‘I don’t know, Mr Rowsley, and that’s the truth. But there’s all those connecting doors and staircases never used except when George was checking for dry rot – and her ladyship, having lived here so long, might know of them.’
I nodded. ‘Of course. Have any of the other members of staff mentioned anything? The chambermaids, for instance? They, after all, strip beds and perform … tasks …’ Tasks which the presence of bathrooms would eliminate.
He took a second to work that out. ‘Ah. The chamber pots. I’ll ask, shall I?’
‘I think I’ll spare you that! But if you were to hear gossiping or complaints, it wouldn’t be disloyal to tell me. Or to tell the maid in question to speak to Mrs Faulkner. I will forewarn her so she will not be shocked.’
The chance to speak to Harriet did not arise till we all gathered in Samuel’s room after luncheon. Predictably, she was not so much shocked as disbelieving, until Beatrice reminded her of the horses the night-time arrival of which she thought she had heard. ‘What if …?’
‘People of her class always used to have much looser morals than the rest of us,’ Harriet pointed out. ‘His late lordship now – he had a fearful reputation as a man about town.’
‘A rake’s how I’d put it. But now we’re all supposed to be puritans, aren’t we? At least according to Mr Pounceman, who is now, by the way, apparently convalescing in Malvern. I wonder how long we’ll be without him. Not that I miss him, don’t get the wrong impression, but what about hatchings, matchings and dispatchings? Life doesn’t stop just because he’s probably become a eunuch!’
Not for the first time I wondered how Samuel would cope with her when they were married.
It was time to divert everyone: there had never been an opportunity to produce the little gifts I had bought in Shrewsbury. Trivial though they were, they lightened the undoubted atmosphere.
The turmoil at the House, and my lingering and egotistical feeling that I should be there to protect the women against dangers unknown, meant I had missed cricket practice – and much local gossip of course. I should imagine Job’s presence in the House occasioned a great deal.
Page continued his daily visits, those to Samuel getting shorter and shorter in comparison with those he spent Upstairs. Surely he was not the lover that Thatcher suspected? I dismissed the possibility immediately. But another, still inchoate, formed slowly but insistently in the back of my mind.
XXIX
I tell myself that the satisfaction of a job well done, that contentment and a calm mind constitute a longer-lasting emotion than happiness. It is the dogma I live by. Serene as a swan, I go about my daily tasks. I never raise my voice. I never lose my temper. I am a perfect employee.
Even my dreams are pleasant. No, I cannot deceive myself. My dreams let me down, as I relive those five minutes – was it as long as that? – in the library, that took my life away.
I love Matthew. He loves me. How much longer can I withstand the desire we both have to marry?
Provisos?
The biggest proviso is how I tell him – unless an even bigger one is how a good pure man like him will react.
THIRTY
Samuel was not well enough to have resumed his duties when I received a letter from Ianto Davies. It was short and to the point. Someone he knew had pulled a dead young woman from a canal near him, which he thought might well be Maggie, given other circumstances, he added mysteriously and irritatingly. Would I care to make a formal identification so the people who came to the rescue might claim the reward?
‘He didn’t say anything about the poor child’s baby?’ Harriet asked gently, watching me drink strong tea to steady me.
‘No. Nothing. But there’s this line about other circumstances: could that allude to a baby?’
‘If it does and if the baby is alive it must come back here. I can find a wet nurse in the village until Mrs Billings is able to look after her. No, she never will be, will she, not with all the blue pills in the world? Ada? Her hands are already full, what with her children and doing her best for her mother. Yet I would not see the baby go into the workhouse or an orphanage: never!’
‘And it may not be an orphan. His lordship may still be alive somewhere.’
She snorted. ‘I can’t see him recognising his by-blow, not in a month of Sundays. No, we must find a better solution. Enough of this speculation! When is the next train?’
‘This is a whole new world!’ she gasped as she peered through the railway carriage window. ‘One I never knew existed. Oh, I have read about it – I believe I have read about everywhere from Norway to the South Seas. But all my journeys have been from one place of employment to the next.’
