by Tracy Rees
‘But when I was six, I was blessed with the most enormous good fortune you can imagine. One of the trustees, Lady Everdene, had a friend, John Capland, who hailed from York. He wanted to adopt a boy. He had lost his wife, you see, and had only one child, Jeremiah. He had determined never to marry again, for he had loved his wife so dearly, but he wanted the very best of everything for his son. That included another boy as a brother for Jeremiah.
‘He was visiting Lady Everdene when she suggested he choose a boy from her Cardiff orphanage. She selected four boys who had caught her eye and gave Mr Capland the opportunity to meet us and choose. That was the day that changed my life. Of course, I had no idea of the purpose of meeting this stranger; it was merely a pleasant break from the monotony. If I had known that a chance for a family and a better future was at stake, I believe the suspense would have been unbearable. But I did not know. And he chose me.
‘I made the long journey to Yorkshire with my new father and made his better acquaintance. He was a good man, Amy. He is dead now, which pains me still, even after five years. I met my older brother, Jeremiah, who was then nine years of age, and after demonstrating repeatedly that he could knock me down in a fight – for he was, and still is, three times my size – we became first tolerable friends and then true brothers.
‘Two years later, Lady Everdene, who was by then Mrs Hamilton of Truro, sent my father a considerable sum of money to be used for the betterment of his sons. Having instigated the adoption and having no children of her own, it pleased her to have some involvement with our little family. My father was scrupulously fair, divided the money equally between us and offered us the same opportunities. But we were very different. Jeremiah had become apprenticed to a butcher in York and he liked the post very well. Nor did he wish to leave home. I took the chance to go to school in London. I spent every holiday at home but I loved school and devoured my lessons like a plate of grilled trout.
‘The years passed and Jeremiah bought the butcher’s shop he had begun his career in, for he had been given as capital the equivalent of what had been spent on my education. Like my brother, I wanted a shop of my own, but not a butcher’s shop – oh no! I wanted a business that was pleasing to the eye, and profitable, where I might meet a beautiful young lady with whom I could fall madly in love.’
‘That’s where I come in!’ smiles Elspeth. I can well imagine it. ‘I was twenty years old and engaged to a boat-builder from Whitby called Sam Perrin.’
‘I’ve never met Sam Perrin,’ interjects Joss, ‘but I intend to spit on him if I do.’
‘I hardly think you need feel jealous now, my love,’ she reproves mildly. ‘It was a great many years ago. Anyway, Amy, my mother brought me to York for my trousseau, for we had all heard tell of a new haberdasher’s that had opened up there. It was run by a dashing young man who had been educated in London, we were told. He had contacts with all the manufacturers, and offered all the fashions of that great city but at a third of London prices. Apparently a great many young ladies passed through those doors that year. A great many,’ she emphasizes pointedly.
‘I intended to make a success of my business and I did,’ Joss counters complacently. ‘I did indeed meet a great many young ladies. But only one that made me look twice, and then look again for the rest of my life.’
‘We married,’ concluded Elspeth. ‘I broke my engagement, and my mother’s heart.’
‘And Sam Perrin’s, I presume,’ I add.
‘Oh, Sam. He found someone else within the year so I do not trouble myself over him. My mother has yet to recover, I believe!
‘Anyway, I am the happiest of wives and we have a beautiful home, as you see, but, Amy, we were not blessed with children. After ten whole years, that joy was not given to us. We tried hard to remember that if it were always to be just the two of us we would still have a great deal for which to be thankful. But I cannot deny that it was a very great sadness to us. Very great.
‘We talked about adopting, but I had a superstitious belief that to do so would be to close the door to conceiving a child of our own. Then one day, almost four years ago, we received a visitor. It was the trustee from the orphanage. Tell her, Joss.’
