Biddy tried to smooth the wrinkles with her hand, wondering when she’d again get the chance to press an iron to the faded striped cotton that was her only nice garment. The high collar button was loose and Biddy feared it would fall and be lost before she’d have a chance to mend it.
She made up a story. ‘I’m just popping out,’ she said. ‘I shan’t be long.’
‘Oh yes?’ said Queenie.
‘Just an errand. For the Reverend.’
‘What to get?’
‘Claret. From the wine merchant.’
‘In your Sunday skirt and hat?’
Biddy nodded in the face of this implausibility and Queenie stared for a full five seconds at the little portmanteau Biddy held in her gloved hand, before adding, ‘So, I suppose I’ll be doing supper on my own then.’
‘No, you won’t,’ said Biddy, hastily, ‘I’ll be here to help you, just like I always am. You’ll see. I’m only popping out.’
‘Oh, well, that’s good then,’ said Queenie in a tone that was stark with its lack of conviction.
Biddy felt the tears threaten again as she held the eye of her friend. ‘Best be off. Don’t want Mrs Rattray asking questions about why I’m taking so long.’
The ghost of a victor’s smile appeared at Queenie’s mouth, and with sickening certainty Biddy realised that the prospect of becoming an ‘upstairs’ maid had meant far more to Queenie than Biddy herself had. While Queenie couldn’t have guessed the course of sending Old Mrs Daws into Topp’s Store to make trouble, she was transparently pleased with the outcome. Queenie set to sweeping up the leaves as Biddy stepped off the veranda and walked the garden path. At the little wrought-iron gate she turned and hoped her friend would have a wave for her at least, but Queenie’s look was hard. The gate squawked as Biddy pulled it open. She felt a rush of emotion at the thought she’d never hear it again.
‘Biddy?’ Queenie called out as the gate closed.
Biddy turned with hope in her face.
‘Was that just a story? About going to buy claret?’
Biddy drew breath, the hope gone as she saw smirking Queenie for what she really was: no friend at all. She pulled herself upright, her back straight.
‘It’s the God’s honest truth,’ Biddy said, and was gone.
• • •
As she waited patiently on the other side of Bridge Road from Topp’s Store, watching the late afternoon customers come and go, Biddy constructed a Christmas of her own inside her head. In this Christmas she was just a little girl, and her mother, Ida, not much older than a girl herself, led her by the hand in the cool evening air towards a weatherboard hall where inside, Ida promised, Biddy would see a tree more wonderful than any tree she’d seen before. And indeed, once they were through the wooden doors Biddy beheld a very fine tree; one that Ida called a ‘mountain pepper’, erected proudly upon the stage. But that wasn’t why it was special; the tree’s foliage was trimmed with wreaths of coloured paper and candles; candles that were lit as the sun went down. Hanging among the decorations were little numbered gifts; dozens and dozens of them. Every child inside the hall was handed a number written on a card, and when all was ready, a nice man called the numbers out and each child came forward in turn to receive a matching gift from the tree. Biddy held number thirty-two; her present was a sweet-faced little doll made from cotton scraps.
The comfort this brought felt, at first, like the comfort that came with fantasy. Yet as Biddy’s mind sought out embellishments that were in no way extravagant, but quite ordinary, she had the jolt of awareness that her head was not in fantasy at all, but memory, which was not where she liked to be. Once opened, however, that door wasn’t easily closed; the memory showed itself in full. Biddy remembered walking home from that Christmas with her mother, happy and laughing, clutching the doll to her chest. Ida was laughing, too, until all of a sudden she stopped. They had reached a street corner. If they continued along the road they’d been walking on, they’d be home in close to an hour. But if they turned at the corner, they’d make use of a shortcut and easily be safe in their beds in half the time.
‘What’s wrong, Mum? It’s a shortcut,’ Biddy had pressed, looking up at Ida.
But Ida had been reluctant to turn, peering anxiously around the bend.
‘But it’s not got nasty men,’ Biddy had protested. Looking down the leafy side street, all she could see were houses; nice ones, big ones with gardens. What could there be to fear down there?
