Cardington Crescent (29 page)

“Mrs. Pitt!” It was Tassie’s voice, high with amazement. “Whatever are you doing here? Are you all right? Have you been hurt? You look terribly pale.”

There was no conceivable explanation but the truth. Tassie’s face when she lowered the light looked as innocent as a bowl of milk, eyes wide, dark with concern.

“I followed you,” Charlotte said hesitantly. It sounded foolish now, and dangerous.

But there was no anger in Tassie’s face. “Then you’d better come in.” She did not wait for a reply but turned back into the house, leaving the door open.

Charlotte stood on the pavement in an agony of indecision. Part of her wanted to escape, to run as fast as her feet would carry her away from these cramped, ill-smelling streets, the yawning house in front of her, and whatever blood and madness was inside it. Another part of her knew she could not—she had no idea where she was and might as easily be running further into the slums.

She could wait no longer. It was not a decision to go in so much as a lack of the courage to bolt. She went after Tassie through the door, along a corridor so mean she could touch either side simply by extending her elbows, and up a steep stairway that creaked under her weight. Her uncertain way was lit not by gas but a wavering pool of candlelight carried only just ahead of her. She dared not imagine where she was going.

But the bedroom was desperately ordinary; thin curtains at the windows, sacking on the floor for carpet, a bare wooden table with a pitcher and bowl, and a large marital bed made tidy for the event. In it lay a girl of barely fourteen or fifteen, her face pale and tense with fear, her hair brushed off her forehead and lying in a damp tangle over her shoulders. She was obviously well into labor and in considerable pain.

On the far side of the bed stood a girl a year or two older and bearing so marked a resemblance they must have been sisters. Beside her, sleeves rolled up, ready to assist when the time should come but for now holding her hand, was Mr. Beamish’s curate, Mungo Hare.

A blinding realization came to Charlotte. It was all so obvious there was no question left to ask. Somehow or other Tassie had become involved in helping to deliver the babies of the poor or abandoned. Presumably it was Mungo Hare who had introduced her to this area of need. The idea of the pink and pious Mr. Beamish organizing such a thing was absurd.

And that quick, wholehearted kiss explained itself, and also explained Tassie’s compliant obedience with her grandmother’s command that she should be occupied in good works. Happiness bubbled up inside Charlotte. She was so relieved she wanted to laugh aloud.

But Tassie had no time for such emotions. The girl on the bed was going into another spasm of contractions and was racked almost as much by fear as by the pain. Tassie was busy giving orders to a white-faced youth in a cloth cap, presumably the urchin who had fetched her with the stone against the window, sending him for water and as much linen as he could find that was clean, perhaps to get him out of the room. Had it not been for the girl’s fear and the close possibility of death, Mungo Hare would also have been banished. Childbirth was women’s business.

Charlotte could remember her own two confinements, especially the first. The awe and the pride of carrying had given way to a primitive, mouth-drying fear when the pain came and her body began its relentless cycle which would end only when there was birth—or death. And she had been a grown woman, who loved her husband and wanted her child, and had a mother and sister to attend her after the doctor had done his professional work. This girl was barely more than a child herself—Charlotte had been in the schoolroom at her age—and there was no one to help her but Tassie and a young Highland curate.

She stepped forward and sat on the bed, taking the girl’s other hand.

“Hold on to me,” she said with a smile. “It will only hurt worse if you fight against it. And cry out if you want to—you are entitled to, and no one will mind in the least. It will all be worth it, I promise you.” It was a rash thing to say, and as soon as the words were out her mind half regretted them. Too many children were born dead, and even if it were perfect, how was this girl going to care for it?

“You’re very kind, miss,” the girl said between gasps. “I don’t know why you should take the trouble, I don’t.”

“I’ve had two myself,” Charlotte replied, holding the thin little hand more tightly and feeling it clench with another spasm of pain. “I know just how you feel. But wait till you hold your baby, you’ll forget all about this.” Then again she cursed her runaway tongue. What if the girl could not keep it, what if it went into adoption, or some anonymous orphanage, a charge on the parish to grow up in a workhouse, hungry and unloved?

