Scarlet Widow (7 page)

‘Wup,’ said the coachman, with a desultory shake of the reins, and the horses went shambling off.

‘You’ve brought only this one piece of luggage?’ asked cousin Sarah.

‘Aunt Felicity is sending more on,’ Beatrice told her. ‘The rest of my clothes, and all of my father’s books and his laboratory equipment.’

‘What on
earth
would you want those for?’

‘I could mix medicines for us, whenever we have need of them.’

‘
You
? The very thought! You’re only a child!’

Beatrice thought of what Molly had said to her, about becoming a woman, but she didn’t like to argue. Instead, she said, ‘Papa showed me how to make all kinds of tonics and cordials and pills, for almost any ailment you could think of. And how to make magic tricks, like candles that you can never snuff out, no matter how hard you blow on them, and little pieces of paper that can dance by themselves.’

Cousin Sarah blinked at her disapprovingly. ‘You’re newly orphaned, Beatrice. I hardly think that frivolities like that are very becoming during your period of mourning. Or, indeed,
ever
.’

Beatrice couldn’t help thinking that her father would have loved her to carry on with his ‘mysteries’, especially if they cheered her up. But she turned her head away and said nothing. Even if she was a child, she was old enough to accept that it was very generous of cousin Sarah to have offered to take care of her. More than that, she knew that she had absolutely nowhere else to go.

*

Birmingham seemed so small to Beatrice after London, but it was very much cleaner. Although every chimney around the town was smoking furiously, a strong wind was blowing from the high snow-covered moors to the west, so that the air smelled quite fresh. The main street was roughly cobbled and very steep, crowded with market stalls and lined on both sides with shops and houses. The pavements were much wider than in the City, and better swept, but Beatrice couldn’t help noticing that most of the shoppers who were walking up and down them were very unfashionably dressed. Most of the men still wore full wigs and ankle-length coats, and only a few of the women wore wide-hooped farthingales.

Their labouring horses pulled them slowly uphill, with the coachman occasionally wheezing ‘
Wup
!
Wup
!’ to them, without much optimism. They reached High Town and then turned up towards Pinfold Street where cousin Sarah lived. As they turned, she pointed out a grand baroque church on the crest of the hill, built in gleaming white limestone. ‘That is where we worship, Beatrice. St Philip’s. You will be able to say prayers there for your poor papa.’

Beatrice gave her a fleeting smile, although she didn’t need to go to church to say prayers for her father. She spoke to him all the time, wherever she was, inside her head – and he spoke back to her. She could still hear his voice, and hear him laugh.

They drew up outside cousin Sarah’s three-storey house, in the middle of a terrace of five brick-fronted houses which faced directly on to the street.

‘Here,’ said cousin Sarah, as Jeremy helped them down from the carriage. ‘This will be your home now, Beatrice, for the rest of your life.’

*

Although the house looked narrow and nondescript from the outside, it was spacious inside, with high ceilings and tall windows that looked out over a small apple orchard at the back. Cousin Sarah showed Beatrice the parlour, with its formal furniture and chiming ormolu clock and slightly distorting mirror over the fireplace. Then she took her into the dining room, with its shiny mahogany table and empty shield-back chairs, and finally into the kitchen, where a fat, black-haired woman in a long white apron was perspiring freely and boiling up a leg of mutton in a large black pot.

‘This is Elizabeth,’ said cousin Sarah. ‘Elizabeth, this is Beatrice. I am sure the poor girl must be hungry after her journey. Perhaps you would cut her some gammon, and some slices of bread, and pickled onions.’

Elizabeth lifted up her apron and buried her face in it to mop up the perspiration. When she dropped it again she said, ‘I’ve yet to start the fish soup, Mrs Minchin.’

‘You’ll manage, Elizabeth,’ cousin Sarah replied, although Beatrice thought that it sounded more like an order than an expression of confidence. ‘Besides, when she is rested, and changed, Beatrice will assist you. Our scullery maid, Jane, is away this week in Edgbaston for her mother’s funeral, and our housemaid, Agnes, is out shopping. You can peel potatoes, can’t you, Beatrice? And your mama must have shown you how to set a table.’

They left the kitchen. Beatrice glanced back and saw Elizabeth scowling as she ladled the scum with a slotted spoon from the surface of the boiling mutton. ‘Come along, Beatrice,’ said cousin Sarah. ‘I will show you to your room.’

