Turning the Stones (10 page)

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The mistress of Sedge Court was absorbed in her work and seemed not to notice our arrival, despite having called us to enter. She was poised at a drawing board, supported on a drop-leaf table in the centre of her ground-floor parlour. Eliza and I bade her good afternoon and she looked up with an expression of glad surprise as though we had suddenly materialised from the ether, although it was she, with her shimmering hair, complexion of pearl and frosted taffeta gown who had the quality of a vision. Even now, regarding her
through the more discriminating gaze of my adult years, I still find Mrs Waterland to be a dazzling proposition. Throughout my girlhood, I revered her desperately. To me she was the lamp in the dark, the spark in the void, the omphalos of Sedge Court, and I worshipped at the cult of her.

She had come across me, the story goes, among a swarm of rickety foundlings in a London hospital, while making her charitable rounds. My inability to recover that day from my memory has always been a source of great frustration to me. I can only imagine the elation I must have felt when her limpid eye fell on my cot and she plucked me from the fate to which I had been originally assigned.

How casual is the line between misery and salvation, between letting an impulse pass and taking an action that alters a life for ever. She might easily have passed on, but she did not.

I hasten to say that I hold you in no blame for the place in which I stewed before the advent of Mrs Waterland. How could I, when I know nothing of you except that you must have been badly let down by the man who fathered me and left you in circumstances where you were forced to a decision that would appal any mother’s soul. You must have agonised about the fate of your child. I wish you could have known that I was carried away to a fine country house, where I have enjoyed more privileges than any poor orphan has a right to hope for.

In autumn and winter the Wirral peninsula, where we live, is sometimes rocked by savage gales that break ships to pieces on the sandbanks. But even under the most unnerving conditions, rain and wind lashing the windows, thunder crashing overhead, Mrs Waterland’s parlour remains a beacon of brightness.
The play of light there is managed by the use of ingenious refractors – spangles and sequins, prisms and lustres – and it seems as though every surface is on the brink of alteration. There are sheets of looking glass fastened to the walls in frames of golden boiserie, reflecting broken bits of sky and vegetation from the garden, and a fantastic mirrored edifice on the marble chimney piece which multiplies the glitter of the collection of rock crystals. The profligacy of the gilt chandelier has always annoyed Mrs Edmunds, who complains whenever candles must be brought to feed it. But the flames create enchanting upside-down pools of light on the ceiling, and tiny fiery fingers at the ends of the chandelier’s long curved arms reach up to them in adoration.

Mrs Waterland approved of Eliza’s dressing in the pink tulle gown, but Eliza could never make anything out of a compliment from her mother, possibly for lack of practice, since they were expressed only rarely.

She scrambled to upright from her curtsy, saying, ‘Well, I do not care for pink, Mama. It reminds me of a pig.’

Mrs Waterland sighed. ‘Must my advice fall very completely on deaf ears, Eliza? I beg you not to launch a conversation so. No one wishes to hear swine mentioned in polite company.’ She shared an irked smile with me and straight away I presented her with my praise-seeking alternative to Eliza’s blunder. ‘Madam, if it pleases you, may I study your drawing?’

The delicate forefinger that Mrs Waterland raised to her lips hinted at a demurral, before giving way to assent. ‘How very kind of you, Em.’

‘I am sure my interest will be amply repaid.’

Eliza expanded her considerable eyebrows in my direction and I knew what she was thinking. Once when Lady Broome visited Sedge Court she brought with her a confection made by her French man-cook, a hard froth of pounded sugar all airy light in a paper coffin, and a pretty creamy colour. It was called a meringue. Eliza said that the meringue reminded her of me whenever I was in the proximity of her mother – so sugary it made her teeth hurt. True, I can be overly delightful around Mrs Waterland, but as I explained to Eliza, since I lack her entitlements, there is nothing for it but to render myself damnably adorable.

Mrs Waterland said, ‘Can you guess the subject?’ Her design showed kinked lines that I took to be waves and fronds of seaweed and branches of coral. I identified it as the underneath of the sea.

‘You have hit it exactly. The design is meant for the mosaic in the summer house and I hope that you will help me with the application, my love. I shan’t be able to do it without your keen eye and nimble fingers.’

As I sank into an acquiescing curtsey Mrs Waterland said, ‘You know, Em, you are growing into quite a beauty. Let us hope that those freckles will fade in time. I wager you could snare a husband of the first water, all things being equal.’ She laughed merrily, and I could not tell if she had made a joke or not.

