Paying Guests (22 page)

‘Oh, pooh,’ he said and straightened up. ‘You know you can do it later! If you don’t wish to take a saddle horse, then we can take one of those fast little phaetons and I will drive you – that will be great fun, I think, and carriage exercise can be excellent. Now, please do fetch your bonnet and be ready for my return. I shall go and fetch a phaeton from the livery stables. What do you say? I can see you are nearly finished here –’ and he indicated her desk with his head. ‘We wouldn’t stay out too long – we would be back in ample time for you to preside over luncheon in your usual agreeable way and you will have a much improved appetite for it too. Do be persuaded!’

She couldn’t help it. She wavered. He was quite right; her
paperwork was indeed almost done, for she had been hard at work since before nine, not wishing to join her guests at breakfast. She had asked Rosie to fetch her some coffee and a sweet roll to take on her desk and now had almost completed the month’s figures and it was only just half past ten o’clock.

He seemed to be aware of her wavering thoughts and pounced. ‘That’s decided then. Splendid! I shan’t be above a quarter of an hour, I promise,’ and he was at the door and out of it before she could protest. By the time she had jumped to her feet to follow him, she heard the front door slam and saw him through the window as he emerged into the street outside to set off at a fast lope in the direction of the livery stables.

She knew when to give up, sighed and set to work to put in the last two or three minutes of tidying her desk which were all that was necessary, setting aside a couple of minor tasks that could safely be left for the next day and closed and locked the desk and went down to the kitchen.

Eliza was sitting at the table, her newest cookery book open in front of her as she pored over it, while the new maid, Susan, peeled potatoes under her eagle eye. Dora, now banished to the upper parts of the house to work, would be leaving to take up a new situation in Knightsbridge at a doctor’s house at the end of the week, to Eliza’s rather grim satisfaction.

‘I am to go for a ride in the park with Mr Geddes, Eliza,’ Tilly said. ‘I can’t pretend I want to, but he can be so insistent.’

‘I’m glad to hear that, Mum. You need some exercise and a bit of air. You look right peaky, you do.’

Without thinking Tilly reached up and pinched both her cheeks in an attempt to bring some colour to them. ‘He said that –’

‘Well, he was right. You go and enjoy it, Mum. I’ll have luncheon ready directly you get back. Half past one sharp.’

She lifted her head to look at Tilly and Tilly was alarmed by what she saw and frowned even more deeply. Eliza’s cheeks had a higher flush than usual and her eyes were heavy. She looked weary and Tilly said, with a swift glance at the girl peeling potatoes, ‘Susan, would you be so good as to go up to my room and fetch
me the bonnet you will see on my dressing table? A chip bonnet, very light – and the small shawl you will see hanging at the foot of the bed.’

The girl bobbed and dried her hands on her apron and went, and as she disappeared Tilly sat down in her place and leaned across the table to Eliza.

‘Never mind how I look,’ she said bluntly. ‘You look far worse than I possibly could. Are you ailing?’

‘Worryin’,’ Eliza said. ‘It’s enough to make anyone look poorly.’

‘Hmm,’ Tilly took Eliza’s hand in hers. ‘Let me look at you. I remember how it was you first told me that Duff was to be – you saw my hands and said I had blue veins.’

Eliza’s hand was red and strong and capable and there were no signs of enlarged blue veins that Tilly could see, and Eliza laughed and pulled her hand away.

‘Oh, do give over, Mum! It was different then. I was still a country piece, didn’t know when to hold my tongue.’

‘You still don’t,’ Tilly said and took the hand back. ‘Are you showing any – is there anything to tell me, Eliza?’

Eliza shook her head gloomily. ‘Not that you could call definite, Mum. I ain’t ‘ad my usual course this month I don’t deny, but it’s only out by three days and that don’t signify, on account I been much more all over the place than that in my time. I don’t usually notice anyway, not having cause, and this time I’m worrying myself fit to be sick, so if I sets the whole business awry, it wouldn’t be surprising, would it?’

There was a hopeful sound in her voice as she looked at Tilly and it was as though she had said aloud, ‘Tell me it’s all right – tell me I’m imagining it – tell me it’s not true.’

