The Trespass (5 page)

I talk to Asobel about many things, the way you talked to me. How lucky I am, my dearest sister, to have had you teach me, so that I can begin, at least, to teach someone else.

Surely Father will let you come to the wedding? Write and say you are coming soon. Cousin Edward asks me every day if you shall. Surely Father will agree to this one thing?

From your loving sister

Harriet

PS A hug for Quintus. Tell him I miss him too.

PPS There is a very mad rooster here. Nobody seems to know what to do about him. He crows only in the middle of the night!

*   *   *

In London Mary always spent part of each morning with the servants, arranging everything to her father’s liking: the food, the flowers, the fire in the chill, dark drawing room summer and winter. Occasionally there was a social call to make or receive, but not many. Mary was, because of her foot, because she would never marry, often excused. Always she was at home ready to greet her brothers and her father on their return from their busy lives, always ready to attend to their wishes. Twice a week she took her father’s smaller coach to St Paul’s Church in Covent Garden, there with other worthy ladies to dispense goodness to the poor who crowded the church door on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Once, Mary had lived for teaching Harriet.

Mary had just turned thirteen when her mother died. And the thirteen-year-old had grasped and understood something: that Elizabeth Cooper had, despite difficulties of which she never spoke, loved life: had been curious and humorous and gay. As well as educating her daughter as best she could, she had encouraged Mary to laugh at things, to question things, to enjoy being alive and to thank God for the privilege.
Being a cripple did not matter.
And so, somewhere in the mind of the bereft little girl was the thought that it was her duty to pass these things on to the small bundle that lay wrapped in a beautiful shawl while the sisters and the servants wept, and the undertaker was called.

Sir Charles did not marry again. Instead he threw himself into his multifarious business activities as well as his parliamentary ones: doing deals, acquiring property, buying shares. Up and up the Victorian ladder: a strict, remote figure to his four children. He was especially harsh with Harriet, made her stand in front of him while he questioned her minutely. His four children, but especially Harriet, feared him excessively. Nurses and nannies passed through the big house they moved to in Bryanston Square. The boys were sent to school; Harriet was taught to sit very straight and to honour her father and brothers.

And there was Mary, dutiful Mary, who sat just as straight as Harriet, and had begun to run her father’s house, as was expected of her. But, like a secret agent, dutiful crippled Mary infiltrated the nurses and the nannies and later the governesses. She encouraged Harriet to question things, as she had learnt from her mother. She read to Harriet from books that would have sent governesses into a dead faint. Through Mary’s chaotic but earnest and joyful teaching Harriet became familiar with Mary Wollstonecraft as well as the Bible; John Stuart Mill as well as Instruction Manuals for Young Ladies; Dante, Dryden and Doctor Johnson. Copies of ‘Punch’ or the ‘London Magazine’ lay hidden under the cushions. Harriet learned from governesses that she must be ladylike but she had a second, secret education that was catholic, haphazard (and most unsuitable). Mary knew very well the danger: that because of the books they had managed to read, unchaperoned, in the musty, unused second-floor drawing room they had somehow glimpsed worlds that did not belong to them, yet the limitations of their actual lives faced them every day when their reading was over. Often they became bewildered, sometimes they would simply laugh – Mary would lean back on the hard horsehair sofa and say, ‘I don’t know, Harriet!’ in answer to a question. ‘But,’ and her eyes would sparkle, ‘aren’t we lucky to have the chance to even think about it!’ and sometimes the grim, dark hallways of the house in Bryanston Square would echo with their laughter.

And then it had been decided that Harriet must become a young lady.

