Folly

by Marthe Jocelyn

  The baby's fussing were a wish come true. Before tea I were sent to fetch gripe water, ready-made, and oil of clove from the chemist, though I could have certainly mixed up my own, as my brothers and sister would tell you.

  I made the purchase and slipped it into my apron pocket. I pulled my shawl tighter round me, seeing the torches being lit against the fog.

  "Have you got it?" asked Miss Hollow, who were waiting in the kitchen, tapping her pointed little boot.

  "No, ma'am." I were inspired. "I'm to go back in an hour, after tea." Pray let the bulge go unnoticed .

  No one blinked an eye except at Miss Hollow's exasperated tromping up the stairs.

  "Now, there's a woman needs a man like a cake needs frosting," said Bates.

  "You hush your sass," said Mrs. Wiggins, but we knew she felt the same way.

  "Mary could make the baby stop, couldn't you, Mary?" said Bates.

  "Aye, but I'm in scullery, aren't I?"

  I set to peeling potatoes and rinsing them, and slicing the bread, and cleaning anything Cook put her hand on almost before it were put down, so as to keep ahead and take my time after.

  I scrubbed up and quick dabbed on a bit of Miss Lucilla's rose scent when I were collecting her tea tray.

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  "What's that pong?" said Nut, waving his hand back and forth over his nose.

  "You'll want to be washing that grubby wee paw," I said to him, "before Bates cuts it off to use for a blacking cloth."

  "He wouldn't," said Nut, tucking his fingers into his vest pockets and stepping back.

  "He might."

  But Nut were done sniffing me. Thanks to my brothers, I'd learned long ago with little boys that distraction saves the day more often than not.

  Mrs. Wiggins and Eliza were indignant that I'd be traipsing out in such a mess of weather--and wouldn't they have whinged if they'd known where I were headed? But out I went into the drizzle and grime of that November evening, to find the boy I were longing for with all my skin and spirit. There were indeed a dread fog that evening. It didn't matter a bird splash that I'd prettied my hair, as it were wet and dangling in two minutes out of doors.

  This leads to that. There were plenty before that almighty kiss and Lord knows plenty after, so where did the leading start ? One thing is clear: it were the fog, that particular night, that led to the kiss, wrapping us around in mystery, so even the plainest thing--a girl, and a boy in uniform--even that were given portent. And that kiss led straight to where you are and to where I be now.

  I had only the time it would otherwise take to get to

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  Messrs. Finley & Dobbs, Apothecary, which were perhaps eighteen minutes, there and back. I paused at the end of Neville Street, dithering, wondering should I keep going over to Russell Square and what were the chances he'd even show his face?

  My name were called, "Mary!" bringing to mind an owl that haunted the lane back in Pinchbeck. But it weren't an owl, not in London. It were him, Caden Tucker. Liar, scoundrel, and heart's delight, though only the third did I have a hint of yet.

  "Out for a stroll?" he said.

  "Not likely," I said. "When the air's as woolly as a sheep's behind."

  "Oh, then it's me you're looking for," he said, with those eyes as bright as first daylight in the gray mist.

  He caught me up with both his hands at my waist. My heart jumped and my hands landed on his damp jacket shoulders. The fog were so close that even as our bodies bumped together his face were not entirely real until his mouth were on mine. I closed my eyes and tasted him, hungry as I'd never been.

  Eliza had told me, the day we met this boy, how kissing him might be. She'd listed the color of his eyes and the shape of his lips and the slight beard that softened his jaw and had never yet felt a blade--teasing me to consider what I'd forfeited by not pouncing on him as she claimed she would have if she hadn't promised herself to Bates.

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  But all his fine features that she'd mooned about--none of that were visible as I were chewing on him like it were my one chance to escape starvation, and he were clasping me like I were the thing he needed most in the world.

  "Oi!" An angry gent appeared out of the mist and collided with us. His cane, and luck, saved him from a nasty tumble.

  We were tossed apart, me dizzy with doing what I'd never have done if the day had been a fine one.

