The Clockmaker's Daughter

by Kate Morton

  Such expansion had the Captain rubbing his hands together with glee: ‘That’s where all the men of worth are,’ he would say, ‘their pockets overflowing with spoils ripe for the picking.’

  Little Girl Lost was a simple enough scheme, involving nothing more than for me to stand about conspicuously with a look of forlorn concern upon my face. Worried tears were helpful but not essential, and because they required significant additional energy, and could not easily be reversed if I decided that the wrong fish had been hooked, I deployed them sparingly. It did not take me long to develop a sixth sense for knowing for whom I should make the effort.

  When the right sort of gentleman arrived at my side, as he always eventually did, enquiring as to where I lived and why I was alone, I would give him my sad story and a suitably respectable address – though not so grand as to risk recognition – and then allow the fellow to put me in a cab with a fare. It was not difficult to slip my hand inside his pocket while he was Being Helpful. There is a very useful sense of righteous importance that overtakes the renderer of assistance; it tends to overwhelm his better judgement and leave him dull to everything else.

  But Little Girl Lost required a lot of standing around in the one place, which I found boring and, in the winter months, cold, wet and unpleasant. I soon realised that there was another way in which I could make the same profit from a position of relative comfort. It also solved the problem of what to do should the Helpful Gentleman insist on seeing me all the way ‘home’. Mrs Mack appreciated ingenuity: she was a natural born scammer and lit up with possibility when presented with a fresh scheme; she had also proven herself clever with a needle and thread. And so, when I told her my idea, she was soon able to procure a pair of fine white kid gloves and alter them to fit my purpose.

  Thus was Little Girl Passenger born, and a quiet young thing she was, too, for her job was the opposite of Little Girl Lost. Where the latter had sought attention, Little Girl Passenger’s wish was to avoid it. She was a frequent traveller on the omnibuses, sitting quietly against the window, her delicate kid gloves folded demurely on her lap. Being small, clean and innocent, she was the natural choice of seating partner for a lady travelling alone. But once the lady had relaxed into the journey, distracted by conversation or sightseeing, a book or her posy, the Little Girl’s hands – heretofore tucked well out of sight – would reach between the voluminous folds of merged skirts until they found her pocket or her bag. I can still remember how it felt: the slip of my hand into the pretty lady’s skirt, the coolness of the silk, the smooth, swift sweep of my fingertips, as all the while my false kid gloves sat well beyond reproach upon my lap.

  From some of the omnibus drivers, an all-day seat could be procured for a small price. And on days when the conductor couldn’t be bought, Little Girl Lost reprised her role, bereft and frightened on a well-heeled street.

  I learned a lot about people during those days. Things like:

  1. Privilege makes a person, especially a woman, trusting. Nothing in her experience prepares her for the possibility that anyone might mean her harm.

  2. There is nothing so sure as that a gentleman likes to be seen to help.

  3. The art of illusion is knowing precisely what people expect to see and then ensuring that they see it.

  The French magician in Covent Garden helped me with that final one, for I had done what Lily Millington bade me and watched him closely until I knew exactly how he made those coins appear.

  I also learned that should the worst thing happen and a call of ‘Stop! Thief!’ be raised behind me, then London was my greatest ally. For a slight child who knew her way, the thrum and throng of the streets provided the perfect cover; it was easy to disappear amongst the moving forest of legs, particularly when one had friends. Once again, I had Lily Millington to thank for that. There was the man with the sandwich board who could always be counted on to turn it back and forth into the shins of an inconvenient policeman; the organ-grinder whose contraption had an uncanny habit of rolling on its wheels to block my pursuer’s path; and, of course, the French magician, who, along with his coins, had a knack for producing the right wallet at the right time, leaving my chaser indignant and reduced as I slipped away to freedom.

  And so, I was a thief. A good thief. Earning my keep.

  As long as I returned each day with a few pilfered spoils, Mrs Mack and the Captain were kept happy. She told me many times that my mother had been a real and proper lady, that the ladies I picked from were no better than I was, that it was right that I should feel the weight of quality beneath my fingertips. I suppose she meant to counter the rise in me of any pesky conscience.

