Stars Across the Ocean

by Kimberley Freeman

  Father glared at me a moment longer, and I grew tense, digging my fingernails into my palms. When had he become so silvery-grey? I remembered him as fair and strong. But this morning, with this burden on his mind, he looked old and tired.

  ‘Your condition is known to us,’ he said at last. ‘I cannot let you marry Ernest Shawe. I will write to him this morning and tell him he must marry your sister. That you are …’ He paused. ‘I will think of something. The fewer people who know of this disgrace the better.’

  ‘Will I have to marry Mister Peacock?’

  ‘Peacock married last month. Tired of waiting, I expect. I think it fair to say that your marriage prospects are practically ruined.’ Then he leaned forward and pointed an accusatory finger at me. ‘I had not expected this from you.’

  I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.

  Mother leapt to her feet and paced towards me, stood quivering with rage in front of me for a moment and then slapped me once, hard on the face. ‘How could you?’ she said. ‘You need not think we will allow you to keep the child. I have instructed your sister to make enquiries and arrangements. The Breckby family will not raise a bastard.’

  At that moment, my child, I felt you move for the first time. I’d had some little sensations before – like bubbles breaking against the wall of my stomach – but this was a clear, soft thud against my insides.

  The Breckby family will not raise a bastard.

  ‘Please,’ I said. ‘Please let me keep it. I will not marry. I will raise it away from home if it will make things easier for you. But do let me keep it.’

  ‘No!’ Father roared. ‘Have my daughter running about, unwed, with a child? It doesn’t matter where in the world you are, you will bring shame on our family. If you insist upon it, know that I will cut you off. You will not be part of this family, nor will you have any of the benefits of it. No house, no money. What will you do, alone with a tiny child? How could that be good for either of you? The only right thing to do is to give the bastard away.’

  I quailed before his infamous temper. My fate was sealed, and so was yours.

  •

  The winter wore on, and it was too cold to be out; and then my belly grew and grew and my family were keen for me to stay inside and away from company, and I became more and more afraid of the outside world. I feared a return of the ghastly fear that had gripped me leaving Emile’s. Somehow I became a creature of the indoors, and I have been that way ever since. Such a fear takes hold of me outside. I dreamed of you sometimes, outside the safety of my womb, and you were in a cold, dark world that gave no consideration for your care or comfort. These dreams and my fears became intertwined over the ensuing months, and I often crept into my sister’s room where she held me and told me stories of the beautiful family who had agreed to adopt you.

  She told me Father had paid them off handsomely for taking you but also for their silence, that they were a noble family but had fallen on hard times. That the wife had tried in vain for years to have a baby of her own, and that they would love you so much and give you everything you needed. Sometimes I cried when she told me these stories, and I would beg to know their names but she said Father had forbidden it, that I must have the child and give the child up and never think of it again.

  ‘It’s for your own good, sister,’ she said to me, over and over again. ‘And for the good of the child.’

  No child wants to know the pain they caused their mother in childbirth, so I will not tell you about those dreadful fourteen hours, save to say that the pain was over soon enough and I held you for a little while after you were born. The attending physician had said it was a terrible idea and that a pillow should be held between me and you so I would never see you, but my sister was there – as she had promised – and she convinced him that it would do no harm for me to cuddle the little one. The midwife cleaned you up and gave you some sugar water from a dropper, then handed you to me. ‘Here is the little girl,’ she said.

  Ah. This is a pain that never leaves.

  What a precious thing you were. Like a bud on a flower, soft and full of promise and beautiful, so beautiful. There, I am crying again. It has been more than a year. Perhaps I will never stop crying. I did love you. I did. I still do. I will never stop.

  Then my sister was there, and her face was grim and patient. ‘Come along, sister,’ she said. ‘You must hand her over now.’

  I looked at your dear face and I kissed your forehead, and I whispered in your ear, ‘One day I will find you,’ although I knew it wasn’t true. My sister took you from my arms and left, while the midwife sat me up to bind my breasts. I heard you crying all the way down the stairs.

