Goldsmith's Row (6 page)

Philadelphia felt herself go hot and cold with mortification. It was intolerable to be patronized like an ignorant rustic by this complacent shopkeeper's wife, and as much as the attack on her good manners she resented the slur on her good sense. Of course she saw the danger of a wealthy woman like Mrs. Tabor offering to hand out large sums of money to anyone who could provide her with a grandchild she had never seen. She knew that Joel was very eager to win the reward; had he been too ready to accept the claims of any girl who was put forward as the missing heiress? From what Philadelphia could make out, he had been hunting for Frances Tabor through the taverns of Southwark, where every kind of gull-groper and trickster congregated, and the bait of Mrs. Tabor's wealth would have been enough to produce half a dozen false heiresses.

On the other hand, if Joel had gone to look for Frances in the right place, why shouldn't he have found her? It would be absurd to reject her in advance.

That evening Philadelphia and Zachary Dowries were waiting upstairs in the great chamber with Mrs. Tabor when they heard the hired coach draw up in the street below. She had agreed to the presence of these two witnesses at her first meeting with her supposed grandchild, because she felt they were on her side, and would help to put a spoke in Hannah's wheel. She was breathing rather fast as she sat watching the door. They heard Joel's voice on the staircase, rallying someone to keep her courage high, no one was going to eat her.

The door opened, and there was Joel, surveying them with a faintly aggressive air; he must know that any suspicion of the claimant he had produced so conveniently was bound to reflect on him. But they hardly had time to consider Joel; they were all staring at the girl who stood trembling beside him. She was very young and fragile, swamped in a borrowed cloak, and her hair, brushed back from her forehead, was like spun gold. She had small, delicate features and a rose-petal complexion; her eyes were filled with fear and curiosity. They were the deepest sea blue.

"Why, she's the image of my Frank!" exclaimed Mrs. Tabor. "She's Frank over again!"

Philadelphia took this with a grain of salt. All the same, the words gave her a queer prickle of excitement.

"Come closer, child," Mrs. Tabor was saying. "And tell me how much you can recall of your early childhood. And first of all, what is your name?"

"If it pleases you, madam, my name is Frances. But they call me Grace."

"How strange! Why is that?"

"If you please, madam, they said that Grace was more fitting for an orphan brought up on charity."

Was there a flicker of an eyelid for Joel here; to see whether she had made the right reply? Philadelphia could not be sure. The girl was undoubtedly very nervous, perhaps she was merely over-awed by her surroundings. She had moved forward and bobbed a little curtsy, the sort that a poor man's child would be taught to make. Her voice was low and pleasant. She spoke with much the same accent as the City people (who all sounded equally quick and clipped to Gloucestershire-born Philadelphia). Her manner was respectful and reserved; she might have grown up in Southwark, but the Charity Hospital had sheltered her from the loud, rough manners of the teeming streets and all their bawdy vulgarity.

She was answering Mrs. Tabor's questions about the woman who had first taken care of her.

"I called her Nurse. She was fat and laughing, and she had red hair."

"Cicely Fox had red hair," said Mrs. Tabor, beaming with pleasure.

The soft voice went on: "I don't think I ever knew my mother, madam. Nurse told me that she was a beautiful young lady who used to live in a house that was covered all over with gold."

Mrs. Tabor gave a gasp of delight. This was proof enough for   her,   she   needed   no   more   convincing.   Philadelphia glanced sideways at Joel, and caught him gazing at his Galatea.

"Did you ever see such a little beauty?" he murmured as an aside to Philadelphia.

She was struck by the quiver of admiration in his voice. No man would ever look at her with just that rapt expression, or turn and stare after her in the street as they would stare at this little honey-sweet creature, who was probably a liar and possibly a strumpet. Philadelphia pulled herself up sharp. She had no right to think evil of the child, just because she was jealous. It was one thing to have an indelibly scarred face; fifty times worse to let the ugliness turn sour in the mind. That was something to avoid at all costs.

