Song of the Sea Maid (6 page)

I see Mr Applebee give his wife a quick kiss on the cheek and she smiles with her eyes. Then she turns and squints at me.

‘They don’t feed them much there, do they?’ says she. ‘This one is as skinny as a pipe, and she favoured too. Come now, sit and eat.’

Mrs Applebee brings me pigeon pie and potatoes in a rich dark gravy, with a pile of hot greens beside it that look for all the world like miniature trees. Hot food never graces our dishes at the asylum, only soup and tripe that are barely warm by the time they reach our mouths. The comfort induced by hot meat, hot vegetables and hot gravy and the taste of more than one distinct flavour in the mouth at once is delectable. I eat so fast I burn my tongue and nearly gag.

‘She will be sick!’ cries Mr Applebee.

‘Do slow down, child,’ says his wife. ‘There is no hurry to be had. You can take your time with it. She has never seen food like it, Stephen, I warrant. Poor lamb.’

After, I am given a bowl of a creamy mixture, yellow and steaming hot; I am told it is called rice custard and it is the food they must serve in paradise, so delicious is it and soft in the mouth.

‘I was to ask for meat for the other orphans. But I think they would rather have sugary matter, as we never do have it, except a kind of fruit cake at Christmas time, only once a year, you see. Can I take some for them? Please, Mrs Applebee?’

‘What’s this?’ she says, and her husband has quiet words with her as I gobble down every scrap from my plate and use my fingers to wipe up the last vestiges of sweetness.

‘A kind child it is,’ says Mrs Applebee and sits beside me on the bench. ‘But food for a score of children would be immediately missed here, my dear. I would be rightly accused of stealing and be sent away. You know this is true, Stephen. I am sorry, my dear. But I cannot give you food to take for the others.’

Say I, ‘Matron says orphans’ legs bow naturally, that their teeth fall out because they talk too much. But I have learned from Mr Applebee that plants need light to make their food and soil and water to grow, and I think that children need their own medium similarly, that bread and cheese is not enough to make a child grow straight with strong teeth. And I think our simple food is making us ill. Mr Applebee agrees with me, is that not right, sir?’

‘It is possible, Dawnay. There is no proof for it. It is most likely an imbalance in the four humours within your bodies, and nothing to do with food. We would have to test it, by experiment. Let us think on it, but now we must go, as Mr Woods awaits you.’

We leave the kitchen and cross the yard to a back door into the house, whereupon we wipe our feet carefully on the mat, proceed along an airy corridor to the front hallway and then ascend the main staircase. The walls are the light blue of spring sky, ornamented with the plaster heads of important men on plinths surrounded by garlands. I am led upstairs to the withdrawing room. A quick knock, and then another, is greeted with silence, so after a wait of some time, my tutor chooses to enter in any case. It is a room as spacious in size as the court room at the asylum, and yet its soft furnishings, canvases of ships and knick-knacks of china and carved wood serve to create a homely and welcoming atmosphere. The walls are covered with a deep red swirling silk, the fire warms every corner and three squat cabinets, one placed against each wall, all have circular designs on each door like eyes inlaid with subtle wooden shades of beige and copper and long legs that curve outwards, all of which serve to make them appear like three friendly toads waiting to greet me. There is nothing of grandeur here and everything of comfort and ease.

We find Mr Woods asleep, propped up in the corner of a high-sided settee. My tutor nudges his employer’s shoulder, warily at first, then more roughly, and speaks into his ear, ‘Wake up, man! The child is here.’

Mr Woods starts up and cries, ‘I think never to exceed the bounds of moderation more!’, his wig askew and his eyes wet with emotion. Mr Applebee helps him compose himself and then my benefactor looks upon me.

‘Why, it is Dawnay Price!’ He bids me sit opposite him upon a stool embroidered with an exotic boat. ‘So here we are, in my home. What do you make of it, Dawnay? Is it not a nice house?’

‘Very nice, sir. Full of ornament and colour. And you have the best cook in London, to be sure.’

‘Ah, you have eaten? Good, good. That old rogue Beelsby …’

‘Sir?’ questions my tutor and clears his throat as if needing drink.

