The Companion

by Kim Taylor Blakemore

  A half year prior.

  “Is this the latest letter from her?”

  There was a lap of water. “She is much in demand for her speeches.”

  “Too busy to rewrite a letter to her sister-in-law.”

  The water sloshed and Mrs. Burton rapped the metal. “Where did you put the towel?”

  I set the letter on the dresser and rose from the settee. “It’s folded on the chair. Can I help you?”

  She did not answer. There was a dull thud; the soap just missed the chair and landed on the floor.

  “Mrs. Burton?”

  “Yes. I would like your help.” The words were clipped.

  Mr. Burton was attentive to Rebecca. Each morning, before he departed for the mill, he pulled a chair to her bed and sat vigil. Sometimes he smoothed the blankets, others he tied the bow on her nightdress. Little kindnesses. I had never seen such offered to Mrs. Burton, though he was not cold to her. Just formal, as if they had agreed to a partnership and were fulfilling the terms. Cook said the mistress’s marriage to him brought with it enough money for the establishment of the mill. And, she said, I should mind my own soup pot, for that money and the mill gave each of us a room and ample board.

  I slowed on my way from the linen room, my arms heated by just-ironed sheets. There he sat and peered at her, as he did the other mornings.

  “Would you like a tea, Mr. Burton?”

  He turned with a start. “How is she?”

  “I think she’s past the worst.”

  “Mm.” He looked me up and down, not with diffidence, but curiosity, I suppose. In another man I would find it insolent. I don’t know why this was not the case with him, save the fact I had witnessed the care he paid Rebecca. “Are you fitting in?”

  “I suppose I am.”

  “Cook speaks well of you.”

  “Does she?”

  “She is a fine judge of character.”

  My chest and face grew hot. “If you say, then it must be so.”

  He gave a short laugh. “Then I say so.”

  “Well.”

  “Well.” He pressed his hands to his knees and stood. “I’m keeping you from your work.”

  “No. I mean, yes, I have work to do.”

  “You’ll let me know if she turns for the worse?”

  “Of course.”

  “Thank you . . . ah?”

  “Lucy.”

  “Lucy. Yes. I remember.”

  Laundry at the prison is not so much different than the Burtons’. Oh, the vats are larger, the lye stronger, the water colder, the brush more beard than bristle. But the rhythm does not change. The chilblains and aching back remain cloying companions.

  Tuesdays were washdays at the Burtons’ house; here the wash runs in an infinite loop of stink and ripped hems and the general malingering odor of rough men too tight held.

  It’s Gert’s day for the vat and mine to wring. I like Gert. She’s broad like a block, and her shoulders are made for the weight of the woolens on the pole she pulls from the vat and swings toward me. She’s patient as I remove the water-laden trousers and shirts and move them with a whumpf to the wringing table. The water drips through the slatted top, travels a trough to the yard outside, fingering its way round a barred opening.

  “Jimmy Sprag’s been sent up,” she says. She gives a quick lift of her chin at the end of the phrase, an odd quirk of hers. It’s a guess whether it is a challenge to contradict or merely nod. “Four years.” Her voice is deep as a man’s, and her words catch on the gap in her front teeth. She pulls her lips back in a smile and gives me a wink under her wild ginger eyebrows. We’re not supposed to be talking. The rule is silence. But Gert is not a prisoner so she abides by her own rule. She oversees the laundry, an employee of this fine establishment, with her own cottage just on the other side of the gates. “Embezzlement,” she says. “Thought his talent for twisting numbers was better than the bank manager. And who do ya think was sweetening up the manager’s wife? Called into court and she broke down on the way to the stand. ‘I been inveigled and ruined,’ she said. Broke her nose when she landed in a faint. Oof—wish I’d been there ta see that.”

  Gert’s got an appetite for the penny papers and doesn’t let a good crime story pass by. She’s a walking encyclopedia of the inmates’ sins and swindles.

  She twists round and dumps a mound of black-striped shirts in front of me. I yank at the lot, separating them into piles to wring, holding them up to check for holes and tears longer than two inches. Those will be sent to the seamsters, who are allowed a needle and thread. Jimmy Sprag will no doubt end up one of them; it’s a nice, quiet room for those of the professional class.

