The Linnet Bird: A Novel

by Linda Holeman

  He was stunned. It took a full moment for him to digest this, and then respond. “You’re leaving?” he finally said. “Leaving Liverpool? Leaving England?” Leaving me? I thought I heard, although he didn’t speak those words.

  “Yes. There’s a ship, the Margery Ellen, sailing in just over three weeks’ time. It will take us around Africa, all the way to Calcutta.”

  “But that journey takes months. And it’s dangerous. India itself is dangerous. What will you do once you’re there? When do you plan to return?”

  “I don’t know, Shaker. I don’t know what will happen when I’m there. I only know I can’t let this opportunity pass. Thinking about it has given me the old feeling, the one I had about leaving here and traveling on a sailing ship, as I told you I planned since I was first on the street.”

  There was silence, and then something in Shaker’s face shifted. “The Fishing Fleet, is it?” he asked, his jaw clenched.

  “I don’t understand.” I found it difficult to look at him; emotions were openly playing across his face. It was as if I were seeing him naked.

  “Nobody speaks of it, but it’s well known, Linny. Desperate women making the long voyage in the hopes of finding someone to marry them.”

  I shrugged. “Well, you’re right, then. That’s what Faith is doing, without saying as much. I’m simply accompanying her.”

  “And you, Linny? You won’t be putting on your best airs—the new airs, the ones you’ve learned while living with me—to find a husband as well?” His voice carried an undertone of cruelty I didn’t know he possessed.

  “Shaker. Can you really think that of me?”

  He half turned so that only his profile was visible. “What else am I to think? Isn’t your life here comfortable? Do you want for anything?”

  I realized it wasn’t cruelty at all. It was pain. “No.” I was ashamed. “No, you’ve given me more than I ever thought I would have. A home, a position that I enjoy, security. And you ask for nothing in return. I know I’m selfish, Shaker, but I want to go. I’m sorry. You’ve given me everything, and yet—”

  “I could give you more, Linny.” He turned to face me suddenly, his voice rising, and my heart plummeted, for I knew what his next words would be. “Marry me,” he said. “Please. You make me feel like I’ve never felt before, like I never dreamed possible.” He took my hand, and his was damp. “I do love you, Linny. You must know that.”

  I looked down at our hands, joined and trembling.

  “I don’t think you love me, Shaker. I think I . . . perhaps I excite you, perhaps because of what I was. Of how you’ve seen me, and of what you know I’ve done.” I was choosing my words carefully, trying to make him see that if he had taken me, as many times as he needed to, he would have burned me out of his dreams and imaginings. How could a man who had only done good love me, dirtied as I was by my past?

  “What you were has nothing to do with it,” he argued. “It’s the way you make me feel. You brought me back from self-hatred. You showed me I could feel like a man.” Then, as suddenly as he had taken my hand, he dropped it and stepped away. Now his face was ashen. “Oh. Of course. All I’ve spoken of is the way you’ve made me feel. I’ve completely ignored how I might have made you feel. But now I see. All I inspire in you is pity.”

  “How can you say that? I may have pitied you, for the briefest of hours at the beginning of our time together, but that was gone when I watched you and listened to you—not only your compassion toward me, but with your mother. I see you with your friends, and the members of the library, and at social events—and even with shopkeepers. I have nothing but admiration for the honest and truly caring person you are.”

  He shook his head in annoyance. “How could I not have seen, all this time, that the way you smiled at me, your many small kindnesses to me—they all meant nothing more than gratitude edged with pity?” He backed away.

  Of course he saw it clearly, and I had no argument.

  “I was so lost in my own discovery of joy, Linny, that I didn’t even stop to consider yours. Forgive me.” And he turned and walked stiffly toward the thick copse of trees along the side of the dusty road, and I had to admire the proud set of his shoulders.

