by Vanessa Tait
‘Sorry tay get you all the way up here,’ Lionel said.
‘I’m sorrier for you,’ said Jenny, watching Lionel go to a patch of grass and rub mud from the tip of his shoe.
‘No bother!’ he said, smiling. ‘The view is grand, though.’
‘Yes,’ said Jenny. ‘It is! I have never been up here before.’ Her face still pointed towards the view but her mind was to him: his cheek, the side of his cap. The wind blew the smell of him towards her, sweeter than grass.
‘Aye, a grand view,’ said Lionel again. A kestrel circled overhead. ‘Have you … are you …? I mean to say, have you been bothered again?’
‘By Mr Badcock, you mean?’ Jenny shook her head, with her eyes on the view. ‘If he is at the house I keep to the kitchen. He cannot get me there. He hasn’t threatened your job?’
‘Mr Badcock takes no notice of me. He struts around the pharmacy and winks at the ladies and I am there, behind the counter, hating him, and thinking of you.’
‘You did enough, Lionel, I’m sure.’ Jenny turned and at the same moment Lionel turned and their hands touched behind their gloves. Jenny smiled and breathed out in a half-laugh. ‘How windy it is up here. It is blowing my thoughts clean from my brain, I swear!’
‘But how fetching you look in it,’ said Lionel. ‘It is putting the colour back into your face.’
‘Aye, that’ll be the broken veins,’ said Jenny. Then her smile fell away again and she looked grave. ‘You said to tell you if I noticed anything strange. I did – I think I wasn’t meant to – though it may sound senseless to you.’
‘Aye?’
‘A shoe. There now, you think I am stupid for telling you! But it was not Mrs Palmer’s shoe, I could tell it by her expression. And it was with a heel – I have never seen a heel the same, nothing like. P’raps it is common enough in Edinburgh, I don’t know, but Mrs Palmer was awkward, and she slammed the door on it quickly enough.’
Lionel put out the tip of his tongue and ran it over his top lip. ‘You must go home,’ he said quietly. ‘Or somewhere else. I do not want to lose you but …’ He swallowed. ‘That house is not the place for you. Can you not find work out in the countryside?’
‘What, for a shoe?’
‘Not just a shoe – Mr Badcock too.’
‘But I thought you said men like Mr Badcock were common enough, that I mustn’t let him trounce me!’
‘Aye, but he has taken a fancy to you—’
‘I can avoid him. Now I know what he is about I can take precautions.’
‘There must be another position in all of Edinburgh!’
‘Why? Why do you say I must leave?’
Lionel pushed up his cap. The rim of it left a red line across his forehead. ‘You know how easy it is for a girl like you to drop off the edge. Maids, servants who … who lose their honour – through no fault of their own – and end up in worse kinds of work. The pay is better, but I don’t think they are happier for it. You know what I am talking about?’
‘Aye. Prostitution. But I cannot leave. I cannot leave Mrs Palmer. Not now. Another maid would not be able to do for her as well as I …’ Jenny turned to the view again and let two strands of pale hair blow across her cheek. ‘And now she spends half her time asleep I think she needs me more.’
‘She needs you less, it sounds like!’ Lionel sighed. ‘I have seen this before.’
‘You have seen everything before, and yet you are the same age as me! What have you seen, then?’
‘Maids who will do anything for their mistresses. When their mistresses care not a jot for them.’
‘Well, Mrs Palmer does care. She is teaching me to read. Though I am not learning well. But I have learned all about the Hindoos and the women who would be men.’
‘Women who would be men – what are they?’
‘They are women who want to be doctors. Mrs Palmer says it is a good thing.’
‘I see! I thought you meant …’ Lionel blushed and worried a tuft of grass with his toe. ‘Well, something else. For there are such women, you know.’
‘Are there?’
‘Aye. But I am glad you are not one of them. I like you just the way y’are. I suppose I should be grateful to your mistress, for I’ve no doubt you should leave Albany Street and leave Edinburgh all together, but I must admit I am glad that you will not.’