Tilly shook her head. ‘I dare say it can be so. I recall times when I too – when I have been particularly anxious, I have found my system behaving in different ways, but you cannot deceive yourself so, Eliza. You know that. You have cause to doubt.’

Eliza again withdrew her hand and nodded heavily. ‘I suppose so,’ she said and bent her head again to her cookery book.

There was a short silence and then Tilly said, ‘Have you been sick, Eliza?’

Eliza sat silent and then looked up miserably. ‘I thought it was all the worrying, you see,’ she said and Tilly grimaced and shook her head.

‘Oh, Eliza, how can it be so? When you know that – no, my dear, I fear that matters are as you suspected they might be. How long is it now since he went away? And how long since – since you started with him and –’ She stopped again, delicacy forbidding her to go further, but Eliza had no such qualms.

‘We lived as man and wife near on a month, Mum,’ she said baldly. ‘It don’t matter when he last was ‘ere so much as when we started, don’t it? And that was a full six gettin’ on for seven weeks ago, I think.’

‘And you say your normal courses are stopped.’

‘Three days or so late, Mum, no more,’ Eliza said with a slightly desperate air, but again Tilly shook her head, and got to her feet as Susan appeared at the top of the kitchen stairs with her shawl and bonnet.

‘I think we must stop conjecturing and think sensibly, Eliza,’ she said, not attempting to lower her voice, for she made sure her words would mean nothing to Susan. ‘We must talk again.’

‘There ain’t a lot to talk about, Mum.’ Eliza too got to her feet. ‘I’ll see you to the door then, Mum. Susan, you get on with those potatoes and cut ‘em proper, mind. I don’t want half the meat of them left on the parings, and don’t you forget it. Make sure you get all the eyes out too – we can’t have anything but the best of everything sent to table here.’

‘Yes’m,’ said Susan nervously and Tilly smiled at her reassuringly and patted one shoulder.

‘It’s all right, my dear,’ she said. ‘Eliza hasn’t bitten anyone yet, so you need not look so fearful. But she teaches everyone very well, so listen to her.’ The girl glanced at Eliza and then smiled gratefully and went back to her laborious work with the potato knife, as Eliza led the way up the stairs to hold the door open for Tilly.

They went to the front door and stood on the step as Tilly tied
her bonnet strings and set her shawl about her shoulders, glad she had chosen to wear her green merino today, for it blended well with the Indian shawl and its many colours and offered a necessary warmth, for the air was brisk and quite chilling, though agreeable after the sultry weather of the past weeks.

‘I suppose I’ve got to think the same as you, Mum,’ Eliza said quietly. ‘And reckon I’ve been caught. There’s not a lot I can do to change that, bitterly though I regret it. Now the only chance there is, is if you –’

‘I know,’ Tilly said. ‘You needn’t repeat it, my dear Eliza.’ She looked down the street at the few hackney carriages that were clopping past and the delivery vans with their dispirited horses, watching for Silas and the phaeton. ‘I have thought a great deal about what you told me last week, even though I have been busy with Duff and so forth. Never think I haven’t been concerned, for I have. But it is a difficult idea you have and one that I am not sure –’

‘I tell you this much, Mum,’ Eliza said, and stood there with the wind lifting the strands of hair that had escaped her cap, and her hands folded neatly on her black housekeeper’s gown. ‘It’s the only way. I’ll not stay here under any other circumstances. I’ll have to be away and hidden somewhere when I starts to show, though I think I can do well enough for a good six months or longer. I can get more commodious gowns and use a small crinoline. No one’ll care when someone like me goes about in outdated fashions, and it’ll suit me well enough to have full round skirts. But if you can’t do as I ask, Mum, then there it is. I’ll have to be on my way. I couldn’t hold my head up otherwise.’

Tilly looked at her almost helplessly as at last the phaeton with Silas on the box, looking very rakish with his whip held at a stylish angle, appeared round the curve of the street. ‘Oh, my dear,’ she said. ‘Do you know what it is you are asking? That you and I live the greatest possible lie – and not just for a few days but for the rest of our lives?’

