The Trespass (3 page)

And sometimes, in the early evening, a gull would cry over, surprising the city dwellers, reminding them that their river led to the sea.

And even with the windows tightly closed no-one could be unaware of the heavy smells of the street. Cesspits and drains and horse dung and smoke. And the outside smells mixed with the inside smells: of people, of chamber pots not yet emptied, of cigars and port, and the eternal, inescapable smell of meat being cooked in the basement that clung to the chairs and the hard sofas and lay hidden in the long, heavy curtains. Always the mixture of smells wafted upwards through the big, dark house, lingered in the curtains of Harriet’s bedroom also and drifted across the pillows; it was in the coverlet as she knelt to say her prayers. Sometimes, in a kind of shame, Harriet would actually smell her own long hair, wondering if it too smelt of mutton and cigar smoke and something emanating from the drains. But her hair smelt of soap, and she would suppose that it was inside her nose that the smell lingered, that it was part of her.

Harriet Cooper stood now by her window in the night, tall and tense and thin. Tonight she had heard the new sound that everybody recognised. A bell rang as the cholera cart passed, with the dead bodies. For a moment Harriet knelt down beside her bed.

Almighty and Everlasting God, have mercy

on those who have died of the cholera.

Dear God, please have mercy on their souls

and bring them everlasting life.

Amen.

Approaching wheels could be heard in the Square: their father’s cab rolled up to the door, stopped, clattered off back to Oxford Street. And then a door banged. And then there was a silence, as if he was deciding something. And then Sir Charles Cooper came right up the stairs of the house in Bryanston Square. Harriet Cooper turned the gas lamp up as high as it would go, so that there was light in her room.

She stiffened as his steps came nearer and nearer and then hesitated outside her room: adrenaline pumped into her legs and arms and her heart beat hard against her ribcage. Outside her door there was silence. (
But she knew that Mary too, just along the passage, would be waiting for the next sound. I am always there, said Mary.
) Then after a moment there was a knock and the door opened into the room where the gas lamp shone.

He stood in the doorway, surprised at the light.

‘You are still awake, Harriet?’

‘Yes, Father.’

He closed the door and leant against it.

His younger daughter was not in bed, she was sitting very upright on a chair, beside an unlit fire. She was in her nightdress but had a shawl wrapped tightly about her. Her feet were bare.
She was so beautiful.
(He saw again the body of Mrs Ballantyre being thrown up on to the cart.) There was a long silence while he regarded her from his hooded, blank eyes. She felt her heart pounding, she felt perspiration run down inside her nightdress, but she remained quite still, unconsciously gripping the arms of the chair.

‘What have you done today?’

She could smell the cigars, and the whisky. ‘I have been reading, Father.’

‘I thought we had agreed that your reading should not take preference over your social duties which your Aunt Lydia has arranged for you. You were to press some flowers for your album, I believe, and inscribe their Latin names.’

‘Yes, Father, I finished that.’
Damn it, she would not even look at him.
He wanted to shake her hard. He wanted to hold her.
I must hold her again before I send her away.
He moved towards her with a little, involuntary groan, whispering her name over and over,
Harriet, Harriet;
behind him the door opened gently.

‘Good evening, Father,’ said Mary. ‘Have you had a very busy day? Is there anything I could get for you?’

The Right Honourable Sir Charles Cooper, MP, stood in the middle of the room, a daughter on either side. They could hear him breathing; but if he had listened for their breath he would have heard – almost nothing.

Time stopped, although all three of them heard the old clock ticking, there in Harriet’s room.

Then he turned on his heel and left.

They heard him walk down the stairs again, to his own room on the floor below, where their brothers had rooms also. They heard him call for Peters, his man, who would bring him his very last whisky. Their ears strained, alert to every sound; at last they heard the door of their father’s bedroom close in the distance. The sisters exchanged no words; swiftly at last Mary kissed her sister and went back to her own room.

In the night, Quintus the dog barked somewhere. Chasing the rats perhaps that congregated near the overflowing cesspits under the elegant houses in Bryanston Square.