‘Yes, yes, Stephen. Of course. Dawnay, your distinguished founder has your best interests at heart, I am sure – in keeping you half starved, the dog-hearted intermeddler – but never mind it, for you are to come each sennight here and eat a good luncheon with Susan. We shall have you fat in no time. Now, what have you been learning, child? What has this old friend of mine here been teaching you? Anything, anything at all?’

‘I know all my letters and grammar. And numbers, sir, with addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of them.’

‘Excellent!’ says my benefactor. ‘With clever Stephen here as your guide, you will stick to your course and not be put out of your latitude by contrary winds. What else have you learned?’

‘A little geography where we study a map of the known world. And natural philosophy too, sir. Namely, some of the science of plants and how they grow. In fact, there is an experiment we wish to carry out, with your permission.’

‘And what is this, now?’ he asks my tutor, who is glaring at me.

Say I, ‘Where one tests an idea, to see if it be true. We think the children grow crooked at our asylum as they eat the wrong food. But if we could provide fruit and vegetable matter, some meat and sugar, from your kitchen, each week, we could try it, and see if the children improve. A worthy test, wouldn’t you say, sir?’

Mr Woods thinks on it, then says, ‘So I am to feed all the wretches now, is that it?’

‘In the interests of science?’ adds my tutor quietly, picking at his nails, and I watch my benefactor’s frown consider it and hold my breath. My mind wishes to test our hypothesis, but my forsaken heart desires to use this food to win friends.

‘We shall see, we shall see. I suppose if I spent less on port and more on foundlings’ suppers, I would find my way to heaven more surely. And after last night’s excesses, Stephen, I simply must refrain. I must change my ways. I will, old friend, I will.’

‘As you say, moderation is the key, Markham.’

‘Yes, yes,’ says Mr Woods, swabbing his brow with his kerchief and standing up. ‘Come, child. Speaking of science, I have something of much interest to show you. It is in the next room. A room, my dear, filled with
wonderful things
.’

I follow with inquisitiveness, my tutor behind me. Mr Woods opens a double door through to a capacious room with a bright white ceiling decorated with the plasterwork shapes of musical instruments, sheets of notation, books and quills. Yet the room itself is darkened by the collection of an inordinate number of objects displayed on shelves almost obscuring all four olive-green walls, with tables in the centre of the room also covered with artefacts in glass display cases and, beside them, two chests filled with tiny drawers, brass panels fronting each one with a card and neat handwriting upon it, naming its contents.

Says my benefactor in a grand voice, ‘This is my Cabinet of Curiosities! Or at least, it began as a cabinet. And now, as you can see, it has taken over what was the saloon. I have even sold the spinet to make room for it all! I collected many of these objects on my travels, Dawnay, and brought them back for fun. Yet Stephen here taught me the value of such curios and encouraged me to use my fortune to seek out more. Now I am older and too stout for adventures – other than the drinking kind – all right, Stephen! I know! But the child must be aware of such things as liquor? She is not, you say? Ah, well, protect the innocent, of course. Now, where was I? Yes, the age of adventure is over for me, but not my curiosity. So these days I pay young men to travel for me and bring back these odds and ends. And now, I can finally make use of them, as you are to come here with your tutor each week and study them all, make a list of them and – well, you know, catalogue them for posterity and the good of your own learning. You have nothing to say, my dear?’

But I have stopped listening. I am stepping about the room in shock, my eyes dry with astonishment at the jostling shapes before me – skeletons and horns, shells and dried beans, carvings and sculptures, brass instruments and engraved silver objects – all of them exotic and not at all English, not at all of my experience, but all of them outlandish and queer and remarkable. There are beautiful pebbles patterned and swirled in rainbow colours, and whorled shapes from a thumb’s breadth to a dinner-plate’s size, laid in long lines, beside strange stone-like plants in twisted forms, these by labels reading
Minerals, Fossils, Corals
; glass containers with tiny creatures or grey bodily parts suspended in liquid of yellow and orange; dozens of visitors’ cards have been turned up at each edge and filled with brown seeds in this one, red nuts in another; a frame criss-crossed with partitions, each neat triangle filled with piles of minute shells in purple, black, green and shiny white; here a small table topped with a glass jar turned upside down, labelled a
Double-Barrel Air Pump
and there a dried-out wedge shape labelled
Shark’s Fin
, beneath it a tray of sharp teeth-like objects named
Tongue-Stones: the Petrified Tongues of Sea-Monsters
; a jar with a cork stopper houses a miniature reptile, mouth open as if surprised at the winglike structures on its back, called
Baby Dragon Preserved in Spirits
;
beside it, laid out on a desk, a spiralled tusk, as long as the desk itself, its label declaring it a
Unicorn Horn
; and a hefty book opened at a page headed
A Table of Antiquities
, with line drawings of hairy ape-like men with big pot bellies and women with long ears and fish tails; and more, more, a myriad of objects of peculiar spectacle.

