by Tracy Rees
‘Then I shall be the first,’ she resolved, tossing her lovely head. ‘Everything must happen for the first time at some point, otherwise nothing would ever have changed and we should still be burning whole villages to the ground.’
‘Some things are not meant to change!’ thundered Lord Vennaway.
‘Some things are long overdue for change,’ blazed Aurelia.
I could almost pity the Vennaways senior. The proudest, most conservative family in the county – no heir, only one daughter. That daughter everything they could wish in terms of beauty, grace and a loving heart. That daughter also harbouring dreams of . . . social reform. Keeping far-from-suitable company (myself, Mr Clay and Mrs Bolton, the nearest thing Surrey had to a bluestocking). It was an unsavoury business.
Of the many suitors that they had auditioned over the years, two were now leading the field, and they were growing impatient. Lord Kenworthy and Lord Dunthorne were very different men, yet each as deeply unpleasant as the other. Giles Kenworthy was some twenty years Aurelia’s senior, cold and rigid, with dry skin and a face that could not smile. The first time I saw him I was peeping out of a forbidden library and he was sweeping along the hall as though riding down a fox. I was thankful that he did not catch sight of me. He had eyes that made me want to run away.
Bailor Dunthorne was young and debauched, drenched with an oily charm. He was handsome and flashy and vigorous. Vigorous enough to beat a horse bloody – we saw it. Handsome enough that an inconceivable number of young women had succumbed to his dubious charms and received scant rewards for their favour – Mrs Bolton told us (or at least she told Aurelia, and I was there). He had a habit of paying impromptu visits, happening upon us when we least expected him. Ever his adversary’s opposite, he condescended to ruffle my hair and bend to my height, sweeping his dark eyes over my face whenever he saw me. It made me shudder.
Both gentlemen were of exquisite lineage and impressive fortune. The Vennaways had decided that either would do. When Aurelia turned eighteen, it was time for her to choose; they had indulged her sensibilities long enough. But Aurelia would not cooperate. She would come into her fortune in three short years, she argued; she had no need of a husband. She often pointed to the young queen as role model and exemplar. ‘Victoria refused to marry unless for love. Victoria seriously considered remaining unmarried, like Queen Elizabeth before her. Victoria only married her Albert because they have a true understanding.’
‘Her Majesty,’ roared her father, ‘is queen of our nation and in a somewhat different position from you! Your responsibility, Aurelia, is not to govern the country and your duty is not to the people. It is to family. It is to marry and continue the Vennaway line. I have not been granted a son and I will not have my daughter fail me as well. Her Majesty is not my concern. You seem to think you have a choice in this, Aurelia. I assure you that you do not.’
Two equally strong sets of ambitions duelled, but of course her parents held all the power. They were bound to prevail, and Aurelia was so lovely that men would overlook her unusual convictions in their lust to possess her.
So the Vennaways reassured themselves: yes, she lacked judgement, tractability and deference, but she more than compensated for this with beauty, breeding and thirty thousand pounds a year.
As for me, I was ten years old and could see no way for the impasse to be resolved. And what kind of man would nurture and support her pioneering temperament, her passionate heart? More likely by far that she would be oppressed and raged at until her spirit was battered. Lord Kenworthy, for example, would think it a fine thing to procure a woman like Aurelia. He would then steadfastly prune away any of her traits that did not meet with his approval (and that was a thing very rarely earned indeed) as though she were a recalcitrant sapling. She confided her fears in me, for she had no one else. He would, she fretted, foist baby after baby upon her until her body and spirits were worn and she would start to be some other person.
Young as I was, I worried sorely for her, and I confess to no small concern on my own account as well. I could tell from the way Lord Kenworthy looked at me that I would not fare well in his household – if I were permitted to go there at all. I would doubtless be slickly welcomed to the Dunthorne home and that could be worse. It was impossible to think of a way out.
And then nature took care of it.