*   *   *

It was their father’s decree that breakfast was an early meal. They were all, of course, in the dining room next morning as always: the Right Honourable Sir Charles Cooper, MP; his two sons, Richard and Walter, his older daughter Mary. And Harriet. (And Quintus the dog, who knew how to keep out of trouble.) And the twelve servants, who always assembled for prayers. Sir Charles read from a small prayerbook, all said
Amen
and then breakfast was served around the long, formal table and Quintus sat somewhere between Mary and Harriet, under the table, waiting for donations.

Eating kidneys and bacon chops, Sir Charles observed his youngest daughter. His handsome, dangerous face was completely blank: his face never showed his feelings.
I must send her away.
Very slowly, aware, or unaware, Harriet buttered her toast. She never looked at him directly, not ever now, and his heart ached; obliquely she spoke, answered, acquiesced politely in whatever was discussed. Just sometimes he saw her face light up, become animated at something she and Mary were discussing. He would intervene and the light would go from her face and she would speak quietly again, nod in agreement with whatever was said

(
And all the time, something shimmered in the shadows, dark and waiting.
)

Sir Charles pushed away his plate, his face still expressionless, his thoughts agitated, knowing she must go.
I must send her away.
And who could know from which danger in the dark recesses of his mind he was sending her.

By the time Harriet was fifteen she had had several governesses, she could read aloud most pleasantly, she could play the piano delightfully, her handwriting was exquisite. However her father was perfectly well aware that she had, thanks to having a much older sister who was an unsuitable influence, read far too many books than was healthy for a young girl. He was therefore amenable that his sister Lydia, who had lived with them in London from time to time after his wife died, take charge of the fifteen-year-old’s more essential education: the education of a young lady. Harriet had therefore been required to go with her Aunt Lydia to Norfolk, and then be placed, by her, in a recommended Academy for Young Ladies. When Harriet’s letter, smuggled out of the Ladies’ Academy, had arrived in London, begging her father to take her away,
I am learning nothing, Father, but lists,
Sir Charles had been furious, blamed Mary for putting ridiculous and unsuitable ideas into her younger sister’s head. ‘I want her a lady fit for my drawing room, not a bluestocking!’ he had shouted at his oldest daughter and he had written sternly to Harriet, saying she must stay.

After almost two years under her aunt’s watchful eye Harriet was returned to London, not as a pretty girl, but as an extraordinarily beautiful young woman. It was a strange beauty for the times, because something about the intensity of the face took away from what was normally considered beautiful: interfered with the serenity and placidity and quietness that were considered a woman’s greatest assets. But something about the beautiful intensity was mesmerising, and unforgettable. Everybody commented on the change: her brothers were shy with her, her father inscrutable. Then Aunt Lydia insisted that she herself would stay in London to launch Harriet. Social calls were made, cards were left, all the things were done which young women of Harriet’s age did, but from which the elder daughter, Mary, had on the whole (in the circumstances) been excused. Dinners and balls were attended and arranged: Harriet seemed to shimmer and gentlemen had secret bets that they could encircle her tiny waist in their hands. Mary was expected to dress in ballgowns and not to dance. Her brothers, who had their own activities in card rooms and other parlours, were expected to be in attendance. The idea that all his sister Lydia’s activities would inevitably lead to – were for the express purpose of – marriage taunted Charles Cooper, haunted him. Every member of the family heaved, for different reasons perhaps, a sigh of relief when Aunt Lydia, her launching activities completed for the moment, returned to Norfolk in the spring. (
But then, in the spring, something had happened, something unspoken.
)

Mary limped over to the sideboard to fetch more milk, observing that the new maid had not seen that her father would want it; always Mary tried to keep the dining table calm; always she smiled. Mary Wollstonecraft had indeed defined the difficulties, but had not counselled for patriarchal dining tables.

Exasperatedly now her father said, ‘You should not leave the table, the maid should do that, hurry up, hurry up,’ and Mary patiently came to his side with the milk (motioning gently to the scurrying girl) then walked with her ungainly gait back to her place at the table, smiling calmly at everyone.

