Turning the Stones (13 page)

Someone was shouting my name. It was Croft, running across the lawn to fetch me. Although I could have cried a river, it was useless to weep over the ending of my education. Sedge Court supplied me with the necessaries of life and I could do nothing but accept a different way of belonging to the house. Let the staggering reality of things be your lesson now, Mary Smith. How could it be otherwise?

Miss Broadbent’s Closet and the Summer House
March, 1758

Downe’s elbow worked in and out like a bellows as she demonstrated how to insert a fire slug into the cavity of a smoothing iron. While she droned on, I stared into the ceiling where Eliza’s translucent white shifts hung on the drying frame like ghosts at rest. At length I was ordered to winch the frame to earth and to iron the shifts, while Downes set about suppressing a pile of turbulent handkerchiefs. Of course my duties were light compared to the tasks of others. You have only to see the herring girls at Parkgate with their arms dripping oil and their hands nicked by their sharp knives to know that – and Abby’s duties were hardly whimsical, scouring with horehound filthy tinware and chamber pots in the freezing scullery. But on that first day at the ironing table I struggled to accept that my life from now on must be measured out in the interminable ruffles of Eliza’s apparel. Downes had shown me how the point of the wretched iron must nose into the root of a seam as determined as a terrier down a rathole, without compromising the puffiness of the gathers, but I found it a feat very troublesome to achieve.

‘There is no room for a long face in my lady’s service, Smith.’ Downes’s mouth twitched in a vinegary smile and she added, ‘Although should the truth be told, you might not have
a lady to serve for much longer.’ This kitchen gossip startled me, which was Downes’s aim.

‘They are sending Miss Waterland away to school, you know. That is why they have taken her to Chester. She is to be enrolled at Mrs Ramsay’s Academy, beginning after Easter.’

‘I find that hard to believe. If Eliza were going away, the mistress would not have asked me expressly to serve her.’

‘She has asked you to serve the house, miss. You are to be at the disposal of Mrs Edmunds and me. Do not worry, we will find plenty for you to do – you will soon climb down off your high horse.’

I hunched over the iron, wondering if it were true about the school. Did that mean my post was in jeopardy – and Miss Broadbent’s, too? But I would not let Downes meet with the satisfaction of further questions.

After I had finished in the laundry I asked Mrs Edmunds’s permission to bring up barley water and a chop to Miss Broadbent. I found her settled in a niche on a night chair next to her bed, which was hardly wider than a slat, with a writing box balanced on her lap and a quill in her hand. She looked up with an abstracted expression as I entered as if interrupted in some thorny mental endeavour. I saw that the few lines she had written were heavily scored through.

‘Miss Broadbent,’ I began, ‘I am sorry for my absence this morning, but—’

She sketched a scribble in the air which overwrote my apology and said, ‘No need to explain, Em. Mrs Waterland has informed me of the alteration in your duties. Naturally, one is dismayed on your behalf. To be denied education is a
blow, and worse for a child of your capacity, but this was inevitable.’

I was still holding the dinner tray. I put it down on a table of Lilliputian dimensions. Miss Broadbent frowned at it and then hung her head. She said, ‘What can I say, child, but that one must accept one’s fate?’

I was surprised by her detached tone. I found it rather dispiriting. But then Miss Broadbent’s face crumpled a little and I cried, ‘You are not leaving Sedge Court, I hope!’

Miss Broadbent made an effort to compose herself. She said, ‘I cannot imagine why you would think that. There is a great deal for me to do here.’

Despite her queer manner, I was relieved by her retort. I wanted to believe that there was nothing to the sneery rumour put about by Downes.

Miss Broadbent suddenly said, ‘I asked the mistress for your admission number, you know. Perhaps I ought not to have done that, but I have it buzzing around in my mind like some infernal fly that there ought to have been a document attached to you.’ Seeing my puzzlement, she added, ‘Every foundling given entry to the London hospital has an admission number. Had I mentioned that? If one has the admission number, one can apply for the certificate of birth. You see, Em, I am determined to help you even if I cannot help myself.’

I was grateful that Miss Broadbent was still fixed to the idea of uncovering my identity, but I was rather rattled by it, too. It was out of character for her to bring a matter so determinedly to the attention of the mistress and I had an uneasy feeling that no good would come of it. That is, Mrs Waterland would not be pleased.

