Thornfield Hall (37 page)

I thanked him for his concern for my purse. Money was the least of my worries, but I wasn't going to tell Mr Merryman that. It was difficult enough concealing my destination from him. Just south of Grimsby was not precise enough for the knowledgeable landlord. I claimed some relatives in a village nearby and said I would send word to them when I was nearer my destination. In my desperation to end his inquisition I invented a name for this imaginary place. True to form he thought he might have a connection who lived in the vicinity. I promised to look up his acquaintance when I arrived. It was a relief to board the coach in the morning and to say farewell to the invaluable Mr Merryman.

My relief did not last long. There were only two other passengers, respectably dressed businessmen or clerks, when I climbed into the coach optimistically named Meteor. We soon acquired the full complement of six passengers crammed inside and heaven only knows what was piled on the top. Much of the life up there squawked or squealed while those inside talked, and talked and talked. My sole consolation was that I no longer had to conceal who I was or where I was going. Nobody was interested in the shabby old lady in the corner. Each new passenger who climbed aboard was much too busy with his or her own affairs to be concerned with a nondescript widow woman.

As I listened to my fellow passengers' talk of their journeys, their destinations and their purposes I detected new and unfamiliar accents. When the realization came to me that I had left Yorkshire, the county of my birth, I felt the tears rise in my eyes. I had never travelled beyond its boundary before and now I would never set foot there again. The occupants of Thornfield
Hall were lost to me and the house was ruined. I closed my mind to the past as I would pull down a blind on a window and made myself look to the future. I tried to picture the house I was going to live in. I saw Grace and Bertha there, I dressed them in fine silk, I saw them waited on by servants. Suddenly the image crumbled. There was a gap in the very centre, the heart of it. Where was the baby? Where was James in this image of the future? Had I locked him in with his mother?

When night fell I clambered stiffly out of the coach and made enquiries about a bed at the inn. The landlord looked me up and down and proceeded to offer me a place in a room with six others. ‘There's two other females,' he assured me. ‘There isn't another spare bed in the house.' How I longed for my black silk dress and my starched white cap and my fur-lined cape.

What was the point of my new-found wealth if I had to pile into a bed with so many other bodies? I offered the landlord money. He took it and showed me to the garret where the maid normally slept. She scowled at him – and at me – as she was forced to move out but I was past caring. In the morning I examined the damage to my person. My legs were covered in tiny red lumps. The bed bugs had been busy in the night. In this manner my journey continued. Tiresome, uncomfortable and lacking in privacy.

I had received many warnings from Mr Merryman about the dangers of travel. My purse was to be kept close at all times and I should be wary of the entire population of the parts of England that were not Yorkshire. Everybody was in a conspiracy to trick the unwary traveller out of her money. I need not have feared. I looked too poor to tempt even the most desperate thief. Indeed I received much kindness from strangers who took pity on a poor elderly female travelling without the assistance of a man. Their advice about the best route, though well-meant, was often
contradictory. I fear I may not have taken the most direct route but eventually I arrived at my destination.

When the coach stopped at The Coach and Horses on the High Street I dismounted and looked about me with wonder at the town that was to be my home. The long vista of the turnpike road stretched to my left and my right. A handsome bridge spanned the river. A church spire pierced the air. I felt a thrill of excitement; I had never lived in a town! I had always lived in the countryside, surrounded by woods and green fields. Here houses lined the road without interruption. The street was thronged with people, carts and carriages; all was noise and bustle.

‘If you please, ma'am, would you be Mrs Fairfax?' A young boy stood before me. He was dressed in the haphazard way of poor boys who grow out of their clothes with astonishing speed or ruin them with rough play. I assured him I was indeed Mrs Fairfax. ‘In that case, ma'am, if you will take a seat here at The Coach and Horses I will go to tell Mrs Poole you have arrived. She has bid me to look out for you.' Wondrous polite he was!

He set off with all the speed his young legs were capable of. No sooner had he disappeared round the corner into some alley than I heard shouts and scuffles and a long wail of defeat. I guessed he had been waylaid by some bigger boy who would now claim his reward. I sat in the inn and waited.

I did not have to wait long. Grace appeared in the doorway, followed by a tall lad. He raised his hand to point at me and then held it out for his reward. I could see Grace was taken aback by my appearance. She stared at me for several seconds; she found it hard to reconcile the worn and shabby woman in front of her with the Mrs Fairfax of Thornfield Hall she had left behind. By contrast, Grace was looking sleekly groomed and polished. Her dress was of a fine lustrous fabric; her white cap, trimmed with lace, was freshly starched. She was every inch the genteel lady.

I was glad of her hand to help me rise from my seat; my legs had gone weak and started to tremble. ‘It is not far,' she murmured. ‘Just round the corner.' She looked round the room, crowded with travellers and their belongings. ‘Your luggage?'

I pointed to the small bundle at my feet. ‘That is it. Everything went. In the fire.'

Grace's jaw dropped briefly. ‘Fire!' she repeated.

‘This is no place for explanations,' I warned her.

‘Let us get you home. Your new home. I think you will approve.'

In the doorway the boy waited with his hand out for his reward. ‘Not him,' I told Grace. ‘This one's a bully. It was a much smaller boy. There he is.' I'd spotted the wondrous polite boy, his face streaked with tears. As she passed the large boy in the doorway Grace elbowed him sharply in the ribs. He gasped and would have protested loudly if he'd had the breath. No one would believe him. Grace was obviously every inch the respectable lady.

