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Chapter Ten

Tarts, The Common, or Country Fashion

Take a fresh cream cheese, made the preceding day, or only made five or six hours before; mix a bit of butter and a few eggs with a little salt; make the paste pretty thick, and the top the same; bake it without glazing the top crust or border.

I could not make head or tail of what had happened and why my stepmother and stepsisters had vanished. Surely Mercy wouldn’t have left me behind?

Only three of Mrs Truegood’s servants remained and I begged them to tell me where she had gone, but they ignored my pleas. I asked for my clothes back but one of the footmen said my things had not been touched.

‘Then where are they?’ I asked and to that there came no answer.

They gathered together all that belonged to their mistress and departed, taking the yellow canaries too. I decided I would follow them but my father took the precaution of locking all the doors after they’d left.

‘Don’t think that you have any sympathy from me,’ he bellowed. ‘You have brought this on yourself.’

‘How? Please tell me how?’ I said, but he would not.

Perhaps, I thought, Mrs Truegood had spied on Mercy and me and been so horrified by what she had seen that she had taken her daughters away.

I hoped that Cook might have some inkling as to what had passed but she seemed to know nothing.

‘And my clothes are gone,’ I said.

‘The master had me sell them this morning,’ she said. ‘All hope is gone.’

‘And Mercy, too,’ said I.

‘Butter and salt,’ she said. ‘Butter and salt.’

‘What does that mean? You always say it and it means nothing.’

‘Butter and salt in the right proportion means a good life. Too much salt and all is ruined.’

Like so much of what Cook said, this only possessed a pepper grain of sense and brought little comfort.

Until Mrs Truegood had arrived, my life had been filled with nothing more than half-formed dreams, but never had I felt as desolate as I did then. The memory of the handsome stranger was now but a patch of blue sky vanishing among thunderous clouds. And the thought that I would never see Mercy again near broke my heart.

It was not long before the house went to rack and my father to ruin. Cook fell back upon her grubby apron and untidy ways. Even the spit-roast dog had vanished along with all the other conveniences and Cook whiled away the hours turning the spit, roasting and burning the meat in equal measure. Thirsty work, she said, that was only eased by gin.

Many times I thought of running away but my father took to being my jailer with more vigour than he had ever shown when a merchant in bricks.

I once read that when Vikings faced defeat in battle they set their ships ablaze. Mr Truegood must have read that too for he seemed determined to cast himself upon the bonfire of bankruptcy. Never one to miss out on pleasures he reinstated the Hawks’ Club. His wayward, sea-salty friends reappeared to help him light the fuse to his inevitable ruin. Like it or not, and I can assure you, sir, I liked it not, I was dragged down into the ashes with him.

The taste for such luxury as Mrs Truegood had shown me had spoiled me for all else. I had lived less than three months in the light and the rest of my days rolled out before me in a never-ending line of chamber pots filled with my father’s shit.

Summer crept along, heating up the streets, heating up the house. Everything was stagnant apart from the hornets’ nest in the attic where I had been ordered to sleep with Cook as before. What, I asked myself, would happen if I stood very still in the blue chamber? Would life pass me by altogether until I turned to dust? I missed Mercy. What hurt the most was the thought that I had meant nothing to her. That alone was a splinter in my heart.

There was no money for meat and vittles, there was no money for wine. There was no money for the removal of the hornets’ nest. Cook and me had to move out of the attic. It had become unusable, filled with the incessant angry whirling of hornets’ wings. It came to symbolise everything that was rotten in our house.

The merchants soon refused to give my father any more credit. He only minded about the wine merchant. It was in want of alcohol that he sent Cook to hire some clothes for me so that we might see the wine merchant together. The thought of being out of the house raised my spirits no end and I saw it as a chance of escape. Before leaving I had had the wit to snatch up the book my dancing master had given me. But Mr Truegood kept his hand on my arm with the ferocity of a crab. There being a customer with the wine merchant, we walked back and forth outside shop until Mr Truegood was certain there was no one else inside but the wine merchant.