  "What's the time?" I gasped. But Caden Tucker had melted into the gray, with the briefest salute and a grin on his face as if he'd won a prize for all of England.

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  OLIVER 1888 Father

  "Mr. Chester," asked the boy one day, while sweeping the classroom floor, "do you think Frederick looks like the Prince of Wales?"

  "Why do you ask that?"

  "He thinks he might be the bastard son of the Prince of Wales. That's what he says."

  "It is ... possible, Nelligan, that the Prince of Wales does indeed have ... a son ... or more than one bastard son. But I think I can guarantee that Frederick Mills is not one of them."

  "Because he doesn't look the same?"

  "That would be a good place to start." Oliver lifted the dustpan from its nail by the door and crouched to hold it in place for James to sweep in the debris.

  Oliver had had his own dream, when he was about James's age. It wasn't the Prince of Wales he'd yearned

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  for, but the author Charles Dickens, who'd frequently come visiting, to hear the music on Sundays in the chapel. Oliver had convinced himself, briefly, that the great man came to see him , Oliver Chester, secretly loving him so much that he'd used the name for his famous character the orphan Oliver Twist.

  "Who do you think I might look like?" asked James.

  Oliver considered.

  "I mean, if I don't ever ... meet ... my father, isn't it funny that I might still look like him?"

  "Yes," said Oliver. This was the sort of conversation that made him want to hide in a cupboard.

  "Or my mother?" said James. "My real mother?"

  "You likely resemble both of them," said Oliver.

  "But I'll never know, will I?"

  "Nor will any of us," said Oliver. "Which of my parents needed spectacles, I wonder. Who gave me these ears, or the eyebrows of which I'm very proud?"

  That seemed to brighten the boy up.

  "It's like what you were saying in the lesson, isn't it, sir? About Henry the Eighth and his fiery-tempered daughter, Queen Elizabeth. About inherited traits? Only we have the traits and we'll never know if they're inherited, or something we invented for our own selves."

  The boy had a point.

  "You'd better assume it's all up to you," said Oliver. "And be content with looking like yourself, as there's no one else for comparison."

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  JAMES 1888 Now a Big Chap

  What he saw Outside was real, James knew that, but not real real. It might be brighter, louder, sharper, than any dull day in the hospital, but there were a locked gate and a high wall keeping it out of reach. He could happily spy but luckily not have to go out there. The little plays that unfolded beneath his branch were almost imaginings--like the history stories that Mr. Chester told them during lessons, and even James's memories of Mama Peevey and the shop. All that had really happened, but long, long ago.

  Voices floated directly upward, so James listened to plenty from the Outside that never went on in his own world. Along with the hawkers' cries, he heard cursing from soldiers and drunken bets and lovey-dovery between young men and their ladies.

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  "What is this place?" one girl asked her beau after they'd been pressing up against the high wall, so stuck together that James couldn't quite see what they were doing through the foggy dusk.

  "It's an asylum," said the man. "Loonies and demented children."

  "Ahh!" she cried. "What are we doing here ?" She dragged him off while James wished it were a chestnut tree so's he'd have conkers to pelt them with. That gave him the idea
to take pebbles next time, to have ammunition at the ready.

  A band of tidy children came along one time, clustered around a nursemaid pushing a perambulator. Rich, thought James. They had pillows full of feathers, probably, a football for each boy, sweets every day. One of the boys was whining for an ice cream.

  "You hush now," the nursemaid said. "Your papa doesn't permit whining. He'll give you away and you'll end up in there ." She jerked her chin toward the wall, toward the very branch that James was gripping. "They eat mice in there, for a special treat! Do you hear me, Alexander? There's no such thing as ice cream for an orphan...."

  James sent a pebble straight off, and pinged the brim of her hat. Alexander got such a scolding that James laughed out loud with no one noticing. What was an ice cream, anyway? It sounded divine.

