by Erica Brown
Emerald laughed.
‘Now, now, Miss Emerald. You know you’re not supposed to be out here.’
Her nurse, Miss Potter, was right behind her, wearing an expression that was greyer than her dress.
Father and daughter exchanged a grimace.
The nurse curtseyed. ‘Begging your pardon, sir, but Mrs Strong said Miss Emerald was to eat in the nursery.’
‘All alone up there? Nonsense. Families who live together should eat together.’
Miss Potter attempted to protest. ‘But—’
‘No buts. You can come too, if you wish,’ said Tom.
The nurse stayed rooted to the spot, her mouth hanging open.
Tom laughed as his daughter launched herself into his arms.
‘Hurray!’ she shouted.
He swung her round, her golden hair flying behind her, then hand in hand, father and daughter traipsed off towards the trestle tables, Tom’s stride long and even, Emerald bouncing like a rubber ball beside him.
Horatia’s smile – the one she reserved for events like this – tightened when she saw them. Ignoring her daughter’s upturned face, she addressed Tom. ‘I gave orders she should eat her meal in the nursery.’ With a swift jerk of her head, she addressed her daughter. ‘Go to the nursery.’
Emerald clung more tightly to her father, peeping out from behind his arm.
‘She should be with her parents,’ Tom said in an implacable voice, smiling as he nodded acknowledgement to their guests.
Aware they were being observed, Horatia spoke through a stiff smile. ‘A child is happier in familiar surroundings, Thomas.’
‘Were you?’
Her smile disappeared and she gave him that ‘wait until we’re alone’ look. Their public image mattered. She would not force the issue, not in front of guests.
Tom bent down to his daughter and pointed at one of their servants. ‘Get Mathilda to give you some cake.’
Emerald scuttled off happily, leaving her father to take the full force of Horatia’s glittering gaze.
Tom took a sherry from a passing tray, and drained it. He felt like a butterfly about to be pinned to a card. ‘I see I have made you angry,’ he said quietly and avoided looking into her face as he reached for another sherry.
Horatia glowered. ‘Sometimes I think you go out of your way to make me angry. I believe you actually enjoy undermining my authority!’
He nodded before swigging back his drink and slamming it down on a passing tray. Although she didn’t seem to realize it, he’d been controlling his temper on account of her obvious sadness following the death of their child. Even when she’d told him about selling Rivermead, he’d merely pointed out to her that it might have been politic to inform her brother Rupert of her intention. She’d almost bitten his head off.
He kept his voice even now. ‘And you, my dear. Have you made anyone angry today?’
Her frosty demeanour was suddenly replaced with a look of triumph. ‘I have enlightened a man that was in darkness,’ she said with a slick smile reserved for her more ruthless moments. ‘I’ve spoken to Martin Lodge. I have told him he may not be in the bank’s employ for much longer and that I know about his gambling.’
He looked at her incredulously.
‘I just want him to stew a little,’ she said defensively. ‘It’s what he deserves. Before he leaves I’ll tell him that he can keep his job and that no one will be told about his gambling.’
Tom had only met the man on a few occasions, but had detected a little nervousness in his demeanour. Gamblers were sometimes like that, bankers and stockbrokers, too. Players for high stakes in a game of chance.
‘Are you sure you haven’t misjudged the man? You’re threatening to destroy his life.’
For a brief moment, there was doubt in his wife’s eyes, but it quickly passed. ‘There is nothing wrong with my judgement.’
‘I think you should let him off the hook, Horatia.’
‘Why should I? It’s only a bank.’
Tom shook his head and lit a cigarillo. ‘Not to him it isn’t. To him it’s his life.’
Again, one of her looks. ‘What’s done is done. I’ll tell him later.’
They parted, Tom to locate another sherry, Horatia to speak to her brother, Rupert, who had just returned to England from the West Indies.
‘I’m selling Rivermead,’ she said to him, glancing in a derogatory fashion at his tall, thin wife, who had chosen to wear a dress of deep saffron. Horatia was reminded of an overripe banana.
