The Gilded Lily (10 page)

No answer. She began to be worried. If Ella wasn’t in, then where was she?

‘Ella?’ she shouted, banging hard on the door.

The door stayed shut.

She did not know what to do.

She had no key to the house, Ella had the only one. So she huddled under the eaves, as much out of the wet as she could, trembling with cold. She caught a whiff of something cooking in the house
next door. It smelt like chicken broth. Her stomach churned from hunger. She had eaten nothing all day.

What if Ella was lost, or kidnapped, or drowned in the river? Sadie’s thoughts began to run on, her imagination painting them into textures so real that she felt faint and had to sit down
on the ground, made weak by what she had visioned in her head. What if Ella was inside the house, but had fallen down the ladder and hurt herself? Sadie jumped up and started hammering on the door
and shouting for all she was worth.

‘Shut your flamin’ racket, for God’s sake.’ Mrs Tardy from the house across the way leaned out of the upstairs window. ‘The babe’s just got off to sleep and I
won’t have him woken.’

‘Have you seen my sister?’

‘Keep your voice down. No. I ain’t seen no one.’ The window smacked shut.

Sadie caved in and let herself sag back down onto the slimy step. Without Ella, London would swallow her up, like the whale did Jonah.

The great Bow bell had struck nine of the clock before Ella hurried into the yard. Like Sadie, she was drenched and shivering. Sadie was so angry she could hardly speak.

‘Get that door open,’ she said, half in tears.

Ella brought out the key and they ducked inside.

‘We’re having a fire, and that’s that,’ said Sadie. Ella sat down, bedraggled. She obviously had not been home since she left Madame Lefevre’s shop.

‘Where on earth have you been?’

‘Shut it. Give us a minute, will you. Get that fire lit.’

Sadie began to break kindling and tear up rags to get a fire going. She did it in a fine fever, half wishing it was Ella’s bones she was breaking.

She swore inwardly. The fire would smoke, for everything was damp and their chimney was just a hole cut into the roof. When it rained the damp seemed to stop the smoke rising. She sighed and
piled on some wood from a broken old crate they had found down at the docks, and then a few hunks of coal.

Her sleeve steamed with the smell of wet flax as she tinkered to get the flame going. Ella looked on, but did nothing to help. Sadie fanned lamely at the smoke with her skirt.

‘The least you could do is find us some supper,’ she said, glaring at Ella.

‘We’ve nothing in. Anyway I’m too tired with tramping after work.’

‘Where’d you go?’

‘I was that shamed. When he tried the wig on and it just sat on top. Feverface tried to force it down to his ears but he made such a face. She went into one of her thin-lipped
rages.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He didn’t get the chance. Madame Lefevre whipped it off his head and started laying into me, the scabby bitch. I don’t know what he must have thought of me. Still, at least
you got to stay put.’

‘It’s not the same without you.’

Ella ignored this and stood up and rummaged in the wall cupboard. She pulled down a paper bag and emptied the last few ounces of oats into a kettle to make a bland porridge. Sadie watched her
stir it half-heartedly. The fire had taken now and was spitting and crackling. Ella looked comely, bending over in the firelight, her hair drying to curls, cheeks pink and flushed with heat.

Sadie wished she looked half so handsome. No matter how much she ate she was always thin as a stick, not rounded and curvy like Ella. And her hair hung straight as pondweed; she guessed
she’d got that from Da.

‘Did you get anything?’ she asked.

‘Nah. I tried the docks and the glassworks. Outside the glassworks I heard tell they were taking on at the bakehouse on Pudding Lane, so I belted over there. When I got there it were like
a riot. No chance. So I’ve been downriver to the gunpowder works, that’s why I were so late back – there wasn’t another ferry till now.’

‘No luck?’

‘No. Come back next week, they said. But I’m not going back there anyroad. It stinks like hell. And there’s explosions every week, a lad was telling me. Someone had his head
blown off.’

‘Oh, Ella.’

‘No, I’ve decided. I’m on the lookout for a housemaid’s place. Like I had before.’

