Read The Grenadillo Box: A Novel Online
Authors: Janet Gleeson
The Grenadillo Box: A Novel (30 page)
She was silent for a while, but when she replied there was no vestige of hesitation in her tone. “My father was the very essence of kindheartedness to all children. I’ve no doubt that if he’d found a child he’d have done something for it. He’d never the heart to send them to the workhouse. He always said he deplored those places, that they were no more than death sentences for any child consigned there.” She halted, looked at the child playing by her side, and patted his head. “However, as to remembering this particular child, I do not. You must understand that there were many occasions when he brought home street children and tried to find homes for them.”
“Did you ever hear word of Lord Montfort sending a child to the hospital?”
She shook her head. “This cottage is some ten miles from Horseheath. I have no connection with the estate, nor any knowledge at all of the comings and goings there.”
“Did your father keep any record of his time at the hospital that might shed light on the matter?”
Here she broke out laughing. “He was as fond of writing as he was of children. There’s a large box of his papers here. I brought them with me from London though I’ve never sorted through them and am no wiser than you as to what they might contain. You may see them if you wish.”
She showed us to a parlor where she took out a strongbox from a coffer and handed it to me. Alice had remained mute all this while, but when Mrs. Bunton asked if she would care to sit by the fire in the kitchen and keep her company, she thanked her kindly and said we would make speedier progress if two of us looked through the papers.
I’ve long believed that every young man, lacking the wisdom to know better, believes himself more or less immortal. To a youth such as I, what remains after I’m gone to mark my thoughts, ideas, beliefs, all that is the nub of my character, is of supremely little consequence. I hazard it’s only when years pass, and experience reveals how tenuous is our grip on this world, that our desire to leave reminders of our existence is sparked. Perhaps that is what drives us to beget children, build monuments, write journals, or create whatever else we fancy might outlive us.
I pass this observation only because I quickly judged from his box of papers that James Barrow was as bountiful in death as in life. He had left much to remind those who cared to look of his profound good nature. There were letters to relatives and his children and his wife. Letters to and from Captain Coram, the doughty founder of the hospital. There were notebooks in which he’d commented upon and commended or criticized prevailing trends—for philanthropy, the latest style in hat, a new design of barouche, some court gossip concerning His Majesty King George II. There were in addition journals in which he noted the birthdays of each of his children, with observations on the stages of their development from birth to the first letter they formed, the first plate they broke.
Above all there were endless records of his administration at the hospital. Details were given of the balloting system used to decide as fairly as possible which children would be granted places when there was a surfeit of applicants. (The women were asked to take a colored ball from a bag. Those who drew white balls were sent with their children to the inspecting room, where their children were examined for signs of disease; those who drew black balls were immediately turned out of the house with their infants.) There were records of the hospital staff: two wet nurses, two dry nurses, a messenger, a receiving matron, a watchman, a porter. All this paper was bundled together in no particular order, and we passed several hours rummaging through it, searching in vain for anything of relevance to our inquiry. Meantime Alice maintained a neutral expression, carefully avoiding my eyes, replying with the utmost brevity to all my attempts at conversation.
After what seemed hours of pointless, silent scanning, the box was empty but for a few stray sheets that must have come loose from one of the journals. Our efforts had yielded nothing, and moreover, I recognized with a stab of dismay, the atmosphere between us was no less strained. Despondently I picked up a crumpled sheet wedged at the side. It was dated February 1751, ten years after the opening of the hospital, the same year that James Barrow died. The shakiness of the hand made it almost impossible to decipher, and I nearly discarded it without further examination. It was only by good fortune that my eye lighted on a single word:
Partridge.
It was addressed, c/o The Old Bell Inn, Holborn, To C.—or whomsoever else it may concern:
I write this now fearing that if I do not and my fever worsens, as it seems sure to do, a confidence will die with me that is not mine to keep, and that this might cause needless misery. The matter concerns a child taken in by the Foundling Hospital unbeknownst to anyone but me and a handful of others whose names I am not at liberty to disclose.
