Unspeakable (29 page)

“Did you not know it was a formal event?” Charlotte had asked, eyeing the dress I'd found perfectly acceptable, until then. Suddenly, next to Charlotte's flounces and bows, mine seemed shabby. Even my hair felt flat and lifeless beside her crown of ringlets, each a perfect gold spiral. “Mother ordered this dress especially from Paris for today.” She smoothed her hands over the skirt. “It cost over six pounds.”

The ridiculousness of it struck me. “How much?”

“Almost seven pounds,” she repeated, revelling in the
wonder of the girls gathered around us, their fingers itching to touch the fabric.

“Didn't your mother just say in her speech that six pounds was enough to feed a whole village for a week?”

The girls around her gasped; suddenly the dress they desired seemed frivolous and wasteful. Like wildfire, red rushed across Charlotte's cheeks and down her neck. It smouldered under her new pearl necklace and burned right up to the tips of her earlobes where the matching earrings dangled. I didn't stay long at the event. My aunt gave a short speech on her research about African culture and, in Aunt Geraldine form, excused us. No doubt she wanted to retreat to her study as soon as possible. But I'd felt Charlotte's hateful gaze on me the entire time.

I felt it on me even now as I dusted her father's hunting trophies. I wondered if she knew me. If she remembered. And all the ways she might make my life more difficult for it.

I needed this job. With only a few days left before my father kicked me out, a daughter to support, and room and board to pay once I found suitable lodgings, I had enough on my plate without Charlotte. I had no time for a foolish girl's drama. So during that first week, when she demanded I make her bed again
properly
, or re-iron her skirts, or even pay for the cup she'd broken because I'd left her tea on the wrong side table, I thought of Faith, I closed my mouth, and I did what Charlotte asked.

All the while, Kate's words to me on that first day aboard the
Empress
echoed in my mind.
First-class daughters are rich, spoiled brats who speak of nothing but clothes, hair, and dresses
. A stereotype, for sure. But one that Charlotte embodied. I'd
known many first-class people on the
Empress
, and liked most. But I'd never like Charlotte. Not because of her class, but because she was simply a first-class brat.

The days of that first week were terribly long and the work was hard, but Monday was my day off and I was taking Faith for the afternoon. Our first outing together. Alone.

I knocked on the front door, the address tight in my other fist. Faith's new foster family, the Buckleys, lived down by Gerrard Street, an hour's walk from the Morgans, but the neighbourhood seemed a world away. I could hear the gulls calling from the nearby shore and planned to take Faith there, show her how to skip stones, how to find a world in a tidal pool and a kingdom in a pile of sand. The door opened and a scrawny boy of about five stood on the other side, his matted hair like an upturned nest on his head. He wiped his runny nose with the back of his hand, smearing mucus across his grubby cheek.

“Get away from the door, Daniel! Haven't I told you never to answer it?” A wiry woman gripped his ear and yanked, dragging him aside. He yelped and squirmed but her pinch held fast. No wonder the poor lad's ears stuck out like open doors on a Ford. She finally let go and he scurried down the hall. “And tell your brothers I'm still waiting on that firewood. Lazybones the lot of you! You'll get no supper if that fire goes out!” she yelled after him before rolling her eyes at me, as though I were in agreement. She dried her hands on her skirts. “Honestly, these kids'll be the death of me.”

I wondered if I had the right house, and worried that I did.

“I'm Ellen? Ellen Hardy?”

“Oh right, right. Faith's mother. Is that today?” She put her head behind the door and yelled for another child before turning back to me. “Mrs. Winters did say that you would be settling your half on your visit.” She forced a smile. It lacked warmth as much as teeth.

“Oh, right.” I took the money from my pocket and handed it to her. As I'd walked here, wages paid, I'd felt proud of myself for working so hard, for providing even a little for my daughter. But something about this exchange with Mrs. Buckley felt sordid and tawdry. As though I were renting my own child. How much of this money was going toward Faith's care, really? Would it make any difference to that empty pot over the cold hearth? To her dirty clothes?

“How many children do you have, Mrs. Buckley?” I asked, as she counted the coins.

“Five boys,” she said. “And four girls from the home.” She glanced at my surprise. “But I love them all like they were my own, of course.”

I thought of the way she loved Daniel.

“Get a move on, Alice. We haven't got all day!” Mrs. Buckley hollered down the hall. “And you've to get to the market for me, yet.” A young girl, about ten or so, appeared at the doorway half as dirty as the lad and twice as tall. In her thin arms she carried Faith.

Faith seemed as happy as ever, if not as clean. Not that I minded the dirt of childhood—hadn't I let her get mucked up and grass stained on our last visit? But something told me this dirt was not from fun. Where Anna had tied Faith's hair in a white bow, Mrs. Buckley had left it loose, uncombed, and Faith chewed on a piece of it as she tried to pick a button
off Alice's dress. She'd been fed at least, for some oatmeal had hardened in her hair and dried upon her cheek. Her white dress and cardigan were replaced with a cotton smock, grey from being washed out and handed down one too many times.

“Did you not think to clean her face, Alice?” Mrs. Buckley raised the corner of her apron to her mouth and spit on it. She wiped my daughter's cheek, much to my disgust and Faith's, who squealed in protest.

“There now, pet,” Mrs. Buckley said. “Is that better?”

