The Linnet Bird: A Novel (23 page)

W
HEN
M
RS.
S
MALLPIECE
finally felt I could be trusted not to embarrass her in public, she took me to church. Like Shaker, she introduced me as the daughter of her husband’s brother—her niece—although the first time she did it, standing outside the church doors on a cold Sunday in December, I felt her arm trembling against mine through our thick woolen jackets. Whether her trembling was caused by anger at me for putting her in this position or simply because she knew she was sinning, I don’t know. But to a woman like Mrs. Smallpiece, surely the sin of telling that lie—that I was a proper young woman, related through marriage—would, I’m sure, be less of a sin than having to admit that she was harboring a whore.

The minister, Mr. Lockie, who sported bushy, tangled gray eyebrows and had a nearsighted squint, also gripped my hand with an unnerving fervor as he welcomed me into his flock that morning after the service. After being introduced by Mrs. Smallpiece he studied my face intently. In all fairness, the intenseness may have been a condition of the squint. But I did indeed read something in his face, something similar to the expression Mrs. Smallpiece often wore when she looked at me—the hope of salvation through conversion that the Methodists so embraced. Did he pick up on my distasteful past and, like Mrs. Smallpiece, thrill at the possibility of saving an obviously needy soul?

The first social call she invited me on, first sternly reminding me that a blunder on my part could literally ruin her reputation, was to the home of her friend Mrs. Applegate. It was mid-December, with air so cold we could see our breath as we walked briskly to Mrs. Applegate’s house a few streets over. After we were ushered into a parlor overheated by a roaring fire and the tightly packed bodies of a number of seated elderly ladies, I was introduced by Mrs. Applegate as Mrs. Smallpiece’s “poor niece.” Once the hostess had directed us to our seats, Mrs. Smallpiece nodded, almost imperceptibly, at my hands, reminding me I was to remove my gloves since tea was being served. She lost no time in making it abundantly clear that I had lived a sheltered life as my father’s nursemaid in Morecambe, away from the company of others, and was unaccustomed to much socializing. “So please forgive her if she’s slightly lacking in the convivial graces we pride ourselves on,” she added, her neck rigid.

I accepted a small mince tart from the silver tray held in front of me by a young parlormaid smelling of perspiration, and deposited it on the decorated plate I held stiffly in my other hand. My mouth was too dry to eat; I knew I would choke should I attempt to take a bite of the delicacy.

The other women nodded sympathetically, having no problem eating tart after tart and drinking many cups of tea. One short woman with a nasty growth over her eyebrow shook her head sadly at Mrs. Smallpiece, as if she knew all too well the trial her friend was going through, attempting to cope with a young woman as feeble and dull-witted as Mrs. Smallpiece tried to make me appear.

Although my whole body burned with shame—for these pious, well-meaning women to think I was such a backward dolt—and also with anger toward Mrs. Smallpiece, I knew it would do me no good to take a stand and prove her wrong. So I lowered my head, studying the frilled edges of the tart. If I were to stay in Everton for at least a while, as had been my choice, instead of going back to the rough freedom of Paradise, I knew I had to fight my own instincts, to remain quiet and adopt a simpering smile. As I sat there, to calm and amuse myself I tried to imagine the expessions of shock and horror that would flood these women’s faces if they could see the images that still burned so brightly in the front of my own brain, the ones of me with my customers, on my back or knees. For all their airs and graces, I knew that I surpassed these women in knowing more about life and the nature of men and women than they could ever, ever even begin to suspect.

And yet in spite of the silent games I played to survive these events, my head still pounded frequently with the effort of it, and the lump inside my cheek grew from the endless gnawing. I saw, in the gilt mirror in the room I shared with Mrs. Smallpiece, that a new line had appeared between my eyebrows.

T
HE COPY OF
The Proper Young Lady
grew tattered. I had most of it memorized after a few months. How tedious it all was: etiquette for the parlor, etiquette for social calls, etiquette for meeting acquaintances on the street, etiquette for introductions—there appeared to be no end to the rules and expectations. At times my head swam with trying to keep it all straight—when to remove one’s bonnet and when to keep it on, likewise for gloves; never stooping to retrieve something that had dropped but waiting for a person of lesser standing to pick it up and return it; and especially—oh, especially, Mrs. Smallpiece warned me—the strict rules for dining.

“There is nothing so indicative of good breeding as manners at the table,” she told me. “A lady may dress with style and carry herself on the street with dignity, and may sustain a decent conversation, but if she is not perfect at the table, dinner will betray her. While your manners—although where you learned them I’m sure I don’t know—are passable, they are definitely lacking in finesse.”

