Untitled (17 page)

   But that couldn't be right. It wasn't Mrs. Saunders's letter that showed hers to be a forgery—it was her own. The ink—that's what Mrs. Robert said. The uneven ink, the greyness of it. "Ma'am?" Her voice sounds thin in this room. "Ma'am—why did you hire me if you knew there was something wrong with the letter?"

   Mrs. Robert's face doesn't move. Even her eyes are still. Then she presses her lips together in a smile. "Oh, you
are
a clever girl," she tells her. "Far beyond anything I expected. You're going to be very useful to me."

Chapter 9

S
ince yesterday those words have been coming back to her: Y
ou're
going to be very useful to me
. They've spun around her head as she's scrubbed the back stairs, and filled buckets of water, and pressed a hot iron over sheets and tablecloths. No wonder when Mrs. Robert sent for her again she felt the shock as a physical pain, as though she'd burnt herself. And now she's been up here an hour and she still can't get the hang of what has been asked of her.

   "Pull the hair tighter," says Mrs. Robert. "Grip it between your fingers or it'll all come undone."

   Jane's voice trembles. "I can't do it, ma'am. I just can't." With a sob she lets the strands drop, but Mrs. Robert spins around and grabs her wrist. She holds her so hard it hurts.

   "Listen to me," she says darkly. "You're a clever girl. You can do it. Try again." She lets Jane's hand drop and picks up the strands of hair herself, then deftly twists them. In a matter of moments she has her hair elegantly pinned up behind, and a fringe of curls left over her forehead. "Like this—see?"

   Outside it is still raining, and a gust of wind sends a splatter of drops against the window. Jane shivers. Isn't this what she wanted? To be trained up? To learn ladies' tricks so that she can use them to better herself ? To be a lady's maid—no more scrubbing floors, no more carrying buckets of water and slops. But this is something else entirely. To do for the widow, to dress her hair, and help her with her clothes, and all the while to be watching out for the loose ends of her secrets, to pull on them, to carry all that she finds to Mrs. Robert.

   When Mrs. Robert undoes her hair and gestures for Jane to try again, she does no better. Doing the curls was difficult enough, for there was the danger of scorching the hair, or Mrs. Robert's skin. But this pinning up is impossible. The hair is unlike her own—not dry and coarse but so soft that it slips between her fingers, or catches on her rough skin. "I can't do it," she says miserably and looks up. In the mirror she sees her face, red and a little swollen from crying, her cap wilted. And there too is Mrs. Robert's reflection—Mrs. Robert in her peignoir with her hair loose around her shoulders, her lips thin with exasperation. When she's angry, Jane notices, two lines appear between the delicate arcs of her eyebrows, and she is angry now.

   "Don't look away." Mrs. Robert meets her eye. "Is this the trouble? That I am sitting here in my peignoir? That you have to be the one to undress me, then dress me again?"

   "Ma'am?" She says the word so softly that it barely leaves her mouth.

   "I'm a woman like you. Look." She pulls at her peignoir until it is loose enough to show her chemise underneath, and the top of her breasts, then she raises one leg so that it appears, pale and naked, from between the folds. "It won't do to be embarrassed. For you this is simply work. Now"—she lets her leg down, then shakes her hair loose from the tangle Jane has left it in—"do it again."

   So she does. She reaches for the long, warm hair and holds the heaviness of it in her hands. Pulling it hard—will Mrs. Robert cry out?—she rolls it around on itself and into a coil.

   Mrs. Robert hands her some pins. "Put them in at a slant."

   This time the hair stays in place. Mrs. Robert shakes her head, then smiles into the mirror, a smile that twists up one end of her mouth. She stands. "Yes. You've done it." She pulls out the pins and hands them back to Jane. "Now get me dressed, then do it again— faster this time."

   Jane holds out the petticoats for her to step into, puts her weight into pulling the corset tight. She holds the dress for Mrs. Robert, then fastens it. Her hair, this time, she does more quickly.

