Burning Bright (12 page)

It was a treat for Anne and Maisie Kellaway to be able to sit out in Miss Pelham's garden to make their buttons. Miss Pelham had gone the day before to visit friends in Hampstead, taking her maid with her, and was staying the week for the air—Lambeth was unseasonably hot and the hills just north of London were likely to be cooler. In her absence the Kellaway women were taking advantage of the sunshine and the empty garden. They had brought chairs out and were sitting in the square with the white lilac in the center, surrounded by pinks. Lilac was Maisie's favorite flower; she'd longed to sniff it but had only been able to watch over it longingly from their windows as its white blossoms began to appear. Whenever she went to the privy, she wondered if she could dash across the gravel path, bury her nose in the flowers, then run back before Miss Pelham saw her. But her landlady always seemed to be lingering at the back window or in the garden itself, pacing with her cup of beef broth, and Maisie never dared. Now, though, she could sit by it for a whole morning and get her fill of its scent until next year.

Maisie leaned back in her chair and sighed as she stretched her neck, tilting her head to the left and right.

“What is't?” her mother asked, still bent over the button—a Blandford Cartwheel—she was making. “Tired already? We've hardly begun. You've only made two.”

“It's not that. You know I like making buttons.” Indeed, Maisie had once made fifty-four Blandford Cartwheels in one day, a record for the Piddle Valley—though a girl to the east in Whitchurch was known to make a gross of buttons a day, as Mr. Case, the button agent who came monthly to Piddletrenthide, often reminded the women who brought their finished buttons to him. Maisie was sure the girl made simpler buttons that could be done faster—Singletons and Birds' Eyes, or Dorset Crosswheels, which weren't as fiddly as Cartwheels. “It be just that I—I miss our lilac back home.”

Anne Kellaway was silent for a moment, examining her finished button and using her thumbnail to distribute rows of thread more evenly so that the button resembled a tiny spider's web. Satisfied, she dropped the button in her lap with the others she had made, and picked up a new metal ring, which she began wrapping with thread right the way around the rim. Then she addressed Maisie's comment. “Lilac smells the same here, don't it?”

“No, it don't. It be smaller and has fewer flowers, and it an't so perfumed, and there be dirt all over it.”

“The bush be different, but the flowers still smell the same.”

“No, they don't,” Maisie insisted.

Anne Kellaway did not pursue the argument; though she had—with the help of regular visits to the circus—grown more accepting of their new life in London, she understood what her daughter meant. “I wonder if Lizzie Miller's picked any elderflowers yet,” she said instead. “I han't seen any out here yet. Don't know if they come out here earlier or later'n Dorsetshire. I hope Sam shows her where the early patch be up Dead Cat Lane.”

“What, near the top?”

“Yes.” Anne Kellaway paused, thinking about the spot. “Your father carved me a whistle from the wood of that tree when we was young.”

“That were sweet. But you can't still have the whistle, Ma, can you? I never seen it.”

“I lost it not long after, in the hazel wood near Nettlecombe Tout.”

“How tragic!” her daughter cried. Recently Maisie had grown more sensitive to the goings-on between couples, loading them with a depth of emotion that Anne Kellaway herself felt she could never match.

She glanced sideways at her daughter. “It weren't so tragic as all that.” She would never tell Maisie, but she'd lost it during a tumble with Thomas Kellaway—“priming the pump for the marriage bed,” as he'd put it. Now, so many years later, it was hard to imagine why they'd done such a thing. Though she knew she must still love her husband, she felt old and numb.

“D'you think Sam has married Lizzie by now?” Maisie asked. “She got the ring in the Michaelmas pie last year, didn't she? It be time for her to marry.”

Anne Kellaway snorted. “That old tale. Anyway, Sam said he would send word if he did.”

“I wish we were there to see it. Lizzie'd look so pretty with flowers in her hair. What would she wear, d'you think? I'd wear white lilac, of course.”

Anne Kellaway frowned as she wound the thread rapidly around the button ring. She and Maisie had been making buttons for years in their spare time, and she had always enjoyed sitting with her daughter, chatting about this and that or simply being quiet together. These days, however, she had little to add to Maisie's remarks about love and beauty and men and women. Such thoughts were far from her life now—if they had ever been close. She couldn't recall being interested in things like that when she was fourteen. Even Thomas Kellaway's courting her at nineteen had surprised her; sometimes when she'd walked with him along lanes and across fields, or lain with him in the woods where she lost her whistle, she had felt as if it were someone else in her place, going through the motions of flirting and blushing and kissing and rubbing her hands along her lover's back, while Anne Kellaway herself stood off to one side and studied the ancient furrows and dikes that underpinned the surrounding hills. Maisie's intent interest embarrassed her.

