A Child of Secrets

by Mary Mackie

  ‘Be still!’ Oriana Peartree admonished more than once.

  But what if he comes? Lily wanted to cry. And what if he doesn’t? her heart replied. Oh, let him come. Just to see him… Not that it would make any difference. Even if he did come, he wouldn’t notice her as a person. He never did. To him, she was like a shrub in a hedgerow, part of the scene but not important enough for special regard. Oh, Ash…

  In came the tall, slender, slightly drooping figure of Sir Richard Fyncham – alone today; his wife was not a keen church-goer and today had the excuse that her daughter was ill with a feverish cold, though young Bella could safely have been left to the care of her nanny and her nurserymaid. Still, Lily’s papa wouldn’t dare say anything about it, except to applaud Lady Fyncham for being a caring mother. Which would be sheer hypocrisy when everyone knew Lady Fyncham was more interested in horses than in her sickly daughter.

  When the church door opened again, Lily could hardly contain her wildly beating heart as she saw the Clares come in – first the lawyer Oliver Clare, with his wife Letitia, he stocky and handsome with greying fair hair, she tiny, her full figure held in place by corsets. Clemency looked stunning in sherry-gold trimmed with dark fur, and behind her… Nerves made Lily shake so much she dropped her hymnal and had to bend and fumble for it, drawing everyone’s attention, or so it seemed: her face burned and the back of her neck crawled with awareness of eyes on her. She dare not turn round again, but from the corner of her eye she watched the family, and a few of their guests, make their way down the aisle.

  Ashton Haverleigh was not among them.

  After the service, Clemency found time to murmur, ‘Ash and Dickon had other things to do. You didn’t really expect him, did you? Silly Lily!’ Her smirk said she knew exactly what terrors Lily had been under.

  How they must have laughed about it, Lily thought bleakly. Clemency, and Dickon, and – yes, probably Ash, too. Once again, she had made a total fool of herself. But this was the last time. The very last time.

  * * *

  While she completed her recovery to health, Jess passed her time with needle and thread, making alterations to the clothes folk had kindly sent for her. She hung them in a mahogany wardrobe which had a real mirror – full length! – on its door. Trouble was, the mirror served to show her how gaunt she’d grown, with sunken eyes and lank, nondescript hair.

  At night the bad dreams came strong: many times she woke in a sweat after reliving, in awful, twisted unreality, some detail from her life in Salt’s Yard. Even by daylight, when she let herself relax the memories were waiting to pounce. Memories, and regrets, and great black gulfs of grief. But she tried not to think about the past, or the future. Each new day, an hour at a time, was enough.

  In the week before Christmas she was invited downstairs to help Lily and the two maids put up decorations, with interruptions and interferences from a playful Gyp. How big the house was, how dismal and cold with its polished wooden floors, its dark panelling, and its tall what-nots holding heavy, ugly ornaments and spiky, dark-leaved plants. Supervised by Lily, the maids hung baubles and ribbons, pinned candles on the tree, and draped holly and ivy on most available surfaces.

  Finding herself with a few last swags of greenery, Lily decided she would deck her father’s study, too.

  ‘He ’on’t like that,’ said Eliza darkly.

  ‘You mind your own business!’ Lily snapped. ‘Get back to your duties, Eliza. You too, Dolly. Come, Jess, we can manage alone.’

  Jess was awed by the study. It smelled of cigar smoke and was full of books, crammed floor to ceiling on every available wall. Reverend Clare must be a very learned man, she thought. There were books on his desk, too, and pages of close handwriting whose neatness she admired though she couldn’t understand a word.

  ‘Sermons,’ Lily said. ‘They go into books. Like these.’

  Reverend Clare wrote books! Lord, what a clever man he must be.

  Beyond a broad bay window trees loomed, giants moving in the wind against a darkening sky. To counter the advancing evening a fire flared bright in a marble hearth. It was here that Lily decided to hang a swathe of ivy, but she had barely secured the first frond when the door opened and her papa walked in, startling her so much that she dropped the loose end of the branch as she whirled to face him.

  Jess, still by the window and now transfixed by apprehension, was surprised to see how short Lily’s papa was, his legs disproportionate to his long, heavy body.