  •

  So, my child whom I could not keep, here is the end of my account. You will never see this, so perhaps I shall tuck it in one of the books in the library that nobody ever reads. I leave today for London, where my father has bought me a house. My sister is now Mrs Shawe, and Father knows I will never marry and so he must get me out of the manor another way. I fear the journey, but once I am there I need not fear anything except long, empty years.

  God bless you, child. Wherever you are.

  Marianna

  The Present

  One day I will find you.

  All I can do is cry. It isn’t just that the story is sad, it’s that I am sad. I am sad and I have been holding it down for a long time. I am sad that I lost my babies and I am sad that I likely won’t ever have one. I am sad that my mother is sick and her future is so uncertain. I am sad that Moineau couldn’t be with Emile. But I am especially sad that she had to give up her baby and she never recovered from it. Everyone knows that children need their parents, but is it not also true that parents need their children?

  That Mum needs me?

  I think of what she said, the day I had persuaded her to finally retire and accept her fate. I feel as though I am about to cross an ocean, and it’s grey and grim and lonely.

  I will not let her be lonely. I will be with her as she crosses that ocean. I know this with such force that I begin to tremble.

  I reach for my handbag to pull out my phone. It is time to call Geoff, and tell him I’m not coming home.

  CHAPTER 26

  Agnes

  As Agnes stepped onto the platform at Dorchester Station, she heard a young woman say to her husband, ‘I feel as though I’ve been travelling forever.’

  The rest of their conversation was lost under the hiss of steam letting off, but she didn’t need to hear it to know that, whatever the woman thought, she had not been travelling as long as Agnes. She had left England in the summer, and now the trees were all bare and the sky was chilly and grey.

  Agnes made her way out of the station and into town, dressed in her second-last gown. All the others had been sold along the way. She had not mourned the two she sold in Colombo to stay in a room for four nights waiting for the steamship, nor the extra two plus Genevieve’s jewellery she sold to pay the ticketing fine for changing her date of departure by several months. Jack had been indignant on her behalf, wanting to give the steamship’s captain a ‘fist in the chops’ for what she saw as extortion. Both of them had complained bitterly about the unfairness of it, ranting and cursing rather than saying the sad goodbye that neither of them was able to say. It didn’t really matter; they were only dresses.

  It had been harder for her, though, to sell the striped black-and-grey dress, which she had worn until it was threadbare on the steamer to London. She really loved that dress: people called her Ma’am instead of Miss when she wore it. But she had sold it for a night in a guesthouse and a train fare to Dorchester. Yes, she might have gone straight to Julius and Marianna, but she’d had a long time to devise her plan, and if either of them had an opinion on it, all might come undone.

  Now here she was in Dorchester, preparing to sell the dress she loved most of all: the sapphire blue evening gown. She’d hoped to return to London still in possession of it, but it wasn’t to be. The villag
e of Millthorne was not in walking distance. She needed a carriage there and back.

  Agnes began to walk, carefully sidestepping puddles. Her shoes were nearly worn through after having been soaked so many times and worn so relentlessly for months. After a good half-mile, she found the high street, with the pretty church spire at its end, and slowed down, looking in the windows. Sometimes she chose a dress shop, or a general store, but this time she chose a haberdasher. They could pull the gown apart: the ribbons and lace and buttons would sell individually, and the satin and velvet could be repurposed. She gulped hard, trying not to think about her beautiful gown anatomised in such a way.

  A bell over the door rang, and a sharp-faced woman of middling years looked up from behind the counter. ‘Can I help you, Miss?’

  Miss. It was the blue cotton dress that had her called Miss. ‘I’d like to sell a gown.’

  ‘We don’t buy gowns.’

  ‘I don’t want much for it. Just enough for two carriage rides and another train fare …’ She trailed off, struck dumb by how close she was, now, to home.

  ‘We never buy gowns.’