‘Yes, well, the visit was nothing remarkable in itself. The trustee, Lady Everdene as she was in Cardiff, had kept in touch with my father all those years and occasionally came to see how I was getting on. She is a person who likes to interest herself in other people’s affairs. After he died, she kept the contact with me. I mentioned that Lady Everdene became Mrs Hamilton, Amy, and over the years she passed through many incarnations as husbands died or disappeared. She was . . . er . . . not a conventional lady, but what will I ever care for that? If not for her, I would not have known my father, or my brother or my wife. By the time she reappeared at my cottage door in 1844 she was Mrs Riverthorpe.’
‘Mrs Riverthorpe!’ How had I not guessed it sooner?
‘Indeed. As I say, it was not the fact of the visit that was remarkable, it was what came of it. She barrelled into our house and informed us that we must do her a favour. I agreed, thinking she wanted me to put her in touch with a certain milliner, or perhaps accompany her on a journey, for she was very old by then . . . But no. The favour was that we were to host a stranger, a young lady, in our home for several months. Oh, and the young lady was with child, and we were to oversee the birth, and then adopt the child after it was born . . .’
Both Caplands are quiet for a moment, wearing nostalgic, slightly wry expressions on their faces. I snort with laughter, imagining it.
‘It was an outrageous demand, of course,’ continues Elspeth, ‘and I had something to say about it, as you may well imagine. There was quite a tussle, for she is very used to getting her own way, as you must know. But I was not about to have our entire future commandeered to her whim, for all that Joss owed her everything. It was not that I was unsympathetic to the young lady’s plight, but I have told you of my feelings about adoption and I could not just change them for the asking. I don’t know if sounds strange to you but it was a very emotional response to a very personal disappointment. In the end, a compromise was reached. We would meet the young lady in question; we agreed to that at least.
‘And so, the following day, Aurelia alighted at our door, pale and thin and shaking, but still the most beautiful girl imaginable and with that heart burning out of her, lighting up everything around her, drawing us in . . . She told us her story; she was very frank about how she came to find herself in this unenviable situation.’
‘When we learned that she was dying,’ says Joss, ‘we began to see things in a different light. When she told us of her parents, however, it made me very worried. It was not their power and influence that caused me hesitate, it was the idea of keeping a child from its own flesh and blood, of standing between people I had never met and their grandchild. But we spent time with Aurelia. She came to stay with us after all. She got to know us and we learned about her life.’
‘I think she felt safe here from the start,’ Elspeth continues. I can readily believe it. ‘Being so far from home, allowing us to nurture her . . . these things all restored her to some degree. Even so, she was not properly well for the whole of her time with us. Her pregnancy was a strain on her body. Well, her letter will no doubt tell you how we managed things between us, but the outcome is as you see. Louis is as we imagine Aurelia must have been before her illness took hold of her. You will be able to judge that better than we can, of course.’
‘And Verity?’
Elspeth laughed. ‘It turned out that my superstition was wrong – entirely wrong. Louis was six months old. Aurelia had departed from us some four months previously. And I discovered that I was pregnant. Joss and I could not believe it, though we have heard since that it is not such an uncommon phenomenon, after adoption. Well, Aurelia always believed that we had a great deal to offer Louis. Little did any of us imagine we would also be able to offer him a sister!’
‘And now, we hope,�
�� says Joss, looking at me steadily, ‘he will have an aunt too. We have told him about our family friend, Miss Snow. He has been excited to meet his Aunt Amy! We should love to know you better, too. Please spend as much time here as you would like. I know this must be a lot for you to take in, but . . . well, we hope this makes you . . . happy.’
Happy. Yes.
It will take a long time for me to fit the pieces together in my heart and in my head, but Mrs Riverthorpe is not here to mock me for it so I expect I may take all the time I need to.
I watch Aurelia’s son tumbling with his sister on the grass and murmur, ‘Aunt Amy.’ And smile.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
I do not arrive back at the Jupiter until ten o’clock at night. Joss drives me in the cart and Louis demands to go with us, although he has already been put to bed three times. He is refused, kindly but firmly.