  ‘Lily Victoria?’ he began, questioning her presence in his study. Then he caught his breath, his horrified gaze going to the fire. The ivy was smouldering among the coals! Lily grabbed at the swathe, trying to break it off above the burning part, but it only bent and twisted in her hands, sending up smoke that made her cough.

  Crying, ‘Are you trying to burn the house down, child?’ the Reverend Hugh pushed her aside and removed all the ivy from his mantel, bundling it on to the fire and placing the guard across as sparks spat. Brushing his hands together, he afforded Lily a reproving stare. ‘I don’t doubt you mean well, Lily Victoria. But that is no virtue when your well-meaning actions lead to chaos. If I had not entered when I did the whole house might have gone up in flames.’

  Lily looked at the hands she was twisting at her waist. ‘Yes, Papa.’

  ‘If only you would think first.’ He sighed again, and glanced to where Jess was standing. ‘Very well, you may go. Both of you.’

  Lily trailed away, making for the door. Jess hurried to catch her, but as she passed the rector, he added, ‘By the by…’

  Jess stopped, not daring to look at him, hardly daring to breathe. Lily had stopped too, and looked round.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It would appear that Miss Sharp is recovering well,’ he said. ‘That being so, I cannot allow her to continue to take up the best guest room.’

  Lily gazed at him in dismay. ‘You’re not going to send her away now? Not at Christmas? Papa…?’

  He let the silence lengthen, while the last of the ivy spat itself to twisted blackness, then he said, ‘I had hoped that you knew better than to raise your voice to me, Lily Victoria. Shouting at your father will not get you your way. Nor does it flatter me to know that you think me so heartless as to turn away someone in need, especially at this season.’

  He paused, waiting for an answer, and she, eventually, muttered, ‘I’m sorry, Papa.’

  Again he let the silence stretch, dominating the room by the force of his presence. Jess could hear her heart like thunder in her ears. What was he going to say? He was as cold as the east wind off the Wash and she began to understand why Lily had had to dream for herself another kind of father.

  ‘Since I’m not insensible of your concern for this girl,’ he said, ‘I have instructed Eliza to prepare the attic room. Miss Peartree and I have decided that she should be allowed to stay at least until Twelfth Night.’

  ‘Twelfth Night?’ Lily was dismayed. ‘But Papa… she has nowhere to go! Would you turn her out in midwinter? She has no family to go to. No friends. Oh…’ In a passion of pleading, she fell to her knees and would have grasped his hand had he not drawn it out of reach. ‘Papa, please… You’ve often said we need another pair of hands. Eliza’s lazy, and slovenly – Cousin Oriana is always saying so. She’s sly, too – I don’t trust her. And she’s always burning the food. If you let Jess stay, she could be our cook. Oh, you can’t send her away! It would be too cruel.’

  The Reverend Clare looked down at his adopted daughter with faint distaste. ‘After Twelfth Night… I shall give the matter further consideration.’

  ‘Oh… thank you, Papa.’ She leapt up, and to her own surprise – and his – threw her arms about his neck and kissed his cheek, only to draw back, hotly confused. His expression of astonishment made her laugh even as she blushed crimson. ‘I need no more Christmas present than that, Papa. Thank you. Thank you! Come, Jess.’

  Reverend Clare stood for a moment with a hand to his cheek, where her li
ps had rested. Jess darted past him, but turned at the door to see him wipe away Lily’s caress with impatient fingers as he went to stir up the fire, destroying every trace of the ivy.

  Four

  Jess liked her new room. Somehow it felt more homely than the great open spaces of the guest room, though it was cold up there under the eaves, with one little window half covered in ivy. But the bed felt familiar, a wheeled truckle with a hard pallet; there was a chest of drawers and a small wardrobe. What else did she need?

  Though she tried not to think about home too much, the approach of Christmas inevitably brought back memories. She remembered lying awake on Christmas Eve, warm in a narrow bed with her sister Fanny beside her, trying to get to sleep; then Matty coming in from an evening with his mates, his boots noisy on the stairs. ‘’Night, maws,’ he’d say as he went through their bedroom to the back room, where Sam and Joe, equally awake, had whispered their anxious hopes. ‘No, he en’t bin yet,’ Matty would say in his loud, cheerful way. ‘And he won’t come, ’long as you’re awake. If you don’t go to sleep you’ll get ashes in your stocking.’ There’d never been ashes – an orange and a shiny new penny had been waiting by morning.

