Tattycoram (19 page)

Sam laughed. “There'll be more of
that
around next lambing season, I shouldn't wonder.”

There was a bench in front of our cottage, just as in our childhood.

“I have a great desire to smoke a pipe out here before turning in. Do you fancy keeping me company for a while?” He fetched his pipe and let the dogs out; they had been whining behind the door ever since they heard our voices.

Sam filled his pipe, lit it, took a few deep puffs and let out a sigh of contentment.

“You know, Hattie, sometimes I think it helps to have known
trouble, for then, when you experience contentment, you recognize it for what it is.”

“Are you content, Sam?”

“Oh, aye. Can't you tell?” Then he paused. “Except, perhaps, for one thing.”

“What is that?”

“Seeing all those merry couples tonight made me think that perhaps I should look for a wife.”

It was as though the distant moon had turned to ice and a chill wind had sprung up around me. My best silk shawl seemed woefully inadequate to keep out the cold that seeped in. Somehow I managed to keep my voice steady.

“A wife?”

“Yes, a wife. What do you think of the idea? Perhaps you could help me in my search. Do you think there might be a woman in this county who would take an aging cripple as her husband?”

“You, a cripple! Who was up there dancing tonight? That was no cripple.”

“One set and I was finished. And at any rate, I was only showing off. Now
you
— you were doing splendidly.”

“Was I? I had never danced before in my life, except once when Mr. Dickens gave all the servants a whirl on Twelfth Night.”

“Never before?”

“Never.”

“Well, you are a natural and you must do more of it.” He took another few draws at his pipe. “I'll tell you what, Hattie, here's an idea. Why don't we help each other? I'll seek out a dancing husband for you and you can inquire for a nice obedient wife for me. What do you think?”

I was grateful for the darkness so that he could not see my face, and yet a sob escaped me, I couldn't help it. The tears rolled down my cheeks. He turned and touched my face.

“What's this? Don't you like the idea of the dancing husband?” Another sob was all the answer I could give.

And then he said, “Oh Hattie, Hattie, it is wrong of me to tease. I want no other wife but you, my dear, but I have been afraid to ask. Tonight, when I saw you dancing and enjoying it so, I felt a new sensation — I think its name is jealousy. And not just jealousy, but despair. I vowed I would say nothing, but I could not resist testing you a bit. I didn't mean to make you cry. Could you really love a battle-scarred, weatherbeaten, one-footed man like me?”

“One heart,” I said, “is all I need.”

There was silence for a while after that, and then he said, “May I go and fetch you a warmer covering? I think it would be nice if we sat here a while longer and enjoyed this still moment together.”

We gave ourselves a holiday the next day and took a walk on the Downs. Away in an orchard women and children on ladders were picking the last apples, and, even farther away, we heard the horn and the barking hounds, long before we saw the distant pink-coated hunters galloping madly over the landscape.

“‘This is the way the gentlemen ride,'” Sam said, remembering the old game on Grandfather's knee, “only every farmer wants to be a gentleman now, and his wife must be a lady. They care nothing for their workers. Times have changed and are changing still. And now the railway cuts through the valley, the
city comes to the country. We are fortunate to have skills that will be in demand for a long time to come.”

“And land,” I said. “No one can turn us away.”

“Not for ninety-nine years, at any rate.”

The banns were read and we were married quietly a few weeks later, with the Misses Bray, very old now but as generous as ever, standing up for us, along with Old Albert, whom we had brought out specially from London.

I was thirty-six years old and Sam was forty-five.

And now we went up the stairs at night together.

To our delight, the following year a little girl was born to us. As I lay in the upstairs room, panting, clutching the bedposts, I remembered the long ago day in the kitchen at Doughty Street and asking, “Is she going to die?”

Yet out of such pain, such joy. We named her Anne, after Mother, but for some reason she was called Rosie, almost from the first. She had my springy curls but Sam's colouring, hair the colour of new pennies and, in time, lots of freckles. Digger became her special protector as though to show Angus he too could round up little lambs when called upon to do so. He placed himself between her and the fender and always accompanied her on her toddling explorations of the outside world.

