Mrs. Cook

by Marele Day

  Elizabeth imagined the artist delicately applying the colour; a man with a very long pigtail leaning over his work, holding his brocaded sleeve out of the way. She saw the teapot being carefully packed in straw so that it could make its way across the seas to her without breaking.

  As she released the sovereigns from her sleeve and handed them over the counter, Elizabeth heard Becky sniggering. Elizabeth turned and frowned, but that only seemed to make things worse. Eventually Becky had to leave the shop and wait outside.

  ‘What’s so amusing?’ said Elizabeth, when the transaction was finished.

  ‘The teapot.’

  Elizabeth held the box containing the teapot protectively under her arm. ‘What about it?’

  ‘The way the spout sticks out.’

  ‘They all stick out.’

  ‘Not at that angle,’ said Becky, giggling all the while. ‘Your trousseau teapot has a spout exactly like a John Thomas.’

  THE ORIENTAL BOX

  In preparation for Frederick’s arrival, Reverend Downing had brought out the best tea service, with a special tea caddie and good china with a flower design. The pot was not dissimilar to Elizabeth’s, which had been tucked away in a special drawer, Mama saying it was bad luck to use trousseau items before the marriage. No-one had passed comment on the spout that had induced so much laughter from Becky, who was now married with a son. The three young Sheppards Elizabeth had in her charge were angels compared to Becky’s little terror.

  Although she missed Mama and even Mr Blackburn, Elizabeth was happy that the position of governess had brought her back to her ‘sister’ Sarah and family life with the Sheppards. She had been with them almost two years now. Elizabeth loved her little charges but was glad to have this time off from them, to enjoy a cup of tea in pleasant company and conversation a little more lively than ‘A is for apple’. She was looking forward to Frederick’s arrival. He always brought the latest news, what plays were showing, new shops that had opened, what the ladies in London were wearing this season. Of particular interest this time, in November 1762, was how the metropolis celebrated the end of the war.

  Elizabeth imagined the great ports—Plymouth and Portsmouth—discharging their sailors, imagined Wapping, Shadwell and the riverside, the brave soldiers and sailors who had fought the French now drunk as lords and fighting each other. She imagined Mr Blackburn throwing his hat up into the air and buying drinks in the Ship and Crown as if it were his own alehouse.

  The coach was late. Such a brisk wind whistling down the chimneys, the sky so dark and ominous. Horses became skittish in this weather. Elizabeth hoped everything was all right, that there hadn’t been an accident. Frederick had recently finished his studies and had secured himself a position with good prospects at Temple Inn. Perhaps today he would put to her the proposal everyone, including Elizabeth, expected. She had imagined his proposal several times but was still not sure of her answer. Perhaps when she heard the proposal from Frederick himself, she would know.

  ‘And what is your opinion, Elizabeth?’

  She put down her cup. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Reverend Downing was asking what we think of the fair,’ Sarah said. ‘The Fairlop Fair.’

  On this grey November day the summer fair seemed a long way away. Yet there was talk of it because certain parties wanted to see an end to it. Not Elizabeth. She loved fairs as much as she loved shopping, especially Fairlop Fair, because old Mr Day, who owned the Fairlop estate near Hainault Forest, was fromWapping, well known on the riverside and so considerate to his block and pump workers that they called him Good Day.

  The fair had started when Elizabeth was a child, and what a sight it was to see people arriving for it. Its beginnings were small, a summer picnic for the workers in the shade of the Fairlop oak, by far the greatest oak in Essex, its branches reaching over three hundred feet. Though Mr Day was generous, he also had a touch of impishness—he stipulated that the picnickers come to the very oak itself, which was not on a river, or even a creek, by boat! That did not stop the enterprising waterside workers of Wapping, though.

  Elizabeth had thought she was dreaming that day when she and all the Sheppards, forgetting their natural Quaker reserve, ran outside to watch the boat coming along the road. It was drawn by horses and bedecked in extravagant bouquets of flowers. Mr Day’s workers sang sea shanties into the Essex countryside as the boat transported merriment for the day in the form of a full barrel of beer, a barrel as stout as a rich man’s stomach.

