Paddington Green, page 3
He did love her so very dearly, this scrap of a child. Small, bird-boned, and pointed of face, she had her mother’s huge grey eyes but surmounted them with winged dark brows and coarse knotted curls that gave her a look of gipsy wickedness that was exceedingly attractive. Fortunately, she did not yet know quite how lovely she was, though she was beginning to discover it from the supper rooms’ customers, for they petted her and fussed over her outrageously, and she was learning to be quite an imperious little madam, ordering her brother about with a lordly disdain that made everyone around her laugh and applaud loudly. Even now, asleep in this absurd and favoured position of hers, bottom in the air and head turned sideways against the pillow so that her cheeks crumpled into a grimace, she had an air of self-assurance about her. She had none of the abandoned helplessness that the sleeping Oliver showed.
Jonah turned his head to look at his son, lying sprawled on his back in his truckle bed with his mouth half open and snoring a little, and sighed softly. He was equally beloved but in a more comfortable companionable sort of a way. Together he and his son would watch the women of their family, strong capable Celia and delicious wickedly selfish little Phoebe, moving about them so swift and busy, and would blink and then smile and turn to each other in a sort of silent communion, as if to say, ‘They amaze me as much as they amaze you, but that is the way they are, and who are we to do aught about it?’ Oliver with his straight black hair that fell always over his forehead and into his eyes, muddily green eyes, round and puzzled and a little shortsighted, Oliver with his fair skin that blushed so easily and burned so painfully in the summer months, quiet, rather slow Oliver with his stocky little body and slightly pigeon-toed walk was a great comfort to his father. And because the child knew it he found his father was a great comfort to him.
Altogether, Jonah thought, looking down on them, they are the most perfect children a man could have. He would never cease to be grateful to Celia and to whatever Providence had so ordained it that he should have the joy of them. If only, he thought as he so often did, if only his own father had been able to find such pleasure in his and his brothers’ and sisters’ existence, how much pleasanter life would have been for all of them! But that was a thought not to be entertained and certainly not now, for it was close on six o’clock, and already he could hear the crescendo of sound from the streets below that showed the market was shortly to close and the men would come pouring in for their beer and victuals. There was work to be done, and the children must be roused and washed and fed before he could turn his attention to the pulling of pints of ale.
Regretfully he leaned over the table between the children’s beds to light the candle lying ready, murmuring their names softly as he did so, for it was bad enough to be roused from a deep sleep without being roused noisily.
The rain made less noise in Grosvenor Square than perhaps anywhere else in London that February morning; it was almost as though the elements, like the rest of the populace of the city, knew that today was to be a most busy one for the fashionable, and showed sympathetic respect by muting their noise. So, no raucous gusts of wind came whistling past the stone-framed windows of the tall and stately grey-fronted houses that marched so arrogantly around the four smart sides. Instead they spent themselves in little whirling eddies of last autumn’s dead leaves in the green and railinged central circle, with its fringe of shrubbery and trailing bushes. No rain came hurling itself against those quiet first- and second-floor windows, but instead ran itself politely down the neat pipes and guttering that led it away to the nether regions where it belonged. Only high up in the attics could the rain really be heard, for the angled windows there lay open to the slanting lines, and they pattered irritably and sometimes viciously against them, rattling the panes noisily. But that did not matter at all, for only servants slept in attics, and none cared about the welfare of servants, least of all the elements.
But despite the quietness of the Square outside and the deep comfort of her bed, sitting foursquare and solid in the middle of the expanse of thick-piled Indian carpet which covered her bedroom floor, Lilith was awake. She had been awake for at least two hours, she had estimated, and in that time had swung from rage at her insomnia to whimpering why-should-I-suffer-so? self-pity and back to pillow-thumping anger. But now, as the light began to shred itself against the lightening sky and lifted her room into awareness of morning, she lay with her lace-covered pillows comfortably piled beneath her head, indulging herself with her favourite occupation.