After Rosie there was a little boy who lived long enough to open his eyes, look blankly at his mother and father and then close them again. We named him John. He was a tiny baby and could easily have fitted in one of Sam's big shoes. His father made him a lovely coffin out of oak, and we buried him next to the rest of the family. Mother told me how people said to her, after each dead baby, “Well, it isn't as though you really knew him,” and how she wanted to scream at them that if you carry a child beneath your heart for nine months, you do know it, that
it has its own particular movements, its own uniqueness, right from the start. How each time she buried this child she already knew, she buried a piece of her heart.

There were no more babies after that, but we were more than content with Rosie. Down came the little chair I had sat in all those years ago; down came poor old Baby (I made her a new dress from a checked handkerchief); out came the wooden hen with her revolving egg.

“I had forgotten about that hen,” Sam said, and he began making copies to sell at the annual Guildford Fair, where they were a great success. We all loved the fair, but coming home I always said, “Well, that's enough bustle for this year.”

And so the years went on, the seasons came and went, and suddenly Rosie was nearly ten years old, one of the best scholars at the village school and, when at home, a great help to me, teasing and carding the wool from Sam's sheep, learning to use a spindle. And of course I taught her the pleasures of tatting and embroidery. She was a chatterbox and asked the drollest questions: “Mam, what do the cows think about when they stand there staring?”; “Mam, why does Digger only bark? Why can't he talk, like me?”

Sam said one night, after Rosie had gone up, “Ah, Hattie, isn't it grand to think that child will never have a number hung round her neck, like you, or printed across her back, like me?”

“Are we going to tell her, Sam — our history?”

“Oh yes, all of it. Nothing must be hidden. We should tell her soon, before the old gossips do.”

And yet I kept putting it off; could not the past simply remain the past? I think the truth was that I did not know how to tell her about my first mother giving me up. Rosie would ask so many questions, might demand that we set off “at once” (one of her favourite phrases)
to find her, whereas I had long ago given up any desire to do so. My real mother was the mother who had loved me and cared for me in Shere. As for Sam, boys and men still poached, although they were no longer transported. That Rosie would more readily understand.

One May day, when Sam was away to Albury, taking measurements for a grand banister to go in a new house under construction there and Rosie was at school, two strangers appeared at my open door: a tall thin woman in black shawl and bonnet and a little man, not much taller than a dwarf, also dressed in black, very rusty black. Digger and Angus had both gone off on some adventure or other, so I had no barked warning at the visitors' approach. I had been up to the shop for some lump sugar (Sam liked his tea heavily sugared) and had just put the kettle on when these two odd creatures appeared.

“Hello,” I said, “are you looking for me?” The woman gave me a bold stare, then looked me up and down in an offensive way.

“Oh yes,” she said, “you are exactly who I'm looking for.” She gave a harsh laugh. “You don't recognize me, do you?”

I shook my head.

“That's not surprising, I suppose, given what I've been through.”

All of a sudden I knew, and I wanted to back away, even shut the door in her face. Elisabeth Avis. The tone of voice identified her.

“Ah,” she said, “it's coming back, is it? Well, Miss Harriet, are you going to invite us in?”

“Come in,” I said, wishing with all my heart that Sam were there. The air seemed to crackle with anger.

Sam had made me an outdoor oven in which I could bake our bread, once the weather turned mild, without overheating our little house. If he was inordinately fond of sugared tea, he was equally fond of fresh bread, and having no cow, he traded labour for butter at Manor House Farm. I had left the loaves to cool while I went to the shop, and now I felt I had to offer my visitors some bread and butter.

“I would prefer a mug of cold water, if you please. We have walked from the station at Gomshall.”