*
She collapsed in the orchard one day during a picnic; the Vennaway cousins were visiting. I had been put to work, as was usual when pleasant times were to be had. I was helping Robin gather plums and their shrieks of laughter – Aurelia’s loudest of all – reached me through the trees. I didn’t notice when they fell quiet; I was crouched in the grass, tying my apron into a bundle because my basket was full, the material slithering about unobligingly.
What I noticed was Robin dropping an armful of plums. They thudded one after another to the ground and bounced; it was unlike him to be so careless with the precious harvest. I looked up and saw his face white as ash, then he leapt from his ladder without a word and ran on long legs towards the party. I stood slowly, a bad feeling scurrying up and down my spine like a spider. Unable to move, I watched as Robin carried her lifeless-looking body back to the house, her cousins clustered nervously around. The sight of her dangling arm in particular has stayed with me always – a chilling premonition of the future.
Dr Jacobs was summoned. After a long, grave examination he told us that Aurelia’s vibrant beauty and high spirits were a cruel disguise on the part of Fate. Her heart, expansive and courageous as it was, was weak, diseased and would not carry her through her twenties.
Aurelia greeted the news as though it were the cleverest device she had yet dreamed up to thwart her parents’ matrimonial plans for her. What a merry to-do! For no one would have her now. No one wanted a wife who would die in a few short years, necessitating the tiresome search for another. Of course, they might have undergone the inconvenience in order to inherit her fortune but, warned Dr Jacobs, there was a very real possibility that childbirth could bring on an even earlier demise. He strongly advised against marriage and all its consequent activities. Without the possibility of an heir, the Vennaways had no reason to marry her off. Better keep the fortune in the family. Aurelia nodded complacently. Better it go to Cousin Maude than to a stranger.
So Aurelia had her way after all – at a cost. There would be no illustrious wedding. There would be no precious Vennaway heir. But neither would there be travel, passion or reform.
Or so I believed.
Chapter Twelve
Thoughts of that time settle heavy upon me as the train slows and halts. The days following her diagnosis are echoed now in the dark days that follow her death. Now as then my brain resists it – death and Aurelia are two phenomena that do not sit easily together. I half expect to find her here, waiting for me.
London is a series of vivid, fleeting tableaux, a pack of cards that won’t stop shuffling. The throng at Bricklayers’ Arms further reveals Ladywell for the sleepy backwater it is. I see hawkers, hollerers, scantily dressed women and barefoot children. As though the experience has set me outside myself, I see my own person: a girl of seventeen who feels a hundred years older, dressed all in black and shrinking from the chaos.
The faces of Mr and Mrs Begley beam like tangerines as they spy their son in the crowd. He cordially greets them with news that the young Mrs Begley is at home in Pentonville, supervising a welcome luncheon. I feel I would give them my whole hundred pounds if I could go with them.
But I am in the way of their happy reunion. I fear I have been forgotten, then experience a nauseating relief at suddenly being remembered and bundled into a cab with shouted good wishes and hasty, duty-done farewells.
The cab sets off at a great rate through a sea of traffic. I am flung forwards, flung backwards. Flung from side to side. My carpet bag flying about the interior like a bluebottle. An omnibus hurtling towards us, missing us by an inch. Horses whinnying in alarm. A rain of curses from
my driver. A world so different from Hatville, where all was grace and state and order.
At last, a cry from my driver: ‘Jessop!’ The cab draws up in a quiet street with terraced white houses stained grey with the pall of the day. I tumble out, unconvinced that my bones retain their original configuration.
After trying at number six – Mrs Begley was sure it was number six – I am directed instead to number eighteen. In Jessop Walk, a moat-like ditch separates street from houses. At each property a little walkway bridges the divide and high spiked gates protect against villains. Despite these precautions, the houses are narrow and the inhabitants could quite easily peer over a garden wall into the lives of their neighbours. At Hatville, if we wanted to see a neighbour, we had to walk some miles.