  The bell rang. James shinnied down the tree and tore

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  across the yard. It was a Departure Day, with a ceremony to watch and an orange for every foundling. Walter didn't like oranges because his fingers got sticky, so if James was a chum, he might have two oranges before nightfall. And it wasn't just any old senior boys leaving; this group included Harvey Hooper and Monty Forbes, as well as the one and only Lionel "Tubbs" Tubman. This was James's lucky day! Harvey was off to be a sailor. Monty, who had somehow learned to play the trumpet, was joining the British Army as a band boy. Tubbs--James didn't even mind switching to his Sunday collar to celebrate--Tubbs would be a butcher's boy in the Fulham Road.

  "They've all got good placements," Frederick told James. "The Foundling Hospital finds somewhere for everyone. Maybe I'll be a banker, if my mother doesn't come back to collect me. Or a--"

  "But who would hire Tubbs to play with knives?" said James. "The newsboys will be shouting about human blood in the sawdust before you know it."

  They slid into the chapel gallery. Usually it was Mr. Byrd who spoke on Departure Days, with his lame sister, Miss Byrd, sitting in the front row to hear the music. She'd never got married, because of her leg, so she came alone. But her brother's words of uplift and guidance were so boring that she often fell dead asleep. The boys made bets on just when her chin would drop to her chest.

  Today, however, there was a guest speaker. Dr. Joshua Merkin had once been a foundling. Not at the same time

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  with Mr. Chester. He was older than Mr. Chester by about a foot's worth of whiskers. But now he was a physician who had attended the Lord Mayor of London. He carried a heavy gold watch and had six horses to pull his carriage. He knew what happened inside a human body, how to fix a broken arm or what to do when the liver misbehaved. He told his audience about the doctors over a hundred years ago, who had attended the earliest foundlings, how they had been great scientists, made great medical discoveries, and been great teachers to those who followed. Dr. Merkin seemed very proud of himself and rubbed his round belly more than once, setting off giggles amongst the girls on the other side of the chapel. He shook the departing foundlings by the hand, even the young women, reminding them to be ever grateful and wishing them wisdom in their choice of employ.

  James, suddenly a Big Chap with the departure of this crew, began to consider what might be waiting Outside for him.

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  MARY 1877 Telling About Love

  It were near unbearable to wait all those minutes till another Thursday come along, but by then there were no need of fog to prompt us. Meeting to meeting those next weeks, I scarce could bite a pie or drink my tea or rub clean my teeth, nor tell a story to Nut or blow out the candle, but I were thinking what else I wished my mouth were doing instead.

  The time came, we did not stop with kisses. I were as eager as he, I will not deny it. There hadn't been a boy before who liked me, not for teasing and flirting or kissing or any of the rest of it. I'd not had anyone to say I were pretty or to bundle me round in his ready arms as if I were a true delight to hold on to. I couldn't think, aside from Eliza's backside touching me in bed, that anyone more than a child had touched me at all since Mam had died.

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  All along I knew it weren't ladylike, but a lady were never what I got up in the morning to be.

  Enough to say that the kissing were hot and even frantic. Our layers of clothing were an obstacle that had us laughing while we tugged to disarrange things. My hands rushed all over him, touching places they had never touched before. He were heated and bucking, saying the wildest things, calling me sweetheart and slipping his fingers above my stockings, fumbling with my drawers until I tore them down for him, we were that warm. Funny how even though it were new, we both had the idea of what to do next.

  I were eager, like I said. When he pushed into me, I cried out, ready--aching--for pleasure and not expecting it to hurt that way.

  "Oh no!" he gasped. "I didn't realize--"

  "Go on!" I cried. He kissed me for one soft moment before we galloped on in the most fevered romp ... this was where a kiss could lead? It took a person over, body humming and spirit noisy in song.

  That were Caden and me, that afternoon near dark in the furthest corner of the burial ground at St. Andrew's Gardens, on the grave of EVERETT MULDOWER 1749-1806 and HIS WIFE, ADA, who lived another twenty-six years without him.