‘Tell him…’ he said as he pushed me at the door, ‘tell him to deliver the wine and you will be the payment.’

My only hope was that the dancing master’s book might have some currency. The wine merchant sat behind his counter, an owl in an ivy bush, so woolly was his wig. He had the startled look that owls have when light is shone upon them.

‘Not another bottle until my bills are paid,’ he said. ‘One way, or another.’

He eyed my assets, which the ill-fitting gown showed immodestly well. I had a nasty feeling that ‘another’ would have a Mr Smollett approach attached to it, and I put the book on the counter and asked if it would pay a part of the bill. The wine merchant sighed.

‘I have prayer books from all the drunks in London. I don’t need more.’

But he opened the book and stopped. On the front page was an illustration that had arrested me when I first saw it. It showed a woman undone, her pretty breasts all pert, her nipples pointing up to heaven, her legs lusciously parted, and between them was her maid, kissing that most tender spot. It made me sad to remember how Mercy was so expert in this. The wine merchant’s eyes widened and he cleared his throat. Quickly I took the book back.

‘Forgive me, sir,’ I said and made to leave. ‘It was foolish to ask.’

Outside I could see my father, his face red with rage, waving his arms and shooing me back.

‘Not so hasty,’ said the wine merchant. ‘If you would show me the book again…’ I could see where this was leading. A customer tried to enter the shop and the wine merchant said firmly that it was closed. ‘I will take the book in lieu of payment this time, Miss er, er…’

‘Truegood,’ I said, handing him the book.

‘The book and one kiss. But if the old devil runs the bill up again I will take from you the pleasure to be found in… in… this illustration.’ He showed me Plate Three. It was without doubt the dullest of all the illustrations to be found there: a man flattened out on top of his lady, his breeches round his ankles and only a small part of his carrot inside her. He looked in ecstasy; she looked bored.

I agreed to the wine merchant’s terms. So this was what it was to be a whore.

‘Seal the bargain with a kiss,’ he said.

I had never kissed an owl before but I imagine the wine merchant and an owl might have more in common than either would have expected. I pulled away for want of breath. He still didn’t let go and his hand found its way under my skirt and petticoat and I having nothing on that would stop his hand from further roaming it went straight to the point.

I eased myself away and left the order for the wine on the counter.

‘When he has drunk this,’ said the wine merchant, ‘I will be needing proper payment.’

I left him smelling the tips of his fingers.

By the time the wine had run out my father had gambled everything away.

It was the morning that the grandfather clock was removed that marked the end of my time in Milk Street. I had forgotten all about seeing the small boy trapped inside until Cook mentioned it.

‘Do you remember when you saw the boy inside the clock?’

‘Did you see him too?’ I asked, for she had never said.

‘I don’t know. It was so long ago. Perhaps…’

Two servants turned up with a cart to take away the grandfather clock. My father, drunk and maudlin, showed them upstairs to where the clock stood.

‘Handsome,’ said one of the men.

The other opened it to take out the pendulum and the weights and he was there, the small boy, curled up, cowering, waiting to be hit.

I held my peace, my heart beating, then my father said, more to himself than to anyone else, ‘I used to hide in there when I was a lad, to keep out the way of my father’s temper.’ He stopped, moved back in surprise, and was saved from falling over the bannister by one of the men.

‘Careful now, sir,’ he said.

‘Did you see that?’ my father asked. ‘Did you see that?’

I had seen.

‘See what?’ said the other man.

My father looked at me. ‘Did you see?’ he said. ‘Did you see the boy?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I did.’

‘It was me,’ shouted my father. ‘It was me – Samuel. Me…’

His eyes filled with tears.

Now, wouldn’t that make a rounded tale, sir, if finally my father had become regretful of how he had treated his one and only child? Perhaps in a pantomime such tales run round that way. Not in this one, I assure you.