A Song Twice Over (88 page)

And pushing back the shawl she revealed a tiny, sleeping child perhaps two years old, straddling her hip and held there by the blanket, peasant fashion, as once and for dozens of miles together, Cara had carried Liam. Luke's child. A girl's face, petal-fine and soft, a flushed cheek, a curl or two of thin, fair hair. A miracle. Where was Luke? And Anna?

‘Come upstairs,' she said anticipating distress and not wishing to suffer it here on her doorstep for anyone to see. ‘Come and sit down.'

‘Aye lass. I will.'

They went upstairs, Sairellen sitting down heavily without a word, the child still on her lap, a stool at her scandalously ill-shod feet. Boots which looked as if they had walked every step of the way from Nottingham.

With shock, Cara realized that they had.

‘The train …?' she said weakly but Sairellen, quickly under standing her meaning, waved it aside.

‘I don't hold with trains.'

‘You mean you couldn't afford the fare.'

She had forgotten –
almost
– how it felt to have no money at all, not one penny or the hope of any. Nothing. So that the only way to get to one's destination was to walk. And she had been twenty, not seventy, when such a necessity had last befallen her.

‘Where is he, Sairellen?' It was time now to know. ‘In prison?'

‘Aye. I reckon you'd call it that. A floating prison. Unless he's arrived by now. They sentenced him at the beginning of May and, since I don't rightly know where Australia is, I don't know how long it takes to get there.'

Neither did Cara. The other side of the world, she supposed. Wherever that was. Very far away.

‘They transported him? Like John Mitchel?'

‘So they did. A Nottingham man, you see. One of Feargus O'Connor's own. The only Chartist to be elected. Luke helped him to that.'

‘And you're proud of him, aren't you, Sairellen.'

Cara's own first instinct had been to tear her hair and beat her breast.

‘Aye lass. That I am.' And there was that, in Sairellen's tone, which gave clear warning that she would do well to keep her weeping and wailing to herself.

‘Did he go to London, too, with the petition?'

‘Of course he did.' What else? Cara was in no doubt that Sairellen would have gone herself, had she not been needed at home by the child. And Anna?

‘Sairellen,' she whispered urgently, ‘is there nothing to be done?'

Someone to bribe to get him better food and cleaner water, as Gemma was doing in her dignified, placid way for Daniel? Something? Could one really be condemned to stand helplessly by, doing nothing?

‘Aye, lass.' Sairellen's eyes were like stones set deep in her head. ‘
Wait
. That's all. Seven years. And since I haven't got seven years by anybody's reckoning I've brought you the child, like he said. Anna's gone. Dead and buried two weeks ago. She'd been ailing since the little lass was born and Luke's sentence finished her. She knew I hadn't long to last and nobody ever thought she could manage with the little lass alone. You'll have seen women die like that, I reckon, of – well – whatever it is that kills them.'

‘Despair,' said Cara flatly.

Yes, she had seen it. Once, very nearly, in Odette. But it had not killed Cara herself. Nor Sairellen who had spent her last penny burying Luke's wife in a proper grave – none of the dismal shovelling away designed for paupers – and then set off to walk, from Nottingham. How long? Ten days?

‘When did you last eat?'

‘I don't eat much, lass, at my age.'

At least these were practical issues which required no more than her hand on a bell, a few orders for tea and muffins, fresh milk and new bread.

‘Eat.' It was done without ceremony or gratitude, as a matter of course, Sairellen eating to fuel her body as one might fuel an engine for the few miles still left inside it, while Cara stared at the sleepy child, looking for Luke and finding Anna.

‘How old is she?'

‘She'll be three on Christmas Day.'

‘She's very small.'

‘Aye. She takes after her mother.'

‘Were they happy, Sairellen?'

‘I believe so. Aye – I know so. They were happy, Cara Adeane.'

