Behind the Scenes at the Museum (15 page)

She put up the photographs of the children on the mantelpiece each side of the clock that – like the children – the foolish wife had left behind. These photographs were a queer thing. Frederick never had understood where they had come from. ‘T’Frenchman came and took ’em,’ Ada said with her surly pout, but was unforthcoming about the details. Two of them were already framed – by ‘t’Frenchman’ presumably – and those were the two that Rachel put on the mantelpiece. One was of the three boys together and the other was of Lawrence and Tom with the baby Lillian. The rest, the unframed ones, were put at the back of a drawer. None of the children ever looked at those photographs on the mantelpiece, they remembered only too vividly that they had appeared on the last day they ever saw their mother. ‘I wish there were a photograph of Mother,’ Ada said miserably one day and Lawrence said, ‘Rachel ’ud throw it in t’fire if there were,’ but later Tom took them both upstairs and showed them the treasure he had purloined from the kitchen table on the morning of his mother’s death and for a full half-hour the three oldest children exclaimed over the photograph of Alice – the beautiful (albeit ambiguous) expression on their missing mother’s face and the plush extravagance of the silver and red velvet frame.

The children were improved a little, in appearance if not in temper – they were brushed and patched and scrubbed, and had their allotted tasks. They read from the Bible and said their prayers and the whole family went to church on a Sunday, Frederick in his smart jacket with the braided trim and a bowler on his head.

The door to the outside was wide open and Rachel could see Albert playing with that stupid little lurcher that Frederick had given to him, he was soft as lard to let him have that dog. Ada was sitting on the grass by the fence telling Lillian and Nell stories, making extravagant gestures with her hands and Rachel knew exactly what kind of stories they were. When she’d sealed the crock of beans she put it on the low shelf in the pantry. The pantry, cool and dark, was the heart of Rachel’s new life – the shelves were weighed down with her clever housewifery – jams and pickles and chutney, big glass jars of raspberry jewels and gooseberry globes, a fat leg of ham, a bowl of brown eggs, flagons of rhubarb wine, puddings, both sweet and savoury, wrapped in cloths.

Rachel surveyed her garnerings with satisfaction, unconsciously twisting the gold ring on her finger round and round, trying to loosen it. She knew when he put it on her finger that it was Alice’s ring – with a piece put in to accommodate her thick finger – but she hadn’t said anything, a wedding-ring was a wedding-ring, after all, no matter how you came by it. ‘To make thee respectable,’ Frederick said when he put it on her finger, as if that were enough. Rachel had her own harvest to come now, respectable or not, she was so swollen up with this child that he must be a prize-fighter in the making. He was going to be as strong as an ox, she could feel it, not like these spindly, sickly children, never one without a cough or a streaming nose.

Lawrence and Tom clattered across the yard, Albert trailing behind them with his dog. There was not one of them doing anything useful. ‘Right, Lawrence, hold back!’ she roared, because when they saw her standing in the doorway they had wheeled round like a flock of birds and headed for the field. ‘There’s jobs to be done, Saturdays aren’t just for laiking – the privies need emptying.’ Lawrence turned his face on her, tutored into sullenness by Ada’s example. ‘Now?’ It was unfortunate for Lawrence that his mouth turned down in a natural kind of sneer; it infuriated Rachel even more than Ada’s false smile.

‘Yes, now, Lawrence-me-lad, or you’ll have the soil bucket over your ugly head!’

Rachel reached for the leather strap that was hung on a peg behind the door and measured its weight in her hand. ‘Are you going to do as I say? Or do I have to make you?’ She advanced on him and the rest of the children scattered like chickens, all except for Lawrence who just stood looking at her.

He stood his ground even though he knew what it meant and screamed at her, ‘Shift for yerself, yer great stirk!’

He couldn’t get away from her because the first thwack from the strap knocked him off his feet and it was all he could do to lie there screaming with his arms over his head and if Ada hadn’t sent Tom running for the pump to draw a bucket of water to throw over their stepmother she probably wouldn’t have stopped until he was unconscious, even dead maybe. It wasn’t just the water that stopped her though, because suddenly, just as she raised her great arm up for a really good blow, she doubled over with pain and clutched her stomach, hissing, ‘The baby, the baby’s coming.’

Frederick locked Lawrence and Tom in one of the outbuildings for two whole days and nights without food or water to teach them a lesson for that and they missed the arrival of their new brother. ‘’Appen yon bairn doesn’t want to be born,’ said Mrs May, who’d come from the village to help with the confinement. ‘But there’s no going back on t’road once tha’ve started,’ she added with a sigh. She wasn’t very taken with this Rachel. Say what you like about Alice Barker, and plenty was said about her after she went, but she always had a pleasant word and her confinements were easy which was a great thing to Mrs May. When she came out of the room she nearly fell over Albert, playing with his soldiers outside the door, ‘Art tha going to be a soldier when tha’s grown, Albert?’ she asked, and the little boy smiled.

‘Well, Albert, ’appen tha’s got a new brother,’ Mrs May told him as a tiny cry came from the room behind them and Mrs May had a sudden memory of handing the newborn Albert to Alice Barker. She could see her as clear as day, lifting out her arms for Albert and saying, ‘Welcome, my bonny bird,’ and Mrs May had laughed because that was a famous song about a baby that was one too many for a poor household.

