Mary Anne, Page 3

  “Behave yourselves, and I’ll take you out,” she commanded—but softly, so that her mother in the bedroom upstairs would not hear. Later, when the dishes were washed, the table set for the next meal and her mother tucked in bed for an hour’s rest, Mary Anne picked up one boy and straddled him on her hip, gave her hand to another, and let the third tag behind hanging on to her skirt. Then away they went, out of the dark alley where the sun never shone, through the maze of small courts adjoining, and so into Chancery Lane and down into Fleet Street.

  This was another world, and one she loved, full of color and sound and smell, but not the smell of the alley. Here people jostled one another on the pavement, here the traffic rumbled on towards Ludgate Hill and St. Paul’s, the carters cracking their whips and shouting, drawing their horses to the side of the road as a coach passed, spattering mud. Here a fine gentleman would step out of his chair to visit a bookshop, while a woman selling lavender thrust a bunch under his nose, and there on the opposite side a cart overtipped, spilling apples and oranges, tumbling into the gutter a blind musician and an old man mending a chair.

  It came to her in gusts, the sound and the smell of London, and she felt part of it, caught up in the movement and the bustle, the continual excitement that must surely be leading to something, to somewhere—not only to the steps of St. Paul’s, where the boys could play safely, out of the stream, and she could stand, watching.

  Adventure was here. Adventure was there. Adventure was in picking up a posy dropped by a lady and offering it to an old gentleman who patted her head and gave her twopence. Adventure was in gazing into pawnbrokers’ windows, in riding in wagons when the carter smiled, in scuffling with apprentice boys, in hovering outside the bookshops and, when the bookseller was inside, tearing out the middle pages to read at home, for prospective purchasers never looked at anything but the beginning and the end.

  These were the things she loved, and she did not know why. So she kept them secret from her mother, who would have scolded her and disapproved.

  The streets were mentor and playground, teacher and companion. Rascals picked pockets on the streets, beggars were given alms, goods were bought, rubbish was sold, men laughed, men cursed, women whined, women smiled, children died under wheels. Some men and women wore fine clothes, some wore rags. The first ate well, and the others starved. The way to avoid rags and starvation was to watch, to wait, to pick up the coin dropped on the pavement before anyone else, to run swiftly, to conceal quickly, to smile at the right moment, to hide at the next, to keep what you had, to look after your own. The thing to remember was not to grow up like her mother, who was weak, who had no resistance, who was lost in this world of London that was alien to her, and whose only consolation was to talk of the past, when she had known better days.

  Better days… And what were they? Better days meant sleeping in linen, meant owning a servant, meant possessing new clothes, meant four o’clock dinner, things without reality for the child, yet because she had heard her mother speak of them they became real in her eyes. Mary Anne saw the better days. She saw the servant, she saw the clothes, she ate the four o’clock dinner. The only thing she did not understand was why her mother had given them up.

  “There was no other choice. I was a widow. I had you and Charley to support.”

  “How do you mean, no other choice?”

  “Your stepfather asked me to marry him. There was nothing else I could do. Besides, he was good and kind.”

  Then men were not dependent upon women after all, as she had thought—women were dependent upon men. Boys were frail, boys cried, boys were tender, boys were helpless. Mary Anne knew this, because she was the eldest girl among her three young brothers, and the baby Isobel did not count at all. Men also were frail, men also cried, men also were tender, men also were helpless. Mary Anne knew this because her stepfather, Bob Farquhar, was all of these things in turn. Yet men went to work. Men made the money—or frittered it away, like her stepfather, so that there was never enough to buy clothes for the children, and her mother scraped and saved and stitched by candlelight, and often looked tired and worn. Somewhere there was injustice. Somewhere the balance had gone.

  “When I’m grown up I shall marry a rich man,” she said. This was one day when they were all sitting round the table having supper, not four o’clock dinner. It was midsummer, and the hot air from the alley came in from the open door, smelling of decaying vegetables and drains. Her stepfather had hung his coat over his chair and was sitting in his shirt. Great hoops of sweat showed under his armpits and, as usual, he had ink stains on his hands. Her mother was coaxing Isobel to eat, but the child, fretful from the heat, turned her face away and cried. George and Eddie were kicking each other’s shins under the table. Charley had just slopped his gravy onto the cloth.

  Mary Anne looked at them all in turn and then made her pronouncement. She was thirteen years old at the time. Bob Farquhar laughed, and winked at her over the table.

  “You’ll have to find him first,” he said. “How will you set about it?”

  Not the way her mother had found him, thought the child. Not waiting in patience to be asked. Not turning into a drudge to mind children and wash dishes. She reasoned like this with her mind, but because she was fond of Bob Farquhar she smiled and winked back at him.

  “By making a fool out of someone,” she said, “before he makes a fool out of me.”

  This delighted her stepfather, who lit up his pipe and chuckled, but her mother was not so amused.

  “I know where she picks up that language,” she said; “following you in the evening, listening to you and your friends.”

  Bob Farquhar shrugged his shoulders, yawned and pushed back his chair. “What’s the harm?” he asked. “She’s as smart as a monkey, and knows it. No girl got into trouble that way.”

