However, when we arrived back at Woodclyffe Hall, the butler immediately told me I was wanted by Mrs M in the morning room. I had planned to give Charles a change of clothes before allowing his mother to see him, but this was not to be.
I knocked lightly at her door.
‘Come in,’ she called from inside.
I stepped in, carrying Isabella, who was asleep in my arms, and holding Charles by his rather grubby hand. In his other hand he still held the broken dove’s egg.
‘Ah, Mrs Winter,’ she said, looking up from the bureau, where she was sitting writing a letter. ‘You decided to bring the children home in the end, I see.’
‘I beg your pardon, Mrs Murray. We just went for a nature walk.’
‘A nature walk?’ She hissed the words in contempt. ‘And what, may I ask, was the purpose of that?’
‘To teach Charles about the natural world,’ I said, faltering beneath her stare.
‘Charles does not need to know about the natural world, Mrs Winter. He needs to know mathematics, religion, literacy and Latin. There is nothing useful to be gained in showing him leaves and frogspawn, or in allowing him to go to the woods and come home covered in mud. If you had discussed your plans with me beforehand – as I would have expected from a young lady in my employment – I’d have told you this and put an end to it.’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Murray. I did not mean any harm. And I thought as it was Charles’s birthday …’
She smiled thinly. ‘Yes, I am aware of this. I did come up to the top floor to wish him many happy returns, so imagine my surprise when I found the place deserted. I shan’t go near him now, as he is grubbier than I have ever seen a small boy in my life, but perhaps I shall pay a visit this afternoon.’
Beside me, Charles stood silent, his shoulders hunched and his gaze on the floor. His mother took no interest in the egg he was so proud of and wanted to show off.
I took his hand again. Chastened, we returned to the top floor.
Isabella was still asleep, so I put her in her crib and changed Charles’s clothes. He, too, was tired from the morning’s walk, so before starting lessons, I sat with him on my lap. He began to nod off and as his eyes rolled sleepily in his head, he leaned against me and murmured, ‘Mama.’
The reverend and I drafted our appeal to the board, regarding the release of Arabella from the orphanage. They were due to meet before Christmas, which felt like a horribly long wait, but my hopes for having her back made each day more bearable. There had been no recent news about the improvements to the nursery, but the governors’ first response was in full agreement with the inspectors’ recommendations, and John Sutton and I shared an optimism that standards might slowly get better for our infants. I couldn’t help praying that such displays of official compassion might also be applied to my own case.
Life in the nursery was improving for everyone. Miriam also seemed happier than I had ever seen her. She went about her work with an unusual lightness of mood, and I now often heard her singing. There was a very sweet tone to her voice, which surprised me.
I knew, however, that all this new happiness was down to her romance with John Sutton. I had my reservations about it, because I couldn’t imagine for one minute that John saw Miriam as anything other than a dalliance from which to gain some experience before taking a wife. Certainly, his father would never have allowed a match between his son and a convict. The shame such a union would bring to the family was unthinkable.
I also feared the consequences, should a baby result, and could only hope she’d taken some advice from Ma Dwyer about how to prevent such a disaster – if their relationship had gone as far as I was afraid they might have done.
She was just sixteen years old.
34
Things was pretty much the same in the nursery afterwards, for all what I was expecting the wrath of Reverend Sutton’s God to fall like a lightning bolt on my head. It didn’t. Nothing much happened at all.
We kept our getting up to no good a secret well enough, though there was times I got bored of keeping it to ourselves, because I was on a fair way to loving that John Sutton and wanted to shout it from the nursery roof, so everyone’d know. But John said that wasn’t a good idea and would get us into a lot of trouble.
So I said to him, ‘I think you should run away with me, then we can be together without worrying about this and that and the Lord and everyone.’
John said no, that wasn’t possible, because he’d got to take the nursery over from his father, and transform it into a wonderful place for babies to live and grow in. I s’posed that was reasonable enough, but I’d got romantic feelings in me and reckoned if he loved me like he said he did, then he wouldn’t care about nothing except us being together.
