Walking in Pimlico (20 page)

I was less inclined to join in the mêlée, though eager to meet her, and so wrote a brief note, expressing my desire to visit her in her lodgings, with a novel that I thought she might find amusing. But the reply was not as immediate as politeness generally requires. In fact, four days elapsed before a hastily written note on inferior paper was delivered, with the somewhat peremptory instruction to attend upon her at a half past two o’clock.

At a rather down-at-heel lodgings in a shabby street, I was greeted at the door by the tall, the imposing Mrs Strong. She nodded me in and announced, with little grace and ceremony, that although Mrs Fitch would see me now, she could spare only twenty minutes. Captain Hawker was arriving at three o’clock, and Mr and Mrs Collins at half past. In the sitting room, overheated and with the curtains already drawn, Lucy Fitch was reclining on a couch, a shawl about her shoulders and a rug over her knees. Beside her, on a little table, was a tray containing a collection of phials and bottles (her medicines, I assumed), and a wine glass, half full. She turned her radiant smile upon me, and begged me, in a low voice, to sit. I made the usual enquiries – how she was keeping, whether she had everything she needed, whether she had found amusement. All of
which she answered unenthusiastically in the affirmative, nodding her head, and every now and then coughing delicately, covering her mouth with a white, embroidered cloth, which she kept tucked under her rug. I produced the book.

‘In my note, I promised you a novel,’ I said. ‘I hope you find this amusing.’

She took it and glanced carelessly at it, while Mrs Strong hovered and, as the wine glass was drained, she re-filled it. The invalid looked up sharply.

‘Surely it’s time for my medicine, Mrs Strong?’

The good lady shook her head. ‘Another two hours, madam.’

‘I believe you are in error,’ replied Mrs Fitch quickly, and with more than a trace of an east London accent. ‘Indeed, I am quite sure that I should have my medicine now,’ and a look of petulance and irritation passed across the beautiful face.

But the servant was adamant. Mrs Fitch’s medicine was her duty, and if
she
didn’t know what o’clock it should be administered, well, Mrs Fitch had better let her go now.

It was of no use. Mrs Fitch insisted. Pleaded. Cajoled. Demanded. Mrs Strong was equally resolute. An impasse arose between the two women, during which both appeared to forget my presence and continued to bicker in the most common way. I might have felt extraordinarily embarrassed if I had not been so engrossed. Eventually, Mrs Strong was dismissed, and left with reluctance, while Mrs Fitch appeared to have forgotten about me for she was momentarily puzzled, and looked at me for some time before saying, softly, and almost to herself, ‘Oh! You still here!’

I was hot and uncomfortable and inclined to take my leave. I had seen enough for the present, and at close quarters also. But Mrs Fitch would have none of it.

‘Don’t mind Mrs Strong. She gets above herself and I have to put her in her place. We regular have tiffs like this.’

Her lapse was amusing and I held back a smile, but she seemed quite unaware of it.

‘Mrs Co-llette, I wonder if you would do me a kindness and refill my glass. Since no one else will.’ This latter given with volume to reach the servant’s ears.

A bottle of very ordinary Madeira wine stood on the dresser. I filled her glass and, turning to replace it, caught a look of childlike cunning pass across her face. She licked her teeth and with them pulled the stopper from a tiny phial, swiftly tipping the contents into the glass. It was such a telling performance, so adept and knowing, that I was inclined to applaud, but instead I pretended not to notice and, carefully restoring the wine bottle to its tray, resumed my seat. Lucy drained the glass in one and settled back into the cushions as languorous as a cat. When she spoke again, her voice was soft and drowsy.

‘My medicine,’ she whispered. ‘I must have it. It’s what keeps me alive. For you should know, Mrs Co-llette, that I am dyin’.’

That much was already clear to me. I was far more curious about other matters. I nodded and sympathized and then wondered where her child might be. She frowned.

‘Your child. Your baby.’

She laughed softly, and her words were slurred. ‘I’ll tell you a secret, Mrs C, since we’re both in the same business.’ She frowned, almost defiantly. ‘Pretending, Mrs C. Pretending to be what we ain’t.’

It was my turn to be nonplussed, but she would have none of it.

‘Oh, come on, Mrs C. I know about you. You’re no more a Frenchy than I am.’

I kept silent on that matter. ‘And the child?’ I said.

‘’S not mine. ’Course it’s not.’