  A bright flash of red catches my eye: a small square of red ribbon stitched along a bottom hem. A message next to it embroidered in small block letters, neat stitches, and mismatched thread.

  Mary me Lucy. Im a gud man. J. Trindill

  A marriage proposal.

  I press the wet shirt to my breast, pull the arms of it round my back. How much planning and bribing and threatening went into gaining that piece of ribbon? Was the needle whittled from wood purloined from the yard? Reached for without a guard noticing the misstep in line? Did this J. Trindill sweat over the cross-stitch and curse the French knot? I don’t know who he is, only that he’s clever with his plans. I want to roll the shirt tight, shift it and its sentiment under my skirts. Sneak it to my cell and wrap it round me like a lover. Rough written words on rough fabric.

  “I’ve been proposed to, Gert.” I drop my hip and turn to her, the shirt still against my shift and apron.

  Gert drops a scrub brush and lumbers over, waving her calloused ham of a hand at me. “What are you on about?”

  She pushes aside a line of limp laundry and I step back, hugging the shirt tighter. But Gert picks it up by the shoulder seams and brays a laugh once she’s gained possession. Holds it up to the flat steamy light so the message furls and flutters.

  “Where’d he get the ribbon?” She smiles at the mystery of it, and snorts and presses her hands to the back of hips. “Trindill? John Trindill?” She leans back, hands still on her hips and one rolled sleeve falling. “John Trindill what burned out the tannery in Jaffrey and took the old widow’s house and life right with it?”

  “You know of him?”

  “I wouldn’t answer it. He’s as bad a man as any here.” She clutches her sleeve and works it back up her arm. “You’ll have plenty to choose from, mark me.” She whistles, shakes her head, slips back to the vat. “You’ll be rolling in sentiments come your meeting day.”

  So the word has spread already. I should have known. The other prisoners who work the laundry—Almira and silent Margaret Terrence—stared at me this morning. It’s been their habit to look away. They’re afraid of me. Gert says they’ve asked the warden to transfer me somewhere else.

  “Where the hell else do they think you can go?” Gert slapped my back. “Keep ’em aquiver.”

  But today they stared.

  I’ve left John Trindill’s shirt for last. I’ve nothing to answer him with. No etui to respond in threads of gold and peacock blue. Had I a pen I could dip the nib in ink and give an answer across the inside collar.

  Dear kind sir—I would say this because it might be true. The fire might have been an accident; he might not be the J. Trindill who set the boards alight. Just as Sprag’s wife might not have broken her pretty nose upon falling in the courtroom, and her manager husband might have been the real embezzler, as Gert would assert.

  Dear kind sir, I would say, thank you for your pity. I must, with great regret, turn down your generous offer. I have thought long on the matter . . .

  But that is an equivocation. If there’s one thing I know, an equivocation casts a flurry of shallow stings and leaves the recipient bewildered, muddled, and terribly, terribly angry.

  J. Trindill, late of arson and the fiery death of an old woman, deserved better.

  Dear kind sir,

  You
may be a good man, but I am not a good woman.

  The ribbon is easy to pick out of the ragged fabric. It shines still, the weft heavy, more silk than wool. Nearly the mix of the ribbons that rolled from the Burton Millworks. Smooth as a whisper, those were. Soft as a passing caress.

  Perhaps this ribbon came from there.

  My stomach twists. It’s not from the quince pie Gert shared.

  Eugenie gave me ribbons. Blue satin, and red grosgrain, and canary yellow that suited my hair. How smug she was, legs crossed under her skirts, an empress in the midst of the comforters and bolsters. Ribbons wound round her fist, loose ends dangling and teasing. Such color in the midst of that winter and cold spring. Sinuous and tempting and so rich I could taste the brightness on my tongue.

  Her fingers pressed and smoothed them, one by one: slick satin of blue with the curled edges, uniform bumps and eddies in the grosgrain, the whorls and nubs in the yellow. All the textures mapped by her skin.