  That was only the first of a procession of vehicles in the years to come—vans with awnings, carts, omnibuses, other horse-drawn boats, all of them gaily bedecked and as magnificent as their owners could make them. Add the bands of musicians and it was as grand a procession as the coronation of King George, but instead of royalty, it was the watermen of the East End and their wives who were the kings and queens. By midday there must have been over 100 000 people spread out around the wide girth of the oak tree, leaving the East End practically empty.

  ‘Perhaps,’ ventured Elizabeth, ‘those who object to the fair should not attend. It’s only one day, it’s easy enough to stay indoors.’ As far as she knew the fairgoers had not so far attempted to storm country houses.

  ‘There are plenty of other fairs,’ argued Reverend Downing. ‘Let them attend those.’

  ‘But Fairlop is the watermen’s fair,’ Elizabeth protested. ‘And it does them the world of good to be breathing air that is not peppered with coal dust and all manner of unhealthiness.’

  ‘I have no objection to them breathing our country air. It’s the quantity of drink they bring with them that causes the trouble.’

  But everyone in England drank large quantities, from lords to the humblest servant. The real trouble was the power of the mob, to those who were afraid of it. The mob owned the streets and public places, especially on the riverside, and those not wise to its ways ventured there at their own risk. Mr Blackburn said it was better to have a fair than a riot. ‘Mark my words,’ he said, wagging that finger of his, ‘if they try to put a stop to the fair there will be a riot.’ England was a land of liberty, and any attempt to put the least restriction on this highly prized virtue was actively resented. In 1750, when Mr Fielding created the Bow Street runners to apprehend thieves, there was fierce public outcry that such a thing would introduce a military state. And much as everyone hated impressment and the press-gangs, compulsory conscription into the Navy, which was occasionally muted in the Houses of Parliament, was seen as a tyranny of the same order as the Spanish Inquisition.

  Reverend Downing’s housekeeper, Mrs Bradshaw, who had been following the discourse, poured more hot water in the pot and said, ‘There is much that goes on at these fairs that is not suitable for young ladies to know about. It’s that what people are objecting to,’ she muttered into the steam arising from the jug.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Bradshaw,’ said the reverend. ‘That will be enough.’

  Elizabeth wasn’t sure whether he meant the hot water or her comment, but Elizabeth already knew what Mrs Bradshaw was referring to—the goings-on in Hainault Forest during the evening on fair day.

  James Cook stood at the bow of a small boat winding downriver towards Barking Quay. He had been discharged only days before, with the tidy sum of £291 19s 3d owing to him. Although the Treaty of Paris which officially ended the war was not signed till February 1763, the preliminary peace negotiations had brought the ships home in November 1762. James’s peacetime prospects looked promising. Lord Colville had praised the surveying work he had undertaken in Canada during the war, and had told James that in his report to the Admiralty he would be informing their lordships of James’s ‘genius and capacity’.

  James had survived seven years of war with the French, attacks by Indians and the hazards of the St Lawrence River. Nevertheless, apprehension and uncertainty gnawed at him now as he stepped ashore at Barking Quay, a square package under his arm. Would ‘genius and capacity’ see him through his presen
t undertaking?

  He paused before beginning the two mile walk. Though it was a cold November day, it was nothing compared to the winters in Canada, to the sleet and sea ice and howling winds that whipped straight through the cold weather clothing, the skin, flesh and bones, and chilled a man’s very marrow.

  An easterly wind had brought a dark grey sky but at least it wasn’t raining. He did not want to arrive at the Sheppards’ dripping with rain, or for the package to be spoiled in any way.

  He had made the acquaintance of James Sheppard, part-owner of Mr Walker’s ships, in Wapping, and in preparation for his visit, had learnt a little of Barking and its surroundings on his journey down the Thames. The boatman who had ferried him here from Sinart’s Quay near Billingsgate had told him about the market house and gardens, the busy fishing industry and the local church, St Margaret’s, an important abbey before Dissolution. But the first thing James noticed about Barking, and the least suitable subject of conversation with the Sheppards, was the muck. Indeed, as he disembarked, also disembarking from another boat was a load of muck from London—night soil, slaughterhouse refuse and carcasses. Cartloads of it were being wheeled away from the quay through the streets of the town to eventually end up on the market gardens.

