by Dilly Court
Almost smothered by an overpowering scent of lavender cologne, Jacinta suffered the embrace. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t know who you are, ma’am.’
‘Of course you don’t remember me. I’m your father’s aunt, Maud Clifford. We haven’t spoken for years because of a rift in the family. It’s a long story, my dear, and best not talked about in the street.’ She glanced nervously at the front window of the Wiltons’ house. ‘We are being watched. My business here won’t take long.’
Even as the words left her lips the door opened and Mrs Wilton appeared on the front step. ‘What d’you want, Maud? You’re not welcome here.’
‘I know that, Aggie. I came out of courtesy to let you know that my poor Billy has passed away. Not that you and that brute of a husband of yours will want to come to the funeral tomorrow, but I wanted you to know that you are welcome if you do decide to attend.’
‘You just want us there so that you can show off your fine clothes and rich friends. It’ll be a pauper’s grave for the likes of us. We can’t afford a plot in the cemetery with a marble headstone, so you can clear off and leave us be.’ She retreated into the foul-smelling hallway and slammed the door so hard that yet another pane of glass fell from the window and shattered on the pavement.
‘That’s my answer then,’ Maud said calmly. ‘I expected no less, but my sister is the only family I have apart from my dear nephew Fred. Are your parents well, Jacinta?’
‘They are both dead and gone.’
‘Oh, you poor child. I had no idea or I would not have been prattling on like this.’ Maud glanced at the cabby, who was drumming his fingers impatiently on the roof of the cab. ‘There’s no need to look surly, my good man. You will be paid for your trouble.’
‘Some of us ain’t got all day to waste,’ he grumbled. ‘Make up your mind, lady.’
Maud turned her back on him. ‘May I offer you and you friend a lift home, Jacinta? It looks like rain.’
‘We intended to walk to Limehouse, ma’am,’ Isaac said hastily. ‘Broadway Wharf to be exact. Ma has rooms there.’
‘Then that’s where we’ll go.’ Maud waved an imperious hand at the cabby. ‘Limehouse, my man. Broadway Wharf.’ She climbed into the cab and made herself small so that Isaac and Jacinta could squeeze in beside her. ‘Now tell me all about yourselves. It’s obvious that you are a young couple in love. I want to hear all about it, and how my poor nephew met his end. I didn’t see him or his delightful wife much after he joined the army, which has always been a source of regret to me. Tell me what happened to them, my dear. If you can bear to talk about it, that is.’
It was painful to talk about the circumstances in which her parents had lost their lives but Jacinta related the events leading to their deaths as briefly as possible. Maud listened with tears in her eyes and kept patting Jacinta’s knee in a distracted manner, as if she were at a loss for the right words in such circumstances. She brightened considerably when Isaac told her that they planned to marry. ‘I’m so glad that Jacinta has found someone who will love and cherish her,’ she said, mopping her eyes with a lace-trimmed handkerchief. ‘I would take you both in, but although my sister thinks I am well-to-do, in fact I am only just able to support myself now that poor Billy has met his maker. I was his second wife and we were not blessed with children, although he had a son from his first union. Unfortunately we do not see eye to eye. Ronald will inherit the house and the business and I will have to take rented rooms, or I would have gladly shared my home with you until you were able to find something for yourselves.’ She took out a hanky and wiped her eyes. ‘But you are both young and you will do well for yourselves.’
The cab rumbled to a halt and the cabby opened the trapdoor in the roof. ‘Are you getting out here, lady?’
Maud took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. ‘No, my man. Take me to Clifford’s Funeral Parlour, Artillery Street.’
Isaac sprang down and held his arms out to Jacinta. ‘Here we are then, my duck. Home sweet home.’
‘I will see you again soon,’ Maud called as the cab pulled away from the kerb. ‘Very soon, my dears.’
Jacinta waved until the cab was out of sight. She shivered as the rain began in earnest. ‘What an odd day it’s been, Isaac. I found my grandparents who want nothing to do with me, and an aunt whose existence I had forgotten. I don’t remember Pa talking about her and I must have been very young when she last saw me. I’m surprised she recognised me.’
Isaac gave her a hug. ‘No one could forget that face, girl. I’ll carry the vision of you in my heart when I’m back at sea, and I’ll be longing to return home to you.’
She clutched his hand. ‘You’re not going to leave me all alone in London, are you?’
