The Linnet Bird: A Novel (4 page)

But my mother never stopped planning. It was as if she were desperate, determined to never let me forget that she hadn’t come from this place, and that I must leave it by any means. Dreaming of a better life for me seemed to bring her the only moments of happiness she knew.

“She could be a governess, if given a chance. She has a fine way with reading. She would be perfect as a governess,” she’d said one night at supper. “If only she had the proper clothing, she might, through the church, be put in touch with the right people. It need never be mentioned she’s from off Vauxhall Road. She’s perfected my voice. It could be said she’s come down from Scotland. Her background need never . . .” Her voice trailed off. She had a dull sheen on her brow and more than once during the meal of bacon crumbled into boiled potatoes, which she didn’t touch, she put her hand to her forehead, then pulled away her fingers and looked at them, as if in surprise. “If she were but given a chance,” she repeated, the unusual flush on her cheeks growing even deeper, “my girl would do me proud.” There was a dangerous spark in her eyes, and interpreting it as boldness, I matched it with my own, speaking out as I never had around Ram Munt.

“I know what I’d like to do,” I said, and my mother turned to me, her mouth in a strained smile, expecting, I’m sure, my agreement with her on her vague plan, even though we both knew that a girl from the low end of Liverpool could never pass as a governess. “I’d like to decorate the books at the printers.”

The odd smile faded. “What do you mean?”

“I’d like to be a finisher, like Mr. Broughton in the Extra Finishing shop.”

Her face darkened. “When have you been up there, to the third floor?”

“The overlooker sometimes sends me up with messages for Mr. Broughton. There are beautiful things there.” I smiled, remembering. “I’ve seen him laying a book with gold and then stamping it with heated tools. There were ever so many tools—rounds, scrolls, diamonds, and all the letters. And Mr. Broughton can create whatever design comes out of his own head, pressing those hot shapes and letters. Oh, think of it! To create such a wondrous—” I stopped, seeing disappointment on my mother’s face, hearing Ram’s snicker.

“But that’s not a job for a lady,” my mother said. “No woman could ever do that. You know it’s only boys brought in as apprentices to the finishers. And that of course only men are clever enough for the Extra Finishing. Whatever would put that idea into your head?”

Now I couldn’t admit that Mr. Broughton had let me experiment more than once in those few moments of stolen time. I had washed vellum and colored initials and even stamped gold tooling into a ruined piece of calfskin. He seemed to enjoy the clandestine activities—quickly showing me this and that, glancing over his shoulder all the while—as much as I did.

Da’s snicker had turned to laughter and he enjoyed himself for a full minute before telling me, as he wiped at his eyes, to do what I did best—fill his bowl with more potatoes—and to never again mention such ridiculous plans as governesses or finishers.

Later that evening the fever that had been toying with my mother for the last twenty-four hours took a firm grip.

And less than a year after she died, Da brought home Mr. Jacobs.

Chapter Three

A
FTER THE VISIT FROM
M
R.
J
ACOBS,
R
AM KEPT ME BUSY.
I never again called him Da; I rarely addressed him at all, but if I did, it was by his name. Ram couldn’t bring customers to our second-floor room on a regular basis, afraid that if the landlord got wind of what was going on we’d be thrown out or, worse for my father, the landlord would demand a percentage. Instead, after I came home from my ten hours at the bookbinders, he’d make me change out of my ragged and stained work dress into a clean, childish frock and pinafore he’d bought from the pawnshop. I’d plait my hair, put on the straw bonnet with blue ribbons he’d brought home along with the dress and pinafore, and then he’d take me to the customers.

I never knew how he found the men. They were always old, or so they seemed. And they were men who liked what I was then, a small, delicate child who appeared at the doors of their hotels or lodging or boarding houses, my hand held by the short, broad, loutish fellow.

There were all manner of men. Most came to Liverpool on business from London or Manchester or from Scotland or as far away as Ireland. Some were rough, and some were kind. Some took ages to finish and others were off almost as soon as I lifted my skirt and sat on the edge of the bed or leaned over a table.

While I might visit two unknown men some nights, an hour each—Ram was always waiting to knock on the door to collect the money when their time was up—there were also regulars who paid for the whole evening. I had a Monday, a Wednesday, and a Thursday. These three became quite dear to me, really, because they were the kind ones; they would rather see a child smile than cry. With them I knew what to expect and from them I learned about myself.

Monday insisted on calling me Ophelia and always wept after his rather lackluster, predictable performance, giving me bags of sweets and stroking my hair. He told me about Shakespeare, quoting from his plays and sonnets. Monday said he was a playwright as well, like Mr. Shakespeare, but could get no recognition. He said when he’d grown obsessed with his need to have his work taken seriously, ignoring all else, his wife left him, taking their young daughter. At this his tears turned to deep sobs and he would shake his head, gazing at me in the rumpled bedding as if it grieved him terribly to have me near him, and yet he couldn’t keep away. “My innocent,” he’d say, wringing his hands. “So innocent, so pure, but one born of a need to understand life’s mysteries. I see it there in your face, your desire to make sense of all that’s around you.”