“Me an’ me sister,” the girl answered her unspoken question, “we’re goin’ ter raise ’im—or ’er. Annie ’as a real good job cleanin’ an like. Mr. ’Are got it for ’er.” She gave Mungo Hare a look of trust so total it was frightening in its intensity.

Then more regular contractions cut out all conversation, and it was time for Tassie to begin her work with words of command and encouragement, and all the towels, and eventually, water. Without ever making the decision to, Charlotte helped. And at half past three in the narrow, shabby room the old miracle was fulfilled, and a perfect child was born. The girl, in a clean nightgown, exhausted, hair wet, but flushed with joy, held him in her arms and asked Charlotte timidly if she would mind if the baby were named Charlie, after her. She said quite honestly that she would count it a very great honor.

At quarter past four, as the summer dawn splashed the sky pearl above the sloping maze of roofs, gray with grime and soot, Charlotte and Tassie left the house and, with the urchin dancing a little jig, were led back to the avenue from which they could find Cardington Crescent and home. Mungo Hare did not come with them; he had said goodbye to Tassie at the corner of the alley. He had other tasks before he reported to Mr. Beamish for the ritual of the morning service.

Charlotte felt like dancing, too, except that her legs would not obey such a hectic call after the extraordinary demands that had already been made upon them. But she found herself singing some snatch of a music hall number because of its sheer joy, and after a moment Tassie joined in. Side by side they marched along the avenue in the white dawn, blood-spattered, hair wild, as the birds in the sycamores welcomed the day.

In Cardington Crescent they found the scullery door still unlocked and crept in past the piles of vegetables and the rows of pans on the wall, up the stone step into the kitchen. Another half hour and the first maids would be down to clean out the stove, renew the blacking, and get the fires going and the ovens ready for breakfast when the cook appeared. Not long after that the housemaids would be up, too, to prepare the dining room and begin the daily round.

“Haven’t you ever run into anyone?” Charlotte whispered.

“No. I have had to hide in the stillroom once or twice.” Tassie looked at her anxiously. “You won’t tell anyone about Mungo, will you?
Please.”

“Of course not!” Charlotte was horrified that the possibility could have crossed Tassie’s mind. “What do you think of me that you need to ask? Are you going to marry him?”

Tassie’s chin came up. “Yes! Papa will be furious, but if he won’t give me permission I shall just have to do without. I love Mungo more than anyone else in the world—except Grandmama Vespasia, and William. But that’s different.”

“Good!” Charlotte clasped her arm in a fierce little gesture of companionship. “If I can help, I will.”

“Thank you.” Tassie meant it profoundly, but there was no time for conversation now. They could not afford to linger; they were later than was safe as it was. On tiptoe Charlotte followed her along the corridor, past the housekeeper’s sitting room and the butler’s pantry to the baize door and the main hallway.

They were as far as the foot of the great stairway when they heard the click of the morning room door and Eustace’s voice behind them.

“Mrs. Pitt, your conduct is beyond explanation. You will pack your belongings and leave my house this morning.”

For an instant Charlotte and Tassie both froze, tingling with horror. Then, slowly and in unison, they turned to face him. He stood three or four yards away, just outside the morning room door, a candle in his hand dripping hot wax into its holder. He was wearing his nightshirt with a robe over it, tied round the waist, and a nightcap on his head. It was broad sunrise outside, but in here the velvet curtains had not been drawn and the flame of the candle held high was necessary to see their faces and the dark stains of the afterbirth splashed down their skirts. In spite of the dreadfulness of the moment, Charlotte could not quench in herself the infinitely more important joy, the exultant achievement in new, unblemished life.

Eustace’s face blanched in the yellow candlelight and his eyes opened even wider. “Oh, my God!” he breathed, appalled. “What have you done?”

“Delivered a baby,” Tassie said, with the same smile Charlotte had seen that first night on the staircase.

“You—y-you what!” Eustace was aghast.

“Delivered a baby,” Tassie repeated.

“Don’t be ridiculous! What baby? Whose baby?” he spluttered. “You’ve taken leave of your senses, girl!”

“Her name doesn’t matter,” Tassie answered.

