The Key to Hiding

by Wendy Reakes

  As she regarded the face of her only friend, Marley recalled the day, a long time ago when she met her dearest Celia.

  She was just seven years old then. And so was Celia.

  Lord Wilbury had been a long-standing customer of her uncle and since he had always been considered a trusted tradesman, uncle saw to all the locks inside and out when they’d needed mending or replacing.

  One day when Marley was seven, uncle took her and Brent to work with him. They had no schooling to do that day and he’d fancied a bit of company on the journey. Not that having school would have mattered. He didn’t care two hoots about them getting educated, but the village had been fortunate to have a retired teacher living in the cottage down the way, who’d offered to take in six of ‘the most promising’ youngsters, to teach them reading and numbers for free. The only reason uncle agreed to let them go was because he thought he was getting one up on his mates whose offspring hadn’t been chosen as one of the special kids. Besides, it was only for one hour, three days a week. It didn’t much matter if they missed it.

  That particular day, they didn’t have school on account of their teacher, Miss Berryhead, coming down sick. Uncle said, “I’ve got to change the lock on the back door to the kitchen up at the manor. That fat cook has gone and run off with old Culpot and she’s taken the back-door key with her.” He shook his head as he steered up the long road towards Wilbury House. "She was a fine-looking woman, though. I wouldn't have minded some of that for meself.” He laughed then, and Marley got to wondering about what he’d just said.

  “Some of what, uncle?” she’d asked.

  “Never you mind, our Marley.” He didn’t ‘alf scowl. “Don’t you go thinking about any mucky stuff.”

  The only mucky stuff Marley knew about was what fell out of the back of horses. He had two horses. The ‘bloody nag’ had been sold for a shilling or two since he’d been responsible for killing uncle’s wife.

  The day Marley met Celia, it was daytime, and she had a bonnet on her head to keep off the sun.

  Uncle had taken the cart around the back of the house. ‘Never to the front,’ uncle had instructed. ‘If you don’t know the back is the rightful tradesman’s entrance, you’ll never be a true and honest worker. ‘Never forget who you are and where you come from,’ he’d often say. ‘And never forget who they are neither.’ When he said that bit he’d pointed upwards, as if the gentry were gods in the sky.

  “Stay in the cart, our Marley,” he’d told her. “Brent, you can come. Learn how it’s done.”

  She was a bit put out at his insistence she remain in the cart. She’d have enjoyed seeing the house, even if it was just the downstairs.

  Then a voice surprised her. “Hello.”

  Her sullenness disappeared when she turned to see a girl who was about the same age as her, but she could have been a year younger judging by her short height. She wore a grey striped dress with a soiled pinafore over the top and a mob cap holding up blonde hair. In her hand was a coal scuttle. Marley said ‘hello’ back.

  “What’s your name,” she asked.

  “Marley.”

  “Are you delivering something?”

  “Not really.” She looked towards the door leading to the kitchen. It was open but all she could see inside were shadows on the side wall of the corridor. She wondered where uncle and Brent were. “My uncle has come to change the lock because the fat cook ran off with Mr Culpot.”

  “Oh, she didn’t run off.”

  That had her all curious. Marley couldn’t help enjoying a bit of gossip. It got her mind all fired up. “What happened then?”

  The girl took a fleeting glance towards the open door and then she shuffled her way next to the cart as she leaned over to hear her better. “She got sacked, she did.” Both of them widened their eyes in shock. Marley waited to hear more. “She went and done it with Mr Culpot and they got caught. Me mam collared them. She’s the housekeeper here.”

  Marley was baffled by such revelations, but the suspense was about to make her fall off the cart. “Doing what?”

  The girl’s brow raised up under the white frilled cap. She frowned with a tilt of her head. “It!”

  Marley decided to make it look as if I knew what she was talking about. Maybe she’d catch on when she knew some more. She nodded her comprehension of the meaning of ‘it’. “What happened then?”