  He didn’t come home until long after his mother and I had gone to bed. I couldn’t sleep, worrying about him out in the dark somewhere, but eventually heard him coming up the stairs. His footsteps were slow and heavy. They stopped on the landing and I held my breath, thinking he would open our door, unsure of what he would say or do, or how I would respond. But then there was the quiet sound of his own door opening and closing, and nothing more.

  SHAKER DIDN’T COME TO WORK with me the next day. His mother came downstairs, telling me that Shaker had asked me to report to Mr. Ebbington that he’d caught a fever. “He’s never missed a day of work. Never,” she told me, her eyes and mouth softened with concern, and at that new look I caught a glimpse of the person she might have once been.

  “Shall I go to see if he needs anything?” I asked, rising from my breakfast.

  “No. He asked not to be disturbed,” she told me, and I sat down again, pushing away the plate Nan set in front of me, suddenly unable to swallow.

  I spent an anxious day at work, but when I returned Shaker was waiting for me in the street when I departed from the carriage. My heart beat harder at the sight of him—relief and anxiety. The sky was low and gray. It had rained earlier, and now the eaves of the buildings around us dripped with a steady rhythm. “Are you feeling better?” I asked, although of course I knew that his reported illness had not been physical.

  “Walk with me,” he said, and boldly took my hand and put it on his arm with a firmness that I had never felt before. He looked pale but resolute as we went to a nearby sweet shop with a few tables in one corner. It was a well-scrubbed place, its floors gleaming and brass polished. It was empty of customers. We ordered tea and slices of hazelnut cake.

  “I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours sorting this out,” he said, as soon as we were seated. “I’m sorry for my behavior yesterday. I’m quite ashamed.”

  I had to close my eyes for a second before I could trust my voice. “Please, Shaker. It’s not you who should be ashamed. It’s me. I’m sorry. I just . . . I don’t feel anything, and don’t think I ever will. Not for a man.” I tried to think of a way to describe what had happened to me, inside, but I didn’t know the right words.

  “People rarely marry for love, Linny. They marry for companionship, for financial convenience, for security. For convention. I’m not convinced love plays that large a role for most.”

  I waited, in case he had more to tell me, but his mouth closed in a firm line. The only sound in the shop was the quiet clink of a wooden spoon beating something in a bowl behind a curtained doorway.

  “I’m going to India, Shaker,” I finally said, quietly. “And I believe I do love you. But not as a wife for a husband. I also believe that if I were able to love a man in that way, you would be that person.”

  His Adam’s apple moved in his throat. “Then I must accept that, and be satisfied with it, mustn’t I?”

  We sat in silence across from each other, our tea growing cool.

  “But will you promise me something? That if things don’t go as you hope in India, and you have to return to England, will you come back here, to me?”

  “I’ve told you, Shaker, I can’t—”

  Shaker didn’t let me finish. “Not to marry me. I understand that, Linny. You made your feelings clear, and I will never ask you again. But if you ever need a place to stay, or you simply need a friend, I’ll be here, always, and I’ll help you in any way I can.”

  I reached across the table and laid my hand against his cheek. “How do I deserve you?” I asked. “Someday you’ll find someone far better than I, someone who can love you in the way I can’t. And you’ll forget about me, as you should.”

  The cake lay untouched between us. We sipped at our tepid tea, but before we finished it we
rose, as if by agreement, and went out onto the street. The sky had cleared, the clouds lifted, and the summer air was heavy and fragrant. The sound of children playing in the distance floated toward us. I put my arm through Shaker’s and he put his hand on mine and we went slowly, surely, with no more words, toward the house on Whitefield Lane.

  THAT NIGHT I WENT to his room. His eyes were open, facing the door as I came through it, almost as if he were waiting for me, although I had given no indication that I would visit him. It crossed my mind that perhaps he had waited for me other nights, even though he had acted, the first time I presented myself to him to thank him—in the only way I knew—as if he could not lower himself so.