‘Were you given the number?’ I asked.

‘No. She says she does not have it.’ Miss Broadbent clasped her hands under her chin and looked up at the ceiling like a child about to say its prayers. I followed her gaze, but there was no sign of a benevolent god aloft. There was nothing up there but cracked paint. Miss Broadbent said softly, as if speaking to herself, ‘That is untrue, I think.’

‘But why should she lie?’

‘I do not know.’

I said thoughtlessly, ‘Well, it does not matter.’

‘Of course it matters!’ Miss Broadbent cried. ‘Think of the woman who was forced to leave you there with nothing but an anonymous token to say who she was! Wouldn’t she always wonder in her heart if you would come to look for her?’

Miss Broadbent had never raised her voice to me before.

‘I am sorry,’ she said, closing her eyes and pinching her temples. ‘I am a little out of humour.’

She would help me
even if she could not help herself
. I wondered what she meant by that. But I was afraid of agitating her further. With a curtsy I murmured, ‘I will not keep you, Miss Broadbent, but may I thank you sincerely for everything you have taught me. It was a pleasure to attend your lessons.’

I thought that she had not heard me. She was transferring her writing equipment to the bed, since there was nowhere else to put it. But then she rose, smoothed her petticoat and took a step towards me. She placed a hand on my shoulder. The gesture had a trace of something ceremonial about it. She leaned forward and said in a low voice as if passing on a secret, ‘Your wit and your conduct have ever endeared you to me, Mary Smith. They will, I am sure, make your destiny. But
take care, child, for you have strong feelings. Do not convert them always into thoughts, otherwise you are liable to be overcharged by melancholy and kept in a state that is improper for the purpose of being useful. Perhaps I have already delivered you such advice. My mind runs on the subject. In any case, I regret that it is not much to give you.’

She turned away abruptly and straightened a volume in her sliver of a bookcase. I noticed that a lock of her mousy hair had come unpinned and I was troubled by its suggestion of quiet disarray. I wished that I could engage her attention further, but her silence and my inability to fill it in any meaningful way gave me no remit to stay. She did not look around as I excused myself from her presence.

*

I returned to the laundry and tied up my sleeves. A petticoat whose hem had come unstitched awaited my attention and I reached for my rosewood box. As I sewed, my thoughts dwelled on Miss Broadbent and the perilousness of being alone. I chewed over the question of the foundling hospital, too. I considered writing a letter to its secretary to ask for my admission number, but feared that I could not do so without alienating Mrs Waterland. I resolved instead that when I was older I would visit the hospital – surely when Eliza was married, she would have occasion to go to London, and I with her – in order to find out for myself whether I had come from there. I finished hemming the petticoat and took up a pair of stays whose boning channels were frayed. A weak sunbeam fell through the laundry’s high window and collapsed briefly across the table. The hours limped on like those beggary old seamen you see at Parkgate hauling their wooden legs along
the road. I stitched the loose cords on one of Eliza’s stomachers. I picked wadding out of an old quilted petticoat and washed it for reuse. I had never known time to lag so. I assisted Hester in the boiling-up of a mess of candle stubs, and when the tallow was liquefied we poured it into moulds for new lights. Empiricists such as Mr Locke say that all knowledge must arise through the senses and so it does, for I can report that the lower the grade of tallow the more evil the smell, and none more so than the congealing suet of a hog. By the time Hester and I had completed our task we had the stench of carrion about us.

*

Eliza was ravenous when I brought her breakfast the following morning and she began straight away to pillage the tray. It was an awkward moment. At least, I found it so. Neither of us remarked on my altered role. In fact it has never been explicitly discussed between us, I think because the subject was too charged with potential recrimination – I might say that Eliza patronised me, and she might counter that I made her feel guilty. We liked one another well enough, the inference was, to want to avoid damaging our mutual attachment. On that first morning we both felt self-conscious. Eliza reached for the jug of beef tea and then snatched back her hand uncertainly and glanced at me sideways. Ought I to pour it for her? A waft of discomfort came off her as I leaned in to fill her bowl and I realised that she had not yet come to terms with her new power. I threw open the curtains. The sun had risen with difficulty, its frail rays hardly able to burn off the morning mist. The lake below looked like a lost penny and the road was a white ribbon unspooling towards Parkgate. I
said that I would call Miss Broadbent, but Eliza informed me, a little slyly I thought, that the governess was to take breakfast with Mrs Waterland.

