Her Mother's Daughter

by Evie Grace

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she cried out.

  He looked from the plate to the glass, then up at Agnes. His frown of surprise turned to a smile, then laughter. She felt the tension drain from her body. He wasn’t cross. It was going to be all right. She began to laugh too.

  ‘I couldn’t have done that if I’d tried,’ he chuckled as he scooped the carrot from his beer. ‘Oh, Agnes. Your efforts have cheered me up. When I’m sitting in that meeting later tonight, I’ll think of this. It will help me get through it.’

  ‘I’m glad to have been of assistance, even if it was quite unintentional,’ she said lightly. ‘Shall I fetch some bread and cheese?’

  ‘I’ll get it,’ he said, rising to his feet.

  ‘I don’t see how I could possibly go wrong with slicing some bread.’

  ‘Whereas I can imagine all kinds of possibilities.’ He grinned. ‘Sit back, Agnes.’

  She cleared the dishes later and washed up while Oliver went out to his meeting, and had retired to bed by the time he returned.

  The next day, she placed his laundry and bedsheets in the basket for Arthur to take to his mama. On the following afternoon, it came back, clean and fresh-smelling, the shirts ironed and collars starched. She felt uneasy handling the clothes that Oliver had worn against his skin – it didn’t seem right. She prepared a stew for dinner – onions, brisket of beef, carrots and turnips. She fair boiled the life out of it to make sure the vegetables were soft, but by the time it came for Oliver to eat it, they had turned to mush.

  ‘It makes an excellent soup,’ he said at the table. ‘Maybe you should add a tater or two next time.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ she said, feeling stupid. She was a dolt when it came to the kitchen.

  ‘How long do you think you have before the child is born?’ he asked, changing the subject.

  She placed her hand on her belly. ‘I reckon I have another two or three weeks.’ She was scared, not knowing what to expect, except for the pain that went along with childbirth. She gazed at her benefactor and wished that time would stand still so she could live in the moment for ever.

  Agnes looked out for Arthur every day so she could give him some breakfast, knowing that he wouldn’t have eaten at home. Today she had brought a slice of bread with cheese wrapped in brown paper for him.

  She saw him in the tan-yard, dressed in his coat with a piece of string tied around the middle and his cap pulled down, shading his eyes. He held his bucket in one hand, his knife in the other, but even though the hides were being unloaded fresh from the carts, stiff as boards with frost, he stood immobile, not darting about to obtain the trimmings of flesh as he usually did.

  ‘What’s wrong, boy?’ Agnes asked, walking across to him. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘Me ma, she’s gorn,’ he sniffed.

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘I tried to wake her this morning, but she won’t stir. I think she’s dead.’

  ‘Oh, Arthur. Why didn’t you say something before?’

  ‘I didn’t want to disturb you and Mr Cheevers.’

  ‘We must go and find out what’s happened.’ She thought of Mrs Fortune, the kindly laundry woman. She wasn’t that old. Why had she died? She felt as if she should have checked up on her and the boy before.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ Oliver asked as she made her way back across the tan-yard with Arthur crying at her side.

  Agnes explained. ‘I must go to her. I’m hoping and praying that he’s wrong, but I suppose he has seen enough of death to know …’

  ‘Indeed,’ Oliver said. ‘I’ll go. You stay and keep warm. I don’t want you falling ill again.’

  ‘No, I must come with you for Arthur’s sake.’

  He didn’t argue.

  They accompanied the boy to the slum, and went up the stairs to find Mrs Hamilton standing at the door to the Fortunes’ room.

  ‘It’s most inconsiderate, her dying like this. What am I to do? I can’t move her, and she has no family as far as I know except the little boy. The older one has done a runner.’

  ‘It’s all right, Mrs Hamilton,’ Oliver said. ‘God forbid that you should change your character now and show any compassion. I’ll take care of this.’

  ‘Well, it’s all right for some who can afford to show compassion. I feel sorry for the boy. His brother was a little tyke, but Arthur’s a sweetheart, always willing to run an errand in return for an apple or a ha’penny.’

  ‘Please, leave us. This isn’t the time,’ Oliver said.

