A Daughter Rebels

by Ann Birch

  “I had a letter from your dear sister Jane in Tolpuddle,” she said. “She told me it would be pleasant if one of her nieces could visit her and the Reverend Mr. Warren.” This was true enough in the main, but she had decided not to mention that the letter had come enclosed in a Christmas greeting months before.

  “Really?” William yawned. He looked around. “Where’s my coffee?”

  At that moment, thank the Lord, Lucy came in, setting cups on the edge of the small table against the wall. She was followed immediately by Cook who carried a silver urn that she put next to the cups. Soon Lucy had drawn two steaming cups full of the hot beverage and placed them within easy reach of Annie and her husband. Annie sniffed the brew. Yes, it was the real stuff, not chicory as she had feared.

  She let William take a sip or two. Then she continued. “Would it not be a convenient time, husband, to allow Anne to accompany you on your trip, spend some time with Mr. Robinson, and then visit your sister and her husband while you are busy at the Inns of Court?”

  “Back to the same old, same old story, are you, wife? I thought I made it clear that women do not leave their homes until they become brides.”

  “And perfectly right you are, William. But I thought that since Anne must inevitably marry Mr. Robinson, you would be present as they firm things up in London, and then she could escape to Tolpuddle while you complete your business at the Inns of Court.”

  “Hm.” William reached for his third slice of fresh bread. “Perhaps you are right. It surely would not take long for the lovers to connect. That problem would be solved once and for all. Then if the girl went to Tolpuddle, I would not have to supervise her further until we met again for the return voyage.”

  Halleluiah. Never did I think a solution would be this easy. But Cook and Lucy must take some of the credit. She would go belowstairs later and thank them.

  “Good. I shall make preparations for the girl’s departure, and you can let me know further when you have booked passage.”

  She sat drinking her coffee until she heard the front door close. William was off to the courthouse. Time to mount the stairs and give the good news to Anne.

  As she tiptoed into her daughters’ bedchamber, she found Anne sitting in her nightdress in a chair by the window looking out towards the lake. Her sister Mary was still asleep in the bed they shared, and Eliza was snoring in the smaller bed.

  “Mama,” Anne said turning towards her and speaking softly. Her eyes sparkled and her face had a becoming flush. “What’s the news?”

  “Let us go into the hallway, daughter, so that we do not disturb your sisters.”

  At the top of the staircase, Annie turned to the girl. “I believe you already know the news without my saying anything more about the matter. You have been eavesdropping, have you not?”

  “Really, Mama, why would you think that?”

  “Do not lie to me, Anne. I could smell your talcum powder as I mounted the stairs. While I find it beyond the bounds of propriety that you should be listening in on a private conversation, let me say that I am happy you will be leaving for England with your Papa. ”

  The girl made no excuse for her behaviour, merely confirming that she did indeed know that William had agreed to take her with him on the voyage.

  Perhaps that admission would have been acceptable enough—Annie understood her daughter’s eagerness to eavesdrop on news that would affect her future—but the girl had the temerity to demand more.

  “I must get some new clothes, Mama. London society will be very different from that of this muddy little town, and I cannot appear wearing the frumpy dresses that are acceptable here.”

  “You can perhaps make a new dress for yourself if there is time and if I can persuade your father to spend money on fabric.”

  “Let me be clear, Mama. I do not intend to do any more stitchery. Stitchery has filled my life for too many months. I shall go to that dressmaker on King Street whom Mr. Boulton has hired recently. She is newly come from France and will know about the latest fashions.”

  “Tush, girl. How are we to pay for a dressmaker?”

  “I shall find a way.”

  “With the jewellery that you have stolen from the drawer in my bedchamber?”

  “So, you have discovered that, Mama? Perhaps you need to consider that the jewellery I have ‘stolen’—as you call it—is mine. Perhaps you will remember, too, that in that same drawer I discovered a diary that indicated you are not merely la crème de la crème of York society, but a poor little shop girl from our enemy to the south.”

