The Trespass (35 page)

Very slowly, by the light of the candle, she wrote:

TO THE DEAR

She stopped. She could not imagine who her dear readers were to be. But then she thought of her mother whom she had never known, writing all those years ago and leaving a message for Harriet. And then she wrote firmly, holding on to the ink bottle that was sliding from one end of the table to the other in an alarming manner:

TO THE DEAR READERS OF MY JOURNAL

30 November 1849

I am, on this day of my life, sailing to New Zealand.

TWENTY

The Right Honourable Sir Charles Cooper, MP, persuaded himself that he was travelling to New Zealand on government business. The activities of the New Zealand Company had been troubling Her Majesty’s Government for some time: they now troubled Sir Charles Cooper exceedingly: almost he could say they had kidnapped his daughter. His rage was monumental, and frightening (he seemed sometimes almost to have taken leave of his senses although nobody voiced such an unthinkable sentiment): he blamed everyone in Bryanston Square as well as the New Zealand Company, he also blamed all his relations in Kent for putting ridiculous ideas into his daughter’s head. It could not be kept from the Prime Minister and others that Miss Harriet Cooper had not been kidnapped but had run away; or at the very least had travelled without her father’s knowledge or permission and if that wasn’t running away what was it exactly? Quite simply it was unheard of. So Sir Charles Cooper told everyone (and came to believe it himself) that his daughter’s mind had been temporarily unhinged by the death of her beloved sister: people remembered her, that pale ghost, at the funeral on the hill, nodded, felt much pity for the poor, wifeless father. An even smaller paragraph in
The Times
pronounced that the MP’s daughter (her name was not actually given), much distressed by the death of her sister, had nevertheless been found safe and well.

His younger son, Walter, offered to go and find Harriet. Sir Charles laughed shortly. ‘You would drown on the first week out,’ he said, ‘in a poker school held in steerage.’ His older son, Richard, laughed also. His laugh was like his father’s in the cold, formal dining room, where now only three of them sat for breakfast. Nobody noticed or cared that Quintus no longer appeared.

Walter could not tell his father how frightened he had been, a man of twenty, to have twice now woken in the night, weeping. Harriet’s terrible disappearance had suddenly shown Walter how much he missed Mary, how he had not grieved for the death of the sister who had mothered him. And now it seemed both sisters were lost to him and he was marooned in this world of indecipherable businessmen. How could he explain these things to this suddenly wilder, older man that was his father?

‘I wish you would let me go, sir,’ he repeated doggedly. ‘I should like to find Harriet. I should like to look after her, so far away from home. I don’t like to think of her alone.’

Sir Charles strode without answering from the dining room and into the privacy of his study. It was
he
who would find Harriet.
He
who would look after her.
And when he found her he would punish her:
there was no question that she must be punished; he had lost face and she would be punished for it. He would beat her. Alone in his study he held his head in his hands and went over it again.
He would take her perfect feet in his hands. And then he would beat her. He could see her. He alone would administer the punishment, a special kind of punishment, and she would beg him to stop, and beg him for more, and he would tame her at last and she would offer him her breast as she had once before.
Every time he conjured her beautiful, closed face he almost groaned aloud. Every time he remembered the night she had held her breast for him his heart, his head, all his being gave a wild, wild leap. When he found her – and he never for a moment doubted that he would find her – he would never let her out of his sight again: he could not live without her. She was his daughter: she belonged to him.

*   *   *

The Prime Minister agreed: a reliable person should look at New Zealand. It was arranged that Sir Charles would leave as soon as a passage could be arranged. All information that the New Zealand Company held on his nephew Edward Cooper’s land purchases and his daughter Harriet’s travel arrangements was of course made over to him. He puzzled over how she had paid for her fare, and how she was planning to live: he did not believe she was in love with her short, fat cousin, he had observed her so carefully and the only person he had ever worried about was Lord Ralph Kingdom who was obviously a problem no longer since he remained in England; the servants said he had called. Sir Charles hoped he would not call again. He acquired some immediate facts about New Zealand. He enquired as to the number of people in the whole country: it was infinitesimal. He enquired as to the number of people in Wellington where Edward had bought his land: they told him 4,381 at the last census and he laughed. She would no doubt try to find Edward; Sir Charles himself would be able to find Edward within an hour of disembarkation.

