Amy Snow (7 page)

This was of an altogether different order. My only friendship had been threatened—ended, I believed. And because of me, however unwitting, Cook was in a deal of trouble.

She had always done her best for me, and now she had been humiliated in front of the kitchen maids, who stood gawping at the drama. Her place was in jeopardy, Lady Vennaway raged. I did not know exactly where Jeopardy was, but I knew it to be highly undesirable, like Bedlam or Prison. I did not want Cook to be sent away to Jeopardy because of me.

I thought for a long time that night. I had never thought so much before. I had merely taken the days as they came and accepted the circumstances of my life as they appeared before me. I had seen the strictures regarding where I could and could not go as arbitrary rules from the adult world. Adults liked rules, I knew, and I would not begrudge them their foolish pleasures. My first meeting with the mistress had been deeply shocking and horrible to think about—so I had ceased thinking about it and the problem had been solved.

But now I understood that what Cook had been telling me all along was true: the world was such that Aurelia and I could not be friends, and if we did not take care, people would suffer.

Long after I had gone to bed, Cook came in to see me. She sat on the foot of my little bed and it tipped a little southwards.

“Is everything cleared away now?” I asked, for there had been a dinner, with eight courses and many wines.

“Yes, everything's done.”

“Did you finish the batter?” I asked, for fresh cakes were required tomorrow.

“All ready to bake in the morning. The reverend's coming so I'm doing a lemon pudding as well as the fig and raisin.”

I knew how nicely the kitchen would smell next morning.

“Do you understand, now?” she asked me, and I knew she was not referring to the cake.

“I do,” I sniffed. “I'm sorry, Cookie. I did not mean for you to be turned upon. You kept telling us and we would not listen.”

She nodded and passed a rough hand over my hair.

Encouraged, I continued. “Lady Vennaway is a horrible, horrible woman, is she not, Cookie?”

Cook hesitated. “Everyone has their own story, even those we find the hardest. Best to accept things the way they are and count your blessings. After all, Amy, you're luckier than many and shorter than most.” It was a jest often voiced amongst my companions, on account of my small size.

I nodded and smiled but as I did so I knew it would be hard. That afternoon, buried beneath the shock, I had felt anger, like a little hard seed waiting to sprout.

“I don't want you go to that horrible place,” I told Cook as she got to her feet and my bed rocked back to the horizontal.

She paused, puzzled. “What place?”

“Jeopardy. Mistress said your place was there but it
isn't
, it's here with us!”

Cook was too weary to correct my misapprehension, but she told me what I needed to hear. “A fine cook is a hard thing to find. One who can cope with a house like Hatville rarer still. As for one who can tolerate her ladyship, well, there's probably only one such in all of England. So don't you worry now, I'm going nowhere, except up four flights of stairs to my bed. Mistress knows which side her bread is buttered.”

I was unsure why the mistress should concern herself with buttering bread at all when she could have cakes baked fresh to her command, but I promised myself that I would mind Cook better henceforth. She was all I had now. After the dreadful things that Lady Vennaway had said to her daughter, I knew that I would never see Aurelia again. The thought was almost too terrible to bear.

Then morning came, and with it the warm, sweet fragrance of baking. And Aurelia, radiant in the doorway.

“Come on, Amy, it's a beautiful day! There is dew on the cobwebs and rainbows in the dew, and the world is altogether as it should be. Let's go outside!”

What a wonder to see the countryside of Surrey through the window of a train! What an experience to be carried, jolting and swaying, past fields and streams and woods and cottages. What a marvel to see it fly past so swiftly!

What is there that is not remarkable about the railway? From its rapid growth to its staggering speeds—
thirty miles per hour
, I am told, in some places!—to its pounding and steaming and gleaming . . . all quite, quite extraordinary. Yet the
most
remarkable feature of the railway, to my mind, must surely be its passengers.

I share a carriage with a couple in their middle years, Mr. and Mrs. Begley. They introduce themselves as they squeeze in with a goodly number of cases between them and sit just opposite me. I believe Tom would have approved them as conversational partners for me, but in truth I have no choice in the matter—Mrs. Begley has not drawn breath since Ladywell.

“Oh, my Lord!” she exclaims, fanning herself with a limp hand. “What a trial, what an exertion, this railway nonsense. Look at me, I am shaking!” She holds out a hand, mere inches from my chin, which I inspect with interest. It
is
shaking.

“Miss Snow,” interjects her husband, “Charlotte, the railway is a marvelous system! Look how comfortable we sit! Providing we bring our traveling cushions with us, of course. Look how neatly stacked our luggage! Unless it is shaken loose. Look at the proliferation of stations and routes and destinations! Why, with such a system as this, any mischance must perforce serve only as a pleasant diversion!”

“Not at
all
, William! When you think of the accidents, the explosions, the overturnings of which one reads
every
day in the papers! Terrifying, Miss Snow, quite terrifying.”

My companions keep up their heated conversation all the way to the very outskirts of London. It is clear that debate is an expression of affection between them and I welcome the distraction from my thoughts. Fond memories of Aurelia are with me at every moment but so, I am shocked to realize, are old resentments, long-buried.