Ida assented and they made the turn, continuing on their way, but the laughter had gone; Ida was silent, gripping Biddy’s hand tightly in her own. Biddy felt her mother’s apprehension and looked about her wide-eyed, wordlessly questioning every house they passed, every gas-lit window, every well-cut lawn. What could be so wrong here?
‘I don’t understand why you’re being strange,’ Biddy had said at last.
But her mother said nothing.
Realisation dawned like a new birthday. ‘Is this where you work, Mum?’
Ida stopped dead, staring at Biddy’s upturned face in shock. It was all the answer Biddy needed. ‘Hurry up,’ Ida said, dragging Biddy faster along.
Not another word was said between them while they walked the full length of the attractive street. With every step Biddy studied the nice homes, trying to determine for herself which one it was, the place where her mother laboured for a living; the place her mother had always told her she was never to ask about, because she would never be allowed to know.
For a final moment before she blocked it all out, the image of lovely Ida completed the picture, with her milk pale skin and soft brown hair. They were safe at home again and Ida was bending to kiss Biddy in her bed where she held the new doll.
A young Chinese market gardener’s boy staggered past Biddy, lost in this memory, while she waited under the shop awnings. He was barefoot in the dust, his wilted wares in buckets suspended from a bamboo pole slung across his shoulders. Glancing at Biddy as he went by he suddenly stopped short with surprise.
‘Biddy?’
Recognition jolted her from her thoughts. ‘Johnny!’
He couldn’t believe he was looking at her. ‘But you missing – you dead!’
She gave a horrified intake of breath.
‘You gone run away from home months back,’ said the Chinese boy, pointing at her now, excited. ‘All people in Carlton think you dead. Your mum very sad. But here you in Richmond! You alive!’
‘Johnny, please,’ said Biddy, smiling, trying to rub the anxiousness from her voice. ‘I did run away from Carlton, it’s true, but that was a year and a half ago – Mum knows where I am now, I told her, you see.’ She held her nerve for what was the most barefaced of fibs.
‘You sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure. I’ve been working in service. You mustn’t be upset.’
He regarded her, thoughtfully, bamboo pole dipping up and down across his shoulders. ‘But why you run away? You were happy. What go wrong?’
She straightened herself, dignified. ‘I’m afraid that’s none of your business . . .’
He considered this. ‘You happy now?’
She blinked away all the events at the manse. ‘I’m beside myself!’
He smiled. ‘You want veggies then, Biddy?’
Biddy laughed and shook her head, looking past him at another customer entering Topp’s. ‘Not today, Johnny, sorry. Maybe next time you’re in Richmond?’
‘Why you dressed up? Not even Sunday yet.’
Biddy went to make up another story, and then stopped herself. She just shrugged instead.
The lad wiped a wrist across his brow, tipping his coolie’s hat back from his head so that he could see Biddy’s features better, scrutinising her. ‘It’s been too hot,’ he commented at last. ‘Getting better but. Sun go down. People come out.’
‘Yes,’ said Biddy. ‘It’s a little better now.’
She smiled for politeness’s sake but gave nothing more, praying he’d go away. Johnny
took the hint and ambled on, following the track of the gutter.
‘I tell you mum I see you,’ he shouted over his shoulder.
‘You do that,’ she called, then added, ‘and Merry Christmas!’
• • •
The last customer left Topp’s and the store was once again empty for the moment. Lifting her hem to keep the skirt from the dust, Biddy immediately stepped onto the macadamised gravel and dashed across the road, giving space to an ambling horse and carriage, and tripping around the manure piles. Reaching Topp’s veranda on the other side, she saw through the windows that Tom was still behind the counter and alone. She beamed with the enormous relief of it and went to let herself inside, ready to announce her unfortunate news, but Tom looked up and saw her doing so. He gave a firm shake of his head, frowning at her, and Biddy was devastated. Her hand froze at the door handle. Tom looked very hard at her for several more seconds, distanced by the window, every drop of warmth in his face gone, before he took his eyes from hers and went back to his newspaper.
