Convenient Women Collection Read online

  The sun’s pale rays swept across the sky and drowned the stars. I shut the door gently, lifted my heels as I stepped out into the yard, and made my way up the basement steps.

  Once on the green, I took a moment to look back at Miss Grey’s house. The white of it glowed in the dawn and made the windows appear blacker than ever. I imagined myself in the top window, bending over to dust the sill and dropping the silver button box into my apron pocket as Luella had seen me do. How many times had she watched me before that day? Now, as I looked at the house, I realised I had been like an animal in a zoo. I turned my back on it so I would not have to worry about what other secrets I had given away.

  The town was coming alive with the dawn chorus. Boats were already on the sea, and the costermongers were calling out their deals for the day. I waited on the street corner and watched the grocer’s shop. The man was stumbling around behind the window, rubbing his eyes and yawning as he wiped down the counter.

  Luella’s window was open, as it had been yesterday, and there was a faint yellow glow in the room from her candle. So she had not yet left, and she was not watching.

  I hurried to the post office a few doors down from the grocer’s and slipped the note for Frank through the letter box. I closed my eyes and prayed to God that it reached him before we did, though I had little faith that God would listen, for it had been years since I’d last spoken to Him.

  I was walking towards the grocer’s when I had the sensation of someone beside me.

  ‘Good morning.’

  It was all I could do to hold the scream inside my mouth. To my right, Luella grinned wildly. Gripping my arm, she marched us through Stowmouth, her bag battering against my thighs as my own leather case hung heavy in my hand. I was gasping by the time she let us slow down. She had walked us out of the town, off the road, and to the banks of the river.

  ‘What on earth?’

  ‘We have to hurry before the day gets too hot,’ she said. ‘Follow the river.’ She was making little sense; she was crazed again.

  ‘We should find a cart going to Exeter. Come, we are going the wrong way.’

  ‘Why Exeter?’

  ‘To get a train.’

  ‘No trains.’ She shook her head and stamped her foot.

  ‘How do you suppose we reach him then?’

  ‘Walk.’

  My laughter echoed in the valley.

  ‘It ain’t that far,’ she said.

  My laugh stopped. She pinched her lips.

  ‘How do you know how far it is?’ I said.

  She kicked a clump of grass free with her toe and shrugged. ‘I guessed you wouldn’t live too far from your husband. Am I right?’

  She was right, but that didn’t quieten my unease. ‘It is far enough to warrant a train.’

  ‘No trains.’ She shook her head so much that her cheeks wobbled. ‘I won’t go on a train.’

  She was a silly country girl, wasn’t she? Scared of anything new. Perhaps she thought her head would fly off or her lungs would be crushed from the speed of it. And there was no point in protesting, for really, it was better this way. Frank would have more time; I would have more time. But the thought of walking all those miles made my feet hurt before we had begun.

  ‘A stagecoach,’ she said.

  When was the last time she had left her hometown? ‘Hardly any operate nowadays.’

  ‘There’s some still going. We’ll use them or walk.’

  I sighed. ‘Fine. But I will not wear out these shoes for you.’

  She nodded, and the madness again slid off her. I led the way out of the valley and over the wet grass until we reached the north road. I stopped and listened for the sound of wheels, but the air was filled only with birds which sang to the glory of a new day.

  I turned northwards and glared at the hill before me. ‘This way.’

  Chapter 3

  A coach did not come. A cart did not come. For a while, I had the awful notion that I was directing us out of our way, but then a marker told us we were five miles from Honiton, and I could breathe again.

  The road was hard under my feet. My shoes were not meant for walking; the leather was too soft, the heel too high. There were blisters forming, and I could feel the pressure of them building at the back of my ankles and on the balls of my feet. Each step became more difficult, and with the heat – for the sun was rising hot and fast – I had slowed to little more than a hobble.

  ‘Let’s sit,’ I said.

