Turning the Stones (12 page)

I wished that I could have pursued the subject with Mrs Waterland more zealously, but I lacked the courage. At the same time I was puzzled by her refusal to satisfy what was a natural interest on my part. I felt that she was determined to give me an insufficient response and that piqued my curiosity even more.

Mrs Waterland’s Apartment
March, 1758

My slow slide towards an estrangement from Sedge Court can be traced to the watershed of Eliza’s and my shared fourteenth birthday. The day began, however, with promise. The moon was in a bright phase, and since it was able to light the way, the Waterlands had decided to leave early and drive to Chester to meet Johnny’s coach from London. Eliza and I rose before dawn. When I opened the window of the bedchamber for fresh air, I saw that the sky was still dusty with stars and a carpet of wavering mist concealed the lawn. I was buoyant, looking forward to spreading my wings in the schoolroom without Eliza’s distractions. I can almost hear her snort of derision at that.

I rigged us in our warm wadded robes and our felt slippers and we ran downstairs to the next floor and knocked at the mistress’s apartment. Downes opened the door brandishing a silver-backed hairbrush like some fabulous weapon.

Mrs Waterland’s dressing room, with its intricate wallpapers, its obscuring festoons of tulle, its screens and hangings keeping their secrets, always struck me as the command post of the house, from where she worked the levers of Sedge Court. She was sitting at her toilette in the glow of candlelight, fragrant, fur-wrapped, looking at least partially divine. You
are probably tiring of my extravagant descriptions of her – but once one has formed an idea about someone it takes an effort to shift it, don’t you think?

She wished us a joyous birthday and added with an arched eyebrow, ‘Don’t my girls look fetching today!’ One was not sure whether she meant it as a jest. But in any case, I was confident that she had at her disposal the means to improve our defects. Her dressing table thronged with silver-topped bottles and cut-glass jars. Glimmers of light ricocheted among the bevelled surfaces of these mysterious receptacles, which contained, surely, all the ingredients needed to beautify the world.

With a mischievous smile, she ordered Downes to retrieve from the closet ‘something that might interest Miss Waterland’, before returning her attention to her toilette. She dabbed at a cake of lip colour with her little finger, while we helped ourselves to the breakfast set out on a low table.

From the closet came the sound of a struggle, followed by a volley of yelps. Then Downes emerged, grim-eyed, with a tawny young pug squirming against her bosom.

Mrs Waterland rose in a rustle of silk and set the dog on a tuffet. She fondled his sooty face and cried, ‘Isn’t he a darling? He is all yours, child!’ She handed his leash to Eliza with a smile that suggested an outpouring of gratitude was in order.

I could see that it was not love at first sight between Eliza and the pug. They regarded one another with mutual uncertainty, their brows similarly corrugated.

‘Do you not adore him?’

‘Of course, Mama.’

‘You must devise a sweet little name for him.’

Eliza scrutinised the pug, and he backed away from the effort of her stare. After a few seconds of deliberation she announced, ‘His name shall be Brownie.’

‘Good heavens, darling, could you be less inventive? Why not call him Pug and be done with it.’

Eliza made a gesture of deflation and the leash fell from her hand. The pug seized his chance, bolting for the door, but I managed to reel him in. I said, ‘We ought to call him Dasher.’

‘Dasher! Oh, clever Em!’ Mrs Waterland beamed. ‘He is absolutely a Dasher, don’t you think, Eliza?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Eliza lamely. ‘Shall he come with us to Chester?’

‘Not today, my love. He is too young and disorderly.’

She called Downes to take Eliza away to be dressed. I, however, she detained with a whispered, ‘Do not think you have been forgotten, my love.’

Perhaps you can imagine my surprise and delight at that.

She invited me to sit down again and then presented me with a substantial parcel wrapped in dark red linen. A portable writing desk! Well, that was what I hoped to find. But the unbundling revealed instead a rosewood workbox, which contained a plethora of needles and pins and skeins of thread.

Mrs Waterland beamed. ‘Cunning, isn’t it? Certainly an improvement on the little box you have had all these years.’

I thanked her and she replied after a pause, avoiding my eye, ‘Well, of course, a rather more capacious workbox is called for now.’