  Annie recognized blackmail. What was she to do if her daughter spread word of her American sojourn in her aunt’s dress shop? “Do as you wish. Get the dress from that slut of a dressmaker. Use the fruits of your sin to pay for it. I will be glad to be rid of you.” Annie slapped her daughter’s face and ran down the stairs. She headed straight for the parlour and the bottle of laudanum that she had secreted in the drawer of the Pembroke table.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Aboard the Manchester, 1816

  Papa and I were now en route to Liverpool and from there we were to make our way to London and the fateful meeting with John Beverley Robinson. “It is my fervent wish to see you dispatched in a prudent marriage with Robinson,” Papa told me a hundred times on our trip from home to New York where we stayed for several days with Mama’s brother George before embarking.

  Once aboard the Manchester, I hoped that the wind in the rigging might drown out the sound of that loathsome refrain. It did not, at least at first. Only when we were several days into our voyage, and the ocean became rough, did I find some respite from his nagging. I had never considered that seasickness might be a boon. But for three days we were each of us confined to our cabins and only the noises of the ship assaulted me: the slap slap of waves breaking over the deck and the creak of my trunk as it scraped from wall to wall.

  One morning when I had just wrested my body high enough to grab the bucket on the small table beside me and vomit up my breakfast of tea and toast, I heard a new sound. A stamping of feet, a confusion of voices, from which emerged one clear phrase, “Man overboard! Man overboard!”

  I struggled out of bed, threw my dressing-gown over my shift, and staggered up to the deck. The Captain’s stern voice was booming through the megaphone, “Silence! Silence! Lower the boat!”

  “Miss Powell, Miss Powell, may I be of assistance?” It was Mr. Forbes, a middle-aged clergyman I had met on the wharf in New York. He rushed towards me.

  “What has happened?” I asked, suddenly becoming aware of how I must look to him, hair unwashed and straggling, my dressing-gown scarcely covering my breasts.

  “It is some unfortunate wretch, they say, an Irishman from steerage. Apparently he was fleeing the unreasoning hatred of the English for men of his origin. He wanted to get back to Dublin, but he had little money to finance his escape. So he climbed up on the rigging for a wager of five shillings. Then he pitched head-first onto the foreyard and thence into the sea.”

  I looked down at the deck and saw a pool of liquid ebbing towards my feet. It was—blood. I pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of my dressing-gown and covered my mouth.

  “Let me escort you back to your cabin. This is no sight for a lady.”

  “Surely for no one.” I managed to get myself to the port side of the vessel. The crew had pulled up the rescue boat. I hoped, how I hoped, to see that poor Irishman alive within it. But it was empty. I turned to Mr. Forbes. “The man is at the bottom of the sea then?” It was a stupid remark. But in making it, I was trying to maintain my composure. Nearby was a woman with two small children whose shrieks of anguish shut out the noise of the waves.

  “He was surely dead before he reached the water.” Mr. Forbes took my arm, helping me to stay upright as the waves crashed against the side of the ship. “Please, let me take you out of this scene.”

  We turned towards my cabin, and there, directly in our path, was Papa. I know he was appall
ed to see me, disheveled and undressed and yes, arm in arm with Mr. Forbes. For once in his life he was speechless. And I could find nothing to say to him. My mind was filled with thoughts of the tragic victim who had risked all on a wager.

  Like me, he had come aboard, in the hope of a better life in a faraway land. And now, his hopes lay at the bottom of the sea. Would mine survive?

  * * *

  A few days later, I awakened in the early evening, my brain strangely empty of the nightmares that had assailed me since the death of that poor Irishman. Nor did I feel the need to vomit into the bucket that I kept beside me. What had happened? Had I passed somehow into another world?

  Then I became aware that my trunk was no longer sliding from side to side. There was no trickle of water under the doorway of my cabin. The ship had stopped its rolling motion. I waited, unsettled by the silence, and after a few minutes, I stepped down from my narrow bed, and stood upright and steady. The storm had evidently abated.