  She needn’t have bothered. We all do things in life that we regret; stealing trifles from the rich is not high on my list.

  I was restless after Jack left my house last night, and he slept fitfully, too, surrendering finally to wakefulness in the light mauve of dawn. It is the day of his meeting with Sarah and he has been dressed for hours. He has made a special effort with his clothing, and the items sit uncomfortably on him.

  There was a carefulness to the way he readied himself. I noticed him stop to rub at an imagined spot on his sleeve and he spent longer than usual in front of the mirror; he shaved and even ran a brush through his wet hair. I have not seen him do that before.

  When he was finished, he stood for a moment as if sizing up his own reflection. I saw his eyes shift in the mirror and for a split second I thought that he was looking at me. My heart skipped a beat before I realised that he was looking at the photograph of the two babies. He reached out to touch each one’s face in turn with his thumb.

  I assumed at first that his unsettlement was due to today’s meeting, and no doubt, for the most part, it is. But I wonder now whether there might be more to it than that.

  He made his cup of tea, spilling half, as is his wont, and then, with a piece of toast in hand, went to his computer on the small round table in the middle of the room. A couple of new emails had appeared in the night, one from Rosalind Wheeler, as promised (threatened), which seemed to comprise a rather lengthy list and a sketch of some kind. Jack’s reaction was to stick a small black contraption in the side of the laptop and press a few buttons before removing the tiny object to his pocket.

  I cannot know for certain whether what he found in Rosalind Wheeler’s email is responsible for sending him back inside my house this morning. I went closer after he left the table and saw that the subject line read, ‘Further Instructions: Ada Lovegrove Notes’; but I could not learn anything more because the email above was open, an advertisement for subscription to the New Yorker.

  Whatever the case, soon after checking his computer, he fetched his miniature tool kit and unlocked the door to my house again.

  He is in here with me now.

  He has not done much since his arrival; there is little of determined industry in his movements. He is in the Mulberry Room, leaning against the large mahogany desk that abuts the window. It faces towards the chestnut tree in the middle of the back garden, and beyond that the field barn. But Jack’s focus is on something further still, the distant river, and he wears that troubled expression on his face again. He blinks as I come nearer and his gaze shifts to the meadow, the barn.

  I remember lying in the upper level of the barn with Edward that summer, watching the sun stream through the pinprick holes between the roof slates as he whispered to me of all the places in the world he’d like to go.

  It was in this very room, on the chaise longue by the fireplace, that Edward told me the details of his plan to paint the Fairy Queen; it was here that he smiled and reached inside his coat pocket, producing the black velvet box and revealing the treasure within. I can still feel the light touch of his fingertips as he fastened that cold blue stone at my throat.

  Perhaps Jack is merely seeking distraction – a way to pass the minutes before it is time to leave; certainly, his meeting with Sarah is on his mind, for he glances up at my clock at regular intervals
to check the time. When, at last, it delivers the correct answer, he beats a hasty retreat, leaving my house, locking the kitchen door behind him and resetting the alarm, almost before I can catch up.

  I follow him as far as the gate, where I watch him get into his car and leave.

  I hope he isn’t gone too long.

  For now, I am going to return to the malt house. Perhaps there will be something more from Rosalind Wheeler in the email. I crave to know how she came by Ada Lovegrove’s letters.

  Poor little Ada. Childhood is the cruellest time. A place of extremes, in which one might this day sail carefree amongst the silvery stars, only to be plunged tomorrow into the black woods of despair.

  After Fanny died and the police finished their investigation, the others left Birchwood Manor and all was still and silent for a long stretch. The house rested. Twenty years passed before Lucy returned. That is how and when I learned that Edward was dead and that he’d left this house, his most beloved possession, to his youngest sister.

