Tattycoram (17 page)

“Hattie, I'm glad yer back. There's a lady in St. John's Wood what wants a piping bullfinch. Do you think any of ours is ready?”

“Jonnie —”

“She'll pay good money, she says, for a first-rate singer. At least three guineas, mebbe more once she 'ears 'im. Choose our very best, all right, and I'll take 'im round this evening.”

“Jonnie,” I said, “hold on a minute. Here's someone come to see you.”

Once again the momentary panic in his eyes — would there ever come a time when he would feel easy meeting strangers? (And yet he could wander all over London hawking his birds.)

The reunion between the brothers was pitiful, each taking upon himself the burden of guilt for what had happened. And when Sam removed his boots and showed us his right foot, made of wood, Jonnie broke down and sobbed like a little child.

“You must stop that, you hear,” Sam said. “This is not the work of the trap but of the careless prison doctor who first fixed me up. The foot went bad on the voyage out, and there was nothing for it but to take it off. I thought surely I would die that night, and for several days after, but the Lord didn't see it that
way and I hung on. By the time we arrived in Australia, I was as right as rain.”

“Except that you had no foot.”

“Aye, except that I had no foot. This did limit my usefulness somewhat, but I was a strong lad, foot or no foot, and so they put me to driving wagonloads of fellow convicts up and down the country, wherever they were needed, always with an officer or two, you understand, sometimes more if they figured somebody might try to escape. There is so much land out there it would be easy, if you could get away, to lose yourself, start again — if you didn't die of the rot or a snake bite or a run-in with a kangaroo. One kick to the head and you're a goner.

“The ship's carpenter had fashioned me a peg, to balance me, you know, but I found that very unsatisfactory. At night, when I couldn't sleep, I kept chewing away at the problem. Finally I thought I'd try my hand at carving an artificial foot attached to a series of straps so I could easily put it on and take it off. I begged a block of wood and began to whittle it into the shape of my missing foot.” He laughed. “Of course, I was using my left foot as a model, and so the first attempt
looked
fine, but it was suitable for a man who'd lost his left foot. I had to begin all over again, and the second time I did it correct. I got quite carried away and even gave it wooden toenails and a few wooden veins. I attached a leather pad to it, just as the ship's carpenter had done for my peg, and there I was. Took a while to get used to it, after the peg, but soon I forgot about it. It wasn't much use for shovelling, but I even managed that eventually. Sometimes, when we were all sitting around a campfire at night, I'd dampen my right boot a bit, then stick it up close to the fire until it was smouldering, like, just a bit. Then I'd jump up and yell that my foot was on fire, quickly detach the braces
and throw the boot, with foot attached, into the bush. The prisoners would just sit there with their jaws hanging down saying ‘Jaysus Christ, Jaysus Christ,' the rest of us doubled over laughing.”

I think, for Jonnie's sake, he tried to make light of his early years in Australia, but you had only to look at his face to see another story written there. And when he pulled his shirt over his head — Jonnie insisted he stay with us that night — we could see the ugly scars that criss-crossed his back.

The next day Jonnie went out hawking as usual, and then Sam left, promising to be back in the late afternoon. He had spent a while talking to Old Albert, who very much admired the artificial foot, while my brother, in turn, exclaimed over the delicacy of the bird cages. When Sam returned, he said he had removed to a lodging house nearby and had ordered a celebration dinner to be brought round at seven. From the pockets of his greatcoat he brought out knives and plates, a corkscrew, lemons and various twists of spices.

“Tonight is a joyous occasion, an occasion I never thought I'd live to see. All three of us together, all thriving.” I had seen him glance more than once at our humble accommodation and frown. He had told me that morning that he had come home with plenty of money — “honest money, Hattie, honestly earned” — but I believed he would not force any changes on us until he knew us better.

Just a few days before Christmas, Jonnie arrived home with all his singers sold, even our shy skylark, who had so far proved unwilling to sing in public. “She gave a lovely performance, she did, and was snapped up in no time.” He went out quickly to buy ale for the feast and I went around to the side to entice Old Albert to join us. His answer was, as always, “Just this once.”