‘Do you know why?’

She shook her head violently and stuffed a handful of plum cake into her mouth.

I cleared my throat. ‘You know of course that I am to be more extensively at your disposal now.’

Eliza narrowed her eyes. ‘It is not my fault. I must have an attendant.’

‘I did not say it was your fault.’

She sucked the tea down in one swallow and thumped the empty bowl on to the tray. When she acts in that cantankerous banging clanging way it usually indicates that she is ill at ease.

I said, ‘Did your brother arrive safely at Chester?’

I knew that Johnny was already in the house, but I thought it might defuse the tension of the situation if Eliza could chatter about him. The reflected glory of Johnny Waterland can always be relied on to bring a sparkle to her eye.

‘Oh, he cuts such a figure,’ she gushed. ‘He came off the coach wearing buckles so bright I was almost blinded by them. Mama says he may now spend near one thousand pounds a year without hurting himself.’

I could not help but think what a difference even fifty of Johnny’s profligate pounds might make to Miss Broadbent. Had she such a stipend she might be able to rent a little cottage of her own and have her independence.

I asked Eliza if I should make her ready so that she would not be late for her lesson.

‘But I am not obliged to go to the schoolroom today.
Hurrah! Mama has given permission for me to be at leisure. I am to recover from the journey. The road was awfully claggy and we nearly stalled at Shotwick. Do you know what else? Johnny’s friend from Cambridge will come here tomorrow in his own chaise.’

I extracted a robe de chambre from Eliza’s press and shook it out. ‘Will you like to wear this lilac?’

Eliza shrugged. ‘As you will. Johnny’s friend is called the Honourable Tobias Barfield and his mother is a dowager-countess. Mr Barfield is not a banker like Johnny though. He is too elevated for that.’

‘What is it that bankers do?’

‘Papa says that one gives a bank money for safekeeping and the bank may lend the money out for a venture.’

‘If the money is lent out, how can it be in safekeeping at the same time?’

‘Obviously I am not an expert.’

‘Obviously.’ I unfolded the robe and held it open. I said, ‘Was Chester agreeable?’

Eliza stepped into the robe. She said, ‘Mama turned over every mercery shop to find a silk that pleased her. She settled on one with a white ground and a running green stalk, and she bought a lace cap hardly as big as my hand with pink ribbons. Then we looked at horrid old houses.’ I fastened Eliza’s sash and she sat at her dressing table to put on the pale blue stockings I had unfurled for her. ‘Johnny says Papa ought to buy a row of houses in one of the old streets and pull them down and put up new ones in the London style.’

‘What is the London style?’ I handed Eliza the ribbons for her garters.

‘If you do not know, I cannot stir to tell you.’ She wrapped a ribbon around her stockinged thigh, tied it and made a face at the knot. ‘And we are to despise Liverpool.’

‘How so?’

‘Because we are against it, out of envy. Liverpool men make money hand over fist, Johnny says, because they have the sense to be in the African trade and the plantations. Mr Barfield’s family has a sugar plantation in Jamaica. But Chester men only make gloves and hats. They think they are above Liverpool men, but they are not.’ Eliza said testily, ‘Does that answer your question?’

‘Why are you so grumpy?’

She pretended to concentrate on the tying of the second garter.

I said, ‘Are you going away to school?’

Eliza tugged at the garter and the knot broke down.

‘You
are
going away aren’t you?’

‘I am not to say.’

‘What about Miss Broadbent?’

‘Do you know, Smith, that you must not speak to me in such a bold manner. I am your mistress now.’

Despite her lofty tone, Eliza’s haughtiness was unconvincing. She looked down at her foot where the unsecured stocking had wilted and then caught my eye. We grinned at one another out of shared anxiety at the onset of change. It would be hard for Eliza to be sent away from home. And I worried about the repercussions of Eliza’s departure from Sedge Court for Miss Broadbent and for me.