  I knelt beside his bed in my thin nightdress, stroking his brow. And this time he did not turn away. This time he sat up, pulling back the coverlet, and I thought, then, that perhaps my old whore’s ways might never leave me, that I would always be willing to offer up my body. But in the next instant I felt a strange rush of confusion—for suddenly I saw that it was not just me offering him a part of myself in gratitude, but the other way round.

  I pulled my nightdress over my head, allowing him to see me in the moonlight. He drew one deep breath and held it. I settled myself beside him, and he expelled his breath in a long, shaky exhalation. We lay, facing each other, eventually breathing in unison. His bedshirt smelled of carbolic soap. When I kissed his mouth it smelled faintly of parsley, a clean and refreshing smell. My own mouth had been violated in so many ways, but I had never kissed anyone before. The feel of his lips on mine was pleasing.

  Slowly, gently, although trembling violently, Shaker tightened his arms around me, his lips responding to mine, and I felt him against me, ready, with only that brief, sweet contact.

  I turned on my back, pulling him atop me, and used my own hand—for his quivered too terribly—to guide him inside me, and lay very still, my bent knees hugging his hips. Within a short time his body ceased its uncontrollable shaking, and then, slowly, as if with a former familiarity, we moved together. His cheek, as he lowered it to mine, was wet with tears.

  Afterward he was still, completely still, in a manner I had never witnessed. It was as if his trembling had, temporarily, flowed out of him along with his physical release. And my throat constricted, aching, as I watched him sleeping on my scarred breast, his lashes damp. He was a man of honor, to be trusted. He would keep me safe.

  And I knew, with a sad certainty, that safety was not the only thing I wanted.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I WATCHED AS WE SAILED AWAY FROM LIVERPOOL. I SAW THE GRAY smoke over the factory chimneys. Under my feet, the deck tilted. I smelled metal and steel—the anchors, chains, clamps, hasps. The scent of tar brought back the image of Ram Munt and his hands.

  My own hands held the railing, wet with fog. My heart pounded; I was sailing away, sailing, as in my dreams, from the place that had brought me mainly misery. This is not my true life, Chinese Sally’s words rang in my head. And now I was sailing toward a new place, what must be the beginning of my true life.

  I watched the chimney pots of Liverpool grow small. I thought of Shaker, the light limning his body as he stood on the dock, one hand lifted in a final farewell.

  August 1830

  My dearest Shaker,

  It is over a month since we left Liverpool on this tall-masted frigate, and today is my birthday. Today I am eighteen, and to celebrate this occasion I am writing to you. I know this letter cannot be posted for months, but I am feeling a strange sense of loneliness tonight, and the act of putting quill to paper always comforts me. I daily record this life aboard ship in my journal—the one you gave me as a parting gift—but tonight I felt inclined to address my written words to you. This is the first letter I have ever written.

  I have taken to the life at sea as if I had been born to it. How strange; as I write this, I think of my stepfather’s words. Because my arm bears the mark of a fish, he often told me I was the daughter of a sailor. Of course I didn’t believe him; my mother’s story of my noble father is much more compelling, and it is the one I will always believe. And yet my feeling aboard this vessel is that the sea—in all its strength and mystery—does speak to me in a language I understand.

  The accommodations are cramped and less than clean; we are below deck, in a room separated from other women by strung canvas. There is little light or air; the doorway opens into the steerage. Faith and I share our tiny cubicle, with its bucket behind a suspended piece of calico, with a large, whey-faced woman of indeterminate age, Mrs. Cavendish. She has lived in Delhi for fourteen years and has made this voyage a number of times. After a visit home, she is now returning to her husband, a general in the Indian army. Because of her seniority, Mrs. Cavendish chose the bed nearest the door. Faith and I are relegated to string hammocks. Although Faith appeared crestfallen at sleeping in a sling bed for the next number of months, I secretly love the way my hammock swings with the rock of the waves, and, so cradled, feel the unraveling of the tangles of my former life as I drift to sleep each night.

