“I hope you will think well of the menagerie when you are back home.”
“Yes, sir. Of course I shall.”
He hated goodbyes — even the children never said goodbye to him — so I was not surprised when he thrust a small parcel into my hands, then turned and walked rapidly away.
He had paid for me to have an inside seat as far as Guild-ford, where my father had arranged for a wagon to meet the coach, so as soon as I was settled, I opened the package. There was a copy of his very first book, The Pickwick Papers, signed by him on the flyleaf: “To Miss Harriet Coram, with affection, Charles Dickens.” And underneath, “Two and twenty. Two and twenty. Two and twenty.” It was the first time had had ever given me one of his own books, although I now had a small library of other works he had presented to me. There was also, tucked in the pages and folded to fit, a drawing by Charley of myself and the children visiting the hippopotamus at the zoo. Charley is drawn much larger than his sisters and the baby, and I am not much bigger.
I’m afraid the London streets went by in a blur of tears.
My mother greeted me with her usual smile and outstretched arms, but she was lying on a bed before the fire. Although she sat up when I came in, she did not stand. I was shocked by the change in her; she had lost a great deal of weight and her eyes looked huge in her thin face.
Father made the tea, something I had never seen him do before, and I put out some slices of the fruitcake Cook had sent. I could not help but notice Mother only crumbled hers, to make me think she was eating. When she sent Father off to the White Horse to get some rum for a toddy — “just to take the chill off your journey, Hattie” — she lifted up her nightdress and showed me her belly; it was as swollen as though she were with child.
“Are you in pain, Mother?”
“Not so much in pain as uncomfortable. My insides are all stopped up.”
“Has the doctor come? I have money . . .”
“My dear child, the doctor has come several times, and the Misses Bray have paid, bless their kind hearts.”
“Is there nothing —?”
“There’s an operation, but Hattie, I don’t think I could bear it. It’s silly, but I don’t want to be cut open. I have a horror of it.”
“Oh, Mam, not even to save your life?”
“Not even for that. Whatever happens now is God’s will.”
“How can you say that? Why would God want you to suffer? Why would there be an operation if that weren’t God’s will?”
“No, no, don’t get yourself upset, I’ve made my decision. Father and I have discussed it, and we are both reconciled to it.”
“Well, I am not reconciled to it. Mother, please, I don’t want to lose you. I can’t bear to lose you.”
I was sitting on the bed, holding her hand (her thin hand), and now I began to weep.
“Hattie, stop this now. You must be strong and help your father to be strong. I want no more tears. Only smiles.”
The temperature dropped even further that night, and through the small window in the bedroom I looked up at the pale, cold, indifferent moon. How cruel life was. How cruel the Creator. He gave me a second mother, a good mother, and now He was going to take her away. What was the point of it all? Why were we here?
I, who had been so lovingly looked after by this woman and this man, took over the management of the house, and when February came my father went back to work in the fields. I could see that both of them were relieved to have him out of the house, for he was a man who couldn’t bear to be idle; his misery and frustration at Mother’s illness brought us all low. They had never slept apart since their wedding day, but now she insisted that he go upstairs at night (he had made a partition and turned the one room into two), and she would call out to us if she needed anything. I think sometimes our energy and our constant efforts to tempt her to eat or to make her more comfortable exhausted her.
My mother was very popular, and many of the village women came to call. They brought food as well as gossip, and my mother always seemed cheered, if tired, after these visits. Many commented with approval on the fact that I had returned from the city to nurse my foster mother. The Misses Bray visited as well, always bringing some delicacy — an egg custard, blackberry cordial, even hothouse grapes. They told me privately that they had done everything possible to persuade my mother to undergo the operation — she could have the best specialist in the country — but she would not be moved.
“And we must tell you, my dear, that the doctor said the operation itself carries great risks and is often unsuccessful. There is not too much hope for this sort of thing.”
In the evenings Father smoked his pipe — Mother said the smell of tobacco gave her comfort — and I told them about Charley and Mamie and Katie and the baby, about Fred and Cook. I told them of how Mr. and Mrs. Dickens were in America, and that Mrs. Dickens had not wanted to leave her children but he got round her by saying he needed her more than the children did, talked about what grand times they would have in Boston and New York, impressed upon her his observation that small children had no sense of time anyway.
“Perhaps he is right about very small children,” I said, “but I think Charley will be counting the days.”
“How could she leave her children — for how long, did you say?”
“Six months at the very least.”
“Six months! I could never leave my children for six months. And to be separated by an ocean . . .” I knew she was thinking of Sam.
“Ah,” I said, “but you are not married to Mr. Charles Dickens — he always gets his own way. And to tell the truth, I think he was nervous about going alone, although he would never admit it. And her maid has gone as well.”
“Her maid as well!” It was all too much for her.
Mother hung on, all through the spring, which was particularly lovely that year. We placed her bed so that she could feel the warmth come in through the open door. Father brought her posies of wildflowers — primroses, bluebells, whatever was bright and fresh and full of promise; she smiled at him and touched his cheek with her finger. “Remember how you used to bring me flowers when we were courting? And you were so shy and nervous, they were nearly dead from the sweat of your hand by the time you presented them.”