She was counting in her head. Enumerating her assets, totting up parcels of house property and their estimated value; the rents of the tenements she owned throughout the rookeries of St Giles and Clare Market and Seven Dials; the revenues from the couple of market gardens in Hammersmith and Chiswick; the intrinsic value of this house in Grosvenor Square—so physically near to her old home in North Audley Street, but miles away in terms of fashion and the monetary value that fashion lent to an address—the lists of her furniture and plate, her pictures and carvings and glass and silver and all the other kickshaws, her jewellery, her furs, the very clothes that filled her presses—all were itemized, added up and a running balance drawn.
It was a most agreeable occupation, and one which she knew could lull her as no other. Not even in the days when she had been able to call half the London ton her lovers, when her bed had known the company of politicians and generals, wits and judges, rich lords and even richer parvenus, had she found such pleasure and ultimate peace in a bed-based occupation.
At seven o’clock, when the rain became careless enough to treat Grosvenor Square to the same drenching downpour that it had hitherto reserved for the less eminent parts of the town, she rang her bell. Never mind the fact that old Hawks would mutter and rage at being called from her own bed at so early an hour; Lilith wanted her chocolate, and wanted it now. And drinking it would help fill in the time between now and nine o’clock when she could hope to see Jody come into her room, bare feet peeping out beneath his befurred dressing-gown, his eyes heavy above his adorably sulky lower lip (for Jody always looked sulky in the mornings) to crawl into bed beside her for their ‘morning romp’ as she so fondly called it.
Not that he seemed to enjoy the romping as much as he had been used to. At six he was becoming suddenly a boy and much less of a chubby baby. Not that she minded the changes in him; indeed she did not. She revelled in his swift growth, in the rotundity of his belly—for he was fond of food, and it showed in his shape—the heavy sturdiness of his legs, the faint curving of a second chin beneath his dimpled lips almost as much as she loved to look at his silky, curly brown hair and his wide blue eyes, so palely blue that when he looked directly at you, she would tell people, it was as though the clouds had suddenly blown away from the heavens. Altogether, Lilith would say, laughing her tinkling cascade of laughter that had enchanted theatre audiences for more years than she cared to remember, altogether she had become as fond a mamma as any farmer’s wife, positively doating over her boy, and finding all good, no ill in any part of him!
Lying now in bed, propped up on cream lace pillows and wearing a silk frilled peignoir in her favourite shade of blue, she felt her lips curve into a smile as she thought of Jody. To think that when she had found herself increasing she had been so furious she had sent his father packing, even before making sure he had made decent provision for his offspring, and had swallowed great quantities of pennyroyal and slippery elm and all manner of noxious draughts in an effort to be rid of the encumbrance. After all, she had been no silly girl when it happened. In the public eye she had been thirty-five or so; in fact she had been a full forty-five, little as she had looked it, and few who would have believed it. To be saddled with a brat at such an age was ludicrous, she had fumed, and had gone on raging and suffering throughout that long and miserable pregnancy, sitting sulking down at Brighton and pretending not to care. She had gone through a long and thoroughly disagreeable labour—much worse than any she had experienced with her other three brats—still hating her ridiculous situation, only to find when the child was put into her arms by old Hawks that some strange alchemy had gone to work, and made her fall head over ears in love with the creature.
Thinking of it now her smile widened until she laughed aloud; it had been so surprising to find herself so besotted by a child! She had enjoyed the others well enough, especially the first—for she had been a novelty—but all had become such dead bores by the time Jody had been born that she had quite forgotten how she had felt about them in their infancy. But she knew how she felt about Jody. The sweetest, dearest child, she thought fondly, that any woman was blessed with.
But when Jody appeared at her bedroom door, he was in no mood to be anyone’s dearest, sweetest child. He was red with rage, his eyes suffused and his nose running, and he came storming in shrieking at the top of his voice with such a volume of sound that Lilith jumped and spilled the dregs of her chocolate all down her frilled front.
‘Dear child!’ she cried, as soon as he drew breath and the noise eased. ‘What has happened? Please, don’t shriek so, not if you love me! You make my head ache so dreadfully—’
‘I shall shriek, I shall, I shall, I shall!’ roared Jody. ‘That hellborn bitch, I’ll kill her if you don’t turn her off! Do you hear me, Mamma! Make her go away, right now, at once, I shall scream until she does, the cow, the bitch, I’ll kill her—’ and then he was on his back on the floor, kicking and shouting and throwing himself about in such a lather of temper that his bare legs and behind were a pink blur against the dark brown of his furry robe.