“It matters very much!” Eustace’s voice was rising and growing louder. “She had no business sending for you at this time of night! In fact, she had no business sending for you at all—where is her sense of propriety? An unmarried woman has no ... no call to know about these things. It is quite improper! How can I marry you decently now—now you have been—Who is it, Anastasia? I demand to know! I shall criticize her most severely and have a few very unpleasant words to say to her husband. It is completely irresponsible—” He broke off, as a new thought struck him. “I didn’t hear a carriage.”

“There wasn’t one,” Tassie replied. “We walked. And there isn’t a husband, and her name is Poppy Brown, if that helps.”

“I’ve never heard of her—what do you mean, you walked?—there are no Browns in Cardington Crescent!”

“Are there not?” Tassie was completely indifferent. There was nothing left to be saved by tact, and she was too euphoric, too weary, and too tired of being humiliated to plead.

“No, there are not,” he said with mounting anger. “I know everyone, at least by repute. It is my business to know. What is this woman’s name, Anastasia? And this time you had better tell me the truth, or I shall be obliged to discipline you.”

“As far as I know her name is Poppy Brown,” Tassie repeated. “And I never said she lived in the Crescent. She lives at least three miles from here, maybe more, in one of the slum areas. Her brother came for me, and I couldn’t find the way back there alone if I wanted to.”

He was stunned into silence. They stood in the guttering candlelight at the foot of the stairs like figures in a masque. Somewhere far upstairs there was movement; a junior maid had allowed a door to swing shut unattended. Everything else was so still, the sound reverberated through the vast house.

“The sooner you are married to Jack Radley, the better,” Eustace said at last. “If he’ll have you, which I imagine he will—he needs your money. Let him deal with you. Give you your own children to occupy you!”

Tassie’s face tightened and her hand on the bannister gripped hard. “You can’t do that, Papa, he may have murdered George. You wouldn’t want a murderer in the family. Think of the scandal.”

The blood darkened Eustace’s cheeks and the candle shook in his fingers. “Nonsense!” he said too quickly. “It was Emily who killed George. Any fool can see there is a streak of madness in her family.” He shot a look of loathing at Charlotte, then turned to his daughter again. “You will marry Jack Radley as soon as it can be arranged. Now go to your room!”

“If you do that, people will say I had to marry him because I was with child,” she argued. “It is indecent to marry in haste—especially a man of Jack’s reputation.”

“You deserve to lose your standing!” he said angrily. “You’d lose it a lot further if people knew where you’d been tonight!”

She would not give in. “But I’m your daughter. My reputation will rub off on yours. And anyway, if Emily killed George, Jack is certainly implicated—at least, people will say so.”

“What people?” He had a point, and he knew it. “No one knows of his flirtation except the family, and we are certainly not going to tell anyone. Now, do as I tell you and go to your room.”

But she stood perfectly still, except for a tremor in her hand where it gripped the bannister.

“He may not want to marry me. Emily has far more money, and she has it now. I’ll only get mine when my grandmothers die.”

“I shall see that you are properly provided for,” he countered. “And your husband. Emily doesn’t count. She will be put away quietly somewhere, in a private asylum for the insane, where she can’t kill anyone else.”

Her chin came up and her face was tight and frightened. “I’m going to marry Mungo Hare, whatever you say!”

For an icy moment he was speechless. Then the torrent broke.

“You are not, my girl! You are going to marry whomever I tell you! And I say you will marry Jack Radley. And if he proves unsuitable, or unwilling, then I will find someone else. But you are most certainly not going to marry that penniless young man with no family. What in heaven’s name are you thinking of, child? No daughter of mine marries a curate! An archdeacon perhaps, but not a curate! And that one hasn’t even any prospects. I forbid you to meet or speak to him again! I shall talk to Beamish and see that Hare does not call at this house in future, nor will you have occasion to speak with him in church. And if you do not give me your word on it, then I shall tell Beamish that Hare has made advances towards you, and he will be defrocked. Do you understand me, Anastasia?”

Tassie was so stunned she seemed to sway.

“Now, go to your room and remain there till I tell you you may come out!” Eustace added. He swung round to Charlotte. “And you, Mrs. Pitt, may take your leave as soon as you have packed whatever belongings you have.”