She smiled, poured out more tea, left the room for a further consultation with her housekeeper and, returning found Sairellen dozing by the fireside, the child sitting placidly on the hearthrug. Dear God. She had forgotten the dog. That savage brute. That peevish monster, jealous of his private and pampered kingdom by her fire. She moved forward swiftly to throw herself between the lethal jaw and the fragile, elfin hand reaching out, with unmixed delight, to pat that most churlish of canine heads. No need. For what she heard was no crunch of tender bone but a resigned sigh from the animal, a gurgle of pleasure from the child. What she saw was the wagging of a stumpy, grudging tail, a wide smile which rendered the pale, plain face of Anna Rattrie's daughter luminous with joy.

Sairellen opened her eyes.

‘I wasn't sleeping.'

‘No. But you soon will be.'

She had told them to clear out the room at the end of the passage where she stored her fancy goods and cosmetics and prepare it for her guests. Two soft beds with feather mattresses and brand new linen, rugs on the floor and pictures on the walls, a marble wash-stand with a jug and basin in flowered china.

‘Nay lass, I've done what I set out to do,' said Sairellen. ‘I've brought little Anna. That's what my lad wanted. So if you'll take her …'

‘Of course I'll take her.'

‘Then I'll be on my way.'

‘Just where?'

‘Is that any business of yours, Cara Adeane?'

‘If I make it so. Because there's nowhere you can go – is there?'

Only ‘away', wandering off like an old cat to die in a ditch somewhere, in solitary dignity, a trouble to no one. She wouldn't have it.

She wanted to be troubled, in any case.

‘You'll stay here, Sairellen Thackray.'

‘I reckon I'll make my own mind up about that …'

‘You'll do as you're told …'

Sairellen stood up, her bones beneath their sagging, yellowing skin still tall and valiant, still capable of making short work of any little flibbertigibbet such as Cara Adeane; or dying in the attempt.

‘I don't take charity,' she said. ‘Never have. Never will. And that's that.'

‘You stubborn old woman,' Cara yelled at her. ‘He told you to bring me the child because he wanted me to look after you – don't you know that? He had to give you a reason for coming, to save your stupid pride. He trusted me not to let you wander off again and I won't – dammit, Sairellen – even if I have to tie you.'

Sairellen sat down again. Heavily. Gladly, perhaps.

‘Don't use foul language to me, my girl,' she said.

‘You'll stay.'

‘Happen so.'

‘No “happen” about it. You'll stay. And don't think of it as charity because I can easily employ you. There's always work to be done. There's – well – A hundred things.'

‘Aye,' said Sairellen, closing her eyes. ‘You'll think of something if you put your mind to it. But he won't come back, you know, lass, if that's what you're hoping for …'

‘Of course he will. He's strong enough …' Cara's mind leaped instantly to survival, the rigours of a convict ship and of penal servitude, men like Luke in chains, digging and tending an alien land, building roads and railways and bridges like her own people had done in England. Surely he could survive that?

Sairellen shook her head. ‘Strength has nothing to do with it. He'll serve his time and then he'll stay out there, wherever it is. That's what I reckon. Why shouldn't he? Anna's gone. I won't be far behind. Seven years from now he won't know the child. And if you've made a fine young lady of her, as I expect you will, she might be none too pleased to know him. So he'll leave well alone. He'll stay. A new land. A new opportunity. That's what he talked about, sometimes, before they took him. You'll never see him again, Cara Adeane. Neither will I.'

But she would see his child grow up. She would have that much. That miracle. How wonderful that it was through Luke this joy had come to her. No child of her own body but a child nevertheless, coming to her now when the easy circumstances of her life would allow her to be a mother. No substitute for Liam but a girl whose wide, breathless smile was already tugging at her heart. A little doll to be cherished and protected and dressed up in lace and sprigged muslin, who would grow into a ‘young lady'of education and manners upon whom could be lavished every advantage – every single one – that Cara's own girlhood had lacked. Luke had given her what she most needed. Another human being to work for and care for. An opportunity to redeem the mistakes of her hectic past. He had sent her the means to start again.

‘Sairellen,' and she was pleading now. ‘Whatever ails you, there are doctors, you know. And with proper food and rest …'

Sairellen smiled, not unkindly, and shook her head. ‘Nay, lass. There's a time for everything and I've had mine. More than my share, I reckon. And more than enough. Because what have I to show for it? One son alive – if he is alive – out of thirteen. And this little scrap of a girl that he's given to you. I've outgrown my usefulness, Cara. Some women can cope with helplessness. Some even like it. Not me, not you either.'

