The Quietness (3 page)

Queenie got up from the pile of straw and limped over to the bed. ‘Mam,’ she said, ‘Mam! Get up now. Come on. The little ’uns are starving. We need you. Come on!’

It was Mam, but not Mam, who eventually turned to look at her. It was Mam’s face, but there was something wrong with her eyes. They were flat and dead like the glassy eyes of the bloaters down at Billingsgate.

‘I’ve looked all over for Da,’ said Queenie. ‘I can’t find him nowhere. Maybe he ain’t coming back this time.’ She shook Mam’s shoulder hard. ‘Come on! You need to get up now!’

Mam sighed deeply and slowly rose from the bed. She stood up and began to tidy herself. Queenie watched her scrape her fingers through her hair and wash her face with spit on a rag. Her hair was black and velvety. Da always said it was like a dark summer’s night. When she unpinned it a shower of dust flew out, and curls rolled down her back stopping just short of her waist. Da was mad for her hair. He would take a thick length and bury his face in the depths of it and cry out, ‘Thank you, Lord, for my own sweet Dollymop!’

Mam would push him away and tell him to keep his filthy hands to himself, but her eyes would be laughing as she tied her hair back into place. But Da wasn’t here now and Mam wasn’t laughing.

‘Mam,’ Queenie said. ‘How’re we going to eat? There’s no money to go to market. Why’s Da buggered off again? Don’t he care a bit?’

‘Your Da’s a proud man,’ said Mam quietly, like she was talking to herself. ‘With the baby gone and that . . . he thinks he’s failed us. But I’m
not
proud, and I won’t see another of my children starve.’

She hung a sheet across the middle of the room and told Queenie to keep the little ones quiet. It wasn’t hard. They barely murmured when she pulled them close and whispered them stories of talking rats and hidden treasures. Tally, the eldest, was learning his letters and Queenie helped him to shape them using a stick to scrape in the dirt floor. Soon the little ones grew tired and drifted off to sleep curled up tight to each other.

Mam was in and out all that day, bringing strange men with her, one at a time, into the room. Queenie never saw them, only heard them as they wheezed through the door and dropped their trousers on the floor. They didn’t speak much, just grunted and sniffed or coughed and spat. Some of them banged the bed against the wall for an age, but others only took a minute to let out a groan of satisfaction, like they’d dined on a plate of good roast beef and couldn’t eat another morsel. Mam didn’t sigh like she did when she was with Da. She hardly made a sound; only cried out a couple of times like she was hurting.

Queenie knew what she was doing and thought of the bloated faces in the gin-shop and grubby fingers fumbling beneath her own skirts. She was glad it was Mam this time.

Mam was quiet a long time after the last of the men had paid up and left. Queenie fell asleep and dreamt of fat pigs gobbling up troughs of plums and Da spinning Mam around the room, faster and faster, her hair flying across her face and Da laughing and laughing.

‘Queenie, Queenie . . . come on, now. Quick. Take this.’ Mam was shaking her awake and pressing coins into her hand. ‘Go on now and fetch some coal. And some bread and dripping. Oh, and best get a pennyworth of tea while you’re at it.’ She’d taken the sheet down and pinned her hair back up. Queenie grabbed the coins and hurried towards the door. She glimpsed a man’s felt cap lying on the floor beside the roughed-up bed and wondered for a moment how Da would feel about his space being borrowed by dirty strangers. He could think what he bleedin’ well liked, she decided. He’d be here if he cared that much.

They had the finest meal in all of London that night. Mam made the tea strong and hot and she covered doorsteps of bread in a thick layer of white dripping that tasted like heaven. They ate until their lips and cheeks were shiny with grease. The coals in the stove turned ashen and Mam began to sing softly to herself as she stroked her mound of belly.

Mary had finished putting Mother back to bed and was airing the blue guest room and removing dust sheets. I walked past her and along the corridor to Mother’s room. It was dark inside. The curtains were drawn and the air was musty with the sour odour of bird droppings. My eyes adjusted to the light and I saw the small hump of Mother lying in the centre of her bed, the covers drawn up to her chin.

‘Is that you, Mary?’ she whispered. ‘Fetch me my shawl.’

‘No, Mother, it is me,’ I said. ‘It is Ellen.’

