Another Heartbeat in the House (41 page)

It was St Leger on the bridle path. I had not seen him for five months.

I let Clara go first.

‘Papa!' she shouted, rushing at him as he swung himself out of the saddle. ‘Yes, yes! You are come! Look at my boots! Look at the footprints they make in the snow!' She cavorted and jumped for him, like a dinky circus pony. ‘We can make a snowman! Lots of snow-mans! And look! Look at all the pine cones we've gathered! They will do for the snowmans' noses. Mama says pine cones are better than carrots. Look how many we have – a hundred, at least. And listen! I can speak Irish even better than you! The Biddies have taught me.
Conas atá tú? Tá mé go han-mhaith
…'

He marvelled at her boots and her footprints and her pine cones and her Irish, and agreed that they should build a snowman – three snowmen – as soon as he had changed out of his travelling clothes. And then he took off a glove and trailed a finger along my frozen face.

‘I've missed you,' he said.

‘And I you.'

We smiled at each other with our eyes until Clara Venus commanded him to look at her gloves. ‘They have robins on! Young Biddy knat them for me.'

‘Knitted,' I corrected automatically, stooping to pull the matching cap over her ears. ‘How did you find us, Jamey?'

‘Old Biddy told me which direction you'd gone. I followed your tracks through the wood.'

‘Did you hear my song?' demanded Clara.

‘Yes.'

‘“Who killed Cock Robin!”' she began, and he joined in:

‘“I, said the sparrow, with my bow and arrow, I killed Cock Robin!”'

Making a lunge for her, he began tickling her through her layers of clothing, and Clara wriggled and giggled and begged him to stop.

‘I have a present for you,' he told her, while she was still breathless from being tickled.

‘What is it? What is it? Can I have it now?'

‘It's waiting for you at home.'

‘Let's go!' Clara looked to left and right. ‘Which way? The woods look different in the snow.'

‘Follow your footprints,' I told her. ‘See if you can make fresh ones all the way home, and we will follow them as if we are tracking a wild beast.'

‘What kind of beast?'

‘A warthog,' said her father.

‘Papa! No!'

‘A marmoset,' I said.

‘What's a marmoset?'

‘A marmoset is the prettiest, cheekiest monkey there is. I saw one once in London. It belonged to an organ grinder, and it danced.'

‘Like this? La la la …' Clara Venus performed a sweet but graceless arabesque.

‘Just like that.'

‘Then, come! You must follow me, Mama and Papa.' She set off, kicking her way through the snow.

I picked up the basket of pine cones, and Jameson reached for it. We were standing so close that we might have kissed.

‘How have you been?' he asked.

‘We have been … managing.'

We continued to smile at each other. The scrunch of the snow beneath our feet, the effulgence of the surrounding whiteness, the mist from our breath mingling and dissolving in the clear cold air, all combined to make me feel a peculiar, paradoxical …
chaleur
. If we had been alone I do not doubt that we would have fallen into each other's arms and onto the ground, but the horse – clearly hungry after the journey from Doneraile – whinnied with impatience to be on his way, and ‘La la
la
–' sang Clara up ahead ‘– come
on
, slowcoaches!'

So, each holding a handle of the basket, together we started to trudge forward.

‘Things are very bad,' he said.

‘Yes. The people hereabouts are scarecrows –
épouvantails
– literally. They are nothing more than skin and sinew and bones, with all muscle and tissue gone.'

‘They are everywhere around Doneraile.'

Ahead, Clara Venus had hunkered down by the bole of a tree and was digging in the snow for pine cones. Even they were in pitiful supply this year: it seemed that the entire country had withered and shrunk, as if Nature had turned her back on poor, green Erin.

‘How much does Clara know of what's happening?' said Jameson.

‘She doesn't talk of it; I don't imagine she can make sense of it. It's so long since she has been beyond the boundaries of Lissaguirra that it's a foreign country to her. The bad weather has kept us here perforce. But what child could remain unscathed by the things she has seen? I cannot bear that she has to learn so early in life what atrocities humankind is capable of.'