Oysters can be eaten perfectly well without oyster forks, and sugar lumps can be dropped into hot punch without the aid of sugar tongs. It does not matter what you eat, or what you eat it with, if you are with the ones you love. Love itself is the sauce that transforms even the simplest meal into a banquet. And this was not a simple meal: it took three boys to deliver it; the smallest looked as though his tray was far too heavy for him and he might faint on the spot. (Sam revived him with sixpences.) We began with oysters, worked our way through chops, cold beef with horseradish, jacket potatoes, oranges and nuts. Sam had forgotten to buy a nutcracker and caused great hilarity by cracking the nuts with his wooden foot. Even Old Albert laughed, such an unusual sound — a bit like a donkey braying or the squawk of ancient, rusting machinery — I thought for a moment he was choking.

“Tomorrow,” Sam said, as he embraced us both and made his farewells, “tomorrow we shall talk about the future.”

After he left and Old Albert had gone off to his kennel, Jonnie took my hand.

“Will you sit up with me a bit, Hattie?”

“Of course. Is something wrong?”

“No, no. 'Ow could anything be wrong on such a night? It's just . . . well . . . I would never like to leave London, it's me 'ome. Oh, I likes gettin' up in the dark and settin' out for a good tramp in the country to catch my birds, but I could never live there all the time. I likes bein' in the streets.”

“I know you do, love.”

“I think Sam's future don't include London.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Things 'e let drop. It worries me.”

“But you have a say in your own future, Jonnie. Sam may be your brother, but you are your own man. He would never force you to do anything that wasn't right for you.”

“Ah, but that's just it! 'E wouldn't 'ave to force me. Do you think I want to lose 'im again — or lose you?”

“What's this talk about losing me? I told you I would never leave you.”

“Times change.”

“
I
don't change. And I don't break promises.”

Which is why, when Sam arrived the next evening and laid out his plans for buying a bit of land in the country, in or near Shere, perhaps in Gomshall or Peaslake, of building a cottage with a room for each of us, where we could all be together in peace and contentment for the rest of our lives, I fought down my inclination to cry, “Yes, oh yes!” and told Sam that I was a London girl now and wanted to remain here, with Jonnie.

Turning to his brother, he asked, “And you wish to remain?”

“I does. One man's best suited to one place, one to another. This is what suits me.”

Sam looked so disappointed, I felt pulled in two. I wanted to be with both of them, but I knew that if I told the truth about my yearning for the country, Jonnie would sell up his business and come with us like a shot. I owed it to Jonnie to keep quiet.

“Sam,” I said, “now that you have found us, we shall never be far apart, whatever happens. If you have come back with the hopes of buying a small farm, I think you should do it. Surrey is not far away. We can visit back and forth all the time.”

“It won't be the same.”

“No, not the same, but Jonnie has built up a good business here — his singers are considered the best in London. I like helping with the singing lessons and looking after the little house. I'm used to it now.”

“Very well. I'll not try to persuade you otherwise. It had always been my dream to come back and run a small farm, whether I found either of you or not, so I shall go ahead with my plan. But you must both swear that you will visit me every chance you get. Now that the line from Guildford goes through Gomshall, it is not so difficult to come out from London as in the old days. I will always be happy to pay your fares.”

It being Christmastime we made merry every evening, and the whole neighbourhood was in and out to sample the punch, wish us a Happy Christmas and hear stories of Australia. Sam gave Jonnie an enormous ostrich egg, carved with the figures of the Queen and Prince Albert, looking nothing like the royal couple but wearing crowns and decorations. For me he had a pair of eardrops made of opals, unlike any opals I had ever seen before: every colour of the rainbow shone within them. He said
they were from the far north of Australia, where he had never been, but he'd bought the stones off another man and had had them made up in Adelaide.

My present to both of them, to all of us, was a trip to the pantomime at Covent Garden, and Jonnie's gifts were a small cameo brooch for me and, of all things, a terrier pup for Sam. We would keep it, Jonnie said, until Sam was settled someplace. Sam named him Digger and we all fell in love with him immediately.

