by Mary Hooper
In the first-floor rooms, next to each other and all the more convenient for fighting, were two families, the Wilsons and the Popes. The Wilsons – mother, father and three children – worked as crossing sweepers and had the best pitches in Seven Dials under their control. Next door, the Popes had four children still at home who took whatever work they could get: rag gathering, collecting horse dung, tumbling to amuse people or, if times were hard, begging or outright thieving. Mr Pope also had a good line in bird-duffing and many a pale finch had entered the Popes’ room only to emerge as a newly painted, multicoloured bird of paradise. (‘Most rare, madam. Brought over to this country by a seaman cousin of mine.’)
After the trauma of the teapot, Lily returned to their room, feeling dreadfully gloomy. She turned to her treasures – a polished oyster shell, a foreign coin and some other near-worthless possessions she kept in an old cigar box – but even these failed to comfort her. Almost another day gone by and still no Grace. Whatever was she going to do? Should she tell Mrs Macready? Her old fear returned: suppose Grace didn’t come back ever? She’d have to go to the Parish and tell them. She’d have to go to the beadle, that big, frightening man, and say that she didn’t have any money to pay the rent, then he’d make her go into the workhouse – and once she was in there she’d never get out. She’d be locked up for ever, her head shorn, living on turnips and wearing smocks made out of sacking which itched her to death. If Papa came back, he’d never find her. Someone would find her, though, she thought with a shiver: that man who’d come in the dead of night and got into bed beside her. Why hadn’t she screamed? Why hadn’t she told Grace about it? Thinking about him now, she worked herself up into a fright and began crying lavishly and uncontrollably.
Grace, hearing sobs as she was coming through the front door, ran up the stairs as fast as her skirts and delicate condition permitted.
‘Lily! Whatever is it?’ she cried in alarm. She took her sister into her arms. ‘What are you crying about? I’m home now . . . I’m here. Hush! Tell me what’s happened.’
Lily sniffed and sobbed, enjoying being comforted. The one-handed man was in the past now and she didn’t want to talk about him, but of course there were other, more recent things to cry about. As sometimes happened with Lily, the distinction between truth and stories became somewhat blurred.
‘I was crying because . . . because a horrible man came in and stole Mama’s teapot!’ she said, bursting into another passion of crying.
‘The teapot!’ Grace felt tears spring to her own eyes, for they had precious few things left to remind them of Mama. ‘Hush,’ she said again. ‘It doesn’t matter as long as you’re all right. As long as whoever it was didn’t hurt you.’
Lily settled a little. It was as she’d thought; the teapot had gone but that didn’t matter compared to other, more important things. She suddenly remembered one of them. ‘Where’s the baby?’ she asked, looking over Grace’s shoulder and around the room. ‘Didn’t you bring it home with you?’
Grace sighed deeply. ‘There isn’t a baby.’
‘It wasn’t in your tummy after all?’ Lily asked, blushing as she spoke, for she could still remember Mama telling them that they were never to mention bodily parts.
‘It was there, but it wasn’t strong enough to be born safely,’ Grace said carefully. ‘It has died and has gone to Heaven.’
‘Oh.’ This was very sad, Lily thought, because the baby would have been a good plaything.
‘I took him to be buried today, Lily, in a wonderful cemetery in the country. That’s why I’ve been away so long.’
Lily pondered this. ‘Can we visit him and take flowers?’
‘One day, yes,’ Grace said, remembering the day when a kind person from the orphanage had taken them to see Mama’s grave and, left for a moment to her own devices, Lily had collected up flowers from nearby graves and redistributed them to those that didn’t have any. Now she set Lily away from her and looked at her steadily. ‘But how have you been managing? Did you buy cresses yesterday? And when did this thief come in and steal the teapot? Did you see him? Did he take anything else?’
Lily frowned as she thought about this. Inventing stories was quite difficult and she usually got muddled; there was always some little detail or other that sounded odd and which Grace would pick up on.
‘Someone took it,’ Lily said vaguely. ‘I don’t know who. Someone came in and smashed it all up.’