Sadie felt a qualm of unease.

‘Trouble is,’ Ella said, ‘I’ve no reference, so I’ll have to blarney it. D’you want some of this?’

Ella ladled the thin grey porridge into two bowls and they ate silently, gazing into the fire as the embers died down.

‘Will you give us a tale, Ell? Like you used to?’

‘I can’t think of anything.’

‘What about one of the old ones? You know, one of Ma’s – like you used to tell me in bed at home?’

‘You don’t want those old things. Don’t tell me you still want Little Red Cap or Molly Whuppie now.’

‘Oh, go on.’ Sadie leaned forward. ‘Oh, Grandmother, what big eyes you have. All the better to see you, maid.’

Ella smiled despite herself.

‘Oh, Grandmother, what big ears you have,’ Sadie said.

‘All the better to hear you, maid,’ they chorused together.

‘Oh, Grandmother, what big teeth you have.’

‘All the better to eat you up!’ yelled Ella, jumping up and chasing Sadie round the room till she screamed. They fell back to their chairs laughing, the memories tugging at them like
a hand on the sleeve. They sat quiet then, watching the embers in the fire.

‘Do you remember her voice?’

‘No, just her eyes. They were blue.’

‘Grey.’ Ella often snapped when Sadie mentioned their ma. Sadie knew better than to reply. Ella always contradicted her, as if she owned her memory and nobody else was allowed a part
of it. Sadie had been only four when her mother died.

‘What happened to her, Ella?’

‘I told you. There was an accident on the sands with the coach. She drowned. She was trying to save me but the water carried her away.’

‘But how? I’ve never understood it. How did she save you? Every time you tell me, it doesn’t make sense. Tell me properly, Ell.’

‘Leave it be.’

Sadie saw in her mind’s eye a gentleman at the door. He had a row of very shiny buttons on his coat. She wanted those buttons. He was holding a bedraggled and silent Ella by the hand. And
it seemed Ella was pulling her hand to get it away, but the man with the shiny buttons kept a tight grip on it. But it was so long ago and she was never sure if she recalled it straight or whether
it was just imagination. But one thing she was sure of – her father’s stricken face. It was like he was a lantern and the light just went out in it.

‘Can you see pictures in the fire, Ell?’

‘I’ve not looked,’ she said. But after a while Ella said she saw gypsy musicians playing fiddle and drum and fine ladies stamping a dance in orange billowing skirts. Sadie
looked into the heart of the coals, but could not find Ella’s dancers. She only saw sunset on the ghylls, high peaks hung with cloud, and the lakes and rushing waterfalls of home.

That night Ella could not sleep, and finally gave up trying. She thought the days of nightmares and being unable to sleep were long gone. Sadie slept exhausted but restless,
one arm flung out of the bed, the one blanket tangling round her thin frame. As Ella looked at her she had never felt so alone in her life. In the bustle of the day she could run away from herself,
but at night there were no welcome distractions, just her and the dark. She lit a candle to push away the shadows flickering in the edges of her thoughts and stood it on the table. She gazed into
the blue heart of the flame, shivered and turned to look behind. Even though she had thought she would feel safe in London, she could not help but always look back over her shoulder.

She had walked home from the gunpowder works and that was why she was so late home. She had made the journey there by boat, but it had made her queasy to be atop such a body of water, when you
did not know how deep it was or what lay beneath. She could not bear to be near water after dark.

She hated the sound of it; it carried the memories, no matter how she quashed them. She had never told Sadie the truth – what was the use? No truth would bring Ma back; better for Sadie to
believe Ma had done something to make her proud. Better to imagine a glorious heroic death. Sometimes the truth was just too much to bear.

