The Linnet Bird: A Novel

by Linda Holeman

  Wednesday simply wanted to watch me bathe and always had a copper hip bath filled with warm water waiting for me in front of a cheery fire. After I’d washed all over, soaping my hair with sweet-smelling lavender soap (he brought a new bar each week and let me take home the used one), he’d dry me with thick soft towels and carry me to the bed. He found his pleasure in looking at me and cautiously touching my skin; whether he was unable to perform or simply ashamed of something beneath the clothing he kept tightly buttoned at all times I never knew, but he didn’t mind if I fell asleep. And I usually did; it was difficult to stay awake after a full day of work, followed by the warm bath and soft bed and the harmless caresses by hands smooth as kid leather. Wednesday was difficult to leave when Ram’s knock was eventually heard.

  But Thursday was my favorite. He loved to feed me and after our time in his room in the beautifully appointed hotel off Lord Street he always took me downstairs to the dining room, shimmering with candelabras and silver salvers and platters polished bright as mirrors. The walls, with their elegant muted wallpaper of blue and silver, were lined with oil paintings. There were tall windows steamed from the warmth of the generous fires and the bodies heated by rich food and plentiful drink and, in many cases, I suspect, thoughts of the upstairs rooms. During our time in the hotel I was instructed to call Thursday Uncle Horace. Did the people at the elaborate front desk, or those carrying clean linens and trays of food through the wide halls, or those serving us in the dining room really believe me to be his niece? Or did they simply turn a blind eye to the truth of the situation, accepting the lie with polite smiles and subservient bows or curtsies, willingly taking the coins Horace pressed into every hand?

  Uncle Horace was huge of girth. Although he was quickly and easily fulfilled upstairs, he seemed unable to satisfy his insatiable appetite at the table. He ordered mounds of food, with special delicacies for me—capons with sizzling golden skin, turbot with lobster sauce, potatoes mashed and swirled into little golden-brown domes. He also bought me sweet port. I didn’t care for its taste but loved its beautiful deep ruby, which reflected off the fire. Uncle Horace always insisted on a table by the fireplace.

  It was there, in the gracious high-ceilinged dining room smelling of roasted meat and caramelized sugar, of hair pomade and delicate eau de toilette, of wealth and confidence, that I watched and learned all I could of how men and women of his class moved about with surety. I studied the ladies at other tables, saw how they dressed, how carefully they dabbed at their lips with their heavy damask napkins, how their laughter chimed like pleasing music. I memorized their language and their articulation, which, I now knew, was far finer than my mother’s had been. It was easy, a game to play as I pretended to listen to Uncle Horace talk about his business and wealth and opulent home in the city of Dublin. I heard about his childhood in rural Ireland, and how he would sneak out with the stable boys on Sunday afternoon for road games of hurling. He told me how he’d learned to eat to take away the emptiness he had while his parents left him with the house staff, sometimes for a year at a time, as they traveled the world. He often brought me a soft spicy cake filled with currants—barmbrack, he called it—his own childhood favorite. It was baked by the ancient cook of his boyhood, still alive and living with him in his house in Dublin. The cake would be wrapped in one of his fine linen handkerchiefs and he’d urge me to take it home.

  “Are you really as hungry as you appear,” he’d asked me once, as I quickly but neatly sucked an oyster from its shell, “or do you eat because you know it pleases me?”

  I’d touched my mouth with my napkin and then put my hands in my lap, choosing my words carefully before I spoke. Had he never known hunger? Did he have any idea that before I was brought to him I’d spent a full day with my folding knife and stack after stack of pages, my hands cramping so badly that by the end of the ten hours it felt as if pebbles had lodged under the skin of my palms, and my shoulders and wrists burned with fatigue? That I had fifteen minutes midday to visit the privy and bolt down the piece of bread and cheese I’d brought with me? “I am as I appear, I assure you, Uncle Horace,” I said, “for how else could I be anything but hungry with such food put before me, and in the presence of such company?”

  He’d studied me then. “You are undernourished, that I see. But there’s another kind of hunger, Linny, a wary hunger for learning, for understanding, that I also see there on your face.”