  It was a quintessentially Edward thing to do, for he adored his sisters, and they him. I know why he chose Lucy, though. He would have reasoned that Clare could take care of herself, by marrying well or convincing someone to look after her, but that Lucy was different. I will never forget my first glimpse of her, that pale watchful face in the upstairs window of the dark brick house in Hampstead, when Edward brought me home to the studio in his mother’s garden.

  She will always be that child to me: the girl I knew who resented the strictures of London but blossomed as soon as she was set loose in the countryside, free to explore and dig and collect to her heart’s content. I have such a clear memory of her when we arrived at the house that summer, the walk from the railway, Lucy lagging behind because her trunk was loaded with precious books and she refused to send it on the carriage with the others.

  What a surprise it was to see her when she turned up to inspect the house. Little Lucy turned into an austere and serious woman. Thirty-three years old and no longer young by the standards of the day. But still Lucy, wearing a long, practical skirt, the most unflattering shade of olive green, and a dreadful hat that caused me to suffer a wave of overwhelming fondness. Her hair beneath it was already coming loose – she never could keep a pin in place – and her boots were thick with mud.

  She did not view all of the rooms, but then she didn’t need to; she knew the house and its secrets as well as I do. She only went as far as the kitchen before shaking the lawyer’s hand and telling him that he could leave.

  ‘But, Miss Radcliffe –’ a hint of bewilderment flecked his words – ‘would you not like me to show you the property?’

  ‘It won’t be necessary, Mr Matthews.’

  She waited, watching him disappear along the coach way, and then she turned back towards the kitchen and stood very still. I went right up close to her, reading the fine lines now written upon her face. Behind them I could see the little Lucy that I knew, for people do not change. They remain, as they age, the people that they were when they were young, only frailer and sadder. I wished nothing more than to put my arms around her. Lucy, who had always been my ally.

  All of a sudden she looked up, and it was as if she were staring right at me. Or through me. Something had disturbed her from her contemplation and she brushed me aside, crossing the hallway and starting up the staircase.

  I wondered if she intended to live here at Birchwood Manor. I hoped against hope that she would stay. And then the deliveries began to arrive: first the wooden box, followed by the desks and chairs and small iron beds. Blackboards and trays of chalk, and eventually a severe-looking woman named Thornfield, whose desk plaque read, ‘Deputy Headmistress’.

  A school. And I was pleased to see it. Little Lucy had always quested for knowledge. Edward would have been glad, for he was forever stopping in the street, dragging me with him into this bookshop or that, in order to choose a new tome for Lucy. Her curiosity was unquenchable.

  Sometimes I can still hear those schoolgirls. Faint, faraway voices, singing, arguing, laughing, crying into their pillows, pleading for a mother or father to have a change of heart, to come back and reclaim her. Their voices became trapped in the weave of the house.

  During the years that I lived with Mrs Mack and Martin and the Captain, I longed for my father to return for me, but I did not cry. The letter left with Mrs Mack had been very clear: I was to be brave, my father instructed, and to do my best to be good; I was to pull my weight and to make myself helpful; I was to do as Mrs Mack told me, for she had his complete confidence and could be relied upon to protect my best interests.

  ‘When is he coming back?’ I asked.

  ‘He will send for you when he’s established in his new situation.’

  There is a wound that never heals in the heart of an abandoned child. It is something that I recognised in Edward and I wonder sometimes if it is that which first drew us together. For of course he was abandoned, too, as a boy. He and his sisters left with their disapproving grandparents while their mother and father travelled the world.

  It is something that I recognised, too, in Ada Lovegrove.

  I have thought often of her over the years. The unkindness of children. The way she pined. That day in the river.