  He threw a roll of copy across the table and his stepdaughter caught it. “What happens if I pull the monkey’s tail?” he asked.

  “The monkey bites,” said Mary Anne.

  She ran her eyes down the copy. Some of the words were long and she was not sure of the meaning, but she knew her stepfather wanted her to correct it because he was putting on his coat and making for the door, and he pulled one of her straggling curls as he passed by her chair.

  “You haven’t told us how you’ll find your rich husband,” he teased.

  “You tell me instead,” she answered.

  “Why, stand on the pavement and whistle to the first fellow you fancy. You’ll get anyone with those eyes.”

  “Yes,” said Mary Anne, “but the first fellow I fancy mightn’t be rich.”

  She heard him laughing as he strolled down the alley to meet his friends. She had often gone with him, she knew just what he would do. First, stroll the alleys and byways and pick up his cronies; then take a turn in the streets, laughing, joking, and watching the people; then, in a bunch of six or seven, they would go on to a tavern and blithely and heatedly probe the affairs of the day.

  Men’s talk was better than women’s. Never food, never babies, never sickness or boots needing mending, but people, what happened, the reason. Not the state of the house, but the state of the Army. Not the children next door, but the rebels in France. Never what broke the china, but who broke the treaty. Not what spoilt the washing, but who spilled the beans. A Whig was a patriot, a Frog was a Frenchman, a Tory a traitor, a woman a whore. Some of it was puzzling and some of it was tripe, but all of it was better than darning Charley’s socks.

  “Thirsty weather?”

  “Thirsty weather.”

  Solemnly they clinked their glasses, solemnly they drank, and riotously the reputations of the famous tore through the smoky air, dropping pieces of themselves into the lap of a listening child—but not tonight. Tonight there were stockings to mend and shirts to wash, the boys to mind and mother to console, and even at bedtime, when she had a moment to sit down by the window and look at the copy that had to go to press tomorrow, Charley would come to the d
oor, Charley would claim her.

  “Tell me a story, Mary Anne.”

  “I’ll box your ears first.”

  “Tell me a story.”

  Anything served. The beat of a drum. The bells of St. Paul’s. The shout of a drunkard. The cries of a hawker. The shabby tinker who came knocking on the doors crying, “Pots an’ pans. Any ole pots an’ pans t’mend?” stumbling over Eddie and George, who were sailing a paper boat in the open drain. Even the tinker’s drab familiar figure, turned from the door by their mother, could be changed into a prince to dazzle the eyes of Charley.

  “Tell about the ’45, and the silver button.”

  Princes Charles had lost the battle, and the Duke of Cumberland had won. She never mentioned the fact in front of her mother, who had been born a Mackenzie. One of the Mackenzies possessed a silver button worn by the Prince. That was enough.

  “What happened to the button?” she had asked when five years old. Her mother did not know. Her branch of the Mackenzies had come south when she was born. They had lost touch with the clan. So Mary Anne wove a fabrication for Charley and herself. They had only to find the button, and the fortunes of the family would be restored.

  “When we have found the button, what shall we do then?”

  “Have candles everywhere.”

  Candles that filled the room with light, and not with grease. Candles that did not have to be hoarded until they spluttered and went out.

  Mary Anne told Charley the story of the silver button. Then she lit the candle, and taking the roll of copy in her hands she stood reading it aloud, beside the small mirror on the wall, listening to her own pronunciation. Her mother had told her that she spoke badly, and Mary Anne could not get it out of her mind.

  “How do you mean—I speak badly?” she had asked, on the defensive.

  “It’s not your voice—it’s the sound. It’s the way they speak in the alley. You’ve picked it up from the children there. Your stepfather doesn’t notice it. He speaks that way himself.”

  She was branded again. Branded with her stepfather, and the alley, and the streets. The Mackenzies from Scotland had been different. Likewise her father, Mr. Thompson of Aberdeen.

  “Was he a gentleman, then?” She snatched at the straw of romance, the link with better days.

  “He moved in the circles where gentlemen moved,” was the reply.

  That was not enough. Not enough the better days, and the dining at four. Not enough plain Mr. Thompson of Aberdeen. Not enough that he had lost his life in the American wars.

  “Do you mean he commanded troops?”

  “Not quite. He was attached to the Army.”

  An adviser, perhaps? A weaver of plans? A go-between? The pamphlets gave hints of such people. Sometimes they called them spies. Mr. Thompson, who had given her mother better days, was no longer so dull. He smiled, he bowed, he listened; he whispered strategic secrets behind his hand; he was clever; he was cunning. Above all he was a gentleman who spoke with a cultured voice. He did not speak broad like the children in the alley.

  “Listen, Charley. Listen to my voice.”

  “What’s wrong with your voice?”

  “Never mind. Listen.”

  The h was all-important. Her mother had told her that. The h and the o and the u. And the o and the i when together.

  “We have it on the highest authority that His Majesty’s Government, which will search around for any available stick to beat the Opposition dog and lame it during the present session, and not content with the stick, pick up the mud…”

  “What are you reading, Mary Anne?”

