by Tracy Rees
Yet my death approaches. When it comes, you will be friendless, for we both know the unfortunate – nay, cruel – attitude my parents hold towards you. Our friendship is precious and I hope that you will never regret it, but it kept you a prisoner also, tied to this house and dependent on me. Now you can fly free, little bird! And I will help you, for you have helped me, more than you will ever know.
So. You are grieving, you are alone. But you do not want for means. I enclose a sum of money for you. There will be more, but this will do for now. Ten pounds indeed! As if I would ever leave you such a negligible amount! That they could even believe it of me is enraging, and yet also highly convenient. The green stole is a gift. It will become you, Amy, though I doubt you will believe me.
Your first instruction in this treasure hunt? To journey to London, my dear. That is your first destination. You have money, you can travel in comfort, enjoy the journey if you can. Marvel at seeing a part of our kingdom so different from Enderby! When you get there, find a bookshop called Entwhistle’s. Go to the natural history section. (A lady browsing amongst the works of Mr Beckwith . . . Oh, the scandal! Be sure your fragile brain does not explode, dear!) Cast your thoughts around the book we discussed at length that summer’s evening after Mr Howden came to dine. Consider the variables and you will find a letter from me to you. How have I achieved this? Ah, but I am a magician, my little bird.
To end, dear Amy, take heart. I do not expect you to recover from my loss overnight, nor forget me, nor replace me (for I am one of a kind, am I not?). But I do expect you to live. And live well. For the life you have known hitherto, our friendship notwithstanding, is not life as it can and should be.
Follow my trail, I beg you. Not only because it will take you further than you can ever imagine but because I have unfinished business which only you can now conclude. Our games and adventures are not at an end yet. Ha! It will take much more than death to silence me!
With greatest love,
AV
Chapter Five
She was always irrepressible. Even when the iron fist of her diagnosis fell, crushing the hopes of Hatville Court beneath its grievous blow, she laughed. She actually laughed! And my life changed for ever.
Until then, I had lived a strange sort of existence, all piecemeal and patchwork, which is hardly surprising considering how I began. The bank of snow was replaced by the potato bucket, and the potato bucket by a crib when Lady Vennaway bowed under the all-seeing eye of Society and decreed that I could stay. Her provisos were that she should never see me, never be troubled on any matter concerning my upbringing and that I should be employed as a servant as soon as I was old enough to be of any use to anyone.
The crib was donated by Marcus, who managed the estate. His wife had borne him seven children in quick succession and then informed him that if he ever came near her again in the amorous way he would lose a limb and be forced to seek new employment. The crib was positioned in the corner of the kitchen and that was where I passed my first year.
Cook was the person to whom the largest part of my care fell. She was big-hearted, capable, and almost always there. But she was busy, and when she needed to, she would pass the responsibility to one of the maids (a revolving cast of characters, due to the horrors of working for Lady Vennaway) or to Robin, the undergardener, then only eight years old but with extensive experience of small sisters. He was a gentle soul, responsible beyond his years, the kind of person who inspired a sense that all would be well.
I was fed in my first months by a wet nurse named Lucy and my sanitary needs, when Cook was up to her elbows in dough, fell to whoever was in the kitchen at the time. Stopping in for a snack, therefore, could be hazardous.
I grew, as babies do, into a person too big to lodge sensibly in a kitchen. When I began to crawl, I was a veritable hazard in a world full of cleavers, flames, glass jars and bottles. So the diaspora of my carers expanded across the Hatville estate.
Robin would plant me in a wheelbarrow when the ground was wet, and take me with him while he tended the lavender, gathered apples and mended walls.
Cook also called upon Benjamin, the lowliest of the grooms. Too insignificant to exercise Lord Vennaway’s famous horses, he was confined to stable duties – mucking out, cleaning leather, mending hay nets and the like. Thus I could stay in one place all day, under a watchful eye, and all out of the sight of Lady Vennaway, which was the most important criterion that any arrangement for my care must meet. They say I could be content in a pile of hay for hours.
