‘Holborn,’ Jessie said in a flat expressionless voice. ‘Holborn?’
‘Yes,’ Mildred sounded eager now. ‘In Leather Lane, just before you get to Gray’s Inn. There are so many sets of lawyer chambers there, do you see, and many well run bachelor chambers too, and I know I can build up a good custom. I dare say I can go further West in time, as far as Bloomsbury, perhaps, for customers. I found a house with a splendid kitchen, quite splendid. A big range, with two excellent ovens as well as one for raising bread, in which I can make meringues, I am quite sure, and there will be space in the scullery for one of these new Rippingille’s oil stoves. I’ve seen a very sensible one that will take several cakes at a time, and which has top burners, too, for bains-marie, you know, where I can do custards, and though it will cost forty-two shillings and sixpence, it will soon pay for itself. There are two bedrooms, just as there are here, so that Poppy may have her own room to herself, which she will need soon, you know. She cannot share with me for always. A growing child needs her own air, of course. And when she starts school –’
‘School? School? What’s the matter with you, Mildred, wishing the child’s life away? She’s a baby, just a baby! She won’t go to school for ever – why already make such a fuss about –’
Mildred shook her head. ‘Time cheats, Jessie. It’s cheating already and you should know it. She isn’t a baby. She’s a big girl already – look.’ And she got to her feet and came and lifted the flap in front of Poppy’s high chair and unfastened the strap and set the child down on the floor on her feet. She stood there for a moment, her fists clenched in front of her in a pose uncannily like a boxer’s and then, legs well apart, began to walk, lurching forwards purposefully towards the shiny horsehair sofa on the far side of the room. And Jessie sat and watched her with none of her usual crowing delight in the child’s prowess, her face closed and blank.
‘You see what I mean?’ Mildred said softly as Poppy, with one last shaky step, finally lost her battle with gravity and tumbled forwards to land on the edge of the sofa, there to try to climb up its slippery side. ‘You see? Only a few days ago it seems I was feeding her at my breast. Now look at her – she eats solid food on her own, drinks from cups, walks about, talks quite a lot. Another few weeks and it will be school and growing up and learning and – and I want her to learn to be a lady. I mean no insult, Jessie, you know that. But she is entitled, surely, to have as fair an education as her mother had? And I was reared –’
Her voice faded and she sat and looked at Jessie as Poppy at last succeeded in her struggle to achieve the high alps of the sofa and bounced noisily on it, laughing, and then Jessie said flatly. ‘Yes. You was reared a lady. So she’s got to be. Which means I can’t have the caring of her – not ever –’
‘Of course you must go on caring,’ Mildred said. ‘Please, Jessie, don’t be angry. I mean no harm to you, you must know that. But she –’
‘Yes. She comes first.’ Jessie got to her feet heavily and began to clear the cups and saucers from the table. ‘When are you going?’
‘I’m – I’m not sure,’ Mildred lied. ‘I have to sort things out. There are items I must buy, handbills to be printed, advertising my service, do you see, and then as soon as I know –’
‘When are you going, Mildred?’
Mildred bit her lip and looked up at Jessie, standing tall and heavy against the light from the window, her round face reflecting the rosiness of her shirtwaist, but looking drawn and almost haggard for all its roundness. She has plumped up a good deal this past two years, Mildred thought, irrelevantly. She needs another gentleman to pay her attention or she will become very large indeed –
‘I thought, another week, Jessie,’ she said at length and Jessie nodded and moved heavily out to the kitchen with the cups and saucers and tea pot.
‘You’ll let me bath her tonight? Seein’ as I won’t be able to after this week?’
‘Every night till we go,’ Mildred said fervently. ‘You can give her her meals, everything. And –’ She jumped to her feet and ran out to the scullery to take Jessie’s hand in her own. ‘I shall always call her Poppy, I promise. You are quite right. She isn’t at all an Emily.’
Jessie grinned crookedly. ‘Well, I suppose that’s something. And you’ll let me visit a few times? I won’t come too often –’
‘Oh, please, Jessie, as often as you like! I don’t wish to cut us away from you!’