‘I wish I could have made your first trip with me one through a better landscape,’ I said. ‘One with cleaner air and happier people. But we can pretend that over there are the Alps, not chimneys belching foul smoke. We can pretend that the turgid water of that canal is a lake so clear we can see the fish.’
Her response to my folly was the saddest smile I had ever seen. Perhaps she was shocked by my insensitivity – we were going to identify a body, after all. But a deep unease I did not want to recognize made me shiver. Dare I take her hand? I reached for it: it lay passively in mine.
If Ianto Davies was shocked to see an unmarried man and woman present themselves at the manse, he did not show it. He greeted me as if I was an old friend, and Harriet with almost as much enthusiasm. I suspected Marty had told him about us.
‘Would you care for a cup of tea, or would you rather get the sad business over and done with first? Yes? We’ll take my trap and head down to the Navigation down Bilston way – they’ve laid the poor girl there.’
‘The Navigation? A public house?’
‘Yes. In an outhouse.’
‘Not a mortuary?’
‘That’s how they do it round here. Bleak as it is, it’s like a social event – people go round to see the body and have a quick half while they’re at it. One day it’ll all change – there’s already talk of building a proper mortuary. I’ll just get my lad to get the trap.’ He rang a bell. Someone shouted. He shouted back in Welsh. ‘This way, now.’ He led us into his tiny yard, where an aged horse stood resentfully between the shafts of an equally venerable vehicle. He continued as if five minutes had not passed, ‘There will be an inquest, of course.’
‘Suicide?’ I asked quietly, hoping that Harriet did not hear.
‘Why should it be? Someone saw the poor little wench – I’m sorry, you pick up the lingo if you live here long enough – the girl on the towpath and said she might have slipped. She was pretty well crawling, she was so weak, they said. A man on a narrowboat. Him and his wife. I know them a little. They don’t come to chapel, but they have been to the parish church and had all their children baptised, as if the water carries some sort of extra luck, with them living on it. But they were more interested in fishing out the baby. Like Moses in the bulrushes, they say, only in a cut – that’s what they call canals round here, Mrs Faulkner – not a river.’
‘Did the baby survive?’
‘Bless you, yes! Didn’t I tell you? I’ll be forgetting my own head next. A little girl.’
Digesting the news, neither of us spoke. Ianto urged the reluctant horse into a slightly faster pace.
‘Ah, here we are!’
We fetched up at a depressed-looking public house, Ianto leading us down one side to a shed, which was not even locked.
‘Are you sure, now, cariad?’ he asked Harriet, who had stepped forward. ‘I’d recommend waiting outside and letting Matthew—’
She said simply, ‘It’s I who was responsible for her in life: I owe her this in death.’
We walked in side by side.
As we emerged, she nodded, as if like me she was unable to speak. ‘Yes. Poor Maggie,’ she said at last, her voice a mere thread. Then she straightened her shoulders, and resumed her usual business-like tone. ‘Is there an undertaker you can recommend, Mr Davies? I want
her brought back immediately to the village where she was born, and given a proper funeral, not tipped into a pauper’s grave.’
He nodded. ‘I will see to that for you.’
‘The living are even more important than the dead,’ she said. ‘You mentioned Moses in the bulrushes? Who took the baby in?’
‘Not Pharaoh’s daughter, I’m afraid! Jem Stride. He’s a boatman. In charge of a narrowboat – actually, his wife is, I’d say. Not a barge: you must never call them that. And you’re in luck. They’re still moored, waiting for their next load. Kingfisher. Is that irony or optimism? I’ll leave you to judge. Down over that humpbacked bridge.’ He encouraged the horse to a dingy patch of greensward. It was happy to stop.
We looked around us. Amid all the vile smoke and fumes, a line of ragged washing fluttered defiantly from front to back of the brightly-painted vessel.
‘And there behind her is a butty boat, which means they can carry extra cargo. That’ll be their horse, there.’ He jerked a curly thumb at the animal in question. ‘Watch the ropes.’ He banged on the side of the cabin, calling. A woman appeared, her sleeves rolled up, revealing arms as muscular as a prize-fighter’s. Nestled within them was a small bundle, wailing. Ianto stepped away without performing introductions, as if wanting to see how we comported ourselves.