I could see the little man eyeing the bread in a wistful fashion, and so, after bringing the water for Elisabeth, I made the tea, sliced some bread and brought out a crock of preserves. The man was a strange creature. The fingers of his left hand drew inward towards the palm, making his hand resemble a chicken's foot, although his right hand, which clutched a pair of threadbare gloves, looked perfectly normal. I wondered how and where these two had met.

Elisabeth, who had so far refused my invitation to sit, withdrew a book from her carryall and thrust it at me.

“I can only assume you have seen this, seeing as you and he were as thick as thieves.”

“I'm sorry, I don't understand.” The little man, who had not yet been introduced — I could not help but think of witches and their familiars, although weren't cats the usual companions? — could not keep his eyes away from the table, but he was too cowed or too polite to help himself until the invitation was given.

“This book!” She was practically shrieking. “This dreadful volume, where both of us have been libelled!”

“Please sit down. I confess I don't know what you are talking about.”

“I find that hard to believe.” She appeared to be coming to a boil, but I had no idea what was upsetting her so. I really wished she would just go away.

“I thought you were in Australia,” I said.

“Of course you did, everybody did. Certainly
he
did, or he would never have dared do what he has done.”

“He?” I poured out the tea and offered cream and sugar, but she waved me away impatiently. The little man, however, accepted gratefully, poured his tea into his saucer and blew on it to cool it.

“He is Charles Dickens of course. Don't play the innocent with me.” She held up the book again and shook it as if she would like to shake it to pieces.

“I am not trying to deceive you,” I said. “I honestly don't know what you are going on about. I haven't seen Mr. Dickens for many years.”

“You haven't?”

“No, not since I moved back here.”

“But you must have read his books? Even in this backwater people must read his books. Why, he has a following of millions.”

“I'm afraid I'm not one of those millions. He used to send me a small parcel of books at Christmastime, but that stopped over ten years ago. I must confess I have not kept up. It's mostly children's stories these days, or stories from the Bible.”

“Ha,” she said with a smile of satisfaction. “Then you really don't know.” (The little man was on his third slice of bread and jam.) “That makes it even better. I thought perhaps you didn't
mind, you were such a hero-worshipper in the old days. I thought perhaps you had said, ‘Use me as you will.' For used you certainly have been, and I, too. Cruelly used.”

I began to suspect what had happened.

“He has written about you?”

“Us! About
us
. He has caricatured us, myself most cruelly. At least you get to reform in the end.”

She paused at this point, accepted a cup of tea and looked around her. I tried to see my little home the way she must see it, the simple but beautiful furniture Sam had made, the geraniums on the windowsill, the bunches of herbs hanging from the rafters, the braided rug before the fender. Everything neat and tidy, but not much more grand, except for the furniture, than an ordinary tenant-farmer's cottage.

“Somehow I thought you had more ambition than
this
.”

“I am quite content with
this
, as you call it, quite content. Can you tell me what it is you want of me, exactly?”

“I want you to join me in a suit against him — against the great man himself. He mustn't get away with this. And we shall be joined by others. I have already found a woman, very small, smaller than Hopkins here, a dwarf, really, who was bought off with a pittance years ago. There must be dozens of us scattered about, and I intend to find them all. Hopkins, show her the advertisement.”

Out of a rusty pocket Hopkins produced a folded paper and handed it to me. He had neglected to wipe his fingers, and so he left grease stains and a purple thumb print at the corner. I unfolded it carefully.

“This is to go in all the London newspapers next week,” Elisabeth said. “And then the innocent victims will come forth to be counted, and we shall launch such a suit against him, he'll
wish he'd never been born. His reputation has already been tarnished, you know. He separated from his wife some years ago, as good as shoved her out the door. He tried to hush it all up, but I've discovered there were plenty of rumours. He's a whited sepulchre, he is, and we shall bring him down.”

The advertisement said that anyone who felt they had been held up to ridicule in any of the novels or stories of the noted author Mr. C _____________ D ____________ should please contact the offices of Messrs. Grundig and Beckstein immediately, with the view of initiating a suit for malicious libel against the said C ______________ D _____________ and his publishers.