  The girl leaned her arm over the side of the cart, still holding the coal scuttle in her other hand as she balanced her thin body between the two. “Me mam told the Lady, so the cook got sacked. There was a lot of fuss, crying and shouting and all that sort of thing. Then Mr Culpot turned up and ‘claimed her as his own’.” The girl said the words in a breathless, romantic way as if she was repeating something someone else had said. "Then he carried her off into the night," she finished.

  “Oooh,” Marley said with a whisper. “What happened about the key then?”

  “She took it, didn’t she?” The girl licked her lips. She was talking so fast now, her mouth must have been drying up. “They’re all saying she did it to get her own back, but what I think is, she forgot she had it, because before she went and ran off with Mr Culpot, she always carried it around in her pocket.”

  "Yes, I think that too." Marley had pondered the details of her new friend's testimony and had already formed her own judgement. "She forgot to give it back," she said. "It's obvious, I reckon."

  She nodded and leaned further onto the side of the cart, which was exactly the moment Marley’s friendship with Celia was sealed forever as they stared into each other’s wide eyes and gaping mouths.

  Just as they finished talking about the cook and Mr Culpot, Celia's mother came out looking as straight-backed as a newly polished candlestick. She made the reference because she was tall and thin, willowy, holding her head aloft and patting the back of her hair. When she exited the house and caught us chin-wagging, she shouted, “Celia, get along with you. What have I said about you idling, my girl? You’ll get us both sacked one day you will.”

  “I’m coming, mam,” Celia said.

  Her mother took a look at Marley sitting in the cart with a bonnet on her head. “Why are you out here in this sun? Come inside.”

  She was just about to step down when her uncle came out the door followed by her brother, Brent. "Don't worry about our Marley, missus," uncle said. "She's used to waiting around when I’m working, she is.”

  Celia’s mother looked indignant as she clenched together her fine long fingers. “Even so…”

  “We won’t be long with this ‘ere job, missus. Don’t you fret none.”

  The lady took one last look at Marley sitting up on the cart and nodded. “Very well.” She patted Celia on the arm. “Come along.”

  When Celia turned to offer Marley one last look, their friendship was sealed, and yet neither of them could have predicted, seven years on, that she’d be hiding in the attic of the house where she worked.

  That day, after they arrived home a few hours later, it was left to Marley to start peeling some potatoes for their supper. They had a bit of boiled ham left from the day before, so she suggested they have that cold. Uncle said he didn't care as long as there was enough to fill his belly. It was a big belly, so she wondered if she might have to go without. Not our Brent, though. Men needed feeding good. That's what uncle always said.

  As Marley pottered around the kitchen, uncle brought in his work bag holding all his special tools for fixing up locks. He told her to take out what was left of the bread and cheese they’d eaten earlier, so she did as she was told and delved inside. She saw a chunk of the crusty bread she’d baked the previous night and, of course, a good size block of cheddar for the most part uneaten.

  That morning, she’d wanted to put the lot into a nice basket. She’d fancied the notion of them all sitting on the grass in the sun, enjoying their repast from a checked cloth laid on the ground, but it hadn’t turned out that way at all. She’d just put out the food ready to pack
it up nicely, when uncle came in with his bag, dropped it on the table and said, ‘Put that lot in ere.’

  Well, she thought, that’s what he did with his meal when he was out working, but since her and Brent were going along with him, and the sun was shining like a ball of yellow happiness, she said, ‘I can put it in a little basket and I’ve got a piece of rabbit pie too, uncle.”

  “Don’t you go fussing about that sort of thing, girl. I ain’t got no time for no fancy stuff. Just put it in the bag and we’ll get going. No need to fuss o’er everything like you do. A waste of time that is and time’s money,” he growled.

  They ended up eating in the cart on the trip home, off their laps, which was just about as far away from the image of a summer picnic as she could get.

  Returning from their journey, she took the rest of the uneaten bread from uncle’s bag and put it on the table, and when she put her hand back inside, she pulled out a big key. Uncle snatched it from her hand. “Give that to me, Marley.”

  "Did you forget to give in the key, uncle?" she asked. She was hopeful. If he'd forgotten to hand in the key like the fat cook had when she'd run off with Mr Culpot, then uncle would have to take it back to the house and she could go with him. It would be a good chance to see Celia again and get an update on how they were all going to manage without anyone to cook them their supper.