I'd only been a mother for a short time, really, but already the guilt of it weighed upon me. How could I have taken Faith from Anna's care only to leave her here? Mrs. Buckley probably wasn't a bad person, not if she'd passed the fostering interview; surely the Barnardo Home had their standards. But the truth of it was, she was as rough and weary as the hand-me-downs she washed. I'd spent my week's wages to give my daughter this shabby life and, sadly, it was the best I could do. I felt guilty that Faith lived here, guilty that I'd taken her from the only woman she'd known as her mother. No doubt she pined for Anna. But most of all, I felt guilty that I couldn't be the mother she needed.

But when Faith smiled and reached for me, none of that mattered.

FAITH AND I SPENT OUR FIRST AFTERNOON
together on the boardwalk. All along the strand, families pitched parasols and beach blankets. Children waded, pants rolled to their knees, as they searched the shallows for shells or scooped
buckets of water to fill their newly dug moats. I glanced at the other mothers calling in their little ones to gather round wicker baskets laden with sandwiches and flasks of milk. I'd come empty-handed. It hadn't even occurred to me to bring a snack, a ball, or even a blanket. The excitement of seeing Faith, of having time with my daughter, had taken over my thoughts.

Next time
. I stroked her head, smiling at the thought that there would be a next time. Many more next times.

We stopped to rest on a bench and I sat as Faith toddled about picking up pebbles and putting them in a row along the faded wood.

I have my daughter. And, I've got a job. Faith and hope
.

… and love?

I glanced down at the seat where lovers had carved their initials and thought of Jim. Of our names, carved together and lost forever to the murky depths.

I thought of Steele, of the article he'd no doubt finished by now. His name and mine, together in black and white. Our deal was done. I'd probably never see him again. Though the thought of seeing that article made my stomach lurch.

Jim's love. Steele's friendship. Stories that might have been.

Chapter Forty-One

I WORKED HARD FOR THE MORGANS
over the next week. I tried to serve them as Meg had served me, efficiently, quietly, anticipating every need. I'd come far since my early stewardess days. So it surprised me when Charlotte's keen eye pointed out streaks I'd left on the front-hall mirror. I was sure I'd left it sparkling. The next day, Charlotte brought me a mudsplattered slip. “You dropped this when you took the washing off the line. Wash it again and try to be more careful.”

Had I dropped it? I wasn't sure. I admit, I often got distracted by thoughts of Faith, of losing my home, of worrying about where I'd live next. But was I letting it affect my work? Whatever was going on, I couldn't lose this job. I did everything I could to keep it. But as the complaints racked up, it was becoming clear to me that Charlotte was doing everything she could to get me fired.

Ironically, the more Charlotte complained about me to her mother, the more Lady Morgan took me under her wing. She loved to pull me from my duties and brag to her tea party
about how well I was doing, how far I had come, how greatly I'd improved under her direction. “I'll make something of her yet,” she'd say, clearly refusing to see that I was something already. To her, I was not only a maid, but a project, of sorts.

She seemed overly committed to proving I was an exceptional maid, whereas Charlotte had fully committed to proving I wasn't.

“Ellen, will you come do my hair?” Charlotte called from her room the next morning. I wondered why she asked for me and not her lady's maid, but I obeyed, careful to curl and pin each lock perfectly so she'd have nothing to complain about. Surprisingly, she loved it. And that made me even more suspicious.

“Fetch my pearls, will you?” She spoke with the voice of a stage actor, projecting it loudly even though I stood beside her. I searched the vanity and the jewellery box, but they were nowhere to be seen. “What? They're missing? But I always leave them on my vanity,” she proclaimed, yet she never even glanced at the tabletop. She waved me away, but I wasn't long at my dusting before Lady Morgan summoned me to her parlour. Charlotte stood behind her mother's chair, as always, but this time, she looked triumphant. Wickedly so.

“You sent for me, Lady Morgan?” It was only as I folded my hands in front of me that I felt something in my apron pocket. I didn't have to see it to know it was Charlotte's pearl necklace, the one she'd obviously slipped into my pocket while I did her hair. The one she was clearly about to accuse me of stealing.

“Oh, Miss Charlotte,” I said, as if only just noticing her there. Before Lady Morgan could ask, before Charlotte
could accuse, I reached in my pocket and pulled out the strand. “I found this under your bed when I was making it just now.”

Her furious look said it all.

“There, you see, Charlotte?” her mother tut-tutted. “You've always been such a careless girl.”

“
I'm
careless?” Charlotte blurted. “Don't you know who she is? Don't you know what she's done? Ellen Hardy, Miss Hardy's niece. Little miss high and mighty, and look at her now—a maid. With a
child
!” Her eyes flashed at me once more. “You don't do a very good job of hiding your dirty secrets, Ellen. Particularly, when you parade them up and down the boardwalk.”

So she'd been spying on me. Let her. I had nothing to hide anymore.

“Well, of course, I know, silly girl,” her mother chided. “Where do you think I hired her? She's one of those … Barnardo mothers.” She said it as though the words themselves were bitter. “But I can hardly head the fundraiser and not have one in my employ, now, can I?”

Lady Morgan may have been a benefactor of Barnardo's; she no doubt gave the organization significant amounts of her money and time. A small price to pay to keep up her charitable image. Too bad she hadn't learned that compassion was free.