by Tessa Harris
The adult son, Robert, returned from Cambridge and occupied her idle hours. They fell in love. Despite the fact that it was a love expressed in stolen moments, in fleeting touches, and in secret assignations, it flourished. One summer evening, six months into their relationship, all decorum had been abandoned on a bed of sweet hay in a stable.
Suspecting that his eldest son had feelings for this young governess, the father dispatched Robert to London to learn the workings of his own vast business empire. But such a move, it seems, came too late to prevent a pregnancy.
Mercifully, Louisa managed to keep her secret for as long as possible both from her master and from his son. Yet, without employment and unable to face the wrath of her own strict family, she was forced to leave her post and lie low for the last few weeks before the birth. She knew that after her delivery, the only course open to her was to offer up her child for adoption.
Six weeks ago, a son arrived—perfect in every way, with her own brown eyes and flame-red hair and his father’s nose. He was born in Stepney, East London, in an ordinary suburban house, in an ordinary suburban street, and his life would surely be both ordinary and suburban. No one would know of his true parentage. That was the way of the world. It was cruel and unjust, but she could no longer fight against it as she had when she was younger.
At Oxford, she and I would attend lectures and rallies. We called for equal rights for women, for universal suffrage, because we were free to think for ourselves. Now, however, the yoke of womanhood weighs heavily upon her shoulders, but endure the burden she must. Tomorrow is the day she must suffer the cruelest part of it all; tomorrow she must say good-bye to her little son, to her little Bertie, for good, with the sole consolation that Mother Delaney will pass on regular updates on his welfare.
This is what has brought her to this room with its threadbare rug and barely enough coal to last the evening. The smell of damp mixes with grime and she can see springs poking through the side of the mattress like thorns. The walls are so thin, the grunts and occasional shrieks of laughter from the next-door occupants are easily heard. The sounds make her feel even more alone. Her small valise is open, but remains untouched. She has not the energy to unpack it for the moment.
I feel for her and watch as she sits on the only chair in her room and looks increasingly disconsolate. It’s then that she spots the well-thumbed novel she could not bring herself to read on the train. It lies on the bed, too, and she leans over and picks it up. It is the copy of Jane Eyre I gave her when I heard she was to take up her post as a governess. I signed the flyleaf:
To My Dear Louisa,
Remember what Helen says to Jane: “If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.”
You may count me as one of your truest, too.
Emily
It is the volume she consults whenever she feels down or angry, or both. I think it gives her hope. It tells her that all will be well if she is strong and shows courage. I hope she is not misguided. I fear she may be.
CHAPTER 10
Sunday, December 23, 1888
EMILY
To the casual observer, the scene might appear rather touching: an elderly woman in a plaid shawl, presumably a grandmother, billing and cooing over the baby she’s just been handed by a young woman. The two of them sit on a bench in a small square, just round the corner from Westminster Abbey. There’s a service going on. It’s a little more sheltered here than out on the street, and obviously more discreet, but the cold is raw, nonetheless.
“She’s a bonnie little thing,” says the older woman to the baby’s mother, a shivering stripling of a girl, who can be no more than eighteen. The mother is wearing a large-brimmed hat so that any passerby cannot see her eyes. They are red and wet with tears. Her clothes are shabby in contrast to the baby’s. She’s brought a small bag with several stitched napkins, two pretty little smocks, and a pink pelisse for when her daughter is a little older and can be taken out for a stroll in a perambulator—the one that her own mother could never dream of affording.
As the old woman cradles the child, she fusses with the embroidered shawl she’s swaddled in. “Let’s keep you warm, dearie,” she says, pulling it up to cover the child’s fine blond hair. “We don’t want you catching a chill now, little Susan, do we?”
As if the thought of her baby being ill has triggered a memory, the young woman brings out a folded paper from her bag. “I’ve her smallpox vaccination certificate here,” she volunteers, waving the document around. “Her arm’s still a little sore from the needle.”
The old woman shakes her head. “Don’t you worry now,” she says with a smile. It amuses her how so many of these mothers take care to vaccinate their babies before handing them over to her. “She’ll be fine with me, so she will. And you know you can visit anytime you like.”
The young mother smiles as she dabs her eyes. She’s been greatly buoyed by the friendly tone of the old woman’s letters, even though she’s more advanced in years than she’d imagined. Yet, this first meeting has reassured her that her darling Susan is going to a loving home. She does not hesitate to hand over her five pounds when asked.
Still supporting the baby’s head, in a maneuver that shows, to the young woman, her experience in handling infants, the matron reaches into her bag and deposits the money. For a moment, she hands the child back to her mother, so that she herself can rise from the bench. The young woman seizes the chance for one last hug, one last caress, of her sweet little Susan.
“Oh, my love,” she whispers before her baby is taken from her arms.
“So we’re done,” says the matron, back on her feet, with the babe held in the crook of her left arm. Her words sound a little too final for the young woman and tears spring forth once more.
“Thank you, Mrs. O’Brien,” she splutters.
“There, there, dearie,” comforts the matron. “I’ll write to you and tell you how’s she’s faring, so I will.”
