The Trespass (25 page)

Very soon one of the frock-coated men was at her side, assisting her to rise, escorting her to one of the inner rooms, mannered, careful, particularly noting her mourning attire, wondering why she was not escorted. Two other men were waiting there: noted her youth and her beauty and her black veil; Harriet was settled again, this time in an armchair, and tea was brought. All the gentlemen smiled and bowed and asked what they could do for her.

Harriet began the story she had planned as she watched her father’s coach take him away. Everything she had learned, everything she had read, everything she had heard about from Edward had been dredged up out of her numbed, grieving, shocked mind. There was no expression in her voice as she spoke, she could have been making a polite enquiry.

‘I believe you have a ship leaving soon for New Zealand.’

‘The
Amaryllis,
yes.’

‘When does the
Amaryllis
sail?’

‘Why, she is loading and boarding already. She is to sail at the end of the week.’ Behind her veil which she did not lift they might have seen the glitter of her eyes.

‘Is there, by chance, room for me to travel aboard her?’ Her voice remained expressionless. It could not have been noted whether she was anxious to travel or not. But the three men looked at each other in surprise, exchanging meaningful glances.

‘You would not be travelling alone? We do not encourage young ladies to travel alone, of course.’

‘Of course.’

‘With whom would you be travelling?’

Harriet’s voice remained flat. ‘My cousin travelled several weeks ago on the
Miranda.
My sister and I were to have joined him in Wellington. My sister—’ her voice faltered, ‘—my sister – passed away—’ and for a moment she stopped speaking completely. One of the men stood but she began again with an immense effort, ‘very – very shortly after my cousin’s departure. It seems best that I go to New Zealand at once.’

Again the men exchanged glances. It was working women who were required most in New Zealand, there was a shortage of servants. The New Zealand Company wanted the gentry in New Zealand, certainly, but not impoverished and distressed gentlewomen who could get neither a husband nor a position in England. The man who had stood a few moments before now said, ‘Would you be so good as to tell me your name? And perhaps your age?’

Harriet’s frame suddenly rose before them: she was taller than the speaker.

‘I do not see,’ she said icily, ‘that all these questions are necessary before I have even obtained from you the basic information that I require.’ Just for a moment she saw the woman carved on to the prow of the
Miranda,
the way she stretched forward towards her destination, unimpeded. Then she said, as the men remained silent, ‘My cousin who is already on his way to New Zealand is Mr Edward Cooper. My father Sir Charles Cooper is a Member of Parliament. My name is Harriet Cooper.’ She prepared to lie about her age but she saw that the mention of her father’s name had galvanised the men into action: the New Zealand Company was at present engaged in trying to get money from Her Majesty’s government to get them out of various financial difficulties.

A bell was immediately rung, some papers were brought in, another man appeared and laid a plan out on the table. All this Harriet observed from beneath her veil; she still stood in front of them, tall and elegant and very young.

‘It is such short notice, Miss Cooper, and travelling alone is, as I say, most unusual. And we would worry of course that it would not be possible for you to get your possessions together on board, you would need furniture as well as your personal belongings; it does not seem to us that you could be ready in time. The ship is already loading at the East India docks. Perhaps next year—’

‘Is there a place?’

‘Well, as it so happens, there is a small cabin, yes.’ He ran his finger down the plan. ‘A last-minute cancellation. Today is Tuesday, let me see. People are already beginning to board, most of the steerage passengers are got on board earlier so as to be out of the way of the cabin passengers, but cabin passengers themselves would be required to begin boarding on Thursday at the East India dock. Or you would need to be in Gravesend with everything on board early on Friday afternoon at the very latest. The Captain will want to take the
Amaryllis
out to the mouth before dusk. It is surely not possible that you could be prepared in the time?’

‘It is possible. My father will assist me of course.’ Again the gentlemen exchanged looks.

‘We have papers for you to sign – for your father to sign of course. For anyone to go alone on such a long journey with such little notice is out of the ordinary, to say the least. But of course your sad circumstances are out of the ordinary also, and your father will of course know what is best. He is not able to be here with you today?’