   Mrs. Robert stands back to look at herself in the mirror. "Good enough," she says.

        
T
he whole house has been holding itself in, waiting. And then it comes—the knock at the door. Jane leans over the banister just far enough to see down to the hallway. Across the black and white tiles comes Cartwright—from the study, perhaps—the long tails of his coat flaring out behind him. The door opens and Jane leans farther out. A bustle of skirts; a small, plain hat; one phrase spoken in response to something Cartwright says—"Thank you." It rises up the stairs to where Jane is listening, then the widow is gone and Jane is staring down into an empty hallway.

   A murmur of voices, the squeak of a door. Footsteps. Before she can duck out of sight, Cartwright is back, staring up at her with one finger raised in warning. She scurries back to her brushes.

        
M
rs. Johnson has propped open a window to let out the steam, and she moves between the stove and the table, her face red and shiny. However, at the sink, where the cold air from outside is pouring in, Jane shivers. Her arms are wet up to her folded-up sleeves, and water has seeped through her apron to her dress. Elsie has been sent off to wash pots in the scullery—she knocked a whole leg of pork ready to be roasted to the floor, today of all days, and Mrs. Johnson shouted at her to get out of her sight—so of course Jane was told to hurry with turning down the beds and laying the fires upstairs because she was needed in the kitchen.

   So, here she stands, soaked through from washing asparagus and potatoes and parsnips under a tap that spurts, washing her hands now to get rid of the butter she had to measure out for the dessert sauce. The cold water runs off her greasy hands; she must use the soap, and she grabs it up. As soon as the butter is gone, though, the soap finds its way into the cracks in her skin. They sting horribly.

   But her thoughts aren't on her hands. After years of this sort of pain it is not so much that she is used to it, more that she can make herself think of other things. In Teignton, she'd stand at the sink with her raw hands smarting and imagine Mrs. Saunders brought low by a sudden reversal: maybe she'd discover that the Reverend already had a wife living in a madhouse and would have to go out into the world with the shame of it dragging behind her; or maybe her doddering father would be exposed as a swindler who'd bilked widows out of their pensions, and she'd never again be able to raise her head in public—and certainly not to talk of the stain of birth.

   However, this evening it is not Mrs. Saunders that Jane is thinking of. She is remembering how it felt to close herself in the widow's room and, between turning down the bedcovers and building up the fire, to search it like a thief. There was not much to look through—no dresses in the wardrobe and so no pockets to let her fingers probe. No trunks, no jewelry boxes, no photographs, no packets of letters tied together with ribbon. All of that must be at the bottom of the sea. Instead, all there was to examine was in one locked drawer of the dressing table. From her apron pocket she took a key. She remembers that moment—the way it turned so smoothly in the lock. Then she slid the drawer open and pushed her arms against her sides as she stared down into it, for she was shivering. Inside she found only a pair of delicate silver earrings, and a small book whose pages were stiff and bent from being soaked and dried. It creaked when she opened it. In places the blue ink was blurred. A book of addresses, all in India except for
Mr. Henry Bentley—32 Cursitor Road, London,
and all written in the same tiny hand. Inside the cover, V
ictoria Cecilia Dawes, January
1892
. She barely had time to put it all away before Sarah knocked on the door and told her she was needed in the kitchen.

   Mrs. Johnson is making a racket with the pans. This, Jane knows, means she is nervous. There's a burst of air, and Jane tilts her head a little. Someone must have opened the door to the stairs. She hears Sarah say, "Well, Mrs. J., they're quizzing her something awful."

"They are? They probably just want to know who she is."

   "You should hear Mr. Robert—just before I came in with the soup he asked her how long her and Mr. Henry had
been acquainted
. That's how he put it."

   Jane takes a cloth from the rack by the window and dries her hands gently, slowly, listening.

   "Well," says Mrs. Johnson. "It's not like Mr. Henry to pick up and marry someone."

   "You'd think she'd done something wrong, the way they're carrying on."