I am speaking of a night ten years ago when I came upon a young boy abandoned on the hospital steps. There were about him two things that made him particular from all the other children taken in. First, he had come a day early; the hospital wasn’t due to open till the following evening. Second, he was too old. Anyone who knows anything of the Foundling Hospital will understand that the institution accepts only children under the age of two months, whereas this child could already walk and talk, and I judged him to be aged four years or thereabouts.
On those two counts I should by rights have rejected him. And yet I did not. If you could have seen the night you might understand why I acted as I did. Rain lashed and wind stormed—to leave him outdoors was to condemn him to certain death. So I did what I believe any Christian should have done: I deliberately flouted the regulations by which I was bound and took him in.
I questioned him closely as to his circumstances. At first he said nothing, traumatized, as any child would be, by his abandonment. After some time he relented a little. I ascertained that his name was John, that he’d been left because his mother was dying of consumption and had no one to care for him. I examined his person and found he was not badly nourished, and that she’d left him with two tokens. One was a severed portion of a ring inscribed “To C.” The other was a package containing as curious a token as ever I saw—of which I will write more in due course. The package was wrapped with a note that read:
Whether this child live or die, be pleased to send account thereof it to the Old Bell Inn, Holborn, in one month’s time.—C.
(The child could not tell me why she had selected this particular establishment.)
What was I to do? As I have writ already, I knew the child would not survive defenseless and alone in the streets of London; if I were to send him to the workhouse he would also surely die. And yet he was not eligible for the hospital.
I took him home with me, pondered the matter over the next two nights, and at length, resolved what to me seemed a satisfactory course of action. I made an entry in the billet book. I placed him among the other listings of infants as if he had been accepted by the committee. I followed every detail, only I neglected to mention his age. I felt no scruple in this deception, for I reasoned it was not such a heinous crime as leaving a child to die, and in the eyes of God the end surely justified the means.
A week later, I handed him to the care of one of the hospital’s nurses in the country and bade her say nothing of his age. Here for four years he was kindly raised, surrounded by clean air and nourished by good food, all paid for by the hospital’s benefactors. All this time, however, I still feared that if his existence were discovered by the committee he might be cast out. Thus I took pains to keep his identity concealed. As part of this subterfuge I ignored the letter from his mother, in which she pleaded for regular word of his progress to be sent to the Old Bell. I convinced myself his mother would surely be dead and that it was in his own best interests to keep his whereabouts and progress a secret.
When he was eight and the first foundlings were returned from their nurses to complete their education at the hospital, I had the child brought back to London with them. For the next few years he acted as an older brother to the younger children, assisting with their classes and other simple duties. By then the committee accepted him and, assuming he was a child I had employed rather than a true foundling, never thought to question his age. Eventually, when the time came for his apprenticeship, I confided a little of his circumstances to Mr. Hogarth (who probably assumed the child was mine). He had noted that the boy showed exceptional talent in drawing, and thought he should be employed in a trade which made use of his dexterity. And so we apprenticed him to a young cabinetmaker of his acquaintance, a Mr. Chippendale.
The last I saw of this child was a few years ago, when he left the hospital to begin his new occupation and I waved him good-bye, feeling I had done the best I could for him. It is only in recent weeks, since I caught this contagion, that my opinion of my own actions has altered. The child now haunts me—or is it simply that his mother’s letter lingers on in my memory? For whatever reason, I have it on my conscience that I did not follow her instructions, that I never sent news to the inn as she stipulated, and that this action was wrong. Suppose she had survived and wished to trace him? Suppose some other relative discovered his existence after her death and desired to offer him a home? My actions would have impeded any such possibility. In saving him I had obliterated his true identity entirely.
And so, to redress these misgivings, I pen this letter and direct it to the inn as I was asked to do. Anyone who wishes to discover the whereabouts of a male child abandoned ten years ago at the steps of the Foundling Hospital a day before it opened may look for him at the premises of Thomas Chippendale.