I tried not to smile. What had made her so suddenly disclose such a very important secret? I knew the child was not hers, of
course, but it was even more enthralling to hear it from her lips. So I silently blessed her ‘medicine’, and feigned surprise to her face. Not hers? Surely it was! It was impossible to believe otherwise! Was she taken in by me? I couldn’t tell, and at that moment I wondered if I had underestimated Lucy Fitch (or whatever her name was).

‘Look, it’s powerful dull here and I get tired of the game,’ she was saying, and inclined her head, her usually bright eyes sleepy and dull. ‘So it’s nice not to ’ave to put it on all the time.
You
know how it’s done. The kid’s from a baby farm. Near Wakefield, or somewhere,’ and she waved vaguely to indicate. ‘I had one before but it died on me. It started coughing like the devil and looked like it was ready to cock its little toes up.’ She stared hard at me, with a drunken defiance in her face. ‘And no one wants to see a dying baby, do they?’

‘They want to see a dying woman,’ I replied.

There was a telling silence, during which she was stupidly fixed upon the linnet in its cage.

‘Dying woman, yes. True to you, Mrs Co-llette.’ Our eyes met, though she was forced to stare hard, and struggled to focus. Her lips and mouth were sticky, and she wiped them with the back of her hand. If the almost imperceptible tremor in her voice was part of the performance, it was clever and effective. But I wanted to bring her back to our subject. The dying woman.

‘Yes. Dying woman,’ she said, after a moment. ‘Of course, that’s different to dying kiddies. Dying kiddies are just tragic. But a dying woman is a powerful strong sight, especially to men. They like all that weakness and lying about and panting and struggling.’

She lay back, stroking her breast and gasping delicately, her eyes half closed, her lips parted. Then she smiled, and raised herself on one elbow.

‘They’re
very
fond of that. And it makes them generous.’

‘So you’re not really dying?’

‘I don’t know. What do
you
think?’

I was so struck by her audacity and her naïve willingness to take me into her confidence, that I began to doubt my own judgement. Who was the hunter, who was the hunted here? She was reprehensible, I said with some humour, and it was surely against some law. The baby, the feigned illness, accepting gifts. But even as I said it, I knew this display of piety was unconvincing, and she saw through the pretence immediately, and took my hand in her hot one and looked drunkenly into my eyes.

‘Now, my dear Mrs Co-llette, you know what it is. It is business. That is all.’

A sudden knock came at the door, and Mrs Strong was its originator, announcing the arrival of Captain Hawker. But before he could be admitted, the redoubtable woman pounced upon her mistress, rearranging her hair and setting to rights the rug over her legs. It was soon done; Lucy was sleepy again and stupidly co-operative, dozing for a moment only to awaken and look around her in confusion, and then, seeing me, was about to speak only to be overcome by stupor.

Of course, I was now not inclined to leave, and as there was no one to insist that I did, I remained where I was. After straightening a chair and smoothing her apron, Mrs Strong surveyed the room and her mistress with a critical eye and, apparently satisfied, enquired if miss wanted the baby.

Mrs Fitch roused herself enough to sigh, ‘Only if it won’t cry, Mrs Strong. I cannot bear it if the brat whimpers. If it does, you must come and get it straight.’

Mrs Strong was unsympathetic. ‘The mite is asleep, so it’s very likely she will cry if you awaken her.’

Lucy sighed again. ‘If anyone else were hanging around I’d let it alone, but you know Captain Hawker dotes on it, and last week he gave me five guineas. The kid’s got to earn its keep, like the rest of us.’

Mrs Strong was stoical but inclined to remonstrate, and the scene seemed likely to fall into bickering again. However, Lucy was adamant.

‘Oh, bring it in! But give it some cordial first to keep it quiet. And don’t look at me in that way, Mrs Strong. It’s
my
kid, and I’ll do what I like with it.’

Lucy smiled disarmingly.

‘Oh come on, Mrs Co-llette – or whatever your proper name is. Like I said, it’s business. There’s no point in getting sentimental.’

My silence she read as an affirmative, and nodded to herself.

‘Now, where’s the kid? And Captain Deep-pockets.’

I was entranced by her assurance, her consummate skill in slipping into the part of dying mother, orphan, widow. It was a pretence so purely motivated by gain, and further amplified by the arrival of the said Captain, who was (to my amusement) genuinely distressed by her predicament. Here was a
mise en scène
that I longed to memorialize, so expertly was it engineered, and I felt nothing but admiration for Lucy. The child, which was fractious even though mildly stupefied, she held lovingly in her arms, uttering, over and over, fond endearments – ‘Mama’s little angel’ – and mild chastisements – ‘Hush, Caroline! What would Papa say!’ – until the poor Captain, a young man who displayed his emotions without embarrassment, was close to tears. They spoke of her husband – a portrait of a young man in uniform stood on the table beside her – and her difficulties. Her sister, though presently reliant upon Lucy, had every intention of becoming a governess and making her way in the world.