  I am learning card games—whist and piquet and ecarte and lanterloo. I simply decline joining in when asked until I’ve observed each game enough times to be confident of the rules. Occasionally there is dancing on board as well, and I take these opportunities to ensure I will be able to conduct myself without embarrassment. Do you ever dance, Shaker? I don’t recall you mentioning.

  To date I have perfected the minuet and the quadrille, and know my dos-à-dos and promenade. I sail from partner to partner—although most of us are women!—on those evenings when the sea is calm and some of the passengers can be persuaded to bring out the instruments they have brought—violins and clarinets and violas—and perform.

  Do you know, Shaker, that most people are too much about preening and being watched to observe others? This has been in my favor while acquiring these needed skills before we arrive in India. It is all Faith chatters about on her good days—the dances and salons and evenings of cards we would attend. Even she doesn’t seem aware that I am a novice at these things, although I have come to see that Faith is, like many of the others, one who enjoys being watched, and doesn’t always observe keenly that which is around her.

  We take our meals in the dining room, and are enjoying the luxury of fresh meat because of cows and sheep brought on board, as well as root vegetables that are still plump and tasty—although I don’t see how much longer they will remain fresh.

  For much of the time during these first weeks on the gray Atlantic I have wrapped warmly and spent many hours on the deck, either sitting on a bench and studying the books on India Faith and I have brought—the customs, the weather, and learning what I can of Hindi—or else walking briskly, stepping over coiled rope and stacks of chain, breathing in the cool salty breeze and marveling at the endless furrowlike swells of the metallic waves.

  I am sorry to report that Faith has grown wan, sighing and constantly warning me that I am looking far too ruddy-complexioned from the wind, and that I should spend more time below, resting, as she does. But I have spent enough of my life in small, foul-smelling quarters.

  I am filled with strange optimism, Shaker, an odd, cheery nudging that is unfamiliar. I am pleased by it. I do hope you are keeping well, and visiting with friends and accepting social invitations. It’s important that you spend time with others.

  Yours,

  Linny

  September 1830

  Dear Shaker,

  I trust you will read these letters in order, as this one, written three weeks after the first, will tell a very different tale of my life aboard ship. Although the sea is still my ally, it has shown its other face.

  Fooled by the even waves and steady wind giving us good speed for our first month, Shaker, I imagined the rest of the voyage would be uneventful and easy. But a storm blew up on our sixth week at sea. The sky grew dark and ominous mid-morning, the wind whipping and cruelly cold, and by afternoon the waves had transformed into huge jagged
crags. Sitting in the shifting dining room, we were advised by the gruff captain to retire to our cabins and lash ourselves to our beds until it had blown over. Faith turned to Mrs. Cavendish immediately, her mouth open as if confused. Dear Mrs. Cavendish, who has taken us under her wing, tried to console her. “I’ve seen many a storm, my dear,” she said. “They get even worse as we round the Cape. Usually it’s possible to ride them through.”

  “Usually?” Faith replied, the color around her mouth and eyes edging into a delicate yellow-green. “You mean . . . does a ship ever—” She couldn’t finish the sentence. I stared at her. Had she really not considered the possibility of dying en route to India, Shaker? Of the ship overturning in a storm just like this one? Of pirates, in the warm Indian Ocean, attacking the ship and looting it for the passengers’ goods, possibly killing anyone who got in their way? I had thought of all of these eventualities—and more—although they held little concern for me. But Faith . . . for one so clever about some things, about others she is woefully naïve.

  Mrs. Cavendish murmured into her ear, patting her arm. “We’ll get you some Jamaica gingerroot; that will help settle your stomach for at least the next little while,” she said comfortingly, and the two of them, supporting each other on the sliding floor, lurched out. But I had to stay for just a few more minutes and watch, through a porthole in the dining room, what was happening to the ocean.