Goldsmith's Row (16 page)

"It's of no consequence," he replied shortly.

She was surprised by his ungracious manner. It was one thing for Judith, brought up by Mrs. Beck in a state of good shopkeepers' morality, to be offended by what she might have taken for an amorous romp. But Brand was a man of the world, she would not have expected him to care a straw. Why should he?

Unless he thought she was deliberately trying to ensnare his friend, and despised her for it. He must know that Laurence would never be content with an ugly wife.

They did not speak again on their ride back to Thurley.

19

"Would you like to hear a secret?" offered Mrs. Tabor.

"If you wish to tell me one, madam."

Philadelphia was tired; she had slept badly, wondering all night how she ought to have handled Laurence yesterday afternoon, and exactly how she appeared to him and his friends. A hungry virgin, desperate for love? Or a calculating one, determined to get married? She was tidying Mrs. Tabor's workbox, and went on winding the silks while she listened without much interest to what her mistress was saying.

Until her attention was suddenly caught.

"… My nephew Laurence and my niece Judith are secretly betrothed!"

Philadelphia laid down the last bobbin of silk and began to pick up the pins in the bottom of the box. She felt icy cold.

"It has always been a dear wish of mine that they should marry."

"It sounds an excellent match, madam." She had managed to find her voice. "But why should it be a secret?"

"Ah, that's the question! But 111 tell you what happened. I was here in my bedchamber an hour ago when I heard voices in the gallery. I didn't mean to listen, only there was someone crying. So I looked out and it was Judith; she was with Laurence, and he was trying to comfort her. He said—I remember the words exactly—he said: 'You must surely understand that no man wants his wife's mother ruling the roost.' And she said: 'It will be different when we are married.' Then they went away together down the stairs, so I heard no more. But you can see how it is, Del—my sister has been so overbearing that they prefer to keep their news a secret for the present. I only hope she won't put him off altogether. She will interfere in everyone's concerns; and one day I dare say she'll be sorry for it," said Mrs. Tabor with a pardonable touch of malice.

She went on discussing the betrothal, leaving Philadelphia free to think her own bitter thoughts. So that was the explanation of yesterday's comedy. There had been some sort of a lovers' quarrel, and Laurence had used her merely as a weapon to torment Judith. Which accounted for Judith's distress, and for Brand's disapproval; he was probably in Laurence's confidence. Everyone knew except me, thought Philadelphia angrily. I was left in ignorance to make a fool of myself.

Laurence and Brand were going back to London that day, and she was glad of it. There was dinner to be got through, but it was possible to sit there, eating little, saying less, and staring at her plate. Immediately afterwards she retired to her bedchamber with a not entirely imaginary headache.

She lay on her bed, telling herself there was no need to be overcome by such a trivial misadventure. She had hovered on the brink of dalliance with a man who was playing her off against another young woman; what was so terrible in that?

She knew the answer well enough. Somehow in the last few weeks or even days she had allowed herself to become physically and mentally enthralled by Laurence Tabor. She was fascinated by his strength and by the graceful air of detachment that concealed it; by his good looks (even though she considered them excessive) and by the voice that mocked while it charmed. The hands which created so much delight: the exquisite miniature portraits, the fantasies of wrought gold, gleaming with pearls and dancing with color and light. You would say that only a fine and sensitive mind could conceive work of such quality.

There were sounds in the courtyard below; Laurence and Brand with a couple of grooms, were preparing to start on their journey. She had an almost irresistible impulse to take a last look at him before he went away. She rolled over on the bed, biting her knuckles, refusing to give in to this shameful weakness. Presently she heard the little cavalcade set off down the avenue. She waited for several minutes, and then got up and glanced out of the window.

They had vanished out of sight. The only person visible was Grace, strolling on the grass in idle unconcern: the stable cat was running along beside her, stalking field-mice. She flicked her fingers at him, and he sprang on to her shoulder and rubbed his soft back head against her cheek.

What a strange creature she is, thought Philadelphia. I wonder who her true parents were. I ought to have told Laurence that I caught her out in that lie. But she pushed this knowledge to the back of her memory. She had no wish to seek for any further encounters with Laurence.

