When the child put the big pink mouth of the shell to her ear, she could hear a faint roaring sound, but she didn’t think that it sounded like the sea.
Best of all was when Mamma let her hold the translucent round white thing that lay on the centre of the cabinet. When she touched it, she could feel the pattern that curled and writhed across its surface. ‘That’s jade,’ said Mamma, ‘a Chinese jade button, all the way from Canton. Can you see the curly dragon on the button?’
Then one day there were other things on the cabinet that the child had never seen before: two pewter candlesticks and two little silver bowls. She had been dressed for the occasion in a new white dress with stiff white lace around the collar, and a big white bow tied in her hair.
‘What lovely brown eyes,’ said Father Ambrose, gazing down at the child. ‘Just like her mother.’ And Mamma clapped her hands and laughed delightedly.
The priest had a soft, plum coloured face and wore a long black robe with a large golden cross hanging on his chest. The centre of the cross was decorated with a green stone. The child couldn’t keep her eyes off it.
‘What’s your name, little one?’ asked Father Ambrose.
‘Grace,’ said Sully.
‘Grazia,’ said Mamma at the same time.
‘Grace! What a perfect name. A grace from God to be sure,’ cried the priest, then paused and added, ‘she’s very quiet, isn’t she?’
‘As good as gold, our dear little Grazia,’ said Mamma, ‘never the least trouble.’
‘We have a fine little chapel now,’ continued Father Ambrose, ‘might it not be better to wait a week or two and do it there?’
‘Oh no!’ cried Mamma. ‘Such a weak chest has little Grazia. So often ill. We cannot take her all that way. The wind and the chill, they would be bad for her.’
‘It should certainly be done as soon as possible. Why ever did Father Sheehan not arrange it earlier?’
‘He was away in Rome when she was born. It has weighed on my mind so long. I am so happy that you can do it.’
‘And you, little Grace,’ asked the priest, ‘are you happy too? Are you happy to enter into the family of Our Lord Jesus Christ?’
The child nodded, her eyes never leaving the golden cross on the priest’s chest.
Sully brought a taper, and the priest lighted the two candles on the cabinet, filling the room with the sweet smell of beeswax. The priest placed a gold-embroidered stole around his shoulders, and Mamma put her white lace kerchief on her head.
‘Quid petis ab Ecclesia Dei?’ Father Ambrose asked the child, who gazed back into his eyes, silent and uncomprehending.
‘She doesn’t understand the Latin,’ whispered Mamma, ‘I will say it for her’, and then, more loudly, ‘Fidem.’
‘Fides, quid tibi praestat?’
‘Vitam aeternam.’
While the priest and Mamma spoke, and the priest bent over to breathe on her with breath that smelled of sugar, and pressed his soft thumb into her forehead, the child wondered about Mamma’s words – about her chest and the wind and the chill. Why would Mamma say she could not walk in the wind? The child loved the wind.
Sometimes at dusk, when few people were about, Sully would take her out of the little green door in the wall of the garden, and they would walk along the narrow road that wove its way through the woods beyond. As they reached the corner of the road, she would see the river far away, flowing endlessly seawards, and beyond the river the murky outlines of a great city. The wind that rose up from the river blew against her face and through her hair. You could see tall ships on the river, raising their canvas sails towards the sky.
‘That one’s bound for Jamaica,’ Sully would say. Or, ‘See her: she’s the Northumberland, bound for the Indies. The Captain used to sail a ship like her.’
On those rare days when they ventured out of the green gate, Sully herself seemed somehow to swell in the wind. Wisps of her hair would blow loose, and in place of her normal silence, the words started to flow. She told the child stories of her own childhood in Greystones, across the sea in Ireland, and of the Captain’s travels. She would describe how the Captain and Mamma first met at a ball, far away, in the port of Naples, and how they fell in love and were married that very week so that the Captain could bring Mamma home to live with him here in Westcombe. The child loved those stories almost as much as she loved the strange tales Mamma would read her from the story book full of mysterious words and pictures.
