by Carol Hedges
Emily Benet (for it is she,) glances about her with delight. She has spent the past week either cooped up in the sewing-room, or stitching away by the light of a guttering candle. For this is the Season, and the rich society ladies are in town and must have their fine ball gowns or afternoon dresses made and delivered as quickly as possible.
They only want to be admired, to be the cynosure of every male or female eye as they sparkle and dance and laugh. They do not care – why should they? – that every tuck, pleat and minute piece of decoration on their stunningly beautiful dresses has been sewn by one of the seventeen thousand skilled dressmakers working all over London, often in cramped or unsanitary conditions, with few breaks for fresh air and food.
But today Emily Benet is not stitching her fingers to the bone. Instead, here she is enjoying the sunshine and the fresh air and the company. So they stroll through the park, the detective and the dressmaker. What are they talking about? What do people falling in love talk about? The weather, the scenery, the flowers, the people around them. Light, artificial safe things. What is important is the conversation taking place elsewhere: the conversation of touch, and smile, and stolen glances.
“Would you like to see the fashionable carriages and riders pass?” Cully asks after a modicum of strolling and admiring has taken place.
“I should like that indeed. I haven’t seen it since ...” her voice falters, “for many weeks.”
Cully steers her through the throngs of couples and families also out for an airing until they reach the road known as Rotten Row, where the rich and fashionable like to parade and take the air, to be seen and be admired.
“If we stand just here, we shall be able to see perfectly.”
While they wait for the procession to make its way over from Regent Street, he tells her about the riots of six years earlier, when protesters against the new law stopping refreshments being sold on Sunday in public parks, and other places of leisure frequented by the working class, stood shoulder to shoulder along the Row with placards, waiting for the rich to pass by.
“It has always been like this,” Emily nods wisely. “Rich people must be allowed their pleasures even if we are forbidden ours.”
“I was one of the constables on duty,” Cully says. “I remember thinking at the time that it was unfair these people could make their servants work on a Sunday, and their Clubs remain open, while working people were denied their few pleasures on their one day off.”
Emily Benet turns to face him, her eyes dancing.
“Why Mr Cully, you are a socialist!”
Cully looks at her in amazement.
“You know about socialism?”
Emily Benet’s lips curve into a smile.
“Oh, I may be only a weak and feeble woman, but I read newspapers and pamphlets. I see the world around me. And I believe it is unfair that some have so much and others so little. Violet and I always said when we had our own business we would pay everybody the same wages, and make sure they did not work long hours, as we have had to,” she pauses. “But of course, that will never happen now.”
“It might, some day,” Cully says, but Emily merely shakes her head sadly.
The awkward silence is broken by the unmistakable clip-clop of horses’ hooves and the jingle of harness. A group of Dragoon Guards from the Knightsbridge Barracks trot by, their scarlet uniforms immaculate, their horses polished to perfection.
They are followed by a procession of open carriages filled with smartly dressed men, and women in the latest copied Paris fashions. The women twirl parasols and gossip. The men stare over the heads of the watching crowds.
Cully, ever on duty even when he isn’t meant to be, scans the crowd, watching for pickpockets, while Emily stares hard at the high fashion dresses, admiring their cut and colour, mentally pricing them up and working out how long some of them would take to make.
As soon as the dazzling procession has passed by, Cully suggests they go down to the bandstand and listen to the band playing popular songs. Which they do, and both enjoy greatly. And then it is time to leave the park. Their lovely afternoon has slipped by so fast, each minute like a precious pearl on a string.
Cully walks Emily Benet to her dusty front door. They stand on the step, going through the customary farewell routines. Then she unlocks the door and hurries up the unlit stairs to her room, where she is awaited by a meagre meal and a large pile of sewing.
Meanwhile Jack Cully walks home alone through the gathering twilight, reliving the glorious afternoon in his head, and wishing he had plucked up enough courage to ask her to join him for supper.