  "I don't forget nothing, girl." He held the key aloft as if it was a trophy. He must have felt in a good mood at that moment because he lifted up the small oil lamp on the shelf above the stove and went to the cupboard under the stairs. She’d never been in there before, so when he signalled for Marley to follow him, she was curious to know what he kept stored away in his secret cupboard. He unlocked the door and waved his hand to usher her in. Then holding the lamp aloft, she looked along the understairs cupboard that took them from standing up straight to bending their backs.

  “See that?” he said.

  On each of the side walls, she saw a hundred or more hooks with keys hanging from them of every shape and size. Old forged metal tags hung from each one, engraved with the key’s identity; Mrs Pepper, Broad Lane, outhouse door; Baker’s shop, front door; Plough pub, Frome, cellar drop…

  Uncle chuckled as Marley stared at the array of keys. “I’ve kept a copy of every key I’ve ever changed or installed in the villages around these parts,” he said proudly, stroking them as if they were delicate hanging vines. “That’s what makes me good at what I do, young Marley,” he said. “When they lose their key, I just make out I’ve gone and changed the lock. But I haven’t, see! I’ve just given them the spare key I kept from the time before.” He patted the side of his nose with his index finger. “Makes me a good few bob, that does.”

  She backed up when he herded her out, and when they got outside, he locked the door. “Was that what you did when you went up to the house today, uncle?” Had he made a free penny out of the Lord and Lady? She needed to know.

  He scoffed. “I’ve been trying to get my hands on that lock to the back of the house for years. It ne’er needed doing before now.” He put the key of the cupboard in his pocket. Then his mood changed. “What’s with all the daft questions, girl? Are we going to have our supper soon or not?”

  So that’s how Marley got into the big house the night she lost her shoes. She had a key.

  Now, Celia was looking at her as if Marley had lost her mind. Maybe she had. “I’ve been here for three months,” she said as she watched Celia sit down on the side of the bed, smoothing her hand across the blankets.

  “But why? There was some talk about you running off with a soldier, but I never believed that.”

  “A soldier!” She bowed her head and kneeled on the floor where her little cup of water was boiling. She removed it from the tripod and let the fire burn to provide a small amount of heat. She added a sprinkling of tea to it and while the leaves infused with the water, she looked back at Celia who was waiting patiently for her explanation. “Something happened to me…something bad.”

  “What was it? I don’t understand.”

  It was a difficult discussion to have. Celia hardly knew her. They had barely spoken, since that day when they were both seven and they’d discussed the plight of the cook and Mr. Culpot. They had become friends by an attraction of the eye only, as if they had a connection, never discussed…but promised.

  Marley pondered how to tell Celia the reason she was there. She also wondered if perhaps she’d gotten the whole thing wrong, and that Celia didn’t think of her as a friend at all, and that she would give Marley up as soon as she knew she was no longer pure, nor a child like her.

  “I was attacked…by a boy.” Marley watched her face to tell if she knew what she was saying, but her expression was devoid of any comprehension. Marley couldn’t blame her for that. “He wasn’t a soldier. He was a terrible man. He did something to me. Without me wanting it to happen. Do you understand?”

  Marley could tell that Celia she was trying to read between the lines of her statement, but really, she was as innocent as Marley was before the event. “Celia,” she said. “I was molested.”

  She watched her face as her blunt statement sunk in. Then she began to cry.

  Marley sat on the floor at her feet, holding her hand resting on her lap. Then she slipped off the side of the bed and joined her on the floor. “Who would do such a thing?”

  Marley thought about her question and realised for the first time that she didn’t even know his name. “Just a boy, a black-haired lout. I helped him home, but I was careless…I should have known…” her voice trailed off as she once again, for the hundredth time, regretted her decision to walk home that night.

  When Celia squeezed her hand back, Marley suddenly realised something else; that she hadn’t felt the touch of another human being for three months. Not a closeness of any kind.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Marley,” Celia murmured.