Now most afternoons Mary would read. Her mind would fill with questions, and sometimes answers: she could often feel the energy of her thoughts wanting to break out of her head. And when the dark house was silent with that still, chill silence of an empty house with too many servants she would sometimes slip a shawl over her head and quietly go out through the mews and into the bustling London streets to try to release the energy that had built up inside her. Young ladies did not walk alone, but with a shawl and a limp Mary felt oddly safe, looked around with curiosity and familiarity and delight at London, her own city. People took no notice of her, would never have considered for a moment that she was the daughter of a member of Her Majesty’s government. Almost always on these walks she visited her friend Mr Dawson of the Dawson Book Emporium, a second-hand bookshop in Oxford Street. They spoke with excitement of new books, and old; Mr Dawson lent her more books from both categories, discussed with her what she had been reading, tried to answer her questions. Sometimes he told her of the Working Men’s Clubs where he taught, how the working men who had had no education were trying to rectify matters, and Mary began to understand that the world
would
change and that, one day, women too would be able to learn.

And then last week Mr Dawson had told her about the Ladies’ College that had opened in Harley Street: Mr Dawson saw Mary’s eyes, how they flashed fire to hear the news; and then how they darkened in unusual despair that she was not one of the lady students.

‘Anyway,’ she said to Mr Dawson, and he saw that she smiled wryly, trying to make light of it, ‘I suppose I would be too old.’

Sometimes if her foot was particularly painful she would sit with her books in the big, silent house, alone for hours and hours. She would read and read: her books were her salvation. Sometimes Quintus the dog sat with her dutifully for a while, but he soon got bored and disappeared to explore under the house again.

This afternoon, listening to the slow, slow ticking of the clock, thinking of the Ladies’ College in Harley Street, Mary wondered what would happen if she screamed.

Dear Father,

The preparations for the wedding are continuing. Will Mary be coming, Father? Everybody here is very much hoping to see her.

I offered to give a few lessons to Asobel, the youngest daughter; you will remember her, Father, she is now eight years old. I am so pleased to be doing something useful and I am enjoying it very much and I wondered, Father, if it were possible for me to perhaps do something like this when I come back to London. I like so much to feel useful, and I know there are young girls like Asobel in the families of some of our friends whom I could help. It is only a few very basic lessons. Also, they wish her to be a little more ladylike and think that I can impart some London manners. She seems not to have much to do and everyone else is so busy.

I am sure Mary is looking after you well. I do so hope, Father, that you will spare her for the wedding, everyone is hoping so much to see her.

Your obedient daughter

Harriet Cooper

My darling Mary,

Your letter came last night and with it the news that Father has said you may come to the wedding and at once my heart beats differently. Suddenly, what a lovely day it is today and I feel so happy. I am only half, without you. Hurry here, my darling, and stay as long as you can.

Oh, the dramas of this Wedding! The scenes at the dinner table! The chatter! And because we do not talk like this at home I find it so hard to join in, I am never sure what to say; all the laughter and arguments: ‘That is ridiculous,’ says Augusta, her favourite expression – imagine saying that at Bryanston Square! You will see when you get here that Aunt Lucretia is quite beside herself that the big local landowner’s son has been snared, only the
youngest
son, but nevertheless … She is rushing about like a thing possessed arranging dressmakers and guest lists and ordering the servants to do impossible things, you remember how she is. I thought the cook would have an apoplexy this morning (something about quail cooked inside chicken) and now the newest maid has actually run away (this was a very brave or a very foolhardy thing to do when any work, they say, is so hard to come by for the people in this neighbourhood). So you see it is not only the rooster that is deranged.

There is much excitement about a marquee that is being put up behind the house. It is to be used for refreshments and, I believe, a band! Some local men have been employed to put this enormous thing up and it seems a difficult task. One cannot help noticing how thin most of the men are, they seem undernourished. Cousin John (you will remember he is predisposed towards portentousness) explained to me that unemployment in Kent is the highest in the country and the farm can get as many cheap labourers as are required at any time. I feel sorry for all the working men in Kent who will work for Cousin John when he inherits the farm, I fear he will not be kind and care for them and their well-being in the way a Squire should, in the way Uncle William does.