‘No,’ Jessie said. ‘I’m sure you don’t.’ But she knew they were both lying. And so did Mildred.
As for Poppy, sitting bouncing on the horsehair sofa, she also knew something was not right, as small children always do know, but she had not yet the words to put to her feelings, however powerful those feelings might be. And she buried them deep inside herself together with her memories of the Jubilee celebrations outside, the sounds of which were still drifting in past the closed windows, to keep for always. Right from her earliest days Poppy Amberly had a very long memory indeed.
22
Poppy lay on her back in bed, her knees pulled up and her hands linked behind her head, trying to decide on a story to tell herself tonight. She had several books of her own – seven to be precise – but she knew them almost by heart now and anyway Mama never let her have a light in her bedroom at night. She said people had to learn to be brave and they never learned if they had nightlights, so that was that. And even if Mama let me have a night light, she told herself now, it wouldn’t be bright enough to read by. So it doesn’t matter that it’s dark in my room. It doesn’t matter at all. But she didn’t feel as brave as she tried to pretend she was.
But at least it wasn’t as dark as it might be. As soon as Mama had heard her prayers and said goodnight and closed the door firmly behind her, Poppy had been out of bed and twitched aside the curtain Mama had so carefully closed and was back in bed again even before Mama reached the bottom step. So the light from the gas lamp outside could seep in and make the blackness not quite so thick.
She was careful not to look around the room. The big cupboard in the corner where the door did not close as tightly as it should was not at all a worry to her. The chest of drawers on the other side was not pretending to be a crouching lion, waiting to spring, any more than the chairs were really great big insects standing up on their long legs waiting for her to go to sleep so that they could hop across the room and bite her –
She took a deep breath and held her knees together even more tightly and stared up at the ceiling, straining her eyes to see the patterns the cracks made. They were nice patterns, a bit like rivers on a map, the sort of maps she had in her book called The Wonders of God’s Beautiful World which was all about places so far away and so peculiar that no one she knew had ever seen them. The ceiling patterns weren’t a bit frightening; in fact sometimes they gave her ideas for stories to tell herself. But tonight it was unusually difficult to find such a story; generally she managed very well indeed, having to choose between being the Princess in the tall tower, or the Good Fairy who came to help her, or the little girl who lived in a house in the middle of the forest with the animals and cooked and looked after herself, all on her own, all day and all night. But not tonight, and she wriggled against her pillows and tried to concentrate.
But still the stones wouldn’t come. She was too aware of what was going on in the house below her, and after a while she gave up trying, and let herself listen, and smell, and think about what was happening in the kitchen.
First the smells. Coconut cakes, she decided, and seed cakes, and perhaps a lemon one too. The house always smelled of cooking, and usually it was agreeable cooking, like tonight, cakes and biscuits and sweet sugary fruit-filled breads, and she was glad of that for there were times when it was a horrid smell, like old dirty clothes being boiled. That was when Mama put her big meat puddings, wrapped in their greyish greasy cloths, in the copper boiler in the kitchen, and stoked up the little fire beneath it as high as she could so that the water bubbled and plopped and gurgl
ed round the string-tied parcels. Poppy hated the days Mama did that, and not only because of the smell. It was also because of the meat, for when Mama made the puddings she stood there at the scrubbed wooden table in the middle of the stone-flagged kitchen and cut the meat with a huge glittering knife, chopping it smaller and smaller and smaller – but however small she chopped it, Poppy could always remember how the meat had looked before she started. Which was like a piece of the bleeding weeping animal it had come from, a cow or a sheep or a baby lamb – and Poppy would close her eyes and try not to remember the pictures of those animals in her book Father Giles’ Farmyard for fear of crying.
No, no nasty puddings tonight, nor frying smells either. They weren’t as bad as the meat ones, but still they weren’t as pleasant as cakes and now, lying in bed, she lifted her head and drew a long and lingering breath in through her nose, letting the sweetness of the scent fill her. It was almost as good as the left-over cake mixture that Mama sometimes baked for her in small tins that she could tuck into the ovens at the sides of the big ones, and made her feel almost as full.