‘Oremus,’ the priest was saying. ‘Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, Pater Domini nostri Iesu Christi, respice designare super hanc famulam tuam, Grazia …’
The priest picked up one of the silver bowls from the cabinet and, with a tiny silver spoon, scooped out a little pile of something white and held it to the child’s lips. She clamped them firmly closed. Her heart was beating in her chest like a butterfly.
‘It’s all right, cara mia,’ said Mamma gently. ‘Open your mouth. It’s only salt.’
Slowly, she parted her lips, and the spoon darted in onto her tongue. The taste of salt filled her mouth. Salt like the salt wind from the sea where the Captain’s ship disappeared over the horizon.
It was summer, and the light lasted long in the evenings. At the end of that day, after the child had eaten sweet black cake full of currants, rubbed her hair to remove the clammy feel of the water that Father Ambrose poured on her head, taken off the stiff new white dress and put on her old blue dress and grey pinafore again. Sully quietly took her left hand, and they walked down the garden path to the green door in the wall. In her other hand, Sully held a small bunch of white flowers, their stems wrapped in a damp cloth which dripped water onto the pebbles of path. The child quietly opened and closed her own right hand, imagining that it was grasping the hand of an invisible girl who walked silently beside her.
The air was still. The long shadows of the trees fell across the lane, but when they reached the corner and looked down at the river, she could see that its water still held the silvery light, treasuring it, reluctant to surrender day to night.
Far down in the direction of the sea, a tall, three-masted ship was silhouetted against the fading sky.
‘Where do you think that one’s going?’ asked Sully.
‘India,’ said the child. India was a dark purple-blue word. Like the night sky itself, dotted with tiny stars.
‘India!’ said Sully, giving her hand a little squeeze. ‘Sure enough, India is where she’s bound.’ And then, pensively, ‘It’s India the Captain was bound for when he was lost, you know. Your poor dear Mamma watched and waited so many days, believing he would come home. There are days when I think she’s watching and waiting still … And then that other sorrow …’
She fell silent for a moment, and then squeezed the child’s hand again and said more cheerfully, ‘She is so good to you, your mamma. Isn’t she good to you, my dear?’
‘Good,’ said the child.
‘You’re the light of her life, you know,’ said Sully.
And the child looked at the light on the river, silver grey and barely rippled by the wind – shining like the silver grey silk that covered the great bed in Mamma’s bedroom.
Further along the lane, there was a little latched gate which led through an old wall into a wide space, almost like a forest, full of cedar trees and big stones. In the evening light, the whiteness of the stones stood out amongst the trees whose dark branches curved downward, nearly touching the ground. Long grass and rosebay willow-herb grew thick in the patches of open ground. The willow-herb was tall enough to brush against the child’s cheeks as they made their way quietly through this garden of stones. A flock of birds, settling down for the night, chattered briefly in the branches of one of the great trees, and then fell silent.
Sully led her firmly towards two stones which stood together before a lichened stretch of the wall. One stone was grey and taller than the child herself. On it were words, and a picture of a sailing ship, carved into the stone. The ship had three m
asts, with sails unfurled on two of them. Stone waves curled around its hull.
The other stone was white, and very small, so small that the child had to squat down to touch it. The stone felt like the jade of the dragon button all the way from Canton. On this stone there were six words and a little engraved flower. In front of it stood a tiny alabaster vase, almost hidden by the grass. Sully bent to put her bunch of flowers in the vase, and then closed her eyes and folded her hands, her lips moving silently.
The child reached out one finger and ran it over the smooth white stone. She felt the folds of the carved flower, traced the outlines of its petals. A drop of water had fallen on the stone from the cloth that Sully was carrying. It ran down the stone and formed a droplet on the tip of one of the stone petals. The child touched the smooth globe of water, feeling its coolness, and then gently wiped it away.