One good thing happened at the end of that week: Mrs. Beck returned to the City for the lying-in of yet another daughter. She took Judith with her, but left her two eldest behind; Dorothy Philips and Joan Bradshaw with all their children. The peaceful, unexacting company of her nieces and their families suited Mrs. Tabor very well.

"I've never felt so comfortable in this house before," she said one rainy afternoon when the women were sitting in the long gallery. Some of the older boys and girls were at the far end, playing a noisy game without disturbing their elders; Grace was amusing the little ones by telling them rhymes.

"Grace does so dote on children," murmured Mrs. Tabor fondly.

"I hope she'll still be doting when she's borne as many as I have," said Dorothy Philips, who was enduring her seventh pregnancy.

Having recited Little Jack Horner and several other favorites, Grace began a jingle that Philadelphia had never heard before:

"A golden house in a golden row, Where the golden people come and go; With crystal windows and pearly doors, Silver ceilings and golden floors, Golden tables and silver chairs, Golden apples and silver pears, And every night as you lie in bed, A silver dream in a golden head."

This had an extraordinary effect. Mrs. Tabor and her two nieces all spun round to stare at the girl who knelt on the rush-strewn floor, rocking one of Dorothy's little boys to the rhythm of her voice.

"It's an age since I last heard that," said Joan Bradshaw.

"Yes," said her sister with a tremor of excitement, "but don't you see what it means?"

Mrs. Tabor had risen and was bearing down on Grace.

"I knew we should be given a sign, I knew the truth would prevail in the end! I always said you were my Frank's daughter, and now we can prove it!"

"Prove what?" asked Grace, looking more alarmed than delighted as she was clasped In a grandmotherly embrace. "Oh, please, what have I done?"

"That rhyme, sweetheart—it was made especially for your mother. Didn't Cicely Fox tell you so? Can't you remember?"

"No," said Grace slowly, "I've known it so long, I thought it was something everyone knew, like Jack Homer… Oh! Do you mean that the golden house was our house, in Goldsmiths' Row? I never thought of that."

"It is a little fanciful," said Mrs. Tabor seriously. "We don't have gold and silver furniture. Mr. William Tabor put that in to make your mother laugh. He was Laurence's father, and greatly attached to Frank; he had no daughter of his own. He made that rhyme for her when she had the measles and no one ever heard it outside our family—Doll and Joan can bear me out."

Her nieces both agreed.

"I remember how I envied Frank," said Dorothy, "living in a golden house and having an uncle like Mr. William Tabor. He was very handsome and witty—like Laurence. How it all comes back! I'd forgotten that rhyme for twenty years."

"I don't think we ever taught it to Edmund or Judith," said Joan.

"No, because they were the youngest of the family. They were very small when Frank ran away." Dorothy broke off hastily, but Mrs. Tabor had not noticed, she was occupied in making a fuss of Grace, who had gone white with emotion and seemed lost for words. The children all began to catch the enthusiasm, and there was a great deal of talking and laughing, Dorothy remarking to her sister that their mother would be very much put out. She sounded rather pleased.

Philadelphia joined in the rejoicings without saying very much.

"What's your opinion?" she asked Joan later. "Do you think that Grace's knowing this rhyme is enough to prove that she is your cousin's daughter?"

"Yes, I think she must be. I can see no other answer for that verse was never known outside our families—and certainly not among the poor people over in Southwark, where Grace grew up. She can only have learnt it from Cicely Fox, who used to be her mother's nurse."

"I suppose it might be suggested that she first heard it after she arrived in Goldsmiths' Row."

"I don't think that's possible. We have none of us recited those lines for years, my children were never taught them until today. The fact is that after Frank ran off, and more still after she died, everything that concerned her was prohibited, not to be spoken of. So the rhyme was gradually forgotten. I couldn't have told you the words myself until Grace brought them back to me… But what's your purpose in asking this?" Joan glanced curiously at Philadelphia. "I thought you were one of Grace's chief champions?"