  I raised my glass to my lips, just letting the crimson liquid touch them before I returned the glass to the snowy tablecloth. “That may well be,” I answered. “Perhaps I have a hunger of the soul itself.” I was repeating, word for word, what the anemic young man at the table behind me had said only moments earlier. I had no idea what it meant, although of course I knew what a soul was. I still faithfully attended Sunday services at Our Lady and St. Nicholas.

  He laughed then, his hair damp with sweat, pomade melting down his neck, his round face reddened by the many glasses of port and brandy he’d drunk, first in the hotel room and then with dinner. “You’re a clever little minx, I’ll give you that. Come now, give me your best Irish voice, for I’m feeling a little homesick tonight.”

  I recited a poem and then told him some silly social snippet I’d overheard, mimicking his own Irish cadence, for it came easily to me, creating the exact intonations of other voices.

  He nodded, smiling broadly and fondly, shaking his head as if amazed. “Aren’t you a wonder, then. How do you achieve that exacting pattern? Pure Dublin, it is. It’s as if you’ve spent all your young days taking tea on Grafton Street.” And then he summoned the server for a dish of pears and cream for me and brandy pudding with hard sauce for himself, and there was no more tedious talk.

  I MISSED SPENDING TIME with my old friends. At the bookbinders I had two friends I’d worked alongside—Minnie and Jane. Minnie was a year older than me, Jane a year younger. We had sometimes left the bookbindery together, four hours before our mothers were allowed to leave, and had lingered along the streets on the way home, talking—or perhaps only pretending—about the fancy hats and beaded reticules we would someday own, or what we would imagine to be the finest meal in the world, or other fanciful dreams of young girls. Sometimes we held hands, as true friends do.

  But there was no time for friendship now; I had to rush straight off from work to prepare our plain dinner and eat and change before I was taken out by Ram each evening. Minnie and Jane accepted my story of having to hurry home to serve my stepfather his dinner or face the back of his hand and they still smiled at me often at work, but I keenly felt the loss of their companionship in my life.

  Adding to my loneliness was missing the visits with the neighbors. Some evenings when the weather was mild, Mother and I had stood out in the court with other women and girls who lived in Back Phoebe Anne. I would stand beside Mother, who usually worked on a bit of darning or sewing. Other women held or nursed their babies or caught up on their mending, like Mother, and we all absently watched the younger children play their skipping and hopping and stone-tossing games. I listened to the local gossip—who had been seen with whom, what arguments had been heard through the thin walls, whose baby was sickening, and whose old gran was dying in bed. Although the other women were coarser than Mother, most with missing teeth and loud guffaws of laughter and cheeks or bottom lips stuffed with chewing tobacco, it had still been a pleasure to lean against the walls and spend a companionable half hour before bed.

  Now I’d pass those women with my head down, following Ram, sure they knew what I was off to do in my clean dress and carefully plaited hair. I often heard whispers and mutterings and knew I was now one of the regular sources of gossip, but no one ever stepped forward to speak to me or to ask how I was doing. They knew their place, these women.

  But I believe it was Mae Scat, from the cellar across the lane, who might have told the Ladies of Righteous Conduct about me. Mae always had a soft spot for my mother and had, more than once, put an arm around my mot
her’s shoulders and given her a warm shake when Ram had been particularly unkind and my mother was sporting a thick lip or swollen eye. Mae Scat had, six months before my mother died, buried her third husband, had six living children, and swore she’d never let another man touch her in any way. She always said she was blessed with a fortune in having only sons, and the three oldest, strapping lads all of them, brought home the bread and coffee on which they all seemed to exist.

  From the corner of my eye I had seen Mae Scat watching me as I hurried down the lane after Ram. Her thick bare arms—she never wore a shawl, no matter how cold the weather, and her face was always flushed and perspiring—were crossed over her low bosom as her head turned in my direction, and once I heard her exclaim, to no one in particular, “It ain’t right. It just ain’t right.”

  So I assumed, when the well-dressed woman knocked on our door one warm fall evening, that it was Mae Scat who had put her on to us.