The world has come here, to this room. And I will study it and know it. These objects that have been brought from so far, one day will lead me away beyond them, to the realms whence they came. For my mind is opened this day, to the richness of this globe, this life, to the spaces beyond the map. And nothing will contain my capacity for wonderment.

The year is 1740, I am presumed to be circa eight years of age and winter is here. It brings the most chilling cold anyone can recall, where we girls put on petticoats and stockings abed to prevent our shivering the whole night. One morning, we wake and find the chamber pots frozen. Once downstairs, my tutor and I come to our classroom to find the ink solid ice in the glass on the standish. He tells me, ‘The Thames River is frozen too and presently they hold a frost fair on the ice. Let us wrap ourselves up and go there. We shall tread in the footsteps of King Henry VIII and Queen Bess, who travelled and sported upon the frozen Thames in their own times.’

Outside, the cold seizes me like a footpad, while the fog that wraps up London almost entirely in these months hangs lowly, thick and white about us, and I almost step into a pile of fresh horse dung shoved up against our wall, keeping our lead pipes warm and free from cracks. We travel down to the river by coach, at a snail’s pace through the murk. We crawl through Covent Garden, where I see looming from the fog towards us the faces of many handsome women with much colour upon their cheeks and lips, joking and japing in the street in gaudy clothes. They are brighter and louder than the quality ladies I saw at the orphanage lottery, and I ponder at their being out on such a bitter day, and not in their houses beside a fire. Before long, the coach stops alongside the Thames, and where we alight, the usual rumpus of riverside life is strangely quiet this day. On the banks lie the land-bound wherries and in a few sit watermen with oars across their knees as if for warmth, their caps out for begging, as the river disabled by ice must have stopped their trade and their customary raucous shouting also.

Beyond them, the white-frosted river stretches easterly and my tutor guides me down to it. I have never stepped on frozen water and I ask, ‘Is it safe? Will it not crack and swallow us up?’

‘They say it is eighteen inches thick here, so there is nothing to fear.’ He takes my hand and we step towards two men who take a coin from Mr Applebee as we pass into the fair proper.

Before us, the river teems with life and pleasing amusements. Tents have been slung up from bank to bank, ramshackle affairs of canvas and poles at chaotic angles, housing all manner of stalls, shops and entertainments. There are fairground booths, puppet shows and roundabouts; two men are engaged in a boxing competition, beside a whole ox being roasted and food stalls selling nuts, puddings, spiced buns, sausages and – my favourite – hot pies. My tutor secures his place in my heart by buying me one, warm and meaty and delicious. We eat and wander, watching the fair folk and their antics. There are many rowdy types gulping from mugs of steaming liquid and slipping on the ice, spilling their drinks and protesting, while young boys skid past them at great speed, running and sliding on the ice for fun. We pass by a strolling woman and her daughter carrying warm apples on their heads in baskets, calling their wares in duet, the sweet scent drifting like blossom in the cold air, soon mingling with the warmer tones of hot tea, coffee and chocolate from further stalls. We see a group of acrobats tumbling and a rope strung up between two poles along which a man treads without shoes, surely a trick of the eye, but no, he truly can walk upon it. There are printers and their presses selling slips of paper adorned with verses and the customer’s name, as a memento of this extraordinary occasion of a frost fair, not seen on this river for twenty years or so. My tutor leads me in a leisurely manner, yet with a purpose, as he knows of one particular tent he wishes to show me.

‘Prepare yourself, Dawnay, for now we are to see an unfamiliar creature. One that has fascinated you from an early age, I think.’