  ‘What about my rent? The next lot’s due tomorrer. I ’ave people queuing up for the room, and I want it vacated by the end of today. I can’t afford to ’ave it standing empty.’

  ‘Just go, Mrs Hamilton,’ Oliver said crossly as Agnes tried to restrain Arthur from pushing past. She couldn’t hold him back. He ran and threw himself down on his mother’s bed where she lay with her eyes wide open, staring at the mouldy ceiling.

  ‘Ma,’ he sobbed. ‘Come back to us. Please.’

  Agnes remembered how Philip had checked her father’s pulse and breathing. She plucked up the courage to feel for the woman’s wrist, but she knew from the cold chill of her skin that it was too late. She had definitely passed.

  ‘Oh, Arthur, God has taken her up to Heaven on the wings of His angels.’ Her heart ached for him, and again for her papa who’d been snatched away from her so suddenly.

  ‘I tried to close ’er eyes,’ he said.

  ‘You did what you could,’ Agnes said. ‘She would be very proud of you.’

  ‘Agnes, take Arthur back to Willow Place,’ Oliver said, coming across to the bed. ‘I’ll make sure that everything is settled here. We will decide what to do later. As far as I know the boy has no other relatives.’

  ‘What about his brother?’

  ‘I ’aven’t seen Bert for ages,’ Arthur said.

  ‘Can we send word to him?’ Oliver asked. ‘Do you know his address?’

  ‘He told Ma he would get in touch with her as soon as he was settled. He didn’t do it, though – I think her heart broke, not knowing where he was.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it now, Arthur. I’ll place an advertisement in the papers and see if we can find him. He needs to know of his mother’s passing. Agnes, take him to Willow Place, please,’ Oliver said firmly.

  ‘Come with me,’ she said, gently taking Arthur’s hand.

  He gave his mother one last kiss goodbye and walked slowly from the room and down the stairs, watched by women and children curious to know more about the demise of their neighbour.

  Agnes took him back to Willow Place.

  He reeked of the tannery and had lice crawling through his hair. His clothes were stiff with dirt and his socks – she insisted on him removing his shoes before he entered the house – had gone into holes, revealing his dirty, overgrown toenails.

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss, Arthur, but you can’t stay here like that,’ she said. ‘You must have a good wash.’

  ‘I’ll only get dirty again.’

  She started to fill the tin bath in the kitchen with hot water.

  ‘You can undress behind the screen,’ she told him as she lugged buckets from the pump outside the back door ready to adjust the temperature. The hotter the better, she thought, looking at the state of him.

  ‘I’ll keep my clothes on, ta very much.’

  ‘You can’t get into the water with them on,’ she exclaimed. ‘Do as you’re told.’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ he said stubbornly, ‘and you can’t tell me what to do. You aren’t my ma.’ He burst into tears.

  ‘Oh, Arthur,’ she said softly. She remembered how she had persuaded Charlotte and Elizabeth to do as they were told by offering inducements.

  ‘If you take your clothes off, get into the water and give yourself a good scrub with soap, I’ll make you eggs on toast. If you let me comb those nits out of your hair, I’ll find you a piece of cherry cake.’ Whenever she made it, she thought of Henry and how it was his favourite
. It wasn’t the best cake in the world, but her baking had improved.

  ‘Really?’ he said, wide-eyed.

  ‘Really. Your ma is looking down from Heaven – I’m sure she’s pleased to see how you’re behaving like a young gentleman.’

  ‘Thank you, missus,’ he said.

  ‘Hurry up then, before the water gets cold.’

  She wasn’t sure how you bathed a child. She recalled how Nanny had instructed her to wash and then checked behind her ears for cleanliness. In spite of his protests, she did the same for Arthur before handing him a towel to dry himself. She went through his clothes, holding them in a pair of fire tongs so she didn’t have to touch them. He couldn’t possibly put them back on until they’d been laundered. She put them in a basket in the scullery.

  ‘What ’ave you done with my clothes, missus?’ Arthur said.

  She stared at him. He still had smudges of filth across his cheeks. She had looked behind his ears and completely missed the fact that he hadn’t washed his face. She sighed inwardly. It wasn’t easy looking after a small boy.

