Another Heartbeat in the House (45 page)

‘How good to see you again,' said Isabella, as if we had met just a week or two earlier. ‘You look very well, despite the tribulations of that odious sea voyage.'

I was about to remark that I had travelled thither by coach, but realized almost at once that Isabella was speaking of the journey to Cork on the
Jupiter
, where we had first met.

‘How have you been?' I asked.

‘I have been hither and yon, you know, in the place where women go. The woods, mostly.' She began to turn the stiff, gilt-edged pages of the album with her slender fingers. The skin on her hands was the whitest I had ever seen, and I noticed that she still wore the locket around her neck that William had said contained a cutting of her dead baby's hair. ‘I liked it on the boat. Did you? I liked it when we sat together that night of the stars.'

She was speaking of the time I had found her crouched beneath the companionway clad in nothing but her nightdress. It had often struck me since that had I not come upon her there, she would no doubt have cast herself into the sea again, and this time there would have been no one to haul her out.

Isabella turned another page. The illustration pasted on the reverse side showed the children of Hamelin following the Pied Piper into the cave.

‘The Pied Piper,' she said. ‘How wicked he was. He lured all the children away, apart from the lame one. You told me stories that night on the boat. Do you remember?'

I recalled that I had related the childhood tales my mother had read to me, fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm – ‘Little Red Riding Hood' and ‘Hansel and Gretel' and ‘The Sleeping Beauty'. How enduring were those stories! I had told them to Clara countless times, and imagined that one day she would tell them to her children, and so on, and so on. If mothers left their children nothing but a legacy of storytelling, I thought, they had passed on something of inestimable value.

‘I like those stories, because they all happen in the woods,' continued Sophia. ‘I know the woods well; I never get lost. I met the Queen of Spain there once and showed her the way through, but she didn't listen, so I expect she is wandering there still. Her name is Isabella too. Will you tell me a story now?'

‘Which would you like to hear?'

‘The one about the princess in the tower with the hair.'

‘Rapunzel?'

‘Yes. There is a picture of her here in this album. Wait – let me find it for you.'

Isabella turned page after cardboard page upon which had been pasted scraps from picture sheets that she had coloured in by hand. There were images of farmyard animals and flowers and fairy-tale characters, lines of verse copied in careful copperplate, woodcuts and miniatures in watercolour. She paused at a page decorated with a bluebird at each corner. In the centre she had pasted an illustration of Rapunzel high in her tower, waiting for a prince to come and rescue her.

‘There she is. You can start now,' she said, folding her hands in her lap and looking at me pleasantly.

‘Once upon a time,' I began, ‘a wicked enchantress stole the baby of a poor couple, and kept it for her own.'

‘Did the baby cry? My babies always cried.'

‘I suppose it did. But it soon grew out of it.'

‘Was it a girl?'

‘Yes. Called Rapunzel. And when she reached the age of twelve, the enchantress saw that with her long golden hair and fine white skin Rapunzel was more beautiful by far than she –'

‘Did she look like me?' asked Isabella, reaching for her hairbrush.

‘Just like you. And so jealous was the witch of Rapunzel's beauty that she imprisoned her in a tower in the middle of a forest with no door, and just one high window.'

‘How did she eat?'

‘When the witch brought food, she would call, “Rapunzel! Rapunzel! Let down your hair!” and Rapunzel would wind her beautiful golden plait around a hook and let it down like a rope so that the witch could climb up into the tower with a basket of food.'

‘Peaches?'

‘Yes. And cake.'

Mrs Bakewell had just entered with a tray of tea things on which a pound cake rested, cut into neat slices. She bustled about, pouring tea and milk and clattering spoons and chatting about the weather while Isabella sat stony-faced, staring down at the picture of Rapunzel, and then Mrs Bakewell withdrew, giving me one of those awful complicit smiles that are supposed to convey sorority.

Isabella waited until the door had shut, and then she helped herself to a slice of pound cake and said, ‘Go on with the story. Is she still twelve?'

‘Well, she's probably a little older than that now.'

‘She's eighteen.'

‘On Rapunzel's eighteenth birthday,' I resumed, ‘a prince riding by overheard her singing, and was overwhelmed by how beautiful she was, so when he heard the call, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel! Let down your hair!” and saw the witch climb into the tower, he resolved to do the same. And that night he too called, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel – let down your hair!” and when she cast her beautiful golden rope of hair over the sill, the prince climbed up the tower and in through the window and he and Rapunzel fell in love.'

‘Did they fuck?'

I hesitated. I had never before heard a woman of Isabella's class use the word, and I was uncertain how to respond. But the way she had asked the question seemed so matter-of-fact that I decided she deserved a matter-of-fact answer. ‘Yes, they did.'

‘Did she like it?'

‘I don't know. But she became
enceinte
, and when the witch found out, she was so angry that she cut off Rapunzel's hair and cast her out into the forest. And when the prince came again and called “Rapunzel, Rapunzel! Let down your hair!” the old witch let down the shorn plait, and the prince climbed up into the tower –'

‘Oh, oh!' Isabella put her hands up to her face, covering her mouth. Above her splayed fingertips her eyes were wide, as though she had never heard the story before. ‘What did he do? What did he do when he saw the witch?'

‘When he saw the witch he fell back into a thorn bush below, and the thorns pierced his eyes so that he became blind.'

‘Good,' said Isabella, stuffing the last of the cake into her mouth.

‘For months afterwards he wandered through the forest –'

‘Did he meet the Queen of Spain?'

‘No. He met nobody until one day he heard a girl singing –'

‘It was Rapunzel!'

‘Yes, it was.'

‘Had she had her baby?'

‘She had had two. Twins – a boy and a girl.'