Adah’s Story
February 1822
The Artist
THE DOORSTEP OF THE house in Spital Square looks the same as ever, its surface slightly stained, and dandelion leaves pushing up through the cracks between the stones. But the brown paint on the door is more faded than it was before, and has peeled away in a patch above the door handle.
Adah vividly recalls standing on this doorstep for the first time, years ago. She had been sent here by William with some trivial message about a meeting of the trustees. The message is long forgotten, but the moment will always be remembered. And then, much later, standing here again with her heart pounding, wanting to lift the brass knocker but lacking the courage. And today, here she is once more, and her heart is hammering as hard as ever, and her hand still trembles as she lifts it to knock on the door.
It is the manservant Stevens who answers, his face ageless and as sour as ever. He must surely recognize her, but gives no sign of doing so.
‘Please could you tell Mr DaSilva that Adah Flint would like to speak to him briefly?’ Adah is astonished at the steadiness of her own voice.
She steels herself for a blank refusal, but after a wait that seems to last forever, Stevens returns and gives a small sardonic nod. ‘The master will see you upstairs,’ he croaks.
The floorboards creak as she follows the old servant slowly up the stairs. Stevens seems to have grown slower and even more bandy-legged since she was last here. His breeches hang loose over his bony legs, and the seam in the back of his olive-brown jacket has split. Upstairs, though, the rooms are just as she remembers them.
The study, lined with orderly rows of books, and with its two watercolour paintings of Jamaica beside each doorway, opens into the chaos of the studio beyond. Every flat surface of the studio is covered with a jumble of sea shells, gourds, vases and shrivelled flowers. Raphael DaSilva has set up his easel in front of a cupboard door, and is painting a picture of the cupboard and the clutter within. She can see the faint outlines of scrolls of parchment, a glass of water and a tasselled cap appearing on the square of canvas. The air is heavy with the smell of pomanders and turpentine.
Adah waits while the artist pauses, brush in hand, putting a few further touches to his painting. While he does so, she looks up at the paintings of Jamaica that hang on either side of the study. She has loved these since the first moment she saw them. Even the name Jamaica sounds like music when Raphael pronounces the name of his birthplace. In one of the watercolours, a black woman and a fair-skinned man sit facing one another in an arbour covered with luxuriant tropical vines; in the other, a small dark boy holds out a bowl full of sugar to a man in a tricorn hat. In the background of this painting, through an open window, you can see tall palm trees and a glimpse of turquoise sea. Is the sea really that colour in Jamaica, Adah wonders idly. I must ask him sometime.
At last Raphael turns from his easel, wiping his paint-stained hands with a rag. His long thin face is unsmiling. His dark eyes gleam as brightly as ever, though she notices that there is now one vivid streak of grey, indeed almost of pure white, in his otherwise black hair.
‘Mrs Flint,’ he says gravely, ‘it has been a long time. I heard about your husband William. I am so sorry.’ She had forgotten the lilt of his voice, the unusual musical rhythm and soft burring of the letter R.
He motions her towards one of the big velvet-covered chairs in the study.
‘Mrs Flint will take tea,’ he says to Stevens, without asking her wishes. Perhaps he remembers that she always liked a cup of tea.
But once the servant has shuffled away, he bends towards her and says more gently, ‘How are you, Adah? Are you in any trouble? And how are the children?’
He means Sally, of course, but she replies carefully, ‘They are all well, very well. Except for poor Richard and his coughing. We have had to leave the courthouse, but we have lodgings nearby, in Blossom Street. It’s small, but comfortable enough. Did you hear that they made me Searcher after William died?’
‘I did indeed.’
‘It was kind, of course,’ she continues, the flow of words seeming unstoppable now they have started. ‘But still I cannot help but feel they do not really trust me. They have given me only little tasks until now, but now … now we have a mystery of a dead child. Poor thing. Poor little thing. She was perhaps seven years old. Mrs Yandall the scavenger found her in the old stable yard behind Magpie Alley, just a week ago today. She had fallen and struck her head on a stone. It seems a simple enough story, but …’
She is startled to find tears welling up in the corners of her eyes as she speaks. How along ago is it since I last cried, she wonders. To stop the tears that seem to be rising relentlessly through her throat, she turns away, fumbles with the strings of her little striped purse, and from its depths fishes out the button with its curling engraved dragon.