Even Jesketh, the butler, silver-haired and stately, was pressed to take his turn when needs must. When he objected, Cook threatened the withholding of cherry pies. And so, by hook or by crook, I was kept alive.
Then, of course, there was Aurelia. It was she who named me: Snow, for obvious reasons, and Amy, after her favourite doll. This was a very great compliment indeed, for this first Amy came from Paris and wore a midnight-blue satin gown. She had blue eyes, black hair and was altogether the prettiest thing Aurelia had ever seen. She was a hard precedent to follow and I believe no mortal child could live up to such standards of loveliness.
My first proper memory is of Aurelia. I think I was around two years old, so she would have been ten. I was grubbing about in the stables when she came in in a flurry of skirts to ride her pony. The memory doesn’t include the pony’s colour or name (though I’ve been told since that she was Lucky, a dapple grey) and I cannot even remember the colour of Aurelia’s riding habit (deepest green with scarlet trim, according to legend). But I do remember the whisk and the swirl of her: the flounce of her entry into the stables; the stamp of buttoned boots on cobbled floor; the rising of alarmed wisps of straw; and the sweep of her ascent into the saddle. Then the turn and hurtle of Lucky and her disappearance into the light.
As I grew, I developed from a pinched, blue baby to a pinched, pale child, undersized and odd-looking, so I was told, with a great mass of sooty black hair and hazel-yellow eyes too big in my narrow face. Once I was, in Lady Vennaway’s words, ‘old enough to be of any use to anyone’, I was immediately seized upon to be of use to everyone.
Robin taught me to distinguish weeds from plants, and I was taught to hold a currycomb and groom a horse as soon as I could stand upright. Cook showed me how to sort through apples, potatoes and other wholesome produce to check for rot.
My landscape was mostly of legs: kitchen-table legs (and the kingdom of crumbs and onions between); brown-trousered legs hard at work; smart, black-trousered legs standing guard over the Vennaway domain; horses’ legs; legs up ladders; and legs hidden by skirts in a constant whirl of activity.
I have only dim recollections of this period but they are mostly pleasant. I remember it in shifting blocks of smell, sound and colour. The kitchen was onions and syrup, clanging and shouting, black oven and red fire. The gardens were earth and apples, the soft, rhythmic chuff of spade in dirt, rainbow and raindrop. The stables were hay and horse, whinny and wind, gold and brown and dust and gleaming.
From as early as I can remember, Aurelia would appear almost daily and play with me or take me for walks. Although I spent a great deal of time in the gardens anyway, they appeared so different when she held my grubby little hand in her elegantly gloved one and pointed out her favourite flowers and birds. She knew just as much about the plants and creatures as Robin did, but it was a different kind of knowledge. She knew the Latin names for things and where they originated from; Robin knew what they liked and how to make them thrive.
I adored her. She was beautiful, kind and radiant and treated me as her own special pet.
My favourite times were when she would read me to sleep. My bed was by this time in the scullery. No one else slept there; the servants were housed far away, high in the attics. But I was reckoned to be too little to cope with all those stairs, and the working day was such that I was only ever alone for a very few hours each night. Sometimes Aurelia would slip down at bedtime, pull up a chair and lean close. I wo
uld lay my head on her arm and listen to her voice: melodious, merry and somehow different from all the other voices I knew. Whether there was drumming rain outside or whether a lilac summer dusk hummed and twittered as a fine day faded, those times felt magical and blessed.
Chapter Six
On my first night away from Hatville Court, in the narrow bed in the Rose and Crown, I sleep poorly. It does not surprise me. Since Aurelia died my heart is like a wild animal. It sleeps with one eye open, with a new wariness I feel will never go away. I wake early.
A series of realizations crowd in upon me like guests at a ball, so swift and swooping they leave me breathless. Emotions accompany them like chaperones. No Aurelia – grief like the tightest, meanest of corsets. No Hatville Court – an equal blend of fear and relief. Today, apparently, I am to go to London! A lurch of trepidation. And the letter. Letters! Wild hope and joy. There is more of Aurelia to come, to keep me moving forward through these dark days.