Grace looked at her. She knew her sister was lying, for she was chewing her nails, anxiety writ all over her face. She couldn’t pursue the matter now, though; she felt too exhausted. The truth would come out in time. With Lily it always did.
x
Later that afternoon, Grace took the bluebird cup and saucer to a pawnshop – not Morrell’s, but to an establishment owned by a younger and more honest Uncle who gave her a silver sixpence for them. Grace knew that this would keep them going for a day or two, but had started to wonder what would happen when every scrap from their former life had been pawned to raise money and every trinket, blanket and spare garment had gone. How would they eat, keep warm and buy candles to light the dark? Whatever would happen to them? She shuddered – not the workhouse! No, never, never, never.
She held on to the sixpenny piece tightly all the way home, as if it were a talisman. Surely something good must happen before it came to that; maybe their father would return and find them, or the market for watercress would increase and they’d be able to sell ten bunches for every one sold now, or maybe she’d find a banknote blowing along the road in a gust of wind, for people always seemed to be losing them in the newspaper. Maybe – she smiled wryly to herself – maybe a fairy would come along and wave a magic wand to transform her and Lily into one of those fine young ladies they saw being driven around in gaily painted barouches, for that was just as likely as any of those other stories.
As she went past the kitchen on the way upstairs, Mrs Macready called out a greeting. Grace hadn’t said anything to her about the coming child, in part because she feared the landlady might have said she wasn’t allowed to bring it back with her, and in part because she thought it might just go away if she didn’t acknowledge it. Hoping Mrs Macready might not have noticed her thickening figure under her voluminous skirts, she called ‘Hello’, and said that she had to hurry because Lily was waiting.
‘Oh, do come in and speak to me, dear!’ Mrs Macready persisted.
Grace flounced out her skirts slightly so that it was impossible to see the outline of her figure and went into the kitchen, where Mrs Macready was sitting with one of the costermongers, enjoying a glass of stout.
‘I haven’t seen you for a few days, dear,’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m very well, thank you,’ Grace replied, thinking that Mrs Macready would probably have made an excellent confidante, but there seemed to be little point in telling her now.
‘Are you quite sure of that?’ Mrs Macready said, giving her a meaningful look.
‘Perfectly, thank you,’ Grace said, her smile fixed. She did not feel perfectly all right, in fact she was glad now that the costermonger was there, for if he had not been, she might have thrown herself on the floor by Mrs Macready’s chair, told her everything and wept until she could weep no more.
‘And how’s the trade in cresses?’ asked the costermonger.
‘Fair to middling,’ Grace said.
‘Slow everywhere at this time of the year,’ he grunted.
‘It is,’ Grace said. ‘But if you’ll excuse me, Lily’s waiting for me.’
‘Ah,’ said Mrs Macready. ‘You’re a saint with your sister, indeed you are.’
x
The next morning before light, when the only people about were milkmaids and drovers taking sheep to Smithfield, Grace and Lily set off to buy watercress at Farringdon Market. It was mostly the very old and very young who gathered to buy the cresses, for the stock money needed was no more than a few pennies and the goods were easy to carry.
The people were of the very poorest, however, and Grace and Lily were among the few who were wearing shoes. Cresses were always sold along the railings at the entrance and gaslights burned brightly above here, enabling the buyers to see more clearly the quality of the goods being offered. A coffee seller had set up his stall by the entrance and lit a charcoal fire, causing the earliest customers to crowd about him trying to gain a little warmth from his brazier.
As it turned five o’clock, the country sellers opened their hampers and baskets and began to display their goods. The buyers – clutching bags, shawls, trays or fraying baskets of their own to collect their green stuffs – began to go up and down, looking carefully into the hampers, asking prices, inspecting the stock for its colour, sniffing it and holding it towards a light to judge its freshness. Grace and Lily’s own purchases eventually made – six large bunches for a penny each – the girls took the cresses over to a water pump to freshen them and discard any discoloured leaves. They then sat down on the stone pavement to break each large bunch into three or four smaller ones and tie them with a rush. Lily suffered with cold hands and had neither the patience nor the deftness to tie the fiddly little bundles, but Grace had become quite neat and quick at it and was fast enough to do four bunches to Lily’s one.
