Another Heartbeat in the House (25 page)

‘Who will help?'

‘I don't know.'

Maria looked at me as if I were a simpleton. ‘You won't find a licensed midwife in those parts, Eliza, and a local woman will spit on the child to baptize it the minute your back is turned.'

‘That's Jamey's concern, not mine.' I shrugged and smoothed my hair. ‘Anyway, I'm young and healthy and I'm sure I can manage on my own –'

‘And I'm sure you can't. Besides, it's abnormal to have no one attend a mother at the birth of her child. It makes you an outcast.'

‘I'm casting myself out, you ninny.'

‘You could bleed to death. I heard a story of a woman who had a massive haemorrhage and lost –'

‘Perhaps I should seek out a medical man?'

‘No! Men are far too rough. They hurry you on, and pull at the placenta instead of waiting for it to come. Why, I even heard of a physician who simply lopped off the baby's limbs when it got stuck and –'

Here I put my hands over my ears and started to cry.

‘Eliza!' Gently, Maria drew away my hands and held them between hers. ‘Eliza – shh. Shh.'

‘I can't do it!' I sobbed. ‘What made me think I could?'

‘Can you send for your mother?'

‘She's dead.'

‘A sister, or an aunt?'

I shook my head. I had no relatives living except for an obscure uncle in France, and he, too, was more than likely dead by now, of drink or of the pox.

Maria rose from the couch and fetched two glasses. She uncorked a bottle on the sideboard and poured a measure of gin into each. In the crate at my feet, Tabby was washing one of her slug-like kittens. Maria sat down beside me, and handed me a glass.

‘Here.'

I took the glass and drank from it, which was strange, because even the smell of gin usually made me nauseous.

‘I don't generally tolerate gin,' I told Maria.

‘You will find yourself tolerating all sorts of things you would not normally countenance.'

‘I never cry, either.'

‘All women cry when they are with child, just as all babies cry when they are born.'

I set down the glass, and looked at her helplessly. ‘What am I to do?' I asked. ‘Who can I ask for help?'

Snug in their nest, the kittens were suckling at their mother, who was purring louder than ever. Maria picked out some shreds of bloodied wood shavings and cast them onto the fire. Then she picked up her glass and took a deep breath before throwing back the contents.

‘I will help you,' she said.

Instead of giving Lady Charlotte my notice directly, I wrote her a letter. In it, I advised her of three faux pas that irked me, and that I had longed to correct since I had first come to live with her:

1: The Schubert song she loved so much was by Schumann.

2: She must stop dabbing at her mouth with her handkerchief (in coded language it was an invitation to flirt: I had seen many a young man snigger at her behind his hand).

3: The painting attributed to Velázquez that hung on the first-floor gallery was a copy, and not a very good one.

Unfortunately, she happened upon me at first light, as I was dragging my trunk across the hall to the front door. Whatever she was doing out of bed at such an hour (not even the housemaid rose that early) I shall never know. She was in déshabille with her hair in papers, but did not seem out of countenance when she spied me standing fully dressed in bonnet and pelisse with my carpet bag in one hand and my reticule in the other. I was put in mind of how I had once found Miss Pinkerton's sister sitting on the stairs of the academy in the middle of the night wearing her nightgown, with the biscuit barrel on her lap. I suppose ladies in their middle years are allowed their eccentricities.

‘You've packed your box!' she exclaimed. ‘Are you leaving us, Eliza?'

‘Alas,' I replied, economically.

‘You can't go! 'Twould be disloyal. You are my companion.'

I wanted to tell her that loyalty had nothing to do with it, that she was mistaking companionship for friendship and that friendship could not be paid for, but I knew that Lady Charlotte was of the opinion that everything could be bought.

‘But why are you going?
Where
are you going?'

I wasn't inclined to give her an answer. She would find out soon enough that I was ensconced in Lissaguirra as mistress to Jameson St Leger.

‘You can't go!' she said plaintively. ‘You haven't finished reading me
The Old Curiosity Shop
. I must find out what happens to Little Nell.'

‘She dies,' I said, hazarding a guess.

‘Oh! Why did you
tell
me?'

‘You wouldn't have found out otherwise. I'm sorry to leave you without giving notice, Your Ladyship, but unforeseen circumstances oblige me to make myself scarce.'

She stamped her foot.

‘Unforeseen circumstances! So you're with child. I have had three of my staff leave in the past year, citing “unforeseen circumstances”. I should have known, when I saw Sir Silas mooning around you.'

‘Sir Silas?'

‘I dare say Lady Sybil has had enough, and barred the door of her bedchamber. She should have done it years ago.'