When a ship is wrecked off our coast, a tolling bell at Parkgate announces the melancholy news. I heard in Mrs Waterland’s
of course
a similarly mournful knell. As she patted my hand, foreboding began to steal over me like a sea fog.

‘Dear little Em,’ she murmured. She spoke in the condoling tone of one who must inform of an accident. ‘The moment has come when you must assume the life that is apposite to your rank.’

I was stunned by her words.

They meant a wrenching shift was about to take place for me. But I nodded reflexively in acceptance. Despite my shock, I felt that I was required somehow to reassure Mrs Waterland. I mean to say: the true expression of my own feelings could never be other than secondary. I was habituated to serve her interests.

She sighed. ‘It is all because of Eliza, of course. Alas, my dear daughter lacks those natural embellishments that draw a gentleman to look favourably upon a young lady. You, however –’ she directed an impish smile at me as if we were in cahoots – ‘must take care to keep the fellows at a distance.’

Which fellows? I wished to protest. I had the feeling I was being reproved for something that was not my fault as though I had deprived Eliza of a toy and she must be compensated for her loss.

A current of air rattled the windows and fluttered the candle flames. Drawing her fur more snugly about her shoulders, Mrs Waterland leaned towards me and said, ‘Ahead of us lies a great undertaking, and all of us must play our part. Eliza must contract a marriage that will make fast her finances and her place in society. You understand the importance of that, don’t you, my love? Your own security depends upon it. You will
want, as I do, to see her make an attractive match. After all, whomever Eliza marries shall become your master, too.’

That my fate rested in Eliza’s hands was a daunting prospect. I shivered at the thought. Then it occurred to me, clutching wildly at straws, that since a marriage was contingent on Eliza’s being able to attract a suitor, perhaps we might never leave Sedge Court. I plucked up the nerve to ask, ‘Madam, how should Eliza and I be disposed if it should happen – I mean, in the event that – that Eliza might not marry?’

Was it the raw draught seeping across the windowsill that made me quake or the remote eye that Mrs Waterland turned on me? ‘There is no question,’ she said icily, ‘that Eliza shall not be settled on an estate. And you will strive, as shall I, to make it so. In any case, one day Johnny will have his inheritance and you will not like to be annexed at Sedge Court when he installs his wife here. Eliza must have her own household to command.’

Mrs Waterland came then to the nub of the matter. Henceforth, I was to take up the position of Eliza’s waiting woman. My status at Sedge Court had never been formally determined in the past. It had lodged somewhere between companion and cousin, a situation that had allowed me to maintain the illusion that I was a member of the family. Now I was to be designated a lady’s maid, a demotion which in one swoop cut off at the knees the fantasy that I belonged to the Waterlands by blood and made clear that my only right to live at Sedge Court was by dint of the master–servant contract.

‘It is the way of the world, my love,’ said Mrs Waterland with a little squeeze of my hand. ‘We are governed by the stations to which we are born.’

I must have looked very staggered, because in order to cheer me up she offered to let me work on her project in the summer house, where her underwater design was to be rendered in shells. However, she made it clear that my principal responsibility, naturally, was to attend to Eliza’s toilette. I was also to clean Eliza’s apartment, and tend Eliza’s fire and bring supplies of fuel, candles and paper. I must launder her laces and fine linens, iron and repair her clothes and undertake white-work, plain-work and the salvation of delicate stuffs as required. I must press her bed linen, draw the figures for her embroideries and make patterns when necessary to refurbish her clothes. I must keep her millinery and her footwear in order. I must manage Dasher. My time apart from that was to be held in reserve in order to assist Mrs Edmunds and Miss Downes in the smooth running of the household and with tasks that arise with the seasons – the putting-up of preserves, for instance, and the beating of rugs and drapes during spring and autumn.

I stared into the empty maw of my workbox. I did not baulk at earning my keep, and certainly it had not escaped my attention that Sedge Court was understaffed, but I could not see that there were enough hours in the day to accomplish my duties and my studies as well. I closed the workbox.

I asked in a weak voice, ‘Shall I continue to go to Miss Broadbent?’