"I always have been," said Philadelphia, collecting herself. "My only fear is for your aunt. She has little understanding of evidence, and I don't wish her to set her heart on a definite proof and then be told that it still isn't good enough."

This satisfied Joan, and gave Philadelphia time to think. Having privately changed her view of Grace, she was now mystified. This latest episode was completely unexpected, and she did not know what to make of it. When Grace had first arrived in Cheapside the so-called memories that she had trotted out to support her claim had all been based on the kind of details that Joel could have found out and passed on to her without any difficulty. She knew, for instance, that her alleged foster-mother had red hair. This was the sort of information that Joel could have drawn out of Mrs. Tabor herself, or one of her servants, without their ever being conscious of it. But there seemed to be no way in which either Joel or Grace could have acquired the golden house rhyme to use as a proof of her identity. And in any case that was not how Grace had used it. All her other memories, true or spurious, had been related with great conviction as though they were matters of enormous import. The rhyme had been merely told to the children and overheard by accident. Which was an overwhelming point in her favor.

Philadelphia was faced with the conclusion that Grace must be Frances Tabor after all.

Then what about the suggestion that she had been at the Charity Hospital long before she was five years old? It was based, after all, on a passing remark that might easily have been misunderstood… Philadelphia felt thankful that she had never got to the point of repeating her suspicions to Laurence. It was the only consolation she could find in the history of her encounters with that insufferable young man.

20

Mrs. Tabor was delighted with the new evidence that made Grace almost certainly her grand-daughter. The Beck sisters were good-naturedly pleased. Philadelphia was puzzled.

And Grace was absolutely thunderstruck. It was some time before she could take in exactly what had happened, and when she understood, she could scarcely believe it. She had produced, out of her own experience of the past, a little scrap of knowledge that could only have belonged to someone closely connected with the Tabor family.

This was so extraordinary that she hardly knew how to contain her astonishment, and had to keep very quiet to avoid seeming too much surprised, for she was faced with a situation that no one else suspected. To the others in the house she had to be either the real Frances Tabor, or an impostor. Grace alone knew that Joel had taught her all the rest of her part but not the golden rhyme. She could not think where it had come from; she had certainly known it long before she ever met Joel. Unlike her other pretended memories, it was a true fragment of her childhood.

After the first bewilderment she began to see that there was a way—the only way, surely—in which she could have heard that verse. All the rhymes and singing games they used at the Charity Hospital were a common heritage passed on by the older children to the younger; some no doubt had come originally from Mrs. Bullace, but many had been brought in by those children who had come to the Hospital when they were already able to speak—children who had once had proper homes and families to care for them. At five years old, Frances Tabor would have been such a child. Joel had actually traced her to the Hospital and although Mrs. Bullace said she had never been admitted there, it now appeared to Grace that Mrs. Bullace must have been wrong.

Grace started wondering which of the other girls might have been Frances. There were around forty children, boys and girls, at the Hospital, most of whom arrived as unwanted babies and stayed till they were put out to work at twelve or thirteen; there were never more than a handful at any one age. It was true that ages were sometimes confused in a place where birthdays were generally unknown, but it was not possible to go very far wrong, and Grace felt sure that Frances could only be looked for among the girls who had been very little older or younger than herself.

She passed them all in front of her mind's eye. Most of them had left the Hospital before her, a few had been adopted, one or two had died, but she had forgotten none of them. When you lived in such a small world, you did not overlook any of the inhabitants.

None of them seemed right for Frances. Her friend Nan wouldn't do; lucky Nan had a father who took her away to live with him. And Bess Barnsley had a mother who used to come to the Hospital and shout lewd insults at Mrs. Bullace when she was drunk. What about one of the two Megs? Fat Meg had a brother in the boys' part of the Hospital, they had lived with their grandmother until she died. And Thin Meg, who was at least a foundling, had come to the Hospital even earlier than Grace, and long before Frances. That was the trouble: the nameless foundlings had all arrived at the Hospital too young, and when older children were admitted, everyone knew who they were.