  ‘Let me show it to you.’

  Of course she bought it. Why would she not? It was exquisite and Agnes sold it for less than a tenth of what it was worth. Then the haberdasher directed her to the coaching inn, and Agnes found herself a coach leaving for Millthorne at four. She sat outside the coaching inn, cold and hungry, and waited.

  Genevieve had told her everything in the pub that day; told it to her as though it were a story about somebody else completely, somebody who didn’t matter.

  Of course, to Genevieve, nobody really mattered. It had taken ten minutes in her company for Agnes to know that.

  Marianna had been in love with a young carpenter by the name of Emile, with a French surname, who lived in the village of Millthorne. She had been sent home in disgrace when it was discovered her lover was already married. ‘But the wife was simple, or sick, or something. I can’t quite remember,’ she’d said. Then Marianna had realised she was pregnant, and Genevieve had been charged with finding the child a good home, and some family friends of family friends had agreed to take the child, but only if it was a boy.

  ‘I thought we had a good chance of getting a boy,’ Genevieve had said. ‘One-in-two! But alas, it was you.’

  Rather than distress Marianna, who had already become withdrawn and afraid to go outside, Genevieve’s parents had ordered her to take ‘the little mite’ to the foundling hospital, which they knew was a good institution that raised fine young people who went on to make good in the world. They told Marianna the other family had taken the baby, so that she didn’t sink all the way into despair; giving up her child had made her take to her bed weeping incessantly already. Unfortunately, their father had revealed the fact to her several years later on a visit to London, and that was when Marianna had lost her temper and thrown Genevieve out. Agnes was astonished to learn that Marianna had a temper to lose, and that it had been the true reason Genevieve left England.

  ‘So, you see, if I lost a button that morning I left you at Perdita, or sent a coat missing a button years later, or if Miss Candlesnuff said something about you being as headstrong as me, those facts were simply coincidences you’ve read a wishful story into,’ Genevieve told her. ‘You’ve got some pluck, I’ll admit that. But you’ve gone well beyond your station. I suppose now you wish you’d been born a boy. You would have been quite wealthy.’

  Agnes had never wished, and never would wish, that she’d been born a boy.

  The coachman came to find her, lifted her impossibly light trunk onto the back of the coach, and handed her inside. He looked at the sky. ‘There’ll be rain,’ he said.

  ‘There always is,’ she answered.

  •

  The journey was slow and muddy, and the rain beat mournfully on the windows of the coach. Village by village they made their way through Dorset, dropping off people along the way, until they rattled into Millthorne. Agnes was the last on board. How far she had travelled since that first coach that left Hatby.

  ‘When is the return carriage?’ she asked as the driver untied her trunk.

  ‘First thing, Miss.’

  ‘Would you be so kind as to take my trunk inside the coaching inn and tell them I’ll be staying the night. I’ll come back to Dorchester with you in the morning.’

  ‘Very good, Miss. What name will I tell them?’

  ‘Agnes Resolute.’

  He smiled broadly. ‘Is that so? What a fine name. And are you, Miss?’

  ‘Am I what?’

  ‘Resolute?’

  ‘Oh, aye,’ she said.

  She had seen a little church on the approach to town and headed back in that direction. In a small village like this, the vicar would know everybody. The rain had held off since they’d arrived, but the sky had grown dark and night would soon be full upon her. She hurried her steps, walked up the grass slope to the church and pushed open the doors.

  ‘Hello?’ she called, and her voice echoed about. Nobody here; she would have to try the vicarage. But it was a bonny little church, not too chilly, and with beautiful hand-carved pews and candles burning in sconces. She moved inside and ran her fingers along the wood, then sat down and clasped her hands together. She rested her forehead on her knuckles and said thank you for being safely back in England, and was just getting on to asking for help finding Emile when a voice said, ‘Miss?’

  She looked up and saw an elderly vicar with fluffy white hair. ‘Good evening, Vicar. Can you help me?’

