I turned back to look at the house, the sunlight striking across the windows; the house felt more coop than castle.
“Have you thought of leaving? What is here that holds you?”
I thought of a hundred things in an instant, but none formed itself into a coherent answer.
“There’s Makepeace, for one,” I replied.
“She come with you, find your father, be reunited. A new start for all of you,” Fookes said, and the pictures in Fookes’s books opened up in my mind’s eye, all the unfolding light upon the water, the strange animals caught in an oval of green, the small figure with his blue coat with his back to me. The thought crept into my mind of all those strange blooms that had arrived, what message did they hold? If he had found someone to write the address, how was it that he didn’t get them to write a letter? Five blossoms for five years; were they a message or a sign, but if they were how was I ever to read them? The ocean roared between their message and their meaning; how would we ever be reunited?
“You could come,” Fookes blurted, “yourself,” and I felt the blood pulse through to my newly pierced ears and felt that if Fookes looked at me long enough he’d see the truth skip through me, like a stone across the water. In the distance along the foreshore a figure bent down and walked like an oyster-catcher, eyes to the ground, scavenging the tide.
“Me, myself? Whatever would I do?” I said. Fookes knew nothing of my uselessness for real life. I’d grown as my father had wanted me, a jewel in the dark of its velvet case, until it had been time for me to show the lightness of my fingers, a harvester of pockets, my eye on the shine.
“Come with me,” Fookes said, placing his hand on mine, and I looked at it, floating over mine.
He pulled me towards him, I felt his body firm against mine; the roughness of his coat lapel scraped my cheek, his hand slid around my waist like I was something to catch, but he didn’t know what I was, I’d run through his fingers like water.
I was back at the house as fast as my feet allowed me. A door slammed upstairs and I sent the one downstairs swinging in reply, Makepeace appearing at the top of the stairs flustered and surprised to see me, her lace cap sitting slightly askew on her head, the silver starting to run through her dark hair.
“I thought you were on a walk with Mr Fookes,” she said breathlessly.
“Not any more,” I said, walking up the stairs, bristling at her question, with the touch of Fookes’s hand on my hip.
Makepeace moved in front of me, her body blocking my way. “What happened? Was he untoward?” Her questions buzzed in the air and all I wanted to do was smack them between my fingers and be done with them. Makepeace still barred my way, until I stood on the step beneath her. “Eglantine, answer me,” she said.
Though I was a full step below her, it was I who looked down on her. She took a step backwards but kept my gaze. She didn’t want answers to my questions, she was wanting to delay me. The door to my father’s old room was closed. I brushed past her and tried my hand on the door, but it didn’t give way to me, it was locked from the inside.
“Eglantine,” Makepeace hissed under her breath, “leave it be, our new lodger is resting.”
“When did he arrive?” I said. I’d not seen anyone approach the house, but then I’d been caught up with Fookes.
Petulantly, I stamped up the stairs and into my room, swinging the door, a bang to end all bangs, the sound echoing across the house.
Fookes’s question skimmed across my mind again and again and again. I strained to listen to the movements of the lodger, but I heard nothing, our new lodger resting like the dead. I kept to my room, listening, the room growing stifling with the heat. I opened the windows and all the brine and salt came waltzing in. There was no sign of Fookes down by the water’s edge, no sound at the front door or in his room. Occasionally I heard some faint sound, but it was no more than a pigeon’s flap or a rustle, for all I knew it may have been the wind singing down the chimney.
By early evening hunger drove me down to the kitchen. Makepeace sat alone at the table, sewing buttons on a shirt: fine linen, mother-of-pearl buttons.
“Is that for Mr Fookes?” I said, thinking it too grand for the likes of him.
Makepeace didn’t look up, her needle looping through the air, the tip of it catching a glint like a dust mote struck with light. “No, it’s for the new lodger,” she said, snapping the thread off with her teeth before affixing another button.
“Does this lodger have a name?”
Makepeace looked up and eyed me. “Mr Brown to you and me,” she said. “It’s too hot to cook anything in this weather, help yourself to bread, cheese and pickles.”