But, of course, I’m wiser now. I know there wasn’t no such thing as love in that John Sutton’s heart, only cruelty.
Hattie said they was all of em cruel, that all they cared about were emselves and keeping up a religious show for the world outside. On the inside, she said, they was as good as dead. She said it was true of the whole Sutton family together.
I sat with her in the family kitchen one evening, when John was off drinking in the Black Horse with his father. It was the first time she’d spoke to me proper for months, and I asked her what she reckoned about the chances of a free girl making a Romany living in Parts Beyond the Sea. She just shrugged and said, ‘You can try it,’ but it felt to me like she didn’t have much hope in the matter. She’d had a heavy heart on her lately, hardly spoke to no one and hardly looked at em, neither, if she could help it. She shut herself in her attic room and no one except the reverend much saw her. I only knew he saw her because sometimes his wife’d ask if Hattie was still alive, and he’d nod his head in a wise sorta way and say yes, she was still alive, but unhappy. And his wife’d purse her lips together in a sour sorta way and say that was good.
I said to Hattie, ‘Is the reverend always off at the Black Horse at night, or is it me imagining things because of being so tired?’
Hattie snorted. ‘You’re not imagining anything. He’s there as much as he can be. He’s not a good man, Miriam. Not good at all. At least, half of him is good – the half the rest of the world sees. The other half is bad all the way through to the core. I think the Lord himself is going to have trouble deciding what to do with that man come Judgement Day. He can’t throw half of him into hell and half of him up to heaven, so it’s my opinion that the whole lot of him is just going to have to be dropped in the pit full of fire.’
Well, this was interesting to me, because even though I’d got my suspicions about it all, and even though I’d got em for a long time, it was a kushti thing to hear the truth spoke by someone what knew.
‘He brought me here because I was weak and exhausted and unable to work anymore,’ Hattie said. ‘No one knew what to do with me. The reverend saw it as being another chance to pretend to the world what a good and caring man he was, so he took me in – said I could live in his attic room for nothing, and rest and be cared for and, maybe in time, I’d be useful again and could work. Well, that wasn’t ever gonna happen. The Reverend Sutton doesn’t take care of me any better than he takes care of those sickly babies down there. He doesn’t care about anyone. It’s all just for show. But the trouble is, Miriam, it’s such a good show, no one out there would ever believe it if you told them the truth. They’d just think you were crazy and ungrateful, too, so there’s no point saying anything about it.’
‘I reckon Ma Dwyer knows,’ I said.
Hattie nodded. ‘Yes. She knows. She runs a brothel. Anyone running a brothel can’t help but know the reverend’s real side. That family are cruel through and through, the whole lot of em.’
And then she did something what shocked me. She spat noisy on the floor of the family kitchen, and didn’t even wipe it up when she went to bed.
Well, I ain’t sure if Hattie’d gone mad on the inside, or if all that talking about the Reverend Sutton’d suddenly made
a whole lot of bad feelings seem real. Whatever it was, the next day, she was gone.
The reverend was the first to notice. He come down to the kitchen in the morning, calm as anything, but frowning a bit. ‘Miriam, have you seen Hattie today?’ he asked.
I shook my head. ‘No, sir,’ I said. ‘I haven’t.’
‘When did you last see her?’
‘Last night, sir. Just before bed.’
He frowned a bit harder. ‘She is nowhere to be seen, and her clothes are gone.’
‘I ain’t seen her, sir,’ I said.
He left me alone and I s’pose he went off hunting for her, in the way a farmer’d hunt for a pig what’d escaped.
So anyway, the day went passing by, and there was a lot of talking about Hattie, but no one found her. Mrs Sutton asked the grocer and the butcher, and I asked Ma Dwyer, and Rose asked the convict mothers, but no one’d got sight of her nowhere. And in the end, when we was all sitting in the dining room, spooning ox-head soup into our mouths, the Reverend Sutton heaved a big sigh and said, ‘I suppose we’ve lost her.’