“You were the only lass for me,” he said, his voice thick. “There was never anyone else.”
“Not even Beatie Chapman?” she said, and to me, “Beatie was the prettiest girl in the village, always Queen of the May.”
“Beatie Chapman was a little minx,” he said. “Beatie Chapman was not a girl to spend your life with.”
“Where is she now?” I asked, enjoying this moment of smiles and intimacy between the two of them.
“Ah, she married a lad from Dorking, a fellow she met at the fair. Nobody’s seen much of her since. Her parents are long dead, but I don’t remember many visits when they were still alive.”
“No,” repeated my father, “Beatie was not a girl to spend your life with, not a girl to marry.”
My days were busy with household duties, and, if Mother were comfortable, I often went for long walks on the Downs in the afternoons, or I sat by the Tillingbourne and watched the children playing the same game with twig boats that Jonnie and I had played. I thought of the dead girl I had called a princess and the stories the village gossips put about concerning her: she was with child. Stories I didn’t understand at the time. Some said it was her oldest brother.
I picked cowslips, for cowslip wine, and elderberries. Mushrooms. Later, in the autumn, hazelnuts, which I dried before the fire. I picked blindly and without pleasure, knowing Mother would be gone before the next year rolled around. I picked an enormous basket of hurts and made pies, something nice to offer the village women when they called. I even enticed Mother into eating little sups of hurt preserves off a spoon.
The doctor came once a week now and left opiates, which she took with sips of water. And still she lingered on, through harvest time, through the comi
ng of winter. As the pains grew worse, I gave her more and more laudanum, so that she spent her last few days in a kind of dream and did not speak. But before that, in the last week, she whispered to me, “You are a good girl, Hattie, the best daughter I could have wished for. And I’ll tell you a secret — I loved you best of all the hospital children.”
She died on Christmas Day. The bells began to ring for church just as she drew her final breaths. I think she imagined she was already dead and the bells were ringing for her as she entered God’s kingdom.
“Lovely,” she whispered, “lovely.” And then she died.
For a long time we couldn’t move, just sat there holding her cold hands. Then Father closed her eyes and went to get the women for the laying out. I wanted to do it, but he said that was not the custom and her friends would be offended, that as soon as I could face it, I should go along to the church and tell the rector that she was dead.
“I don’t want to leave her alone!”
“All right, lass, wait here until I come back.”
Except for the princess (and she didn’t really count), I had never seen a dead person before. Children had died at the Foundling, of course, and were given nice funerals, but their caskets were closed. When I looked at my mother’s corpse, I felt as though I were looking at a stranger, for when her spirit left, she left too. I was not overwhelmed by grief — that would come later, along with the panic, the feeling of abandonment. I was simply relieved that her terrible suffering was over.
She was certain that she would be reunited with her parents in Heaven and with her nine dead babies, as well as with Sam and Jonnie, if they were no longer alive. I wasn’t sure what I thought about heavenly reunions, perhaps because I was afraid I would meet the woman who had given me up or even the man who was my father. I realized I no longer wished for any such meeting, on Earth or in Heaven.
That evening, as the bells tolled for my mother’s death, I wrote to Mr. Brownlow to inform him and to request, if it were possible, the names and addresses of the other eight children she had fostered over the years. Some of them might wish to come to her funeral. He replied almost at once, saying it was against hospital policy for me to have the names and addresses, but he would write himself to the ones whose addresses were still known. Could I please let him know when the funeral was to be? He praised my mother and went on to say that all her foster children had returned to the hospital sound in body and mind and that I must be very proud of her and honour her memory.
I don’t know if he was unable to reach the other orphans in time, but none of them appeared or so much as sent a note. This made me angry, it seemed so ungrateful, but perhaps they had all moved away. Once girls were twenty-one, or boys twenty-four, we were no longer wards of the hospital and were free to do whatever we liked with our lives. And the funeral was lovely, even without those others. The entire village came, and the hospital sent a wreath of white roses and ivy to lay on top of the casket. The church was decorated with holly and swags of pine, and the Misses Bray had provided two enormous pillar candles of beeswax for the altar. The smell of pine and honey filled the little church. Afterwards, they hosted a lunch at the White Horse Inn for all who wished to come. My father sat at the head of one of the long tables, but like a sleepwalker, he hardly seemed to know where he was. Snow fell silently outside, and we walked home hand in hand through the muffled world. Soon it was the New Year, and it seemed impossible that we could go on without her.
My father seemed suddenly bent and old, although he was not much past fifty. He almost never spoke unless I addressed him first. In truth, he did not have enough to occupy him, and so he brooded. I think, if he had not considered it a sin, he would have joined Mother.
I began to read to him, of an evening, from Robinson Crusoe, and this cheered him a bit. He found it admirable the way Crusoe managed to make a life for himself on that desolate island. I told him Mr. Dickens said the story was based on a real man and a real shipwreck.
“You don’t say so — a real man?”
“Yes, Father, and he really did all those things.”