‘It should have been two girls.' Isabella reached for another slice of cake. ‘What happened when she saw the prince?'

‘She ran and took him into her arms, and the tears of joy she shed fell directly upon the prince's eyes, and his sight was restored.'

‘And then he left her?'

‘No. He took her with him to his kingdom.'

‘And the twins, too?'

‘Yes.'

‘Did they live happily ever after?'

‘That's what the story says.'

With a finger, Isabella delicately transferred a crumb of cake from the plate to the tip of her tongue. ‘She was his
beau idéal
,' she said.

‘Yes.'

‘That is what William used to call me. His
beau idéal
. You are that now, I think.' She looked up from the plate. ‘I don't believe that they lived happily ever after, Rapunzel and the prince and the babies.'

‘Oh? What do you think happened?'

‘I think he took the boy twin to his kingdom, and that he locked Rapunzel and the girl back up in the tower in the wood.'

‘Why do you think that?'

‘The wood is where women go to hide when their babies are taken away from them. I have met the Queen of Spain in the wood. I don't know what she is doing there. She is far too young to have had babies yet. She is the same age as I was when I married. Are you married?'

‘No.'

‘Don't marry. I didn't want to, but they made me. They made the other Isabella marry too, even though she is just a child …'

I went to pour myself another cup of tea, but Isabella snatched the cup away. ‘Do not have any more tea!' she said. ‘Just
listen
! It's
important
! You need to
know
this!'

I fixed my eyes upon her and listened while Isabella talked and talked about the Queen of Spain, asking me repeatedly if I could get a message to her. When, growing tired of the subject, I tried to talk of our young Queen Victoria instead, she became quite agitated and dropped her plate onto the floor. The crash brought Mrs Bakewell and her daughter running, whereupon Isabella started to scream and shout abuse, and I was ushered from the house with scant ceremony. As the front door shut behind me I heard Isabella's calls of distress. I did not like to think what humiliating ritual she might have been subjected to, to subdue her.

I SUPPOSE I
must trust a Quaker to tell the truth
, I had said to William when I told him I was returning to Lissaguirra. But nobody told the truth. Politicians and clergy and pamphleteers alike all told lies, and until pictorial records began appearing in the newspapers, nobody in England knew what was really happening in Ireland.

On our way home, Clara Venus and I stopped in the Imperial hotel in Cork city for breakfast. Clara had boiled eggs with toast soldiers to dip in the yolks, while I had my eggs poached, with ham and muffins. It seemed that there was still no shortage of food for those who had the money to pay for it. We found ourselves sitting at a table next to a pair of gentlemen whose conversation I could not but help overhearing.

One of them, a handsome, dark-haired man in his middle thirties, had placed a sketchbook before him on the table; he was leafing through it, commenting on the drawings as he turned the pages.

‘They are coming to the workhouses now,' I heard him say, ‘not for food – for they know there is none – but for coffins. They believe that there at least they have a chance of a decent burial.'

‘Or the illusion of one,' the other, older, gentleman said. ‘Haven't you heard that the coffins have hinges? The bodies are tipped into the grave on top of the ones that went before, and the coffins reused.'

I checked to make sure that Clara Venus was still engrossed in dipping her soldiers in her egg – ‘Higgledy-piggledy, my fat hen!' I encouraged her – then angled myself towards the adjacent table.

‘I beg your pardon, gentlemen,' I said, ‘I have come here from London. I had it from a friend that things were improving. She said that prayers of thanksgiving had been offered up.'

The dark-haired man looked at me as if I was of unsound mind. ‘Thanksgiving for what?'

‘For the potato harvest, which I understand did not fail this year.'

‘Any prayers of thanksgiving were premature, madam,' he said, scathingly.

‘Dr Daniel Donovan, at your service,' said the older gentleman, with emphatic courtesy, as if to compensate for his friend's rudeness. ‘And this is Mr James Mahoney. Mr Mahoney is an artist, who has been commissioned by the
Illustrated London News
to supply eyewitness testimony of the hardship.'

‘Miss Eliza Drury.'

‘You were not altogether misinformed, Miss Drury,' continued Dr Donovan. ‘The blight was not as widespread this year, but the harvest was a scant one, for the people were so famished that they ate the seed potatoes before they could be put in the ground.'

‘So the suffering continues?'

‘The politicians don't call it “suffering”,' said Mr Mahoney. ‘They are skilled in the use of euphemism. They call it “distress”.'

‘What brings you here from London, Miss Drury?' Dr Donovan asked.

‘I am on my way to my home by Loch Liath – not far from Doneraile.'

Mr Mahoney cocked an eyebrow at me, and gave me a smile in which there was very little humour. ‘Doneraile! A darling place! You will not find the spectre of famine hanging over Doneraile.'

My eyes went to the sketchbook on the table. The uppermost drawing showed a woman with a begging bowl in her outstretched left hand. In the crook of her right arm, a baby lay sleeping.

‘I made that drawing not far from here, in Clonakilty,' said Mr Mahoney. ‘The mother was begging for money to bury her infant. It had died of typhus.'

‘It might have been any number of other diseases,' said Dr Donovan lugubriously. ‘Cholera, smallpox, tuberculosis, diarrhoea, pellagra. They are all borne of famine.'

Mr Mahoney slid the sketchbook across the table to me. ‘Peruse my drawings, if it please you,' he said, adding darkly, ‘I rather think it will not.'

And as I turned the pages, and saw images of suffering beyond apprehension, I heard Clara Venus singing in her sweet, light voice:

‘Higgledy-piggledy, my black hen! She lays eggs for gentlemen. Sometimes nine and sometimes ten: Higgledy-piggledy, my black hen!'