The Forgotten Garden (16 page)

Such tall tales made Eliza even more fiercely protective of her twin.

At night sometimes, when she lay in bed listening to the Swindells arguing, their little daughter, Hatty, bawling over the top, she liked to imagine dreadful things happening to Mrs Swindell. That she might fall, by accident, into the fire when she was washing, or slip beneath the mangle and be squeezed to death, or drown in a vat of boiling lard, head first, skinny legs the only part of her that remained to evidence her gruesome end . . .

Speak of the Devil and she shall appear. Round the corner into Battersea Church Road, shoulder bag fat with spoils, came Mrs Swindell.

106

Bh1449M-PressProofs2.indd 106

6/5/08 2:39:31 PM

T h e F o r g o t t e n G a r d e n

Home after another profitable day spent hunting little girls with pretty dresses. Eliza pulled herself away from the crack and shimmied along the shelf, used the edge of the chimney to ease herself down.

It was Eliza’s job to launder the dresses Mrs Swindell brought home.

Sometimes when she was boiling the dresses over the fire, minding not to tear the spider’s-web lace, Eliza wondered what those little girls thought when they saw Mrs Swindell waving her confectionery bag at them, the confectionery bag full of shiny bits of coloured glass.

Not that the little girls ever got near the bag to know the trick that had been played. No fear. Once she had them alone in the alley, Mrs Swindell got their pretty dresses off them so fast they didn’t have time to scream. They probably had nightmares afterwards, Eliza thought, like the nightmares she had about Sammy stuck up the chimney. She felt sorry for them—Mrs Swindell on the hunt was a fearful thing indeed—but it was their own fault. They shouldn’t be so greedy, always wanting more than they already had. It never ceased to amaze Eliza that little girls born to grand houses and fancy perambulators and lacy frocks should fall victim to Mrs Swindell for such small price as a bag of boiled sweets. They were lucky all they lost was a dress and some peace of mind. There were worse losses to be had in the dark alleyways of London.

Downstairs, the front door slammed.

‘Where are you then, girl?’ The voice came rolling up the stairs, a hot ball of venom. Eliza’s heart sank as it hit her: the hunt had not gone well, a fact which boded ill for the inhabitants of number thirty-five Battersea Church Road. ‘Get downstairs and ready the supper or you’ll book yourself a hiding.’

Eliza hurried down the stairs and into the rag and bottle shop. Her gaze passed quickly over the dim shapes, a collection of bottles and boxes reduced by darkness to geometric oddities. By the counter, one such shape was moving. Mrs Swindell was bent over like a mud crab rummaging in her bag, sifting through various lace-trimmed dresses.

‘Well don’t just stand there gawking like that idjit brother of yours. Get the lantern lit, stupid girl.’

‘The stew’s on the stove, Mrs Swindell,’ said Eliza, hurrying to light the gas. ‘And the dresses are almost dry.’

107

Bh1449M-PressProofs2.indd 107

6/5/08 2:39:31 PM

K a t e M o r t o n

‘Should think so too. Day after day I go out, trying to earn the coin, and all’s you have to do is get the dresses laundered. Sometimes I think I’d be better off doing it myself. Shove you and your brother out on your ears.’ She puffed a nasty sigh and sat in her chair. ‘Well, come over here, then, and get my shoes off.’

While Eliza was knelt on the ground, massaging the narrow boots loose, the door opened again. It was Sammy, black and dusty.

Wordlessly, Mrs Swindell held out her bony hand and beckoned slightly with her fingers.

Sammy dug into the pocket at the front of his overalls, pulled out two copper coins and laid them where they were due. Mrs Swindell eyed them suspiciously before kicking Eliza aside with her sweaty stockinged foot and hobbling to the moneybox. With a slant-eyed glance over her shoulder, she pulled the key from the front of her blouse and turned it in the lock. Stacked the new coins atop the others, smacking her lips wetly as she calculated their total.

Sammy came to the stove and Eliza fetched a pair of bowls. They never ate with the Swindells. It wasn’t right, Mrs Swindell said, for the two of them to be getting ideas about their being part of the family.

They was hired help, after all, more like servants than tenants. Eliza began ladling out their stew, pouring it through the sieve as Mrs Swindell insisted: it didn’t do to waste the meat on a pair of ungrateful wretches.

‘You’re tired,’ Eliza whispered. ‘You started so early this morning.’

Sammy shook his head, he didn’t like her to worry.

Eliza glanced towards Mrs Swindell, checked her back was still turned before slipping a small piece of hock into Sammy’s bowl.