Sounds came to her too; the faint clang that was the door of the oven on the big range being slammed shut and the tinny rattling sound that was Mama refilling the oil tanks on her Rippingille’s stove. If she was using that one tonight, Poppy thought, she was working extra hard, and making a big order; which meant she would be up a long time and be very tired in the morning and consequently cross, and Poppy stopped enjoying the smell of the coconut and seed and lemon cakes and thought about what she would do if Mama was cross in the morning.
Perhaps she could put her coat on when Mama wasn’t baking and go and play in the playground of the school in Baldwin’s Gardens until the big children heard the bell and had to go in to the big red brick building in long lines, marching as they went. Then she would have to come home again but perhaps by then Mama would not be cross any more – and, oh, please let me soon be a rising five and make it the time for me to be one of the children at the Baldwin’s Gardens School allowed to march in at the end of the line with all the others instead of being a baby they all jeered at and wouldn’t play with –
There was a new sound from below and she lifted her head from her pillow and began to listen in good earnest. A thumping on the front door and then Mama’s steps going along the lino covered passage to open it, and voices – Mama’s, low and sharp at the same time and somehow strange, and then a very unusual sound inside this house. A man’s voice.
Poppy sat fully upright and listened harder than ever. It was a deep rumbling sound, like the one made by the men who looked after the stalls in the street outside or the ones Mama paid to deliver her cakes and puddings to her customers. Those men were never allowed to come into the house but had to stand on the step outside – that bright clean step which Mama scrubbed and buffed with a special white stone every morning – while the heavy cake trays were brought out to them, for Mama said she had to be careful, a woman alone with her child as she was, to do all that was proper. And that meant no men must come into the house. Perhaps, Poppy thought hazily, men were dirty and spoiled the cakes and made them fall flat inside the oven as they sometimes did, which made Mama very cross indeed; but it couldn’t be that, for now this man was right inside the house. Poppy could tell that by the way his voice was so much louder and the way it came booming up the stairs so clearly that she could hear the words he was saying.
‘It wasn’t all that difficult to find you. I had only to ask the lawyers. I knew you had been in correspondence with them this past five years and more – and they told me –’
‘They had no right –’ Mama’s voice, sharp and strange still, and something else – frightened? Poppy knew a lot about what it felt like to be frightened. ‘No right at all –’
‘Still, here I am. Will you talk to me, Mildred?’
‘I – there is little to talk about, I imagine.’ Still Mama sounded strange, but sharper now and a little more like herself. ‘You have felt no need to seek me out this past five years or more. Why now?’
‘These are difficult times, Mildred. Very difficult – the war –’
‘The war!’ Mama sounded sharper than ever now. ‘What has that to do with you coming to see me? I find that –’
‘You will understand when I explain, perhaps,’ the man said, more loudly now and Poppy could almost see her Mama shake her head and made a face.
‘Hush –’ she said. ‘You’ll wake her –’
‘Wake who?’
‘I – quiet. Come in here. And please be quiet –’ And Poppy heard the footsteps go further along the passage and heard the kitchen door close with a little snap. And after that she couldn’t hear anything at all.
She lay there on her back for a long time staring up at the patterned ceiling and trying to think about who the man might be and why Mama had allowed him to come into the kitchen. And who were The Lawyers who had sent him? Friends of Auntie Jessie, she decided after a while. Auntie Jessie has lots of friends for she always talks of them when she comes. Perhaps she has friends called The Lawyers and they sent this man. And maybe he is a prince in disguise who will bring gold treasure in a great chest and go on one knee and open it in front of Mama and it will be full of wondrous coins and necklaces and rings like Auntie Jessie’s only bigger and lemon cakes and coconut cakes, all little and sweet and bouncing about in the chest – and she fell asleep without having to find a story to tell herself after all.