CHAPTER 8
When Rebecca got out into the wind she found it prevented her from going as fast as she would like. She’d had, at the last moment, a compulsion to stuff the shoe into her carpet bag. For all the shoe’s horror, it was not big: the height of the heel meant it was compressed into a kind of solid thing, almost a cube, and it disappeared from view quite easily. She had the idea of thrusting it in Evangeline’s face.
Rebecca did not want to go down North Bridge and straight past the pharmacy’s window, so she walked down Market Street and into the Old Town that way. She had not visited the Old Town for some months; it was always a surprise to feel the change in atmosphere. Here the streets were not as straight as they were in New Town. They stuttered with differently angled, differently sized houses and lurched into the alleyways as if they were drunk. The stone steps that led one alley into another were not smooth like Rebecca’s steps in New Town but sagged in the middle if they were made of softer stuff.
Blackfriars Street was not in the slums, not quite. But from where she was, at the top of it, she could smell the acrid smoke that the slums always seemed to give off. Several filthy children clustered in doorways and eyed her as she passed, the chilblains on their toes shining angrily though the grime of their feet.
Number nine, then. It did not look to be in such a state of disrepair as the others nearby: there was glass in the window, the bricks were not as blackened.
She rang the bell. The two dogs curled on the steps must’ve been used to visitors for they paid her no heed. She rang again. Now one of the dogs gave a great sigh and settled its nose under its tail.
P’raps she had the wrong address? No, this was number nine, though the number had been partly obscured by soot. Evangeline must be out, then.
Rebecca rang once more. The other dog got up, circled round and round, and dropped down again, its head facing the other way.
Well. She would come back tomorrow.
Rebecca had made her way down the steps and was halfway along the street when the door opened and Evangeline came out.
‘Oh, Mrs Palmer – do come back!’
Rebecca turned. Evangeline was without bonnet or petticoats, or gloves. Her dress was unbuttoned at the top, as if she had pulled it on in a great hurry.
‘I was asleep; I have strange habits, I am afraid. You did not send ahead! But I am awake now. I am glad you have come. Will you come up?’ She wore the same stretched look that she had had before, as if she had been pulled too tight and might at any moment break in two.
Now that Rebecca had turned to leave, she wanted anything else but to turn around again and go inside, even though she had come all the way down here.
But she must, alas. There was nothing else for it.
When they went inside Rebecca looked around for a drawing room or a parlour to be shown into, but Evangeline led her through the hall and pushed open a door at the very end of the corridor. It seemed she lived in a lodging house.
Rebecca’s first thought was that Evangeline had been the victim of a burglary. The table had been pushed unevenly towards the centre of the room, and the smell! Rotting fish, or some other sea thing. Rebecca took out her handkerchief.
‘Oh dear,’ said Evangeline. ‘Yes, that fish belongs to Kitty Kat.’ Eva took up the bowl with a skeleton of a fish half in it and flung it through the window. She opened the other window and flapped her hand through it. ‘This must seem dreadful to you, I think. I have let it get away from me. I have been …’ She paused and took a gulp of air. ‘I have been ill. And you surprised me – though I am glad you did! I haven’t had time to tidy anything away.’
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sp; Rebecca looked about the room for signs of Alexander, at the hairpins next to the sink, the books stacked on the chair and fallen off it, the saucer rimmed with dried milk. But she could not imagine that this was where Alexander came to tup. They must have somewhere else.
She stared at Eva’s face, as if she might see a clue in it, a trace of her husband. Eva was half-turned away at the stove, a kettle was on it, steam was coating the glass with condensation. The paint was peeling on the sill from all the tea that must have been boiled there. But Eva only frowned at the kettle, which was coming to a shrill boil. She grabbed hold of the handle but there was too much water in it and dropped it back down with a cry. Some of the water came spilling from the spout onto the hem of her dress and the floor.
Eva cradled her hand next to her chest and hopped about. ‘Oh dear, my wrists are so weak! And now I have wrecked my slipper. And my toe too, I think!’ She raised her skirts and stared down. ‘Water is terrible for satin.’