He goes there by the name John Partridge. I christened him thus on account of the parcel he carried when I found him. As I said, it was a singular memento. It contained a piece of wood labeled by the name of partridge wood.
May God forgive me for disregarding the hospital rules as I did.
I am with respect your obedient servant,
James Barrow
I handed the letter to Alice.
“It seems the letter was never sent to the Old Bell,” I said as she finished reading it.
“To judge from the handwriting, he was already ill when he wrote this,” she said. “He must have died soon after, and it was probably lost in the aftermath of his death.”
I frowned as I pondered the contents of the letter. “There is nothing here to connect John Partridge to Montfort. On the contrary, the story of a mother dying from consumption is entirely unconnected with all we’ve learned. I doubt Mrs. Figgins, the nurse Montfort employed, would have traveled to London had
she
been dying.”
Alice’s mind was on the tokens the letter mentioned. “We can be certain Partridge made the temple box from the block of wood left to him. Montfort had it when he died. It contained the ring mentioned here. Is that not evidence of their connection?”
I shook my head resolutely. “No, it proves only that Partridge had been to see Montfort and gave the box to him because he
believed
Montfort to be his father and that the box would therefore have some significance. It doesn’t prove Montfort
was
his father, or that he understood the significance of the box or the ring.”
Alice stared at me. “You believe the box was of no significance to Montfort?”
“Indeed.”
“Yet he held it in his hand at the moment of death?”
I paused. I had to admit the presence of the box at the scene of death was baffling. “Perhaps Montfort chanced to pick up the box at the moment he was shot?” I suggested lamely.
Alice put her head to one side. “That seems most unlikely. Are you sure your reason for denying a connection between Montfort and Partridge is not simply that you can’t acknowledge that such an odious character could have fathered your friend?”
Her comment was disquieting; I was reluctant to admit it, but the same thought had crossed my mind. “I’ve looked at this as dispassionately as I am able.”
She gave a small smile, one I knew meant she was unconvinced.
“Don’t forget that the box could have been intended to cast suspicion on Partridge. The killer might have known it was made by him; perhaps he placed it there to incriminate Partridge,” I said.
Alice frowned dubiously but said nothing apart from suggesting it was time we left Mrs. Bunton in peace. My pulse was racing at her obstinate refusal to comprehend my sentiments. Yet I knew it was pointless to pursue the matter at this juncture, with so little to bolster my case. Thus, in chilly dissension, we took our leave and made our way back to Hindlesham.
We journeyed in uneasy silence, distance widening between us. I wondered why she constantly questioned my judgments, why she had insisted on accompanying me when plainly she detested me still. I longed to reach out and touch her cheek, or squeeze her hand. Yet some instinct held me in check. I knew full well that now was not the time, that she was different from Connie and Molly and all the rest, and that if I dared to ignore this fact and touch her she would scourge me mercilessly with her fury.
With this thought I acknowledged the real root of my anxiety. I felt as if my very existence were spiraling beyond my control and I was no longer master of my being. The deaths of Montfort and Partridge had forced me to face a plethora of unwelcome truths. I’d found that my friend’s history wasn’t quite the void I’d believed it; that my master was more treacherous than I had suspected. Robert Montfort had revealed himself to be duplicitous rather than devoted towards his father; he was involved in a passionate liaison with his stepmother, who was certainly not the demure, put-upon wife I’d taken her for. Moreover, Alice was as changeable as a weather vane, and I’d developed sentiments for her that made me feel both feeble and stupid. In short, my ordered world seemed to be melting like an icicle, transforming itself to murky mayhem where nothing was as it seemed. I wanted the people around me to conform to my trusting perceptions of them. If Partridge turned out to be someone other than I thought, would the same be true of everyone else I knew? Were Foley and Miss Alleyn and Connie and Mrs. Cummings as devious as the rest? Would the same prove true of Alice?