The hasty plan Biddy had made about what she was going to do with herself evaporated, given that it had involved the assumed participation of Tom. With it went the fine impression Tom had made across the months of shared words.
Biddy opened her little portmanteau on the footpath and found the last remaining sheet of a packet of writing paper among the things she’d packed. Further rummaging unearthed the blunted stub of a pencil. Biddy leant against the windowpane and wrote a few quick words, knowing that Tom would see what she was doing if he looked up again. When she was done she glanced through the glass and saw his eyes flick back to the newspaper; he’d been watching her. Biddy folded what she’d written in half and popped it into the slot meant for letters.
• • •
It was clear that Tom thought she had gone when he came to the front door and took the note from the letterbox. But Biddy had not gone, she’d simply returned to her spot across the road, where she tucked herself into the late afternoon shadows.
She watched him stand there and read it, and she recited in her mind the words she had written.
Please do not worry for me, Tom. I have a brother who is a floorwalker at Alston & Brown. I have gone to visit him now in Collins Street. He will be very pleased to see me and will let me share his accommodation. This is why you mustn’t worry. Your loving friend, Biddy.
She saw him look around, as if suspicious of one of her pranks. He could see no sign of her. Then he stared for another long minute at Biddy’s note. She hoped her handwriting spoke to him of a girl he had barely known, a girl who had presented only a sliver of her true self, and that sliver disguised by play-acting.
Biddy saw him slip the note inside his pocket and then, before his fingers could even have let go, he slipped the scrap out again, tore it in half, and then another half again, before dropping the pieces into the street.
• • •
The woman’s name was Miss Evangeline Garfield – Biddy learned that by lingering near the Collins Street doors and overhearing the Alston & Brown store assistants as they greeted the arriving customers – or rather, greeted the arriving customers they knew by name. Miss Evangeline Garfield was greeted warmly. No one greeted Biddy because no one knew her from a bag of salt, but no one stopped her entering the elegant ladies’ fashion emporium either, which thronged with shoppers, and after a while it was as if Biddy was invisible.
The tall and slender Miss Garfield was a respected governess of thirty, Biddy further discovered by continuing to eavesdrop on the shop girls while the lady browsed; Miss Garfield was known to have a “weakness” for fashion, or so she had claimed in the past. This flaw, or virtue, depending on personal perspective, manifested itself in visits made irregularly yet memorably to Alston & Brown. Each time she condescended to call Miss Garfield would exclaim that the styles she found within had changed wildly and unrecognisably since the time she visited last. The shop girls thought this hilarious. If this so-called weakness actually made for rather more frequent visits to the establishment Miss Garfield would discover that styles did not really change, from season to season, quite so radically or sweepingly as she supposed. Fashion evolved, one of the shop girls stated, in the manner of animal life as so convincingly described in Mr Darwin’s theories. It did not burst forth fully formed, wholly and utterly without precedent.
It was the shop girls’ belief that Miss Garfield did not know many ladies with a genuine failing for fashion. She had a sole pupil, they believed, a girl of sixteen, who was also fond of clothes, but due to restrictions placed upon this girl’s movements was not permitted to acquire items by any means other than mail ordering from catalogues.
Biddy stored all this purloined information in her head. Something about the governess’s manner greatly drew Biddy, although she couldn’t have explained why, except to say that there was a hint of her own mother’s kindness in the expression about her eyes. Miss Garfield looked like a nice person. Biddy made her way towards her, being still invisible to the staff herself.
Miss Garfield was staring at the fashion array around her in bafflement.
‘Are you lost?’ Biddy offered in a friendly voice behind her.
Miss Garfield turned and found pleasingly featured Biddy smiling at her with her clean, white, evenly spaced teeth from beneath a pair of sparkling brown eyes and a sweep of well-kept, chestnut hair arranged in the Gibson Girl style, upon which a broad straw hat was perched. Biddy was shorter and much younger than Miss Garfield, her serviceably plain Sunday best in uncommon contrast with the lavish clothes on display.
‘Perhaps I am a little lost,’ said Miss Garfield.