Mrs Waterland’s expression told me that it pained her to disappoint me, but disappoint me she must. ‘I know,’ she sighed, ‘that you have been a most laborious pupil. Miss Broadbent tells me you have already mastered a syllabus far beyond your years, but …’ She brushed a stray curl from my face.
‘Now is the time for a different kind of guidance – and Miss Downes shall provide it.’

My despair at her answer was hopelessly commingled with the fear of displeasing her, and so I held back my tears and colluded with her vaguely sorrowful smile. It was not only the cancellation of my lessons that grieved me so bitterly, but also the loss of Miss Broadbent’s company, which had always been a joy to me. I looked away at the sullen fire in the grate. A rising draught chivvied it and the dank wood began to fume.

Mrs Waterland said in a tone of determined gaiety, which had yet an edge to it, ‘Buck up, Em, there’s a good girl. You are not the first girl to be harried out of the schoolroom. I will tell you frankly that a woman who loves learning must find her ambition ever frustrated. I had far more genius than either of my brothers, yet there was no question that I should receive the opportunities that they did. One must accept that one is subsidiary.’

‘I will follow your instructions diligently, madam.’

She patted my knee. ‘That’s my girl. Now be a love and find something for the dog to eat. We must shift ourselves to leave for Chester.’

I nodded, suddenly unable to speak. Smoke scratched the back of my throat and pricked my eyes. I felt short of breath, as though something were being snuffed out before I had had the chance to understand what it was.

*

With Dasher lopsided under my arm, paws dangling, I lighted my way to the basement, every footstep of my descent sounding a knell of doom to my ears. I brought the dog into the scullery to search out scraps for his breakfast and found
Abby scrubbing out a dripping pan. At once the dog lifted his head and stared at her with lovestruck eyes. The whole of his little body strained towards her. ‘Oh, it is only the smell of the bacon bones he has got a whiff of,’ she said, pleased as Punch. ‘It is a great nuisance, but I will settle him down if you like.’ I left her dandling him on her knee. I had an appointment with Downes in the laundry, but my feet did not seem to want to take me there.

Hearing the rattle of the chaise in the courtyard, I pulled open the door of the back entry. The sky had lightened grudgingly – a daylight moon still glowed above the stables. The blustery wind was making a sound like someone shaking out a counterpane. I ran along the side path with unfledged thoughts of entreaty churning in my head, of beseeching the mistress to let me stay at my books, but my impetus faltered at the corner of the house.

From the vicinity of the porte cochère, where Mr Otty had stopped to pick up the Waterlands, came the slam of the chaise’s doors. The clink of the harness and the grating of wheels on the semicircle of gravel in front of the house announced the family’s departure. I watched the black-and-yellow chaise trundle on to the drive. It looked like an overgrown bumblebee, a freak of nature, that dwarfed the rider approaching it from the entrance gates. I recognised the lumpen silhouette of Mr Sutton, astride his horse like a bag of sand.

The chaise pulled up and Mr Waterland alighted. Sutton dismounted and he and the master walked towards the lake, falling into a conference. I could not hear what was said, but the discussion was animated, and I had the impression that something was passed from Mr Sutton’s hand to Mr Waterland’s.
Mr Sutton returned to his mount and rode away at a fast trot. Once he was out of sight, Mr Waterland threw the object he was holding into the lake. Despite my melancholy mood, I could not help being curious about the scene I had just witnessed.

As soon as the chaise had turned on to the road I hurried to the spot where the exchange had taken place, but I could find nothing there but a couple of cockleshells scattered on the damp grass. Perhaps Sutton had brought shells for the mistress. She was in need of large numbers of them for her decoration of the summer house. But in that case why had the master thrown them away, and so angrily, too? I picked up one of the shells and weighed it in the palm of my hand. And why would Sutton ride up here for the sake of a handful of shells? I remembered Rorke telling me that Sutton used to be the master’s servant, although he has come up in the world since then. Rorke observed that Theo Sutton owned an uncommon fine house for a fellow of his background, and he did not get that by peddling periwinkles. I think Rorke meant that Sutton dabbled in illegal goods. But of course he, Rorke, would want to be circumspect with that accusation, since there was something brutish about Sutton and one imagined that he would not take kindly to an imputation.