Harriet surged forward. ‘Is that Maggie’s baby? Mrs Stride, I’m Harriet Faulkner: I’ve come to take her home to her grandmama!’
‘Over my dead body, you do! ’Er’s my little one now, ain’t you, my pretty? You’re your ma’s pretty Lizzie.’ As the wails increased, she simply lowered her bodice and put the babe to her breast, just as one of Alf’s sows would let a piglet suckle. Blushing, I averted my gaze, but Harriet managed to smile encouragingly. ‘I lost me last babby after she picked up a fever. But the milk’s coming nicely, ain’t it, my pretty?’
Harriet nodded. ‘Is she thriving?’
‘Oh, ah. You can have a look if you like – but you’m not taking her nowhere, understand?’
A bent and wizened man appeared along the towpath, accompanied by a yellow-toothed brute of a dog which snarled at the sight of us.
‘Charlie! Give the lady and gent a hand aboard, will yer? And keep that bloody dog quiet, or I’ll tie a brick round its neck and drown it myself.’
Down a short, steep flight of steps, the cabin smelt of poverty and dirt, but was neat and tidy. ‘The rest of the kids are at school,’ Mrs Stride told us, as she sat on a what in fashionable circles would be a window seat, but here was not much more than a shelf, covered in a rag rug. She shifted the baby to the other breast. ‘We might be poor, mister, but they goes when they can. They knows their numbers and their letters as good as anyone.’
Mr Stride nodded, pulling out a pipe as he sat down.
‘And you can take that stinking pipe outside, too, like a Christian man. Ah, they’ve all been christened and all,’ she added proudly as he sneaked off. ‘As I’ll swear on that Bible.’ A huge tome, swathed in a shawl, lay on an upper shelf.
‘And they can all read and write?’ Harriet asked quietly. ‘How old are they?’
She listened patiently to a recital of names and ages. I followed Mr Stride out on to the tiny area by the tiller, where I passed him my cigarette case. There was no sign of Ianto. We smoked in silence, the dog occasionally snarling in its sleep, with the women’s voices murmuring inaudibly on. In silence? Just as there was constant smoke billowing from the manufactory chimneys, so there was incessant noise – from the iron wheels on the cobbles of the street, and also from what sounded like giants’ hammers.
‘Steam hammers, that’s what they’ll be,’ Stride said. ‘They need coal. That’s where I come in. We’ll fill the butty boat with coal, plus a bit more forward there. Hard for the missus to keep things clean. Nice when we go through a bit of country. Rabbits, pheasants and such. Nothing what belongs to anyone else,’ he added hastily. ‘Never a sheep, nothing like that. Smell that? Rabbit stew. Better a job like this than in a works. Seen a lot of me mates carried out of them in coffins. Them what they call chemicals – not getting anywhere near any of them. So I carries coal. They say as the coal gets into your lungs, but it’s not so bad if you wet it first.’
‘What will your children do?’
‘The missus says if they learns well, the wenches might go into service or work in a shop. My lad – I’d like him to go for a soldier. We got hopes, mister. Hopes.’
‘What about Lizzie?’
‘Treat her the same, won’t we? No better, no worse.’ He spat into the green waters. ‘That missus of yours – she might want the nipper but it’ll break my old woman’s heart to let her go. Look at her face.’
I nodded. And thought of the hopelessness of Mrs Billings. And of Ada and Silas, who might have a claim, though I could not imagine how they might manage with yet another child. Of course I could find them another, bigger cottage; of course I could increase Silas’ wages. And yet … was I going to play God? I feared I was. ‘Now we’re on our own, tell me about the baby’s mother.’
‘Topped herself, no doubt about it. But I won’t tell the Coroner that, bless you, no. Don’t want Lizzie growing up knowing that. Moses, that’s what we’ll tell her about – like we found a little princess in the reeds, not a princess finding a lad, if you get my meaning.’
‘What if we told you she was the daughter of a rich man?’