  Suddenly overcome with longing for her family, Jess threw back her blanket and went to stand by the curtainless window. It had small panes of diamond-shaped glass and was hinged at one side, looking out along the walled vegetable patch and the path through the orchard, leading to the woods. A half moon shining on the snow made shadows black while everything else was almost plain as day.

  Feeling the need of cold air to clear her head, Jess struggled with the rusty latch and opened the window, lifting her face to the welcome wash of chill night air. It smelled faintly of bonfires and stable dung, with no tang of the sea nor the underlying stench of excrement and fishy decay that had tainted Fisher’s End. Distant on the cold night came a sharp, coughing bark. A fox, maybe. Wild things seemed close here.

  She distinctly heard the scrape of wood on wood, like a gate closing. The sound drew her attention back to the garden three storeys below. Moonlight illumined the path that emerged from the orchard and followed the line of the garden wall towards the house, and it was there that a figure appeared. He walked lightly, furtively, in such a way that Jess knew he shouldn’t be there, not at that late hour when everyone was asleep. He was clad in a long, heavy cape that might have been leather, with a peaked cap on his head and a bag slung over his shoulder. At his heels, Jess made out the shape of a shaggy black dog.

  Somewhere below, Gyp began to bark, alarmed at the approach of an intruder so late at night. The barking stopped suddenly, just as the man went out of sight below, hidden from Jess by the slope of roof under her window. But her ears were sharp and the night so still, the air so carrying-clear, that she heard the scratch of fingernails on glass, the opening of a door, the murmur of low conversation, and then the closing of the door. Someone had let the man into the house!

  Realising that she was shivering, Jess closed the window and went back to her bed to lie curled under the blanket trying to get warm.

  Next morning, she collared young Dolly and asked about arrangements in the house at night. She learned that Dolly slept in a corner of the kitchen and that Gyp usually spent the night in his basket by the kitchen range. ‘Though if he’re restless I bring him in along o’ me,’ said Dolly. ‘Eliza get her rag up if he bark and disturb her beauty sleep.’

  ‘Was he barking last night?’ Jess asked. ‘I thought I heard somethin’, after the moon was up.’

  ‘Yes.’ But Dolly could no longer meet her eye. ‘He musta had a bad dream or somethin’. Eliza come in a-swearin’ and a-carryin’ on, so I hushed him up and took him to bed along o’ me, and there we both stayed till that was time for me to riddle the ashes.’ She might as well have added, and that’s all I intend to say so don’t ax me no more. The scarlet in her cheeks, and the guilty sidling of her glance, betrayed her.

  ‘Does Eliza sleep downstairs, too?’ Jess asked.

  Yes, said Dolly, Eliza had a room off the side passage – a room she kept firmly locked. Eliza was jealous of her privacy. When she’d caught Dolly trying to peep into her room she’d clipped her round the head and sent her off with a flea in her ear.

  After what she’d seen last night, Jess didn’t wonder that Eliza guarded her right to that room so conveniently near the side door, where she could let a lover in and out without anyone knowing – anyone except poor little Dolly, and light-sleeping Gyp.

  * * *

  On Christmas Day, Jess took part in family prayers for the first time. These were held in the staircase hall, where a plum-coloured curtain draped the front door, protecting the hall from the worst of the draughts. Morning prayers usually included all members of the staff and household, though, it being Christmas, on that day the boy Button and the outdoor man Fargus were both absent, having been allowed to take the whole day off. The maids would start their holiday later, after dinner.

  There were chairs for Lily and Miss Peartree while Jess, Eliza and Dolly stood behind. They had little to do except repeat ‘Amen’ in the appropriate places while Reverend Clare rattled off words from behind a wooden lectern. Most of the time Jess kept her head down and her eyes shut, wishing she could pray.

  In the kitchen later, in company with the two maids, Jess partook of the luxury of Christmas dinner – carvings from a fat capon, with all kinds of extra trimmings. Eliza managed to be polite, though hardly friendly, still wary of Jess but ready to put up with her for the present.

  ‘Seems as how you’ll be joining us for a time, then,’ she remarked, helping herself to a sausage.

  ‘Shall I?’ Jess returned.