‘Good,’ said Rupert. ‘I hate the bloody place.’
No prevarication, no hurt feelings, no pleas for her to retain the sprawling house and the cane fields surrounding it. The world of the eighteenth century, when black slaves and brute force had spawned their wealth, was gone. The children of the brutal men who had founded and advanced their dynasty were of a different mould. Fastidious in their tastes and keen of mind, they would look to new horizons and towards an expanding empire and a new century.
Horatia was pleased. Everything was going well. The hem of her dress turned wet as she made her way across the grass, smiling to herself and feeling triumphant at a job well done.
A flock of crows took to the air in response to the sudden bark of a gun. It was followed by a scream.
Tom recognized the voice immediately. ‘Emerald!’ Discarding his cigarillo, he ran in the direction of the sound.
Emerald was hurtling towards him, the dogs yapping behind her. Her pink dress was speckled with blood and she was screaming at the top of her voice. ‘Daddeee! Daddeee!’
She was still screaming after her father handed her to her nurse, ran into the trees and discovered the body of Martin Lodge.
* * *
‘I knows all about it, I knows all about it!’
Blanche glanced at the woman staggering on the other side of the road, but her attention was quickly drawn to the queue of people waiting outside the Workhouse gates: men, women and children, of all ages and sizes, their clothes threadbare and their faces lined with worry. She knew these were the people with nothing left in the world, all hoping to gain a place in the Workhouse. It made her ashamed to be wearing such a fine dress, such a rich velvet trim to her hat and kid gloves that cost enough to feed a family for a day, perhaps longer.
Her depression might have deepened if the woman making a ruckus on the other side of the road hadn’t started shouting again.
‘I saw that babbee! I knows what he was and where he went! I knows…’ She waved her arms, upset her balance and fell flat on her face.
‘Oh, my—’ Blanche stepped into the gutter.
Edith grabbed her arm. ‘No! Don’t you worry. I’ll see to her. You go on and do yer business in thur.’
Blanche heard the double gates open behind her as she watched Edith scurry across the road to the fallen woman.
‘Well, ‘allo thur,’ she heard the woman exclaim.
Edith muttered something unintelligible close to the woman’s face.
‘Well, are ye coming in?’
She turned to face the Workhouse watchman, who was still attired in his mismatched uniform, his shoulders back and his stiff leg held to one side.
She apologized and headed for the main door, her gaze carefully diverted from the segregation signs.
‘Take no notice of ‘im,’ said the watchman suddenly.
‘What?’
It was then that she realized the stocks were being used. Her eyes met those of a bony-faced boy, his eyes deep-set and accusing, his jaw firmly defiant, though his body shivered.
‘Why is he here?’
The watchman laughed and rubbed the boy’s tousled hair. ‘Been eating what he shouldn’t be eating.’ The boy jerked his head so that the watchman’s hand fell away.
‘I don’t understand. What do you mean?’
The watchman sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve. ‘Well, ‘ee was s’posed to be crushing bones, but caught stuffing one in ‘is gob!’
Blanche closed her eyes and swallowed the bile rising from her stomach. ‘When will he be released?’ she said.
The watchman shrugged.
Blanche glared at him as fiercely as the boy had done.
The watchman tried to laugh off her indignation. Taking a swipe at the boy’s head he said, ‘This un’s a hard nut to crack. Don’t you go worrying—’
Suddenly he howled as the boy’s teeth bit into his hand.
‘Bite me would ye?’
To Blanche’s shock, he began to beat the boy about the head. ‘Stop it,’ she shouted.
The watchman continued. ‘You brat, you little toe rag!’
‘Stop it!’
When he still failed to oblige, she kicked out at the man’s stiff leg. She’d half expected it to be made of tin or wood, but it wasn’t. He tumbled onto one knee, his hat rolling in the dirt and a look of surprise on his face.
Blanche was still angry. ‘Take care I do not bite you,’ she said, her eyes blazing as she shook her finger at him. ‘Unlock that contraption. Unlock it right now!’