‘For neither of us, Captain Hawker, want to be a burden upon anyone. Even little Caroline here,’ and she gave the dozing baby a surreptitious shake (none too gently), at which she whimpered pitifully. The Captain reached over and stroked the baby’s cheek, clucking affectionately and repeating her name. Looking over his
shoulder, Lucy Fitch’s eyes met mine, wide and shining now that the immediate effects of her ‘medicine’ had subsided.

‘Captain Hawker,’ she whispered, smiling radiantly and, at the same time, bringing out her white embroidered handkerchief, ‘would you be kind enough to hold Caroline. I fear I cannot. . .’ as the cloth was raised to her lips and she coughed.

It was a bold ploy. The young man took the child, inexpertly but gently and, after an initial struggle, she settled into his arms, blue eyes gazing steadily at him, and a smile upon her baby lips. Lucy, meanwhile, settled back into the cushions and watched, calculating, no doubt, how deep the young Captain’s pockets were today! A fascinating little scenario.

She was, I reflected on my walk back home, a decided challenge.

Following this interview, I kept company with Lucy Fitch many times, and though I enjoyed the notion that I could betray her, I didn’t. Not even to Mrs Gifford. It was amusing to be party to such a grand deception, for people
were
deceived, but their gullibility never diminished the power of Lucy’s impersonation, which was really alarmingly convincing, and a far better impersonation than I could ever have imagined. It seemed to me that she
became
the unfortunate creature desiring to spend the last days of her mortal existence in Abbotswelford among gentle friends and in comfort. Her little child was all innocence and, had it been schooled in its part, it could not have played it to better effect. Mrs Strong (who, I discovered from Mrs Gifford, was in fact Lucy’s mother) was dour, but attentive, with lips permanently sealed to her daughter’s scheme, and a countenance as impenetrable as her daughter’s personation.

As inexorably as I was drawn into the subterfuge, I was also drawn into Lucy’s daily life and found myself not only on errands to the wine shop and butcher, but also embroidering that fictional
existence in which Lucy moved, and with an adeptness that astonished even me. One morning in Agate’s Bazaar I described in terrific detail to a rapt audience the moment when Lucy and her sister Charlotte were orphaned, their poor parents drowning in their desperate efforts to rescue their children. My mind was running on – rescue them from what? A capsized pleasure boat at Ramsgate? A flooded Scottish fishing village? A remote Welsh cottage caught up in a conflagration on a biblical scale? It could have been anything I fancied, for the field was open to me to fabricate as extravagantly as I wished. Consistency was never at issue. The fiction that Lucy – and others – wove around her was unsubtle and endlessly varying, and no one seemed perturbed by it, least of all Lucy herself. So I mused as, here in her rooms, I sat one dark afternoon, mesmerized by her audacity, as she held court.

‘Oh, my dear Mrs Fitch,’ the handsome young curate, Mr Freelove, was saying breathlessly, taking Lucy’s hand in his, ‘I was so moved to learn of your tragic loss.’

Lucy smiled, and her eyes filled with tears. Baby Caroline gurgled and grasped the curate’s finger in a chubby hand.

‘Were the bodies of your brothers and sisters ever discovered?’

Lucy dabbed her eyes and her lips trembled.

‘A tidal wave took them, I understand.’

‘H-oh yes,’ she quivered, ‘h-I believe they was washed up round India. But,’ she added quietly, for dramatic effect, ‘without no ’eads.’

One day, when Lucy and I were alone, I broached the subject of her missing sister, the one who had been so helpful in disclosing their whereabouts to Mrs Pickuls.

She sniffed. ‘Oh, her! I tell you, Mrs Co-llette, that girl has nearly cost me everything, and it is only my hard work what has turned it around. For starts, we settled that it was her job to go and arrange for Baby. I had plans to come out with another pal,
Bessie Spooner, but she was—’ Lucy stopped for a moment and bit her lip. ‘She had other business, so I took Kitty on instead. It was a mistake from the start. I should have known. Anyhow, we left London in a bit of a rush, but as I’d my eye on this line for a little while and as I’d found the kid . . . All Kitty had to do was collect Baby. She should’ve brung it to me straight away, but, no, she took it to her mother’s first.’