  He smiled. ‘I will do what I can, Miss, and you can pray to God for the rest.’

  ‘I’m looking for a man named Emile. I believe he’s a carpenter and he may have a French surname. He’s an … old friend of my family and I have come a long way to find him.’

  The vicar nodded and held out his hand to help her up. ‘Emile carved the pew you were sitting on,’ he said. ‘He’s lived in Millthorne for twenty years or more, though he keeps to himself.’ Here a small frown passed over his face, but was soon gone. ‘I can give you directions.’

  ‘Thank you, Vicar.’

  Soon she was on her way again. It was dark and the rain was back, but nothing could stop her now. She walked back along the main street of the village, then turned where the vicar had told her to. She would have known the house by its carved gateposts, even if the vicar hadn’t told her specifically which one it was.

  She opened the gate, strode up to the front door and knocked loudly.

  She heard the sound of somebody moving inside, then footsteps. The scurrying of dog feet. The door opened and a puppy jumped out and began madly scrabbling at her hem. A man held a lamp, looking at her. He was in his late forties, with grey hair around his temples and a vest stretched a little across an expanding middle. His brow looked troubled, but his eyes were kind. Agnes smiled. Her father.

  ‘Yes?’ he asked.

  A spirit of joy took hold of her, despite the cold and the dark and the damp, and she said, ‘Hello, Papa.’

  His expression froze on his face, as his eyes took her in. ‘It can’t be,’ he said.

  ‘May I come in?’

  •

  Agnes sat in front of his fire. The pup had settled down enough to sit in her lap, bathing her hands with his tongue. Emile stood at the mantel, unable to relax enough to sit down.

  ‘The moment I saw you,’ he said. ‘You look so much like her. I didn’t know she’d had a child.’

  ‘She did, although her sister left me on the porch of the local foundling hospital.’

  ‘How did you …’

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  Finally, he sat down on the chair opposite. ‘I have all the time in the world to hear it.’

  So, she told him. As she unfolded her tale, she saw in his eyes wonder and pride and she felt, for the first time in her life, a sense of belonging so strong and so deep that nothing would ever shift it from under her again. Here he was, her father
, and he was proud of her. She embellished the story a little to make him laugh or gasp, and finally they were back, here in the room, on this rainy night in Millthorne.

  ‘And you, Papa?’ she said. ‘What of you?’

  ‘I’ve done less in the twenty years since I met Marianna than you’ve done in the time since you left the foundling hospital,’ he said with awe. ‘But I will tell you my wife, Eleanor, died fourteen years ago, and I have not remarried. You have no wicked stepmother to concern yourself with.’

  ‘I’m well supplied with a wicked aunt, I’d say,’ Agnes replied. ‘Have you never thought to seek out Marianna in those fourteen years?’

  He was already shaking his head. ‘Her family would have forbidden it. She was set to marry another man.’

  ‘She didn’t. She never married.’

  He cleared his throat then said, very softly, ‘How is she?’

  ‘Lonely, still beautiful in her way. Afraid.’

  ‘Afraid?’

  ‘She doesn’t leave the house.’

  ‘That can’t be right. Nobody could ever keep her indoors.’

  ‘She’s changed.’ Agnes paused a beat and then said, ‘You should come to London and see her.’

  Emile turned his eyes to the fireplace and watched the flames; he didn’t reply.

  ‘I know she would welcome it,’ Agnes added.

  ‘You don’t know that. As you say, she’s changed.’

  They fell into a long silence, and Agnes felt her weariness keenly. She needed to come to rest; she had been too long in motion. ‘May I write to you?’ Agnes said. ‘May I keep in touch?’

  ‘But of course. You are always welcome here too. My home is yours. I’m sorry, I do not know what to say or do. I never expected …’

  Agnes stood. ‘I never expected either. Let me write down our address so you may correspond with me, or come to visit. You needn’t announce it. In fact, it may be better if you don’t.’