‘I feel better after that.' Grace spoke with satisfaction. ‘I can't abide bullies. If there weren't so many witnesses I'd have boxed his ears. Now I am a lady I have to be careful about appearances.' She beckoned to the tear-stained boy and put a shilling in his hand. ‘Now carry Mrs Fairfax's bag to my house and you can have a bit of dinner in the kitchen. By the time you've finished the big lad will have found someone else to bother. With luck you'll get your shilling home.'

Grace led me into what I afterwards learned was called the Market Place and to a fine double-fronted house. A neat little maid opened the door to us and led the boy off to the kitchen. In the handsome drawing room was Bertha, dressed in grey silk. She sat by the window and was busy with some embroidery. The
scene was tranquil, ordered, a picture of domestic bliss. There was one thing missing. There was no sign of the baby.

‘James!' The name came out as a croak. Fear strangled the voice in my throat. ‘Where is James?'

‘Why? Bless you!' said Grace. ‘He's asleep in the nursery. He always has a nap at this time.'

What a fool I was! I thought that once I arrived at my new home and found the baby had survived, my life would be plain sailing. I would live in a calm upland without the storms and dramas that had plagued my life recently. When I discovered that baby James was safe, I don't mind admitting, I fell into hysterics. All my carefully guarded strength deserted me. I cried for several days and just couldn't stop. My mind, normally so clear and decisive, ran out of my control. It felt as if it had melted into a great river that was so choked with water that it overflowed its banks.

Between them Grace and Bertha nursed me. I was in a great fever and alternately cried by day and raged by night, convinced that the heat that consumed me came from the flames sweeping through Thornfield Hall. I had not sent Grace and Bertha word of the fire. They had no clear account of the disaster, so they found many of my ravings difficult to understand. One thing was clear to them; I feared baby James was no longer with us.

Every day, Bertha brought the baby to the doorway of my room to show me that he lived and thrived. They would not
bring him closer for fear of contagion. Bertha would list his small achievements to me: he had tasted porridge, he had smiled, he had slept for six hours. At night she would take his chubby arm and wave it at me to say goodnight.

Every night in my sleep I would forget. In my dreams I would scour the third floor of Thornfield Hall. As the flames licked at my ankles, I hoped desperately to hear his feeble cry above the roar of the inferno. Sometimes I would stand outside in the grounds, a helpless spectator, while Martha in her nightgown, with her baby in her arms, sought escape from the roof. In despair she would come to the edge and hurl the tiny body into the air. I would strain my outstretched arms to catch the flying baby – and fail. He would crash onto the paving stones at my feet and I would wake wailing. Grace would come to comfort me.

Two weeks passed before I woke to find myself in a bright and pleasant room. And in more or less my right mind. There was a bell on my bedside table. I rang it. A smartly dressed maid appeared. She would tell Mrs Poole and Mrs Mason that I was awake and would bring me tea. She drew the curtains and made to leave the room. I heard my voice speak as if of its own volition. My words floated across the room. ‘And Master James. Where is he?'

‘Why, bless you, ma'am. His nurse is giving him his breakfast. Up on the third floor.'

And this time I believed her.

That afternoon Grace arrived at my bedside with two glasses of porter. ‘I've prescribed it for you,' she announced. ‘And for myself.' She raised her glass to her lips and drank with obvious satisfaction. ‘Now we are such grand ladies we have to keep our coarse habits secret.'

‘I thought we'd done with secrets.'

‘Not entirely. We are doing very nicely at inventing our past lives here. We are both widows, of course. My late husband was
a medical man, like his son. Bertha's was a merchant in Spanish Town, Jamaica. No one here is very interested in our past. They find the price of land and cattle more important.'

‘How is Bertha managing?'

‘Very well. The baby is a great distraction to people. How he's grown. Has he teeth? That sort of thing. She can cope with that; she was never one for complicated conversations.'

‘How have you explained James?' I asked Grace.

‘He is Bertha's nephew. Child of a wayward niece. We try to look embarrassed when we say that and so far no one has pursued it further.'

I smiled. How often have I seen it happen? News of the impending arrival of an illegitimate child sours faces, screwing them up with disapproval. The physical presence of such a child brings a softening smile to the pursed lips of respectability.

‘Tell me about Martha,' I commanded Grace. ‘I want the authorized version from you.'

Grace, as usual, was brisk. ‘I told you I would deal with Martha. When we left Thornfield Hall, all the way to the turnpike road she was crying and sobbing fit to burst. Then she banged on the roof to get the coachman to stop. Claimed she was homesick, frightened to go away from the place she knew. She couldn't leave Yorkshire, never mind go to Grimsby; we had not told her that our real destination was considerably further south. There was a handsome new footman she had hopes of. She was convinced he had a fancy for her.

‘In the end I said we would stop the chaise and she could walk back to Thornfield. It was no more than a couple of miles. The moon was very low and bright that night. Out she gets with her bag and her cloak and the driver points out the way for her. She sets off and the driver climbs back on his box and has his whip raised to start the horses. I shout him to stop and call out to
Martha. I ask her if she's forgotten something. She looks puzzled for a moment. So I say to her, “Your baby. You've forgotten your baby.” That stops her in her tracks.