Walking in Pimlico (21 page)

Her
mother’s? So they weren’t sisters at all?

‘She had this notion that the kid was hers. And she was taken up awful strong by it and wanted to keep it herself.’

I asked how that could be a bad thing. Lucy’s glass was empty and she filled it to the brim and added a few drops of ‘medicine’.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘I paid up for that kid and had my eye out for it from when it was first brung. It was me not her who give the missis at the Farm extra to keep it healthy. For if the kid’s not in good health, Mrs Co-llette, the business is no good neither.’

I understood completely. Baby Caroline was plump and sweetly alert, and much given to chuckling and babbling in a most endearing way, which pleased men and women alike. Also, Lucy confided, a healthy child might be more readily ‘subdued’ with cordial when necessary, without the inconvenience of accidental death, which was easy if a child was ‘nought but a bit of stick and gristle’.

‘So Kitty disappeared,’ she continued, ‘and I was worried my business would be shot. But then she turned up with baby well and good, though
she
isn’t right at all.’

She frowned hard into the glass.

‘She’s always piping her eye which puts people off. Anyway,’ Lucy said, filling the glass again, ‘I’ve sent her on to make arrangements for us in the next place.’

I was taken off guard, I admit, and showed it. The next place? Why contemplate moving when people were so fond, so interested? She was loved and fêted and, from what I could judge, was making
a good enough living. Surely it would be madness to move while she was in such demand?

‘Mrs Co-llette,’ she said patiently, as though she were explaining it to a child, ‘there are two great things to know in this business – when to turn up and when to disappear, and the last one is the most important. For you see, the longer you stay, the greater your chance of getting tumbled. You have to leave while everyone’s still fascinated but not asking questions. That way no one’s disappointed.’

I had, then, foolishly imagined she might stay, might ‘die’ in Abbotswelford, even. In fact, it had crossed my mind a number of times (and not in an altogether disinterested way). Surely her death would bring about a sensational flood of interest. She laughed lazily, for her ‘medicine’ was having its accustomed effect, and she gestured to me to sit beside her. Her warm body was soon heavy against mine, and she threw one of her naked legs across my lap.

‘You
are
a green goose, aren’t you! Look, if I died, what then? What would they bury, eh? And how would we manage the kid? Where would we go next?’ She smiled, closing her eyes, as if she were dreaming out the perfection of her business. ‘What we must do is disappear. Flit. Everyone is buzzing the following day, but by the end of the week they’re interested in something else. Besides, if you’re very clever you’ll arrange another story, an ending, and they’ll hang on to that.’

Was that what she was going to do? I asked.

‘Probably. But better for us you don’t know too much, for I’ve already told you more than I should so don’t you peach on me, Mrs C. I shall know if you do, mark my words.’ She closed her eyes and soon appeared to be sleeping, though I knew she was watching me.

But I was not about to betray her. I was fascinated by Lucy Fitch,
by her complete lack of morality, her apparent indifference. I was charmed by her beauty (more than a little, for those naked limbs and that sleepy languor were most affecting!), which was extraordinary, and which she exploited so skilfully. I judged she was not a danger. Not to me, nor to James Yates. Not for the moment.

And so we went on, for little more than a week, and Lucy did not mention our conversation again. Perhaps she had changed her opinion of me. Or perhaps she had changed her plans. One afternoon, when she was noisily entertaining a bevy of young soldiers, I sat with Mrs Strong in her parlour. The baby lay in her cradle, the linnet chirruped in its cage, the curtains were drawn against the dark and the rain, the lamp lit. We were cosy and confidential, which is doubtless what prompted me to probe the reserve of the taciturn Mrs Strong.

‘Lucy tells me she intends to leave Abbotswelford soon?’

The lady was surprised and stared at me for some moments, as if deciding whether she should invest in me the trust that her daughter shared. Eventually she shrugged her shoulders resignedly.

‘You know Lucy, Mrs C. If she has her mind made up, she will do it, whatever anyone says. We just follow along with her. Follow along.’

The baby let out a gurgle of delight as I tickled its tiny foot.

‘Where will you go?’

Mrs Strong considered. I sensed that she had her own opinion of where their destination
should
be, but that Lucy Fitch would have her own way regardless.

‘Lucy has made arrangements for us to go to the country, Mrs C, and has sent Kitty on ahead. A notice in the
Era
, the Organ of the Profession, solicited upwards of twenty replies from various establishments. All genteel, of course,’ she continued. ‘No sea ports, and no mining towns. I believe she has secured a concert-hall engagement for her and Kitty.’

‘And yourself?’

‘I shall go to my sister’s in Walthamstow for a while. The Blue Dog, a quiet place with rooms to be had by the night. Or my other sister in Birmingham. Her man is a hard worker and wouldn’t see me out of a shop.’

‘So no more Mrs Fitch?’

She shook her head.

‘And baby Caroline?’

‘Oh, back to the Farm. She was never bound for anything else, poor little mite.’

And as if she knew and understood, Caroline’s baby delight stopped suddenly, and she gazed with unfathomable and serious blue eyes into mine.

‘Well, you preserve a – a professional distance,’ I replied, vainly searching for the appropriate words to describe her attitude, which seemed to me to be devoid of feeling.

‘I have to, Mrs C, or I’d be good for nothing. Now Mrs Skinner, the Missis up at the Farm, is as hard as a charity, for it is all business to her. Children, babies mostly, just come and go and disappear if their parents want them to. Or if the money stops. It goes both ways, you see. Buying babes. Keeping them alive. Letting them go.’

I was amazed. ‘So Caroline?’

She shook her head again and regarded the child with a face that moved between impassivity and strong emotion.