  ‘I’ll find you something else to wear.’ She went up to the linen cupboard and found one of Oliver’s shirts. It would have to do. They could tie a belt of some kind around his tiny waist, she thought as she went back downstairs and slipped it over his shoulders. He looked very sweet, dressed in a white shirt that was far too big for him. ‘We’ll find somewhere for you to sleep. I’ll ask Oliver, I mean, Mr Cheevers.’

  ‘Can’t I go home?’ he said sorrowfully.

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ She guessed that Mrs Hamilton’s new lodgers would already be settled in the room. ‘I’m sorry. You’re sure you have no one else who can take you in?’

  ‘No, missus. I’m an orphan and I’ll ’ave to look after myself. I can, you know.’

  ‘I know that you can, but it isn’t right. You’re far too young.’

  He shivered.

  ‘Let’s get you some food. You’re cold,’ she said. ‘Come along.’

  She watched him devour plateful after plateful of eggs, toast and cherry cake, until she was afraid that he would be sick. He didn’t care that the eggs were like rubber and the toast was black. Agnes frowned. She wondered how Mrs Fortune had managed to keep her son’s belly filled. He was like a chick, with his beak constantly open for food.

  Where would he stay? What happened to boys of his age who had no parents?

  Tears filled her eyes as she pictured him lost and alone, and subjected to the cruelty and deprivation of the workhouse. It had been said that her papa had made the Union in Faversham too comfortable for the inmates, but it wasn’t necessarily the same elsewhere.

  ‘I wish Ma hadn’t bin taken up to Heaven,’ he muttered. ‘Maybe she’s with Pa now. She used to cry her eyes out every night over what happened to him. Mr Cheevers – the young one, not the old gent – found him drunk and pulled him out of the liquor in the pit by his feet, but it was too late. He’d gorn. The old one paid for him to be buried proper like, in the churchyard with a headstone and all with his name writ large on it,’ he added proudly. ‘I had an aunt – I don’t remember her. And I had a sister, but I don’t recall her neither.’

  Oliver returned to the house after she’d put the boy to bed in Temperance’s old room.

  ‘How’s Arthur?’ he asked.

  ‘He washes up well,’ she said. ‘I borrowed one of your shirts. I’m sorry.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ve brought what little he had left at the lodgings house – Mrs Hamilton is a vampire of the poor, sucking the lifeblood out of them by forcing them to live in that overcrowded hovel.’

  ‘Without her, they would have nowhere to stay,’ Agnes pointed out. ‘She did show me some kindness when I lodged with her, although her manner was very abrupt.’

  Oliver shrugged. ‘Anyway, I’ve brought the clothes and few possessions that Arthur’s ma had left. I’ve had to leave it all outside, though – it’s riddled with fleas.’

  ‘I’ll go through it in the morning. Oliver, I wonder if … Please, let me know if I’m overstepping the mark. I mean, it’s your place to offer, not mine, but I wonder if we should take the boy in – for a few days, or a week at least.’

  Oliver gazed at her, his eyes gentle. ‘Oh, Agnes, that is exactly my sentiment. As long as you are happy to look after a lost soul …’

  ‘Of course I am. He needs mothering, but can you manage with another mouth to feed? He eats like a horse.’

  ‘I’m sure we can stretch to accommodate one more.’

  ‘Oh, thank you. It will put my mind at rest. I don’t suppose that Temperance will approve.’

  ‘It’s none of her business,’ Oliver said. ‘Don’t worry about her.’

  Temperance vented her opinion the next day when she discovered Arthur had moved into Willow Place. Agnes overheard her talking while she was back in the kitchen, trying to work out how to pluck a whole chicken that she had bought from the market, thinking it a bargain.

  ‘You can’t raise a guttersnipe from the gutter,’ Temperance told Oliver.

  ‘I think something can be made of him,’ her brother insisted.

  ‘I’ve just seen him snivelling in the yard.’

  ‘He’s just lost his ma. Don’t you remember how we felt when we were orphaned? I don’t know what would have happened to us if Grandpa hadn’t taken us in. He was a widower, living on his own and already suffering from the ague. He had plenty of excuses not to.’

  ‘He’ll take advantage of you, you mark my words.’

  ‘He’ll make himself useful,’ Oliver said.

