by Tracy Rees
It was inevitable that the time would come when Aurelia would want to share her indoor kingdom with me. And inevitable too that when she did we would be caught. Once, learning to play the piano, I was hauled from the stool midscale by Mrs Last, the then housekeeper. I was dragged back to the kitchen and pushed through the door with a wallop.
On another occasion, Aurelia had me trying on one of her gowns. We had always been dressed differently: Aurelia in lustrous fabrics with sashes and ribbons, and frilly white bloomers peeping out beneath full skirts, I in the plainest of work garments, flat shoes and a simple white cap. How she envied me.
It was one of the maids, Peggy, who spotted us this time.
My grey serge was in a puddle around my feet, the blue satin was halfway over my head. I was shivering in my white cotton shift in between when the door banged open.
Peggy had been most eager to share intelligence of my whereabouts: Lady Vennaway had come. Her shriek rings in my ears to this day. You would have thought me a rat upon her dinner table.
I was blinded by petticoats and the dress was snatched from me with such force that I heard the satin rip. This time Lady Vennaway herself manhandled me to the kitchen before I could properly fasten my dress, her fingers digging into my flesh.
She threw me, actually threw me, inside. I staggered against the stove and burned my arm, though glancingly. I had two far greater concerns, however.
Amidst all the confusion, I had heard one thing clearly; Lady Vennaway had absolutely, in the clearest possible language and with a host of accompanying threats, forbidden Aurelia to see me again. And now I watched Cook’s ever-ruddy face drain of colour as Lady Vennaway gave her such a castigation as I had never heard.
That night I cried myself to sleep for only the third time in my life. The first time I had eaten too many strawberry tarts and my stomach pains were fierce. The second had been over the travails of Oliver Twist.
This was of an altogether different order. My only friendship had been threatened – ended, I believed. And because of me, however unwitting, Cook was in a deal of trouble.
She had always done her best for me and now she had been humiliated in front of the kitchen maids, who stood gawping at the drama. Her place was in jeopardy, Lady Vennaway raged. I did not know exactly where Jeopardy was but I knew it to be highly undesirable, like Bedlam or Prison. I did not want Cook to be sent away to Jeopardy because of me.
I thought for a long time that night. I had never thought so much before. I had merely taken the days as they came and accepted the circumstances of my life as they appeared before me. I had seen the strictures regarding where I could and could not go as arbitrary rules from the adult world. Adults liked rules, I knew, and I would not begrudge them their foolish pleasures. My first meeting with the mistress had been deeply shocking and horrible to think about – so I had ceased thinking about it and the problem had been solved.
But now I understood that what Cook had been telling me all along was true: the world was such that Aurelia and I could not be friends, and if we did not take care, people would suffer.
Long after I had gone to bed, Cook came in to see me. She sat on the foot of my little bed and it tipped a little southwards.
‘Is everything cleared away now?’ I asked, for there had been a dinner, with eight courses and many wines.
‘Yes, everything’s done.’
‘Did you finish the batter?’ I asked, for fresh cakes were required tomorrow.
‘All ready to bake in the morning. The reverend’s coming so I’m doing a lemon pudding as well as the fig and raisin.’
I knew how nicely the kitchen would smell next morning.
‘Do you understand, now?’ she asked me and I knew she was not referring to the cake.
‘I do,’ I sniffed. ‘I’m sorry, Cookie. I did not mean for you to be turned upon. You kept telling us and we would not listen.’
She nodded and passed a rough hand over my hair.
Encouraged, I continued. ‘Lady Vennaway is a horrible, horrible woman, is she not, Cookie?’
Cook hesitated. ‘Everyone has their own story, even those we find the hardest. Best to accept things the way they are and count your blessings. After all, Amy, you’re luckier than many and shorter than most.’ It was a jest often voiced amongst my companions, on account of my small size.
I nodded and smiled but as I did so I knew it would be hard. That afternoon, buried beneath the shock, I had felt anger, like a little hard seed waiting to sprout.
‘I don’t want you go to that horrible place,’ I told Cook as she got to her feet and my bed rocked back to the horizontal.