I wash and dress. I have no appetite but for the first time in days I am minded to look after myself, so I will eat. I have business to carry out, Aurelia’s business. How clever she was! She knew that if any one thing on earth could compel me onwards, it would be my sense of devotion to her. She could be dead a thousand years and I would still want to please her.
I read her letter once more, then bury it deep in my skirt pocket again. I will carry it with me at all times.
To my relief, the landlord is at large in the hall; I did not want to seek him out. Even without the torrent of emotion that threatens each minute to topple me I would find this hard. I have a retiring disposition, I suppose. My life has ever been Hatville; I have rarely left it. And Aurelia was right: it was a prison. But I never thought of it like that, not while she was in it. We were like two birds, keeping each other company in a very fine cage.
Now she is forcing me to see the wider world, but in this moment I do not feel I can thank her for it. I don’t expect to find a warm welcome outside Hatville. I am accustomed to feeling I am an inconvenience, yet I know that to carry out Aurelia’s wishes I will have to depend on others for help and information though not, thank God, for money. So I am inordinately grateful when Mr Carlton enquires whether he can help me with anything.
‘Thank you, Mr Carlton, you are very kind. I wonder, have you any idea of the times the trains will run today? I shall walk to the station and then . . . I wondered . . .’ I run out of words. I have never taken a journey before. I hardly know how to shape the questions I need to ask. And I don’t want to leave this shabby inn before I have to; it represents my very last link with the life I have always known.
‘Certainly, Miss Snow, certainly. If you’ll be so good as to accompany me to my office, we can find out everything you need to know.’
At the door he stops and twinkles at me. ‘Never fear, Miss Snow, we shall consult Mr Bradshaw.’ I look around for a benevolent gentleman with white whiskers and a wise expression. The room is, however, quite empty aside from a dense crowding of bookshelves and a very large, untidy desk. It is laden with papers and quills, and ornamented with three long spikes on which tufts of bills are speared. Empty stools stand about.
‘Now then,’ he beams, taking down a thick pamphlet with pretensions to being a book. Tracks in the thick dust on the shelf betray that this volume is frequently used. ‘This is the most marvellous publication that ever was, Miss Snow. Do you know Mr Bradshaw?’
‘I fear not.’
‘He is the author of this splendid compendium. A collection of all the timetables of all the trains run by all the train companies across the land. Do you know how many rail journeys that is, Miss Snow?’
‘I’m afraid I cannot guess, Mr Carlton.’
‘No more can I! No more can anyone, excepting I suppose Mr Bradshaw himself. Well now, in a word, the answer is many! Look, Miss Snow, at all these trains!’ He riffles the pages of the book at me in helpless wonder. There do seem to be a very great many trains.
‘Just think,’ he continues, ‘until only a very few years ago stagecoaches still ran in our part of Surrey. Progress, Miss Snow, progress!’ He pores over his oracle, licking his thumbs. On each page I see a dense thicket of black print, all columns and figures and lines. If this represents my future, I am more daunted than ever.
‘Ha!’ he triumphs, when he comes to the right page. ‘Allow me, Miss Snow?’
‘Gladly, sir.’
‘Up or down?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Are you wanting trains going up or trains going down, Miss Snow?’
I hesitate. I had been under the impression that they all run flat along the ground but I think perhaps nothing can surprise me any more.
‘North or south, Miss Snow? Up towards London or down towards Brighton?’
‘Oh, I see! Thank you, Mr Carlton. Well now . . .’ I try to phrase my response in such a way that it sounds as though I am just thinking through my plans, that I am going to London because it is the most obvious place to go and not because I have a predetermined destination. I must remember that to outside eyes I am yet aimless and unfixed, with only ten pounds to my name. How careful I will have to be in all I say and do.