Wednesday simply wanted to watch me bathe and always had a copper hip bath filled with warm water waiting for me in front of a cheery fire. After I’d washed all over, soaping my hair with sweet-smelling lavender soap (he brought a new bar each week and let me take home the used one), he’d dry me with thick soft towels and carry me to the bed. He found his pleasure in looking at me and cautiously touching my skin; whether he was unable to perform or simply ashamed of something beneath the clothing he kept tightly buttoned at all times I never knew, but he didn’t mind if I fell asleep. And I usually did; it was difficult to stay awake after a full day of work, followed by the warm bath and soft bed and the harmless caresses by hands smooth as kid leather. Wednesday was difficult to leave when Ram’s knock was eventually heard.

But Thursday was my favorite. He loved to feed me and after our time in his room in the beautifully appointed hotel off Lord Street he always took me downstairs to the dining room, shimmering with candelabras and silver salvers and platters polished bright as mirrors. The walls, with their elegant muted wallpaper of blue and silver, were lined with oil paintings. There were tall windows steamed from the warmth of the generous fires and the bodies heated by rich food and plentiful drink and, in many cases, I suspect, thoughts of the upstairs rooms. During our time in the hotel I was instructed to call Thursday Uncle Horace. Did the people at the elaborate front desk, or those carrying clean linens and trays of food through the wide halls, or those serving us in the dining room really believe me to be his niece? Or did they simply turn a blind eye to the truth of the situation, accepting the lie with polite smiles and subservient bows or curtsies, willingly taking the coins Horace pressed into every hand?

Uncle Horace was huge of girth. Although he was quickly and easily fulfilled upstairs, he seemed unable to satisfy his insatiable appetite at the table. He ordered mounds of food, with special delicacies for me—capons with sizzling golden skin, turbot with lobster sauce, potatoes mashed and swirled into little golden-brown domes. He also bought me sweet port. I didn’t care for its taste but loved its beautiful deep ruby, which reflected off the fire. Uncle Horace always insisted on a table by the fireplace.

It was there, in the gracious high-ceilinged dining room smelling of roasted meat and caramelized sugar, of hair pomade and delicate eau de toilette, of wealth and confidence, that I watched and learned all I could of how men and women of his class moved about with surety. I studied the ladies at other tables, saw how they dressed, how carefully they dabbed at their lips with their heavy damask napkins, how their laughter chimed like pleasing music. I memorized their language and their articulation, which, I now knew, was far finer than my mother’s had been. It was easy, a game to play as I pretended to listen to Uncle Horace talk about his business and wealth and opulent home in the city of Dublin. I heard about his childhood in rural Ireland, and how he would sneak out with the stable boys on Sunday afternoon for road games of hurling. He told me how he’d learned to eat to take away the emptiness he had while his parents left him with the house staff, sometimes for a year at a time, as they traveled the world. He often brought me a soft spicy cake filled with currants—barmbrack, he called it—his own childhood favorite. It was baked by the ancient cook of his boyhood, still alive and living with him in his house in Dublin. The cake would be wrapped in one of his fine linen handkerchiefs and he’d urge me to take it home.

“Are you really as hungry as you appear,” he’d asked me once, as I quickly but neatly sucked an oyster from its shell, “or do you eat because you know it pleases me?”

I’d touched my mouth with my napkin and then put my hands in my lap, choosing my words carefully before I spoke. Had he never known hunger? Did he have any idea that before I was brought to him I’d spent a full day with my folding knife and stack after stack of pages, my hands cramping so badly that by the end of the ten hours it felt as if pebbles had lodged under the skin of my palms, and my shoulders and wrists burned with fatigue? That I had fifteen minutes midday to visit the privy and bolt down the piece of bread and cheese I’d brought with me? “I am as I appear, I assure you, Uncle Horace,” I said, “for how else could I be anything but hungry with such food put before me, and in the presence of such company?”

He’d studied me then. “You are undernourished, that I see. But there’s another kind of hunger, Linny, a wary hunger for learning, for understanding, that I also see there on your face.”

I raised my glass to my lips, just letting the crimson liquid touch them before I returned the glass to the snowy tablecloth. “That may well be,” I answered. “Perhaps I have a hunger of the soul itself.” I was repeating, word for word, what the anemic young man at the table behind me had said only moments earlier. I had no idea what it meant, although of course I knew what a soul was. I still faithfully attended Sunday services at Our Lady and St. Nicholas.

He laughed then, his hair damp with sweat, pomade melting down his neck, his round face reddened by the many glasses of port and brandy he’d drunk, first in the hotel room and then with dinner. “You’re a clever little minx, I’ll give you that. Come now, give me your best Irish voice, for I’m feeling a little homesick tonight.”

I recited a poem and then told him some silly social snippet I’d overheard, mimicking his own Irish cadence, for it came easily to me, creating the exact intonations of other voices.

He nodded, smiling broadly and fondly, shaking his head as if amazed. “Aren’t you a wonder, then. How do you achieve that exacting pattern? Pure Dublin, it is. It’s as if you’ve spent all your young days taking tea on Grafton Street.” And then he summoned the server for a dish of pears and cream for me and brandy pudding with hard sauce for himself, and there was no more tedious talk.