The tearful mother nods. “Oh, please do.”
Mrs. O’Brien is not the old woman’s real name, you understand. It is just one of the several aliases it behooves her to use in her line of work. She smiles, nods, then waddles off into the crowds of a London street. The young mother remains a moment longer, grasping at the last sight of her little girl. She is desolate. How she will make it back home, she really has no idea. How will she ever be happy again? She cannot say. All she knows is her darling baby deserves more than she can ever give her.
CONSTANCE
Ma and me are in St. Jude’s for the Sunday service, but I can’t concentrate and my mind’s straying from the sermon. I keep harking back to yesterday at the mortuary. When the duty copper saw me half swoon and Flo start to blub, he rattled us and told us to wait until another constable arrived to “accompany” us to Commercial Street Station. ’Course I asked to speak to Detective Sergeant Hawkins, but he weren’t there, so we ended up separated. Some older bloke tried to dig the dirt on Cath. Important, he seemed. I think they said he was an inspector. He had a funny accent, too, like he was speaking with a biscuit in his mouth. Scottish, I think. I don’t recall his name. He just kept firing questions at me about the night Cath died.
“How much did you see her knock back? Was she drunk? What was her mood? Would you say she was anxious?” It was clear he was leading me down a dead end. There’s only one way he wanted this investigation to go. He fancied Cath had died like so many of her sort die in the East End. They are cold, or starving, or ill, or, most like, all three, so they drink themselves into the grave. That’s the way it is round here. A fact of life. A fact of death. But he’s closing his ears to the word on the street. Everyone thinks that Cath was murdered, and a lot of us fear by Jack.
By the time the service is over, it’s almost one o’clock. Cold enough to freeze the tail off a brass monkey, it is, yet there’s still a long queue outside Wolf’s, the baker’s. Doe
s a roaring trade roasting joints on a Sunday, he does, for those of us that don’t have an oven. And you should taste his gravy. A halfpenny a ladle, it is, but we’d pay double that, it’s so good. We dropped a nice bit of brisket off before church and it should be done by now, so Ma gets in line, while I go home to boil the spuds.
I’ve just shut the door behind me when the first thing I notice is Flo’s hat on the floor; then a bit farther on, her coat’s been flung down at the foot of the stairs. It’s like she’s torn them off in a hurry. I know she was off seeing Danny, instead of being in church—and who could blame her?—but I sense something’s amiss.
“Flo,” I call up. “Flo, are you there?”
“Go away!” comes the muffled reply.
Of course, I ignore her. I know her better than she knows herself. I stride up the stairs to find her lying, facedown, on our bed.
“What’s he done now?” It’s that greasy dolt Danny. I’m sure of it.
Slowly she lifts up her head. She’s been crying. She props herself up on her elbows; I can see another tear break loose. “I shouldn’t never have gone to Poplar that night,” she tells me.
I sit down beside her on the bed. I’ve read her wrong. Cath’s death has hit her hard. “You can’t blame yourself for what happened,” I tell her. “We couldn’t have known he’d be in Poplar, too.”
Her head jerks up and she looks puzzled. “What you on about?”
“Jack,” I dart back. “Poplar’s not his normal hunting ground.” But it’s soon clear to me that I’m the one who’s got the wrong end of the stick. It’s Danny she’s got the hump over.
“It’s nuffink to do with the murders,” she whines. “It’s Danny. He got to hear from one of his mates that I was . . .” She dips her head in shame. It’s not something she does often.
“. . . making eyes at other men.” I finish the sentence for her.
She nods and brushes more tears away with the back of her hand before she swings round on the mattress and sits upright by me. “One of ’em saw me and told ’im. We rowed.” She lifts her moist eyes to mine and I see a purple bruise blooming on her cheek.
“He didn’t!” I raise a hand to her jaw. I’m angry for her, but she seems accepting. Her weary nod tells me Danny has hit her. I’m sure it’s not the first time, but I know there’s more to her sorrow.
“It’s over,” she tells me through trembling lips.
At the news, I’m ashamed to admit that I feel glad. How dare that low-down greasy rat hit her? I know she’s a flirt, but that doesn’t give him the right to treat her like that. They were never a good match, and she deserves better, but I try and keep my own counsel. At times like these, it’s best to tread careful for fear of causing offense. I think that deep down Flo knows he’s just a Jack the Lad. He’s got a roving eye, just like she has. Neither of them’s ready to settle down. That’s why I’m so alarmed when she suddenly flings herself at me and starts to sob like her world has ended.
“What am I going to do?” she cries. “What am I going to do?”
I pat her on the back. “It’ll be all right,” I tell her; then it slips out. “You’re too good for him, anyway,” I say. But she just sniffs and sobs even louder. So we sit, side by side, my arm around her heaving frame. “Don’t cry so. It’ll be all right,” I tell her, stroking her tousled hair.