Her father looked away.
Deformed. Deformed. Deformed.
He never got over it, never. He had tried to insist that Mary be put away into some sort of asylum when they realised that the ugly, misshapen foot would never be normal: it was the only time in his married life that his wife Elizabeth had not deferred to his wishes. Elizabeth, the laughing Elizabeth, who never raised her voice, who ran his household smoothly, who brought money to the marriage (which he in turn had used to clever enough effect to obtain first profit, then a knighthood, then a seat in parliament), had turned into some sort of screaming madwoman that he did not recognise, she had threatened to kill herself and he had believed her. So the deformed Mary stayed at home and Elizabeth had become herself again: not once ever again was the matter referred to and sometimes Charles Cooper wondered if he had only dreamed of the wild hair flying, the hands flailing at his body.

More births had transpired after the trauma of Mary’s birth: he acquired two sons (and two more, stillborn) but in his heart he longed for one beautiful daughter. When Harriet was born and the midwife had come hurrying out calling for more basins and towels, he had gone into the room blank-faced, being told it was a girl, half-expecting another cripple. Two perfect, tiny feet filled him with an overwhelming, overpowering tenderness. Clumsily he tried to hold them in his hand, they were so small he feared they might break. He held the beautiful, perfect baby girl gently, fearfully, he had never before held a baby in his arms. He was stroking the perfect feet with one finger, when they came to tell him that his wife was dead.

His son, Richard, was trying to get his attention.

‘The railway, sir. Will the underground railway go ahead?’

His father pushed back his chair. ‘I have my doubts. I can see how they make it sound attractive, when the city is so crowded, but think of the problems! Think of the districts to be brought together, and then think of what is already under the city, think of railway lines hitting drains and sewers and gas pipes, is that what we want? They propose tunnelling under central London – do we actually require a railway under this very house? Think of the noise! And most of all think of the cost. I am a good speculator, as you know to your advantage, but I think money could be lost in this foolishness. I am supposed to report to the Prime Minister this afternoon. As if there weren’t enough to do, running the country.’ And then he stared at both of his sons. ‘You work for one of the Water Companies, thanks to me. Ask them what they’d think of trains running over their pipelines. Harriet—’ and she lifted her head slightly at the sound of her name, waiting yet not looking (
like a colt
he suddenly thought) ‘—you are to go to stay with your Uncle William until this epidemic is over, you will be safer there than in London, London is not safe.’ (And he saw again the body of his old friend Mrs Ballantyre being thrown up into the nightcart and then he saw Harriet in her white nightgown and the two pictures rearranged themselves over and over in his mind.) He repeated the words more loudly than he needed to, ‘London is not safe. I have already sent word of your arrival.’

Her quiet voice: ‘With Mary?’

‘Not with Mary,’ he said, ‘she is required here, obviously. The large carriage is ready, you will go this morning, one of the maids will accompany you on the journey.’ He did not mean his voice to sound harsh. ‘There is a wedding coming up in that family, is there not? That will amuse you.’
She must know how hard this was for him, how much he would miss her. He could not even bear to say goodbye.
He stood abruptly. ‘You will write to me every day.’ Then he formally kissed her cheek, the way he always did, and left the dining room. The two young men rose also.

‘Goodbye, Harriet,’ they said. Richard and Walter, who had once found all their world in their sisters, took their cue from their father these days: they largely ignored Mary (although she had brought them up and they were fond of her), were bemused by the new and beautiful Harriet. These days they were men of the world (because their father had arranged positions in it for both of them) and they had business to attend to.

The new maid, Lucy, having nervously cleared the dining room under the instruction of a footman, passed the door of the dark, wood-panelled drawing room; saw the two sisters arm in arm, leaning together, looking out of a window and over Bryanston Square. Their bodies rocked together almost imperceptibly, as if they were comforting each other.

TWO

‘Now, my dear Harriet, you must tell us all about London. Not about the cholera, of course. Have you seen Her Majesty? Have you been to the Ballet? Did you know that Alice’s wedding gown has come from London, for I insisted upon that. Tell us
everything.
’