They climbed the main staircase until they reached the landing. Cousin Sarah touched the tip of her finger to her lips and then pointed to the door on the left-hand side. ‘That is Roderick’s room. We are always very quiet when we go past Roderick’s room.’

She paused, and when she saw that Beatrice didn’t understand what she was talking about, she said, ‘Roderick, my husband. Your cousin-in-law. Not long after Jeremy was born he was kicked in the head by a horse and since then he has suffered from a very
unpredictable
demeanour. So we do our best not to disturb him.’

‘I see,’ said Beatrice, although she couldn’t imagine what cousin Sarah meant by ‘a very
unpredictable
demeanour’.

They climbed another staircase, steeper and narrower. On the topmost floor there were two large bedrooms and a much smaller room, facing the back of the house.

‘Oliver’s room and Charles’s room,’ said cousin Sarah, opening the doors to both the larger rooms. ‘They are away at the moment, Oliver in India and Charles at university.’ She opened the door to the smaller room. ‘This will be where
you
live, Beatrice.’

There was just enough space in this room for a single wooden bed with a blue patchwork quilt, while under the window stood a pine table with a jug and a basin on it, for washing. The only other furniture was a small bow-fronted wardrobe, with two drawers underneath. There wasn’t even a chair.

On the wall beside the bed hung a framed engraving of a bearded man in a long blue cloak. ‘St Philip,’ said cousin Sarah. ‘A great worker of miracles. Did you know that he was crucified upside down? But he still kept on preaching, even as he hung there.’

At that moment, Jeremy came up the stairs, lugging Beatrice’s trunk. It bumped loudly on every tread and cousin Sarah hissed, ‘
Ssshh
! We don’t want your father to have one of his fits.’

Jeremy said, ‘He’s asleep, mother. I looked in on him.’

‘All the same, I don’t want you waking him up. At the moment I have quite enough to cope with.’

Jeremy left the trunk on the landing and went back downstairs, deliberately whistling as he went.

‘That boy,’ said cousin Sarah. ‘He’ll be the death of me one day.’ She looked around the room. ‘I’ll leave you to unpack, then. Once you’ve done that, come down to the kitchen and help Elizabeth. We have seven for dinner tonight, from the parish council, and she always gets herself into such a panic when she has to cook for more than four.’

She went to the door, but then she stopped and said, ‘Before I forget... the proceeds.’

Beatrice frowned at her. ‘What proceeds?’

‘The proceeds from the sale of your father’s business. Felicity told me that you realized quite a reasonable sum. Two hundred and forty-three guineas, I believe, after your lawyers and auctioneers had both been paid.’

‘Yes,’ said Beatrice.

‘You brought the money with you, I assume?’

‘Yes. Aunt Felicity said that you would have a strongbox to keep it safe.’

‘Well, yes, because I will depend on it to pay for your board and lodging, not to mention your clothing and any other incidental expenses that may arise in the coming years.’

‘I’ll bring it down for you, cousin Sarah, so soon as I’ve changed.’

Cousin Sarah gave her a ferrety smile. ‘Don’t be too long, then. And put on something plain, with an apron. I don’t care for frivolous dress in this house, and besides, you have work to do.’

Before she left she took the key out of the door and held it up. ‘In case of fire,’ she said, and dropped it into her pocket. ‘Wouldn’t want to have you locked in here, would we, with your bed ablaze, and us unable to get in to save you?’

*

That evening, after she had bid goodnight to the last of her dinner guests, cousin Sarah came downstairs into the kitchen. She was wearing a plain blue satin round gown and her hair was tightly braided.

In the scullery, Beatrice and Agnes, the housemaid, were already starting to wash the plates and cutlery, while Elizabeth, the cook, was sitting at the table, scouring her pots as if she had a grudge against them.

Agnes, when she had returned from shopping that afternoon, had turned out to be a small, busy girl with a large bosom and a protruding bottom and a round face with a button nose and two of her front teeth missing. She got on with her work without any fuss, and spoke in a very matter-of-fact way, but her Birmingham accent was so thick that Beatrice had difficulty understanding what she was talking about.

‘Burt-triss, joos bring me the plights from the tie-bull, would you?’ she asked, as she tipped an enamel jug of hot water into the sink.