‘Running the country,’ said Harriet (
and she had the oddest feeling that Mary floated somewhere beside her, smiling as Harriet quoted the oft-used words of their father: she was so shocked she looked for a moment round the room
). ‘Running the country,’ she repeated, pulling herself together, ‘is a difficult and time-consuming business.’

The gentlemen thought of the financial assistance they required and nodded, anxiously.

‘Give me the papers,’ said Harriet.

‘Should we charge the fare to your father perhaps?’

He leaned forward, placing her own hand under her breast.
‘No!’ said Harriet sharply. ‘I will bring the money and the signed papers back to you, or send them with a servant.’

‘This cabin, which you will not be sharing, will cost forty-one guineas.’

‘Thank you,’ said Harriet.

‘You do understand you must furnish it yourself?’

‘Of course I understand that. We have already sent one of our family across the world and we understand how it is. My father will assist me in every way.’

‘Of course. We would very much like to see him here.’

‘I will tell him that,’ she said and the gentlemen looked positively chirpy.

She had to wait while papers were gathered, notes were made, pleasantries were exchanged. Behind her veil she watched the frock-coated men, saw how they mentioned her father importantly to one another several times. Her heart was beating very fast, faster than perhaps it should, she felt so strange, but somehow she could not bring herself to sit down again. So she stood there still, as they bustled about her.

She had to find forty-one guineas and much more beside.

As she came out into the Strand a thin, watery sun was trying to shine and she stopped for a moment on the pavement, steadying herself.
Could she truly have had a vision of Mary? It felt as if she was near.
The cabman was leaning against his vehicle in amongst all the loud, unruly passing traffic, and he was whistling, but such was the roar of the noise that she could not pick up the tune. He saw Harriet, gave a cheery wave, helped her into the cab. She told him to take her to Bryanston Square, and then changed her mind suddenly.

‘Where is the Ballet?’ she asked the driver.

‘Why, Her Majesty’s Theatre, ma’am, of course.’

‘I wish to go there.’

‘The Haymarket.’ He nodded, enclosed her in, jumped up to the top of his vehicle, flicked at the horse; the cab with its whistling driver trotted its way through the carriages and the carts and the people. Inside the cab, suddenly alone at last, Harriet crumpled.
What am I thinking of? The Haymarket is where the street women go. And if I see him all I would do would be to ask for the other brother, the one whose eyes seem to smile. But what would I say? However do I ask for a loan of forty-one guineas? And I will need more money than that. How will I get to Gravesend with whatever luggage I can arrange? I have no furniture for a cabin. The servants will be watching me always. Am I mad? It is impossible! O Mary, Mary, my beloved sister, are you really somewhere near? Have I gone mad?

Almost, she wept.

But then the same distorted vision of Sir Charles Cooper came into her mind and she did not.

The cab stopped outside Her Majesty’s Theatre and Harriet stepped out. But the theatre was closed of course: there would be a performance in the evening. In amongst the traffic, people crowded the street talking and smiling and arguing; there were ladies resting their gloved hands on the arms of gentlemen, businessmen with top hats and bundles of papers, young lads hurrying and scurrying, darting through the traffic, laughing and cursing; the ladies of the street were perhaps not yet parading. By the front of the theatre a small dirty boy was waiting with his broom to sweep a path for the ladies and gentlemen: Harriet was near enough to see mud and filth all over his face and clothes, grey-yellow stuff running from his nose, his eyes flicking anxiously from face to face, ready to dash into the roadway. No sign of course of Lord Ralph Kingdom, let alone the grey eyes of Sir Benjamin,
what am I thinking of?
She leant against the side of the hansom cab and closed her eyes. Almost at once the whistling driver was beside her.

‘You all right, ma’am? Shall I take you now to Bryanston Square?’

She had no strength left, she felt it draining from her as he began to help her back into the cab.

‘I don’t know what to do.’ He heard her, felt her falter on the carriage step.

‘Can I help you, ma’am? Anything I can do?’

‘I – I think – I am so sorry, I need some water.’

‘Here, I’ll take you in the theatre.’

‘Into the theatre?’ Harriet’s voice was faint and confused.