‘D’you think I haven’t thought as hard as may be, Mum?’ Eliza’s voice was harsh. ‘D’you think I ain’t yearnin’ to carry a child as’ll call me mother and treat me as a mother should be treated? D’you
think I wants to go through all the trouble and pain only to deny who the child is as soon as I’ve borne him? Or her, of course – No, Mum. Believe me, I ain’t being captious. It’s truly the only answer – not just for me but for the babe. It’ll do a sight better in the world as your child than mine – now, sir!’

She lifted her voice and turned with a smile to Silas as he drew alongside with a lively flourish of his whip and then jumped down to hold the horse’s head. ‘See to it you takes good care of Madam, now!’

‘You needn’t worry, Eliza,’ Silas promised. ‘I’ll treat her like gold dust. Here, hold this animal’s head for me, will you?’

Eliza obeyed and Silas came and opened the little door of the phaeton, which was very smartly painted in dark blue with a frieze of flowers and curlicues of seashells in yellow along the sides, and upholstered inside in matching blue leather. Tilly could do nothing else but accept his invitation to get in. She stepped forward and took his hand and let him lift her into place before he jumped up beside her and reached for the reins, which Eliza fetched to him, patting the horse’s nose so that it turned its head, and watched her go.

‘There you are, sir. I shall be sure that your vegetable pie is crisp and ready for your luncheon at half past one sharp.’

‘I take that as an instruction not to stay out too late,’ he said and looked at his pocket watch. ‘Very well then. I accept your orders, Madam Eliza. Come up now!’ And he whistled at the horse as he flicked the whip over its back and tossed the reins. The animal shook its head, snuffled and obediently moved, turning the phaeton round in response to Silas’s pull on its right.

Eliza walked alongside as the phaeton turned, looking up at Tilly, and after a moment Tilly leaned over and said quickly, ‘I promise you, by the time we return I shall have reached a decision. I will do the best I can to find an answer, I promise.’

And they were off, spanking along the road with the horse stepping high and elegantly. Tilly looked back to where Eliza stood on the kerb, her gown and her hair blown a little in the lively breeze and her heart ached, for she still didn’t know what she could
do to help Eliza. It certainly was not possible, she told herself, that she could do as she asked. It would be impractical, for a start, to take on the task of rearing another child, even though such rearing would be a shared occupation, just as it had been with Duff. But she had poured her heart and soul into Duff. He had been her beloved child, the son of her own body, and even though she had not conceived him in love but in shrinking pain and even in terror, for his father had not been a good man, he had been her baby from the start. Loving him had been easy. But how could she love another woman’s child, even if the other woman was her dear Eliza? She could not imagine it no matter how hard she tried.

Her spirits were very low indeed as the phaeton rolled on its jingling clattering way and turned into the park gates just past Knightsbridge Barracks.

IT REALLY WAS a glorious morning and even though she was so preoccupied with Eliza – and to an extent, Duff – Tilly could not ignore that fact. The sky was a bright scrubbed blue, for it had rained last night, and clumps of clouds were scudding busily across it in the high wind. The park sparkled green and fresh as the last of the raindrops were blown away and everywhere people strolled or rode and held on to their hats; and in spite of herself her spirits lifted a little.

‘There,’ he said, as though he were a mind reader. ‘I told you it would make you feel better. Carriage exercise may not be as vigorous as riding, but it still shakes one up most agreeably.’

‘Indeed it does,’ she gasped and put her hand to her bonnet as the phaeton jolted sharply on a particularly rough portion of the road. ‘I feel I must use every atom of strength I have to make sure I remain inside the phaeton and am not hurled out completely!’

‘Don’t you fret,’ he cried. ‘I won’t let any such thing happen!’ And he cracked the whip and flicked the horse’s rump and it broke into a sharp trot, tossing its head in some irritation. And then it veered sharply to the left and sent the phaeton almost rolling, though it recovered itself swiftly on its high, well-sprung wheels, as a small figure darted out almost beneath the animal’s hooves.