Cousin Sarah stood watching them for a while and then she said, ‘I’m retiring now. I will see you in the morning, Beatrice – I hope you sleep well. Agnes – my tea at half-past six, please. I have much to do tomorrow. Elizabeth, the caper sauce was very thin, and the Reverend Bute had a fish bone in his soup which almost choked him.’

Elizabeth said nothing, but banged down her iron pot.

‘Goodnight, cousin Sarah,’ said Beatrice. ‘And thank you.’

Cousin Sarah gave her a thin, self-satisfied smile, as if Beatrice had complimented her for her saintliness, and then left them to finish clearing up. It was past nine o’clock now and Beatrice was feeling deeply weary. Three days of being jostled in a coach, jammed in with five other people, had made her ache all over, especially her back.

‘You go on oop now, Burt-triss,’ said Agnes, as Beatrice started to dry the soup tureen. ‘Me and Elizabeth can finish the rest. Look at you, girl, you’re worn ragged.’

Agnes gave her a lighted candle and Beatrice tiredly climbed the stairs to her bedroom. She paused on the first landing and listened. From Roderick’s room came harsh, irregular snoring, but on the other side she heard cousin Sarah’s voice, speaking very low and very fast, as if she were giving instructions to somebody in a hurry.

Beatrice tiptoed over to cousin Sarah’s door and leaned close to it in an effort to make out what she was saying. All she heard, though, was, ‘...
name of the Father, and
of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen
.’ This was followed by the creaking sound of cousin Sarah climbing into bed.

Beatrice went up to her own room. When she opened the door she found that it was so cold in there that she could see her breath, and so dark outside that she could see her reflection in the blackness of the window, a pale ghost staring in at her. She didn’t undress before she got into bed, although she pulled off her mob cap and unbuckled her shoes and loosened the strings of her corset. She buried herself in the patchwork quilt and lay there, huddled up, shivering, too cold even to cry. The flannelette sheets were rough and damp, as if they hadn’t been dried properly after washing.

For a while she could still hear clattering echoes from the kitchen downstairs, but after twenty minutes or so the house became silent and she fell asleep.

*

She dreamed that she was back in the corner of the chaise as it jolted and bumped its way towards Banbury. She was almost overwhelmed by the huge hooped gown of the woman sitting next to her, and the bony knees of the man sitting opposite kept jabbing into hers. Outside, the landscape was beginning to grow dark and a few large flakes of snow were tumbling down. In the distance she could see leafless elm trees, with inky crows perched in them.

The woman turned to her and it was Molly, from The Fortune of War. She winked at Beatrice and said, ‘You’ve fallen off the roof, my darling. Fallen off the roof.’

The next moment there was a juddering crash and her bedroom was suddenly filled with light and dancing shadows. She twisted around in her quilt and sat up in bed, her heart beating hard. For a few seconds, she couldn’t work out if she was still dreaming or if this was real.

Standing in her bedroom doorway, holding a long candle in his hand, was a wild-looking man, completely naked. His hair was as bouffant and grey as a dandelion-clock, and his eyes were glittering and deep-set under his forehead. He was bony and emaciated, except for his stomach, which was so swollen that his navel protruded. He was leaning forward and grasping his erect penis tightly, as if he were afraid that if he let go of it he would lose his balance and fall over.

‘Well! Well! The Lord and all of his seraphic host be praised!’ he exclaimed, his eyebrows rising and falling suggestively with every word. ‘My dearest Sarah told me that we would be having a young girl for a house-guest! But she didn’t tell me how comely you would be!’

He took one staggering step towards her, and then another.

‘Throw back your coverlet, my dear, and let a frozen fellow feel the warmth of your bed and your body!’

Beatrice shrank away from him, pulling her quilt up to her neck. He stood by the side of her bed, candle in one hand and penis in the other, and ostentatiously licked his lips.

‘We shall have such a night together, you and me!’ he told her. ‘You shall give me children, to be my obedient heirs, and I can dispossess those treacherous sons of mine who seek to rob me of my fortune!’

Beatrice said, ‘
Cousin Sarah
,’ but she was so frightened that she could only manage a whisper. She cleared her throat as the wild man took another step nearer and was about to shout out, ‘Cousin Sarah!’ when Jeremy appeared in the doorway, with his own candle-holder raised. He was wearing a nightcap and a long white nightshirt.