‘Oh, not that old story! Some gentleman has her as his fancy woman and kicks her out when she gets in the family way. Bastards! Begging your pardon, sir. Funnily enough, the bab had something tucked up in the rags we found her in – amazing it stayed there, now I come to think of it. As if her mam wanted it kept safe. Come back down – I’ll show you.’
The baby lay asleep in Harriet’s arms, but Mrs Stride, although busy at her tiny stove, barely took her eyes off her. Stride shifted the shawl covering the Bible: ‘There!’
I took what he was offering. A silver spoon, complete with the Family’s coat of arms. I showed it to Harriet. Without touching it, she nodded.
‘I think Maggie, Lizzie’s mother, stole this,’ I said gently, ‘and it could get her family and maybe you into a great deal of trouble if it was found here. Mr Stride, you said you want to raise her as your own, no better and no worse. Maybe Mr Davies has told you I offered a reward for someone telling us where Maggie – the baby’s mother – might be found. You shall have that. I have another offer for you: let me return this spoon secretly, and – no! listen to me! – and I will give you some money instead, more than any pawnbroker would give. You know Mr Ianto Davies, minister up at the Baptist Chapel in Wolverhampton, I believe?’
‘Ah. He said as how he’d bring you here. I bet he’s over yonder – trying to stop old Biddie supping her stout. He’s straight, is Mr Davies, so they say.’
‘As straight as any man I’ve known. Are you a drinking man, Mr Stride? Because if you are, I don’t want to give you a lot of money that’ll go straight down your throat.’
His wife said, ‘He ain’t signed the pledge, nor never would. Why do you ask?’
‘Because you’d need a lot of money to raise Lizzie properly – and that would mean for your other children too, doesn’t it? Exactly the same.’
Harriet, unprompted, took up my theme. ‘Money for schooling. Money for a doctor if they – if you! – fall sick. Money for apprenticeships.’
‘Safer than going to be a soldier,’ I said aside to Stride. ‘Better prospects.’
‘You bribing us, or summat?’ Mrs Stride snapped.
‘Never!’ she responded, tears in her eyes. ‘I can see you are good people – Lizzie’s name is already in the family Bible, Matthew!’ She stopped, blushing, as she used my name for the first time in public. ‘At home she has a grandmother – she has an aunt … But who am I to try and take away a child from a loving home?’ Tears welled from her eyes. ‘Promise me, never to let her go to the workhouse or an orphanage: you must trust Mr Davies if ever you fall on h
ard times. Promise me!’ By now the tears were running freely.
Stride looked awkwardly on. ‘You mean we can keep her? Maybe you could write that down in the Bible, missus.’
‘I’ve told you, she’s not mine to give away. But—’
‘Let’s call it finders keepers, then,’ Mrs Stride said decisively. ‘And we’ll promise on the Good Book. We’ll have that reward, Miss, but you can give Mr Davies the spoon money. Just in case. Know what I mean?’ She proffered the spoon, which Harriet slipped into her bag.
I handed over the money.
Mrs Stride stared, and then peeled most of the notes off, handing them back to me. ‘Much too much.’ She considered a moment longer. ‘Suppose you give that lot to Parson Davies too. Hey, I’ll do it myself if he’s anywhere around.’ She went up on to the tiny deck and bellowed.
As we drove back to the manse, Ianto was so joyful he might have been a smile personified. ‘Oh, you’ll doubt this and worry about that, but in my view you have been extremely wise. Assuming her family did want her, what would a court of law do? What would your employer say, Matthew, if the by-blow he’s gone to all that trouble to get rid of suddenly reappears? Answer me that, eh? Now, you shall see me lock this money, in a sealed envelope signed by all three of us, in my chapel safe. No – don’t argue: it’s what the Strides will expect. Make it all legal-looking – I know it’s not, but who’s to ask? And who’s to say a woman like her won’t love a child and bring her up as well as a duchess would. Not that a duchess has anything to do with her children, or so I’ve heard, it’s all nurses and maids. Look you, here’s the chapel: come along in. I can feel God here, for all it was only built five years ago. A proper organ, see …’
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