“She’s mentioned her friends,” I told him. “I fear my presence has prevented her from inviting any of them to call.”
Shaker smiled at me. “Don’t worry about that. I’m pleased that she can still enjoy the small pleasures she knows as Dr. Smallpiece’s widow, with her acceptance in that milieu, and the invitations she receives.” He stopped, and in that moment I realized that in the short time I’d known Shaker, he had proven to be very much like the father he described.
“Shortly after my father died—seven years ago—my mother suffered that terrible apoplexy, and after that, she began seeking . . . God.” He frowned, studying the illustration over his desk as if he’d forgotten I was there. “I’ve read of these cases more than once. It seems as if there is a connection between the two—the onset of seizures with the beginning of unnatural religious fervor.”
I made a small sound, an acknowledgment, and he started, focusing on me once more. “I tried to help her. I followed all the prescribed medical treatments—restricting her fluid intake, giving emetics and purgatives. I even bled her frequently, trying to equalize her circulation. But none of it has helped. Although, as I told you, the fits are rare, at times her behavior is such that I hardly recognize her anymore.” He sighed. “And you needn’t worry about her demands on you. They’ll stop. Nan, who has always done for us, as well as her daughter, Merrie, who looks after my mother’s clothes and hair and any extra work to be done, will be back—my mother dismisses them both regularly for one infraction or another. Nan and Merrie stay away two or three days, long enough for my mother to miss them terribly, and then they simply show up again. Nan is quite used to the pattern and she and my mother understand one another.”
I picked up the quill and dipped it in the ink. “What did you mean, Shaker, when you told me I was your sign?” I asked him, before I wrote the first word.
Shaker moved to the window, fussing with the curtain. “I had decided—that night in the Green Firkin—that . . .” He stopped, then continued. “I had decided to drink as much as I could, although I rarely consume much strong drink. When I felt that I had drunk enough to give me courage, I planned to go to—to the place where Frances is buried—so as not to leave my mother to deal with . . . things—and drink a potion of hemlock I had procured.”
“Hemlock? Is it not a form of poison?” I knew I shouldn’t have interrupted Shaker’s confession, and quickly put my hand to my mouth.
From the side, I could see the corner of Shaker’s lip lift slightly. “It is. I felt there was no purpose for me anymore. It seemed the cowardly way out, and yet I could think of nothing else but ending my miserable existence. I felt there was no purpose for me anymore. I had three emotions, as I stood at that dirty counter in the public house.”
I waited.
“The strongest was self-pity. That because of my inabilities, I would never be the man I wanted to be. I would never be a physician or even a surgeon, the one thing I wanted to do—help people in that capacity. Although my work in the library is quietly fulfilling, it holds no . . . no passion for me. As well, my despair was also over the fact that I would never even know the simple pleasure of my own family—for what self-possessed young woman would be interested in someone like me?”
This surprised me. I had begun to see a quiet strength under Shaker’s plain features, and in spite of his tremors, he carried himself with the utmost dignity. Surely he judged himself too harshly.
“The second emotion was guilt,” he continued, “at leaving my mother on her own. But the self-pity won out over that. I had a letter written for her, one which I hoped would explain things, as well as instructions for her own welfare. I knew she wouldn’t be destitute, as there is enough left by my father to comfortably support her until her demise. And I spoke to Nan, long ago, about the possibility—should I ever be unable to care for my mother—that she and Merrie move in and live here, caring for my mother as long as she lived, to which Nan agreed. She is a widow herself, and although my mother considers Nan much beneath her, there is nonetheless a strong and undeniable friendship between them.”
He ran his fingers up and down the piping at the edge of the curtain.
“And the third?” I finally asked, when he had been silent too long.
“The third was one last tiny shred of hope. Hope that I would suddenly be shown why I shouldn’t carry out my plan. I had been watching and perhaps waiting for something for over two weeks, from the time I had decided on my course of action. If there was something, some kind of indication—something that I could interpret as a sign, then I would ask for forgiveness for my bitter self-pity and go on with my life. And you, Linny, were that sign.”
“In what way?”
“Because I realized I could help you.”
A drip of ink fell onto the clean paper, and I watched it spread. “You mean because I’m a useless whore and you thought that you could justify your own life by changing mine into what you see as respectable?”
There was more silence and then Shaker’s voice came low, in barely held back anger. “No. Because I thought—perhaps with doses of feverfew tea, mixed with a touch of rosemary, which I’ve read can be helpful in alleviating cramping—that the labor might stop. When I realized it was too late for that, I wanted to assist you and make sure you weren’t forced to drop your baby in an alley, alone and like an animal, and then bleed to death. That’s how I hoped I could help you, even if I’m not a physician or a surgeon. Just as an ordinary man who cared about the welfare of a stranger. That’s how you were my sign. You enabled me to rise above the mire of my own self-absorption.”
I bit at the inside of my cheek, where a small, hard lump had formed from this habit I had acquired of late. It had become something to concentrate on in order not to speak out to Mrs. Smallpiece, or when I was at a loss for words—as now.