The sound of the water lapped at her thoughts as she watched the flicker of the candle eddy round the walls. She was seven years old again. She absentmindedly balled her hem in her hand and
crushed it, just the way she had as a little girl, standing on the shore all those years ago. She remembered covering her ears to the screams of the horses as the carriage overturned and they
thrashed in their traces, spraying up salt water and wet sand. She remembered she was winded and it was a moment before she rolled over. The fine ladies sprawled on the ground, their skirts blowing
and billowing, showing the tops of their stockings. One by one they sat up, rubbing at their backs, the gentlemen rushing to help. Ma’s mistress was making a mighty fuss, groaning and
a-carrying on. Ella cast about looking for Ma, but couldn’t see her. A man came over to Ella and bounced her back onto her feet. She began to cry and it was then that she heard her
mother’s voice. ‘Over here, help me.’

The men in their dark suits took a few steps forward but then retreated. They were talking in low voices. All Ella could make out were the words ‘not safe’.

At first she thought her mother was kneeling down, but then saw she was buried in the sand up to her knees. The sand squirmed around her skirts like it was alive.

‘Ma!’ She ran towards her, thinking to join in the game, but cold wet hands grabbed her round the waist and pulled her back. At the same time, her mother shouted, ‘No! Stay
there, pet, stay with the gentleman.’

‘Listen, the bore’s a-coming!’ A woman’s panicky voice. Everything seemed to happen quickly after that.

Mistress shouted, ‘Get the child, there’s no time.’

Someone picked her up under his arms and began to run with her towards the shore. It made her teeth rattle in her head. She had a sideways tilted view of men uncoupling the horses and setting
the ladies atop. They clung round the waists of the men, their bare legs showing as they were forced to ride astride. She began to howl. It was all noise and commotion.

The horses galloped up behind them, the three ladies from the carriage clinging onto the manes, skirts flapping against the bare backs. One of the gentlemen was riding up front.

‘Get up,’ Mistress said to the other man.

‘What about the girl?’ the man said, helping her up. The heavy bunch of keys the mistress always wore at her waist clinked.

‘No room,’ Mistress said, from the back of the horse where there were already two of them astride. ‘Come on, we’ll fetch hands from the village to deal with their
own.’

‘Wait there, maid. We’ll go fetch help.’ She remembered the sound of her own blubbering as he paused, looking at her in consternation as if he wished she would stop. Then he
leapt onto the second horse so there were three riding together and they galloped away.

It was suddenly quiet. The sound of a gull screeched overhead.

Why didn’t her mother come? But she could not. She stayed where she was, her skirts weighed with water. Her face was fixed on Ella. A little way off the carriage lay on its side, sticking
out of the sand, one wheel askew.

There are those who say the bore that comes in from Morecambe Bay can outrun a man, that it moves quick. But Ella knew that to be a lie. That day it crept leisurely as you like, the fingers of
the tide creeping slow up the bare leg of the estuary, filling the undulations until the crests of grey-yellow sand became just grey. Several times she called, but whenever she set foot on the sand
her ma shouted, ‘Get back, by Christ, or I’ll get your da to leather you. Help’s coming.’

So she waited, silent and shivering, the drizzle soaking her hair. When the flat expanse of water was up to her mother’s waist she was like a small rock jutting out of the sea. By that
time she had stopped calling, stopped saying anything at all. Ella waited until the rock was a tiny dot before she began to cry silently at her own helplessness.

Ella felt the hot tears on her face even now, all these years later. She stood as she had then, her hem tight in her fist. Ma’s mistress did not come. Nobody came. She had waited there
until it faded into dark and the wheel of the carriage disappeared and the sea and sky became one black void.

It was the constable who came in the end. ‘It was too late,’ he said. ‘We couldn’t have got to her. The water moves too quick.’

He had to drag her away for even at seven years old she knew that if she gave up waiting then her ma would really be lost. She fought with her fingernails and the metal tips of her clogs, but he
was strong as wire and pulled her down the road till she had no scream left in her. He told her it would be a kindness to her father and to her sister to say Ma had died from hitting her head and
been washed away. Ella had glared at him as he had told them, watched her father’s face drain. She knew it to be another lie, but she had stayed dumb, that way it was bearable.

And now here was Sadie asking for the truth. She dropped her skirt and rubbed at her eyes, took up the candle and shut the shutters against the dark with a slam. In church they talked of the
forgiveness of sins, God help her, but she could not forgive.