****
Meagre indeed is the Sunday supper being served at Mrs Lucinda Witchard’s Boarding House for Commercial Gentlemen. The principal components are thin bread and butter, sour watercress, fatty ham and watery tea.
The lodgers gather round the table. They pick and prod the offerings with a sigh, and think of other tables groaning with good things, and a pleasant woman in attendance to heap their plates high and smilingly refill their cups.
The lodger on the third floor seems unconcerned by the poor fare on offer. His mouth moves mechanically as he chews the stale bread. He keeps his head down, focusing instead upon his chipped plate. He takes no part in the conversation, which is mainly about the various occupations pursued by the rest of his fellow-diners.
He wonders what they would think if he described his occupation. Would they like to hear how he prepares dead bodies for dissection, sawing and cutting, separating limb from torso? How he clears up and disposes of the bits and pieces once they have fulfilled their final purpose? How he follows the surgeons on their rounds, standing in the background as they probe festering wounds and drain pus-filled abscesses?
Would they like to hear about the Foul Wards, where women with secondary and tertiary syphilis lie moaning and writhing in agony on sweat-soaked sheets, their noses eaten away, their private parts chancred and rotten with disease? He remembers with a shudder of disgust the first time he entered one of these polluted places, saw the bright blue faces of those who’d let cheap gin be their solace and comfort, smelled the stink of corruption.
Whores. Harlots. Carriers of disease. Polluters of the marriage bed. Unholy. Like she was. Like she did. His gorge rises. His colour suddenly turns to livid white, ominous marks forming about his nose, as if the finger of the devil himself has touched it. He jumps to his feet, knocking over his chair.
“All right there, old man?” one of the lodgers asks. “Looking a bit seedy.”
He does not reply. Instead he runs upstairs, takes down his coat from its peg behind the door, and crams his hat on his head. Tonight, he will find her. Wild-eyed, his lips parted, he rushes frantically out of the house as if it were a matter of life and death. Which in a way it is. Although mostly death.
****
London sleeps. At least, the respectable section of it sleeps. The chiming of church clocks, the shouts of the late ones meandering drunkenly homewards, disturb not their slumbers. But in low lodging houses, in dark derelict buildings dating back to before the Great Fire, whole families lie where they can on bare floorboards, prey to the bugs and fleas and vermin that make sleep almost impossible.
The Foundling is finding sleep almost impossible. Hunger does not make a good bedfellow. Leftover crusts and fatty ham rinds from the lodgers’ tea are all she has been allowed. She tosses and turns on her basement bed, her growling stomach a constant reminder that she has had virtually nothing to eat all day.
Mrs Witchard takes the attitude that Sunday is a day of rest – which means that she does not prepare any meals (apart from supper,) for the lodgers. Which in turn means no food for the Foundling, who relies on the leftovers and scraps to fill her belly.
Mrs Witchard’s day of rest also includes a day of rest from all domestic chores. By inference this includes those who perform them, so the Foundling is turfed out of the house at eight am and only allowed back in to lay up for supper. How she spen
ds the time in between is of no interest whatsoever to her employer.
The other thing currently keeping the Foundling awake is the sensation that somebody is moving around directly over her head. She can hear footsteps, boards creaking. She throws back the ragged coverlet that used to be a curtain, and with catlike tread creeps up the basement stairs to take a look.
There is a light in Mrs Witchard’s parlour. She sees the flickering strip of it under the door. The Foundling puts an eye to the keyhole. She can just make out a dark shape hovering by the mantelpiece, where the solid-silver-framed pictures of Mr Witchard (her employer’s late husband) and other members of the family are displayed. She hears ragged breathing, a muffled groan. Then she sees a hand reach out and take up one of the pictures.
Next minute the candle is blown out. Footsteps stumble towards the door. The Foundling draws back and crouches down by the stairwell. The door is thrust open. Somebody enters the hallway, and climbs the stairs.
She does not see his face, but she does not need to see it, for she knows at once who it is. Every night the Foundling collects the boots and shoes left by their owners outside their doors and takes them down to the scullery, where she cleans and polishes them before returning them ready to wear to work next day. So, she knows those boots. Probably better than the boots’ owner knows them.