And then Shaker came back to the desk and pointed to the passage he wanted me to start with, bringing the lamp closer. I began copying, in the best hand I could manage. We never spoke again of what he had just told me.
Chapter Thirteen
NAN AND MERRIE WERE BACK AT WORK, AS SHAKER HAD PREDICTED, within another day. I suspected that part of the reason Mrs. Smallpiece greeted them so pleasantly on their return was not only so she could be pampered in the style to which she was accustomed. I deduced she wanted to be free to come and go on the social calls—the luncheons and afternoon teas and church events—she so enjoyed. I don’t know whether she thought I might flee with the silver if left to my own devices, but do know that she wasn’t comfortable leaving me alone in her home.
And when we were home together, that first week, Mrs. Smallpiece tolerated me as long as I read to her from the Bible whenever she asked. She had one bad day when she complained at length about her aching joints, and on that day tried to get me to repent, to admit my wicked foulness and what she imagined to be my continued lustful thoughts. When I stubbornly refused to bow to her demands for prayers for forgiveness, she turned sullen and thumped my hands with her Bible, predicting my lonely death after endless torturous suffering. She made it clear that her Methodism had been a natural stage of her moral background, and it obviously remained an intellectual and philosophical grounding.
I found it an easy task to accept her moods and helped her in the same way Shaker did when she was seized with a fit upon awakening one morning.
She was determined that I should improve my manners and decorum. She immediately began drumming the rules she felt were needed to function as a proper young lady.
“If Shaker is allowing you to stay here—and it appears that you’ve accepted his completely unacceptable offer of lodging—you’ll not be embarrassing me any more than you already have. I know there’s no real hope for you”—here she sighed, the loud, gusty sigh of one badly inconvenienced—“but all I can do is try. Look at the way you’re sitting.”
I looked down at myself in Mrs. Smallpiece’s cast-off dress. I was leaning into a corner of the horsehair
sofa, my elbow resting on its arm, my palm supporting my cheek. My legs were stretched out and my feet comfortably crossed at the ankle.
“Sit up, girl. Straight up. Hands folded in your lap. Feet beside each other. You look like the slattern you are, lying about like that.”
I straightened my spine, keeping my mouth tight. I clasped my fingers together and moved my feet so my ankles touched.
“That’s better. Now stay that way for the next hour.”
“What?”
“You’ll say ‘I’m begging your pardon, Mrs. Smallpiece?’ And you’ll stay that way until it feels natural. It’s what every young lady should learn when she’s no more than a babe.”
“This can never feel natural.”
“Maybe not to one born in a cellar and never brought up. But here in Everton, a lady knows how to behave at all times.”
“I was not born in a cellar,” I said. “And my mother did bring me up. I’ve also learned a thing or two about proper deportment along the way.” But I also realized that no matter what I believed I knew, I recognized that Mrs. Smallpiece, for all her odd ways, had been looked after all her days, and only knew the life of a middle-class lady.
She sniffed at my argument now, went to the bookshelf, and pulled out two books which she deposited in my lap. One was called An Appeal to the Consciences of Christians on the Subject of Dress, and the other was simply entitled The Proper Young Lady. “Study the one on respectable dress on your own. But I shall expect you to read a chapter a day from the book on etiquette. Begin with chapter one; I shall question you on the items you’ve read each subsequent evening.” She studied me and I remained immobile in the pose she’d demanded. “You must realize that your presence here has hampered my own entertaining,” she said. “I cannot allow any of those ladies in my social circle to meet you until I can trust you will not humiliate me.”
“I shan’t humiliate you, Mrs. Smallpiece,” I said, trying to keep the fierceness I felt out of my voice. “I can assure you of that.”
Her expression made it clear she didn’t believe me. “We’ll wait and see, shall we?” she said, and turned and left the room, managing, even with her limp bombazine dress, to give the impression of a sweeping, imperious dowager.
When she was gone I shook my head in annoyance and relaxed into my former comfortable position, idly flipping through the books she’d dropped onto my skirt.
Nevertheless, I listened for her footsteps, ready to straighten my spine should she return.
AT HER SON’S REQUEST, Mrs. Smallpiece reluctantly took me to her seamstress and had three dresses made for me. They were all of the same pattern—with rounded neckline and center front-button closure. The bodice was fitted, with no boning, and the skirt wide and gathered into the waist. The only ornamentations were lace-trimmed nankeen collars with a dull sheen, a tiny strip of white lace and one crocheted button accenting each sleeve. The fabric was sturdy material, meant, I’m sure, to last for a good ten years. One dress was brown, one gray, and one navy. The dresses were disappointing in their fit and dull colors, but I thanked Mrs. Smallpiece with an enthusiasm I didn’t feel.
Although she instructed Merrie to pin my hair into a severe mode, when the woman left the room I convinced the girl to adopt a more flattering and younger style. Later Mrs. Smallpiece eyed my soft ringlets but said nothing.