I am reassured that Mrs Woodrow is a scholarly looking woman with spectacles and grey woollen mittens. She is not fat, slatternly, drunk nor inquisitive (I had not been aware how much the novels of Mr Dickens would shape my expectations of landladies). I pay for two nights’ lodging in advance and she agrees that I can extend my stay if I need to.
‘Assuming, that is, a crowd of wealthy and important guests don’t all descend at once,’ she adds drily. ‘It is January,’ she continues, seeing that I take her seriously. ‘No one ever visits London in January.’
Looking out of my small window I can quite see why. A light rain has begun falling, adding its own lustre to the day. The sky sags over the hodgepodge of cramped gardens, washing lines, vegetable plots, outhouses, roofs, windows and walls that fit within my view of roughly two feet squared. Home . . . if such it ever was . . . is a long way away.
My room has bare floorboards and a narrow bed covered in a plain coverlet. The walls are brown and there is but one small painting in an ugly frame, a sentimental shepherdess simpering at a rosy-cheeked swain. There is a washstand, one chair and a small table bearing a glass jar of snowdrops.
The sight of them leaves me awash with memories: the road between Hatville and Enderby; countless hidden corners of the estate; dark lush leaves and drifts of little white flowers; fresh air and the promise of spring with Aurelia . . .
I wonder if this is what she imagined for me.
Chapter Thirteen
The household was devastated by Aurelia’s diagnosis. I caught Lord Vennaway reduced to tears, and turned away out of respect. Lady Vennaway took to her bed, then got out of it almost at once when she realized that a decline was an ill use of precious time with Aurelia. Lord Kenworthy disappeared like a shot cannon, soon to become engaged to a wealthy young lady from Kent, so we heard. Every cloud has its silver lining.
I could not catch my breath from the shock of it. Aurelia! She was far too bright a flame to be prematurely extinguished. If this sad destiny had been anyone else’s, I might have been able to conceive of it: Lady Vennaway was too brittle to sit comfortably in this life, Cook was eternally tired, Rosy was always coughing and scratching. As for Marcus, he was forever falling off walls and dropping hammers on his toes and getting trapped under logs. But Aurelia? Goddesses don’t have weak hearts.
She remained in good spirits. In fact, she was so little changed in that first year that it was easy to suppose Dr Jacobs mistaken. She insisted, though, that I must cease my ambiguous role in the household and become her full-time companion.
‘It is time to stop this nonsense now,’ she told her parents soberly one day. ‘I know you disapprove of Amy and I will stop trying to talk you out of it if you will accept my decision and allow her to carry out her duties in peace. I do not know what lies ahead of me or how long I have. Amy calms me and I trust her absolutely. Whatever befalls me now, I want her by my side.’
Of course, she said it when the Reverend Mr Chorley and Dr Jacobs were present; she never hesitated to air her private business before the pillars of the community if it served her interests. Dr Jacobs expressed his medical opinion that I was a beneficial tonic for Aurelia. Mr Chorley urged compassion and said I was a gift from God. I loved him for that.
And so I bedded down in the scullery no more but was moved into the room next door to Aurelia’s. We continued to take lessons together, though these were now a desultory affair. Mr Henley was no longer grooming her for marriage, but Lord Vennaway had become so distracted with grief that he neglected to dismiss him.
Aurelia continued to walk the two miles into Enderby each week to visit the villagers, as well as to discuss the plight of the unfortunate with Mr Chorley, Mr Clay and Mrs Bolton, but now I went with her. Everyone, irrespective of fortune or status, was appalled at the ill fate that had befallen Aurelia. She forbade anyone to talk of it, but everyone did.
Lady Vennaway’s persecution of me eased, save for her insistence that I dress like a governess, provoking another battle. Aurelia chafed at the unkindness that it represented and swore that seeing me so drab would hasten her demise. Lady Vennaway would not hear of a lowly companion wearing beautiful clothes. Aurelia argued that to look upon beautiful things raised her spirits. Lady Vennaway retorted that Aurelia’s spirits seemed unnaturally high to her and that if she didn’t like it she could send me back to the scullery. I did not care so I told Aurelia that she could yield with honour. There were greater things to concern us, after all.