  We had been trudging up and down the valleys, with ditches and hedgerows flanking us and cattle and sheep in the fields beyond. Now, at the crest of another hill, there was an opening where a shallow stream bubbled beside a tree. I fell into the shade, grabbing at the buttons around my neck and pulling the material off my skin. I had worn the wrong dress too, and the crinoline ballooned around my legs as I sat awkwardly upon the grass.

  Luella, though, seemed perfectly suited to the occasion. She crouched beside me in her white dress with the flowers on it, and her skin was just as pale as it had been in the early morning. I imagined that her feet would be fine as well in such ugly boots.

  I tore off my hat, threw it away from me, and let my head rest against the tree. The breeze, which was stronger up here on the top of the hill, teased at my hair and ran its cool fingers across my scalp. I closed my eyes and drank in the air.

  I had no watch upon me, so I could not be certain what Miss Grey would be doing now, but I was sure she would be awake and screaming for me. How might Cook handle the situation? She would call me names, I supposed, and tell Miss Grey that I never was any good and that Miss Grey was better off without me. Cook did not know she would have no job come Monday morning.

  Ruffling, tinkling … Luella was sifting through her cotton bag. There were few clothes inside it from what I could see – only some white material that might have been a dress or a petticoat or a handkerchief – a purse, and a flask. She had in her hand a paper bag with a chunk of bread in it.

  ‘Want some?’ She offered it to me, and I took it miserably. It must have been yesterday’s lot, for it was stale.

  ‘Water?’ I said.

  She ran her fingers in the stream as an answer, cupped her palm, then drank from her hand. Filthy creature. She laughed at the shock on my face.

  ‘It’s all we have,’ she said, taking the bread off me and eating it all herself.

  ‘Then I shall wait until we reach the town.’ But my tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth, and my lips were so dry that I feared they would crack. I dipped a finger into the water – at least it was cool – then ran that finger over my gums, trying not to think about the cows which drank from this same stream, nor their shit and piss which filtered into it.

  ‘What’s in that flask of yours?’ I asked, for she had left her bag open, and the metal caught in the dappled sunlight. It was pewter, rather dull compared to my silver one, which now lay waiting as a snake waits for a mouse to walk between its teeth. ‘You have water in there, yet you make me drink from a stream?’

  The heat and exhaustion was souring my temper. It was all I could do to stop myself from calling her a selfish bitch, for it was she who had dragged me on this journey when otherwise I could have been in the carriage of a train without the pain in my feet or the ache in my hips, and she would not even share her water with me.

  ‘It ain’t water.’ She scrunched the empty paper into her bag, then fastened it so I could see nothing else.

  I would have pressed her on the subject, but my energy was dropping. The grass beneath me now felt soft, the moss as welcoming as a mattress. My feet and legs stuck out of the shade and were warmed by the sun. My head rested on the bark as if it were a pillow, and my eyelids struggled to stay open to look at the view of the patchwork of fields that rolled before us.

  ‘Beautiful,’ Luella whispered, and I had to agree with her, though I did not say as much. ‘How old were you, Bonnie, when you went to Mrs Campbell’s?’

  ‘Twenty-two.’ I r
ecalled Frank and I walking into Bridgefield, laughing at how pretty the place was with its stone bridge over the wide river, its high street made up of Georgian buildings, and the woodlands that surrounded the place. I remembered skipping along the dirt track to the big red-brick house at the edge of the town. Its chimneys poured out smoke, the place smelt of fried bacon, and Mrs Campbell talked with me at her kitchen table as she made tea and asked if I’d like something to eat.

  ‘How do you do it?’ Luella said.

  I squinted at her.

  ‘How do you get to be their companion so easy? Everything seemed so easy for you …’

  She was getting melancholy, but I was too tired to try and cheer her, so I told her the truth. ‘A young, middle-class girl with a nice smile and an honest face. That’s it.’

  ‘That’s what?’

  ‘That’s all I need to win them over.’

  ‘You lie to them.’