‘Wait a moment,’ said Rebecca, her heart beating fast. ‘I know something about shoes, my father was a sweater’s hand. Let me look.’ She crouched down and held out her hands for Eva’s shoe.
Eva leaned against the table. She drew up her skirts further.
Eva’s slipper was worn at the heel and dirty at the toe and – long. Very long. There was no way that the shoe could belong to her.
Rebecca rose to her feet. Laughter rose up in her chest. But she must not laugh, else Eva would think her mad. Instead, she covered her mouth with her hand and smiled into it.
But Eva looked at her, her brows drawn. ‘I see you have noticed my slippers; they are dirty, I am afraid. I dare say you think me very slovenly. I was not always this way! I—’
‘No, it is not that!’ said Rebecca. How could she have ever thought that Alexander would be having an affair with this Eva, who caught at her hair and chewed it, whose nails were bitten, whose hem was caked in mud? ‘I think your slippers are perfectly fine!’ Now she was sounding foolhardy. ‘I think, I don’t mind about the state of your rooms, not one bit.’
But Eva’s brows furrowed still further. ‘You are being polite. Or sarcastic.’
‘No, I merely—’
‘I have not always lived like this, you know. I grew up in a parsonage, in Perthshire.’
‘Aye, I’m sure you did and I—’
‘It had six bedrooms. And the lawns ran, let’s see, as far away as that building there.’ Eva gestured to a blackened building quite far away through the back window.
‘Really, I have no judgement at all.’
‘But Father was a parson, you see,’ Eva continued as if she had not heard, picking at a dry piece of skin on her cheek. ‘And a parson’s wages do not stretch to eight children. By the time I was born there was a hole in the roof that the rain came through, and the damp growing up the parlour wall had mushrooms on it. When I was ten Father died from a congestion of the lungs and later I came to Edinburgh to become a governess. Only you know what sort of work that is, neither fish nor fowl.’ She shuddered and looked up at Rebecca again in a kind of appeal, her eyebrows up into her hairline, and again Rebecca had the feeling she had seen Eva somewhere before. ‘The children were devils.’
‘A governess; are you trained for it?’
‘Oh, you do not need training to teach girls! I got it all out of a book. I think growing up in the damp is why I am so sickly. Do you think it can be?’
‘Are you sickly?’
‘Oh yes! Most terribly.’ Eva picked at one of the charms that hung from her bracelet. ‘I have fits – melancholy fits – and I don’t know what to do with myself. Then I wish myself dead. It is hard to seek work feeling like that. I’ve run into the sea, you know, and thrown myself in. Once I swam far enough out, certain that I’d never get back in, I was sure that would do it. But a boatman hooked me up and took me to the shore again. He even charged me for it!’ She squeezed her face together, as if she would sneeze. Instead, she laughed. ‘Ah well! You have not come here to hear about me. I have not followed the proper paths of conversation! It comes of living away from society, as you can see.’
Watching, Rebecca felt something go out of her, towards this pale, fretful woman, who was not, after all, so different to herself. ‘As do I, Eva. I live far away from society! I think my maid is my best friend. And she is fifteen, I am eight and twenty – nearly an old maid. Or I was, before I married.’ She blushed.
Kitty Kat leapt up onto the sofa and pushed his way under Eva’s hand. ‘I am the same age. But do you not recognize me?’
‘I do! But I cannot place it.’
‘After the governess’s position I got a job as a sweater’s hand. For your father.’
‘My father?’
‘We talked of bridge. You were going to make up a four, with your father’s friends, only—’
‘Yes, I remember it now! Only I hate bridge and was only going grudgingly.’
‘Because your father wanted it. Yes – and I said—’
‘You said that you hated the game too, that there was nothing more boring. Only you said it in a low voice, so no one else would hear. I remember, and we laughed, didn’t we?’
‘I was not with your father for long.’
‘No, for the next time I came to his rooms a new girl was cutting. And I thought you had gone somewhere that paid better. Are you a cutter still?’
‘Oh no, I get by on my savings.’ Eva rubbed at the edge of her teacup with her thumb.