She had wanted the foundling's claims to be true, because of the happiness this would bring to Mrs. Tabor, and also because it would be a crushing defeat for Mrs. Beck. Now she had a third reason. Her natural generosity demanded that the girl she secretly envied must be given the benefit of every doubt.                                                    

7

Grace lay stiffly at the edge of the bed she was sharing with Mrs. Philadelphia Whitethorn, and tried to keep perfectly still and to breathe without making a noise—she did hope she wouldn't snore. Not that she was unused to sharing a bed; in fact, she would have been frightened if they had put her in a room by herself, but Mrs. Whitethorn was rather alarming. She must be over twenty years old and still unmarried, getting on for an old maid, with those smallpox scars on her forehead, yet she was elegant and pretty, and she moved so beautifully and talked in such an easy, confident voice; Grace found it almost impossible to answer her, though she probably meant to be kind.

Mrs. Whitethorn seemed an altogether superior being. She spent far more time brushing her hair and saying her prayers than Grace had ever spent over either, and she had a special ball of soap for cleaning her teeth, and a special shift to wear in bed. Grace, who had gone to bed naked all her life, was amazed by this garment which was made of the most delicate white lawn, with goffered frills at the throat and wrists. She was amazed by the warm, scented rose-water that had been brought for them to wash in, and which had left a luxurious fragrance on her skin, she could smell it as she lay inside the great curtained bedstead, the size of a small room. The linen sheets had been aired by a warming-pan, and the feather bed was so soft, it was like lying on a cloud.

If the bedchamber afforded such marvels, the other rooms had been even more bewildering. She had always lived in a place where the barest necessities had been counted out-there were just enough stools for everyone to sit down, and just enough knives for everyone to cut their meat, and if you needed anything like a needle and thread to do the mending, Mrs. Bullace would get it out of a locked casket. If you lost or broke the needle, you were punished for it, because carelessness was a sin and needles cost money. But here in Goldsmiths' Row they must live by quite a different set of rules. There seemed to be an unlimited number of things for the use of everyone; there were more candles than Grace had ever seen alight at the same time; and as for the many rich dishes they had at supper, she hardly knew what she was eating.

She had not been given a silver plate but they all drank out of silver cups and on the centre of the table there was a silver-gilt salt, about a foot high and shaped like a lantern with pictures from the Bible embossed on the sides.

"That was your grandfather's masterpiece," Mrs. Tabor told her. "The piece he had to submit to the Goldsmiths' Company when he applied for recognition as a master of his craft."

Her grandfather! Of course John Tabor was not really her grandfather, and this brought home the wickedness of all the lies she had repeated. Though she did not find it difficult to enter into the part of the unknown Frances; the things that had happened to her did not seem at all alien, and she found herself almost believing in what she said. She had always been able to imagine things in a game, that was why she had got on so well with Coney.

Coney had been so angry and scornful about her coming to Goldsmiths' Row; he had called her a cheat and a thief and refused to say good-bye to her. She had pretended not to care at the time, but now,  cast adrift in this  complicated new world, she felt desperately alone, and began wondering if she would ever see him again. The thought was too much for her, and she began to cry.

She sobbed undisturbed for a few minutes, and then a voice from the other side of the bed asked her what was the matter. "Do you feel ill? Or just miserable?"

"Oh no, madam. I'm very h-happy," gulped Grace.

It had instantly flashed across her mind that tears might be taken as a symptom of guilt, a proof that she was an impostor.

But Philadelphia Whitethorn merely said, "You're homesick."

"Yes, I think I must be a little. Though it's very strange, for I was heartily glad to leave the Charity Hospital. Only there were some of my friends…"

"I know. You don't have to tell me. My first night in this room, when I came here last year, I cried my eyes out."

"Did you?" Grace was astounded, and also puzzled by Mrs. Whitethorn's exact status. "Do you live here all the time, madam?"

"Yes, I came from the country to act as a waiting-woman to your—to Mrs. Tabor. And by the same token, there is no need for you to treat me so formally. I have a confoundedly lone name which you can use, but most people shorted it to Del."

It was an eye-opener to Grace that a gentlewoman could be a kind of servant; perhaps that was why she had cried?