“Oh my! And that black fellow, Friday, was he there too?
“I don’t know about Friday. I think so.”
He sighed. “I feel like that — shipwrecked — since she went. But perhaps you are my Man Friday, Hattie, here to keep me company?”
“I won’t leave, Father, you do know that? I won’t ever leave you.”
He leaned across to my chair and grasped my hand.
“I must tell you something, Hattie, that I never told her, never let on to anyone. When she first started this fostering business — she’d heard about it from a cousin over to Farnham — I didn’t like the idea, I didn’t like it at all. But when her first two babies died, and she was so low, I thought I should reconcile myself to the idea. Then Sam came, but she was used to it by then, and I got used to it as well — sometimes she had two babies at once! — and so she kept on. Just as well, because her own babies kept dying, poor things. But I never really liked those babies the way she did. Until you. Mebbe it was because of Jonnie, because he lived, even though the little girl died, but suddenly it all made sense, that she wanted to help raise a strange woman’s child, that she would put it to the breast. And you were such a lively little thing and so fond of us all . . . well, I just wanted you to know all this. I was as fond of you myself as if you were my own. And now — look at the blessing you have been. There are many natural daughters who would not have done as much as you. God works in mysterious ways, He truly does.”
I could say nothing in reply, just hold onto his hand and sob.
And later, when I came across a small packet of letters from the hospital, I found in one a lock of my hair, “as requested.” So it hadn’t been for my first mother after all.
8
In the summer of 1843 the Misses Bray came to see me. They wished to set up a proper school in the village; would I be interested in teaching there?
“But I have never taught anyone.”
“Harriet, you can read, and you write a good hand, as we saw in the note you sent us after your mother’s funeral. The rector vouches for you, and the need for education in this village is great. You are as yet unmarried and without the encumbrance of children at home. All that we would require is basic reading and writing, simple arithmetic, handicrafts for the girls and some religious instruction.”
“I would have to ask my father.”
“Lass,” he said, “it’s a good thing. It would provide you with a bit of money and keep you by me at the same time.”
“I’ve told you, Father, I won’t leave you, money or no money.”
“Do you not think of returning to London some day?”
“Not really. I like it here with you.”
This was not strictly true. I did like it in the village and I would never leave my father, but I sometimes felt very lonely. Most of the women my age were long married and had children. They greeted me warmly, but I could see that they didn’t feel we had much in common. Even my accent was different. I missed my walks through the busy streets — so much to look at and listen to. I felt old before my time, and although I loved my father, I knew that some day he would be gone and I would be all alone, with no one to cook for or care for. It was almost comical: on the one hand, I was a bastard, some unknown couple’s child and, in the world’s eyes, a nothing, a naught; on the other, my life in the Dickens household, where both my speech and manners had been polished and my love of reading encouraged — these things set me apart from the villagers in quite the opposite way.
The new curate came to call, a limp young man who fancied himself, and although I gave him tea and he praised my scones, I made no effort to attract his interest. I was sure someone appropriate would soon snatch him up, perhaps one of the young ladies from the big houses in the parish. As for myself, I could never be happy with such an earnest, joyless creature. I had a feeling his face might break if he laughed, and he constantly patte
d his lips with a white handkerchief.
What were my prospects if I stayed? Nursery maid to one of the rich families? Maybe even parlour maid, with ribbons in my cap? A word from Mr. and Mrs. Charles Dickens would assure me of good employment in that line. I decided being a teacher was vastly preferable to that, and so I told the Misses Bray I would be pleased to try it, and try it I did.
For four years I taught at that little school, and I did become quite good at it, expanding the syllabus to include geography, because I was interested in that subject. The Misses Bray bought a large map of the world, with all the Empire marked in pink. It hung on the wall behind my desk, next to a picture of the Queen and Prince Albert in their best clothes. It amazed the children to think that there could be such places as Africa or South America. They knew about Australia, if only to hear of, because that’s where the convicts went.
They wrote on their slates:
The North Wind doth blow
And we shall have Snow
And what will the Robin do then
Poor thing?
The size of my class depended on the season, for at sowing time and harvest time the older children disappeared to work in the fields alongside their parents. And if a new baby was born, an older sister might have to stop at home for a few weeks.
We burned peat in an iron stove, and I shall forever associate that sweet, acrid, eye-watering smell with the squeak of chalk on slates and the sound of children’s voices, more or less in unison, reciting the four times table.
And now, for the first time, I felt part of the community. I was “the schoolmistress”; I was “the teacher”; I had a clearly defined role. I went to church with Father every Sunday, never failing to say a prayer in the churchyard, where Mother lay beside her parents and her children. I helped at the village fetes, where my tatting and fancywork were very much admired by the gentry. My pies were applauded at the harvest dinners.
In the years since my return, I had continued my habit of long walks; sometimes Father went with me, but from spring until past harvest time he was usually too busy and seldom came home before dusk. I often thought of the day I left the Foundling, when Mr. Dickens had said to me, “Do you like to walk, Harriet?” and my pert reply. I’m surprised he didn’t turn me around right then and march me back inside.
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