‘Not for a while, sweetheart. But I’ll have to find another ship very soon or I won’t be able to support my family.’ He bent his head to kiss her on the lips. ‘And you won’t be on your own. Come and meet Ma. She’ll love you as I do.’
Jacinta gazed up at the wooden building perched on stilts like a performer in a fairground. Painted signs hung over doorways advertising the trade of the occupants: ship chandlers jostled for position with ropemakers, lightermen and coal merchants. Warehouses and manufactories lined the narrow streets abutting the wharves and boatyards at Limehouse Hole and on every corner there was a public house or a brothel. This was a world totally alien to Jacinta, but as she held Isaac’s hand she was determined to make the best of her new life. She was in love and each new day would be an adventure.
‘Are you all right, sweetheart?’ Isaac’s tone was tender and his smile caressed her like a kiss.
‘I am all right as long as I’m with you.’
‘Tomorrow I’ll find a parson and fix our wedding day. It can’t come too soon for me. Let’s go and tell Ma the good news.’ He led the way up a rickety staircase on the outside of the building which twisted upwards in a crazy spiral to the top floor and the rooms that Hester Barry rented from Mr Walters, the lighterman.
They found Hester at home, drinking tea from a tin mug with a half-eaten meat pie on the table in front of her. She uttered a cry of delight when she saw Isaac and threw her arms around him as he enveloped her in a hug, lifting her off her feet. He put her down hastily and held his hand out to Jacinta. ‘Ma, I want you to meet the young lady I’m going to marry.’
Hester clutched her hands to her ample bosom, gasping in astonishment. ‘Well, I never did. What a surprise to be sure. I knew it would happen one day, of course, but now it’s come.’ She eyed her son’s prospective bride with a critical frown and for a horrible moment Jacinta thought that she had not found favour with Isaac’s mother, but then Hester smiled and opened her arms. ‘What a little beauty you are. You’re very young, my dear, but that’s all to the good. I love you already and I know we’re going to get on like a proper mother and daughter. To tell the truth I always wanted a little girl of my own.’ She gave her son a warm smile. ‘Boys are all very well but a daughter is a great comfort. We’ll do very nicely, my dear.’
Isaac rescued Jacinta from his mother’s embrace. ‘I knew you two would like each other. My two lovely girls – what a wonderful thing for a chap to come home to.’
Hester snatched up her bonnet and shawl. ‘This calls for a celebration. We’ll go to the Bunch of Grapes and order a jug of rum punch.’ She rammed her bonnet on her head at a skew-whiff angle. ‘So you’re going to be wed,’ she said, smiling.
‘Yes, Ma. As soon as possible.’
‘I’ve only got one thing to ask of you, son.’
‘I’ll do anything in my power, Ma. You know that.’
‘You must call your firstborn daughter Stella. It was your grandma’s name and she thought the world of you when you was a nipper. It would be like carrying the old lady on into the future.’ Hester turned to Jacinta with a pleading look. ‘Would you agree to that, dear?’
Jacinta answered her with a kiss on the cheek. ‘It is a pretty name. We will have many babies, I am sur
e.’
Chapter Two
Portgone Place, Essex, 1868
COOK’S FLORID FACE was beaded with perspiration and her temper was fast reaching boiling point. Stella knew the signs only too well and she took two steps back from the scrubbed pine kitchen table, out of reach of Cook’s arm and the wooden rolling pin which was never far from her hand. Her use of it as a method of punishment for errant kitchen maids was legend in Portgone Place, and the soup ladle came a close second. In fact, anything from a wooden spoon to a wet dishcloth when clutched in Mrs Hawthorne’s chubby fingers was a weapon to be reckoned with and avoided at all costs.
‘It’s all very well for her upstairs acting like lady bountiful,’ Cook said through gritted teeth. ‘She doesn’t have to bake half a dozen cakes for you girls to take home to your mothers. I don’t recall any mistress being as generous when I was first in service.’
‘That must have been a hundred years ago,’ Annie Fox whispered in Stella’s ear.