She paused, puzzled. ‘What place?’
‘Jeopardy. Mistress said your place was there but it isn’t, it’s here with us!’
Cook was too weary to correct my misapprehension but she told me what I needed to hear. ‘A fine cook is a hard thing to find. One who can cope with a house like Hatville rarer still. As for one who can tolerate her ladyship, well, there’s probably only one such in all of England. So don’t you worry now, I’m going nowhere, except up four flights of stairs to my bed. Mistress knows which side her bread is buttered.’
I was unsure why the mistress should concern herself with buttering bread at all when she could have cakes baked fresh to her command, but I promised myself that I would mind Cook better henceforth. She was all I had now. After the dreadful things that Lady Vennaway had said to her daughter, I knew that I would never see Aurelia again. The thought was almost too terrible to bear.
Then morning came, and with it the warm, sweet fragrance of baking. And Aurelia, radiant in the doorway.
‘Come on, Amy, it’s a beautiful day! There is dew on the cobwebs and rainbows in the dew and the world is altogether as it should be. Let’s go outside!’
Chapter Ten
What a wonder to see the countryside of Surrey through the window of a train! What an experience to be carried, jolting and swaying, past fields and streams and woods and cottages. What a marvel to see it fly past so swiftly!
What is there that is not remarkable about the railway? From its rapid growth to its staggering speeds – thirty miles per hour, I am told, in some places! – to its pounding and steaming and gleaming . . . all quite, quite extraordinary. Yet the most remarkable feature of the railway, to my mind, must surely be its passengers.
I share a carriage with a couple in their middle years, Mr and Mrs Begley. They introduce themselves as they squeeze in with a goodly number of cases between them and sit just opposite me. I believe Tom would have approved them as conversational partners for me, but in truth I have no choice in the matter – Mrs Begley has not drawn breath since Ladywell.
‘Oh, my Lord!’ she exclaims, fanning herself with a limp hand. ‘What a trial, what an exertion, this railway nonsense. Look at me, I am shaking!’ She holds out a hand, mere inches from my chin, which I inspect with interest. It is shaking.
‘Miss Snow,’ interjects her husband, ‘Charlotte, the railway is a marvellous system! Look how comfortable we sit! Providing we bring our travelling cushions with us, of course. Look how neatly stacked our luggage! Unless it is shaken loose. Look at the proliferation of stations and routes and destinations! Why, with such a system as this, any mischance must perforce serve only as a pleasant diversion!’
‘Not at all, William! When you think of the accidents, the explosions, the overturnings of which one reads every day in the papers! Terrifying, Miss Snow, quite terrifying.’
My companions keep up their heated conversation all the way to the very outskirts of London. It is clear that debate is an expression of affection between them and I welcome the distraction from my thoughts. Fond memories of Aurelia are with me at every moment but so, I am shocked to realize, are old resentments, long-buried.
It is the sight of those old letters this morning that has drawn them from the recesses of my mind. I had been pleased to forget our earlier, temporary separation, long before Aurelia’s passing
, when I believed myself forgotten by her. Then, I blamed Mrs Bolton for taking her away from me. I was wrong to do so, for Aurelia was most determined to go. Then, as now, she asked me to trust her – yet I had to endure at Hatville without her for far too long. I think it was too much to ask of one so young. Together with my fear about arriving alone in the great city of London, such ruminations on the past are far from comforting. Perhaps this is too much to ask of me, too.
As we pass through the pleasant village of Dulwich, Mrs Begley tells me their plans. They are to stay with their married son in Pentonville. His wife is expecting their first child. He works as a senior clerk in a large bank and likes it so very well that he cannot think why everyone is not a bank clerk.
I think of all I have read of murders and pickpockets and tricksters. I remember from gloomy newspaper reports that Seven Dials is a dire place, the Old Kent Road too. The other blackened names elude me; I feel ill prepared indeed for London.
As the city hails into view, grey and heaving like an ocean of stone, Mrs Begley falls briefly silent and I seize my opportunity to ask these fonts of knowledge for some counsel.