‘I think you must get out of here,' he said.

‘Yes.'

‘They say things are not so bad in the north of the country. I have friends there who will be glad to take you and Clara in. You can stay with them until this calamity has run its course.'

I did not want to go to the north of the country! I did not want to travel hundreds of miles of highways and byways with Clara, encountering human skeletons at every twist of the road and over the brow of every hill. It was my plan to travel to Cork city under cover of night and board a steamship that would take me to Bristol, and thence to London.

I reached into the pocket of my pelisse and took out the letter that Christy had brought. ‘This came today.'

‘What is it?'

‘It's a letter from William.'

Jameson looked blank.

‘Thackeray.'

‘You still correspond with that booby?'

‘Yes. Although I have not heard from him for some months. He is living in London, now, with his daughters.'

‘And with his wife?'

‘No. Isabella is still unwell. She is being cared for in Camberwell. He needs someone to look after Annie and Minnie. Listen.' I skimmed through the first few paragraphs, which were given over to William's horror at what was happening in Ireland. ‘Here we are. “My house is a substantial dwelling, three storeys, with servants' quarters, study, dining room, drawing room and capital bedrooms. Kensington Gardens is at the gate, and there are omnibuses every two minutes. What can mortal want more? Might you think of coming, for I am need not just of inspiration –”'

‘What does he mean by “inspiration”?' asked Jameson sourly.

‘Nothing. It's a joke. We came up with an idea for a book, years ago.'

‘A book?'

‘The night we went to dinner at Templeogue, do you remember? You were at your Club – we talked about collaborating on a novel. I thought it was just an idle piece of nonsense at the time – we called it a novel without a hero – but it appears he may have struck lucky. See, here he says, “
The Novel without a Hero
has been accepted by
Fraser's
for serial publication in monthly instalments. The first was published on New Year's Day. I have two more written, but after that I don't know where Miss Sharp will lead me …'

‘Miss Sharp?'

‘She's a character in the novel. He goes on: “The fact is I need a very good governess and perfect lady to command my house and children. Miss Hamerton, who is currently residing with us and instructing the girls, is not a lady –”'

‘What does he mean by that?'

‘How should I know? I shall stop reading, Jameson, if you persist in interrupting.'

‘Go on,' he said, sulkily.

‘“I know Annie will love you as much as ever she did, and Minnie, too. I will pay you a decent salary, of course. Money is still tight but easing a little, and you will be glad to know that I have made a donation of five pounds to the British Relief Association to help the needy in Ireland.”'

‘Five pounds!' scoffed Jameson.

‘Five pounds is a lot of money for most people. He pays two pounds a week for his wife's welfare –'

‘I dare say he is glad to be rid of her.'

‘Jameson! What a horrid thing to say! Isabella is a sick woman.'

‘You told me she was a lunatic.'

‘It is the same thing, in a way.'

A melt of snow dropped from a branch suddenly, onto Jameson's hat. He took it off and shook it, and then he said, ‘Anyway, I won't hear of it.'

‘Hear of what?'

‘You gallivanting off to be “governess” to an ass like William Thackeray.'

The stress he put on the word ‘governess' made it sound like ‘whore'.

‘I am neither “gallivanting”, nor am I to be
his
governess. I have been asked to be governess to his children. And who are you to tell me what I may or may not do?'

He was about to retaliate, but at that moment Clara Venus, who had been ploughing ahead, swinging her arms marmoset-style, tripped over a tree root hidden in the snow and went flying face first. She let out a howl in the way that children do who are more shocked than hurt, and immediately Jameson went pelting to her rescue.

‘Carry me, Papa!' she entreated him. ‘Carry me the rest of the way home.'

So we trailed back to the house, the three of us, Clara Venus on her father's shoulders, me leading the horse and carrying the half-empty basket of pine cones.

