay pot to Mother’s bedside, wide-eyed with wonder at the mysterious hidden object.
Suspense tingled in Eliza’s fingertips as she waited for Mother to fumble the pot open. Her movements were clumsy in the last days and the pot’s lid was held tight by a wax stopper. Finally, it cracked apart from the base.
Eliza gasped in amazement. Inside the pot was a brooch, the likes of which would have had Mrs Swindell weeping warm tears down her horrid face. It was the size of a penny, gems lining the decorative outer rim, red and green and shiny, shiny white.
Eliza’s first thought was that the brooch had been stolen. She couldn’t imagine Mother doing such a thing, but how else had she come to possess such glorious treasure? Where could it have come from?
So many questions and yet she couldn’t find her tongue to speak. It wouldn’t have mattered if she had; Mother wasn’t listening. She was gazing at the brooch with an expression Eliza had never seen before.
‘This brooch is precious to me,’ came the tumble of words. ‘Very precious.’ Mother thrust the pot into Eliza’s hands, almost as if she could no longer bear to touch it.
The pot was glazed, smooth and cool beneath her fingers. Eliza didn’t know how to respond. The brooch, Mother’s strange expression . . . it was all so sudden.
‘Do you know what it is, Eliza?’
‘A brooch. I’ve seen them on the fancy ladies.’
Mother smiled weakly and Eliza thought she must have given the wrong answer.
‘Or perhaps a pendant? Come loose from its chain?’
‘You were right the first time. It is a brooch, a special kind of brooch.’ She pressed her hands together. ‘Do you know what it is behind the glass?’
Eliza looked at the pattern of red-gold threads. ‘A tapestry?’
Mother smiled again. ‘In a way it is, though not the sort formed of threads.’
‘But I can see the threads, plaited together to form a rope.’
‘They are strands of hair, Eliza, taken from the women in my family. My grandmother’s, her mother’s before, and so on. It’s a tradition. This is called a mourning brooch.’
‘Because it’s worn only in the morning?’
Mother reached out and stroked the end of Eliza’s plait. ‘Because it reminds us of those we’ve lost. Those who came before and made us who we are.’
Eliza nodded soberly, aware, though she wasn’t sure how, of having received a special confidence.
‘The brooch is worth a lot of money, but I have never been able to bring myself to sell it. I have fallen victim, time and again, to my sentimentality, but that should not stop you.’
‘Mother?’
‘I am not well, my child. Soon it will fall to you to look after Sammy and yourself. It may become necessary to sell the brooch.’
‘Oh no, Mother—’
‘It may become necessary, and it will be your decision to make. Do not let my reluctance guide you, do you hear?’
‘Yes, Mother.’
‘But if you do need to sell it, Eliza, be careful how you do so. It must not be sold officially, there can be no record.’
‘Why not?’
Mother looked at her and Eliza recognised the look. She herself had given it to Sammy many times when deciding how honest to be. ‘Because my family would find out.’ Eliza was silent; Mother’s fam
ily, along with her past, was rarely spoken of. ‘They will have reported it stolen—’
Eliza’s brows shot up.
‘—Erroneously, my child, for it is mine. I was given it by my mother on the occasion of my sixteenth birthday, it was in my family long before that.’
‘But if it’s yours, Mother, why can no one know you have it?’
‘Such a sale would reveal our whereabouts, and that cannot happen.’ She took Eliza’s hands, eyes wide, face pale and weak from the effort of speaking. ‘Do you understand?’
Eliza nodded, she understood. That is, she sort of understood. Mother was worried about the Bad Man, the one she’d been warning them about all their lives. Who could be anywhere, lurking behind corners, waiting to catch them. Eliza had always loved the stories, though Mother never went into sufficient detail to assuage her curiosity. It was left to Eliza to embellish Mother’s warnings, to give the man a glass eye, and a basket of snakes, and a lip that curled when he sneered.
‘Shall I fetch you some medicine, Mother?’
‘Good girl, Eliza, you’re a good girl.’