  ‘And how about Agnes? Is she making herself useful?’ Temperance said snidely, without waiting for her brother’s reply. ‘People are talking, as I said they would.’

  ‘Oh, what do you know about it?’ Oliver said. ‘Let them say what they like. It’s like water off a duck’s back to me.’

  ‘I wish you could see what’s going on here. She’s trying to trap you into making an honest woman of her.’

  Agnes felt the heat rush up her neck as she pulled ineffectually at the bird’s plumage.

  ‘She isn’t. And if she was, well, I like her – I like her very much.’

  Agnes found herself with a handful of feathers. Her heart was pounding. He liked her – he’d said so.

  ‘You are being ridiculous,’ Temperance exploded with rage. ‘You cannot marry a whore.’

  ‘If you repeat that allegation once more, I shall ask you to leave my house and not come back. She’s a good woman. She’s kind, which is more than I can say of you.’

  ‘She is carrying somebody else’s child.’

  ‘A fact of which I am painfully aware,’ he said, his tone filled with regret. ‘Now, go and don’t show your face again until I’ve had time to calm down.’

  Agnes was even sorrier now that she’d taken so many wrong turns. No one would consider marrying her now, least of all someone she admired as much as Oliver.

  Temperance no longer visited Willow Place or sent her maid to help Agnes out with the housekeeping. Arthur stayed on, though, and the three of them took to sitting in the parlour or the study in the evenings. Agnes would sew and mend while Oliver read or wrote letters, and Arthur looked through picture books and talked. It was so very different from when she’d been at Windmarsh Court at the same age – seen, but not heard.

  ‘Would you like to learn to read?’ Oliver asked Arthur one day.

  ‘It looks like too much trouble, sir.’

  Arthur looked quite the dandy, Agnes thought. She had altered some second-hand clothes to fit him and cut his hair.

  ‘Perhaps Agnes can teach you. She has been a governess.’

  ‘I’d like that.’ She wondered how long she would stay, and how much progress he would make in that time. ‘You must go to bed now, Arthur. You have work in the morning.’

  ‘I’d rather stay up late,’ he said.

  ‘Listen to your elders and betters, young man.’ Oliver sounded stern, but he
was smiling.

  ‘All right, I’ll go.’ Sighing, Arthur got up and stomped out of the room.

  ‘Goodnight,’ Agnes called after him. ‘Don’t forget to say your prayers.’

  ‘I won’t, Ma,’ he called back.

  ‘Ma?’ Oliver raised one eyebrow. ‘Since when did he start calling you that?’

  ‘That’s the first time I’ve heard it.’ She smiled and shifted in her chair as the baby kicked. ‘Has anything been decided about dredging the river?’ she asked, remembering that he’d been to another meeting of the Sanitary Society the previous evening.

  He shook his head. ‘It was suggested that I paid for it to be done, but it would bankrupt me. One of my great-great-grandfathers set up the tannery with a shop across the road and there have always been complaints about the stink, but what can I do when I employ ten people? Isn’t it more important to provide a living for those who would otherwise be unemployed than worry about noxious odours?’

  ‘Well, I would agree with you on that.’

  ‘The tanneries and the dye factory can’t stop using the river – we depend on the water for washing and disposing of by-products. It’s been suggested that an alternative would be to lay drains that empty further downstream.’

  ‘Won’t that merely pollute the water for the villages outside Canterbury?’ Agnes said.

  ‘You’re right,’ Oliver said, sounding taken aback.

  ‘Are you surprised by that?’ Agnes asked. She refused to bite her tongue.

  ‘I apologise. Sometimes I forget that you’ve had the benefits not often granted to your sex of education and common sense. We are easily equals in intellect.’ He blushed to the roots of his hair. ‘I’m always pleased to hear your opinions. You remind me of my cousin in many ways. In fact, I’ve received a letter from our dear Marjorie. She’s hoping to call on us shortly.’

  ‘Oh,’ Agnes gasped in dismay.

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased to see her again,’ Oliver said, frowning.

  She couldn’t possibly meet her beloved Nanny, not in her condition. She had gone against her teaching. She had let her down, especially after all she had done for her in helping her find her place at Roper House. Nanny had given her the opportunity of making a comfortable living and she had thrown it away.