We continue our lessons in the summerhouse, I have persuaded Aunt Lucretia that a little fresh air will help Asobel to concentrate. As long as you are teaching her to be ladylike, says Aunt Lucretia distractedly(!) But I enjoy it so, truly, to be doing something useful and I plucked up my courage and asked Father if I might do something like this in London. I think it would change my life, to DO something. And always of course I think of how I could earn some money of our own. For that would give us freedom.

Yesterday I heard Aunt Lucretia berating one of the maids (the one who afterwards ran away) for allowing to be seen – not her own – the maid’s – leg, but
the leg of a table!
‘Cover it! Cover it!’ she cried, dreadfully shocked, and the poor girl had to pull a great white tablecloth down over the offending limb. For one amazed moment I thought she was covering the table legs because the latest fashion has decreed that they are
rude
, but it transpired that one of the legs was
damaged
; I believe nevertheless that long table-covers are part of our Aunt’s new grand style. When I went to my room I lay in bed and I had visions of all the chairs and tables coming out from under their heavy cloths at night and showing their ankles and dancing.

I send all my love to my dearest sister and cannot wait until I see her dear face. My love to our brothers also. And to that little rascal, Quintus, I miss him too.

Harriet

PS Of course, being sent here so hurriedly I have not a suitable dress. Will you send or bring the primrose silk, for I expect that will be the most suitable. What shall you wear? I like your blue dress best.

PPS Is Walter still gambling at cards?

*   *   *

On Old Quebec Street, just where it runs into Oxford Street, a man and a woman stood beside a small handcart, handing out tracts headed ‘Education For All’ or ‘The Betterment of Life for the Working Classes’. A woman with a shawl over her head limped nearer and smiled at the couple, took one of the pamphlets, began talking; over and over the dreaded word ‘cholera’ could be heard.

The following afternoon the couple, the limping woman, and several others could have been seen in Seven Dials, entering crowded alleys where the sun never shone, walking under lines of grey, wretched clothing that hung between the rotting houses; they passed wild, filthy children who fought over one marble in the excrement that lay everywhere and stared up at the gentlefolk who were trying to make their way through the broken cobble stones. By the standpipe a gentleman paid a penny several times for three buckets of water; the men carried the buckets into dark rooms, the ladies carried disinfectant and soap.

*   *   *

Down in the summerhouse Harriet read to her youngest cousin. Already Asobel had her favourites and asked again and again for ‘the sleepyhead poem’, and Harriet’s voice, and the cadence of the lines, drifted out across the sunny morning.

Two of the local workmen brought in to raise the marquee were waiting for the arrival of some rope. They were reclining on a grassy bank in the sunshine; they had been discussing the abnormality of this Indian summer; when the voice that they could hear but not see began reading they stopped talking and listened.

Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see

The dew bespangling herb and tree!

Each flower has wept and bow’d towards the east

Above an hour since, yet you not drest!

‘I am not a slug-a-bed, Harriet.’ Asobel’s voice was high and clear across the garden. ‘I get up as soon as my eyes pop open.’

A whistle recalled the workmen to their duty: the rope had arrived.

Harriet and Asobel turned to ‘The Life and Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York who lived Eight and Twenty Years Alone in an Uninhabited Island’. This was Asobel’s favourite book, and the second time she had had it read to her; she directed Harriet to where they had reached the day before. ‘The raft! Robinson Crusoe is building a raft. Please, Harriet, do hurry and begin.’

We had several spare yards and two or three large spars of wood, and a spare top-mast or two in the ship: I resolved to fall to work with them and I flung as many of them overboard as I could manage for their weight, tying every one with a rope, that they may not drive away. When this was done, I went down the ship’s side, and pulling them to me, I tied them together at both ends, as well as I could, in the form of a raft, and laying two or three short pieces of plank upon their crossways I found I could walk upon it …

‘Oh, he is very clever,’ said Asobel, ‘oh, I wish it could be me. I wish I could live on a desert island.’

‘You may be lonely,’ said Harriet.