I looked at the cheese already sweating beneath its cloth. “Have you seen Mr Fookes?” I said, slicing the cheese, flicking off the mould and taking a bite, sharp and creamy.
“Not since you came in like the devil’s own,” she said and I felt my shame simmer.
“He asked me why I didn’t go with him,” I said, scoffing the cheese down, drinking a glass of water. I hadn’t realised how thirsty I’d become. “To the Colony.”
Makepeace lay down the sewing in her lap. “Is that such a bad thing?”
Her words struck me: why would she agree to such a thing, see it as a possibility? “I …”
“Are you too good for a shoemaker with plans to not just make do but make better?” she said.
“It’s not that,” I said, floundering.
“He’s not handsome enough, nor refined? You find him unsuitable?”
“No,” I said, I found him handsome enough; the tips of his fingers pressing my own had filled within me a sensation like hot and cold across my skin, his hand on my waist had done the same. “What good would I do him, I who know nothing of life or the world?” All I know is the inside of a stranger’s pocket. “He’d expect an honest woman for a wife, and in that I am sorely lacking.” Angry tears sprung to my eyes.
Makepeace stood up and came over to me, her hand resting on my cheek, dry amid all this clamminess. “You’ll learn,” she said, kissing both my cheeks. “You could do worse.”
As she came close to embrace me, I felt the familiar dance begin in my fingers, all the joints outstretched and ready, supple like a pianist who already heard the song she was about to play. Why would I fight it when it was all I knew? She didn’t even blink as my fingers unlooped the key from her chatelaine and neither did it make a sound as I dropped it into my own pocket. I was as subtle and as secret as the water that seeped from its secret river course to the earth beneath our cellar, wending its way upward through the dark.
THIRTY-ONE
Eglantine, 1838
All night I listened for the sounds of the new lodger moving beneath, but aside from the odd shuffle the room was silent, as if he had slippers made of thistledown. Fookes was in his room, I heard the tap of his footfall, the faint sound of his cough, the sound further away and soon it would be on the other side of the world. How dare Makepeace suggest I could do worse, when I didn’t know the parameter of any other human being – no relationships other than those I fostered in this house, not knowing anyone other than my father and my grandmother? I was rudderless in knowing what sort of man Fookes was. He had all the attributes of a kindly gentleman portrayed in the pages of the newspaper – neat and polite, manners learned at his parents’ knees, all the old courtesies, but what did that translate to me, thief that I was? All I knew was that when I was near him the air changed, like a window open in my soul, a gulp of breath.
At dawn, before the house stirred, I walked barefoot down the stairs and leaned my ear against the door of my father’s old room, the grain of the wood rough against my cheek, hearing nothing except my own heart knocking against my chest, loud as if I was knocking on the wood, my mother’s pouch hanging a conduit between flesh and door. The key was in my palm and I was certain that the room was empty. In the distance a cart splashed in the ruts of the road. I held the handle and turned the key to silence th
e chance of the wind rattling the door.
The room was empty, the bed unslept in. Why would Makepeace lie and say there was a new lodger if there wasn’t one? I stood behind the door and made myself look at the room again; something was different, something had shifted. I teased the curtain open a little, the light trickling in, a pigeon rested on the sill, his mottled grey feathers smeared against the glass, before he disappeared into the morning. What was I missing? The drawers were empty, the bed was made but there was an indentation along the length of it as though an invisible guest still lay there; the mirror above the mantle showed me the whole room back in miniature, a porthole of the room. That was when I saw it, feeling sick to my core, frightened as if a spirit stood behind me till I realised it was a coat hanging, the length of a man, on a hook behind the door.