  “Tomorrow’s copy.”

  “But I don’t understand it.”

  “No more do I. But that doesn’t matter. Father says the readers don’t either. Don’t interrupt. ‘We have it on the highest authority…’ ” And out came her pencil—the r of “authority” was broken.

  “There’s someone knocking on the door down below.”

  “Let them knock.”

  But the boy was off the bed and craning his neck out of the window.

  “It’s some men… They’re carrying father… He’s hurt.”

  And suddenly they heard her mother’s voice, calling out in alarm, and Isobel crying, and George and Eddie came running upstairs.

  “All right. Easy now. No cause for alarm.”

  They were laying him down between two chairs in the living room, and his face was mottled and queer.

  “It’s the heat.”

  “The doctor will bleed him.”

  “He fell at the street corner.”

  “He’ll be himself again directly.”

  Her mother stood by helplessly. Mary Anne sent Charley running for the doctor, packed the other two boys and Isobel upstairs, and shut the door on them. Then she fetched a basin of cold water and sponged her stepfather’s head, while his friends went over the story in detail once again to her mother.

  Presently Charley returned with the doctor. He looked grave, he murmured something about apoplexy, he sent Mary Anne and Charley out of the room—children were in the way when there was sickness.

  Finally Bob Farquhar was carried to bed, and after the bloodletting and the purging the children were told that it was not apoplexy after all, that he was not going to die, but that he must rest. He must on no account go to work, not tomorrow, not next week, not for several weeks. While the doctor explained the ritual of nursing and feeding to her distraught mother, Mary Anne slipped into the bedroom and took hold of her stepfather’s hand. He had recovered consciousness.

  “What’s to happen?” he said. “They’ll find someone else to do my work at the printing house. A sick man’s no use to them.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “You’ll have to take a message. Someone must go and take a message. Ask for Mr. Day, the overseer.” He closed his eyes—talking was too much for him.

  Mary Anne went downstairs. Her mother looked at her hopelessly.

  “This is the finish,” she said. “They’ll pay him for this week’s work, and no more. It may be months before he is well again, and his place will be filled. How do we live meanwhile?”

  “I’m to go down to the printing house in the morning.”

  “You must tell them the truth. That your father is sick.”

  “I’ll tell them the truth.”

  Mary Anne rolled the copy carefully. She must take the chance that every word was correct. She knew all the signs by now, the small marks in the margin, but never before had copy been delivered back to the printing house without her stepfather glancing at it first. She knew his hand well. The sloping R. The curl to the F. She signed at the foot of the copy, “Corrected. Robt. Farquhar.”

  Early next day she washed her face and hands and put on her Sunday frock. The straggling curls looked limp, making her childish. She snipped at them with scissors and then stood back to see the effect in the mirror. Better, but lacking in something, lacking in color. She stole softly into the next bedroom. Her stepfather was asleep. She opened the press where her mother kept her clothes. A gown was hanging there that she never wore in Bowling Inn Alley, a gown which belonged to the better days, with a bunch of red ribbon on the bodice. Mary Anne threaded the ribbon through her hair and looked at her reflection once again. Yes, the ribbon was the answer.

  She stole out of the house before her mother or the boys could see her, and, the roll of copy under her arm, went down to Fleet Street.

  3

  The doors were open and she could go where she pleased. No one took any notice of her. The press was at work, and she caught a glimpse of the great wooden contraption in a long narrow room, with two men beside it and a boy holding rolls of paper that he passed to the men. Two other men were standing nearby, talking, and a second boy kept running up a narrow stairway to a room above, returning with fresh paper. The men raised their voices to make themselves heard, because of the clanking sound the rollers made as the sheets of paper passed through the press.

>   Another door, marked “Private,” stood opposite the pressroom across the passage. Mary Anne knocked at the door. Somebody shouted “Come in,” but the voice was irritable. She went into the room.

  “What do you want?”

  The owner of the irritable voice was a gentleman. He wore a good coat and silk stockings, and his powdered, curled wig was tied with black ribbon. The other wore his own hair and his stockings were worsted.

  “I’ve come with a message from my father. He’s sick.”

  “Who’s your father?”

  “Robert Farquhar.”

  The gentleman turned away with a shrug. The plainer man, with the worsted stockings, apologized. “Bob Farquhar, Mr. Hughes. One of our best men. Compositor and corrector. What a piece of ill luck.”

  He turned to the child. “What ails your father?”

  “He was taken ill last night. The doctor says he won’t be well enough to come to work for some weeks.”

  “Strike off his name,” said the irritable gentleman. He was cleaning his nails by the window. “Easily replaced. Give the child the week’s pay, and let her go.”

  The plainer man looked worried. “I should be sorry to lose him for good, sir. He’s been with us for some years.”

  “Can’t help that. Can’t afford to keep sick men.”

  “No, sir.”

  The man sighed, and opening a drawer in the desk pulled out some money. “Tell your father we’re very sorry, and if he comes to see us when he’s well again we may be able to find something for him, but we can’t promise. Here is his pay for the week.”

  “Are you Mr. Day?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m to give the copy to you.”