Although wearisome, the lessons were simple things to learn when taken in small doses, and it pleased Mrs. Smallpiece that I responded favorably. As the months passed and I showed her that I was willing to follow her demands, she found less and less reason to berate me. Now and again I witnessed a small, tight smile cross her thin lips when I took over for her, pouring the tea and passing the sugar and cakes to callers on Saturday afternoons, or reading aloud to her in a pleasant voice from
A Family Shakespeare
—the only other book she was interested in besides her Bible. The book, the complete works of Shakespeare, had, by author Thomas Bowdler, been rewritten with all passages considered improper removed, so there was no fear of encountering any immorality.

Mrs. Smallpiece also took pleasure in watching me work on tiny, delicate stitches to decorate lawn handkerchiefs as we sat before the fire of an evening. In my hands, damp with the effort of this unfamiliar work, the fabric grew wrinkled and limp, sometimes dotted with tiny pinpricks of blood as the needle stabbed my thumb instead of the handkerchief. And although I found the work numbingly boring, it afforded me a kind of quiet, rhythmic monotony that allowed my mind to wander to places far from Everton.

Mrs. Smallpiece mistook my bent head as obedience; she thought she was converting me, and there is no one more sanctimonious than one who believes she has turned a sinner into a saint.

O
VER THIS TIME
Shaker viewed me as neither sinner nor saint, or perhaps as a little of both.

Not only did he never call me to his bed, he treated me with an oddly courteous respect. I knew he watched me when he thought I wasn’t looking, and I could tell, from the startled embarrassment on his face and his sudden turning away, that at times he grew aroused being near me. But he never acted in any way but as a perfect gentleman, and although I suspected that his affection for me was growing, I also knew that I didn’t know how to feel anything for a man. I knew men in one dimension, men like Ram Munt and Mr. Jacobs and the unspeakable man in the house on Rodney Street. It was a long and seemingly endless line of men, all alike. I knew Shaker wasn’t like them in spirit, but still, I couldn’t feel anything for him except a clumsy gratitude.

I had immediately loved my job at the library, surrounded by books, and felt a definite thread of connection between my life as a child, near my mother at the bookbinders, and the life here. Thoughts of my mother came to me often now, along with the comfort of clean paper, the smell of ink, the order of one page after another: it created a deeply soothing quality. I knew she would have been proud of my work. But this life, no matter how I looked at it, was a lie, a posturing and deception. I did not wear the pendant.

I sat hidden behind a high screen at a desk with my quill and ink and pile of books and recording cards all day, light streaming in from a small window on the wall behind me. I wasn’t to come out into the public area while there were members about, Mr. Ebbington informed me, but as part of the position I would be allowed, like Shaker, to sign out books as if I were a member, once the library was closed for the day.

I waited for the closing of the library with anticipation every evening. The Argand lights on the polished and gleaming reading tables would be lit, sending soft shadows onto the graceful domed and pillared interior. There were scientific instruments and maps on display, as well as elegant long-case clocks and mahogany barometers. Under glass sat display books with their gold and silver clasps, their precious and valuable bindings in velvet and silk. The library collections, purchased or donated by its members, were wide ranging. I would wander through the sections—History, Voyages and Travel, Sciences, Government, Jurisprudence, Theology, and the largest section, Polite Literature—under which encyclopedias, heraldry, topography, poetry, drama, philosophical works, and novels and tales could be found. I paused among those quiet shelves and held books in my hands, inspecting their mottled or gilded edges, and ran my fingers over their covers. I inwardly rejoiced at the sensation of them, the cotton cloth with their ornamental characters, the embossed books with their patterns in relief, like cameos, and my fingers lingered especially on the costly and elaborate varieties of russian, moroccan, and calf bindings.

Every week both Shaker and I chose three books to take home with us. While Shaker knew exactly what he wanted, searching out specifically those books dealing with medical science—although he also professed an interest in history—my decision always took much longer. Shaker would wait, reading one of his books, always patient, while I roamed the aisles. At first he had recommended books for me, pointing out volumes of poetry or drama or some of the gothic tales he had once read and thought I might enjoy. But I had spent a long time reading Polite Literature. Now I wanted books that would teach me ever more about the world and its people. I found I was especially intrigued with tales from the Voyages and Travel section.

“Do you not ever dream of taking a voyage, Shaker?” I asked one evening, laying a book I’d chosen—Boswell’s
Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
—on the library table. “There is such a huge world beyond ours here.”

He nodded. “I often thought of adventure when I was younger,” he admitted. “When my father was alive we would discuss all manner of the world, its many lands and inhabitants. He did encourage me to see more, and before his death I spent one summer in Paris at his urging. I was a little younger than you are now, and journeyed with two other lads.”