Eliza placed the clay pot on the bed beside Mother and fetched the little bottle of laudanum. When she returned, Mother reached out to stroke again the strand of long hair that had unravelled from Eliza’s plait. ‘Look after Sammy,’ she said. ‘And take care yourself. Always remember, with a strong enough will, even the weak can wield great power. You must be brave when I . . . if anything should happen to me.’
‘Of course, Mother, but nothing will happen to you.’ Eliza didn’t believe this and neither did Mother. Everybody knew what happened to people who got the consumption.
Mother managed a sip of medicine then leaned back against her pillow, exhausted by the effort. Her red hair spread out beside her, revealing her pale neck with its single scar, the fine slice that never faded and had first inspired Eliza’s tale of Mother’s encounter with the Ripper. Another of the tales she never let Mother hear.
With her eyes still closed, Mother spoke softly, in short, fast sentences: ‘My Eliza, I say this but once. If he finds you and you need to escape, then, and only then, take down the pot. Don’t go to Christie’s, don’t go to any of the big auction houses. They have records. Go around the corner and ask at Mr Baxter’s house. He’ll tell you how to find Mr John Picknick. Mr Picknick will know what to do.’ Her eyelids quivered with the strain of so much speech. ‘Do you understand?’
Eliza nodded.
‘Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Mother, I understand.’
‘Until such time, forget that it exists. Do not touch it, do not show it to Sammy, do not tell a soul. And Eliza?’
‘Yes, Mother?’
‘Always watch for the man of whom I speak.’
And Eliza had been good to her word. For the most part. She’d taken the pot down only twice, and then merely to look. To float her fingers over the top of the brooch, just as Mother had done, to feel its magic, its inestimable power, before sealing the lid quickly and carefully with candle wax, and stowing it back in place.
And though she took it down today, it wasn’t to look at Mother’s mourning brooch. For Eliza had made her own addition to the clay pot. Inside was her own treasure, her own contingency for the future.
She plucked out the little leather pouch and held it tightly in her palm. Drew strength from its solidity. It was a trinket Sammy had found in the street and given her. Some wealthy child’s plaything, dropped and forgotten, found and revived. Eliza had kept it hidden from the first. She knew if the Swindells saw it, their eyes would light up and they’d insist on putting it downstairs in the rag and bottle shop. And Eliza wanted the pouch like she’d never wanted anything before. It had been a gift and it was hers. There weren’t many things she could say that about.
It was some weeks before she finally found a use for it, as a hiding place for her secret coins, the ones the Swindells knew nothing about, paid to her by Matthew Rodin, the rat-catcher. Eliza had a skill for rat-catching, though she didn’t like to do it. The rats were just trying to stay alive after all, best as they could in a city that favoured neither the meek nor the mild. She tried not to think about what Mother would say—she’d always had a soft spot for animals—instead Eliza reminded herself that she didn’t have much choice. If she and Sammy were to stand a chance, they needed coin of their own, secret coin that passed beneath the Swindells’ notice.
Eliza sat on the edge of the hearth, clay pot on her lap, and dusted her sooty hands on the underside of her dress. It wouldn’t do to wipe them where Mrs Swindell could see. No good would come once her suspicious nose was set to twitching.
When Eliza was satisfied her hands were clean, she opened the pouch, loosened the soft silken ribbon and gently widened the opening. Peeked inside.
Rescue yourself, Mother had said, and look after Sammy. And that was just what Eliza intended to do. Inside the pouch there were four threepenny bits. Two more and she’d have enough to buy fifty oranges. That was all they needed to start out as orange-sellers. The coins they made would buy more oranges and then they’d have their own money, their own little business. They’d be free to find a new place to live, where they were safe, without the watchful, vengeful Swindell eyes upon them. The ever-looming threat of being turned over to the Do-Gooders and sent to the workhouse—
Footsteps on the landing.
Eliza pushed the coins back into the pouch, tightened its neck and poked it inside the pot. Heart thumping, she slotted the pot back inside the chimney; it could be sealed later. Just in time, she jumped clear and perched, a model of innocence, on the end of the rickety bed.