   The rattle of a pan against the stove, and the creak of the oven door opening. The air from outside smells of coal and frost. No snow yet, though Jane half expects it. To be inside—even here, in the freezing draught from the window, half soaked from leaning against the sink, hands smarting—even that is something to be thankful for. If Mrs. Robert had thrown her out, where would she be now? She doesn't know a soul in this city.

   "I pity her," says Sarah with a sigh in her voice. "She's not likely to get married again, I don't think, not unless she makes something of herself."

   They have already heard Sarah's description of her, and now in her head Jane carries a picture of the widow. A slight woman with light brown hair and small features, eyes that are a nondescript blue, and a way of sitting with her hands in her lap as though to hold herself down when she'd rather run away. That's what Sarah had said— that she looked as though she'd scarper given half a chance, and that she for one wouldn't blame her.

   "Ready for dessert now, are they?" asks Mrs. Johnson.

   "Should be." There was a scrape as Sarah pulled out a chair. "My feet are murder today. And I'll just bet they'll take forever over the rest of dinner."

   "She must be exhausted, poor love," says Mrs. Johnson. "Just imagine the shock of it all. After coming all that way and getting so close to home. Still, maybe in a few days she can get back to her family."

   "Oh no, she doesn't have anyone here except a second cousin,"

Sarah tells her. "She's never even been to England before—can you imagine?"

   "Never been here?"

   "Never in her life. She was born out there; I heard her say so."

   "But she's bound to feel at home, now that she's back here," says Mrs. Johnson.

   "I don't know about that. She looks half scared to death by everything. From the way she poked around with her eels, I don't think she's seen the like of them before."

   The cold air pulls more strongly past Jane, and she glances over her shoulder as Cartwright comes into the kitchen. "Have time to sit and gossip, do we?" He places the serving dishes on the table. "The family is waiting for dessert. And Price says she asked half an hour ago for Mrs. Bentley's hot water and still hasn't got it."

   So Sarah loads a tray with dessert plates, and Jane is sent to Price with a kettle of boiling water that sloshes dangerously as she carries it up the stairs. She climbs them carefully, kicking out her foot so it doesn't catch the hem of her dress and send her flying. She thinks of Mrs. Robert and the small key she pressed into her hand only a few hours ago, and how she said matter-of-factly, "One has to be so careful these days. See what you find out, Jane, and once we're sure of this new Mrs. Bentley we'll be able to give her the welcome she deserves." This is the lady who has hired her—a lady who will set a servant to look through another lady's things. A lady who can recognize the signs of a forged letter. And just what kind of a lady is that?

   Footsteps. The groan of a floorboard just beyond the door, but the door doesn't open. "No, thank you. No." A thin voice, frightened, or fraught with grief—it's impossible to tell. "Please—I don't need your help."

   "Very good, ma'am." She steps away from the door and heads down the first few stairs. Then softly, so softly, she creeps back and listens. There is nothing to hear, and though she waits until the clock downstairs strikes the half hour, her time is wasted.

   On the toes of her boots she moves away as silently as she can. The dining room still needs to be cleared, the drawing room tidied, and it is unlikely she will be in bed before midnight.

Chapter 10

M
ina waits until Robert has finished his breakfast and is gone before she pushes away her plate. She pours more tea for the two of them. "Does nothing about England feel remotely like home to you, Victoria?"

   The young widow puts down her fork. Her sorrow has not much affected her appetite, Mina notes, for she has finished a second helping of kedgeree. Perhaps Mrs. Johnson's approximation of it is not so bad, despite her complaints that such a thing was impossible and besides, no civilized person eats rice for breakfast.

   "I feel as though it should." Her voice is as insubstantial as she herself is. Her delicate egg of a head rests on a thin neck. Her ears, her nose, her mouth, all are small and nestled together in the center of her face, as though not wanting to intrude themselves. As for her pale hair, it is pulled back tight, leaving her head looking strangely exposed. For a couple of seconds she holds Mina's eye, then looks down at her plate.