  I sighed. She was naïve for someone who had been raised as a murderer’s daughter. I thought her experiences would have taught her that the world was not a fair nor a nice place to be, but who was I to tell her that now, when she had so little time left anyway?

  ‘Yes, I lie, Luella.’

  She asked no further questions. I think I dozed after that, for time seemed to jump. One minute there was sunshine, the next a cloud had passed over us. I dreamt we were riding a horse, and I woke to find Luella poking my arm and gathering up her skirt as she stepped over me towards the road. The hooves I’d heard in my dream were the hooves of a donkey pulling an old, weathered farmer on a cart.

  I scrambled to my feet, pushing down my crinoline and placing my hat neatly on my head, and stepped onto the roadside, smiling.

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ I said, stepping into the path of the donkey, ‘we are heading north and wondered if you might be so kind as to let us ride with you for a while?’

  The man’s white brows pulled tight as he regarded us both. Luella was stroking the donkey’s muzzle and whispering to it, and I thought the man must have taken her for a lunatic.

  ‘My maid is fond of animals. She was raised a farm girl.’

  The man nodded, grunted, and beckoned us to sit in the cart. He did not wait for us to be seated properly before he flicked the reins and lurched us all forward.

  The cart was dirty and smelt of vegetables; it was an uncomfortable journey, but at least the weight was off my feet. I smiled at the views, as we crested hilltops and dipped into lush little valleys, until he made a right turn.

  ‘I’m down here,’ he called and stopped so we could dismount. We waved him and the donkey goodbye and trudged another mile or so until we reached an inn.

  It was one of those places where everyone stares at new people. The door was low, the wood dotted with iron nails and splintered so that the stench of old beer tickled you before you’d even passed over the threshold. I ventured in first, for Luella seemed to be holding back, waiting, as if she was afraid of entering a public house. She would hopefully lose her boldness again when it came time for murder.

  A scruffy black dog ran at my feet, barking, and nipped my skirt. Horrible thing; it looked as if it had seen many scraps with other dogs, for half of one of its ears was missing, and there were bare, white patches of scars showing over its muzzle. I kicked it back, and a man who had propped himself up with one elbow on the bar groaned at the animal to come away. The thing didn’t pay its master any heed and continued to snap at my silk skirt until Luella pushed me along and knelt before the dog. She offered her naked hand to it, and after showing her its teeth, the dog edged towards her, sniffed her fingers, licked them, then trotted away to lie down under its owner’s stool.

  Well, that surely got everyone’s attention, didn’t it? The men – for the only other female was the landlady – stared at the thin waif with a look of wary hunger in their eyes. I’d seen that look many a time, and I didn’t like it being directed at Luella; in these parts, I was unsure as to whether they thought her a witch, a whore, or a simpleton.

  ‘Sit in the corner there,’ I whispered to her, giving her my case and pushing her to the place furthest away from the men, though their eyes followed her as she sat.

  Raising my head, I pinned the landlady with a stare. She came forward begrudgingly, looking me up and down. Take it in, I thought, for she had likely never seen silk like my blue dress before, and I wanted her to know the sort of woman she was about to speak with.

  ‘My maid and I will have ham and eggs, and wine,’ I said. Some man to my right sniggered, but I did not turn towards him.

  ‘Don’t have wine,’ the landlady said, and her accent was worse than Luella’s.

  ‘Beer, then.’

  She nodded and poured us two pewter cups of it, slamming them on the counter so that the liquid sloshed over the side and splattered onto my gloves. I took no heed of her petty jealousy.

  ‘Where might we find a coach?’

  ‘Depends where you’re wanting to get to.’

  I leaned closer to the counter top and lowered my voice. ‘We are heading for Bristol.’

  She sniffed a dreadful, wet kind of sniff, and swallowed whatever she had taken back. ‘Out of here, turn right, follow the track to the main road. Coaches pass through sometimes, though can’t say if there’ll be one coming today.’ Then she turned and disappeared through a door, and the smell of hot fat wafted into the air.