But no matter what I say, there’s no consoling her and suddenly I find my own tears falling, too. A great wave of sorrow washes over me as I think about poor Cath, the dead infant at the market, and about Miss Tindall as well. It’s like Flo’s sadness is a sickness that she’s passed on to me. I feel guilty, too, when I think on that Wednesday night at the George. Cath wasn’t herself—all fretful and wild. We should’ve seen her back to a doss house. But “should” is a big word when you’re tired and cold and a long way from home and afeared that Jack will rip you.
CHAPTER 11
EMILY
The family, though small, could be any number of comfortably-off families standing around a dining table about to enjoy their Sunday roast. Mother Delaney says the Catholic grace. “Bless us, O Lord, and these, thy gifts, which we are about to receive through thy bounty. Through Christ Our Lord. Amen.”
“Amen,” says Mother Delaney’s daughter, Philomena, or Philly as she’s known. “Amen,” responds her husband, Albert, even though he does not share their Roman persuasion.
Mother and daughter have, in fact, not long returned from Mass at the Catholic church in Whitechapel. Due to certain recent difficulties, the nearest church in Bow is out of bounds to them, so they’ve had to find a new one where they won’t be challenged. Who knows how long they’ll be able to visit this one? But Mother always feels better after she’s received the Host at Holy Communion.
As for Philly, Mass is just a good opportunity to don her Sunday best and compete with other female celebrants in the fashion stakes, even though there is actually very little competition. It strikes her that most Catholic women look poor and downtrodden. Sometimes she wishes she were of the Anglican persuasion, where the bar is much higher. Today she wore an elegant forest green two-piece, topped off with a neat bonnet embellished with velvet ribbons, from her husband’s store, of course. And she was sure her new suede gloves didn’t go unnoticed. She felt like a rose between thorns.
As I mentioned earlier, the man of the house and Philly’s husband, Albert Cosgrove, is not a member of the Catholic Church; he’s not a member of anything, in fact, although he does have a secret hankering after admission to the Drapers’ Guild, but he accepts that, under the circumstances, it is out of the question. His face is long and his hair is parted down the middle, while his chin is shaped like a trowel, coming to a point at the bottom. Aesthetically speaking, it would surely benefit from the cover of a bushy beard. Instead, however, Cosgrove has opted for wispy light brown sideburns that are crying out for a good trim.
For the past three hours, a large sirloin of beef has been roasting in the oven. Lotte, the maid, a docile young woman, broken in under a much harsher household, can turn her hand to most things, including peeling vegetables, and she soon has the meal on the table.
Little Isabel joins the adults in her high chair. She’s a pretty, plump girl, aged no more than eighteen months, with large red ribbons nestling like exotic butterflies in her golden ringlets.
Napkins are unfurled, wine is poured—only on the Sabbath, you understand—and all four of them are ready for Cosgrove to carve the joint. Only, of course, he cannot. His hand is still bandaged from the unfortunate incident a few nights before, so it is up to Mother to step up to the plate. This she does expertly with the steady hand of a woman used to suturing wounds. With thick slices apportioned and smothered in gravy, and vegetables served, there is, however, just one thing missing from the table. Amid the tureens of mashed potatoes, peas and carrots, and the gravy boat, the cream of horseradish is notable by its absence.
“Lotte!” Cosgrove, surveying the array of dishes a second time, can find none. “Lotte! Horseradish sauce, girl, and quick about it.”
The crestfallen maid, her thin face all angles and lines, dips a curtsy and rushes to the pantry. Two minutes later, however, the plates of beef remain and there is no sign of the horseradish.
“Where’s the girl got to?” asks Cosgrove, irritated. “The food’s getting cold.”
As if on cue, there comes the quick patter of feet. “Mother!” exclaims Lotte, glaring at the old woman.
“What is it?” she growls, the look of eager anticipation suddenly vanishing from her face.
“One of the babes is taken real bad,” the maid replies breathlessly. “Turned all blue, it has.”
The pantry, you see, is not only home to all manner of jars of jams, ketchups, and pickles, sacks of flour, tins of biscuits, and bottles of vinegar and wine. It is where most of Mother Delaney’s charges—her babies—are kept. But instead of following the girl to see what ails one of the infants, the matron remains seated and her smile rea
ppears as she tucks her napkin under one of her many chins.
“Don’t worry yourself, Lotte. It’ll be a touch of colic, that’s all,” she assures the girl before her gaze settles on her plate once again. “And ’twould be a crime to let all this food go cold now, to be sure.”
CONSTANCE
It’s a bellowing voice outside that shakes Flo and me from our sorrow. I rush to the bedroom window and look below.
“Have no fear, ladies. I bring festive cheer!”
Together we let out a sigh and round it off by shaking our heads. It’s only Mr. B come to call. I hurry downstairs to let him in, but when I open the door, all I see is a mass of green spikey leaves and branches.
“Merry Christmas!” is all we can hear from behind the thick boughs of greenery as they’re shoved over the threshold.
He’s met Ma on the way home and for a moment our house is full of mirth. She’s all flushed and laughing like a little girl. “Oh, Harold!” she chuckles as Mr. Bartleby maneuvers himself and the tree inside. “You are a one!”