The door opened and Sammy appeared, still black with soot. Standing in the doorframe, single candle flickering limply in his hand, he looked so thin Eliza thought it a trick of the light. She smiled at him and he came towards her, reached inside his pocket and retrieved a small potato sneaked from Mrs Swindell’s larder.
‘Sammy!’ Eliza scolded, taking the soft spud. ‘You know she counts them. She’ll figure it was you that took it.’
Sammy shrugged, started rinsing his face in the bowl of water by the bed.
‘Thank you,’ she said, stashing the potato in her mending basket when he wasn’t watching. She’d return it in the morning.
‘It’s getting cold,’ she said, taking her pinafore off so she wore only her underdress. ‘It’s early this year.’ She climbed into bed, shivered beneath the thin grey blanket.
Down to his undershirt and shorts, Sammy hopped in beside her. His feet were freezing and she tried to warm them with her own.
‘Shall I tell you a story?’
She felt his head moving, his hair brushing her cheek as he nodded. And so she launched into her favourite tale: ‘Once upon a time, when the night was cold and dark and the streets were empty, and her twin babies were pushing and squirming inside her belly, a young princess heard footfalls behind her, knew instantly whose wicked tread they were . . .’
She’d been telling it for years, though not when Mother could hear. Mother would have said Eliza was upsetting Sammy with her tall tales. She didn’t understand that children aren’t frightened by stories; that their lives are full of far more frightening things than those contained in fairytales.
Her brother’s shallow breaths had become regular and Eliza knew that he had fallen asleep. She stopped her story and reached to take his hand in hers. It was so cold, so bony, she felt a flutter of panic in her stomach. She tightened her grasp, listening to him breathe. ‘Everything will be all right, Sammy,’ she whispered, thinking of the leather pouch, the money inside. ‘I’ll make sure of it, I promise.’
15
London, 2005
Ben’s daughter Ruby was waiting for Cassandra when she arrived at Heathrow. A plump woman in her late fifties, with a face that glowed and short silver-grey hair that stood to resolute attention. She had an energy that seemed to charge the air around her; the type of person other people noticed. Before C
assandra could express surprise that this stranger was at the airport to greet her, Ruby had seized Cassandra’s suitcase, put a fleshy arm around her, and steered them both out through the glass doors of the airport and into the fume-filled carpark.
Her car was a battered old hatch, its interior suffused with the scent of musk and the chemical approximation of a flower Cassandra couldn’t name. When they were both belted in, Ruby plucked a bag of liquorice allsorts from her handbag and offered them to Cassandra who took a striped cube of brown, white and black.
‘I’m addicted,’ said Ruby, popping a pink one into her mouth and tucking it in her cheek. ‘Seriously addicted. Sometimes I can’t finish the one in my mouth fast enough to move on to the next.’ She chewed fiercely for a moment, then swallowed. ‘Ah well. Life’s too short for moderation, wouldn’t you say?’
Despite the late hour the roads were alive with cars. They sped along the night-time motorway, bow-necked street lamps casting orange glows onto the bitumen below. While Ruby drove quickly, making sharp jabs at the brake only when absolutely necessary, gesticulating and shaking her head at other drivers who dared get in her way, Cassandra stared out the window, mentally tracing the concentric rings of London’s architectural movements. She liked to think of cities that way. A drive from edge to centre was like taking a time capsule into the past. The modern airport hotels and wide, smooth arterial roads morphed into pebble-dashed houses, then mansion blocks, then, finally, the dark heart of Victorian terraces.
As they drew closer to the centre of London, Cassandra figured she should tell Ruby the name of the hotel she’d booked for the two nights before she left for Cornwall. She fossicked in her bag for the plastic folder in which she was keeping her travel documents. ‘Ruby,’ she said, ‘are we near Holborn?’
‘Holborn? No. Other side of town. Why?’
‘That’s where my hotel is. I can catch a taxi, of course, I don’t expect you to drive me all the way.’
Ruby looked at her just long enough for Cassandra to worry that no one’s eyes were on the road. ‘Hotel? I don’t think so.’ She changed gear, braked just in time to avoid collision with a blue van in front. ‘You’re staying with me, I won’t hear otherwise.’