  She appreciated the sentiment more than she could ever say, but it was difficult for her to believe she was blameless. Stupidity wasn’t a virtue she relished.

  Celia gazed around the parlour, as if she couldn’t believe where she was sitting and who she was talking to about something so terrible. “But why did you come here? Your family…”

  “I couldn’t go to them. My brother, Brent…he would have killed that boy. I couldn’t risk that. He would have spent the rest of his life in gaol.”

  “Your uncle…”

  Marley stopped her before she could say another word. “That is the worst part, Celia. I think he knew.”

  She gasped again. “No, surely not.”

  She stared into her eyes and nodded, as she made Celia realise her uncle’s input in the event. “Yes, he knew. I’m sure of it. He was with the boy before, you see? He made it happen.”

  Celia tucked her feet under her skirts as she sat at Marley’s side.

  “I had nowhere else to go. I had a key for the backdoor…My uncle was a bad man, Celia. He made duplicate keys of all the locks he’d ever worked on. He cheated people.”

  “But how did you get past the servants?”

  “The only one I saw was the groundsman…no one else.”

  She nodded. “That makes sense. The only people left behind were the gardener and the groom. That’s Mr. Lakely, but he has a house in the village with his wife. The gardener has a place near the stables. That’s old Porter.”

  “Old Porter?”

  She nodded.

  “He didn’t look old.”

  She chuckled. “They just call him that because his predecessor was called was Old Jack. But he died. Some said he drank himself to death…” She leaned closer to Marley to assure her that what she was saying was true. “Liked a pint of Somerset cider. And that’s strong stuff, Lottie told me.”

  Marley smiled. To gossip along with Celia was the nicest pastime in the world, especially after all those months alone in the attic. “And who’s Lottie?” she asked.

  Celia looked serious. “L
ottie is the old nanny. She’s a holy terror. She’s thought of as a member of the family, but she stays downstairs now, since there are no children left in the house. Master Edward is ten now and he attends boarding school.” Celia lowered her voice to a whisper. “But…listen to this, Marley…There’s a rumour going around that Her Ladyship is having a baby in the Spring.” Celia’s eyes widened. “What do you think of that?”

  They both stopped smiling when Marley said. “She’s not the only one.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to have a baby, Celia.”

  Aghast, Celia said “You can’t stay here.”

  Marley nodded. “I know.” She was having a baby. She would need to take care of it, protect it, despite it coming from the loins of the black-haired lout…and against her will. “But I don’t know where to go.” She looked at Celia’s face in the decreasing light of the fire and the slow burning candle. “I’d intended to look up family in Taunton, but I can’t go there now. A pregnant, unmarried girl!! They’d kick me out as quick as you like, and they’d probably tell uncle.”

  “What shall we do then?” Celia said beneath her breath.

  Marley was taken aback by her use of words. “We!?”

  She smiled softly. “Well, you need someone, and now you have me.”

  Marley cried then as her friend’s kindness melted her heart. She put her arm around her shoulder. “Don’t worry, Marley. We’ll think of something.”

  She placed her hand on Celia’s sleeve. “There’s another thing. I’ve stolen food. I could be jailed for that.” She got onto her knees and shuffled along the rug to her small kitchen. “You can have this food back. I shouldn’t have taken it.”

  Celia shook her head. “No, I could get caught putting it back in the pantry and that would be worse.”

  “But I don’t want to get you into trouble.”

  “It’s okay, you won’t. A lot of pilfering goes on around here. Half the time the cook doesn’t know what’s being taken since she likes a tot of sherry or two.” To illustrate, Celia raised and dropped her eyebrows. “We all know about it. She’s too stupid and lazy to take stock and she’s worried the servants will shop her if she gets too bossy with them. My mam doesn’t like it. She’s the housekeeper here, but these days she keeps to herself a lot and tells me to as well.” Celia mimicked her mother. “Don’t you go taking nothing, our Celia, she says. They might do it, but it doesn’t mean we have to.” Celia offered a look of disapproval as she tutted. “Me mam’s honest as the day’s long.”