  “Are you Linny Munt?”

  I nodded, feeling my heart begin a staccato beat. No one had ever come to our door asking for me before. I was still dressed in my stained clothes from the bookbindery; we’d just finished eating and I hadn’t yet changed for my evening work.

  “I’m Mrs. Poll, from the Society of Ladies of Righteous Conduct. Could I please come in and have a word?” she said, her nostrils tight and her narrow shoulders held stiffly in the dim, smelly passage outside our door.

  I hadn’t opened the door any wider and now looked over my shoulder at Ram to take my cue from him. Sitting on the settle, he stared into the fire as if he hadn’t heard the knock or the low, rhythmic voice.

  When he made no move to object, I swung the door open, stepping back, and the woman entered. She was dressed almost severely, with a navy bonnet and matching poplin spencer over a lighter blue cambric dress, but it was easy for me to see that although the short jacket and dress were plainly cut, they were of superior material. Instead of a reticule, she carried a large gray cloth bag.

  “How are you this fine evening, Linny?” she asked.

  I nodded, twisting my hands in my skirt. I was suddenly afraid, even though her voice was kind. She wore cotton navy gloves, and I thought, for no apparent reason, that she was wise not to wear white ones when she came down to Vauxhall.

  “How old are you? I would venture a guess at ten?”

  “I’ve just passed twelve,” I said. My voice came out as little more than a whisper. I don’t know what I was afraid of, although perhaps I imagined she would carry me off to the children’s section of the workhouse. I had heard terrible stories of the workhouse.

  She looked surprised. “Twelve. Well. I’ve just come to meet you and to bring you some information. Is this your father, then?” She looked behind me at Ram, who still hadn’t moved or spoken.

  I nodded again.

  “Mr. Munt, is it not?” she called.

  Ram answered with a grunt, then rose from the settle. “What’s your business with us, then, since you already appear to know our names? What nosy cow has put you on to us?”

  “I assure you, Mr. Munt, that I am not here to cause trouble. I’m simply checking on the well-being of the children in the area.”

  I let my breath out slowly. It didn’t appear she was here to take me away, then.

  “Well-being? What do you mean by that?” Ram demanded.

  Mrs. Poll licked her lips. I saw that her temples were damp. “Making sure they are keeping well. Inviting them to partake in our Children’s Hour on Sunday afternoons at the church. I have a tract you might enjoy looking at,” she said then, reaching into the cloth bag and pulling out a folded paper. “There are some lovely little drawings I’ll explain.”

  As I reached for the pamphlet she looked at my badly bruised wrist, caused by the rough handling from one of my customers a few days earlier. “How have you hurt yourself, dear?” she inquired, glancing at Ram.

  I put my other hand over my wrist. “I—I don’t remember,” I said. But I looked up at her, wanting her to know that I couldn’t tell her, that I dare not. That Ram would punish me if I spoke the truth.

  “Is someone mistreating you?” she asked, although now she spoke to Ram and not to me.

  Yes, yes, I wanted to cry. Look at me, Mrs. Poll. Look at me and understand what Ram makes me do every night.

  Ram’s voice went up a notch. “She only gets wot she deserves if she don’t get on to her chores quick enough. It’s a father’s duty to see his daughter brought up right, last time I looked.”

  Mrs. Poll nodded. Although a slight color had started in her throat and now stained her cheeks, her voice remained firm and pleasant. “Yes. It is a father’s duty to bring his children up, to feed them and make sure they are clothed. And that no harm comes to them. I can assume, then, that you are carrying out your fatherly duties?”

  “You’re right,” Ram answered. “I am. Not that it’s your place to check on me. There’s no such part of the law wot tells a parent how to treat his child. And the church has no business interfering.”

  I bent my head over the tract, skimming the words as Ram blustered. The little tract held a verse of Scripture and announced Sunday afternoon classes for the children of the parish. All those who attend will be served a slice of bread with jam at the end of the lesson, I read.

  “And isn’t that a pity, Mr. Munt. That prevention of cruelty to children is mooted.”