Sam had arranged to stay at the White Horse Inn, in Shere, while he looked around, and by the end of December he was gone.

“Are you sure, Hattie,” Jonnie said to me — how quiet it seemed with Sam gone — “are you sure you don't want to go with him?”

Digger squirmed in my lap and yelped; I must have squeezed him too tightly.

“I'm sure. My place is here.”

The New Year's bells rang out extra joyously that year, all over the great city. I went to church and gave thanks for our reunion and prayed that the years to come would find us never far from one another. How I wished our mother and father could know that Sam had at long last come home. The rector would no doubt assure me, “They know, my dear, they know,” and I tried very hard to believe this, and believe that Grandfather was smiling up in Heaven too, but my sceptical side said that souls did not have smiles, that souls were like the winds — we could see their effects, the bent branches, the dancing flowers, the ruffled waters, but we could never see their shape.

When I came out of church, I went down to the river and walked. The fog that had covered the city in the week before
Christmas had left us for a while, and the winter sun, although shedding little warmth, cast a harsh, metallic light on the great river. There was not much river traffic on this holiday, but a few oarsmen rowed their boats under the bridges and out towards the sea. I had thought so much about emigrating with Jonnie to a new land — not Australia, I had decided, even before Sam returned, but western North America perhaps. Miss BurdettCoutts had connections everywhere. I had imagined us sailing away from the past into a bright future, where we would build a little cabin by a stream, plant vegetables and flowers, fish for our dinners. I could see now, with Sam home, that that was out of the question. Sam was finished with travelling, he said, and Jonnie had made a life for himself in the city. I stood in the middle of Waterloo Bridge and opened my hand, consigning my dream to the water, letting the current take it. It was a small enough sacrifice to make to stay close to my family. I walked back to our mean street with no regrets. I was, I realized, a bit like one of those twig boats we had launched in the Tilling-bourne as children. I would submit myself to the stream of my life and let the current take me where it might. So long as my brothers were near me, each of us drawing strength from the other, then I would be content.

The fog that rolled in a few weeks later was not the usual acrid yellow blanket that we cursed but had learned to accept as part of London life. That we could tolerate. This was the fog of pestilence, of the dreaded cholera, and as usual it attacked the poorest and most overcrowded sections of the city. Sam urged us to come away until the danger was over, but Jonnie just laughed and said he had survived '31 and '48 and he had no intention of leaving.

“But perhaps you should go, Hattie, just for a while?”

Aside from the scarlatina, when I was a child, I had never been ill a day in my life. I decided to stay. The disease had so far left our neighbourhood alone, although people were dying by the hundreds in Seven Dials and Cheapside. Jonnie was still out catching birds every other Sunday and hawking them the rest of the week, but he promised not to go near any section of the city which harboured the disease. I stayed close to home (I had given up tatting temporarily because I felt my hands were never quite clean), tutored my singing school and attempted to train Digger, whose paws seemed to be growing much faster than the rest of him.

So how did I fall victim to this terrible thing? We never knew. It started with a piercing headache and chills in the middle of the night, then terrible cramps and violent purging. When Jonnie came home, he found me on the floor, moaning, with Digger anxiously whining beside me and licking my feet. I was too weak by then even to raise myself to my bed. I thought it must have been something I'd eaten, but Jonnie sent for the doctor immediately. He gave me paregoric and said I must drink plenty of fluids, but I could keep nothing down. I begged Jonnie to go away at once and save himself. “I'm not afraid,” I whispered to him, “I'm not afraid.”

By evening I had slipped into unconsciousness, and Jonnie sent Old Albert to the post office with a message for Sam to come quickly; I was dying.

Twenty-three dead on our street alone. The little boy next door, his mother and father, his grandmother. Only his sister survived. The publican and his wife. But I knew none of this
then. People fleeing the city carried the illness into the suburbs. Neighbourhoods such as ours were put under quarantine in the hopes that would stop the spread of the disease. The well-to-do, who remained shut up in their houses, were, for the most part, spared.