‘Miss Snow! Am I to understand you? Pray, correct me! Do you mean us to believe that you have nowhere to stay . . . that you are alone? Oh, Miss Snow! This is ill-considered, I fear. Oh, whatever can be done?’
‘Now, now, Charlotte, mere practicalities – creases to be steamed out! Do not look so alarmed, Miss Snow. All shall be well. When we alight, Mrs Begley and I will see you into a cab. I’m afraid the Bricklayers’ Arms is not positioned in the most salubrious of neighbourhoods.’
‘Indeed no! The Old Kent Road! Gracious heavens, whatever were the railwaymen thinking of, building a passenger terminus in such a perilous quarter. Perilous!’
We are quiet for a moment before I dare to venture another question. ‘Do you think you could possibly suggest somewhere I might stay? And I shall be very grateful for your assistance in finding a cab. Only . . . where should I go in it? A good area, a respectable place.’
‘Do you have sufficient funds, my dear, to pay for somewhere tasteful? For London is shockingly dear, you know.’
‘Charlotte!’ Mr Begley looks scandalized.
‘Well, William! I am only looking out for the girl. I do not want to ruin her, you know!’
‘Even so . . . one cannot simply . . . enquire!’
Fearing to be the cause of another dispute, I interject. ‘I am quite happy to pay for a good place. It is only for two nights, then I shall be joining friends . . .’ I tell the lie both to lessen their alarm on my behalf and because I badly wish it were true.
Mrs Begley casts a lofty look at her spouse. ‘In that case I have no hesitation in recommending Mrs Woodrow’s establishment, a boarding house for ladies situated close to St James’s Park, in Jessop Walk. Can you remember that, dear, Jessop Walk? Number seven. No! Number six! No! Number eleven, is it, William? On the right, in any case, as you look towards the campanile. The right or the left at any rate . . .’
Chapter Eleven
If Aurelia had been a man, she would have been considered a humanitarian visionary. She might have stood for Parliament and passed new bills if she had worn breeches and whiskers. Her parents would have described her as energetic. Instead, she had tumbling chestnut curls, navy-blue eyes, a narrow waist and a ready laugh – and they despaired of her.
When the talk in the drawing room was all gossip, Aurelia took the controversial view that the subjects were real people with their own sensibilities who should be protected. I remember one local scandal that kept her mother, aunts and cousins thrilled and appalled for weeks. Our neighbour Mr Templeton, respectable master of a modest but prosperous home, had fathered a child on his housemaid. It was a far from uncommon story, of course. Yet in each and every instance, it seems, the done thing is to behave as though nothing so terrible has ever taken place on our green planet hitherto.
While everyone else reported nuggets of information (the maid was uncommonly pretty with strawberry-blonde curls; Mrs Pagett in the village had never liked the way Mr Templeton looked at her) or passed judgements (he was a disgrace to the neighbourhood, a beast in breeches; she was a young hussy and the housekeeper was lax not to have kept an eye on her), Aurelia asked questions.
What would happen to the young girl now, with no employment and a blackened name? Was she not very young to have her entire life damned before her? And Mrs Templeton? Was she upset or angry, maudlin or vengeful? What had made Mr Templeton do it (aside from the obvious, of course)? Had he not always been a decent and reasonable man? Other pretty girls must have crossed his path before this, so why now? Could anything be done to help?
Questions like these were part of the reason that Aurelia, though adored, was considered within the family to be lacking in intelligence. Consequently, Mr Henley was commissioned by Aurelia’s parents to guide her.
He was a very strict lady’s tutor with the reputation of favouring results over method. I venture to guess that Mr Henley, as a man of learning, could not have thought Aurelia stupid, but he was hired to turn her into a very particular being, and in this he was challenged daily. He strove to succeed where a succession of hand-wringing nursemaids and governesses had failed. The subjects that interested young Aurelia – philosophy, literature, economics and politics – were certainly not within his remit. She was to be a wife one day, after all, and not just any wife! He was hired to teach her Latin and music, a little of geography and history and, above all, decorum. Decorum did not come easily to Aurelia. However, his determination became the unexpected cause of another change in our friendship.