He smiled slightly, warily, his round eyes meeting Eliza’s. Seeing him like this, shoulders deflated with the day’s heavy labours, face plastered with the soot from rich men’s chimneys, grateful for the morsel of leathery meat, made her want to wrap her arms around his small frame and never let him go.

‘Well, well. What a pretty picture,’ Mrs Swindell said, clapping the moneybox lid shut. ‘Poor Mr Swindell, out in the mud digging for the treasures what put food in your ungrateful mouths—’ she waggled a knobbly finger in Sammy’s direction—‘while a young lad the likes of you is making free in his house. It ain’t right, I tells you, it ain’t right 108

Bh1449M-PressProofs2.indd 108

6/5/08 2:39:31 PM

T h e F o r g o t t e n G a r d e n

at all. When those Do-Gooders come back, I’ve a good mind to tell them so.’

‘Does Mr Suttborn have more work for you tomorrow, Sammy?’

Eliza spoke quickly.

Sammy nodded.

‘And the day after that?’

Another nod.

‘That’s two more coins this week, Mrs Swindell.’

Oh, how meek she managed to make her voice!

And how little it mattered.

‘Insolence! How dare you backchat. If it weren’t for Mr Swindell and me, you two snivelling worms’d be out on your ears, scrubbing floors in the workhouse.’

Eliza drew breath. One of the last things Mother had done was to obtain an undertaking from Mrs Swindell that Sammy and Eliza should be allowed to stay on as tenants for as long as they continued to meet the rent and contribute to the household. ‘But Mrs Swindell,’ Eliza said cautiously, ‘Mother said you undertook—’

‘Undertook? Undertook?’ Angry bubbles of saliva burst in the corners of her mouth. ‘I’ll give you undertook. I undertook to tan your hide till you can’t sit down no longer.’ She rose suddenly and reached for a leather strap hanging by the door.

Eliza stood firm though her heart was thumping.

Mrs Swindell stepped forward, then stopped, a cruel tic trembling her lips. Without a word she turned towards Sammy. ‘You,’ she said.

‘Come over here.’

‘No,’ Eliza said quickly, gaze darting to Sammy’s face. ‘No, I’m sorry Mrs Swindell. It was insolent of me, you’re right. I . . . I’ll make it up to you. Tomorrow I’ll dust the shop, I’ll scrub the front step, I’ll . . .

I’ll . . .’

‘Muck out the water closet shed and rid the attic of rats.’

‘Yes,’ Eliza was nodding. ‘All of it.’

Mrs Swindell stretched the strap out straight before her, a horizon of leather. She glanced beneath her eyelashes, from Eliza to Sammy and back. Finally, she released one side of the strap and hooked it again into place by the door.

A shower of dizzy relief. ‘Thank you, Mrs Swindell.’

109

Bh1449M-PressProofs2.indd 109

6/5/08 2:39:31 PM

K a t e M o r t o n

Hand shaking a little, Eliza passed the bowl of stew to Sammy and picked up the ladle to serve her own.

‘Stop right there,’ said Mrs Swindell.

Eliza looked up.

‘You,’ said Mrs Swindell, pointing at Sammy. ‘Clean the new bottles and get them set up on the shelf. There’ll be no stew till it’s done.’ She turned to Eliza. ‘And you, girl, get upstairs and out of my sight.’ Her thin lips quivered. ‘You’ll go without tonight. I’ve no intention of feeding a rebellion.’

c

When she was younger, Eliza had liked to imagine that her father would one day appear and rescue them. After Mother and the Ripper, Father the Brave was Eliza’s best story. Sometimes, when her eye was sore from being pressed against the bricks, she would lie back on the top shelf and imagine her gallant father. She would tell herself that Mother’s account was wrong, that he hadn’t really drowned at sea but had been sent away on an important journey and would someday return to save them from the Swindells.

Though she knew it to be fantasy, no more likely to happen than for fairies and goblins to appear from between the fireplace bricks, the pleasure she took from imagining his return was not dimmed. He would arrive outside the Swindells’ house—on a horse, she always thought. Riding the horse, not in a carriage pulled behind, a black horse with a glistening mane and long, muscular legs. And everyone in the street would stop what they were doing and stare at this man, her father, handsome in his black riding costume. Mrs Swindell, with her miserable pinched face, would peer over the top of her washing line, over the top of the pretty dresses snatched that morning, and she’d call to Mrs Barker to come and see all that was happening. And they would know who this was, that it was Eliza and Sammy’s father, come to rescue them. And he would ride them to the river, where his ship would be waiting, and they’d sail off across the ocean to faraway places with names she’d never heard of.

