Tattycoram (7 page)

“Is Charley all right?” she whispered.

“Charley is fine, ma'am. He's down in the kitchen with Cook and me, in the warm.”

“But not too near the stove! He could burn himself on the stove!”

“It's all right. We tied him to the table leg with a bit of clothesline. He can move about, but he can't get near the stove.”

“Hattie, thank you . . . bless you . . . you are such a help to me.”

And then her face twisted with pain and she cried out.

Her torment went on for hours and hours. We could hear her screams all the way down to the bottom of the house. Mrs. Dickens Senior had sent for the doctor; the baby was stuck.

“Is she going to die?”

“Of course not, you silly goose. We all 'ave to bring forth in sorry, the Bible tells us so.”

“But you heard her, the baby is stuck!”

“Doctor will turn it.”

Mr. Dickens, once the pain began, had called for his horse and ridden off to Richmond with his friend Mr. Forster.

Charley had had his supper by now and had fallen asleep on my lap. I didn't dare move him, so I carefully brought out my tatting shuttle and thread and began some new edging. I had
made some lovely nightgowns for the new baby, but now I was working on a collar and cuffs for my mother. Cook had served us both with some cold meat, bread and pickle, and now she helped herself to a tot of port.

The screams stopped.

“She's dead,” I said, “I knew it.”

“Nonsense. Wait and see.”

After a while Mr. Dickens's mother came smiling into the kitchen with a bundle of bloody sheets. She saw her sleeping grandson and whispered, “It's a wee girl. Now they have a pigeon pair.” She asked Cook to warm some beef tea.

“It was a hard one, that?”

“Very hard. She tore. But she's all smiles now.”

“Yes, we soon forgets the pain, that's Nature's way. Otherwise nobody'd ever 'ave a second one.” They smiled at one another and nodded.

Cook said she knew a cousin whose baby was stuck so bad and they pulled so hard that its little leg came off in the midwife's hands.

Mrs. Dickens put the bloody sheets to soak in cold water, then asked me to carry Charley upstairs and sit by him until called. I was dripping with sweat and feeling faint. So that was what it was like to bear a child — “The baby was stuck”; “She tore”; “Its little leg came off in the midwife's 'ands.” Screams and bloody sheets. I would never let that happen to me.

The front door slammed and Mr. Dickens went pounding up the stairs; he had met the doctor on his way home. I heard his mother come out of the bedroom. “Hush, hush, they are both asleep.”

Later, Cook and I were invited to see the new baby. My mistress was still pale, but she had a glow on her and looked
very young and happy. The baby was in a cradle by the bed. I had seen hundreds of little babies at the Foundling, for I was one of the trusted big girls who stood with babies in their arms while the chaplain sprinkled them with water and gave them new names. “In the name of the Father . . .”

This was different. Mr. Dickens was sitting close up to the bed, holding his wife's hand, beaming.

“She is to be called Mary,” he said, “after the dearest, sweetest girl who ever lived.” I thought this remark a bit peculiar, given the hell my mistress had just been through, but she smiled and nodded.

“Yes, after Mary, but I think we shall call her Mamie amongst ourselves.”

The baby was just another baby, red-faced and wrinkled. What brought tears to my eyes was the sight of the happy family: father, mother, newborn
wanted
child.

We offered our congratulations and stole away.

By the new year she was pregnant again.

“Writing to your sweetheart, Coram?”

Miss Georgina often appeared in the kitchen without warning, hoping to catch us stuffing our faces with forbidden foods or entertaining riffraff. It drove Cook wild.

“I am writing to my mother,” I said, without looking up.

“Your
mother
?”

“My foster mother, then.”

“What a good girl you are, the very model of a foster daughter.”

Miss Georgina had come down to ask Cook, as a special request from Mrs. Dickens, if she could make a Madeira cake and some flapjack because the family were coming to tea. Cook scowled, but of course she would do it.

At the door Miss Georgy turned and addressed me once more.

“Oh, Coram, can your foster mother read?”

“Of course she can,” I lied. “Why?” (Count to two and twenty, count to two and twenty, one, two, three, four . . .)

“I'm rather surprised, that's all. How long has it been since you saw her?”