  I went over to the washstand and looked into the pitcher sitting in the basin. There was enough water with which to wash myself and to wipe away the dried vomit on my lips and chin. The tiny mirror above the stand showed me more of the wreckage of these last few days. I pinched my grey cheeks to bring back some colour, smoothed my hair into a plait, and dressed myself in a blue silk frock I had bought with the “stolen” jewelry from Mama’s drawer. When I had first worn it during our time in New York with Uncle George, Papa chastised me for its “most indecorous neckline.” That was the current style, I told him. I was then almost twenty-nine years old, and I had resolved on this, my first trip across the sea, to ignore my father’s attempts to control me as if I were a child.

  I went out onto the deck. How glorious it was to walk upright and to look for miles in all directions. I saw Mr. Forbes a few yards from me, his back turned. I called to him.

  “Do come over here, sir. Such a sight!”

  Together we watched the phosphoric light break in flashes on the water until the sea looked like clusters of glow-worms floating by. Time passed, and I seemed to be in a dream. Finally, Mr. Forbes drew out his pocket watch. “Time to sup,” he announced.

  For the first time in over two weeks, I entered the dining area and took my place at a table with Mr. Forbes, the Captain and his lieutenant, Mr. and Mrs. Solomon Moses, and—inevitably—Papa. There was a quantity of stuffed ducks and geese, fresh bread and cakes, excellent wines and champagne; in fact, everything the finest hotel might supply. Conversation was generally sprightly, but I could tell from the way Papa kept his head down, saying nothing, seemingly absorbed in the delicacies before him, that he was in one of his blackest moods. I knew he wanted to chastise me for a dozen perceived misdemeanours: my “indecorous” dress, my unchaperoned friendship with Mr. Forbes, even my expressed desire to have Mrs. Moses entertain us after our dinner. Mr. Forbes had told me she was a popular vaudeville entertainer.

  But I knew that Papa could not lecture me in front of five relative strangers. I was safe, for a few hours at least. Turning to Mrs. Moses, I said, “Please, ma’am, will you sing for us now?”

  “Of course,” she replied. “What would you like me to sing?”

  I was ready with an answer. For the first time in my life, I had been free in New York to attend a musical evening at a public theatre with Uncle George and my cousin John. I had loved the entire program, but my favourite song had been “Where E’er You Walk.” And now was my chance to hear it again.

  “I love Handel myself,” the lady said. “I don’t usually sing opera, but I shall do my best to entertain you. My dear husband will accompany me on the pianoforte over there in the corner of the room.”

  It was true that she was not an opera singer. But she sang beautifully, and I sat back in my chair and let the words and the music wash over me. Swept up in the moment, I turned to Papa. “Is it not lovely? Those words—‘Where’er you walk/ Cool gales shall fan the glade’—do they not make you long for the pleasant London parks and the English countryside?”

  “Balderdash,” he muttered in my ear. “Asking that woman to sing is an offence against all reckoning. You must surely know that she sings in a common theatre in the worst district of London. Moreover, she is a Jew. She should—“

  Fortunately, at that moment, Mrs. Moses finished the Handel aria and Papa was forced to shut his mouth. I was for a few seconds embarrassed that he was the only one at the table who did not clap in appreciation of this wonderful musical moment. Then I realized that the other people had their attention focused on the singer. They did not give a damn about Papa’s reaction.

  And it was at this instant I also realized that my hopes for a new life did not lie at the bottom of the sea with those of the unfortunate Irishman who had fallen overboard. In the world I had now entered, Papa was no longer the arbiter of all things. I would go my own way, make my own plans, decide my own fate.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  After the dinner and impromptu entertainment, I pushed back my chair and rose. Papa immediately got up, too, caught my arm and said, “I shall accompany you back to your cabin.”