At the hotel, a short letter awaits me from Mrs Riverthorpe. In it she graciously agrees to put me out of my misery – as she terms it – provided I burn the information at once. She then instructs me to visit Joss Capland, a draper on High Petergate. She also requests that I continue to correspond with her and allows that I might visit her in Bath again one day at my convenience. I smile as I fold up the letter.
I summon the concierge and beg a plate of sandwiches to be sent up to me. I feel terrible, knowing how the late-night whims of the wealthy can feel to the maids like the tiresome last straw after a busy day in the kitchen. I would be happy to fetch them myself, but of course that would never do. Yet I find that completing a quest, and freedom, and aunthood all generate a fierce appetite.
I sit at the table in my room, still fully dressed, and devour my sandwiches and my letter both at once. The letter is many pages long, and I am glad of it. I have at least a million questions.
My treasured Amy,
This will doubtless be my longest letter to you and I find I hardly know where to begin. It will also be my last – the thought of it breaks my heart. Foolish really, that it feels like farewell when once again I shall see you tomorrow. It is just that I have been keeping so much from you. My letters are the only place where I can shed that reticence. Once this is written, I can share no more confidences with you for the rest of my life.
I wonder if you have been angry with me for not confiding in you. I dare not speak of Louis to you. The temptation to do so again and again would be too great. It would be the same for you, I know it would. We might be overheard. And then, I am quite sure, my parents would stop at nothing to learn whatever you knew. I have to put it all aside and go on as though it had never happened; that is the choice I have made.
At last I can write freely. Joss will guard this letter with his life, I know that. If you are reading it, then you have followed my trail to its conclusion and you will know my whole story. For this one night, alone in my room, I can unburden myself to you fully and fill in the gaps. Then I need only fear its discovery before I post it, but I shall do as I have done with all of them.
I write to you, dearest, last thing at night. I sleep with my secrets under my pillow and rise early to haul myself to the post office, even if it is not a good day, even if I am feeling wretched. I can feel my strength fading fast and I need to finish this before I am altogether incapable. The letters do not stay on Vennaway property for one second more than they absolutely must. I see them placed into the care of Miss Penelope Lambert, postmistress, with my own eyes!
I pause in my reading to laugh at another memory of my old life. To give something to Penelope was akin to placing it in a vault, locking it, throwing it into the ocean and then melting down the key for good measure. We went to the post office whenever there was anything to be posted, even though the servants could easily have done so. We went just for the pleasure of counting how many times in any given encounter she would refer to herself, with consummate pride, as ‘Miss Penelope Lambert, postmistress’.
Life is a richness of little details and minute encounters. In losing Aurelia, I have lost somebody with whom I can share a whole history. I should like to tell Henry these inconsequential things. I think perhaps he would understand. I think he might like to hear them.
If you are reading this letter, then you have met Louis. Amy, my son! Of course, he is not my son, not now, he is Joss and Elspeth’s son and yet . . . I cannot help but think of him that way still.
By now (I mean as I write this) he will be nearly a year old. He may be crawling and babbling and chuckling but I have only ever seen him as a babe. Like the both of us, Amy, he was a winter baby. Born in November to grey skies, rain and bare branches. Really, you would think I might have timed it better!
Oh, to be able to write to you of Louis, to be able to share my love for him with my dearest friend! But I must return to Twickenham first. This letter is intended to enlighten you, not to indulge myself (although I never say no to a little indulgence, as well you know).
So there was I in Twickenham, enjoying life with the Wisters to the full. I firmly pushed all thoughts of Bailor Dunthorne from my mind. I felt I was finally gulping down something I had long been denied. I thought it would fortify me to return to my parents. I even hoped, you know, to return early and surprise you. I missed you so.
Well, Robert Burns was quite right when he said: ‘The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men an’ even Vennaways / often go awry.’ (Mr Henley would tell me that I have taken licence with the citation, but I’m sure Mr Burns had a Vennaway or two lurking in an early draft.)