However, she too wished that she could see her eldest son married. They'd only had one letter from Sam, at the beginning of May, though Maisie, who could read and write better than the rest of the Kellaways, had set herself the task of writing to him weekly, and began her letters with a paragraph full of questions and speculation about all that might be going on in the Piddle Valley—who would be shearing their sheep, who was making the most buttons, who had been to Dorchester or Weymouth or Blandford, who'd had babies. However, though he could read and write a little—all the Kellaway children had gone for a bit to the village school—Sam was not a letter writer, or very talkative. His letter was short and poorly written, and did not answer Maisie's questions. He told them only that he was well, that he'd carved the arms for a new set of pews for the church at Piddletrenthide, and that it had rained so much that the stream running through Plush had flooded some of the cottages. The Kellaways devoured these bits of news, but there had not been enough of them, and they were still hungry.

Since they got little news from home, Anne and Maisie Kellaway could only speculate over their buttons. Had the publican sold the Five Bells as he was always threatening to do? Had the head-stock holding the treble bell at the church been mended in time for the Easter Sunday peal? Had the maypole been set up in Piddletrenthide or Piddlehinton this year? And now, as they bent over their buttons: Would Lizzie Miller pick the choicest elderflowers for cordial and wear lilac in her hair at the wedding the Kellaways would miss? Anne Kellaway's eyes blurred with tears for not knowing. She shook her head and focused on her Blandford Cartwheel. She had finished wrapping the ring with thread and was now ready to create spokes to make it look like the wheel of a cart.

“What's that sound?” Maisie said.

Anne Kellaway heard a chop-chop-chopping next door. “Tha' be Mrs. Blake with her hoe,” she said in a low voice.

“No, not that. There it be again—someone knocking on Miss Pelham's door.”

“Go on and see who it is,” Anne Kellaway said. “It may be tickets for the circus.” She'd heard that the program was to change again soon, and Mr. Astley had sent them tickets every time it did. She had already begun to anticipate a knock on the door and another set of tickets thrust at her. Anne Kellaway knew that she was becoming greedy for the circus, and was perhaps relying too readily on Mr. Astley's continuing generosity with complimentary tickets. “Seats for seats!” he'd said once, delighted with the chairs Thomas Kellaway had made him.

As she went to answer the door, Maisie was smoothing her hair, biting her lips, and pulling at her dress to make it sit properly over her stays. Although a circus boy usually brought them the tickets, Maisie nursed a fantasy that John Astley himself might deliver them. She'd had a special thrill the last time the Kellaways went to the circus, when John Astley had played the Harlequin in
Harlequin's Vagaries
, and Maisie had been treated to a whole half hour of gazing at him as he sang, courted Columbine—played by newcomer Miss Hannah Smith—and danced upon his chestnut mare. Maisie had watched him with a lump in her throat—a lump that got stuck when at one point she was certain he looked at her.

When she was thinking sensibly, Maisie knew very well that John Astley was not a man she could ever expect to be with. He was handsome, cultured, wealthy, urbane—as different as could be from the sort of man she would marry in the Piddle Valley. Although she loved her father and brothers—especially Jem—they were awkward and dull next to John Astley. Besides, he provided a distraction from London, which still scared her, and from her brother Tommy's death, which she seemed to feel more acutely four months on. It had taken that long for her to acknowledge that he was not still in Piddletrenthide and might appear at any time at Miss Pelham's door, whistling and boasting of the adventures he'd had on the road to London.

For a brief moment, Maisie stood by the front door of no. 12 Hercules Buildings and listened to the knock, which had grown persistent and impatient, and wondered if it could be John Astley.

It was not, but rather a woman she had not seen before. She was of medium height, but seemed taller because of her bulk; for though she was not fat, she was well endowed, and her arms were like legs of lamb. Her face was round, with bright cheeks that looked as if they'd seen too much heat. Her brown hair had been shoved under a cap, from which it had escaped in several places without the woman appearing to have noticed. Her eyes were both lively and tired; indeed, she yawned in front of Maisie without even covering her gaping mouth.

“Hallo, duck,” she said. “You're a lovely one, an't you?”

“I-I'm sorry, but Miss Pelham an't here,” Maisie stuttered, flustered by the compliment but disappointed that the woman wasn't John Astley. “She'll be back in a week.”

“I don't want to see any Miss Pelham. I'm after my daughter—Maggie, that is—and wanted to ask you lot about her. Can I come in?”

“Ma, this be Mrs. Butterfield,” Maisie announced, arriving back in the garden. “Maggie's mother.”

“Call me Bet,” the woman said. “It's Maggie what I come about.”

“Maggie?” Anne Kellaway repeated, half rising from her seat and clutching the buttons she had made. Then she realized whom Bet meant and sank back down. “She's not here.”

Bet Butterfield did not seem to have heard. She was staring into Anne Kellaway's lap. “Are them buttons?”

“Yes.” Anne Kellaway had to fight the urge to cover the buttons with her hands.

“We do buttony,” Maisie explained. “We used to make 'em all the time back in Dorsetshire, and Ma took some of the materials with us when we came here. She thinks maybe we can sell 'em in London.”

Bet Butterfield held out her hand. “Let me see.”

Anne Kellaway reluctantly dropped into Bet's rough, red hand the delicate buttons she had made so far that morning. “Those be called Blandford Cartwheels,” she couldn't resist explaining.