  After, we barely spoke, for giggling and brushing off and snatching extra kisses, until we looked about and saw that it were truly night. If I did not run full-speed, the

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  Allyns' tea would include bread sliced by Nut and sprinkled over with fingertips.

  So run I did.

  "You're as pink-cheeked as St. Nicholas," said Eliza.

  "I've been running," I told her. "I were distracted by the sights and got late. My under-bodice is pinching."

  "Red face, guilty conscience?" she asked, pricking me with those dark eyes.

  "Ha, ha," I managed.

  "And what do you know? You weren't the only one out there prowling in the dark," she said, nodding toward the door as Bates banged it open.

  "Well, well, well," she said to him. "Another stray, coming in for shelter." Her voice were tight and peculiar, but Bates gave her bum a pat and she cheered up some. I took the moment to repin my hair, feeling Caden's hands in it, tugging while he whispered, "So pretty, so soft ..."

  After that first time, Caden and I wasted few moments on chatter. We were always laughing, but we were past flirtation, always in a hurry, always fiddling with clothing in the way. We never did chance being naked, pressed together all the way from lips to toes. Nor did we take the time again to go so far as the cemetery. I never saw his bare back, nor his shoulders, though I could feel them well enough, as I slid my hands up under his shirt, putting my palms flat against the warm wide strength of him.

  We were most often in the dairy shed, behind the Allyn house, where no one went after the day's milk were

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  fetched each morning. It were chilly in there, being made of hunking great stones; another reason not to dally about without covering.

  We thought, once, of going to his own bed, in the little place off the barracks stable where he had a cot, but it were raining that night, too far to walk in the wet, with me having to come back and look presentable at the end of it. So we stuck with the nearby and I were rosy-faced but dry when next seen by Mrs. Wiggins.

  What possessed me? I'd been a girl with common sense up till then. All the days between our minutes together, sense never won. Not over ... over the lust of it. Whatever were I thinking?

  Nothing clever, it's clear now. Clear as the first cry on a winter morning. "Pies, ladies! Fresh pies!" Only it were "Lies, ladies! All lies!"

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  JAMES 1888 Guildford Street

  An old pieman stood himself on the very same cobble every day, his basket so heavy to start with that it sat by his feet--or on his feet when the mud was bad. When the breeze was right, the smell of meat floated up to James in the tree, making his stomach grumble even if he'd just had his dinner. This old man's cap looked like one of his
own pies, with his hair sticking out in tufts from under it. The customers called him Pie Peter, and he'd sing two hundred times in an afternoon: "Savory pies! Fresh and tasty, buy them hasty! Pies! Savory pies! Fresh and tasty, buy them hasty! Pies!"

  Late on a drizzly day, James spied a gang of boys creeping up on Pie Peter. Their clothes were tattered, enormous, maybe parts of men's suits, torn off to make the lengths right or tied on with string. Some of their feet

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  were bare, some were wrapped in newspapers or rags; some wore shoes of a sort, but none with laces and none with hose. James was tempted to peel off his own stockings and toss them down, just to see if the urchins would know what to use them for.

  The two in front were playacting: the littlest boy began crying at a nod from his partner. He belched out such a boohooing that he drowned out "Savory pies!"

  The old man leaned over to him, maybe tender or maybe just to shut his noise, but those other scamps scooted in from behind and snatched pies right out of the basket! Pie Peter hollered and swung his cap as if it were a stick that could strike the villains down.

  James laughed so hard he nearly slipped off the branch. He climbed down, still hearing the small boy's shout, "We was hungry 'n' you gots pies!"

  James lay in his bed that night, surrounded by the familiar night sounds: Walter wheezing, Frederick snoring in squeaky huffs, Adam Bernard whimpering as always, as if he were dreaming about greedy rats crawling over his mattress, Michael Angelo grinding his teeth like he'd got the hardest of boiled sweets between his molars.

  James propped himself up on an elbow, looking around in the dark until it didn't seem quite so black.