The bunches prepared, they set off to sell them, Lily with half of them in her spare shawl and Grace with the others displayed on an ancient tea tray carried in the crook of her arm. Grace’s cry was, ‘Fine, fresh watercress!’ and Lily’s, ‘Cresses, fresh and green!’
How discomforted they’d been, Grace reminded Lily that morning, when they’d first gone out shouting their wares; how humbly they’d called – whispered, almost – as if apologising for having anything to say at all. They had grown braver over the months, for if they hadn’t they would have starved.
It was a busy morning, fine and bright, and the two girls managed to sell several bunches of watercress to labourers going to work and, a little later, to housewives looking for something sharp and tasty to have with their bread-and-cheese dinner. It proved a good day for them, because by eleven o’clock Grace had sold all her stock, her pretty face and solemn demeanour provoking sympathy from gentlemen and ladies alike and often drawing over the asking price of a ha’penny a bunch. Once Grace’s tray was empty, the sisters walked together, calling in harmony, and by midday they had more than tripled the money laid out that morning. Grace was tempted, then, to redeem Mama’s cup and saucer, but knew there would be a premium to pay on it which, together with that week’s rent, would not leave them enough to buy both stock and food the next day. She therefore decided it must be left at Uncle’s.
How normal everything felt, she reflected as they walked home that day; as if the baby had not happened at all, as if the ordeal in Berkeley House had been nothing but a nightmare. Apart from the knowing look Mrs Macready had given her, none of their neighbours had referred to the matter of her pregnancy, and Grace suspected that this was either because they genuinely hadn’t noticed, or hadn’t wished to become involved. If Grace had wanted to speak of her ordeal, if she had wished to unburden herself and tell of the visit to Brookwood and her conversations with Mr James Solent and Mrs Emmeline Unwin, there was no opportunity. Lily, sadly, did not make a satisfactory confidante.
Beside her now, Lily hummed a popular ballad as she walked along, happy because they’d sold all their cresses and because Grace was home safely – and, well, perhaps it was better that there was no baby, because babies had to be fed and some days they had no money for food. She loved babies, but they probably took a lot of looking after and . . . Suddenly, as they were passing Morrell’s Pawnshop, Lily stopped thinking anything because there, on a glass shelf of its own, all the better to show its beauty, was Mama’s teapot.
She stopped, gasped and pointed, for it seemed to her that a miracle had happened – the teapot they knew and loved had somehow come back to life.
‘It’s Mama’s!’ exclaimed Grace, seeing it at the same moment. ‘Or one very like.’ She looked first at the teapot and then at her sister. ‘Is it ours? Lily! Did you take it to be pawned?’
Lily couldn’t speak, so bewildered was she. How had this happened?
‘You did take it, didn’t you?’ Grace looked at Lily, crestfallen. ‘How could you, Lily? How could you tell me such a terrible lie about someone coming in to steal it?’
Lily began crying. ‘I . . . I only went to pawn it because I didn’t sell all my cresses and there wasn’t enough money for stock. And I thought the . . . the baby would need clothes.’
Grace gasped. ‘How much did they give you? What have you done with all that money?’
‘They didn’t give me anything! The teapot broke. It broke just as I was giving it to the man.’
‘What?’
‘I was handing it over the counter and the man dropped it. Well,’ she went on meekly, ‘he said I dropped it, though I don’t think I did.’
‘Did you see it smashed?’
She nodded. ‘It was on the floor. A hundred pieces.’
‘But there it is now,’ Grace said, pointing at the teapot.
‘Is it . . . is it magic?’ Lily asked fearfully.
‘No, it’s not magic,’ said Grace, ‘but it’s a trick, certainly.’ She was quiet, thinking, while they carried on walking to the end of the lane. ‘I’m going to wait here while you run home as fast as you can,’ she said to Lily then. ‘On the mantelpiece in our room you’ll see two little white cards, which I want you to bring to me.’
