Walking in Pimlico (22 page)

No, I thought grimly, but I am twice as clever as you! The spiteful pinches I endured when she was supposedly helping me to dress and her undisguised smugness were irritants, but I consoled myself with the knowledge that I had seen through her deception and allowed her to have a taste of triumph before I announced, with some relish, that I would not be going to Uncle’s, nor to London, and that she had lost her ten guineas, and her situation, for I did not want her. Her face, frozen into the image of some gawping fish, was almost comical.

‘But, miss,’ she cried, when she had come to her senses, ‘you cannot – you must not – in your condition – contemplate – living alone? Where will you go? How will you live?’

She gazed pitifully upon me with moist eyes, as if it were she who was cast adrift upon the hostile world. But I knew that look of old! The Gifford look that she hoped would melt my heart and bend me to her desires. And whether she feared Uncle’s wrath or for her own uncertain situation, she was also struck by fits of weeping which
came on as soon as she looked upon me. More troubling were the letters (so easily intercepted that my suspicions were aroused) flying more frequently now between Abbotswelford and London, and which signalled that, since I was not about to take up my new residence voluntarily, ‘other arrangements’ were being made. I knew force and abduction were possible and that, despite my increasingly heavy condition, it would be in my best interests to make my escape. Soon.

I was not idle, therefore. Indisposition brings with it the opportunity for reflection and I reflected much on the whispered conversation I had had with Mrs Strong on the last occasion I had sat with her. When she and Lucy were ‘settled’, Mrs S promised, she would send word to me. I waited with mounting impatience, and was soon rewarded when, returning from an afternoon walk, there was a letter from Mrs Strong. Lucy, she wrote, was about to give up the pretence of widowhood. She had been obliged to continue temporarily the tragic life of a military widow (the generosity of a ‘clerical gentleman’ was the inducement) but someone acquainted with Abbotswelford had ‘clocked her’ and they were forced to remove ‘sharpish’. Lucy’s resourcefulness was never wasted and she had quickly ‘called up one of those parties’ who had responded to her professional advertisement, and now they were comfortably accommodated in Burdon Oaks, and I was invited to call upon them whenever I wished. Lucy’s precocious talents were matched with Kitty’s looks and so, as the Sisters Bellwood, they were ‘powerful lively girls’ and gents were ‘much struck by them’. Lucy was anxious to see me, and for her part, Mrs Strong believed that no one had such a thoroughly good and steady influence upon her daughter as Mrs Collette!

I sent a note of thanks to Mrs Strong by return, and in it enclosed a letter for Lucy, congratulating her on her new enterprise, and acquainting her with my own situation, and the difficulties in which
I found myself. Lucy’s letter similarly arrived by return, as I had half hoped, half expected.

Dear Mrs C

You poor dear thing! What beasts men are, an’t they, to use wimen so! When you say you don’t want no help, well I should take it if it were offered. You must know how hard it is for a womun to be on her own with a kid. Your proberly thinking of how I managed and that I don’t do too bad. Its true, I had a fair living, but it wasn’t always so, and some towns were terrible hard and no one come to see me or parted with so much as a penny. I don’t recimend that line of work at all, Mrs C. Besides you need someone you can trust alongside of you. I’ve got Mrs Strong, who is also my mother, and she is powerful good. But you have no one.

You should write to the gent who has got you in pod and skin him good. It’s the only way.

Mrs Strong says you are without a shop. If that is so, come to us, Mrs C. Don’t dispare. We are your frends and shall look out for you.

Afestshionately

    
Lucy Fitch (Miss)

Apoligs for want of spelling. I am no skoler, but a hard working girl.

In my mind, it was settled, and I was glad to know that I could soon leave, for Gifford hung after me like a bad smell, uncertain of her position, and in receipt of some unpleasant communications from Uncle. No doubt he was unwilling to excuse her from the duties they had agreed upon, for though I was harsh and unpleasant towards her, she declared would not believe that I no longer required her services. Finally she tearfully admitted that, so
attached to me had she become and so bereft would she be if I dismissed her, she would consider it a duty and a privilege to attend upon me until the child was born. Now I was even more suspicious of her intentions, and even more alert! But in my present condition she was useful, and so I grudgingly allowed her to accompany me to Burdon Oaks, prompted by another letter from Lucy Fitch.

Dearest Mrs C

This is to let you no that me and Mrs S will expect you in Burdin Oaks at yore convynens. We are at the Live and Let Live, and have room for you.

But Dear Mrs C, how are you? I have wondered if you was keeping well. And not to sick with the mornings which is a terrible thing. Kitty is with us, but I should like to drop her as she is slack.

Hopin this finds you well.

   
Affecshunotley

      
Lucy Bellwood (Miss)

Mrs C you will see that I have changed my name for the derashun of bein in Burdin Oaks. But I am still your frend Lucy Fitch whatsomever.

Rather than accept her invitation to lodge at the Live and Let Live, however, I decided to take a cottage. (Lucy was completely understanding, opining that ‘no matter how clean it pretended to be, a tavern is still a tavern, and no place for a babby’.) It was a small, a very small cottage at the end of the village, with its back into hillside and its front looking down a short dirt track to the road into Burdon Oaks. It was secluded but not isolated, spare, warm, and contained everything I could possibly need. It was called Jasmine Cottage – ill-named, for I found no trace of jasmine – and clung to a hillside on which the only living creatures were sheep. It had been
in former times the home of a farm labourer and his family, but now belonged to a medical man in Castledon, who leased it at a modest rent. It was, after all, a modest house, with a single room and scullery on the ground floor, and a single bedroom and boxroom upstairs. The walls were thick, the roof sturdy, rebuffing the constant winds that howled up the valley with mellow Shropshire stone and hard Welsh slate, and when the storms rolled in – and there were many that winter and spring – there was nothing to do but lock the doors, draw the curtains and keep the fires burning brightly. We lit the lamps after our midday meal some days, as the darkness and wild weather closed in around us.