  I would have left there and then if my stomach had not been aching with hunger. The pewter cups were sticky on my gloves as I carried them to the table where Luella waited for me. She drank first, oblivious of the grubbiness, and though I tried to restrain myself, I could not stop from quenching my thirst. The beer was stale and smelt dank, but I had downed half of it before I could pull it from my lips.

  ‘You’ll be sick, carry on like that,’ Luella said.

  ‘We must be quick here, then get to the main road.’ I assumed – hoped, rather – that the coachmen might be eating their own lunch somewhere now and that if we were lucky enough – and Lord, I prayed for us to be lucky, for I would not spend a night in this wretched building – we would be able to meet them for the afternoon journey.

  ‘Where we going?’

  ‘North.’ I would not tell her the destination, for then she would have no need of me.

  She nodded, placated. She was a simple girl when her anger was cold. I wondered if she might be some kind of idiot, for at times like these, nothing seemed to pass behind her eyes. She continued to gaze through the glass, which was cut so thickly that the world outside was distorted into swirls of green and blue, until the landlady dropped our plates and two grubby sets of cutlery on the table.

  The ham, to my horror, was green at the edges. The egg, which had been fried, was runny on the top, the white still half transparent. Luella pierced the yolk and let it spread over her meat, then cut and sliced and shovelled it into her mouth. I decided that not a morsel of the ham would pass my lips and ate only the cooked bits of the egg.

  She finished swiftly and dragged her sleeve across her lips. Then she was on her feet, waiting for me to follow. I threw a coin on the counter and followed in Luella’s eager footsteps, lifting my skirts away from the dog’s teeth as I jumped through the doorway.

  She was ahead of me by three paces, marching over a track between some farm buildings. I had to trot to catch her, and as I did so, my foot caught in a dip, and I twisted my ankle. She caught me before I crashed onto the ground and gripped me under the armpit to hold me up. Her strength shocked me, for I was almost a head taller than her, but she appeared to have no trouble in taking my weight. Pressing into her, I limped along the track. Another dog came charging at us, and I was sure that this one, which was bigger and ownerless, would attack us, but it stopped a few feet away and only gnashed at the air as we passed.

  ‘Hush,’ Luella said, holding us both still. She cocked her head, and then I heard it too: hooves.

  We hobbled as fast as we could until the track spilled onto
a road, and over the tops of the hedgerows, we saw four horses dragging a coach. They were going the wrong way.

  I could have cried, for the pain in my ankle was sharp, the egg and drink sloshed around my otherwise empty stomach, and the beer had made my head feel like something was sawing it open.

  ‘When’s the other one coming, going north?’ Luella shouted as the coach neared us.

  The driver doffed his hat to us and called back, ‘Within the hour.’

  The coach blew dust into our eyes as it passed. The passengers were few; I could see only one face inside the carriage, and a lad was riding at the back, letting the breeze blow through his hair.

  Luella dropped me at the side of the road where the grass grew high with wildflowers. Butterflies flew out around me as I rubbed my ankle and tested how much movement it had. It had not been a bad fall, nothing felt broken, though there was a twinge when I pointed my toes at the sky.

  ‘How is it?’ Luella lay beside me and closed her eyes against the sun.

  ‘Fine.’

  A honeybee buzzed over her, and for a moment I thought it might land on her, mistaking her for a flower, but it continued on its way. Behind her, the space above the road shimmered and waved; the sun was high in the sky.

  I lay beside her. The road was quiet; just the occasional cart loaded with hay passed by, and in the distance we could hear the sounds of labourers working in the fields.

  ‘It were raining,’ Luella said. Her voice was soft and feathery. She was on the edge of sleep. ‘When Pa died.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘You don’t remember?’

  I grunted.

  ‘I saw you.’

  I did not recall her being there. I had been watching as Samuel was walked towards the noose, my bonnet tied tight to keep the rain from my eyes. It truly had been a terrible day, an unusual cold spell for August, and the chill in the air had been like fingers down my spine.