*
The second year brought the first signs of her ill health, unwelcome and inevitable as the shortening days and withering leaves of autumn. She began to complain of fatigue, a word that was never in her vocabulary before. ‘It is not that I am tired,’ she told me, ‘it is not the feeling one has after a busy day or the longing to melt into sleep. It is like a weight upon me and I cannot wrestle it.’
We still walked into Enderby, but only on a good day. Sometimes now we took the carriage and sometimes we stayed at home. Aurelia grew frightened. What would her condition impose upon her in the time that remained? She didn’t mind death, but she didn’t want to be changed before it came.
In December 1843 we celebrated Aurelia’s twenty-first birthday. Her parents wanted no ritual at all to mark her passage into an adulthood that would be all too fleeting. Aurelia wanted a ball. They compromised with a dinner for selected family members, prepared by Cook, aided by me. And Aurelia came into her fortune.
Chapter Fourteen
I eat a little of the cold collation Mrs Woodrow has brought me. There is a cut of ham, some bread and butter, an orange and a mug of ale. I am not fond of ale, but I take a swallow, then leave the rest untouched for later. I head downstairs and ask Mrs Woodrow if she knows the whereabouts of Entwhistle’s Bookshop. She does not.
So I step into the cold, damp afternoon and commence to wander the streets. The size of the city becomes apparent as I walk, street after street after street, never passing a shop of any kind, let alone a bookshop.
The absence of a chaperone makes me painfully self-conscious. If Aurelia had ever paced the streets of London alone, Lady Vennaway would have died from shame. I am, in addition, all too aware of my shabby appearance. At Hatville, everyone understood that I was lowly, but here, out of context, I look as unimportant and lacking in connections – and therefore as vulnerable – as I truly am.
These reflections chase me back to Jessop Walk. My first explorations have been discouraging but I am glad I have been cautious when I see that night falls sooner and swifter here than it does in the country. Gaslights, something I have never seen before, flare eerily in the murk and usher me on.
Alone in the chilly, charmless room that is mine for the next two days, I swallow the remains of my luncheon and stare at the wall. I don’t know what to do. So I take up the pages I began in the Rose and Crown last night. I wish I could stop myself journeying back in time each time my quill touches the page. I wish that my present had more to recommend it. Yet I find myself thinking of my origins, something I have not done for many years. This is a certain route to drawing yet another blank. Who am I?
I used to wonder about my parents all the time. So did Aurelia. From my earliest youth, one of our favouri
te fascinations was speculating about my birth. It was too great a mystery not to! A baby left in the snow with no clothes and no clue . . . For a fanciful sprite like Aurelia and a solemn little girl like me, who longed to be something, it was fertile ground.
At first we assumed I was a princess, stolen away by wicked usurpers, bent on the downfall of my kingdom. But we found two flaws in this theory. One was that none of the periodicals Aurelia avidly read had reported a missing princess baby in their Foreign News columns. The other was that if I were ever found, my duty would be to go and rule my country. Aurelia would be alone again and it sounded tedious to me.
Our next hypothesis was that I was a gypsy. This had more to recommend it, as some travelling gypsies had passed through Enderby the previous year. Gypsies, we understood, were extremely feckless and disorganized. They might well have lost a baby. But gypsies could not have travelled across the Hatville estate, fenced and fortified as it was, so how did I come to be there? I did have very long black hair like the gypsies, but my skin was pale and my eyes too light. We discarded this idea also.
Aurelia proffered the idea that I was Lord Vennaway’s ‘love child’, a term she heard liberally sprinkled about Hatville’s drawing room. I was too young to understand fully what that meant, and I’m not convinced she did either. We liked the possibility because it would make me Aurelia’s sister and it would certainly explain Lady Vennaway’s attitude towards me.