The coat was deeply soiled, the hem had soaked up a great deal of water and had turned the lower half of the coat a different shade. A long tear had been mended in the lining, stitched roughly with some sort of string or twine, the cuffs soiled, the buttonholes made ragged by mismatched buttons, some just a stick stitched on tight and used like a toggle. I ran the fabric through my fingers as if I was a blind person, my eyes closed, the familiarity leaching into my fingertips, and let my fingers swim into the pockets, careful not to touch the sides as if fearing a slap; it had once been such a fine article, the sorrel colour of a fine horse’s coat, but now it was worn to threads on the shoulders. All that the pocket contained was a sprig of rosemary, the tiny blue flower still in the bud. The owner of the coat I was in no doubt of, though worn and travelled, distressed and repaired.
The whole house was silent except for the shout of my thoughts. I stepped out of the room, locked the door behind me and palmed the key. Fookes turned the handle of his door, so I made haste back to my bedroom, filled with confusion. I pulled on my stockings and shoes. The red birthmark around my neck began to sting, the leather of my mother’s pouch brushing against it; I pulled my blouse away, the skin an accusation. There was a quick rap on my door.
“Come in,” I said, thinking it was Makepeace, my mind so dammed with questions I didn’t know which one would trickle out first. But it wasn’t Makepeace, it was Fookes.
“May I come in?” he said, standing on the threshold. “May I speak with you privately.” He didn’t wait for me to reply but entered, closed the door quietly behind him and stepped towards me, all of my mind rushing and loud.
“Makepeace won’t be happy that we are in here alone,” I said, panic spreading all down my neck.
“She’s gone out, before dawn, I heard her go,” he said, stepping closer. “She might be back at any moment, so please let me speak.” He put up his hands, seeing that I was keen to sweep him out of the room, all of me bristle and broom.
“I didn’t make myself clear yesterday, and for that I’m sorry, I’m not a man of words.” His voice made my skin prickle. He reached and took my hand and I looked at my fingers, foreign as fish, in the net of his. “Eglantine …” His hand was hot and dry and it pulled me closer.
“What is it that you want, Mr Fookes, Francis?” I said, unable to stop the twist of sarcasm in my voice. “There is nothing I can give you.” I pulled my hand away.
“No, it is what I can give you. Yesterday when I spoke of your coming with me, I didn’t mean for you to come as some piece of luggage but as my wife, Eglantine. Would you accept my hand?”
I felt twisted with my cruelty, his earnestness stoking my sting. “But I don’t know you, Mr Fookes. I know nothing of your plans, your person, you’ll be gone in mere weeks,” I said, feeling the ugliness of the words as I said them, “and you are, after all, a mere tradesman, a shoemaker.” My father’s words were in my mouth. I was his puppet even still and I would remain so. I had become what he had wanted of me, regardless of what I felt; even though we were separated by the span of the globe, I still did his bidding.
Fookes’s face blanched, each of my words filching any affection and regard he might have, my sleight of hand damaging his estimation of me. I saw myself in his eyes: small, dark, a thorn. But as I said those words I meant the opposite – I didn’t care if he was a shoemaker or a chimneysweep, I cared for him however he came. His hands were honest hands that practised an honest trade, unlike mine, and soon he’d be gone, just another person I loved who would leave only a silhouette as a memory of themselves, sharp and black.
“I’m afraid I don’t believe you.” Fookes stepped forward, his face so close. I willed him to defy my bitter resistance.
Gingerly he reached a fingertip and ran it the length of the raised and angry birthmark that swelled at my throat. His touch made me ashamed of all that I had said. What had I done to deserve him? But instead of pushing him away with the tide of it, I pulled him in closer.
“But I have done things, things that you would not approve of,” I made myself say, feeling the burden of all that my father had made me become, of how much I wanted to say yes to Fookes. “I’m a thief,” I said, “that is how I provide, it is all I know.”
Fookes placed his mouth on mine and kissed me, the fractious knot dissolving into disarray. A tangle of arms. His skin warm as light.
I never laid eyes on the mysterious Mr Brown. Occasionally I heard a cough or a cry that woke me from sleep, but often I wasn’t sure if it was some other sound, a passer-by in the street, the house settling, a sound coming from across the river. His coat sometimes appeared in the corners of my dreams – I was wearing it, a scarecrow flapped in it, a drowned person floated in it – leaving me distracted, unfocused, awake and listening to the house again. Fookes came silently in the night, barefoot, his tread the only thing I listened out for, his mouth the only thing I craved.