‘What do you want, girl?’ she hissed. ‘Go and get Mary for me.’

‘I just want to talk to you for a moment,’ I said. ‘Where is your shawl? I will fetch it for you.’

‘Talk?’ she said. ‘Talk? Can you not see I am indisposed? Get Mary now.’

‘But Mother, it will only take a moment. I want to ask you about Aunt Isabella, and . . . and Jacob Grey.’

‘How dare you!’ she spluttered. ‘This has nothing to do with you. Now leave me in peace.’

‘But I have an aunt I know nothing about! And a cousin! Why have they never been spoken of before?’

Mother coughed; dry little barks, and she waved me away with her hand.

‘Get me Mary,’ she croaked.

‘But Mother,’ I persisted, ‘I have a right to know about my family!’

‘You,’ she whispered, seemingly exhausted from her coughing, ‘have no right to know anything. Now fetch Mary!’

She closed her eyes and I knew it was of no use to ask again. What was wrong with me that she could not love me? I swallowed hard to hold back my tears and left the room, daring to close the door hard behind me. Mother’s birds started squawking and flapping and I thought that even though they were caged, at least they were loved.

I hurried back to the guest room where Mary was smoothing the counterpane on the newly made-up bed.

‘Mother is asking for you,’ I told her. She turned to go and I put my hand on her arm to stop her. ‘Mary. What can you tell me of my Aunt Isabella and my cousin?’ I felt her stiffen under my touch.

‘I . . . I . . . I don’t truly know, miss,’ she said. ‘I think it best that you don’t ask me.’

‘Do not be silly, Mary, what is there to hide? I will find out soon enough. Jacob Grey will be here in a few days.’

‘I know, miss, but it’s something that’s never spoken of. It is a family matter and I don’t wish to lose my position by talking out of turn.’

‘That would never happen,’ I said. ‘Please, just tell me what you know.’

‘Miss,’ she sighed, ‘all I know is there were words between your father and his sister. Harsh words, and many years ago. Her name has never been spoken since. Now let me get on and don’t you breathe a word.’

I nodded and let go of her arm. She walked briskly out of the room. I watched her go and wondered what I would ever do without her. When all the governesses came and went over the years, the cold, distant women who taught me my letters and how to keep quiet, Mary was my only comfort. She laughed at my attempts to speak French, smuggled pieces of cake to my room and listened to me as I read her passages from my favourite books.

‘You’ll be the most beautiful bride in London one of these days, miss,’ she told me as she brushed my hair at bedtimes.

‘Will my husband be handsome?’ I asked her. ‘And will he be rich?’

‘But of course, miss, he’ll be the most handsome, richest man ever.’

‘And will we have children?’

‘Hoards of ’em,’ she said with a wink.

‘Then you will have to come and live with us, won’t you? To look after us all.’

‘That I will, miss, that I will,’ she would say.

I looked around the guest room: at the new cake of soap on the wash stand and the plumped-up pillows on the bed. I hoped the days would pass quickly and that Jacob Grey would arrive safely.

For as long as Queenie could remember, Mam had told stories. If she couldn’t feed Queenie’s belly with tasty morsels, she would fill her head instead. Mam’s words took Queenie to warm places where there was always a fire burning and a table laden with food. She told of the taste of hot winter broths and steaming apple pies. Her words filled Queenie’s empty spaces and took away the sharp gnaw of hunger. As the little ones came along, first Tally, then Kit, then Albie, Mam made room for them all in the rough folds of her skirts as they sat by her feet and listened hard. Da was never there. He was always out on the beer. ‘He’ll be home soon,’ Mam would say hopefully. ‘With a rabbit for the pot maybe, and a blanket for the next baby.’

Queenie loved Mam telling of the time before she met Da. In the days when she was young and pretty and worked in a house on the other side of the river. In a house that was as white as the bone on a newly boiled ham, she said. The house was full of rooms. So many rooms, there were doors that were never opened. It smelt of warm honey; of polished rosewood and hair oil; cigar smoke and lavender. Queenie could only imagine those smells, but they sounded good enough to eat. Every space was filled with dark furniture that was covered by lace. There was even paper on the walls with patterns of birds, flowers and ivy coloured in reds and greens and golds.