I say ‘we’ for Mrs Gifford would not be separated from me, and this, I was convinced, was entirely due to Uncle. Her spirits lifted as soon as we were installed, and I noticed the little gifts – the pots of jelly and boxes of sweets – that began to arrive each week. Angered though he was, my distant benefactor was not yet prepared to give me up, and would rather have Gifford close by than have me cared for by a local woman. She strove to keep her irritability at bay and in particular her daily complaints about the discomfort and cold which attended upon her accommodation on a truckle bed in a tiny cupboard room, but as her aches and pains grew so did those needling grouches, until one morning I could endure it no longer.

‘We are two women alone in a cottage,’ I cried, ‘which seems to be at the end of the world. Here we are and must remain, more or less, for the next three months. If that time is to be at all tolerable, you must learn to accept the situation and not constantly complain to me about the conditions. You can go as soon as you like, you know. I can manage perfectly well on my own. I did not ask you to remain here with me. Unless,’ I added as dryly as I could muster, ‘you wish me to write to our ‘uncle’ and ask that you be relieved of your duties. And that I will do most gladly.’

She was shocked into silence, and for the rest of the day spoke
not a word. But the following morning, as we sat at breakfast, she enquired after my nausea, and offered to fetch me a mixture from the pharmacist when she next visited Castledon. It seemed that although our relationship was now never likely to be friendly, she had resolved to make it at least amicable. She sat with me most afternoons, and then we chatted more agreeably than I had ever known, while we sewed tiny clothes and edged blankets and sheets. I did not trust her, but she was, at least, company.

We dragged through the winter months, each tolerating the other, the tedium lifted by my visits to Lucy and Mrs Strong at the Live and Let Live and Gifford’s to Castledon, where I had no doubt she posted and collected her communications with Uncle. But one visit to Lucy, on a bright and chilly day, when the cries of the sheep on the hills echoed around the hilly market square, confirmed my growing unease. When I informed her of my intentions, Gifford was more than usually attentive, a veritable shadow, eager to dissuade me from my little excursion. Bad weather threatened to leave me stranded, she claimed my colour was poor and she thought I seemed breathless, and there were countless things to be done in preparation for the birth. She was so urgent and anxious that I was even more suspicious, and when she watched me from the gate as I walked along the path to join the road for Burdon Oaks, I was convinced. She had never been so protective, usually glad to see me out of the house so that she could drink gin all day and retire early. But today she had been altogether more resolute, hiding my shoes, my purse and at one point holding me by the arm. I was never so relieved to see her dark figure disappear from view around the bend in the road, and so glad to see Lucy and Mrs Strong.

I told them my fears, even mentioning the threat of Uncle and Gifford’s unholy alliance with him, and of course they were insistent
that I should stay with them at the Live and Let Live. I sent a note to Gifford immediately saying that I had been taken ill and begging her to send me the few things I needed – and my trunk. A room was secured for me, Mrs Strong promising to ‘look out’ for my health, and while Lucy and Kitty (a silent, morose creature, with dark eyes, who burst into feverish animation every evening) performed their songs in the concert room, I sat in the parlour warming my constantly frozen feet and reading penny novels, and during the day wandered the streets of the village, my arm comfortably linked through Lucy’s.

And now I hurry to an episode that takes no time at all to tell, but which altered the course of everything that happened subsequently. I once heard a story from China, or perhaps from the Indies, about a child who tossed a pebble in a lake, the ripples from which so multiplied in number and strength that they eventually overwhelmed a village, crushing all before them and drowning the inhabitants. Nothing and no one could be saved, and the entire landscape, the lives and futures of the village residents were utterly changed by that single insignificant action performed unthinkingly by an innocent child. And such a catastrophic incident, so simple, so unassuming, happened one day to me, as if it had been awaiting its proper moment.

James Yates had been away for weeks and months, but he was never far from my thoughts. Even as my waist began to thicken and I became clumsy and slow, I recalled with clear delight those heady moments when we possessed the street, and enjoyed the devouring glances of the girls, the slap on the back from other men. The races, the ratting kens, the pleasure gardens, John Shovelton – ‘You’re a good fellow, Yates. I like you’ – and again the sound of heel upon cobblestone and the dark, dank night.

One afternoon at the end of the week, having resolved that today I must go back to Jasmine Cottage and prepare for my confinement
– Mrs Gifford is alerted, and has sent word that all is ready for my return – I am crouching on the floor of my room in the Live and Let Live. It is quiet and still, for everyone is out, and I take the opportunity (the first time in many months, and the last time for the foreseeable future) to drag my trunk out from under the bed and empty it of Yates’s suit and shirt, his boots and stockings, his lime oil and sandalwood balm, spread out around me. I am once again caught up in the aroma, now slightly stale, which returns me not only to the immediate past, but to my childhood, to Mountgarrett and the yard of my father’s tavern. I have Yates’s fine linen shirt around my shoulders and I am, once again, inspecting the pockets of the waistcoat for Helen’s picture. So absorbed am I in this that I do not hear the approaching footsteps. The door opens suddenly and, before I can move, Lucy Fitch is framed there, beaming merrily, and carrying a cage, shaped like a miniature pagoda, in which flutters a tiny bird.