Behind him Hawks came marching in to scoop him up in her deceptively scrawny arms—for she was still as strong as an ox for all she was nearly sixty-five—and hold him at arms’ length until he flopped against her with the exhaustion born of his tantrum, while Lilith, now out of her bed with her head between her hands in an agony of concern, stood beside him and tried to make her voice heard above his din.
‘What happened?’ she managed at last, as Jody subsided to a quieter, if still very audible, snivelling. She held out her arms to him and immediately he was in them, curling his legs around her narrow body so that she reeled a little under his weight. ‘Whatever happened to you, my darling? Tell Mamma, and all shall be put right at once—’
‘The way to put things right, madam, is for me to set the child across my knee and beat the livin’ daylights out of ’im!’ Hawks said sharply. ‘ ’E’s been fit for nothing but a larrappin’ since he got out of bed this morning. ’E’s thrown his breakfast at Mrs Jennings, ’e’s kicked Mrs Castor, and when Mrs Jennings rightly said as if ’e didn’t behave, no wedding parade should ’e be took to see, ’e went and bit her. She’s bleeding that ’eavy that it’ll be a miracle she isn’t scarred for life. ’Er arm it was, and ’e ought to be—’
‘It’s her own fault!’ Jody lifted his head from its damp spot on his mother’s neck and glared at Hawks. ‘So it is! She gave me all the things I hate most for my breakfast and then she took that damned hairbrush to me, and said I could not see the parade, and it’s her own fault! Mamma, turn her off! I shan’t let her do anything for me, so I tell you, Mamma! I hate her! Turn her off!’
‘That’s the fourth nurse you’ve let him have turned off since Christmas, Madam Lilith,’ Hawks said sourly, ‘and I’ve more sense than to argue with you if ’e demands it, but I tell you it’s gettin’ ‘arder and ‘arder to find any as’ll take the place. It took me all my time to persuade this one to come, let alone stay, and now—ah, what’s the good o’ my talkin’! You let that limb o’ Satan do all ’e wishes—’ She turned away from them and began to clear the chocolate equipage from the bed as Lilith carried her now beaming son to her chaise longue.
‘Dear Jody! You must not, you really must not treat your nurses so! I must have someone to take good care of you, and how can I if you will be so wilful? I know these women can be so stupid as to make one rage, but all the same—’
He snuggled close to her, tucking his head under her chin. ‘Ah, Mamma, must I have nurses at all? Cannot you take care of me? I would like that above all things!’
‘No doubt you would, you wretch,’ Hawks, scowling, came to stand beside the chaise longue. ‘No doubt you would, for you could wind ’er about your small finger any time—I tell you, Madam Lilith, for your own good as well as ‘is that ’e needs a firm ‘and and none of your mollycoddling ways will be of use to either of yer in the long run! You mark my words—’
‘Oh, Hawks, be quiet!’ Lilith snapped. ‘You’ve been scowling at me long enough! Go away, and tell that woman to pack her box. And seek a better nurse this time, do you hear me? I cannot have these alarums and excursions to drive me wild, not when I have a matinée day to face!’
‘Oh, Mamma, you will take me to the parade, will you not? I shan’t go if you don’t take me, for Hawks is always hateful, and the other servants are so stupid—please Mamma, take me to see the Queen in her carriage—Mamma, please?—please—’
And it took but little more of his pulling at her lacy wrapper and his impassioned pleading to make her give in, little as she relished the thought of so exhausting a morning as one spent pushing through gawping crowds and on the day of a matinée performance too. But she could refuse this little love of hers nothing, she told him fondly, and together they began to plan the morning’s outing.