I frequently did battle with my health while I was there, Amy. I tried to make light of it in my letters to you, for I did not want you fearing I might not return. It was bad, and I had not expected that so soon.
I don’t think I ever mentioned that Mrs Bolton had left me by then. She had business in London and I would not be torn away from her relations. She returned a few weeks later, however, and took me aside only days later.
‘Aurelia,’ she said (you know she never was one for preamble), ‘tell me, is there any way that you might be pregnant?’ That is a frank friend indeed!
She was much struck with the change in me, you see, the repeated bouts of sickness, my dizzy spells, and all before luncheon. Yet despite my weakness, she said, I glowed in a most particular way!
Will you think me very stupid if I tell you that it had never even crossed my mind? The biological indications were all there, of course, but I had been too busy to pay them any mind – too busy enjoying myself, too busy gritting my teeth with determination to stay alive and enjoy even more!
I answered her questions with my head spinning and Mrs B suspected her guess was right. I knew it was. From never even dreaming of it, the knowledge rushed in on me all of a sudden. I knew I wasn’t ready to die when I left Hatville! Something else was responsible for my malaise.
When I look back at the three-and-twenty years of my life, there are three moments that I remember with a special quality of memory, an extraordinary clarity – moments when I knew absolutely that my life was about to change for ever. The first was finding you. The second was the day I collapsed in the orchard and learned I was not going to live for ever, not even close. And the third was standing in the garden at Mulberry Lodge, understanding that I was with child. I put my hand on the trunk of the birch and saw it silver and black beneath my white hand. I see it still.
My dear Amy, you may imagine how I felt! Robin had promised me such a thing could not happen! I can only think these things are a very imprecise art, for he would not have wronged me in that way intentionally. Clearly, I could never go back to Hatville whilst I was pregnant and unmarried.
I remember writing down my options and a dismal little list they made (burned at once, naturally). Of course I might lose the child, as my mother had done so often. Yet somehow, given my body’s recalcitrant nature, I knew that would not happen.
I could rid myself of it deliberately. Mrs B assured me that such a thing could be done if you knew the right (or perhaps the wrong!) people.
It is illegal, you know, Amy, yet if I wished to do this, she would make discreet enquiries, she promised. Now there was another reason for secrecy, another person to protect. Imagine if my parents ever knew she had encouraged such a thing! But you, Amy, I want you to know everything.
Well, this option was not one I could consider. I can understand how women in desperate circumstances are driven to it. I was terrified, Amy. Yet despite my fear, I could not end the life of my child. You know me, Amy, I cannot kill a worm!
The third avenue then was to carry the child to term, if I lived that long, and then . . .? Abandon it? Impossible. Keep it and spend the rest of my life in hiding . . . well, you know, Amy, there was great appeal in that! I might have sent for you and done just that if it were not for the fact of this infernal problem with my heart. All you needed was to be left adrift in the world with a newborn baby!
Or there was the possibility of giving it up for adoption to a loving family. (I say ‘it’, my dear, because of course I did not know then that ‘it’ would be my Louis!) This was the unselfish choice, it seemed to me. A novel choice, then, for me!
It was the first alternative that gave me hope. But it was dependent on finding the right people and I knew of no one; no more did Mrs B. Then again, the secrecy that would have to be involved . . . the length of time I would need to stay away from home . . .! You may imagine how I stayed awake at night circling over the details and problems and possible solutions . . . All pleasure was at an end and in its place only this obsession with creating the perfect solution.
You might think I resented ‘it’ for this abrupt termination of my newfound happiness but I did not. Not for a moment. All I wanted was to protect it.
And that brings me to the heart of the matter. You and I both know that if I had come home with an illegitimate child my parents would have raged and roared and the storm would have been vengeful. I imagined it in vivid detail, you may be sure! But then, Amy – and you know this too – they would have been reconciled. Their desperation for a continuance of the line would have done mighty battle with their outrage, and it would have won, I believe.