The object of our visit lay spread out on a low table in front of the couch: a tea equipage and a kettle of hot water positioned on a trivet above a spirit lamp. Eliza was to practise her service. The potential for disaster – the horribly fragile bowls, the simmering kettle, things balanced on top of other
things – seemed great to me. I envy Eliza her obliviousness to such potential hazards. Far better to be knockabout and a whirligig at one’s ease than to be a slinking charmer, who must extort commendations night and day in order to survive. Mrs Waterland patted the couch next to her chair and invited us to sit down.

Eliza said, ‘Mama, have you heard from Johnny? Will he soon be home? I am unbearably dying to see him! I do hope he will be here for my birthday.’

‘You shall be the first to know when I have word, my love. Now let us rehearse the tea. When we have next the pleasure of Lady Broome’s company I should like you to make a good impression, if that is not too dizzy an ambition.’

Eliza gave no sign of noticing her mother’s sarcasm, but she did eye the tea service with a certain amount of wariness. Mrs Waterland commenced then to speak in low, sweet tones of warming and steeping, while the tall Delft flower stands on either side of the fireplace looked down on us like a couple of corpulent fops. Their midsections were studded with pockets sufficient to hold an entire garden’s worth of blooms.

A knock came at the door and Rorke was admitted with a letter. He carried it in on a salver, which he gripped like a man at the reins of a mettlesome horse. Mrs Waterland rose to standing and her chin went up as Rorke approached with his large head and beaky nose thrust forward and bendy legs lagging behind. He looked like the outline of a question mark. After offering the salver to the mistress with stiff arms, he delivered a departing bow with the air of an individual who had done us a favour.

Mrs Waterland invited Eliza to pour the tea and then
turned away to a window that overlooked the garden. From my seat I watched her reflection in the glare of one of the looking glasses as she unsealed the letter. Even the offensive clang of teaspoons which accompanied Eliza’s ham-fisted management of the service did not distract her. As she read, she began to twist one of her ringlets around a finger to restore its bounce.

And then I noticed, as I shifted in my seat, that I was also reflected in one of the panels of gold-framed glass. The compliment that Mrs Waterland had paid me was still uppermost in my mind. I smiled at myself rather nervously. I was elated of course that my appearance pleased the mistress, but I felt troubled too. I wondered if there was not something dangerous about beauty – I mean in the way that it could set one apart and attract harmful attention. But I am sure that Abby does not think such a thing, and she is lovely in my opinion. She, like me, has the look of winter, I would say, with cold white skin and sea-coloured eyes and black hair. And we are both small and wiry with a lively way of moving.

‘Why are you simpering at yourself in the glass?’ Eliza asked in a loud voice.

I jumped up, mortified at having my conceit exposed, and straightaway trod on the hem of my gown. I stumbled and fell to my knees. My face flamed with embarrassment, my vanity well and truly punished.

Eliza burst into laughter. I looked anxiously in Mrs Waterland’s direction. I couldn’t bear for her to see me look a fool.

But she was completely absorbed in her letter. She was gazing at the page in her hand with an expression of deep satisfaction or even a kind of euphoria.

The Servants’ Hall
March, 1758

For months Mrs Edmunds had guarded our store of candles with such ferocity you might think the world was running out of tallow, but from the moment that Mrs Waterland unsealed that letter, the moods and interiors of Sedge Court grew lighter. There was a fizz in the air as if great changes were abroad. In fact, that very evening Eliza was invited to dine with her parents, which was a noteworthy event in itself, and Miss Broadbent and I were asked to take our dinner downstairs.

We arrived in the servants’ hall to the merry sight of candle flames in abundance, reflected in the glass of the water bottles set upon the table and in the copper pots hanging on the wall, and there was a hearty fire flourishing in the grate. Even Downes looked more or less thawed. Miss Broadbent appeared below stairs infrequently – we usually dined in Eliza’s dressing room – and I wondered if there might be some demurring at her company, because she did not properly belong to the basement, but Mr Otty welcomed her with bonhomie, saying, ‘Draw yourself up cosy, Miss Broadbent, for it is crisp out tonight.’ He was the picture of informality with coat flung aside, neck-cloth untwined, and paunch liberated by an untrammelled waistcoat. I am not sure of his age. His whiskers
are white and he has a face that has been blasted by all kinds of weathers during his career as a driver – it is as rubicund and wrinkled as an overwintered beetroot – but he is sprightly on his legs for an old man. Actually Miss Broadbent seems to carry a greater burden of years, although she is probably scarcely in the middle of her thirties.