Finally we establish that I will not need to leave the Rose and Crown for almost an hour. Mr Carlton insists on sending a boy to carry my bag and put me on the train. I almost refuse, so loath am I to be any trouble to anyone, but Mr Carlton will not hear of a young lady managing a station alone.
‘Not the thing at all,’ he frets. ‘The railway is a wonderful thing but there is every sort of a person in a station, Miss Snow. And I believe you have never taken a train before? Do you know the protocol?’
I have not and I do not. Mr Carlton describes to me the quirks of buying a ticket from the house adjoining the station and what must be done if the owner is not home, the importance of choosing the right carriage and the optimum seat, how to address fellow passengers and where to stow my ticket for safekeeping.
‘For ladies, I always recommend the left glove, Miss Snow. The left glove cannot be bettered for this purpose. Tickets seem to have a great propensity towards escaping, you know, and that is a very great inconvenience indeed, for the inspectors simply will not believe that you have purchased your ticket and lost it. They will insist or imply that you are trying to defraud the railway company and that is an insult not to be borne, Miss Snow . . . hence, the left glove.’
‘The left glove,’ I murmur, head spinning. ‘Thank you so much, Mr Carlton, I don’t know what I would do without your invaluable advice. Who would ever have thought there could be so much to think about?’
‘Indeed, indeed. ’Tis not like the old days. So many of my customers are uncomfortable with the changes that I have taken it upon myself to be as informative as possible to ease the path of progress. I have been pondering the idea of writing a book: Hints and Advice for the Inexperienced Traveller. Do you think such a project would find favour with the public?’
‘I should think it invaluable, Mr Carlton. Do write it!’
‘Thank you, Miss Snow. I think I shall. Disseminating knowledge is the human duty, sharing it about so that all can benefit.’
‘Why, that is exactly what Miss Vennaway used to say!’ I smile, then fall quiet.
Mr Carlton nods. ‘I have heard that she was a remarkable young lady. My very sincerest condolences, Miss Snow.’
Chapter Seven
When I was six years old, and Aurelia fourteen, a queen came to the throne. I remember Aurelia beaming, her hair flying as she spun me around and around in the kitchen garden, her dress a rainbow. It was summer, and I swear the air was full of butterflies.
‘When you were born, our ruler was a king,’ she told me breathlessly as we tumbled to the ground, ‘but now a woman heads our nation – a young woman, only four years older than I! Oh, Amy, it makes me feel as though anything is possible. They say she stepped into her new responsibility with as much equanimity as if she were stepping into a parlou
r for crumpets. If she is too young and foolish and feminine to be equal to the task, clearly she is unaware of it!’
I remember the sense of optimism that infected the world but I was too young to understand the implications of a dawning age. To me the queen seemed imaginary, like the princess who kissed a frog or the young woman who cast her hair from a tower in the storybooks. Aurelia, however, fancied a real sense of connection between herself and the monarch. They were both only children. They were both in possession of more ideas than rightly belonged in a pretty bonneted head. They had both sworn they would marry only for love. The imagined Victoria, proprietorially discussed by Aurelia and me, came to seem like a third, absentee member of our happy little club. We often planned what we would ask her if she came for tea.
It was as I grew a little older that my troubles began, or at least that they came to the surface, as they were always bound to do. By seven I was of an age where, had my circumstances been different, I might have been plucked from a workhouse to go into service. I would have been chosen for a particular purpose and trained to meet it.
As it was, no requirement brought me to Hatville; I was simply there. Thus the selection of a line of work for me was somewhat arbitrary. Just as well my preferences were not considered, for girls could not work in the stables or grounds. Given Lady Vennaway’s strictures that I should stay out of sight, the kitchen was the obvious choice, but Cook and Rosy and Dora were already there so unless the family was entertaining I only got under everyone’s feet. The housemaids resented me for having such a light workload. I was happy to do more but Cook would not risk me encountering Lady Vennaway, an event she feared on her own account as much as on mine. I was often puzzled as to what I was about, and a frown became my habitual expression.