Sometimes, on the rare occasions when Eliza had been able to convince her to join in telling tales, Mother had spoken of the ocean.

110

Bh1449M-PressProofs2.indd 110

6/5/08 2:39:31 PM

T h e F o r g o t t e n G a r d e n

For she had seen it with her own eyes, and was thus able to furnish her stories with sounds and smells that were magical to Eliza—crashing waves and salty air, and fine grains of sand, white rather than the slimy black sediment of the river mud. It wasn’t often, though, that Mother joined in at story time. For the most part she disapproved of stories, especially that of Father the Brave. ‘You must learn to know the difference between tales and truth, my Liza,’ she would say. ‘Fairytales have a habit of ending too soon. They never show what happens afterwards, when the prince and princess ride off the page.’

‘But what do you mean, Mother?’ Eliza would ask.

‘What happens to them when they need to find their way in the world, to make money and escape the world’s ills.’

Eliza had never understood. It seemed irrelevant, though she wouldn’t say as much to Mother. They were princes and princesses, they didn’t need to make their way in the world, only as far as their magical castle.

‘You mustn’t wait for someone to rescue you,’ Mother would continue, a faraway look in her eyes. ‘A girl expecting rescue never learns to save herself. Even with the means, she’ll find her courage wanting. Don’t be like that, Eliza. You must find your courage, learn to rescue yourself, never rely on anyone else.’

Alone in the upstairs room, simmering with loathing for Mrs Swindell and anger at her own impotence, Eliza crawled inside the disused fireplace. Carefully, slowly, she reached up as high as she could, felt about with an open hand for the loose brick, pulled it clear. In the small cavity beyond, her fingers grazed the familiar top of the small clay mustard pot, its cool surface and rounded edges. Mindful not to send notice of her actions echoing down the chimney and into Mrs Swindell’s waiting ears, Eliza eased it out.

The pot had been Mother’s and she’d kept it secret for years. Days before her death, in a rare moment of consciousness, Mother had told Eliza of the hidey-hole. She bade her retrieve its contents and Eliza had done so: brought the clay pot to Mother’s bedside, wide-eyed with wonder at the mysterious hidden object.

Suspense tingled in Eliza’s fingertips as she waited for Mother to fumble the pot open. Her movements were clumsy in the last days and 111

Bh1449M-PressProofs2.indd 111

6/5/08 2:39:31 PM

K a t e M o r t o n

the pot’s lid was held tight by a wax stopper. Finally, it cracked apart from the base.

Eliza gasped in amazement. Inside the pot was a brooch, the likes of which would have had Mrs Swindell weeping warm tears down her horrid face. It was the size of a penny, gems lining the decorative outer rim, red and green and shiny, shiny white.

Eliza’s first thought was that the brooch had been stolen. She couldn’t imagine Mother doing such a thing, but how else had she come to possess such glorious treasure? Where could it have come from?

So many questions and yet she couldn’t find her tongue to speak.

It wouldn’t have mattered if she had; Mother wasn’t listening. She was gazing at the brooch with an expression Eliza had never seen before.

‘This brooch is precious to me,’ came the tumble of words. ‘Very precious.’ Mother thrust the pot into Eliza’s hands, almost as if she could no longer bear to touch it.

The pot was glazed, smooth and cool beneath her fingers. Eliza didn’t know how to respond. The brooch, Mother’s strange expression . . . it was all so sudden.

‘Do you know what it is, Eliza?’

‘A brooch. I’ve seen them on the fancy ladies.’

Mother smiled weakly and Eliza thought she must have given the wrong answer.

‘Or perhaps a pendant? Come loose from its chain?’

‘You were right the first time. It is a brooch, a special kind of brooch.’ She pressed her hands together. ‘Do you know what it is behind the glass?’

Eliza looked at the pattern of red-gold threads. ‘A tapestry?’

Mother smiled again. ‘In a way it is, though not the sort formed of threads.’

‘But I can see the threads, plaited together to form a rope.’

‘They are strands of hair, Eliza, taken from the women in my family.

My grandmother’s, her mother’s before, and so on. It’s a tradition. This is called a mourning brooch.’

‘Because it’s worn only in the morning?’

Mother reached out and stroked the end of Eliza’s plait. ‘Because it reminds us of those we’ve lost. Those who came before and made us who we are.’