‘My sister’s the one what makes the tea for the girls and that. Hey!’ and he called one of the skylarking lads, tossed him a coin together with some dire threats about holding the horse and somehow quite gently led Harriet through the stage door and down into the basement. She wasn’t quite sure what happened then, but later she found she was in an old chair with her hat on her lap and holding a mug of tea given to her by a woman who did indeed look like the cab driver. She remembered the pot of tea Seamus had made for her so proudly in the old falling-down barn full of pigs and people, and how she had refused it.

‘Thank you,’ she said to the cab driver’s sister. ‘My name is Harriet.’

‘I’m Phyllis,’ said the woman, ‘and me brother is Cecil but he’s gone to check his horse. You had a little faint.’

‘Did I?’ She looked around, confused, at the armchairs and the fire, not sure why she was here.

‘Only a couple of minutes. You ain’t missed much of the world I shouldn’t think, not in a couple of minutes,’ and Phyllis was rewarded by a brief flash of one of Harriet’s rare smiles. ‘There, the tea’s made you much better, sailed all the way from China just to warm your heart on a nasty London day. My girls won’t dance without it.’

‘Could I…’ She looked about her, deeply embarrassed. Ladies were never caught like this, it was one of the things she had been taught at the finishing school.

‘There, behind the curtain.’

‘Thank you.’ The skirts and the petticoats were gathered and held as she crouched down to the bucket.

Cecil clomped down the stairs again, they knew it was him by the whistling. Harriet was back in the armchair. ‘There you are, ma’am. Right as rain now, I shouldn’t wonder. If you stop long enough you could see
Giselle!
’

Then Harriet remembered why she had come to the Haymarket: she got up at once, her hat fell to the floor, she stooped, confused again, to pick it up; how terrible if Lord Kingdom found her here. ‘I am so sorry, I must go, I have many things to do. Thank you so much for your kindness,’ and she had gone up the stairs, Cecil whistling after her.

‘Piccadilly,’ she said to him.

In Piccadilly she bought stout shoes, a warm shawl, underwear and a sunhat, about which the gentleman assisting her made a small joke about hope springing eternal. All the clothes she signed, as she and Mary had always done, to her father, even as he gasped and moaned inside her head.

‘Oxford Street,’ she said to Cecil, and she tapped on the roof of the cab as she had seen Mary and her father do, to get him to stop outside Mary’s favourite bookshop, Dawson’s Book Emporium. And Cecil smiled to himself, to see where she had stopped. He was glad she was going there, Symond Dawson would be the man to help her, and he whistled his tuneless song. As Harriet pushed the door she was at once assailed by the smell Mary had so often and so lovingly recalled: the smell of books. All around her, on shelves, in piles, in boxes, on tables, books stood. The bookseller, a man from somewhere in the north of England, came forward at once when he saw her, for all the world as if he had been expecting her.

‘Come in, Mary’s sister, I’m right glad to see you. Tha sister was a right bonny lass,’ he said. ‘I shall miss her. I believe she saw life in smiling terms.’

It was such a strange, and such a loving description of Mary, the first real words that anybody had said to her about her sister, that Harriet lifted her veil at once.

‘She did,’ she said. And she repeated his odd words:
in smiling terms.
He saw, before she was almost aware of them, the tears that suddenly streamed down Harriet’s face.

‘Nay, lass, nay,’ he said. And he helped her to a chair in a small room at the back of the shop.

‘I cannot—’ the words came out like great, choking cries, ‘I do not know how to live without her.’ She did not even crumple in the chair, she just stared at the bookseller helplessly as the tears fell down.

‘Nay, lass,’ he said again, and she saw that he too was making her tea. ‘Just wait a minute now.’ He walked over to the door of the shop and flipped over a notice that said, in beautiful copperplate handwriting: DAWSON’S BOOK EMPORIUM CLOSED FOR FIVE MINUTES, and pulled down a blind.

‘Now,’ he said, as he poured the tea, stirred in sugar. ‘I think tha must weep as often as tha can, to help the pain of it. But after that tha must take her with thee.’

Harriet was so surprised she actually stopped crying. He handed her the tea.

Thinking of it long afterwards she never knew if he did know she had planned to go away, or if they were talking at cross-purposes, for all he repeated was, ‘Tha must take her with thee, wherever tha goes. Talk to her if it helps. But most of all, take her smiling terms with thee.’ And after a while he said into the almost companionable silence, ‘And her books of course.’