And that was that. He didn’t contact the police force or do nothing else – just put his hands together a minute or two and prayed a little bit, and then it looked like we just had to see the facts as they was. Hattie’d gone, and there wasn’t no finding her.
After the first few times, I come to quite like getting up to no good, instead of just spending my evenings watching the goings-on at the Black Horse. There was times I wondered why I’d been afraid of getting up to no good for so long, but then I remembered Katie-May and how getting up to no good was what’d brung about her sorry end, and ended up afraid again.
Ma Dwyer give me some advice. She was a woman what couldn’t get the wool pulled over her eyes, and she’d got her suspicions early on. She didn’t have nothing bad to say about it, though – not like Mrs Sutton’d of done if she’d known – and she just give me plenty of lemon juice and vinegar from the stock she kept for her girls and said, ‘Mix it with water and use it religiously, Miriam, and you shouldn’t come to no harm.’
Well, I used them douches every single time. Not once did I ever forget or get too lazy for bothering, because I was a sensible girl at heart and I knew what risks come with getting up to no good, especially with a reverend’s son. But for all the care I took, it still went and happened, and a few months after that first time, I started getting myself signs of a baby.
I couldn’t believe it at first, and I didn’t tell no one about it, not even Rose. I knew if I told Ma Dwyer, she’d help me out, like what she’d done to Katie-May, but the thought of how things’d turned out for Katie-May put me off that, even if it was more likely that things’d turn out lucky now we wasn’t living on that dirty, stinking ship.
I wasn’t sure how Rose’d take the news, neither. She knew what I got up to with John Sutton. We didn’t never talk about it, but she knew, because she was a woman what could tell stuff about me with just one look in my face, as if she was my mother or something, and a proper strict one at that. I ain’t sure how she managed it, but that was the way it was.
The only thing she ever said about it was this: ‘Do you love him, Miriam?’
‘Who?’ I said, because I wanted to pretend like I didn’t know what she was on about.
‘John Sutton,’ she said.
I shrugged. ‘A bit.’
‘You don’t love someone a bit, Miriam. Loving someone a bit is no love at all.’ And she spoke like she was an expert on such matters.
So I said, ‘Yes, I love him.’
And then she didn’t say no more about it, and never said nothing about no lemon juice or vinegar, and I s’posed she must just of reckoned I’d got it sorted.
Then one Monday morning, when Rose was sleeping in the room we shared, what meant John Sutton couldn’t, I suddenly come over with a feeling of ill round my insides. I threw the cover off myself quick, pulled on my smock and ran down the stairs to the yard, where I hid myself on my hands and knees behind the outhouse, and got sick as a dog.
Rose followed me, in that caring way she had. She helped me up and said I should go back to bed and not move for the rest of the day; she’d see to it that Mrs Sutton and the reverend knew I was too ill for working.
‘It’s just something I ate, Rose,’ I said. ‘Maybe it was a bad ox in the ox-head soup yesterday, and now I’m rid of it.’ I got myself to stand up and tried hard to look normal, so she wouldn’t suspect nothing.
But Rose wasn’t stupid, though she didn’t say nothing about it that day. She waited till it happened again, a few mornings later, and then she said, ‘If you confide in me, Miriam, I will keep your secret.’
Well, at that, I couldn’t help myself and though I prided myself on being a strong sorta body – of the kind what don’t go welling up and crying at nothing – I broke down right there and then and cried my heart almost outta my ribs. I said how I’d got in a sorry way, and the man was John Sutton, and he wasn’t gonna be too pleased about it and neither was his father, for that matter. I couldn’t see how anything kushti’d ever come of this, because it’d bring too much shame on the Sutton family, and I could see plain as plain how I was gonna end up spending my days in the crime class at Cascades.
‘Hush now, Miriam,’ Rose said. ‘You don’t know this for certain. John Sutton is a good man. Perhaps there will be a ring on that finger and a happy life ahead for you.’