"I longed to come to London, and live in Goldsmiths' Row," said Philadelphia, "for I knew I should like to be at the hub of things and meet so many different people, and I was not very happy sharing a house with my sister-in-law, who is always cross. But it was my home, after all, and I missed the familiar faces and places when I came away. Just as you are doing now. You'll feel better when you wake up in the morning."

She was right, as Grace gratefully discovered. By daylight she began to get her bearings in the large, impressive building. The ground floor at the front was taken up by the shop: there was a room that opened on to the street, and another where favored customers could sit and examine the goods at their ease. Grace, peeping in, saw Joel Downes spreading a sable velvet cloth over the table and displaying against the inky blackness a shining set of Apostle spoons for the inspection of some people who had come to choose a christening present.

Behind the shop was the workshop, and that was just as fascinating; It was like a kind of kitchen, because of the furnace, which was a rectangular stove projecting from the wall under its own hooded chimney-piece. There was a pair of organ-bellows fitted into the side wall to bring up the fire, and a circular opening on the flat top of the stove, called the wind-hole. The furnace had to be very fierce; it was used for melting down old pieces of plate, and for annealing—heating metal until it became pliable—so that it could be cut into shape and worked on the anvil.

Once a piece had been hammered into shape, and any necessary joins made with a soldering alloy, it was generally decorated with an embossed work or engraving. An old journeyman called Ralph stood all day at his bench between the furnace and the window, silently wielding his gravers and chasing hammer. The workshop was very hot and smelt of scorching metal and of various strange minerals, from the jars of pickle in which the finished pieces of plate were left soaking, to clean them before they were burnished with leather buffers and fine sand.

Grace was soon sharing in the everyday work of the house. She was frightened of the servants, who were at first inclined to despise her, but when they found she was a painstaking, diligent girl who didn't try to put on airs, they relented and were very kind to her. She found that she was expected to do only the pleasantest chores. She had to sew a little (and she was already an accomplished needlewoman), learn how to make pastry and other delicate feats of cookery, and help Philadelphia with the marketing.

She was given a beautiful dress and cloak, the first new clothes she had ever possessed. They had to be black, because of the mourning for John Tabor, but Grace did not mind, she was so entranced with the richness of the stuff, and the thick, quilted petticoat, which made her feel almost as though she was wearing a farthingale hoop, like a court lady. She had a black felt hat, and a pair of black leather shoes from the cordwainer, and to complete this dream of perfection, a short chain dangling from her waist with a purse and a polished looking-glass and a pair of scissors made of Toledo steel.

The only fly in the ointment was bustling, censorious Mrs.

Beck, who was perfectly certain that Grace was not her great-niece.

"Do you know what happens to girls who tell lies?" she demanded at their second meeting.

"Yes, madam. They burn everlastingly in hellfire."

Grace then had to step back hastily, to avoid getting her ears boxed for impudence. She had not meant to be impudent. It was the proper answer for the question when it was asked at the Charity Hospital, so she knew it must be true, though she was much more frightened of what would happen to her in this world, if she was found out.

"Mrs. Tabor has had many sorrows," Philadelphia said to her one day. "It would be a great pity if she was made the victim of a cruel jest. I dare say she might be cozened out of a fair sum of money without feeling the pinch, but I think she would be greatly hurt by the unkindness."

Grace felt a shock of compunction mingled with fear, and very nearly gave herself away. Instinctively, she slid into the cloud of evasion which had been her best safeguard throughout her life at the Charity Hospital.

"I wish I could prove that I am Frances Tabor," she said gazing candidly at Del. "I wish I could swear it on my Bible oath. But I can't remember where I was born. I can remember my foster-parents dying in the attic room above a tavern, but I don't know their proper names, or the date, or how long afterwards that woman left me on the step outside the Charity Hospital. How could I understand what was happening when I was five years old?"

8

It must be hard, thought Philadelphia, to have no identity, only a procession of confused memories with no one to interpret them. However much the evidence pointed her way, it was true that Grace could not actually swear, of her own knowledge, that she was Frances Tabor.