Lily, anxious to make amends, did as she was told and returned with the cards within minutes. Grace told her to wait, then straightened her shawl, pulled herself up to her full height and went in to Morrell’s.
Morrell was not pleased to be interrupted, for it was Saturday and he was hunched over a racing paper making his selection of horses.
‘Yes, missy?’ he asked, chewing a stub of pencil between his lips. ‘What is it?’
‘That teapot in the window . . .’
‘The one with the bluebirds?’ He looked up. ‘That is a very nice, quality piece. We don’t often have things of that hexcellence here. You’re a very astute young gel.’
‘It’s very similar to a teapot my sister brought in yesterday,’ said Grace.
‘Hoh yes?’ Morrell asked, his lips coloured purple from the indelible lead.
‘Yes,’ Grace said firmly.
‘And are you going to tell me that I didn’t give her a fair price for it?’
‘You didn’t give her any price!’ Grace said. ‘You dropped the teapot as she was giving it to you.’
‘Breakages are not the responsibility of the management,’ Morrell muttered automatically.
‘But it wasn’t broken at all,’ said Grace, ‘for it’s there in your window on a shelf.’
‘That’s a different one!’ Morrell blustered.
‘I’ve been warned about people like you, who make a pretence that something is broken when it isn’t.’
‘I tell you that that there pot in the window is another one,’ said Morrell. ‘A different one. That one’s quality, that is.’
‘That is our mother’s teapot in your window,’ Grace said sternly. ‘And my brother, who is a lawyer’s clerk,’ she brandished the card belonging to Mr James Solent, ‘says that if you do not return it to us immediately then he will begin a court enquiry into the matter.’
Morrell looked at the card and his jaw dropped so that the pencil fell out of his mouth. ‘Oh, hoity toity,’ he said. ‘No need for that. Court enquiries indeed.’
‘Then I demand that you give it back right now!’ said Grace.
x
Ten minutes later, Grace and Lily were home and Grace was putting the teapot carefully into the crate. Her hands were shaking a little as she did so, for standing up to Morrell had taken more out of her than she had thought.
She’d removed a couple of sheets of newspaper from Morrell’s counter to wrap the teapot and now smoothed out one of the
se. To amuse Lily and show that all was well between them (for indeed, Grace did feel that a teapot lost and found was nothing compared to other things), she began to read some of the advertisements.
‘For the best treat of the Season, visit Madame Tussaud’s Historical Gallery with a full-length model of the Murderer James Mullins, with a replica of the awful brown paper parcel, the discovery of which led to his capture.’
‘Should you like to go to see that?’ Lily asked her fearfully.
‘No, I should not,’ said Grace. ‘But I should like to see this: Captain Green’s silk balloon shown daily at the Crystal Palace. See the balloon which has made ascents from all the major cities in Europe. Captain Green will be on hand to answer questions and receive your approbations.’
‘A silk balloon?’ Lily questioned. ‘How big would that be?’
‘I believe it’s big enough to have a basket below it which can hold people.’
‘People who go up in the air with it?’
Grace nodded.
‘Like birds!’
‘Yes, like birds,’ Grace said. ‘Oh, there are several advertisements for dogs here: Sociable, first rate and handsome toy terriers. A fine companion for a lady. I should like a nice dog. Wouldn’t you, Lily?’
‘But dogs would need to be fed every single day,’ Lily reminded her.
‘Of course,’ Grace said. ‘We won’t have one, then.’ She glanced down the page. ‘A considerable number of ladies are looking for situations as governesses – oh, and under Missing Friends there is someone looking for a Miss Caroline Thomas regarding a matter both delicate and urgent. I wonder what that can be?’
As she paused to think a little longer, her fingers traced the outline of a small, neat oblong which had been cut from the bottom of the page. ‘Look,’ she said wonderingly, ‘someone has cut out one of these advertisements. Perhaps they mean to answer it. I wonder what it said?’
Lily shook her head impatiently. ‘Never mind that. Read me some more, do! Make me up a story about a toy terrier going up in a balloon!’
