by Kate Morton
‘And then he’ll be able to send for me?’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, with a wave of her hand. ‘Yes, yes. Then he’ll be able to send for you.’
Lily Millington laughed when I told her that Mrs Mack had special plans for me. ‘Oh, she’ll find you something to do, all right, make no mistake about that. She’s nothing if not creative and she demands her pound of flesh.’
‘And then I’m going to America with my father.’
Lily tousled my hair whenever I said that, just as my father had always done, which made me even more disposed to like her. ‘Are you, poppet?’ she said, ‘What a lark that’ll be,’ and, when she was in an especially good mood: ‘Do you think you’ll have room for me in that suitcase of yours?’
Her own father had been ‘no good’, she said, and she was better off without him. Her mother, though, had been an actress (‘That’s a fancy way of putting it,’ Mrs Mack snorted if ever she heard this claim), and when she was littler, Lily herself had been in the pageants at Christmas time. ‘Gaslight fairies, they called us. Because we glowed yellow on the front of the stage.’
I could imagine Lily as a fairy, and as an actress, which is what she planned to be. ‘An actor-manager like Eliza Vestris or Sara Lane,’ she would say as she strutted across the kitchen, chin up, arms wide. Mrs Mack, should she hear such utterances, could always be counted on to toss a damp cloth across the room and huff, ‘Best be managing those dirty dishes back into the kitchen racks, if you know what’s good for you.’
Lily Millington had a sharp tongue and a hot temper, and a knack for provoking Mrs Mack’s ire, but she was funny and clever and, in the first weeks after I woke to find myself in the rooms above the shop selling birds and cages in the Seven Dials, she was my salvation. Lily Millington made everything brighter. She made me braver. Without her I do not think I would have survived my father’s absence, for I was so used to being the clockmaker’s daughter that I did not know myself without him.
It is a strange thing, though, the human instinct for survival. I have had many opportunities whilst resident in this house, to observe first-hand the ability of people to bear the unbearable. And so it was for me. Lily Millington took me under her wing and the days passed.
It was true what Mrs Mack had said, that everyone in the house worked to earn their keep, but due to the nature of her ‘special plans’, I was granted an initial brief reprieve. ‘A little bit of time to get yourself settled,’ she said, with a pointed nod at the Captain. ‘While I get things in order.’
In the meantime I did my best to stay out of her way. For someone who took in children, Mrs Mack did not appear to like them very much, bellowing that should she find one ‘under foot’ she would not spare the strap. The days were long and there were only so many corners within the house to keep oneself hidden, and so I fell to trailing Lily Millington when she left for work each morning. She was unimpressed at first, worried that I’d get her ‘caught’, but then she sighed and said that I was as green as grass and it was just as well for someone to show me the ropes before I got myself into trouble.
The streets back then were chaotic with horse-drawn omnibuses and colourful carriages; ducks and pigs being driven to Leadenhall Market; sellers of every type of food one could imagine – sheep’s trotters, pickled periwinkles, eel pie – trumpeting their wares. Further south, were we to steal down the shadowy cobbled lanes of Covent Garden, was the market square, where costermongers lined up by the dozen to buy the best strawberries from the delivery cart, market porters carried stacked baskets loaded with fruit and vegetables on their heads, and travelling vendors wove through the thronging crowds selling birds and snakes, brooms and brushes, Bibles and ballads, penny slices of pineapple, china ornaments, ropes of onions, walking sticks and live geese.
I came to recognise the regulars, and Lily Millington made sure that they knew me. My favourite was the French magician who set up every second day on the southern corner of the market, closest to the Strand. There was a farmer’s stall behind him where the best eggs could be bought, so a constant stream of traffic bustled by and he always gathered a crowd. He caught my attention first for his elegant appearance: he was tall and thin, an effect accentuated by his black top hat and stovepipe trousers; he wore a tailcoat and vest, and his moustache tapered and curled above his dark goatee. He said little, communicating instead with his large kohl-rimmed eyes as he made coins disappear from the table in front of him only to reappear within the bonnets and scarves of people in his audience. He was able, too, to conjure wallets and items of jewellery from members of the crowd who were amazed and indignant in equal measure to discover their valuables in the hands of this exotic stranger.