  “Have you finished with your call, then? Because my girl here doesn’t have any time to dawdle. Give that back, now, Linny,” Ram told me.

  As I handed it to her, I asked, “There’s bread and jam for all?”

  Mrs. Poll stepped closer. “I see you’re able to read then, dear?”

  “Oh, yes,” I told her, looking up and handing her the tract. “I’ve been reading for a long time.” And do you hear how well I speak? Can’t you see I shouldn’t be here, Mrs. Poll? Can you take me home with you? I knew the ridiculousness of my thoughts, thoughts of a silly and very young child who didn’t understand life.

  “Well, then.” Her voice held a note of surprise. “Would you be interested in assisting in some of our Bible classes for younger children on the Sunday afternoons? It’s very simple, really. We read a passage to them and sing a verse or two of a hymn and talk about God’s plan for good works and good, clean living.” She reached out with an unconscious gesture to tuck a stray lock of hair behind my ear and I felt myself lean into her gloved hand. She kept her hand against the side of my head for another moment and I shut my eyes, remembering my mother’s touch.

  Yes, yes, I would like that, I thought, I would like that so much and opened my mouth to say the words, but Ram spoke before I had the chance. “She ain’t got no time for that business,” he said. “I allow her to get on to church of a Sunday morning and say her prayers over her muvver’s grave, but then she’s to come on home.”

  “It’s only an hour, Mr. Munt, and I’m sure Linny would enj—”

  “As her father, I think I’m a better judge of how Linny should be spending her Sunday,” he said, standing. “Come to think of it, I’m the only judge of how my daughter spends her time. That’ll be all, now. And don’t be expecting to see my girl at none of yer afternoons.”

  Mrs. Poll moved toward the door at the obvious signal that the visit—if it could be called such—was officially over. “Well, then, I will bid you a pleasant afternoon, Linny. I’ll look forward to seeing you at least in church next Sunday.”

  I nodded, sinking my teeth into my bottom lip, wanting to run to her, to put my ink-stained hands on her gloved ones and hold on tight. I knew my life was here but I wanted to teach Bible stories to little children, and spend an afternoon with ladies who wore gloves, and have a piece of bread and jam at the end of it all. I wanted . . . I wanted so much.

  But I was silent, rooted to the spot.

  “And good day to you as well, Mr. Munt,” Mrs. Poll said then, her pointed chin rising. She opened the door and went out, and I heard the swish of her hem o
n each step as she walked downstairs, and wished with all my heart that I could follow her.

  I knew I would never go to the Bible classes. I knew that neither the church, nor Mrs. Poll, nor any of the other well-meaning Ladies of Righteous Conduct could help me. Even if I’d had the courage to tell her the truth about my life, what Ram had stated was true. Nobody had any business telling a parent how to treat his child, or interfering. Nobody.

  I TURNED THIRTEEN and knew I had grown hard. And I knew my mother would not be pleased—not because I was a whore, for that was not my fault—but because of my evil ways and my even more evil thoughts.

  My daily reflections revolved, as I worked at my folding table, on planning all the ways I could kill Ram Munt. These plans were varied and usually torturous and invariably involved imagining the use of my bone-handled knife. I also planned the ways I could kill each of the men my father brought me to (except for the weeping, grieving Monday and Thursday’s kindly Uncle Horace. By that time fastidious Wednesday no longer came to Liverpool on business; I greatly missed my weekly bath and had to return to washing myself with tepid water in our dented washbasin).

  But the others! To me they were all the same: no matter what bearing they affected, each had the identical fascination of ensuring that the ridiculous worm nestled at the center of their bodies would grow to a snake and then find a home in which it thrashed and jerked about until its death, with a final twitch and dribble. Immediately upon entering a strange room where one of these man awaited with their cherished worm or, in many cases, with the snake ready and waiting, I would cast my eye over the furnishings. I looked for the heavy decorated flower urn that would bash in a skull with a resounding and satisfying thud, or the sharp silver fish knife on the dinner tray that could slice the jugular with one quick, smooth stroke. Of course, these were only fancy pictures that gave me pleasure, although I had indeed had to defend myself from my customers.