At the head of the table, Mrs Edmunds was carving a joint. With something very close to a smile she said to me, ‘No need to stare like a throttled earwig, wench,’ and, pointing her knife at Downes, ‘Ease up, missus, and make room for the lass.’ Rorke arrived with a plate-basket of dirty dishes and said that they were drawing out their dinner upstairs. Then he winked at me and said, ‘They won’t begrudge us our junketing down here tonight. After all, it has passed more than a twelve-month since we were given our wages.’

This was not the first time I had heard of the wages being long delayed, but since I myself was not paid in coin, I had not appreciated the seriousness of this state of affairs.

‘Abby!’ Rorke shouted. ‘Come now and bustle off these plates.’

Abby was making conversation with Andy Croft, an ungainly, good-natured boy with big-knuckled hands and a speckled complexion, but she followed Rorke into the scullery, and I did as well, for I was keen to know what was afoot in the house.

Rorke said, ‘It has been stark bad right enough. The master was well nigh jigged up and we were all feared for our situations.’

‘What do you mean, jigged up?’

‘Near to bankrupt. Has Miss Broadbent taught you the meaning of that or is it all dancing and folderol upstairs?’

‘I know that bankruptcy is a miscarriage of money.’

‘You are not wrong there. The prospect of it has put the terrors on us.’

Now I understood the cause of the house’s anxiety. The rumours of the master’s languishing income were true. Miss Broadbent had been right to attribute his prickliness to the worrisome responsibilities associated with this and I felt abashed at having mentioned my fear of eviction to her. Recalling the overheard exchange between the master and mistress in the light of this news, I began to see that I had leapt to conclusions. The master had spoken of a child, yes, but was I indeed the child in question? Mulling it over again, I wondered if he had been referring to one of the servants – Abby, perhaps? In truth, I am so minor as to be beneath remuneration, my position as Eliza’s companion being compensated for in perquisites rather than pay. How vain of me to think that Mr Waterland gave any thought at all to my existence. Of course Miss Broadbent had been too kind to observe that only a nonentity with a runaway imagination and an altitudinous opinion of herself would presume that she, and not his debts, had rattled the master’s composure.

‘But we are all safe now, don’t you know,’ Rorke said, and sallied out with his platter.

I took my place at the table next to Miss Broadbent, and Hester hastened the pease pudding towards us, and the gravy boat. Mr Otty asked Croft to fetch more beer. ‘And cork the barrel well,’ he shouted after him, ‘else all the virtue will go out of it!’

‘Thank you, Hester,’ I said, helping myself to pudding. ‘I am glad to dine here. It is much jollier than in Eliza’s apartment.’

Downes said, ‘How fortunate that you feel that way, miss, for I wager you must get used to the servants’ hall. The mistress will be looking to put you out of the way, I warrant.’

‘What do you mean by that? I wonder,’ said Miss Broadbent. ‘The child knows full well that Mrs Waterland finds her very obliging.’

Downes pursed her lips. ‘I am only saying that if this young lady is not careful she will vex the mistress by showing up Miss Eliza’s wants.’

‘Ah, here is Croft,’ said Miss Broadbent, making a point of ignoring Downes. ‘Shall we raise a toast to the young master, Mr Otty?’

I could not help feeling unsettled by Downes’s remarks and resolved to be on my guard against any inadvertent eclipsing of Eliza. Everything about my conduct – whether I stepped forward or hung back – was qualified by Mrs Waterland’s opinion.

We stood then and cried the good health of Johnny Waterland and when we had sat down again, Mr Otty made a rather rambling speech. I gathered that after a long and nerve-racking delay, the mistress’s uncle, Sir Joseph Felling, had agreed to sponsor Johnny for a future at the bank of which he was a principal and there was even hope that Johnny might be favoured as Sir Joseph’s heir. This was the news imparted in the letter Mrs Waterland had received, although the servants seemed already to know most of it. The intelligence, I later found from Hester, was owed to the combined efforts of the
servants, their individual differences notwithstanding – Downes, for instance, poking into the correspondence tucked away in Mrs Waterland’s secretary-desk, Rorke doing likewise with the master’s, and Mrs Edmunds and Mr Otty drawing on a network of connections developed over their long years of service in the respective families of the mistress and the master. They worked together for the common good in this regard, since their fates were, naturally, bound up intricately with their employers’.