‘Did you see, Lily?’ I exclaimed, the first time I observed him pull a coin from behind a child’s ear. ‘Magic!’
Lily Millington only bit into a carrot she’d procured from somewhere and told me to watch more closely next time. ‘Illusion,’ she said, flicking a long plait over one shoulder. ‘Magic’s for those that can afford it, and that’s not the likes of us.’
I was still coming to understand exactly who ‘us’ was and just what Lily Millington and the others did for work. They were good at it, I suppose, and that’s the point. I knew only that it involved hours of loitering, occasional instances when I was instructed to wait while Lily mingled briefly with the crowd, and then, sometimes, a hot-cheeked flight – from whom, I was not sure – through a tangle of cluttered lanes.
Some days, though, were different. From the moment that we set out from Mrs Mack’s place, Lily Millington would be jumpier than usual, like a skinny cat that does not take kindly to petting. On such occasions, she would find me a spot to stand at the markets and make me promise to wait for her. ‘Don’t you go nowhere, you hear? And don’t talk to nobody. Lily’ll be back for you soon.’ Where she went then, I did not know, only that she was always gone longer than usual, and often returned with a grim, secretive expression on her face.
It was on just such a day that I was approached by the man in the black coat. I’d been waiting for what felt to me then like an eternity and, growing weary, had wandered from the spot where Lily had left me, to crouch instead against a brick wall. I was half-watching a shop girl sell roses and didn’t notice the man in the black coat until he was right above me. His voice made me startle: ‘Well, now, what have we here?’ He reached down to take my chin roughly in his hand and turned my face towards him, eyes narrowing as he carried out his inspection. ‘What’s your name then, girl? Who’s your father?’
I was about to answer, when Lily appeared, like a flash of light, to stand between us.
‘There you are,’ she said, grabbing my arm in her strong, skinny fingers; ‘I’ve been looking all over for you. Ma’s waiting on those eggs. It’s time we got them home.’
Before there was time for me to utter so much as a sneeze, Lily yanked me after her and we were zig-zagging through the alleyways.
Not until just before the Seven Dials did she finally stop. She spun me around to face her, her cheeks blotchy red. ‘Did you tell him anything?’ she said. ‘That man?’
I shook my head.
‘You sure about that?’
‘He wanted to know my name.’
‘Did you tell him?’
Again I shook my head.
Lily Millington put both of her hands on my shoulders, which were heaving still from the effort of running so far, so fast. ‘Never tell nobody your real name, you hear me, Birdie? Never. And certainly not him.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it isn’t safe. Not here. The only way to be safe is to be someone else when you’re out here.’
‘Like an illusion?’
‘Just like that.’
And then she explained to me about the workhouse, for that’s where the man in the black coat was from. ‘If they find out the truth, they’ll lock you up, Birdie, and they’ll never let you out. They’ll make you work until your fingers bleed and flog you f
or the merest fault. Mrs Mack has her moments, but there’s far worse can happen to the likes of us. A girl I heard of was given sweeping duties. She left a spot of dirt on the floor and they stripped off her clothes and beat her black and blue with a broom. Another lad was strung up in a sack and hung from the rafters for wetting his bed.’
My eyes had begun to sting with tears and Lily’s face became kinder. ‘There, now. No need for the waterworks or I’ll have to thrash you myself. But you must promise me solemn that you’ll never tell no one your real and proper name.’
I swore that I wouldn’t and at last she seemed satisfied. ‘Good.’ She nodded. ‘Then let’s get home.’
We turned the corner into Little White Lion Street, and when the shop selling birds and cages came into view, Lily said, ‘One more thing, while we’re giving undertakings. You’re not to go tattling to Mrs Mack that I left you on your own, all right?’