‘But the Reverend—’
‘Will also experience the sharp edge of my tongue for allowing this cruelty. Now get that boy out of there, take him to the kitchen and see that he’s fed. Use whatever is being provided for the Board’s midday meal. They won’t notice the difference.’
She stormed up the stairs and into the dining room where the Board was awaiting her arrival.
The Reverend Smart was as solicitous and sleazy as usual, but she was in no mood to be polite.
‘Why has a starving boy been put in the stocks?’
His mouth broke into a leer, though he’d probably meant it to be a smile. ‘My dear lady, the boy broke the rules.’
‘By being hungry?’ There were murmurs of condemnation among the other members of the Board, though she couldn’t tell whether they were aimed at her or the Reverend Smart.
Mrs Tinsley jumped to his defence. ‘How dare you come in here and accuse the Reverend of behaving in an unchristian manner!’
Blanche could barely control her anger. Taking a deep breath, she turned to Mrs Tinsley and wagged her finger in the way she’d wagged it at the watchman. ‘Is it Christian that those in your care are starving, and that you sit here stuffing yourselves with hams and pies and all manner of good things? Is it right that they are skin and bones and you are fat as hogs that have been too long at the trough?’
A gasp of astonishment rose around her.
Blanche realized she had gone too far. What was she likely to achieve by alienating everyone there? If the inmates were to be treated justly and kindly, she had to have the majority of the Board on her side. She had to temper her words, accuse those who deserved to be accused, arouse pity and cause true Christian charity to beat a little more strongly in the Board members’ hearts. It had never been her habit to use her appreciable womanly wiles, but she judged the time had come.
‘Gentlemen,’ she said, her voice quivering. ‘Gentlemen,’ she repeated, holding her hand against her breast as though she were likely to faint at any moment, and adopting a pleading expression, ‘I ask you as a mother who adores her .children just as your wives do your own. Would you see your own children suffer like this? Would you have your wives feeling as upset as I do now to see a child locked in a medieval contraption?’
Owing something to one of her ancestors who had been an actress, she got out her handkerchief and began to dab at her eyes.
‘Mrs Heinkel,’ said Sir Bertram, the rotund gentleman who only seemed to come for the port. ‘Please do not distress yourself.’ He took hold of her hand and patted it.
Colonel Barnes, a ramrod of a man wearing a monocle and bushy side-whiskers, came to her aid. ‘Mr Tinsley. Release the boy,’ he barked as if he were addressing a battalion. ‘Never even treated me own men like that, and hard bastards they were… begging your pardon, ma’am.’
‘Well, I don’t know…’ Tinsley slid a sly look in Smart’s direction.
‘Do it!’ snapped the colonel.
Tinsley fled like a rabbit with a hound snapping at his tail.
As the colonel and the other gentlemen consoled Blanche, Smart adopted a sanctimonious look and said, ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child.’
Colonel Barnes threw him a warning look. ‘Spare the boy some food, and you wouldn’t need a rod. In the army we always said that men marched on their stomachs. Feed ‘em well and treat ‘em with respect, and they’ll follow you ‘til the ends of the earth. Mark that well, Smart. Mark it well,’ he said, pointing an accusing finger.
Mr Tinsley came back and reported that he had done exactly as Colonel Barnes had directed.
‘There,’ said the colonel, smiling down at Blanche like a doting father. ‘Can’t bear seeing a memsahib in tears. Now brighten up, my dear. The boy’s been sorted. Dare say one of us should have said something when we first arrived. Shamed by a woman!’ He stroked his moustache, a voluptuous affair that curled at the ends and tangled with his side-whiskers. ‘Have to say, it’s not the first time in my life that that’s happened! What?’ He leaned closer. ‘Tell me, ma’am, and please forgive me for my presumption, but do you have Punjabi blood?’
Blanche felt her colour rising, but managed to hold her head high, and even managed to smile when she looked him in the eye. ‘No. Spanish actually.’
‘Ah!’ he said, eyeing her appraisingly. ‘That would explain it then. Must admit, always did like the native women.’