When he was newly in post and did not yet know the rules concerning me, he found me in the schoolroom one day and let me stay to share the lesson. And if he was a little condescending to me, well, I was only eight.
Thus he came to notice what several others remarked upon over the years: I calmed her down. With me present, Aurelia grew more settled, attentive and, he liked to think, receptive to instruction. If the truth was simply that she hoped to be dismissed from her lessons earlier so we could escape to our own entertainments, she certainly didn’t disabuse him. So Mr Henley, of all the improbable figures, was the next to argue the case for our continued association.
He earnestly explained to his employers that for a restless spirit such as Aurelia’s a companion with a steadier disposition and a more pedestrian mind was a beneficial thing. Further, that in the absence of brothers and sisters, placid company could soothe and sweeten the path of correction. He very strongly advised that I be allowed to share her lessons.
Lord Vennaway was too lofty altogether to care either way. ‘Why ever not allow it?’ he demanded of his wife, bored. Lady Vennaway’s more heated emotions had no place amongst these bastions of male rationality. Her womanly feelings must bow to sense and expediency; it was what they were trying to teach Aurelia, after all.
Thus it happened that I was with Aurelia more than her mother could ever have wished and my role in the household subtly changed: I heard myself referred to as Aurelia’s companion more than once – though never in earshot of Lady Vennaway. I was now privileged to see Aurelia living in her own world, instead of only in our happy, separate little bubble. And I came to see her in a new light. I realized that whilst to me she was the friend of my childhood (older to be sure, but free and careless even so), other people thought of her as a young lady, with a clear duty before her.
*
Aurelia was sixteen when Mr Henley arrived, and by then her parents had been discussing her marital prospects for over a year. Aurelia refused even to acknowledge their plans, as though by ignoring them she could will them out of existence. I did not like to admit that Aurelia had a blind spot. I was dependent on her after all, and I wanted to believe her all-powerful. But, watchful little soul that I was, I started to see that reality as Aurelia determined upon it and reality as everyone else saw it were not always the same.
Shortly after Mr Henle
y joined us, her parents started entertaining suitors at Hatville Court, and shipping Aurelia off to balls with her aunts and cousins as chaperones (Lady Vennaway would not go herself, being wary of anything that might be considered an amusement). At first Aurelia enjoyed the novelty of dressing up and dancing and being admired. She laughed outright at the men who came to dinner. Just as I looked up to Aurelia, and learned from her, she in her turn adopted airs she copied from Mrs Bolton. She behaved as if she was blithely unaffected by it all. I was taken in at first.
But time passed and Lord and Lady Vennaway became more explicit about their plans. They forbade Aurelia to change the subject or flounce from the room when the subject of marriage arose. Arguments grew more frequent. And Aurelia was afraid. She was loath to admit it but I often saw her staring around her wild-eyed, like a horse bridled with curb chain and martingale too tight.
I do not doubt that they loved her – no one ever could who saw the way they looked at her. But they were people for whom love was a complicated affair, very closely bound up with, and easily confused with, matters of proprietorship, duty and control. Being who they were, the public eye upon them as it was, the honour of their family so great . . . well – there were expectations. They wanted her well mannered, modestly dressed, reserved and blushing, an immaculate prize for some wealthy noble with fine whiskers who could match or better the Vennaways’ fortune and prestige.
They foresaw a future of stately grandeur for her – producing heirs, gracing society, decorating her husband’s arm. Aurelia, however, had read too much and lived too little. Inspired by the vast libraries of Hatville, and with no wise guide to understand or check her, every wild daydream seemed possible to her. She wanted a life of travel and intrigue, romances of her own choosing (she was determined there should be several) and to use her fortune and privilege to do philanthropic works. She wanted to be a new kind of role model for rich young ladies. (‘Subversive and scandalous!’ spat her father.) She wanted her name in the history books, never mind that no history book we had ever read recognized the opinions of women.