It is the sight of those old letters this morning that has drawn them from the recesses of my mind. I had been pleased to forget our earlier, temporary separation, long before Aurelia's passing, when I believed myself forgotten by her. Then, I blamed Mrs. Bolton for taking her away from me. I was wrong to do so, for Aurelia was most determined to go. Then, as now, she asked me to trust her—yet I had to endure at Hatville without her for far too long. I think it was too much to ask of one so young. Together with my fear about arriving alone in the great city of London, such ruminations on the past are far from comforting. Perhaps this is too much to ask of me, too.

As we pass through the pleasant village of Dulwich, Mrs. Begley tells me their plans. They are to stay with their married son in Pentonville. His wife is expecting their first child. He works as a senior clerk in a large bank and likes it so very well that he cannot think why everyone is not a bank clerk.

I think of all I have read of murders and pickpockets and tricksters. I remember from gloomy newspaper reports that Seven Dials is a dire place, the Old Kent Road too. The other blackened names elude me; I feel ill prepared indeed for London.

As the city hails into view, gray and heaving like an ocean of stone, Mrs. Begley falls briefly silent and I seize my opportunity to ask these fonts of knowledge for some counsel.

“Miss
Snow
! Am I to understand you? Pray, correct me! Do you mean us to believe that you have nowhere to stay . . . that you are
alone
? Oh, Miss Snow! This is ill considered, I fear. Oh, whatever can be done?”

“Now, now, Charlotte, mere practicalities—creases to be steamed out! Do not look so alarmed, Miss Snow. All shall be well. When we alight, Mrs. Begley and I will see you into a cab. I'm afraid the Bricklayers' Arms is not positioned in the most salubrious of neighborhoods.”

“Indeed
no
! The Old Kent Road! Gracious heavens, whatever were the railwaymen thinking of, building a passenger terminus in such a perilous quarter.
Perilous!
”

We are quiet for a moment before I dare to venture another question. “Do you think you could possibly suggest somewhere I might stay? And I shall be very grateful for your assistance in finding a cab. Only . . . where should I go in it? A good area, a respectable place.”

“Do you have sufficient funds, my dear, to pay for somewhere tasteful? For London is
shockingly
dear, you know.”

“Charlotte!”
Mr. Begley looks scandalized.

“Well, William! I am only looking out for the girl. I do not want to
ruin
her, you know!”

“Even so . . . one cannot simply . . .
inquire
!”

Fearing to be the cause of another dispute, I interject. “I am quite happy to pay for a good place. It is only for two nights, then I shall be joining friends . . .” I tell the lie both to lessen their alarm on my behalf and because I badly wish it were true.

Mrs. Begley casts a lofty look at her spouse. “In that case I have no hesitation in recommending Mrs. Woodrow's establishment, a boardinghouse for ladies situated close to St. James's Park, in Jessop Walk. Can you remember that, dear, Jessop Walk? Number seven. No! Number six! No! Number eleven, is it, William? On the right, in any case, as you look towards the campanile. The right or the left at any rate . . .”

If Aurelia had been a man, she would have been considered a humanitarian visionary. She might have stood for Parliament and passed new bills
if
she had worn breeches and whiskers. Her parents would have described her as energetic. Instead, she had tumbling chestnut curls, navy-blue eyes, a narrow waist, and a ready laugh—and they despaired of her.

When the talk in the drawing room was all gossip, Aurelia took the controversial view that the subjects were real people with their own sensibilities who should be protected. I remember one local scandal that kept her mother, aunts, and cousins thrilled and appalled for weeks. Our neighbor Mr. Templeton, respectable master of a modest but prosperous home, had fathered a child on his housemaid. It was a far from uncommon story, of course. Yet in each and every instance, it seems, the done thing is to behave as though nothing so terrible has ever taken place on our green planet hitherto.

While everyone else reported nuggets of information (the maid was uncommonly pretty with strawberry-blond curls; Mrs. Pagett in the village had never liked the way Mr. Templeton looked at her) or passed judgments (he was a disgrace to the neighborhood, a beast in breeches; she was a young hussy and the housekeeper was lax not to have kept an eye on her), Aurelia asked questions.

What would happen to the young girl now, with no employment and a blackened name? Was she not very young to have her entire life damned before her? And Mrs. Templeton? Was she upset or angry, maudlin or vengeful? What had made Mr. Templeton do it (aside from the obvious, of course)? Had he not always been a decent and reasonable man? Other pretty girls must have crossed his path before this, so why now? Could anything be done to help?

Questions like these were part of the reason that Aurelia, though adored, was considered within the family to be lacking in intelligence. Consequently, Mr. Henley was commissioned by Aurelia's parents to guide her.

He was a very strict lady's tutor with the reputation of favoring results over method. I venture to guess that Mr. Henley, as a man of learning, could not have thought Aurelia stupid, but he was hired to turn her into a very particular being, and in this he was challenged daily. He strove to succeed where a succession of hand-wringing nursemaids and governesses had failed. The subjects that interested young Aurelia—philosophy, literature, economics, and politics—were certainly not within his remit. She was to be a wife one day, after all, and not just any wife! He was hired to teach her Latin and music, a little of geography and history and, above all, decorum. Decorum did not come easily to Aurelia. However, his determination became the unexpected cause of another change in our friendship.