  The easterly did little to abate the smell of it, and James waited a moment to put some distance between himself and the manure. Not that a Yorkshire farm boy was unfamiliar with such things, but today of all days he wanted to present well. He smiled to himself at the thought that the potatoes, cabbages, turnips and onions, to say nothing of the apples, plums and walnuts destined for the best tables in London, were nurtured in the city’s muck.

  James strode into the grey day. He passed the market house with its row of mullioned windows, the arcades of the ground floor which would be full of corn on market days. Then he passed the Green Man Inn, and the timber and brick houses of Barking. The flint and rag-stone tower of St Margaret’s led him out of the town and into the fields, the stubble of corn, rye and wheat catching the last brown leaves the wind flurried off the trees.

  Across the fields James found the bridle path, wide enough for a horse but not a coach. He passed the manors of Uphall and Rayhouse, and on the London–Colchester turnpike road finally came to Crowcher’s Yard. Set back from the road he saw a large solid brick house and counted five attics jutting into the sky.

  He took in a deep breath, summoned up his courage, and strode decisively towards the house, towards what he hoped would be his future. The pair of barking dogs which accompanied him up the path settled as soon as the door was opened.

  ‘James Cook,’ he announced himself. ‘Come to see Miss Batts.’

  The coach bearing Frederick had not arrived.

  ‘I’m sure everything is all right,’ said Sarah, as the girls walked back along the turnpike road. ‘The driver is probably going slow to avoid accident.’

  ‘The ideal pace for highwaymen,’ Elizabeth pointed out.

  ‘They wouldn’t dare hold up a coach with a lawyer on board.’

  Sarah’s comment lightened the mood. It was pleasant to be in the crisp cold air after the warm fug of Reverend Downing’s drawing room, though by the time they turned off the road and made their way to the house, escorted by Blacky and Spot, the girls were well and truly ready for another fire.

  But Elizabeth was not prepared to see who was sitting beside it. James Cook. It had been more than seven years. Though the sound of his name still caused giddiness to ripple through her, when she had tried to recall his image it was blurred by her feelings for him. Yet she recognised him immediately, instinctively.

  ‘Ah,’ exclaimed Mr Sheppard, ‘I see our fine Essex weather has brought colour to your cheeks,’ he said, looking at Elizabeth, who herself didn’t know where to look. ‘Mr Cook, this is my daughter, Sarah. And of course you know Miss Batts.’

  James Cook rose out of his seat and bowed. Elizabeth watched the flow of movement through his blue coat and the neat white breeches. He must be thirty-four—Elizabeth couldn’t help but do the calculation—and the years of war, of harsh Canadian winters, were visible in his face, yet his eyes were the same. They swept over Sarah and came to rest on Elizabeth.

  ‘How is Frederick?’ Mrs Sheppard enquired.

  Elizabeth left it to Sarah to answer. ‘Not yet arrived.’

  ‘But we heard a coach.’

  ‘Frederick wasn’t on it,’ Sarah said.

  ‘How disappointing for you, Elizabeth,’ Mrs Sheppard sympathised.

  Sarah glanced at Elizabeth. Why had she suddenly gone quiet?

  ‘Mr Cook and I have been exchanging news of our mutual friend, Mr Walker,’ Mr Sheppard broke the silence.

  Elizabeth felt she must say something. After all these years. Was James Cook here to see her or the Sheppards? ‘Will you be returning to Whitby?’ she finally asked.

  ‘To see Mr Walker, and my family. Then back to London. I’ve taken up lodgings in Shadwell. Near your mama and Mr Blackburn.’

  Elizabeth knew now that she, not the Sheppards, was the object of his visit.

  ‘The wind appears to have dropped,’ James Cook said. ‘I was hoping Miss Batts, and Miss Sheppard,’ he added, ‘might show me a little of the countryside.’

  Nobody commented on the fact that Mr Cook must have already seen something of it on his way from Barking.