The night before the Coronation I hardly slept, the night hot, my skin sticking to the sheets. I got up and pushed open the sash of the bedroom window, hoping for a lick of the breeze, but there was none. The night was still with anticipation. The darkness was filled with carousing song; celebrations had started early, the sun was but a hope on the horizon.
Makepeace had brought up water from the river before dawn split the sky and land. She had twice boiled it for good measure, sending the kitchen thick with steam, until the house was filled with the hot cloud of it. The table was laid with our wedding breakfast, a cake dusted with sugar, a bowl of raspberries, a jug of cream and a bottle of whiskey. While the water cooled, Makepeace dressed my hair in sweetpeas she’d found wind-sown in one of her pots, tenderly threading them through my braids.
“Your mother would have loved to have seen this day,” she said, holding me at arm’s length and taking me in. “Your father too.” Her emotions stuck in her throat. If Makepeace’s old ways were true, if all the things of the departed weren’t destroyed their spirit would linger, then whatever remained of my mother remained on earth, lingering still, caught in the pouch which hung close to my skin. Was that why my father had never destroyed it, was it his gift to me: if not a living mother, a spirit one? I closed my eyes and tried to imagine her face, but all that came to me was the sound of water.
I heard Fookes’s footsteps on the stairs and felt my heart chirr like a magpie as he neared. Fookes gently swept my hair to the side to bare my neck, around which he draped a simple strand of coral, the little click of the clasp; his breath on my neck made me shiver, bedecked as I was, a religious icon, made out of portable property ready to be carried on a procession through the streets. The coral nestled right across the mark the Lord had given me at birth; in the side of the copper pot I saw my reflection bulge, the scar on my skin and the strand of beads intertwining.
“It was my mother’s,” he said and the gap widened of how much I didn’t know about him – his parents, his life. I told myself that we’d fill these in, these pages of the book our lives were yet to write, but the cavernous lack of knowledge yawned up at me, making me wonder if he’d be waiting for me after the months at sea; would the equator act as a magnet did on a watch’s mechanism and send
his affection for me haywire? While lying in the circumference of his arms all these thoughts were kept at bay, but for how much longer? It had been arranged that I’d follow Fookes a few weeks after his departure, unable to get a berth on his ship, and I pushed the thought of his loss out of my mind, though it was but hours away.
“Now join hands,” Makepeace said and we did. “You are promised to each other from this day forward.” Fookes looked at me and grinned, a line of perspiration atop his freshly shaven lip. “Now drink from the cup.” Makepeace handed it to Fookes and then myself, still hot so that it scalded my tongue, burned my lips. “You ever will drink from nothing but the same cup else,” she said, wrapped the cup in a cloth and bid us step upon it; the crunch and grind of the porcelain sounded beneath our heels. Makepeace kissed us both. We drank whiskey, ate cake and made ready to join the throng of people to welcome the new queen.
Fookes held my hand and we went out into the morning. The whole city seemed to buzz, a hive waiting for their new queen bee, but for Fookes and me it felt like a celebration just for us. From the fronts of the buildings hung flags, limply waiting for the wind to turn them to banners. Already people milled in the street, taking up vantage points. Hawkers set up their wares in carts – Coronation pies, mugs, ale. Fookes tried to flag a hansom cab, but no driver would stop, all were occupied, urgently trying to make their way through the growing congestion.
A newspaper boy sang out in a pure voice, “Three thousand and ninety-three gems, the Black Prince’s Ruby, St Edward’s Sapphire, a cross pattée will crown her.” And I had to stop and lean into the gutter, Fookes’s hand on my back as I retched the whiskey, the cake and the raspberries into the street, the paperboy’s chant like a rhyme, the sort of portable property my father would covet in one spectacular item. Fookes bade me sit and catch my breath, but the excitement of the crowd bobbed me along, and I was keen to see her, the doll a happy little wooden fish rolling in my pocket.
The River Sings Page 24