‘This one was hand-picked, poor little mite. Lucy went out to the Farm and picked her out not long after the last one died. She knew what she wanted and so did the Missis. Now I’ve heard that there are some that go in for child stealing, but Missis is a cut above that. This one come in, and Lucy went up, at her own expense, and said she’d do, but was a tad too young, so they agreed five shillings a week, and Missis would keep her and feed her up until she was ready.’

Like fattening a goose for Christmas!

‘Then they both went, Lucy and Kitty, to have a look at her and make the arrangements.’

She rocked the cradle, idly, with her foot.

‘Kitty was in an odd way when they came back. Girls get hungry for a baby, Mrs C, and once the hunger’s there, there’s but one way to satisfy it.’

The child murmured contentedly, and Mrs Strong regarded her with a faint smile.

‘It’ll be a wrench for me too, this time, for this ’un’s a little angel. And so quiet and loving. I’m fond of babbies. I lost three of my own, and wet-nursed two.’

We sat in companionable silence for a while, and when I left baby Caroline that afternoon I had no presentiment that it was for the last time. That night (I assume it was during the night), they left Abbotswelford, and I never saw the child again.

As Lucy had said, it was all business.

And she was perfectly accurate in her calculations. The inhabitants of the town were at first shocked and concerned at her disappearance and I, regarded as one of her confidantes, was the object of repeated questioning as to her circumstances and whereabouts. But I was unwilling to be further embroiled in her scheme, and with no instructions regarding what I should say, I simply confessed my utter ignorance. Nevertheless, within hours the rumour-mongers had been at work: Lucy Fitch had taken a turn for the worse, was losing her grip on life as each hour passed, and had taken herself and her child to the Convent of the Holy Name, some sixty miles distant, where she might receive care and the last rites, and the charitable Sisters would assume guardianship of her child. Sensational, sentimental, it was, nevertheless, a suitable conclusion to Lucy’s story. The young ladies shed tears when her name was mentioned, and for a while her unbraided hair was adopted as the
nouveau style
in Abbotswelford. Mothers looked admiringly and a little sadly at visiting young officers, and the
Abbotswelford Looker-On,
while it never mentioned her by name, spoke in glowing terms of the ‘sacrifices made at home by the wives and children of our soldier-heroes’.

Mrs Collette – Abbotswelford to Burdon Oaks

B
ent over a bowl, sick and aching, with Mrs Gifford’s stern eye upon me, I was presented with a difficulty. I was pregnant. In my eagerness to accumulate funds in Springwell, or in entertaining officers to sustain my stay in Abbotswelford, I had been less rigorous than usual in taking precautionary measures. The effects came upon me shortly after Lucy Fitch left, and though Gifford attempted to remove it with the usual methods, the child clung to my belly like a limpet. Every morning and evening my face grew pale, my hands shook, and I had neither the energy nor the inclination to move from my window seat except to hang over a bowl. Gifford was so full of herself that, as common folk say, she was quite empty! She dealt with callers, brought me tea and dry toast and made as sympathetic a noise as she could muster. And one morning she claimed, with a note of triumph in her voice, that she had the solution to my problem, that our passage was booked, and we were shortly to retire to an uncle’s house in London where, for the duration, I could be ‘properly taken care of’. Bustling about the room like my lady’s keeper, she was bursting with self-righteousness, in no doubt that I had
her
to thank for this good fortune, for who knows how I would have managed otherwise. Indeed, if it was not for her, I would be looking at
the workhouse gates or worse! She was always thinking of me, she said, always putting my wants before her own.

If she was expecting gratitude, then she was disappointed, for I was beside myself with fury. Who did she think she was to assume responsibility for my affairs? I demanded. Writing to whosoever? Disclosing my business? And this ‘uncle’? I had no ‘uncle’.

I knew, of course, the answer to this last enquiry, for the accommodation she had arranged was with no doting relative. The ‘uncle’ to whom she had written – who had replied and was expecting me, for I had made it my business to read her letters – this ‘uncle’, who was so solicitous for my welfare, was a dealer in exotic prints in Holywell-street with houses in other parts of London, and had a particular liking for pregnant women. These he took in and subjected, over the ensuing months, to varieties of intimate scrutiny, thereby satisfying a gross and inexplicable fascination in the physical process. There was no doubt in my mind that he intended to keep me as a living specimen in his domestic prison (Gifford destined to assume the role of gaoler and how she would enjoy that position!), always available to him for close inspection and whatever else took his fancy as my condition advanced. His interest in me would doubtless disappear immediately the child was born, when he would have no conscience in ejecting us both. A despicable man, who preyed upon children as well as young and unfortunate girls, he and his abominable practices were well known among street-women.

Gifford, I knew, would profit well by my incarceration, and the thought that I had been sold into slavery by my own servant enraged me, but I coolly let her know this sunny morning that I was, as they say, ‘up bright and early’ to her game. To her pale and astonished face, I reminded her that it was I who paid her and put up with her and, yes, put her up, whether it was in the George or, latterly, in Pugh’s Lodging House. And that if it was not for my tolerance and
good nature, I was not the only one who might find herself in very poor circumstances.

But Gifford was not yet ready to concede defeat, and retaliated with her own brand of pious indignation, one that allowed her to vent her hypocritical self-righteousness while at the same time keeping a tight hold on self-interest. How Uncle was a good man and a generous man, how he might settle on me an allowance (he had done so for other young women) and would never turn me out until I had a place to go to. Of course, it would be necessary for me to do as he bade me, down to the last letter if I wanted to avoid unpleasantness and keep him amiable, and a mite of shame and contrition would not go amiss. If I would only be guided by people who knew better. People like Uncle. And her. For I wasn’t, she said with a parting smirk she made no effort to disguise, half as clever as I considered myself to be.