I promised that I wouldn’t.
‘She has her “special plans” for you, and she’d have my head if she knew what I’d been doing.’
‘What were you doing, Lily?’
She glanced at me and stared hard for a few seconds, and then she leaned close to my ear, so that I could smell the tang of perspiration. ‘I’m saving up,’ she whispered. ‘It’s all very well to work for Mrs Mack, but you’ll never get free if you don’t earn a little for yourself.’
‘Have you been selling things, Lily?’ I was doubtful because she did not carry fruit or fish or flowers like the other traders.
‘In a manner of speaking.’
She never told me more than that, and I never thought to ask. Mrs Mack used to say that Lily Millington had ‘a mouth on her’, but Lily could be tight-lipped when it suited.
I never had the chance to ask her much anyway. I only knew Lily Millington for six weeks before she was killed by a sailor with too much whisky under his belt who didn’t agree the price that she was asking for her services. The irony is not lost on me that I know so little about a girl to whom I tied myself for eternity. Yet she is precious to me, Lily Millington, for she gave me her name: the most valuable thing she had to give.
Although she hadn’t a spare two pennies to rub together, Mrs Mack had a way about her that could almost be described as airs and graces. There was an abiding narrative in her household that the family had once been destined for Better Things, dislodged from their rightful place by an Incident of Cruel Misfortune a couple of generations before.
And so, as befitting a woman of such illustrious lineage, she kept a room at the front of the house that she referred to as her ‘parlour’, and into which she poured every bit of spare money that she possessed. Colourful cushions and mahogany furnishings, skewered butterflies on velvet backings, bell jars flaunting taxidermy squirrels, autographed images of the royal family and a collection of crystal oddments with only the merest cracks.
It was a sacred place and children were most certainly not permitted unless a specific invitation had been issued, which it wasn’t, ever. Indeed, aside from Mrs Mack, the only two people granted entrée into the sanctum were the Captain and Martin. And Mrs Mack’s dog, of course, a boarhound who had come off one of the boats and whom she’d named Grendel, because she had heard the word in a poem sometime and liked it. Mrs Mack doted on the dog with the kind of cooing affection I do not recall ever hearing her bestow upon a human being.
After Grendel, the light of Mrs Mack’s affection fell upon Martin, her son, who was ten years to my seven when I came to live with them at their place on Little White Lion Street. Martin was large for his age – not merely tall but imposing, his presence being of the sort whereby he seemed to occupy more space than was his due. He was a boy of little intelligence and even less kindness who had, however, been gifted with a great deal of natural slyness, an attribute which proved a blessing in that particular time and place as, I dare say, it would now.
I have had much opportunity to wonder over the years whether Martin might have turned out differently had he found himself within another situation. If he had been born into the family of Pale Joe, for instance, would he have become a gentleman of refined tastes and proper decorum? The answer, I am all but certain, is yes, for he would have learned the manners and mask required to survive, and indeed to thrive, in whichever station society determined that he must. This was Martin’s prevailing skill: an innate ability to see which way the wind was blowing and to hoist his sail accordingly.
His conception had apparently been immaculate, for a father was never mentioned. He was only ever referred to, proudly, by Mrs Mack as ‘my boy, Martin’. That she was his mother was as clear as the noses on their matching faces, but where Mrs Mack was a woman of great optimism, Martin tended always towards the negative view of life. He saw losses everywhere and could not receive a gift without wondering at the alternatives he would now be forced to do without. Another trait, it must be said, that served him well in our particular knot of London.
I had been with them in their house above the bird shop for two months and Lily Millington had been dead two weeks when I was invited one night to visit the parlour after dinner.
I was very worried as I made my approach, for I had seen, by now, what happened to children who displeased Mrs Mack. The door was ajar and I pressed my eye up close against the gap the way I had witnessed Martin do when Mrs Mack was entertaining one of her ‘business associates’.