‘Did you ever see the like of this before?’ she asks.
Raphael takes the button and holds it carefully between his thumb and forefinger. His brown fingers are patterned with shadows of blue paint. She notices again how the knuckles show paler beneath the darkness of his skin. His face is the face of a scholar, but his hands are the hands of a labourer. He walks to the window and holds the button up to the light.
Adah recalls him standing just like that, his back to her, silhouetted by the light from the window, the last time she was here; and those other times, when she sat in this room, while Raphael turned the pages of a book with those paint-stained fingers, coaxing her to read the difficult words on the page.
He turns back towards her, shaking his head.
‘Chinese jade,’ he says, ‘but that is all I can say.’
‘I found it where the dead child was found, lying in the grass. But oh, poor child. No parents came forward to claim her. We had to bury her in an unmarked grave in Bunhill Fields. I have hunted high and low to find her family, but all I can find is a story of some poor, half-crazed woman who was seen in the inns around Shadwell, looking for her missing child, and by the time I heard that news, the woman was already dead, drowned in the river. But strangest of all …’ No, she cannot bring herself to speak about the ghost. The words die on her lips. ‘Strangest of all, when they told me the name of the woman who died looking for her child, I seemed to know it. I am sure I heard William speak that name, some years back now. Catherine Creamer, she was called.’
‘Catherine Creamer,’ says Raphael slowly, ‘Catherine Creamer … Yes … Yes … It seems familiar to me too. But where I have heard it, I cannot tell.’
The crockery rattles as Stevens hobbles into the room carrying a tray laden with the curious teapot with its pattern of cabbage leaves, two mismatched mugs and a plate of aged-looking muffins.
They are silent for a moment as Raphael pours the pale China tea. The steam rises thickly from her mug, and Adah suddenly realizes how cold this room is. She wraps her fingers around the pottery mug to warm them.
‘Do you remember anything more that William said about this woman, this Catherine Creamer? Does Beadle Beavis know anything of her?’ asks Raphael, once Stevens has gone.
‘I don�
�t like to ask Mr Beavis,’ says Adah. She finds it difficult to explain, even to herself, her reluctance to share this story with the beadle and the other officers. ‘As for William, for some reason, all I can remember him saying is “Poor Catherine Creamer, just like poor Mrs Dellow.”’
‘Ah!’ exclaims Raphael. ‘Now I see it! Dellow, of course. I don’t quite remember the story of Catherine Creamer, but surely you too must remember the case of Thomas Dellow?’
Once he says the words, of course she does. Thomas Dellow. The little stolen child. Such a famous story. How could she have forgotten?
‘Wait,’ says Raphael. ‘Let me see what I can find. When would it have been? Perhaps eight years ago now?’
He turns to the long row of brown covered volumes of the Aldwych Almanack which fill one shelf of his bookcase.
While he thumbs through one volume after another, Adah, out of nervousness, crumbles the muffin on her plate. It is dry and tasteless, and in any case, she does not feel hungry. She promised herself that she would never come to this house again, and she has failed in her promise. Mr Cansdell’s sly glances are bad enough, but worse still are the memories of William’s long silences in the last months of his life, when he would sit alone at the table, not reading the papers in front of him, drinking one glass of gin after another, the bubble of his slightly pompous pride deflated, his raucous laugh turned to ponderous sighs. He never said what it was that troubled him. When Sally was born, he had been delighted with the new baby, chucking her under the chin and holding her in the crook of his arm. They had continued to lie together in bed, and only little by little, as Sally grew and began to walk, the silences had grown, and he had come to bed either drunk and half asleep or wakeful, staring wordlessly into the darkness. Perhaps it had nothing to do with Sally’s birth. Perhaps it was something entirely different. She will never know how much, if anything, he suspected.
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