I heard the sound of a coach pulling up on the gravel sweep outside.

‘Who's that?' demanded Her Ladyship.

‘It is the carter, come to take me to town.'

‘Well, good luck to you, Miss Drury,' said Lady Charlotte sniffily. ‘Do I owe you wages?'

‘No.'

I was, in fact, due money – I had had none since the last quarter: but I no longer needed Lady Charlotte's. More particularly, I didn't
want
her money. I had my own house and an allowance from St Leger, and I had plans to pursue a profession as a writer. I was as independent as a woman could be, and no longer required a servant's risible salary.

The chiming clock on the chimneypiece in the drawing room struck five.

‘I must go,' I said. ‘The Sisters of Charity are expecting me.'

Lady Charlotte nodded. ‘Sir Silas will provide for the child, I have no doubt. Perhaps you will have the good fortune to miscarry. I will keep you in my prayers.'

‘I am much obliged.'

‘Farewell, Miss Drury. I suppose I must wish you Godspeed.'

She retreated, and through the cotton of her nightgown I could make out the shape of her unlovely haunches, her spindle shanks and her incipient dowager's hump. Poor lady. She had been destined from marriage to sit out the dances, instead plotting in a cabal in a corner of the ballroom with the other matrons, and jockeying perpetually for position. I'd rather the life of her sister, frayed around the edges from child-bearing but merry still, though she was a widow and poor.

Reaching for the strap on my trunk, I yanked it the remaining few yards to the door. I did not care that no footman had been summoned to help me, for I had acquitted myself with dignity.

Outside, the sun was coming up. A glance through a window would have told Lady Charlotte that there was no cart waiting there to convey me to some unsavoury lying-in establishment. It was St Leger's carriage that had drawn up outside, emblazoned with his coat of arms and drawn by a pair of horses.

I dumped my trunk on the perron, and waited for the coachman to come and take charge of it. Once it was strapped to the roof, he would hand me in to the sedan and I would settle back against the upholstery and daydream until we arrived at my new home by the lake. I would spend the hour between here and Lissaguirra making notes in my sketchbook of the narrative that was beginning to take shape in my head. I had given my heroine a countenance that pleased me, and I had outlined her beginnings in an artist's studio in Soho, where she had been brought, after her French mother's untimely death, by that poor lady's twin brother.

And so, with my head full of stories, I took my leave of Doneraile Court.

Dear William
,

Here I am, quite set-up and comfortable in my own house. It is a good-sized hunting lodge, with a library and French windows on the ground floor overlooking a resplendent view. I have staff, and a pony and trap for transport, and a lake to gaze upon and a wood to go walking in.

You will ask how my fortunes have changed that I have a house and accoutrements, but I shall not tell you here, for I must save my ink for writing my novel.

What I must tell you is this: since leaving Doneraile Court I have seen a different aspect of this forsaken country. It seems the rich live the high life and the common people must starve for it. Yesterday I went to the other side of the lake, to a village of mud cabins. You will recall the beggars we saw in Cork who had not an intact coat nor an intact shirt nor an intact pair of trousers? You would think them dandies by comparison with these wretches. They are wrapped in rags – rags made of rags, with whole parts of their bodies left bare. Everything about them hangs loose; bits of cloth flap around, before and after them. They wear no shoes; they are unshorn, unshaven and unwashed. Never have I seen such poverty: Mr Dickens himself could not describe it. I came away feeling ashamed.

But I do not intend to stay here long – I could not bear it. A year or two will suffice for me to finish my novel. Then I can sell this place and return to London, having made my fortune, and with a song in my heart – tra la la.

If you come to Ireland you will find me a most munificent hostess.

Eliza.

My dear Eliza,

A library! A view! I envy you, for I am writing to you in a cubbyhole (which the concierge of the establishment has the nerve to call a
chambre meublée)
at a rickety table that scarcely allows space for paper, inkstand and … There! My elbow has just knocked my cigar box to the floor.

Isabella is a little improved. Champagne is the panacea, but alas, until I can find some way of bringing in the thousand pounds a year that you & I deem requisite to being good people, funds do not permit a bottle a day. I am working on a plan to bring the family to London, but the move is determined by money.

I am curious to know how your good fortune came about. Perhaps it is the luck of the Irish. I must try if some of it will rub off on me when I visit that country as indeed I must, for Messrs Chapman & Hall want their guide-book.

I have found a character for a story that I am sure will be amusing.

My God, how I wish I had you to be with.

Yours
,

William

Dear Eliza
,

When will it be convenient for me to present myself to you at Lissaguirra?

Jameson St Leger