* * *
‘You look – um – well – Mildred. Very well,’ he said and then, as she stared challengingly at him let his gaze slip away.
‘If you have nothing more honest than that to say, I wonder that you bothered to come,’ she said tartly. ‘I look ten years older than I should, and small wonder, working as I do. And I am hardly dressed or primped to receive company at present.’
‘Company? I’m hardly that! As your brother –’
‘A brother I have neither seen nor heard from for so long no longer seems to be an important part of my life,’ she said. ‘I doubt you feel differently.’
‘Even if I did, you give me no encouragement to express warmer feelings.’ He frowned and then looked appealingly at her. ‘Come, Mildred, ask me to sit down at least, and let us talk. I dare say I did behave badly to you when we last met – but I was much younger then. Just a boy, after all. Times have changed and I with it. And you know it was not easy for me, or for Claude. You had brought great disgrace on us all and –’
‘Disgrace? What disgrace? Who was to know of my doings? I had but gone away, that was all. I see no disgrace in that.’
‘Oh, come Mildred, don’t try to be – I mean, you did after all go off to the East End – and now live here –’ He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the front door. ‘It’s hardly Leinster Terrace out there, now is it?’
‘And so much the better for me that it isn’t,’ she said. ‘The people here may lack gentility, but they more than make up for such a lack in good heartedness. Well, sit down. You take up too much space standing there like a great booby. You appear to have continued to grow.’
He smiled at that, and obeyed her instructions, taking a chair beside the big kitchen range. ‘I am now an inch over six foot,’ he said proudly. ‘And better muscled too. I joined a good gymnasium, don’t you know, and took pains to develop myself better. It seemed to me –’ He swallowed and stopped, embarrassed. ‘Claude looks well too. He is not so well grown as myself, but well enough, well enough.’
‘And the rest of them?’ She could not bring herself to speak any names, nor could she look at him, preferring to fuss over the cakes that stood cooling in rows on her big kitchen table.
‘Well, the rest of them? Let me see – Wilfred is working in the Acton shop and will be moving to the new one at Shepherd’s Bush soon – or so it is planned –’
‘Wilfred? But surely he is at school still? He was always a good scholar as I recall –’
‘He is seventeen, M
ildred. Well able to be of use in the business, and Papa saw no sense in leaving him in school longer –’
‘Papa,’ she said and took a sharp little breath in through pinched nostrils. ‘And Thomas and Samuel and Harold? Are they working in the shops as well?’
‘Now, don’t be sharp Mildred. Of course not. Thomas and Samuel are both doing well enough at the City of London School, and Harold, it is hoped, will be able to join them in a year or two. They are well and fit –’
There was a silence as she sat down and stared at her hands on her lap and Basil watched her covertly, unsure of how to continue what he had to say. He had not entirely lied about her appearance, he decided, as he looked at her. Mildred would never be anything but excessively plain, or course, but she had improved somewhat since her girlish days. She wore her hair pulled back severely from her forehead beneath a neat white cap and this, far from exaggerating the length and unevenness of her nose and her rather long chin gave her face a strength it had certainly not displayed when she had tried to hide so much of her brow beneath a frizzed fringe. Her eyes seemed to be larger too, somehow, for her face certainly had a pleasantness about it that had been lacking when last he had seen her and her figure, though still thin, had lost some of its gawky awkwardness. When she moved about her small kitchen she did so with economy and dispatch and even a certain grace and now, as she got to her feet to bend to her oven and remove from it a large round and very golden cake he said impulsively, ‘Indeed, it is good to see you looking so well, Mildred. I had feared what I might see when I came, but as it is –’
‘And what did you expect?’ She set the cake on the table and with one expert twist of her wrist ran a knife between the tin and its sides and set it tipped at an angle to cool before decanting it onto the rack that stood ready. ‘A bedraggled crone, no doubt, living in filth and squalor? One who has been abandoned and left to rot as she deserved, wicked fallen creature that she was?’
Jubilee (Book 1 of The Poppy Chronicles) Page 24