Thankfully, they were next to the window, and the conversation had not been overheard. The port had been replenished, and Mrs Tinsley was clapping her hands to attract their attention. After clearing her throat, she pronounced that they were gathered for a specific task before lunch.
‘The new entrants,’ she said. ‘As you no doubt saw for yourself, we are quite full at present, but still they come.’ She flapped her hands in a useless manner. ‘We have to do what we can, which is not always easy.’
She smiled benevolently at the men and threw Blanche an odious look.
Blanche disregarded her and smiled up at the colonel as he led her to a seat.
Chairs had been placed on one side of a large refectory table. Courteously, the colonel held out one for Blanche. Once she was seated, everyone else took their places, facing the door and their backs to the window, the bottom panes of which had been filled in with green paint.
Blanche folded her hands in her lap. Today there was no need to fend off the roaming hands of the Reverend Smart. Colonel Barnes sat on one side of her, and Sir Bertram on the other.
But still she was filled with trepidation. She’d seen the city’s poor lined up at the gate, willing to forgo their freedom and their self-respect in order to eat and have a roof over their head. There were too many poor and not enough places, even in such a terrible Workhouse as this.
By lunchtime, some people had gained entry and some had not. They had little room left. No matter how beguiling the food laid out before her, Blanche had no appetite. She’d seen so many pathetic creatures that morning, and had heard so many tales of woe.
The one face she could not chase from her mind was that of a young girl, probably no more than thirteen, who carried a child in her arms. She had insisted the child was her brother.
The Reverend Smart bore down on her. ‘Tell the truth, girl, or it will be the worse for you. Who is this child? Who is his mother?’
Her bottom lip trembled before she answered. ‘He’s my brother, sir.’
Mrs Tinsley, standing in the corner and watching the proceedings, shouted, ‘Liar. I heard you outside. That babe belongs to you. Go on, you little trollop, tell these gentlefolk the truth!’
The girl was one of those not offered a place.
Devastated by the proceedings, Blanche asked the Reverend Smart why she hadn’t been taken.
‘She’s not married! The child has no father.’
Blanche felt her heart swell in her chest and only barely kept her temper. ‘But
she’s so young. Where will she sleep tonight?’
Embarrassed by her question, all eyes became fixed on the tabletop in front of them.
It was Mrs Tinsley who answered. ‘A shop doorway, an old cellar, or one of them old sheds the Charlies used.’
‘What’s a Charlie?’
The colonel answered. ‘A night watchman’s hut. They’re not used any more, certainly not since this new police force came into existence.’
The memory of that first day of choosing who should come into the workhouse would stay with her for the rest of her life. It became especially piquant when Mrs Tinsley reported that a baby wrapped in a blue cloth had been found abandoned outside the gate.
‘It must belong to that girl,’ Blanche exclaimed passionately. ‘We have to find her.’
Mrs Tinsley shrugged. ‘So how do we do that?’
‘A baby left out alone? Surely she’ll be worried.’
Mrs Tinsley folded her arms and eyed her with undisguised disdain. ‘And what about the other mothers? Do you think they’re worried, too?’
Blanche frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, what about the other six babies left outside the gates this week? Will their mothers miss them? No! They won’t. And neither will that one.’
Chapter Nine
The shooting party had broken up early, everyone pale with shock.
The bright day turned grey and it began to rain.
Once Emerald had been stripped of her bloodied clothes, she was washed and put to bed. She was already asleep by the time Tom went to her room.
He knelt at her bedside, the day a turmoil inside his head: flashes of golden feathers; the smell of gunfire; the sound of each shot – one louder and more terrible than any of the others; his daughter’s dress splashed with blood. How much would Emerald be affected by such trauma?
Horatia had changed for dinner, and appeared at the table wearing a pale blue silk dress. The lace-trimmed neckline was cut very low, revealing her glisteningly white shoulders. Diamonds, fashioned like a chain of flowers, sparkled at her throat, with a matching bracelet at her wrist and earrings that flashed with borrowed light. Tonight they dined alone.