So when at one o’clock as the bride and groom’s procession left the Chapel Royal at St James’s to exhibit itself to the waiting crowds of admiring, jeering, gawping, and by now half-drunken Londoners, she and her Jody were there, watching. Not far away in the press of the crowd were Abby and Frederick and even nearer were Miss Ingoldsby with Gussy and Martha; not that any were aware of the others’ presence, so heavy was the crush. And Abel, tending the third broken head of the morning in Endell Street cursed Queens and weddings and crowds with a fluent impartiality, for February the tenth, 1840, was proving to be a very busy day and not only for the Queen and her dull Albert.
3
Frederick had conversed in whispers all the way home from the Park, sitting there close beside her in the swaying musty dimness of the seven o’clock Shillibeer’s omnibus. The three bay horses clattering noisily before them as the vehicle went lurching and rolling up the New Road; the burly self-important conductor in the handsome dark velvet livery who had taken their fares of sixpence a head with such lordly disdain; the other travellers, a dozen or so city men with their well-upholstered wives; all had come in for his wry comments and observations, and Abby had several times to suppress a snort of laughter at the sharpness of his remarks and the edge that he could put into some judgement on a lady traveller’s too widely brimmed and excessively feathered and beribboned hat, for he had a dry wit, for one so young, that much delighted her.
It had been a most agreeable day, they both agreed, in spite of the crowds and the rain that had marred the early part of it. The processions had been satisfyingly sumptuous, the sellers of comestibles delightfully ubiquitous, so that even Frederick’s ability to eat non-stop had been hard put to it to cope, and the marvellous mock battle fought upon the lake in the Park for the delectation of onlookers had been altogether superb, for at least seven of the frail and overdecorated craft had sunk ignominiously, leaving their crestfallen occupants to struggle muddily to the bank amid the mocking cheers and shouts of the crowd. And then there had been the early fireworks that had starred the grey skies over the roofs of St James’s with crimson fire and yellow showers and even, in one particularly breathtaking set piece, a conglomeration of blue and green and orange cascading flame making up a picture of the bride and groom that had left even the indefatigable Frederick speechless. A most splendid day, and when at last they climbed down from the omnibus, a little stiff and crumpled, Frederick hurled his arms about his mother with a last burst of energy, and told her she was beyond any shadow of doubt the dearest soul of a Mamma, and he wished for no better life than to spend a million such days in her company. And she had laughed, and hugged him in her turn, and they had made their way companionably across the dark Green, leaving the Shillibeer’s men behind them busily unhitching their steaming tired horses, to their snug little house opposite St Mary’s Church.
Frederick had produced a couple of jawcracking yawns and gone willingly to eat his supper of hot soup and bread and butter in the kitchen under the watchful eye of Ellie, the little general maid who was the only house-servant Abby felt it necessary to employ, before taking himself off to bed. And so left Abby to take herself to her room to change into a comfortable soft daygown, one of the old grey ones which while being far from fashionable still became her neat well-proportioned figure, and to brush her hair into a tidier mode. She felt at peace and comfortable within herself, for Frederick had indeed been delightful company, and had made her quite forget her morning irritation about the loss of a day’s work. And now, it was barely eight o’clock, and there was plenty of the evening left. She would eat her supper and look over the ledgers before bed, and rise early next day to harry them all a little to make up for the loss of production this day.
She went downstairs contentedly to her small sitting room, her favourite room for it looked out over the little garden behind the house, and she could, by straining a little at the window, just glimpse from it the roof of her little manufactory which stood at the corner of Irongate Wharf Road, where it abutted on the Harrow Road. So much of her security and peace of mind was tied up with this house and that manufactory, and so much of her short life with James had been tied in with them both that to sit in one and be able to see the other gave her much comfort.
It was while she was finishing her baked egg custard, having thoroughly enjoyed the dish of crimped cod and potatoes which Ellie had brought to her, that she heard the knocker followed by the soft colloquy of distant voices in the hall. She wiped her mouth upon her napkin and set her tray aside on the little table beside her, but not quite fast enough for the door opened and he stood there, smiling slightly at her. As she made to stand up he said swiftly, ‘Please, do not disturb yourself! It is unforgivable of me to visit you on business matters at such an hour, but you were absent from home all day, my messenger said, for I sent him three times. So I took it upon myself to call this evening in the hope you would not object too strenuously to the intrusion.’