The Captain was standing by the window overlooking the street, intoning on one of his favourite subjects, the epic winter fogs of 1840: ‘Totally white, it was; ships, like ghosts, colliding in the middle of the Thames.’ Grendel was stretched out along the sofa; Martin was hunched over, biting his nails on a three-legged footstool; and Mrs Mack, I saw at last, was ensconced in her winged armchair by the fire. For some time she had been engaged of an evening with a secret stitching project, telling anyone who asked about it to mind their own business ‘or else I’ll mind it for you’. The project, I could see, was across her lap now.
I must have pressed too hard upon the door, for it swung open with a rude creak.
‘There you are, then,’ said Mrs Mack, shooting a knowing glance at Martin and the Captain. ‘Little pitchers and their big ears.’ She dragged her needle through the fabric with a final triumphant flourish and then snapped the thread with her teeth and secured the end. ‘Come on, then, let’s have a look at you.’
I hurried to her side and Mrs Mack unravelled the item on her lap, shaking it out to present a dress, more beautiful than any I had worn since outgrowing those that my mother had kept so carefully mended when she was alive.
‘Turn around, then, girl, arms in the air. Let’s see how it fits.’
Mrs Mack undid the button at the top of my smock and then pulled it over my arms and head. It was not cold, but a shiver went through me as the fine dress slipped into place.
I couldn’t understand what was happening – why I was being granted such an extravagant and beautiful gift – but I knew better than to ask. Tiny pearl buttons snaked up the back to the nape of my neck and a wide satin sash of the palest blue ribbon was tied around my waist.
I was aware of Mrs Mack behind me, her warm laboured breaths, in and out, as she undertook to put the whole ensemble to rights. When she was finished, she spun me back to face her and said to the room, ‘Well?’
‘Aye, she’s a pretty one,’ the Captain coughed around his pipe. ‘And with that sweet little toffee voice – we never had one of them before. She’s a right proper little lady.’
‘Not yet she’s not,’ came Mrs Mack’s pleased reply. ‘But with a good bit of polish, some etiquette lessons, and a curl or two in the hair, she might just pass for one well enough. Doesn’t she look a picture, Martin?’
I met Martin’s gaze, but I did not like the way he stared.
‘What about the pockets?’ said Mrs Mack. ‘Have you found the pockets?’
I slipped my hands down the sides of the skirt, my fingertips finding the openings. They were
deep – in fact, I could not find the bottoms unless I sacrificed my arms. It was like having carry bags stitched within the petticoat of my dress.
I was perplexed, but evidently all was as intended, for Mrs Mack laughed crowingly and exchanged a glance with the others. ‘There, now,’ she said, with a lick of feline satisfaction. ‘Do you see that? Do you see?’
‘There, now, indeed,’ said the Captain. ‘Well done, Mrs Mack. Well done. She looks a right treat and there’s none would suspect a thing. I predict a mighty windfall. Doesn’t everybody want to help the little girl who’s lost her way?’
My visitor stirs at last.
I do not think I have ever had a visitor so reluctant to rise and start the day as this one. Not even Juliet, who used to cling to the last few minutes when her children were already up and racing, before they finally came in to drag her to her feet.
I will move closer to the head of the bed and see whether that helps. It is as well for me to know. Some of them are insensitive and I can brush right by them and fail to raise a shiver. Others notice me without the slightest of prompts, like my little friend during the time of the bombs and planes, who reminded me so much of Pale Joe.
And so, a test. I will just shift up the bed now, nice and slowly, and see what happens.
What happens is this:
He shivers and scowls and lumbers out of bed, shooting daggers at the open window as if to punish the breeze.
Sensitive. And it is just as well to know; I will simply have to work around it.
It makes my task harder, but in some way I am pleased. My lingering vanity. It is always nice to be noticed.
He removes the earplugs that he wears when he sleeps and heads towards the bathroom.
The photograph of the two little girls has found a new home on the shelf above the small sink, and after he finishes shaving, he pauses and lifts the image from its place. He could be forgiven anything for the look that crosses his face when he studies that photo.