  Of all the Sheppards, only Sarah seemed to know what was going on. ‘I’m feeling a little tired,’ she said. ‘If Elizabeth and Mr Cook will excuse me, I’m sure they have much to discuss. Family news to catch up on,’ she emphasised.

  A moment of indecision hung in the room, Elizabeth could feel it like a wrinkle in an otherwise smooth fabric.

  ‘Would you prefer to stay, Miss Batts?’ asked James Cook.

  ‘No, no,’ Elizabeth replied, she hoped not too hastily.

  ‘Mr Blackburn tells me you are living with the Sheppards now,’ he began as they made their way down the yard and onto the road. Though the wind had dropped it was still the same low grey sky, but with James Cook by her side, Elizabeth felt she was walking in brisk sunshine.

  ‘I am helping with the little ones.’

  ‘Their governess?’ suggested James Cook.

  ‘Yes.’ Elizabeth couldn’t help but smile as she remembered that The Governess was the novel she had been reading when James Cook first strode into her life.

  In the natural motion of their walking she felt his hand brush hers. A precious thing, like a bird coming to rest on her hand. Though it was only the slight brush of skin on skin, the feeling quivered up her arm and through her entire body. In the time since they’d first met Elizabeth had grown from a girl into a young woman, yet now the years fell away and she felt the same as she had when she’d opened the door to him.

  ‘Are you cold, Miss Batts? Do you wish to return to Crowcher’s Yard?’

  No, she didn’t. ‘You’ve hardly seen anything of the countryside yet.’ They relaxed into an easy pace.

  They passed Reverend Downing’s. Elizabeth hoped the reverend, or worse, Mrs Bradshaw with her clucking tongue, wasn’t peering out the window, because up ahead was the Fairlop oak and, looming behind it, Hainault Forest, the place of the ‘goings-on’. Here she was, walking towards it, unchaperoned, with a man she had met only once before.

  As they approached the tree, a great flock of crows rose up, screeching and mawking into the sky. ‘When I was a little girl,’ said Elizabeth, ‘I would stretch out my arms and try to encircle the trunk. I did it each time I returned to the Sheppards’, sure that my arms must have grown long enough, but they never reached even a quarter of the way around.’ She had a desire to do it right now, to enfold the tree in her arms, but it seemed too intimate a gesture.

  ‘A magnificent tree,’ James remarked. ‘And it continues growing, despite the abuses to it,’ he added, referring to the burnt-out lower section, remnants of fires from the fair.

  They leant against the amplitude of the trunk and watched the crows
settle in the forest.

  ‘Boys climb right to the uppermost branches of this tree,’ said Elizabeth. ‘They swear they can see London.’

  ‘There’s a tree outside the cottage where I was born. An evergreen, with dark green bristly leaves. It was from that tree that I first saw a ship,’ he told Elizabeth.

  ‘And you decided to become a seaman?’ How easy it was to be in James Cook’s company, to talk with him as if he and Elizabeth had been friends for life.

  ‘It piqued my curiosity. A determined curiosity. My father doubted I could see a ship from Marton—“tree or no,” I remember him saying. I saw the sea itself later, when we moved to Great Ayton.’ He gazed into the distance. ‘It was the horizon as much as the sea that intrigued me. I’d never seen such a straight line. The schoolmaster said it was an apparent line, that you could never reach it. But I wanted to see for myself, wanted to know what lay beyond.’ His voice softened. ‘Are you not curious about what lies beyond the horizon, Elizabeth?’

  There it was again, breeze rustling sequins through her name. Elizabeth felt as though she were being edged into the forest, into its dark enticing promise.

  ‘I don’t need to go to sea to find out,’ said Elizabeth decisively. ‘Much of what lies beyond the horizon ends up in London anyway.’

  ‘Indeed it does,’ laughed James, a low chuckle that seemed to spread out in his chest and rise into his throat.

  ‘Do you have brothers and sisters, Mr Cook?’

  ‘Two sisters. Christiana and Margaret. All that survive from eight births. My mother and father are still living. In Yorkshire, in a house built by my father with help from Mr Skottowe, his employer.’ He turned and gazed directly at her. ‘Perhaps you will see the house one day.’