But shouldn’t ha’ come just when tha did

‘It’s as yellow as butter,’ Frederick said, when he first saw his new son. ‘He,’ Rachel said. ‘
He
and his name is Samuel.’ Mrs May had brought spice with her for the children and later, when Albert woke up and wouldn’t go back to sleep, Ada gave him a piece of the toffee that was the colour of marmalade and gold and he sat happily on her knee, while she told him the story of Snow White and her wicked stepmother, and many other stories too in which the new usurping mother had to dance for ever in red-hot iron clogs. ‘And then their mother came back, and they were all happy for ever after.’

Next year, Rachel thought, they would send the girl into service and that would be the end of that. And there would be some kind of justice at work when Alice Barker’s daughter was having to black-lead and empty slops. Rachel had grown to hate this place. She felt landlocked and out of her sea-salty element in this green land. She missed the screech of seagulls and the potent reek of fish and boiling whale-blubber and if it wasn’t for Samuel she might have packed up and gone home. She wasn’t sure which she disliked most – husband or children.

‘It’s time you were all in bed,’ she said without looking at any of them.

‘Can we wait for Feyther to come home from t’Fox and Grapes?’ Lawrence asked, his voice sliding into a whine that irritated Rachel.

‘If I say it’s time for bed, then it’s time for bed.’ Rachel spoke with a heavy measure, stressing every word through her gritted teeth. A cleverer boy than Lawrence might have sensed she was eager for a set-to.

‘Why not?’

Rachel moved her foot from the rocker and reached across, grabbing Lawrence by the hair and pulling him into the lamplight, but when she saw him she let go as if his hair had burned her skin and gave a gasp of horror. They all gathered round Lawrence with interest – his face was erupting in vicious little red spots. ‘Is it t’plague?’ Tom asked, looking up at Rachel, who shook her head in disgust and said, ‘No, yer big lump – it’s chickenpox.’

Ada took out the little silver locket from her pocket and opened it in the moonshine. The hair coiled in the locket looked no colour in this light. She’d disappeared in the night. She’d kissed each of them in turn at bedtime as usual and in the morning she was gone and in her place was the little silver locket slipped under Ada’s pillow in the night by her mother’s ghost. The next morning Frederick gathered them round the kitchen table and told them their mother was dead and Ada was left to make the oatmeal while Frederick went into the village to try and find a wet-nurse for baby Nellie, cursing as he left, ‘She mun have taken t’bloody bairn wi ’er!’ Ada didn’t see how her mother could be dead without leaving a corpse behind – but if not dead, where could she be?

Ada shut the door as quietly as she’d opened it and tip-toed over to the crib, ‘There Samuel, did tha like that? Nice cowd air to haste you to t’Maker.’ The baby made a small snuffling noise. ‘Tha’rt a mardy gowk for all tha cosseting, eh?’ Then, slowly and deliberately, Ada rubbed her finger across the thick crust on top of one of her chickenpox spots so that it broke and she stamped her foot with the pain of it. She took a deep breath and rubbed her finger round on the pus underneath and then reached down into the cot and rubbed it on the baby’s face, like a priest giving a blessing.

‘What are you doing?’ Rachel came across the flags in her voluminous nightgown like a man-o’-war in full sail bearing down on a hapless victim.

Ada jumped and automatically put the offending hand behind her back. ‘Nowt,’ she said, smiling hugely.

‘Little liar! Don’t play the innocent with me – get away from that crib!’ Rachel’s voice was rising all the time, a familiar prelude to her going berserk. ‘If you’ve laid a finger on that baby I’ll rip you limb from limb, do you understand?’

Samuel made a small mewling sound from within the depths of the crib and Rachel grabbed Ada’s arm and spun her away from it, grabbing her hand at the same time to see what she was hiding. ‘There’s nowt there!’ Ada shouted, ‘Nobbut my hand – I was doing nowt to him – I thought I heard ’im bawlin’.’

‘As if you’d care,’ Rachel said, turning her this way and that, searching in her pockets, and Ada suddenly remembered the locket and made a frantic effort to corkscrew her body away from Rachel’s rummaging hands.

‘And what’s this, madam?’ Rachel held the locket aloft, triumphantly. ‘Well, well, I know who gave this to you.’

‘My mother gave it me, it’s got nowt to do wi’ you!’

‘Oh, but it has,’ Rachel said, laughing as Ada scrabbled for the locket. She gave Ada a hefty shove across the kitchen so that she banged into the settle. Rachel fumbled for the catch on the locket, which sprang open suddenly, and she removed the lock of blond hair that was coiled neatly behind the glass and threw it on the embers where it hissed into nothing. Ada was spitting like a kitten and ready to launch herself at Rachel with her nails but at that moment Frederick pushed his way through the door, his face dark from drink and Rachel turned her anger on him, ‘Look at you! You’re a disgrace, a shiftless good-for-nothing drunkard. I can see why she left you—’ but the rest of the sentence was walloped away by Frederick’s vast red fist.