  So long ago, and yet it was yesterday. With only the merest effort I can see her now, sitting cross-legged on the bed in the attic, hot tears of anger on her cheeks, scribbling faster than her pen will permit, entreating her parents to please, please, please come back for her.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Summer, 1899

  Ada Lovegrove had a tall, wealthy father and an elegant clever mother and she hated them both equally. The hatred was only new – she had adored them both as recently as April the twenty-fifth – but it was no less deeply felt for being novel. A holiday, they’d said, a little trip back to England. Oh, Ada-Bear, how you’ll adore London – the theatres and the Houses of Parliament! And just you wait until you see how soft and green the countryside is in summer! How gentle and floral, filled with honeysuckles and primroses, narrow laneways and hedgerows …

  These foreign words, spoken with a romantic longing that Ada could not understand and did not trust, she had turned over with the dispassionate interest of an archaeologist building a picture of a distant civilisation. She had been born in Bombay, and India was as much a part of her as the nose on her face and the freckles that covered it. She didn’t recognise words like ‘soft’ and ‘gentle’ and ‘narrow’: her world was vast and sudden and blazing. It was a place of unspeakable beauty – of brilliant flowers on the terrace and sweet swooning fragrance in the dead of night – but also of mercurial cruelty. It was her home.

  Her mother had broken the news about the upcoming holiday one afternoon in March when Ada was having her evening meal. She had been eating in the library because Mamma and Papa were hosting a dinner that evening and the grand mahogany dining table (shipped from London) was being set. The library was lined with books (also shipped from London) on whose spines were printed names like Dickens and Brontë and Keats, and at the end of the desk was the playbook from which Mamma had been teaching her The Tempest. The heat had made her hair stick to her forehead, and a lazy fly was turning loops around the room, its song droning like a barbless threat.

  Ada had been thinking about Caliban and Prospero, wondering why Mamma’s forehead had creased disapprovingly when Ada said that she felt sorry for Caliban, when the words ‘little trip back to England’ broke her concentration.

  As the lace curtains shrugged off a hot, moist breeze, Ada said, ‘How long will it take to get there?’

  ‘A lot less time than it took before the canal was opened. We used to have to go by rail, you know.’

  Rail sounded preferable to Ada, who could not swim.

  ‘What shall we do there?’

  ‘All sorts of things. Visit family and friends, take in the sights. I’m looking forward to showing you the places I knew as a girl, the galleries and parks, the
palace and gardens.’

  ‘We have gardens here.’

  ‘We do.’

  ‘And a palace.’

  ‘Not with a king and queen inside it.’

  ‘How long will we be away?’

  ‘Long enough to do what needs to be done and not a moment more or less.’

  This answer, which was not really an answer at all, was not typical of Mamma, who was usually very good at meeting Ada’s many questions, but Ada had no time then to unpick her mother’s reticence. ‘On your way, now,’ she had said, making a fluttery sweeping motion with her elegant fingers. ‘Father will be home from his club any minute and I still have the flowers to set. Lord Curzon is coming, as you know, and everything must be perfect.’

  Afterwards, Ada turned slow cartwheels on the terrace, watching the world change kaleidoscopically from purple to orange as the queen’s crepe myrtles took turns with the hibiscus. The gardener was sweeping the lawn and his helper was cleaning down the curved cane chairs on the wide verandah.

  Ordinarily, cartwheeling was one of Ada’s favourite things to do, but this afternoon her heart wasn’t in it. Rather than enjoying the way the world spun around her, she felt dizzy, even queasy. After a time, she sat instead on the edge of the verandah near the spider lilies.

  Ada’s father was an important man and their mansion was on the very top of a hill in the centre of Bombay; from her vantage point, Ada could see all the way over the Hanging Gardens to where the Arabian Sea rolled its shoulders. She was busy peeling long white tentacles from an enormous spider lily flower, breathing in its sweet perfume, when her aaya, Shashi, found her.

  ‘There you are, pilla,’ said Shashi, in careful English. ‘Come, now – your mother wishes us to collect some extra fruits for the dessert.’

  Ada stood up and took Shashi’s outstretched hand.

  Usually she loved market chores – there was a man with a snack stall who always gave her an extra chakkali to nibble on while she followed Shashi and her enormous basket around to all of the various fruit and vegetable sellers – but today, in the shadow of her mother’s worrying announcement, she dragged her heels as they walked together down the hill.