“Lord, an't they lovely,” Bet Butterfield murmured, pushing them around with a finger. “I see these on ladies' nightgowns and am always careful with 'em when I wash 'em. Is that a blanket stitch you've used on the rim?”

“Yes.” Anne Kellaway held up the button she was working on. “Then I wrap the thread across the ring to make spokes for the wheel, and then backstitch round and round each spoke, so the thread fills in the space. At the end I gather it in the center with a stitch, and there be your button.”

“Lovely,” Bet Butterfield repeated, squinting at the buttons. “Wish I could make summat like this. I an't bad at repairs and that, but I don't know as I could manage summat this small and delicate. I'm better at washin' what's already made than makin' it. Is these the only kind of buttons you make?”

“Oh, we do all sorts,” Maisie broke in. “Flat ones like these—the Dorset Wheels—we do in cartwheel, crosswheel, and honeycomb patterns. Then we do the High Tops, and the Knobs—those are for waistcoats—and the Singletons and Birds' Eyes. What others do we do, Ma?”

“Basket Weaves, Old Dorsets, Mites and Spangles, Jams, Yannells, Outsiders,” Anne Kellaway recited.

“Where you going to sell 'em?” Bet Butterfield asked.

“We don't know yet.”

“I can help you with that. Or my Dick can. He knows everybody, could sell eggs to a chicken, that man could. He'll sell your buttons for you. How many you got ready?”

“Oh, four gross at least,” Maisie replied.

“And how much you get per gross?”

“It depends on what sort and how good they be.” Maisie paused. “Won't you sit down, Mrs. Butterfield?” She gestured to her own chair.

“I will, duck, thanks.” Bet Butterfield lowered herself onto the hoop-back Windsor chair that, even after ten years of daily use, did not creak when her substantial mass met its elm seat. “Now, there's a nice chair,” she said, leaning back against the spindles and running her finger along the smooth curved arm. “Plain, not fussy, and well made—though I never seen chairs painted blue before.”

“Oh, we paint all our chairs back in Dorsetshire,” Maisie declared. “That's how folk like 'em.”

“Mags told me Mr. Kellaway's a bodger. He make this one, Mrs.—?”

“Anne Kellaway. He did. Now, Mrs. Butterfield—”

“Bet, love. Everybody calls me Bet.”

“Like Bouncing Bet!” Maisie exclaimed, sitting down on one of Miss Pelham's cold stone benches. “I've just thought of it. Oh, how funny!”

“What's funny, duck?”

“Bouncing Bet—it be what we call soapwort. Back in Dorsetshire, at least. And you use soapwort for your washing, don't you?”

“I do. Bouncing Bet, eh?” Bet Butterfield chuckled. “I'd not heard o' that one. Where I'm from we called it Crow Soap. But I like that—Bouncing Bet. My Dick'll start calling me that if I tell him.”

“What were it you've come for?” Anne Kellaway interjected. “You said it were something to do with your daughter.”

Bet Butterfield turned to her soberly. “Yes, yes. Well, you see, I'm lookin' for her. She an't been round for a while and I'm startin' to wonder.”

“How long has she been gone?”

“Two weeks.”

“Two weeks! And you're only now looking for her?” Anne Kellaway couldn't imagine losing Maisie for one night in this city, much less two weeks.

Bet Butterfield shifted in her chair. This time it creaked. “Well, now, it an't as bad as that. Maybe it's been a week. Yes, that's right, just a week.” At Anne Kellaway's continuing look of horror, she blustered on. “And maybe not even that long. I'm often not at home, see; what with my washing, I work sometimes through the night at people's houses and sleep during the day. There's days go by I don't see my Dick or Charlie or no one 'cause I'm out.”

“Has anyone else seen her?”

“No.” Bet Butterfield shifted in the chair again; again it creaked. “I'll tell you truly, we had a bit of a row and she run off. She's got a temper on her, has Mags—like her father. She's a slow fuse but once she goes off—watch out!”

Anne and Maisie Kellaway were silent.

“Oh, I know she's round,” Bet Butterfield added. “I leave food out for her and that disappears right enough. But I want her back. It an't right for her to stay away so long. Neighbors are startin' to ask questions, and look at me funny—like you lot are doing.”

Anne and Maisie Kellaway bowed their heads and began stitching at their Blandford Cartwheels.

Bet Butterfield leaned forward to watch their fingers at work. “Mags has been spendin' a lot of time with your boy—Jem, is it?”

“Yes, Jem. He's helping his father.” Anne Kellaway nodded toward the house.

“Well, then, I come to ask if he—or any of you—has seen Maggie in the last while. Just round the streets, or by the river, or here, if she's come to visit.”

Anne Kellaway looked at her daughter. “Have you seen her, Maisie?”

Maisie was holding her button and letting the thread dangle, with the needle on the end of it. The motion of the stitching tended to twist the thread so much that now and then she had to stop and let it unwind itself. They all watched as the needle spun, then slowed, and finally stopped, swinging lightly at the end of the thread.