He would punish her (again the visions came) and then he would bring her home. But one thing she had forfeited: her right to freedom. He alone, from the moment he found her, would hold the key. Peters would accompany him: between the two of them she need never be alone again. From Doctor Adams he obtained, without question, a large amount of laudanum. She may need to be calmed. They would be back with Harriet by the end of the summer.

There would not be an election until the winter at least and the Right Honourable Sir Charles Cooper, MP, leaving Peters to deal with the final arrangements, went back to Norfolk with various inducements that would make sure that his seat was absolutely safe. All was under control.

Only in his deepest, unconscious dreams did Charles Cooper recall how Harriet had looked at him the morning he left for Norfolk: that last wild look. And then all at Bryanston Square in the watches of the night heard a terrible cry, as if a man visited hell and could not forget what was shown to him there.

*   *   *

Lucy the maid stole Quintus the dog.

She did not mean to; she didn’t want a dog, she couldn’t feed herself, let alone a dog. Once again she had been forcibly removed from Bryanston Square, without a position, without the wages due to her, without a reference, with blisters on her heels from hurrying from Spitalfields just to apprise Sir Charles Cooper of the whereabouts of his daughter.

She sat on the steps in the mews behind Bryanston Square on the grey, cold November day. She had managed to sleep in the kitchen for three nights in all the turmoil of the household; had heard with relief that Harriet had got away, felt shame at her own perfidy. But Peters had found she was still there. Cook had quickly given her a small parcel of food and some stockings: she knew Lucy had been badly treated, but there was nothing to be done; all their places were uncertain now. Peters rampaged about the house in a rage mimicking his master’s: Peters was to go on a long sea journey, and Peters was afraid of the sea.

‘Get out! Get out!’ he shouted to Lucy. ‘And never come back. You’re an Anathema in this house.’ Lucy presumed that was a new swearword.

In the mews she did not cry (Lucy never cried). Instead she fumed and fulminated at the unfairness of life and ate a cold chop. She licked her fingers, getting the last traces of meat, not knowing when she might see meat again. That position in Bryanston Square had been meant to change her life.

Although Lucy looked so young she had actually turned fourteen. Lucy’s eldest sister had disappeared when she was fourteen. They heard she’d been seen parading in the Haymarket where some of the young girls had luck: Lucy’s sister had not had luck. She had come back to Spitalfields with big scabs and a big belly: her father had kicked her in the belly. Lucy never forgot that day. The vicar’s wife had spoken to Lucy at her sister’s pathetic funeral, Lucy had thereafter, aged twelve, trained in the vicar’s house and a girl never tried so hard: she was the best, hardest-working maid the vicar’s wife had ever had, and the vicar’s wife had taught her to read. At last, like a gift from the Lord, she had been chosen for Bryanston Square, chosen by Sir Charles Cooper on the recommendation of the vicar. What would Sir Charles say to the vicar now?

It was starting to rain. She supposed she must go back to Spitalfields. Lucy was otherwise on the streets. Like her sister.

She got up and started walking. It was then that she saw Quintus. He lay mournfully beside the stables, his face on his paws. He raised his eyes to Lucy, recognised her, the one who sang to him; he gave an almost imperceptible wag of his tail to show Lucy that he remembered.

‘Hello, Quintus,’ said Lucy, equally mournful, and she stopped for a moment in the rain and threw him her chop bone. He tried to be pleased but his eyes stared at hers, great pools of unhappiness: his owners had gone away and left him and he did not know what he had done.