Stella bit her lip in an attempt to stifle a giggle. Annie was the only kitchen maid who was not terrified by Mrs Hawthorne’s bursts of ungovernable rage when she ranted and raged at the unfortunate transgressor for the smallest of misdemeanours. One unlucky scullery maid had been castigated for having mud on her boots even though Cook had sent her to the kitchen garden to fetch fresh herbs on a particularly rainy day. Poor Gertie had burst into tears and declared that it was not fair and that was the last they had seen of her. Gertie had been sent packing without a character and everyone knew that her widowed mother had ten other children to support. No one crossed Mrs Hawthorne and got away with it. Stella could see a vein throbbing in her temple and her breath was coming in ragged gasps as if she were about to have a seizure.
‘There now, see what you’ve made me do,’ Cook said, slamming a cake tin onto the table. ‘I’ve burned me fingers and all for the sake of charity. How am I supposed to manage on the twenty-second of March when you girls have a day off to visit your mothers? No one brings me a present on Mothering Sunday.’
Having been employed at Portgone Place for nearly a year Stella was well aware that Mrs Hawthorne had never been married, but cooks and housekeepers were always addressed as if they were matrons. She kept her gaze lowered for fear of catching Annie’s eye and giggling.
Cook snatched the last cake tin from the oven. ‘It’s bad enough that Sir Percy chose to entertain a house party this weekend without leaving me with only Annie and Tess to help in the kitchen.’
Annie bowed her head and her shoulders shook. Stella was not sure if her only friend in the household was laughing or crying, and she closed her ears to Cook’s angry tirade. Poor Annie was an orphan taken from the foundling hospital and expected to be grateful for living a life of drudgery and servitude with little hope of bettering herself. Stella knew only too well the pain of losing a much-loved parent. She could still remember the day when the news came that her father’s ship had gone down with all hands off the Cape of Good Hope. Ma had cried for weeks, refusing to be comforted, and the life had gone out of Granny even before she succumbed to a fatal chill a few months later.
Stella reached out to give Annie’s hand an encouraging squeeze, but withdrew it hastily when Cook fixed her with a hard stare.
‘Have you got something to say, Stella Barry?’
Stella shook her head and averted her gaze. It was best not to look Mrs Hawthorne in the eye. Annie said she could turn you to stone if she got into a real rage and judging by the expression on Cook’s face this was imminent. ‘I should hope not.’ Mrs Hawthorne flipped the cakes out of their tins onto a cooling tray. ‘That’s done. Make yourselves useful and scour these pans until I can see my face in them, and make sure you dry them properly or they’ll be eaten away with rust.’
Annie leapt forward and scooped the hot tins into her apron. ‘Yes, Cook.’
‘That’s not the way to do it, you stupid girl,’ Mrs Hawthorne said, scowling. ‘I don’t want to see you in a soiled apron. You’ll miss supper and spend the evening in the laundry if you make it dirty. Lord have mercy on me. I’m surrounded by idiots. Where are Tess and Edna? Why do the kitchen maids disappear the moment they’re needed?’
Annie was silent and Stella felt bound to answer. ‘You sent them to the meat larder to pluck the geese for dinner tonight, Cook.’
‘That’s enough cheek from you, miss.’ Cook snatched up a wooden spoon and pointed it at Stella. ‘Speak when you’re spoken to. Now get on with those pans and don’t let me see you again until they’re shining like new.’ She broke off as the kitchen door opened and Lady Langhorne wafted into the kitchen, seeming to glide across the floor like a beautiful swan on a moonlit lake.
Stella bobbed a curtsey, keeping her eyes downcast as she had been taught on her first day in service. She remembered the lesson well, repeating it in her head like a mantra. The scent of lilies and jasmine clung to her ladyship’s person in a fragrant cloud and her silk gown rustled as she moved. ‘I’m glad to see that you’ve made the cakes, Cook. They look quite delicious and I’m sure the girls’ mothers will be delighted to receive them.’
‘Thank you, my lady.’ Cook acknowledged the compliment with a jerky movement which might have been a clumsy attempt at a curtsey, or else one of her feet had gone to sleep and she was suffering from pins and needles. Stella gave her a sideways glance and then looked away quickly. She did not want to be turned to stone before she had had a chance to visit her mother, whom she had not seen for nearly a year, although it seemed much longer. She had sent her wages home each quarter, keeping only a small amount to pay for a new pair of boots when her old ones were outgrown and down at heel. Mrs Dunkley, the housekeeper, had taken her to Brentwood to purchase a new pair, but as these had proved costly Stella had opted for a good second-hand pair from a dolly shop. Mrs Dunkley had tut-tutted and frowned, but there had been no alternative and the fact that the boots were a size too large was a point in their favour as they would take longer to outgrow. Stella jumped as Annie poked her in the ribs.