“Over a year, but I shall see her soon.”

“How so?”

“I'm to go home for a few days around Easter.”

“My goodness! Kate — your mistress — can let you go when there is so much to do here?”

Cook stopped on her way to the larder.

“Mrs. Hogarth — your mother — will be coming to visit for a few days. It's all arranged, Miss Georgina.”

“Is it now? I have not heard of it. And Mrs. Hogarth is not a nursemaid. How typical of soft-hearted, soft-headed Kate!”

Cook spoke up for me.

“It's in the contract, Miss Georgy. The girl gets three days off each year to go and see her mother.”

“Well, you are a lucky girl. I shouldn't think many servant girls have such agreements with their employers.”

Smirk, smirk and she was gone.

“I'll flapjack 'er,” Cook said. “The sooner she's growed up and married off and 'as a 'ousehold of 'er own to manage, the better for everybody.”

“She's never going to marry. I heard her say that to Madam.”

“That's unnatcherl. She'll change 'er mind when she's a little older.”

“Why does she dislike me so?”

“Well, I don't think it's because of your curly hair. I thinks it's because Master likes you. I thinks it's because
she'd
like to be living 'ere.”

I folded my letter and prepared to go back upstairs to the nursery. Charley was with his mother, being specially dressed up for his relatives in a new little sailor suit. The baby was asleep.

“Mrs. Rogers,” I said (I never called her Cook to her face), “when the time comes, would you teach me how to make a simnel cake? I've been saving for the spices and such. Mrs. Dickens suggested I should take one to my mother when I go.”

Cook looked up from where she was cracking eggs one-handed into a big bowl.

“Of course, love. I'll 'elp yer make the best cake you've never seen.”

In the end, Mrs. Dickens said she wanted to help as well. And oh, what fun we had, with Cook's big aprons tied around our middles, our arms dusty with flour. Carefully we measured out the cloves, the cinnamon, the currants and sultanas. Carefully we whisked together the eggs, sugar and butter. Oh so carefully we poured half the mixture into the tin, laid a circle of marzipan on the top, added the remaining batter.

“If you make a shallow well in the centre, Hattie, your cake will rise evenly.”

As we waited for the cake to bake, Mrs. Dickens sat down at the big kitchen table, just as though she were one of us, drank a cup of tea from a kitchen mug and helped herself to the tarts Cook had baked that morning.

“I shouldn't,” she said. “I'll get thick in the waist.”

There was the lovely smell of cake and the sound of rain falling outside the kitchen window. Mrs. Hogarth had come early to supervise in the nursery, and Mr. Dickens and Fred had gone out on some family business. The three of us sat together in a little island of peace.

“What is she like, Hattie, your foster mother?”

“Small,” I said, smiling. “I am now much taller than she is. She has grey hair, although she is still not old, and freckled skin. When we were little and grew restless, she would sit us down and ask us to try and count the freckles on one arm. Since we could never count beyond ten, we would have to begin all over again.”

“We?”

“Her son Jonnie, ma'am, my foster brother. And then there was an older brother as well, Samuel.”

I was still smiling as I said this, but the tears stood in my eyes as I thought of Sam and Jonnie.

She laid her hand upon my arm.

“Mr. Brownlow told Mr. Dickens something of your brothers' history. I'm sorry, I had forgotten. Perhaps it will all come right in the end.”

“Perhaps.”

“You were very happy there?”

I nodded. “Very.”

When the cake was done, tested with a straw and declared to be perfect — the whole kitchen full of its fragrance — we put it in the larder to cool, and Mrs. Dickens and I went up to relieve her mother of the children. Miss Georgina was coming to tea, alas, but since her mother would be there, and her older sister Helen, I did not expect any pert remarks when I brought the children down to the parlour. I was to leave the next morning for Shere, and what with the lovely interlude of cake-baking and the thought of my coming journey, I was in the happiest of moods.

Charley, at fourteen months, was a wriggler and hated being confined in fussy clothes. He would lie on his face on the nursery rug and refuse to sit up. It was all a game, really, and I had learned that if I ignored him and started to dress Mamie, muttering, “Oh dear, what a pity Charley isn't going down, and there are butter tarts for tea,” he soon came round. Mamie was different right from the start — a smiler. You could do anything with Mamie.