‘Let me help you then,’ said Biddy, ‘I know this place backwards.’ And before the governess had quite considered it, Biddy linked her arm in hers and waltzed her towards a display of mannequins. ‘See here some very nice new styles in shirtwaists,’ said Biddy, hoping the governess would pay little attention to the faded old garment she herself was wearing. ‘Look at the tucking in these; clusters in the centre back and in the sleeves. Very finely done. And this one has lace insertions alternating with the tucks, which makes it particularly pleasing, especially with the bishop sleeves.’
Miss Garfield agreed.
‘Shall we select you some for trying on?’ Biddy asked.
‘I don’t know . . .’ said Miss Garfield, even though she was evidently feeling much more comfortable than she had when she’d entered the store.
‘But you must try them on, you’ll be pleased with how nice they look, and why not combine them with one of these lovely five-gored flared skirts?’ Biddy went on, seizing items from display. ‘The fabric is summer weight, you’ll see, with four gathered ruffles along the hem and an inverted box-plait at the rear.’
‘Well . . .’ said Miss Garfield, taken aback by Biddy’s apparent knowledge and keenness. But she allowed herself to look properly at what was on show and then cast her eyes upon the wardrobe choices she herself had made when getting dressed that very morning. It was clear she didn’t much like the comparison. ‘I confess I’m feeling somewhat out of date,’ she whispered.
Biddy was sympathetic. ‘You and me both,’ she said. ‘The way time moves on, it’s dizzying, isn’t it? Who can keep up with the rate of changes?’
Miss Garfield blinked at that. ‘I really came here to consider new hats.’
‘Nice! Lots to choose from. Not all of them with stupid prices attached either.’
Miss Garfield appreciated that. ‘Do you know, I may be tempted to purchase rather more than a hat, if my needs are met.’
‘I’ve got every faith they will be,’ said Biddy, winningly.
Miss Garfield obviously decided she could trust this shop assistant, despite her unusually familiar manner. Friendliness always went a long way and Biddy knew she was very good at being friendly. ‘I’ve visited this store in the past,’ Miss Garfield told her, ‘and found things . . . quite unpleasant here.’
Biddy tut-tut
ted, dismayed.
‘I’ve even walked away without purchasing a single item,’ the governess added. ‘It’s been because of the service I’ve encountered; almost amounting to contempt, really, and quite uncalled for. It’s as if I was offering coins of a foreign currency.’
‘That’s disgraceful,’ said Biddy, meaning it. ‘Strikes me that any shop which makes a lady feel small just for trying to buy a dress doesn’t deserve to be a shop at all, and most likely won’t remain one for very much longer.’ She looked around her, accusingly. ‘If you see the culprit that offended you last time, point him out to me, won’t you, miss? He might have some comeuppance due.’
Miss Garfield took a good, long look at Biddy for a moment, at arm’s length. Then she enquired: ‘Are you a country girl?’
Biddy hesitated, unsure of what sort of answer might be called for. ‘Are you, miss?’
‘I was born near Castlemaine.’
‘Takes one to know one,’ laughed Biddy, ready to concoct another story should more details be required.
‘How nice,’ said Miss Garfield, feeling ever more at ease in Biddy’s presence, ‘I live at Summersby now. Have you heard of it?’
For some reason the name rang the very faintest of bells with Biddy, as if it was a half-remembered word from deep in the past that she’d heard spoken of once or twice, perhaps, but not in many years. Hearing it again it had a magical quality, romantic even, which was probably why it had stuck in her head in the first place. Or perhaps she was mistaken and had simply seen it written in a newspaper? ‘I think perhaps I may have read of it somewhere . . .’ she said, vaguely.
‘Most likely,’ said Miss Garfield. ‘It’s a very great house, quite famous in the Castlemaine District. I’m the governess there. Summersby is also the name of the little village that is situated near to the property. Very pretty country.’
Biddy took note of all this although she scarcely knew why.
‘I could tell that you were a county girl,’ said Miss Garfield. ‘It’s your manner, you know.’
‘Yes?’
The Secret Heiress Page 8