‘The mistress asked you a question, you ninny.’
Stella raised her head slowly. ‘I’m sorry, my lady.’
Lady Langhorne bent down so that her face was close to Stella’s and her smile was so beautiful that Stella’s eyes filled with tears. She has the face of an angel, she thought, sniffing and wiping her nose on her sleeve.
‘Stella Barry, where are your manners?’ Cook demanded angrily.
Lady Langhorne produced a scented handkerchief trimmed with lace and pressed it into Stella’s hand. ‘There’s no need to cry, my dear. I was just asking if you had far to go tomorrow.’
Stella buried her face in the soft folds of the cotton lawn, but the lace tickled her nose and made her want to sneeze. ‘London, my lady.’
‘My goodness, that’s a long way to walk. In which part of London does your family reside?’
Stella was at a loss. She looked to Annie, who shook her head, and cast an agonised glance at Cook, hoping that she had put the rolling pin away. ‘I – I don’t understand, my lady.’
‘Where does your ma live, you silly child,’ Cook said impatiently.
‘She has a couple of rooms in the lighterman’s house on Broadway Wharf, Limehouse, my lady.’
‘I’m not familiar with that part of London.’ Lady Langhorne smiled vaguely and moved towards the doorway. ‘I hope you girls enjoy your time with your mothers tomorrow.’ She ascended the stairs, leaving a hint of her expensive perfume in her wake.
Cook tossed a pan in Annie’s direction and it caught her on the side of her head, making her howl with pain. ‘That’s for nothing. See what you get for something. Go to the meat larder and tell Tess and Edna that there’ll be trouble if I don’t have those birds prepared and ready for the oven in two minutes. They’ll be in there gossiping and giggling and wasting time because they think I can’t see what they’re doing. Well, I’ve got eyes in the back of my head and I know everything that goes on in this kitchen.�
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Rubbing her sore head Annie ran from the room and her small feet clattered on the flagstones as she headed for the meat larder at the far end of the corridor. Stella fled to the comparative safety of the scullery and climbed onto the wooden pallet in front of the stone sink, plunging her arms into the rapidly cooling water which already had a thin film of greasy scum floating on its surface. The only thing that kept her from bursting into tears of desperation was the fact that she would see her mother the next day. Ma would be overjoyed with the present of the cake. Stella could not remember the last time they had been able to afford such a luxury. Her younger brother and sister would make sure that not a crumb went to waste. She wondered if Freddie and Belinda had grown much in the past eleven months and twenty-nine days. She had been counting them off with tiny pencil marks on the wall in her corner of the attic bedroom she shared with Annie, Tess and Edna. She longed for the day to end so that she could curl up in her narrow truckle bed beneath the eaves and allow sleep to rescue her from the drudgery of domestic service. Tomorrow was going to be wonderful and she was determined to rise before dawn and set off on the thirteen-mile walk to Limehouse with a good heart. She had worked out the sums in her head: if she left Portgone Place at five o’clock next morning she might reach home by ten or eleven, depending on how fast she could cover the ground. She would have a few precious hours with her family before she had to set out on the return journey.
She had walked for almost an hour in complete darkness, but it was Sunday and the roads and lanes were deserted. She had seen no one until long after daybreak when she came across people on their way to church, but by this time her legs were aching and her new boots had rubbed blisters on her heels. She was, she realised, still several miles from the outskirts of the city and she was tired and hungry. She sat down at the roadside and took out the bottle of water and a slice of bread that she had wrapped in a piece of butter muslin. She did not think that Mrs Hawthorne would miss just one slice thinly smeared with butter and a little jam. She was just finishing off the last mouthful when she heard the rumble of cartwheels and the clip-clop of a horse’s hooves. She moved out of the way in case the mud thrown up splashed her one and only good frock, but to her surprise the man driving the trap drew it to a halt. He was dressed like a prosperous farmer in heavy tweeds and a billycock hat and his gingery mutton-chop whiskers gave him a benign, almost comical appearance. It was impossible to be afraid of a genial gentleman with a red nose and rosy cheeks who smiled at her with such warmth. ‘Where are you going, poppet?’ He glanced at the wicker basket containing the cake, and he grinned. ‘I know. You’re taking a present to your ma for Mothering Sunday.’