The Foundling waits until all is quiet overhead. Then she creeps into the parlour and feels along the mantelpiece. There is a gap where one of the pictures used to be. She moves the others along to fill it. Then she returns to her basement bed and tries to puzzle out what she has just seen. She is still puzzling when the first streaks of dawn gild the sky, and Mrs Witchard thumps downstairs from her comfortable feather bed and kicks her into action.
****
Hyacinth Clout is also in possession of something puzzling. In her case, it is how to come up with a plausible excuse to leave the house for an afternoon. For Hyacinth has finally received a letter from her Lonely Widower inviting her to take tea with him.
He has suggested a discreet tea-room in the pleasant and totally respectable environs of Hampstead. He has also suggested a date and time: this afternoon. At three.
Hyacinth is both thrilled and terrified in equal measure. She has spent all morning going through her not-extensive wardrobe trying on this, discarding that, and staring at herself in the cheval glass. It is impossible to guess what this stranger will think of her appearance. First impressions count so much – she has read that in a ladies’ magazine. She really wants to make a good first impression.
But now she has to work out a strategy for getting the other side of the front door without her sister knowing why. She has checked the diary Lobelia keeps in the writing desk. There are no committee meetings scheduled. No afternoon calls pencilled in. She is going to have to employ all the qualities of duplicity and mendacity that she never thought she possessed before starting her illicit correspondence with Lonely Widower.
Lunch provides her with an initial opportunity to introduce the concept of her absence.
“I notice we are out of several items of food,” she observes. “I wanted to make a nice treacle tart for supper, but there is no treacle left in the larder.”
Lobelia wipes her mouth with her napkin. She is particularly fond of treacle tart, as Hyacinth knows full well. In fact, Hyacinth strongly suspects, from the speed with which the tart disappears every time she makes it, that her sister has been slipping downstairs at night and helping herself to extra slices. Either that, or the Clouts have a very sweet-toothed mouse.
“Perhaps I should get some more treacle, what do you think?” she suggests. “And some fresh eggs for the custard sauce.”
Lobelia eyes her empty plate. She has just enjoyed an excellent luncheon of cold beef and new potatoes, but the thought of treacle tart later is clearly enticing.
Hyacinth clasps her hands together under the table and waits.
“Yes. I think that would be a good idea,” Lobelia says finally.
Hyacinth carefully tunes her facial expression to neutral.
“Then I shall slip out when I have tidied up the luncheon things,” she says, her heart dancing in her chest with excitement.
And here she is now, dismounting from an omnibus. She is wearing her best cherry and grey striped day dress, enhanced by the judicious insertion of bust improvers – for Hyacinth is rather flat-chested, and current fashion favours a more rounded look. She also has a fringed Indian cone shawl, and a bonnet that is almost but not quite fashionable.
Hyacinth checks her watch: it is a quarter off three o’clock. She slows down – she doesn’t want to arrive at the tea room too early; that would not be proper for a young lady in her position. So, she dawdles in the High Street, glancing into shop windows, seeing nothing, until the watch shows three o’clock. Then she crosses the road and makes her way to the Lily Lounge, the rendezvous suggested by Lonely Widower.
Hyacinth enters the busy tea room. It is very full of people. Waitresses are rushing to and fro carrying trays. She stands on the threshold, hesitant, uncertain, suddenly wondering whether this was a good idea after all. She is just about to turn tail and flee, when a heavily-bearded gentleman rises from a seat and lifts his gloved hand to his top hat in greeting.
Blushing furiously, she crosses the floor.
“London Lady, I presume?” he says, in a pleasant tone of voice.
“Oh. Y-yes, I am,” she stutters.
Her interlocutor is wearing a sober grey suit, white high-collared shirt and blue silk necktie fastened with a gold horseshoe pin. He waits politely for her to sit down. Hyacinth lowers herself decorously onto the chair opposite. Suddenly she feels shy, tongue-tied.