Lucy talked to him. ‘Well you might feel cheated, but not as cheated as me. I did my work best as I could, but I lost my position. I suppose I should blame Miss Harriet but she was just a sad thing, wasn’t she, dog? In all the time I worked for her I never saw her smile, that’s a funny way to live your life for a start. And in a way she should blame me because I told her father she’d run away. But I need a reference that bad, ’cos I’ve got to work. And she got away. And I’m glad, because—’ and here Lucy cast a glance back at the door of the house but it was deserted. ‘Because—’ but then a groom came out of the stables. He saw Lucy but hardly saluted her: since Sir Charles had ridden so wildly off to Falmouth nobody’s position was safe; he walked with hunched, angry shoulders to the servants’ entrance.

‘Because—’ Lucy was absolutely determined to finish her sentence so she found herself crouching down beside Quintus in the rain. ‘I think—’ (and she whispered her suspicions about Sir Charles Cooper into Quintus’s ear). And then having unburdened herself of unpleasant thoughts she patted him in a desultory manner before she got up again.

So that when she started off on her long journey home Quintus stirred himself and followed her. She was the first person to talk to him since Harriet had gone. Perhaps she would know something.

At first Lucy, so deep in her own problems, didn’t notice; then she told Quintus to go back; then she thought,
why should I care?
and talked to him all the way down Oxford Street about the unfairness of life: a short fourteen-year-old girl with only a thin shawl, limping from her blisters and talking to a dog.

The girl and the dog wandered through Covent Garden ignoring the harsh cries of the costermongers and the sad faces of the flower-sellers; Quintus snuffed at old vegetables and fish bones, someone kicked him and Quintus yelped and Lucy shouted in high dudgeon. She stared again at St Paul’s Church, thought again of her mistress planning her escape.
I’d like her to know how her scheming fell back on me,
but try as she would she couldn’t really work up an anger towards Miss Harriet, she would just like her to know the trouble she had caused.
She could’ve taken me,
thought Lucy wistfully,
I would have helped her, and not told a soul. Fancy crossing the world and getting away from here,
and she kicked in despair at the cobblestones.

And then, just off Trafalgar Square, a notice caught her eye on the door of a house; slowly and carefully she read it aloud.

FEMALES IN SERVICE

REQUIRED FOR EMIGRATION.

ENQUIRE WITHIN.

‘Wait there,’ said Lucy to Quintus.

*   *   *

Lord Ralph Kingdom became moody and distant, his dark eyes smouldered. He had even taken to occasionally haunting cab ranks near Bryanston Square in the hope of seeing Cecil, but the rascally-looking driver in the waistcoat and the squashed top hat was nowhere to be seen.

Sir Benjamin Kingdom became very silent and thoughtful also, spent a great deal of his time alone in his house or walking around the Regent’s Park. For he clearly understood at last, without knowing why, that a plan was forming in his mind; that this was what the knocking at his heart had been saying,
this
was the decision he must make: it was the action he had somehow foreseen. He tried to laugh at himself again: this was indeed an extreme excuse to see again a beautiful woman! this was indeed an extreme justification to travel the world! At last he went back to Kent to visit the man he admired most in the world, Charles Darwin, who was ill in bed but who seemed pleased to see him.

Sir Benjamin Kingdom had been one of a group of privileged men who had been made privy, at a private meeting, to Charles Darwin’s explosive thoughts on the origins of the human species: the devastating, painfully correlated information that Darwin was still working on was to be presented finally in a book; the lives of all who had listened to him and knew what the book would contain were subtly changed.

Benjamin enquired concernedly about the other man’s well-being. Charles Darwin was often ill: it was thought by doctors that he had perhaps contracted some tropical ailment while on his long voyage on the
Beagle.
It occurred to Benjamin, not for the first time, that somewhere in this extraordinary man’s being was an understanding that the place his meticulous studies was leading him to would bring the world crashing about him; that sometimes his spirit crumbled under the weight of what he was going to say about the world, for it could only lead to one conclusion: that religion was a fraud.

Benjamin engaged Darwin’s interest with his talk of the fabulous flightless bird, the New Zealand
moa;
both men knew of the large, shambling extraordinary bird, maybe ten foot high, that was said to have looked a little like an enormous ostrich. It was said that it could not fly but it could run like the wind. And it had been found nowhere else in the world.

‘They say it is long extinct,’ said Ben expressionlessly.