I looked at her and smiled a sad sorta smile, because I knew how much it’d be hurting her – to think she’d be losing a friend to a man like John Sutton, and to know I’d be getting a baby into the bargain, when she’d gone and lost all hers.
And the thought of all that hurt for Rose made me hope in a strange sorta way that I wouldn’t get no offer of a ring, or no respectable life, for all what I knew those’d be the best things all round.
Pretty well every day from then on, Rose nagged at me to tell John Sutton the truth about my plight. I ain’t afraid to admit it wasn’t no easy thing to think of doing, and I put it off as long as I could, though I knew there’d be no putting it off for ever. Already, I was getting extra flesh round my hips. Folk was gonna notice extra flesh on me sooner than they’d notice it on other girls. No one’d ever be stupid enough to put it down to too much ox-head soup.
‘John,’ I said one evening, just after we’d got up to no good. I reckoned that was a kushti sorta time to break the news, because he’d be in a happier mood than usual and too busy thinking about sleep to get angry or worried. ‘John, I gotta tell you something.’
‘What’s that?’ he asked, in a sleepy way.
I took myself a deep gulp of air and swallowed hard. ‘There’s a baby in me,’ I said.
He didn’t say nothing for a while. Then, ‘Are you sure?’
I nodded my head and, without really knowing what words was coming out my mouth, I found myself saying, ‘I’m sorry, John.’ Outta the shame of it, I buried my face in my pillow and felt the tears come to my eyes. Later on I was cross with myself for saying such a thing at all – it wasn’t all my own fault, that was certain, and now I’d gone and admitted the guilt, just as if I was a girl of the criminal sort.
John sat up. ‘It’s all right, Miriam,’ he said. ‘We’ll be all right. We’ll get married. That’s what we’ll do. It’ll be fine.’
I looked up at him. ‘Really?’ I said, not much believing in his words. ‘You gonna marry me?’
‘Of course,’ he said, and smiled. ‘I won’t abandon you, Miriam. I’ll talk to my father. There’ll be a ring on this finger by tomorrow night, I promise.’
And he took my hand and kissed it. I got a feeling of relief in me so big it almost took my mind off the fact that I’d have to spend my whole life long running this nursery with John Sutton on my arm, and probably his growing-old father upstairs. But then I thought how much better that’d be than a life lived out in the prisoner class and I was grateful. It didn’t do a girl no good to want too much. I knew that well enou
gh.
Next morning, I busied myself in the usual way, mixing up the breakfast gruel and slopping it into bowls for the convict mothers and the convict children what could eat more than just milk. I ate a bowl of it myself, and Rose ate it, too, but I didn’t give none to the Sutton family. They’d got their own helpings of rich, thick porridge, or poached eggs, or kippers, what they made for emselves in their little kitchen. It didn’t do for em to be seen eating better food than what they give their poor folk, but everyone knew it was the case.
While everyone was settled at their benches, and the babes’d got fed their bottles of flour and arrowroot, Rose come into the kitchen and said, in a stern-sounding way, ‘Have you told John?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘And?’
I looked her square in the face. ‘He’s gonna marry me.’
She give a sigh, but then she smiled, too. ‘I knew he would,’ she said, and put a kiss on my cheek. ‘Things will all work out for you, Miriam.’
I knew I must of been imagining it, but I couldn’t help thinking there was something not all that happy in her voice, or her way of being. Her words’d come out cut, like they’d got caught round broken glass on their way up her throat, and she wouldn’t hardly look at me after that neither, and I had to try hard not to let me feelings be too hurt.
In the afternoon, true to his word, John come home with a ring. He brung it to me when I was hanging the kitchen laundry on the line in the yard.
‘Here,’ he said, and he give me the box.
I finished pegging out my last teacloth, then opened the box. The ring inside was a thin circle of pale gold – what I s’pose meant it was gold of the cheaper sort – and there was a diamond, or maybe just some glass what looked like a diamond, stuck in the middle of it.
The Night Flower Page 18