Then Mam would tell of the room full of books. Floor to ceiling full of books. The grandest books you ever saw; smart in leather bindings and all tucked neatly into their own little space on a shelf. Mam dusted those books, one by one. Ever so careful. Queenie imagined what an age it must have taken. Hundreds of them, there was. Sometimes, Mam whispered, she would dare to pick up the books and open the covers to smell the ink. She liked to feel the paper between her fingers. Some pages felt rough and heavy but others felt as light as onion skins. Best of all were the pictures hidden between the pages: flowers in all their detail, dark-skinned men in strange costumes, beautiful ladies dressed like ships in full sail and the most curious of creatures. Great birds the colour of jewels with beaks as long as swords, and monsters with claws and horns as thick as your legs. It was in that room that Mam learned her letters. With all those books, she said, she couldn’t help herself.

Once, Mam said, she found a book so foul she could scarce imagine the mind that had thought of it! Full of drawings of sharp knives and peculiar instruments and of men’s bodies laid out on butcher’s blocks and all cut open so the insides were on view to the world. And words so long she couldn’t make head nor tail of them. Mam said the books only got half a dusting that day and she felt as green as a quarter of soap right up till bedtime.

Mam would tell how she lit fires, swept ashes, scrubbed floors, brushed carpets, beat rugs and cleaned walls. The paper on the walls was so beautiful it couldn’t be allowed to get dirty. With the fires going all day, the soot settled on the paper and hid the colours. So Mam blew off the dust from top to bottom with a pair of bellows. Then she got a loaf of bread and broke it in half. She wiped the bread over the paper. Not too hard, or else the dirt stuck and never came off and the paper was ruined. So bit by bit Mam rubbed the loaf gently down the walls and the crumbs collected the dirt and the whole lot fell to the floor to be swept up tidily.

As Queenie got older she grew tired of Mam’s stories. She got angry at the picture in her head of bread being broken to wipe away soot. Bread that could fill bellies being crumbled and wasted and swept up with the dirt. But as the feeling inside her grew she knew it wasn’t anger after all. It was bigger than anger and stronger and she realised she didn’t mind about the bread. She didn’t care. Not one bit. She just wanted to live in that fancy house, to be just like those fancy people and to have her own walls to cover in fancy paper. She wanted to have great baskets of bread delivered to her fancy door every day. Baskets of warm fresh bread to break apart and rub over
her
fancy walls till the soft crumbs rolled to the floor.

I had waited nearly the whole day by the parlour window. It afforded the best view of the street. I curled up on the cushioned window seat and watched the maids from the houses opposite bring in freshly filled milk jugs from their doorsteps. I watched market carts rolling down the street and knots of children being hurried along on their morning walks. I watched countless cabs rumble past. Not one pulled up outside our house.

I had Mary bring me a tray of tea and I sat there and I waited and I waited. Doors were opened and closed, people came and went and soon there was nothing left to watch. Then, just as the day began to dim and the lamp-lighter wandered down the street, with his lighting rod balanced on his shoulder, two sleek, black horses and a dark green carriage appeared from the end of the street and pulled up outside the railings.

My heart leapt and I pressed my face to the window. The door of the carriage opened and a young man stepped out. He stood for a moment under the glow of a lamp and looked up at the house. I held my breath. I noticed his lips at first; they were full and ruddy and turned up into a half smile. His hair was dark as treacle and his eyes were hidden under a long fringe. He was wearing a black mourning suit and, with his black gloves and black cravat, he looked like a young boy in man’s clothing. Part of me wanted him to see me standing there behind the lace curtains. But he did not. Instead, he looked away and nodded to the driver to fetch his bags.

I quickly pulled the lace to one side and, as he turned back to climb the steps to the front door, he flicked his hair back and glanced over at me. He had the greenest of eyes. I should have dropped the curtains, or at least have averted my gaze or turned my head. But I just stood there. My newly tightened corset made it impossible for me to breathe evenly and I could feel a hotness spreading from my cheeks down to my powdered bosom. Mary had brought me a tin of arrowroot from the larder and had insisted on dusting the white powder over my cheeks and chest. ‘It’s what all the young ladies use, miss,’ she had reassured me. I hoped the pleasing pearly whiteness was not disappearing now under a flush of unbecoming scarlet.