‘What a coincidence!’ said Rebecca. She could not resist looking at her carpet bag. ‘I remember it clearly now, even though we only spoke a few words! It was several years back.’
‘Yes, a coincidence.’ Eva looked down at her tea, which was getting cold. ‘Did you take your father’s death very hard?’
‘Not as hard as my mother’s. When she died I was lost, and father too. That is why he worked so hard, I think.’
‘If he’d lived he would have been rich.’
‘But he had not a head for business. He paid too much for new machinery and when he died he was greatly in debt.’
Eva leaned forward and touched her arm. ‘We are both orphans, then, and we are both the same age! It is a good recipe for friendship.’
Kitty Kat scratched away at the threads that hung down from the side of the sofa; Eva scooped him up under her arm and went to the window. ‘Oh, you devil! You will ruin everything. Out you go. And see you don’t come back with a poor dead bird!’ She pushed him through the window and tried to shut it but Kitty Kat slid through her grasp and ran to Rebecca, his tail swishing with fury. ‘Oh dear! I cannot control him, not at all. Perhaps that is the nature of cats. But be careful of your bag, he will claw it if he gets the chance. Should I keep it safe? I think I should put it up there, on the shelf.’
‘Oh no! I mean to say, I don’t want you to—’
But Eva had already crossed the short distance to the bag and was bending over as if she meant to pick it up.
‘No please, there is no need,’ cried Rebecca, snatching it away and feeling herself flush. But she had grabbed hold of only one of the bag’s handles so that lifting it and swinging it out of reach had the opposite effect: it gaped open.
From inside the shoe gleamed and glimmered darkly, visible to them both.
‘That! What are you doing with that? Oh, oh!’ Eva staggered back and fell against the little table, sending its legs scraping against the floor.
‘You know it? It is yours, then!’ said Rebecca.
‘Mine? No! It is not mine.’
‘But you know whose it is!’
‘Yes,’ said Eva. ‘I know whose it is. But why do you have it – why have you brought it here?’
‘I found it. In my husband’s study. And I thought it was yours. I feel very foolish telling you. I thought you were his mistress.’
‘His mistress?’
‘I know the shoe is not yours – I saw it straightaway. But – oh please, Eva – you must tell me whose it is!’
‘You do not want to know.’ Eva shook her head and looked to the ceiling. ‘I wanted you to come here because I thought I might protect you. Now I see that it is too late! I thought that I might be able to make up for the wrongs I have done. But you have brought that here, and it is too late.’
‘What do you mean, too late?’
But Eva only shook her head. ‘And you love him? I think you do.’
‘Alexander?’
‘Your husband, yes.’
Rebecca paused, with her hand to her throat. ‘I don’t know. I ought to.’
‘But …’ said Eva. ‘Does he hurt you?’
‘We have not been married six months and already he is unfaithful.’
‘Not with this, this affair. I mean, in other ways.’
Rebecca remembered the way he had gripped her, she thought of his clenched fists. ‘Not yet,’ she said slowly. ‘Will he? Oh Eva, tell me what you know of him!’
Eva blinked twice.
‘If you mean to protect me you must tell me!’
But Evangeline only shook her head again. ‘I cannot tell you. You will know everything when I show you the owner of the shoe. If you are still sure you want to see her. But it will take time to set it up.’
‘How long?’
‘I cannot say. Two weeks, maybe three. I cannot say.’
It was Rebecca’s turn to shake her head. Then she saw the clock. ‘Oh, but I must go home! Alexander will be back soon.’
‘Well, then,’ said Eva. ‘I will send word.’
CHAPTER 9
Rebecca went as fast as she could, though people turned to stare, not in the Old Town, for there they were used to women running, but as soon as she got up into the New Town. So she slowed to a trot, through the kind of dusk that poets write of: the thrush singing and the air scented by jasmine. She was sweating by the time she came in sight of the front door. She pulled off one glove and grasped the key and tried to get it in to the lock. And then, from behind the door, she heard her husband’s voice.
‘Where is she? You must know. You are her maid, and I think, know most things about her. She confides in you too much.’