Charley did not want to hold on to me as we went downstairs, but the stairs were steep and I insisted, muttering, “Oh
dear, oh dear, butter tarts and jam sponge,” and refusing to go on until he did as he was told.

Miss Georgina had arrived; I could hear her voice as we descended the last flight.

“You spoil her!”

My mistress's voice was low, so I could not hear her reply.

Then Miss Georgy again: “She is a
servant
, Kate. You have no notion of how to treat servants.”

My mistress laughed. I knocked and brought the children in just as she said, “Well, you'll have some of your own one day, and then you can play the lady.”

Charley headed straight for his mother and claimed her lap so there would be no room for Baby. I went over and, placing Mamie on the sofa, whispered in Charley's ear, “Oh dear, oh dear, butter tarts and jam sponge,” whereupon he promptly got down and went over to his grandmother.

“What a nice big brother you are,” Mrs. Hogarth exclaimed, and I left the children to the adoring women, after making sure that the tea trolley was set up and all that was needed was boiling water.

While the kettle boiled in the kitchen, I wrapped the cake in parchment paper and then again in heavy brown paper, ready for the morning.

Mothering Sunday being the fourth Sunday in Lent, Mr. Dickens said he had discussed it with his wife and they both thought I should be given the Monday off as well, so that I could have my three full days away, arriving back in London on the Tuesday evening.

I rose very early the next morning and tiptoed down the stairs to the kitchen in my stockinged feet, having left my shoes and my outer things on a chair there the night before. I quietly
made up the fire, removed the cake from the larder and put it in my basket. My mistress had given me a lovely broad blue ribbon to tie around it once I got home. Cook, who came out of her closet just as I was leaving, handed me a packet of bread and cheese, an onion and a stone bottle of ale. She warned me not to talk to strange men. I was so happy I kissed her, which surprised us both.

I walked through the quiet London streets, still shining from yesterday's rain, and over the bridge to take the coach to Guildford. After that I would walk the six miles home. Because it was Sunday, there was not much traffic and we made good time. The coachman set me down just outside Guildford and pointed me east towards Shere. Mr. Dickens, who was a great walker himself, had consulted a gazetteer and drawn me a little map so I should not get lost. He advised me not to tell “the ladies” I intended to walk part of the way — “You know how ladies are.” He also gave me fourpence to stop at a public house, should I become thirsty on my travels.

The March sun was warm, not hot, just right for walking, and I disturbed no one as I walked along, smelling the sweet smell of the ploughed fields after rain. During my long years in London, I had forgotten what country air smelled like, and I breathed deeply as I walked along, drinking it in like cool water. And country scenes: young lambs in a meadow, a hare sitting up in a field, an old white horse which trotted slowly up to greet me over a fence. As I walked, I was accompanied by the piping and the warbling of a blackbird. The road was not straight but curved along below the rounded hills of the North Downs, and I felt as though London were a hundred miles away, not less than thirty.

There were times when I seemed to feel the presence of
someone beside me, a small girl in a faded blue dress, tugging impatiently at my shawl, enticing me to throw down my basket, rid myself of my shoes and come running across the fields with her to see what we could see. And oh, it was tempting, but I was a grown-up now, or nearly, with a situation and responsibilities; that little ghost-girl was no more than a dream of long ago.

Two tramps raised what was left of their hats to me, but they did not bother me or ask for money. However, I went on a bit before I spread my shawl on a dampish rock and stopped to eat my breakfast. I knew I should probably share — that would be the Christian thing to do — but I wanted to be alone, I was so enjoying my solitude. I thought to myself, “At this moment no one knows exactly where I am. No bells will ring save church bells, and should I meet any little children, they will be someone else's.”

After my meal, I did not have too far to walk before I rounded a corner and I was there. Past the Lodge and a new, handsome house nearby, past the Pound House and the cottage next to it . . . nearly running now . . . down Rectory Lane and across the stream at the ford (oh blessed, blessed music of that fast-flowing water) and into Lower Street, where our small cottage stood.