Clara Venus was asleep upstairs. She had tried her hardest to stay awake, but finally Jameson had carried her up and tucked her into her own bed, which had been warmed first with a hot brick. His present to her had been a Noah's Ark, beautifully carved and painted, with a menagerie of tiny wooden animals. Clara had spent an hour lining them up, two-by-two, marching them up the gangway to the ark where Noah and his rosy-cheeked wife stood ready to welcome them.

Jameson and I were sitting by the fire in the library, which was the room I used now for living, writing, reading, eating and occasionally sleeping. It made sense to keep just one or two rooms in the house warm when fuel was scarce. We had firewood aplenty, but splitting logs was time-consuming and turf was hard to come by.

I was mending Clara's stockings. Old Biddy had taught me to darn, for I had never learned any needlework other than the fancy variety. She had laughed at my first rubbishy attempts, but I had become quite adept at it, and enjoyed it more than I ever had picking out rosebuds and daisies in silk, because there was something honest and no-nonsense about darning. We had enjoyed a supper of rabbit stew and rice pudding, and Jameson had consumed a bottle of claret. I could tell that he was spoiling – not for a fight, but to let rip about something – and I guessed that the bone of contention he wanted to pick had to do with William. I was right.

‘So this chap Thackeray wants you to write a book with him.'

‘What? No.'

‘I thought you said you were writing a book together.'

‘We had an idea for a book.'

‘And now he's stolen it for his own.'

‘You can't steal ideas.'

‘Of course you can. If you had copyrighted the idea, you could sue.'

I refrained from pointing out that copyrighting ideas was equally unenforceable.

‘Jameson,' I said, coolly, ‘William has very kindly offered me a post as governess to his daughters. He could have offered it to any one of the hundreds of educated women who advertise their services in the pages of the
Morning Post
, but he didn't, because he knows that I am in desperate need –'

‘I find that a gross insult. You cannot say that you are not well set up here in Lissaguirra.'

I ignored him. ‘He knows that I need to get out of Ireland. And if you interpret William's proposal as being motivated by anything other than a generous impulse, then shame on you.'

‘I told you that I have friends in the north who –'

‘A plague on the north! Would you have me and Clara Venus travel through countryside that is rife with pestilence and fraught with danger, to seek shelter in some strange place where we know nobody? I have been offered a
job
, Jameson. A job with accommodation in a family where I am known and cherished. Why do you try to deny me the right to steer my own course?'

‘Because whatever course you embark on implicates my daughter.'

‘And whatever course
you
embark on implicates my son!'

‘He is not your …'

I gave him a look, and he tailed off lamely. It was an underhand tactic, and I was not proud of it, but I wanted to remind him that I had a metaphorical axe in my hands that could, with a single blow, fell the family tree that he and Sophia had taken such pains to root.

‘I did not intend to rear a child, Jameson,' I said. ‘But I am doing it. I am doing it well, and I am doing it mostly on my own.' He opened his mouth to say something, but I held up a hand to arrest him. ‘I know that you provide for us financially, but you have not bought us, and you cannot keep us in a place where disease and fever and famine are by-products of the cruellest tyranny.'

‘The queen is not –'

‘The queen does not live in this country! Her henchmen and her lords and ladies do not live here! Do you think the queen knows that there are babies in this country suckling their dead mothers?'

He slumped, turning his face away as though I had physically slapped him.

‘It is true. A woman near to putrefaction was found in a cabin not far from here with her infant still trying to draw nourishment from her dead breast. Your worst imaginings are all true, Jameson. And if you died in your feather bed in your grand house in London next week, Clara and I would not be able to keep the roof over our heads. They say a human being is just three weeks away from death by starvation here. I will not wait for you to give me permission to save my life and that of our child. I am going to work for Mr Thackeray.'

I left the room, shaking with emotion. The chamber upstairs was warm from the fire that had been lit earlier, the bed was toasty from the hot brick. But Jameson did not climb the stairs to keep me company that night.

The next day I packed my bags and set off for London with Clara Venus.