AS I SET OFF with Shaker for my first day of work at the library, packed into a crowded carriage that ran regularly between Everton and Liverpool, my feelings swung wildly from nervousness to confusion. When we approached Liverpool’s center, I knew none of the girls I had worked with would be out so early in the day. And, I told myself, even if we did pass one of them, it was unlikely she would recognize the plain brown bird in the crowd of other plain, respectable men and women on their way to work at their offices and shops.
I truly suited my name now. Never mind the linnet’s voice, the beautiful variations on a tone. I had the true appearance of a female linnet, a common, small, and rather drab finch.
Had any of them—Annabelle or Helen or Dorie, or any of the other countless girls I had laughed or commiserated with over a bad customer—worried over me or missed me? Likely—at least for a day or two. And Blue might be slightly annoyed at having lost one of her hard-working girls. I imagined that by now, when I had failed to show up at the room on Jack Street or under the gaslights along Paradise, they would all simply assume the worst—that I had ended up as another murdered whore dumped someplace where no one would find her. Someone might have seen me getting into the carriage with the Scot, and that would be the last they knew of me. I had been warned, and had ignored the warning, and—just look at that, would you—she paid the price, didn’t she, they would say. Would they mourn for me? Perhaps briefly, and some of them might raise a glass in my memory in the Goat’s Head, but there were always girls, always someone waiting to slip into the place of one who had disappeared as easily as she had first appeared.
WHEN MRS. SMALLPIECE finally felt I could be trusted not to embarrass her in public, she took me to church. Like Shaker, she introduced me as the daughter of her husband’s brother—her niece—although the first time she did it, standing outside the church doors on a cold Sunday in December, I felt her arm trembling against mine through our thick woolen jackets. Whether her trembling was caused by anger at me for putting her in this position or simply because she knew she was sinning, I don’t know. But to a woman like Mrs. Smallpiece, surely the sin of telling that lie—that I was a proper young woman, related through marriage—would, I’m sure, be less of a sin than having to admit that she was harboring a whore.
The minister, Mr. Lockie, who sported bushy, tangled gray eyebrows and had a nearsighted squint, also gripped my hand with an unnerving fervor as he welcomed me into his flock that morning after the service. After being introduced by Mrs. Smallpiece he studied my face intently. In all fairness, the intenseness may have been a condition of the squint. But I did indeed read something in his face, something similar to the expression Mrs. Smallpiece often wore when she looked at me—the hope of salvation through conversion that the Methodists so embraced. Did he pick up on my distasteful past and, like Mrs. Smallpiece, thrill at the possibility of saving an obviously needy soul?
The first social call she invited me on, first sternly reminding me that a blunder on my part could literally ruin her reputation, was to the home of her friend Mrs. Applegate. It was mid-December, with air so cold we could see our breath as we walked briskly to Mrs. Applegate’s house a few streets over. After we were ushered into a parlor overheated by a roaring fire and the tightly packed bodies of a number of seated elderly ladies, I was introduced by Mrs. Applegate as Mrs. Smallpiece’s “poor niece.” Once the hostess had directed us to our seats, Mrs. Smallpiece nodded, almost imperceptibly, at my hands, reminding me I was to remove my gloves since tea was being served. She lost no time in making it abundantly clear that I had lived a sheltered life as my father’s nursemaid in Morecambe, away from the company of others, and was unaccustomed to much socializing. “So please forgive her if she’s slightly lacking in the convivial graces we pride ourselves on,” she added, her neck rigid.
I accepted a small mince tart from the silver tray held in front of me by a young parlormaid smelling of perspiration, and deposited it on the decorated plate I held stiffly in my other hand. My mouth was too dry to eat; I knew I would choke should I attempt to take a bite of the delicacy.
The other women nodded sympathetically, having no problem eating tart after tart and drinking many cups of tea. One short woman with a nasty growth over her eyebrow shook her head sadly at Mrs. Smallpiece, as if she knew all too well the trial her friend was going through, attempting to cope with a young woman as feeble and dull-witted as Mrs. Smallpiece tried to make me appear.
Although my whole body burned with shame—for these pious, well-meaning women to think I was such a backward dolt—and also with anger toward Mrs. Smallpiece, I knew it would do me no good to take
a stand and prove her wrong. So I lowered my head, studying the frilled edges of the tart. If I were to stay in Everton for at least a while, as had been my choice, instead of going back to the rough freedom of Paradise, I knew I had to fight my own instincts, to remain quiet and adopt a simpering smile. As I sat there, to calm and amuse myself I tried to imagine the expessions of shock and horror that would flood these women’s faces if they could see the images that still burned so brightly in the front of my own brain, the ones of me with my customers, on my back or knees. For all their airs and graces, I knew that I surpassed these women in knowing more about life and the nature of men and women than they could ever, ever even begin to suspect.
And yet in spite of the silent games I played to survive these events, my head still pounded frequently with the effort of it, and the lump inside my cheek grew from the endless gnawing. I saw, in the gilt mirror in the room I shared with Mrs. Smallpiece, that a new line had appeared between my eyebrows.
The Linnet Bird: A Novel Page 14