  “Thank you,” I replied, “but I have an errand that I must carry out alone. I shall see you at breakfast. Please enjoy your slumber now that we are in peaceful waters.” And having uttered that necessary cliché for the benefit of our dinner companions, I pulled my arm from his and made my way towards the door from which the serving people had emerged. I knew Papa would not make a fuss in front of the gathered diners—he would not want them to see that he could not control me—and I smiled to myself as I contemplated his chagrin.

  I paused just inside the doorway of the steamy little room where a few members of the crew were scraping the remnants from our dinner plates into a bucket. A man in a greasy apron rushed towards me. “Ma’am, ma’am,” he said, “you have lost your way. Let me take you out into the dining area.”

  Realizing that my blue silk frock with its “indecorous neckline” had caused some consternation, I hastened to apologize. But I had come for a purpose and I needed to state it. “Please give me some rolls and butter and some pieces of fowl,” I whispered to the man. “I have not eaten solid food for many weeks, and I shall need to rebuild my strength.”

  I waited while the crew piled the requested items into a basket. Then, putting the handle of the basket over my arm, I slipped along a narrow corridor just beyond the sight of the dining area and found my way down a steep, narrow staircase into the quarters of the steerage passengers. Here, below the prow, were twenty people (according to what the Captain had told us) crowded together into one cabin.

  I could hear music and loud laughter as I descended. In the doorway, I saw several men and women dancing a reel while an old man scraped out a tune on his fiddle. The stench of unwashed humanity assailed my nostrils, but I pushed myself forward into the melee.

  “Please forgive my intrusion,” I said, “but I seek the family or the friends of the Irishman who fell overboard a few days ago. Please show me where I may find them.”

  One of the dancers, a woman with wild yellow hair, pointed towards the narrow berths stacked one atop the other. I looked in each bed in turn, finding in the fourth row, bottom berth, the family who had stood beside Mr. Forbes and me on the day the man fell overboard.

  The three of them were asleep, lying side by side in a space that could have been no more than six feet long and three feet wide. In the murky light shed by the candles in sconces on the wall, I saw their pale, starved faces and their tattered clothes and inhaled the stink of the children’s pantalets and dirty bodies.

  I did not try to wake them. For a few hours at least, they were oblivious to their troubles. I placed the basket of food under a ragged blanket that lay rucked up at the bottom of the berth. But as I moved the blanket, I touched someone’s foot. The young woman stirred immediately and opened her eyes. “Shh,” I said, bringing my forefinger to my mouth, “I have brought you some food from the dining-room. I shall just leave it
with you and head back upstairs.”

  The girl stared at me. “You . . . you are the lady who was standing with the clergyman on the day that . . .” Her voice broke.

  “I heard your cries. I wanted to tell you how sorry I am . . .” I could think of no more to say.

  “He was our friend,” the girl said. She pointed upward. “He had the bunk above us, and he used to let my young son sleep beside him so that I would have more room for myself and my small daughter.”

  I glanced up into the bunk the girl indicated. Its occupant now was a woman of middle age. She was asleep on a dirty pillow, her mouth wide open as she snored. Her swollen, blood-soaked gums and foul breath indicated some dread disease. I drew back.

  “Scurvy,” the girl whispered. “After our friend died, I and the other steerage folk decided to give her a bunk to herself. She had been sleeping with her husband—he is the old man who plays the fiddle for our dances—and we all wanted her to be comfortable in her last days. She will be dead before we reach Liverpool.”

  I kissed the young mother’s cheek, tasting the salt of her tears. “With all my heart, I hope you find happiness in a new land, my dear.”

  * * *

  The next morning brought a fair, fresh wind followed by a day of smooth sailing, a red sunset, a starry night, and by dawn, the sight of land. I stood on deck beside Mr. Forbes watching as the sailors brought a canvas-wrapped body up the stairs. They placed it at the port side of the deck and laid a ladder in front of it.

  “Who has died?” I asked.

  “One of the steerage folk, I’m told,” Mr. Forbes said. “Scurvy, they say.”

  It was certainly the unfortunate woman I had seen in the berth. I took out my reticule and counted my coins. Yes, there was just enough.