Fortunately, a waitress appears at her shoulder.
“Tea, sir and madam?” she murmurs.
“Indeed, tea,” Lonely Widower says. He glances across the table. “And cakes?”
Hyacinth nods, suddenly too shy to speak.
The waitress repeats the order, then glides away.
Hyacinth steals a glance at her companion. Apart from the beard, which is a little disconcerting in its bushiness, he appears perfectly normal. She does not know what she was expecting, then reminds herself that he is in exactly the same position. She attempts a smile. He smiles back.
“I am delighted meet you in person at last,” he says. “I found your letters so full of interest. By the way, my real name is John Smithson.”
Hyacinth tells him her name, feeling as if she was sharing some great secret.
“Hyacinth: what a lovely name,” John Smithson exclaims. “A lovely name for a lovely young lady, if I may be so bold as to remark.”
Hyacinth feels her face flush. No man has ever paid her a compliment before. It is both strange and intoxicating at the same time. And here she is, alone with a man for the first time in her life. The only man she has ever been alone with before this afternoon is Reverend Bittersplit, but he is a clergyman, and so barely registers as a man as far as she is concerned.
Over tea and luscious cakes (Hyacinth notices with approval how delicately and carefully her companion eats), she tells Mr Smithson about the death of Mama, and her current life, keeping and sharing the house with her sister.
“It was very brave of you to write to the newspaper,” he remarks when she is done.
“Oh, I just felt so unhappy and alone,” Hyacinth confesses. “It was as if my life was empty and meaningless.”
He smiles at her across the tea table.
“And do you still feel like that, Miss Clout?” he asks gently, his eyes searching her face.
Hyacinth drops her eyes to her plate and chases the last few crumbs around with a finger.
“I am so glad we have met,” he continues. “I felt we had a bond the moment I opened your letter, for I too, have known great unhappiness. When my beloved wife passed away, I also couldn’t see the future for the dark clouds of misery that threatened to overwhelm me.”
“But you had yo
ur child,” Hyacinth says.
“Ah. Yes. Indeed. Dear sweet Agnes. Such a treasure and comfort to me in my lonely state.”
“How old is she?”
“She is thirteen. On the threshold of womanhood. That was why I decided I needed to find a companion – a special companion – who would be the mother to her that I cannot be. A good woman who could guide her through the snares and pitfalls of this world.” He glances earnestly at her. “The sweetness of a mother’s love. Who can put a price on such a commodity?”
Hyacinth, whose experience of maternal love has encompassed rather more bitterness and gall than sweetness, does not reply.
He heaves a sigh.
“It has been a most delightful afternoon, but now I must return home. Agnes is still very delicate – the death of her mother has affected her greatly, and I do not want to cause her any more distress.”
“Does she know you were meeting me today?” Hyacinth asks.
“Not yet. I wanted to see you, to find out a little more about you. Now that I have met you, and spoken with you, I shall tell her. And next time we meet, maybe I will bring her with me.”
“Oh, I should like that very much!” Hyacinth exclaims. “I am particularly fond of children.”
“Then let it be so,” he smiles. “And now I shall settle the bill and put you in a carriage.”
“I am quite happy to catch the omnibus,” Hyacinth demurs.
“Indeed, you shall not!” Lonely Widower says, waving a finger roguishly at her. “Riding about London in a common omnibus? A lady of your beauty and elegance? I cannot hear of it.”
He pays the bill, then ushers Hyacinth out of the tea-room, where a hansom is summoned and she is put inside.
“Until the next time we meet, London Lady,” he smiles. “A merry meeting, that I hope will take place very soon. Watch out for the letter carrier.”
He raises a hand. The cab rattles away.
Hyacinth sinks back rapturously onto the leather banquette. Her head is in a whirl. There is so much to think about. She runs through the afternoon, reliving the thrill of it, blushing as she recalls the compliments, the smiles, the way he listened intently to everything she said, the absence of bible verses.