  ‘So I hear. Well, far as I’m concerned you’re welcome to the kitchen. Cooks and kitchenmaids get fat and ruin their complexions with the heat. That’s not for me. Some day I expect to be a lady’s maid, if not somethin’ better. Howsomever, don’t you never imitate to move into my room down here. That’s mine, and mine that will stay, long’s I’ve a place here. Keep you to your attic and we shan’t fall out, together.’

  She went back to her food, expecting no answer; she had laid down the rules and that was that.

  Glancing at young Dolly, Jess encountered a pair of sympathetic eyes in a rosy round face topped by a mob cap. Dolly gave her a little conspiratorial grimace before ducking her head to stuff another roast parsnip into her mouth.

  ‘I know Miss Lily have spoke up for me,’ Jess informed Eliza. ‘What don’t yet fare to be settled is do I accept. I hen’t made up my mind.’

  ‘No?’ Eliza’s green eyes were narrow with suspicions.

  ‘No.’ Jess returned the stare levelly, thinking about illicit callers, and her lost ring. Perhaps her eyes reflected the bitterness of her thoughts, for something in her face made Eliza look away.

  Eliza and Dolly were anxious to get away, to spend the rest of the holiday with their families, so Jess offered to help with the washing up that piled high in the scullery. Eliza seized the chance to slope off. Tearing off her apron, she threw it at Jess – ‘You want the job, do you do it’ – and she made for her room off the kitchen passage to change out of her working clothes.

  Jess looked at young Dolly, who gave her a wry grin that said much about Eliza’s well-known laziness.

  ‘Run you off, too,’ Jess said, ‘soon’s you’ve put them pans to soak.’

  ‘Not until the work’s done,’ the child answered, her round, ruddy face set in determined lines. ‘“You can leave soon’s you’ve washed up the dinner things and set everything out for tea and supper” – that’s what Miss Peartree say to me and that’s what I’ll do, thank you, Miss Jess.’

  Jess smiled. ‘No, don’t call me that. I’m Jess. Just Jess.’

  The kitchen was in sad disorder, cupboards crammed in disarray, flour sieves with ladles, copper pans thick with verdigris, mouldy jars of jam shoved behind saucepans. In corners, the flag floor was thick with grime; cobwebs laced the backs of c
upboards, and the larder shelves displayed a liberal sprinkling of mouse droppings. Jess was shocked. Neither her mother nor Mrs Bone, her previous employer, would have dreamed of allowing her kitchen to get into such a state.

  ‘I never have no time to bottomfy it,’ Dolly said. ‘Eliza’s alluss chasin’ me to do somethin’ to help her out and if ever Miss Peartree do mention the cleanin’ Eliza alluss make out she’re intendin’ to do it. Trouble is, Miss Peartree’s blind as a bat, even with them glasses, so she don’t know how bad it is, and Miss Lily ’ouldn’t notice ’less someone drew her ’tention to it.’

  ‘If Mr Clare knowed, he’d do somethin’, surely?’ Jess said.

  Dolly gave her a wondering look. ‘Mr Clare don’t never come near the kitchen. He’re far too busy with more important things.’

  ‘More important? Like what?’

  ‘Well… holy things. Church things.’

  ‘“Cleanliness is next to Godliness”.’ Jess had had that text drummed into her from babyhood. ‘And elbow grease cost nothing. Shipshape, that’s the way a kitchen ought to be, all tidied away and scrubbed down.’ She rolled her sleeves up further in anticipation. ‘Well, Dolly, that look as if you need me here, after all.’

  She was tempted to start then and there, but since it was Christmas she contented herself with sitting by the kitchen range, sewing. Having the place to herself was nice. Restful. All she did for the rest of the day was set tea, clear up afterwards and tidy the kitchen, by which time she was ready for her bed.

  Boxing Day was another quiet day. As it was a Saturday, the rector had granted his maids an extra day off, but Miss Peartree and Lily both helped Jess with the meals so work was light. On the Sunday Dolly dutifully appeared to light the fires at six a.m. as usual, but Eliza Potts did not turn up; one of her brothers came to inform Miss Peartree that Eliza was ‘took sadly with the miseries in har stommick’. Recounting this tale, Lily shook her head, torn between amusement and vexation.