  The ribbons, and later the garnet earrings that were but baubles to Eugenie—for she would never see the deep red-umber hue of them—and the bracelet I wore under cover of night were all gifts.

  But gifts have consequences.

  They become evidence.

  Gert flips another load of wash before me. “There was a sawmill burned in Fitzwilliam in ’51. I’d set that on John Trindill’s head. And what misused girl did he connive that ribbon from?” Her chin jerks twice. “Wonder at that, why don’t ya.”

  I drop the bit of fabric between the slats. It tumbles and rolls past the bars to settle and sink in the mud.

  Chapter Eight

  Dear Ned,

  Just a short bit of quiet now—you wouldn’t believe the riot here—the whole house stripped for a flea! Cook dunked Mr. Quimby in the vinegar mix and we’re still not sure who had it worse.

  She picked up a thick brush and scrubbed him the same as she did the laundry. Mr. Quimby hissed and spit, but Cook was faster than his claws, swinging him one way or the other depending on his choice of attack.

  Would you have liked a cat? Not one like Mr. Quimby. He’s a grumpy mean-puss to everyone except Mrs. Burton. The world turns on its axis when she pays him attention. No—I think you would much prefer a great roly-poly puppy with breath as sweet as yours. And a rocking horse in gilt with a shiny leather saddle and silk reins. I saw one today, in the nursery, and I thought—I thought of you.

  How much I’d give to you!

  Do you know tomorrow is your birthday? You would be two years old. How proud I’d be of you. I’ll kiss you a good night—wait for it!

  With All My Love—

  Linens and curtains were subjected to two bouts of boiling water, vinegar, and lye. Jacob and I followed Mr. Beede room to room, pulling curtains, rolling rugs, yanking dust sheets from unused furniture in neglected rooms, exposing it all to a tumble of dust-kissed light.

  We were in a room now bare of curtains and flooded with light. The glare of it caused me to blink. The walls bore signs of paintings removed, the wires hanging listlessly from the cornices. Dust motes clung to the corners and feathered up the joins. The cheeriness of the yellow paint tattered at the edges. A room willfully ignored rather than forgotten.

  My neck flushed with sweat. Too much like another room, a room in my family’s home. That home willfully stripped of spoons and butter presses and Mother’s etui and all the books: items traded by Father for drink. Bedframes and spoons. The butter press and pewter. Linens marked neat in the corner, to be handed to me on my wedding and passed by me to a daughter of my own in someone else’s hands and the name unstitched for another. Two plates, a pot, a few greens and grains left. All the money I’d sent to Father from the mill disappeared down his throat. The stench of this room the same as that: fust and mildew and disquiet.

  That last day, Father on the stairs, his ankle awobble on the first riser. “You’re nothing to me.”

  I remained at the parlor door, belly swelled with a child knocking at the world, my nails gripped tight to the wood frame, and knees locked fast to keep me upright.

  His foot slipped slow and clumsy to the landing, his boot catching and jumbling the carpet. He grabbed the railing and pulled himself up, taking in a rasp of air and releasing the bloated stink of whiskey. Each foot carefully set upon each stair. Halfway up, another stumble, his body swinging wide, a sodden bounce from off the rail, an “umph” and shake of the head before he righted himself and continued the climb.

  My blood buzzed and sawed through my veins, a hiss of ice under the skin. “Was I ever something?”

  He slowed, but my words did not carry to the top of the stairs, and so he continued on. No words to stop him. My grief and gathering hate followed to the second floor, then slid along behind him and careened off the walls. My thoughts snapped to the month prior, to that bottle of solution the doctor left for my “misery.” I had buried it under the honeysuckle in the far corner of the yard. The poison leached over the weeks, and as Ned grew and pressed inside me, the honeysuckle browned and withered to hollow stalks.

  Father’s door shut with a thud. I licked my lip of blood. I should have kept that bottle close by, killed the child inside, or myself, or him. Instead, I killed the honeysuckle, which was one of the only things Father could not sell or trade for his mourner’s measure of whiskey and the last of the garden Mother had raised to health.

  My teeth clicked and chattered, echoing in the empty rooms. Not even a curtain rod remained, just mud grouted in the divots of the pine planks, gouges from furniture dragged away, and the carpet too bare and torn for even the rag man’s fancy.