No. She could not cope with it. Could not stand even the thought of it. Could hardly bear to see it now in this gnarled, grim-visaged woman she resembled far more than she had ever resembled pretty, patient Odette.

Outgrown her usefulness? Never. Not so long as Cara needed her.

‘Sairellen,' she said, hot tears in her eyes, kneeling now beside the old woman's chair like a penitent before an imperial throne, ‘let me look after you.
Please
.'

Sairellen sighed. ‘Aye lass,' she said, in the manner of one who bestows a favour. ‘You might as well.'

Daniel Carey was sentenced that autumn to spend the following year in confinement at York castle, the leniency of his sentence occasioning no surprise in those who knew how diligently Mrs Gemma Gage had employed the influence of her father's name and fortune on his behalf. Foolish Mrs Gage. Daughter of a foolish mother, the eternally romantic Amabel who would be returning from her own second honeymoon – in the south of France, of all scandalous places – in time to attend her daughter's second wedding.

On the whole Frizingley felt much inclined to wash its hands of the Dallams, seeing no point any longer in being surprised at anything they did, although Gemma's attendance at her lover's trial in the company of Miss Cara Adeane
did
give rise to a ripple – no more – of speculation.

Could Miss Adeane, perhaps, be a sister of Mr Carey's? Mrs Magda Braithwaite rather thought so, although Miss Linnet Gage very knowingly smiled and shook her head. Very sweet of Magda, of course, to take that view, if a little unworldly – dear Magda – but what of the little girl Miss Adeane had acquired so suddenly? A dear creature, no doubt – if one happened to care for children – in all the frills and finery with which Miss Adeane kept on smothering her. Finery, indeed, far and away greater than anyone would be likely to lavish on a child who was not a – well – a
near
relation. And who was the grim-faced and exceedingly haughty old woman one saw so often taking the air in Miss Adeane's carriage? A positive virago, one heard, who, having driven Miss Adeane's housekeeper to give her notice, had now taken charge herself, keeping Miss Adeane's maids and apprentices in better order – it must be said – than they had ever been.

But, after all, so long as Miss Adeane continued to turn out her exquisite dresses, to fulfil her commitments promptly and pleasantly and to make herself so very obliging about the face creams and powders one's husband or father forbade one to buy, one might allow her to call her private life her own.

So she called it.

The departure of her housekeeper had provided accommodation for Sairellen, a handsomely furnished room on the ground floor behind the kitchen, with two maids and a cook-daily at her command. While Cara lived upstairs with the dog and the child, the one in his habitual basket guarding her money, the other in a nursery with pink silk walls and a pink muslin bed, a wardrobe overflowing with pink frills. Although Miss Anna Elizabeth Sairellen Thackray, an elf with a mind of her own, was often to be found curled up on the drawing-room hearth-rug, her head on the dog's patiently heaving flank, her cloudy blue eyes enraptured by the pictures they could see in the fire.

A child with a wide, breathless smile and a breathless wonder at everything she saw in the happy, friendly, quite wonderful world around her. A child who gave affection freely and joyfully, finding nothing surprising about it and who chattered and gurgled with no vestige of shyness, seeing no reason why anyone should do her harm. Anna Rattrie, as she might have been, without the scars of her rat-poor, rat-infested childhood; with Luke's capacity for reflection.

Cara loved her and told her so. She loved Sairellen too, although she knew better than to mention that. It was the cornerstone of her nature to look after those she loved and now she had the means to do it. The money to supply their material needs. The time to get to know them.

Her letters to Liam and to her mother became easier, happier. She wrote to Daniel in his prison cell and, by tortuous means, in the spirit with which one might cast adrift a message in a bottle, to Luke with news of his daughter and his mother. Once, encountering Christie Goldsborough face to face in the station yard, she paused signifying her willingness to speak to him – a notable concession on her part, she considered, after the way he had treated her – although he had simply raised his hat and walked away. Still limping badly, she noticed, as he approached the sporting phaeton and the high-bred, high-tempered bay horse waiting for him in the street.