  I managed my way to the front door, my hands turning the brass knob. The sun was midday bright, and I blinked against the glare. A woman with a peach parasol walked past. It was Mrs. Hofsted. One of the ribs was awry, once broken and rough repaired. Mrs. Hofsted, two doors down with the dog that yapped all day. So solicitous when Mother died, sending pea porridge soup and meringues. Holding Father’s hand between hers. Fingers short, inflated like balloons, dry hot against my cheek. There in the house for days on end, then not there anymore. I missed the meringues. Father said they’d rot my teeth and that she was rotting him.

  She glanced at me, then away, eyes drilled forward again to the walk. The umbrella bobbed above her head. I waited until she was at the corner, had crossed the street, the parasol—once my mother’s—shrinking to a spot of color under the elms.

  A sharp kick behind the ribs. Ned reminding me of his presence. My breath caught. I pressed my palm to my belly, moved it in circles. “There, there.”

  How impudent he was. As annoying as Mrs. Hofsted’s dog and its unrelenting need for attention.

  The lock squealed behind me, then a clunk as the bolt turned. With a jerk, I grabbed the handle and twisted. “What are you doing?” But the lock held tight. I gathered my skirts and hopped from the step, moving around the side of the house to the rear yard. The crisp grass crackled. I wrenched open the back screen, twisting the knob to the kitchen door. “You can’t turn me out.”

  He was right behind the door, his breath a wheeze. “I can,” he said.

  I lay under the honeysuckle that night, back pressed against the fence, and watched the yellow candle as he moved from room to room. He passed out in the dining room. The candle burnt itself out, and the glass became a gape of dark. I was gone before light.

  “Lucy.” Mr. Beede tapped my shoulder.

  “What?”

  “The pillows.” Mr. Beede held his list aloft, his thumb marking our progress through the house.

  I lifted a square pillow from the end of a brocade settee. It was simple, embroidered in a star pattern of tulips interspersed with angular green stems that each held a single leaf. It was child’s work, though there were no children here. It was hidden beneath a silk pillow bilious with smug angels who seemed too fat for their fluttering wings. Both were forgotten on this settee draped in sheets in a room that should have been filled with the memory of guest
s and conversations past. Perhaps it was, and the Burtons were once a warmer couple with hopes of children still bright. I dropped the pillows in the basket I’d hauled in.

  There was a crack of wood against wood behind me, followed by a reverberation of piano strings. Jacob stood at the pianoforte, staring at the keys. The sharp sun reflected off the surfaces, coaxing a honey tone from the deep brown of the wood. The fabric that clothed it lay crumpled at his feet. He pressed a heavy thumb to the high F, then followed with E below C and pounded the lowest notes until the piano groaned. It was quite out of tune, and a few keys were absent of string.

  I had not played in too many years to remember. It was not a talent of mine; that was given to my mother. I’d spent many hours half ignoring the drone of Mr. Wiley, my piano teacher, half intrigued by his untoward height and anticipating the moment he’d forget to duck while entering our parlor. But Mother loved our simple upright, and it sung for her.

  The instrument pulled me to it. I ran my fingers along the curved edge of the cover. Who owns Mother’s piano now? It has surely passed hands. Sits in another parlor with a different set of watercolor portraits atop its frame. Perhaps someone else plays “Annie Laurie” and sighs with the last note.

  “Who’s here?”

  We all turned. Mrs. Burton stood in the doorway, a hand to her throat as if to tamp down more words. Her other arm was tight round her waist. Her body quivered and her face was pale.

  Mr. Beede stepped forward. “Mrs. Burton?”

  “The furniture’s all been moved.” She pressed her fists to her skirts. “You need to move the furniture back.”

  Jacob dropped the piano lid. Mr. Beede jumped. He gave Jacob a quick hard look before turning to Mrs. Burton. “I apologize for the—”

  “I don’t care about your apologies. I want the furniture put back where it belongs.”

  “We’re in the process of gathering the carpets for beating. All will be returned to normalcy by evening.”

  “Does one flea really require all this?”